Leverage Best in Class Tech Archives

Play Video about Lessons Learned From Building A Team Thumbnail

Ben Walker, Founder of Inspire Accountants and High-Performance Accountants share the lessons he learned from building an A-team in the recent webinar called, “Creating a High Performing Accounting Firm”.

Here’s what he said:–

In terms of building teams, these are the lessons over the years:

Inspire 1.0 – All the mistakes I made

I hired the first person who rocks up for the interview, and I started learning the challenges of managing people. Delegating is hard, we think that’s hard throughout every stage but especially harder if you haven’t done it before.

Inspire 2.0 – You hire the smartest person

You’re not at a size where your people do just one thing in their role. But you’ve got two sets of expectations on one person which can be hectic at times, and still unclear on team roles and progression.

Culture seems to be hard to manage. People burn out, including me from a flat structure wearing too many hats. You’re concerned that people are unproductive from home, that was also a bit of a question mark. No time sheets, I wasn’t concerned, but maybe thinking how do we keep a track of what people are doing?

Inspire 3.0 – You rush your hiring process to keep growing

Your team culture becomes more complex because you’ve got more people and more dynamics. Your teams create silos and develop different ways of doing the same thing.

Communication between teams becomes a challenge as well. It just makes things more complex. So, you need to build the systems on the backend that can accommodate that.

Discover your firm’s performance score and identify opportunities of low-hanging fruit to increase your firm’s profit, value and overall enjoyment as the owner of the accounting firm.

For more tips and trick around creating a High Performance Firm, follow us on our socials:

Play Video about Introducing High Performance Accountants Thumbnail

Ben Walker, Founder of Inspire Accountants and High Performance Accountants is introducing HPA as the newest program to growing a fun, super rewarding accounting firm that runs like clockwork.

Here’s what he said on the recent ‘Creating a High Performing Accounting Firm’ webinar –

We will be starting a group mentoring program that kicks off in March next year. We’ve already got dates in place for that program and it’s called High-Performance Accountants.

Over that time, you will grow your firm while working less hours and earning more profit. And hopefully, you ever thought possible in the first few months after starting that you will have clarified your vision for the firm that you can relate to.

These words I’ve chosen specifically because sometimes we had visions, I just did not see myself in. And you would understand where you’re adding the most value in your role, and have discovered some quick wins to grow and boost your profits – your firm’s profit and evaluation. And then we turn our attention to working through each of those remaining steps to creating a high-performance firm.

If you do want to have a chat about what that looks like, then please book in for what we call a Right-Fit Call, where we work out if we’re a right fit together to be able to help you.

Discover your firm’s performance score and identify opportunities of low-hanging fruit to increase your firm’s profit, value and overall enjoyment as the owner of the accounting firm. Take the high-performance accountants scorecard.

For more tips and trick around creating a High Performance Firm, follow us on our socials:

Play Video about Top Tech Tips For Your Accounting Firm Thumbnail

Having the best in class technology and an integrated tech stack is KEY when it comes to running a high performing accounting firm.

This includes using cloud only software as well as cutting edge computers and audio visuals.

Inspire’s Tech Stack

Inspire has tried and tested different software throughout the growth of the firm. What worked at the start, doesn’t necessarily get us to the next level. We’ve combined a list of the app or tech stack we currently use with a philosophy of ‘best in class’ when it comes to what we select. Take a look and see if there’s some apps that may benefit your firm.

For more tips and trick around creating a High Performance Firm, follow us on our socials:

Play Video about Tech Struggles We Experienced At Inspire Thumbnail

Ben Walker, Founder of Inspire Accountants and High-Performance Accountants share his tech struggles during the early days at Inspire. Here’s what he said:-

Inspire 1.0

The problem I had was using entry-level computers that we don’t update. Maybe we’re using the free or the light version of the software and you’re your own IT girl, or you don’t have the cash to invest in awesome equipment. These are the things I struggled with then.

Inspire 2.0

Your team complained about their computers. But I see a lot of firms in this revenue range using all-in-one software packages like HandiSoft or MYOB. They do everything in your practice, maybe not everything, but most things in your practice but each thing potentially poorly.

You have a server on-site, and you sign up with software that’s appropriate for maybe your current size, instead of the business you’re growing into using software that first came out 20 or more years ago. So, I think there’s just such good and efficient software now that we need to be using best-in-class software.

Inspire 3.0

Audio and video quality on Zoom and client meetings are poor. We had limited thought put into them. This is an awareness thing. That’s the reason why I’ve got a pretty crazy mic setup and headphones. I’ve got a 4K camera for my webcam. These are distinguished things I’ve made to give that online experience as best as I can with the equipment I can get access to, but also for our team who sit in client meetings every day.

And the other tricky thing was we don’t have scalable software such as enterprise-level CRMs or workflow managers.

If you want to discover your firm’s performance score and identify opportunities of low-hanging fruit to increase your firm’s profit, value and overall enjoyment as the owner of the accounting firm. Take the high-performance accountants scorecard

For more tips and trick around creating a High Performance Firm, follow us on our socials:

Play Video about How To Scale Your Sales Process Thumbnail

So, what do we put in place?

Sales Process – It converts most of the clients you want to work with. If it’s converting all of them, that the price is probably not high enough and that there’s one thing that might be wrong.

And if you’re not converting any, then it could be sales skills or a really high price.

Showing the value for the client – We think part of sales is actually saying no to people who don’t fit our target client profile, whether they’re just a plan out muppet. We are going to say no to them upfront or not in the revenue range or team size or profit level.

Maybe they are too new at business for our stock standard client and whatever that is, that’s what we’ve got to work out in that product step.

Documented Sales Process And Training – Things that helped and regular training as well. Ability for clients to test you before going all in and in terms of the ability for any of our team to know how much something costs is literally having a pricing menu and a pricing calculator.

Hourly Rates – So, we don’t do hourly rates at Inspire. We’ve got set prices for different things and it does change depending on the size of the business, the number of entities and turnover. But this has helped to scale our sales. Anyone can log in and see how much something’s going to cost.

Discover your firm’s performance score and identify opportunities of low-hanging fruit to increase your firm’s profit, value and overall enjoyment as the owner of the accounting firm.

For more tips and trick around creating a High Performance Firm, follow us on our socials:

Play Video about How To Build A Highly Effective Team

Have you ever experienced a really bad team culture where good team members don’t stick around and you find it extremely tough to find good people to join the team?

Things that helped:

1. Coals To Diamonds Team Development Plan

Inspire has created a Coals To Diamonds Team Development Plan that covers from Undergraduate Accountants right up to what a Partner looks like at Inspire. This includes the key milestones and expectations at each level. We do pay raises based on the Coals To Diamonds, and the team knows where they’re sitting and what they need to work on to get to the next level.

2. Implementing A Leadership Team

We implemented the leadership team in Inspire 2.0 and we’ve been perfecting it ever since. Having a leadership team makes the boss’s job easier and help[s them to delegate certain tasks to certain people.

3. Culture Club

We have an authentic approach to culture and have created rhythms with the team to be able to promote that close, trusting, fun culture.

The results:

We’ve got a team of A-players who love what they do and advocate the firm to clients and prospective team members. We’ve had a few good team members who’ve come from referrals from our existing team. They may have worked together in the past or they went through CA together.

Discover your firm’s performance score and identify opportunities of low-hanging fruit to increase your firm’s profit, value and overall enjoyment as the owner of the accounting firm.

For more tips and trick around creating a High Performance Firm, follow us on our socials:

I have been feeling that we need to review our prices and implement price increase at inspire.

That is due to the way salaries, subscriptions, and other inputs to our business.

It has been increasing over the last 24 months.

At the same time, I’d share my thought process and an insight into what happened to me and inspire in 2020.

That time led to a price increase of 200% at the high end (but between 10 – 50% on other services).

Covid had just kicked off in late 2019, but got serious in March 2020.

Throughout this time, I also had a business partnership breakdown during that same window. Not great.

After taking back full control of the business with 100% ownership, I realised we needed to change the way we’re doing things on a number of fronts.

Over the time of having a business partner, I started to lose trust in myself and in my own decision-making process.

Now it was just me again.

I had to back myself like I did in my first 2.5 years of business I had on my own.

We hadn’t really reviewed our pricing over the last five years from 2015 through to 2020.

We don’t do timesheets, and we have a pricing menu and calculator that we use internally for different services.

I immediately put the base price of our compliance and proactive tax planning package from $500, to $550 a month (a 10% increase).

Our structuring services (which includes setting up trusts companies, self-managed super funds and the like) increased between 20 – 50%, depending on the service.

I felt we were too cheap for the effort and additional work we put in, rather than just setting up the company or trust itself and handing over the keys.

We also increased the cost of our advisor facilitated estate planning by $500 or so at each service level.

All of this pricing was for new clients only, and we were going to review our existing clients’ pricing coming into June 2020.

Now, we might be increasing our prices by 10, 20 or sometimes 50% (depending on the service) but think about what happens to the net profit margin:

Let’s say our product currently is priced at $100.

Our wage cost is say 30% or $30, overheads are 40% or $40, leaving a profit margin of 30% or $30.

Due to the events of the last 3 years, our wage cost goes up by 20% and overheads go up by 10% – that is now $36 and $44 respectively.

Our profit has reduced from $30 down to $20 if we do not change our pricing, which means we’ve lost one third of our profit.

If we increase our pricing on that service from $100 to $120, our profit on that service would now be $40 taking into consideration the rising costs (which is actually an increase of one-third in profit, compared with what we were making on that service originally).

We continued to have no pushback from new clients on our pricing, and because it was the only pricing they had seen from us, there was no framing that we had recently increased prices. Instantly, those clients were substantially more profitable.

We adjusted our pricing at the start of 2022 as well – our base price for compliance now $600/m. Other prices tweaked as well.

Coming into the start of a new calendar year, I encourage you to place consider what you might want to change about your pricing – even just for new clients.

I’m not sure about your firm, but there seems to be an abundance of new work coming in, and our limitation is around delivery and finding good team to produce enough work. So why not make the work that you do a lot more profitable then otherwise would be by increasing your prices by between 10 – 50%?

The steps I took were pretty simple (for our no timesheet firm):

List out all the services in an excel document
Put the current prices that you charge beside each item
Think back to when you last increased your prices
Consider the true value for the effort that you deliver (and I recommend adding 10% because you’ll probably be too close to the service offering to see its true value to the client)
Be sure your prices increased by at least 10% on each service, as a minimum
Put the document together so you can share this internally and train your team on the new pricing
Ensure that you update your marketing material, including website if you publish pricing on that (and also your ignition proposals)
Enjoy the additional profit margin for your new clients
This should build confidence that you can have conversations with your existing clients to bring them to a similar, increased pricing structure

Let me know what your thoughts are on this and what your experience has been previously raising your prices.

Also, let me know if these longer format emails are handy or if you’d like to continue receiving them in addition to the video style content that we’re used to putting together – as we may do more of it.

And all the best for this year!

Join our community and discover effective ways to build a thriving, enjoyable, and efficient accounting firm.

Play Video about Common Struggles When Growing A Firm Thumbnail

Growing a firm or starting out in business, there will be a lot of ups and downs. Ben Walker shares the common struggles he faced when growing his firm, Inspire Accountants. These common struggles can be the difference between a surviving and thriving firm. Here’s what he said –

Inspire 1.0 – Growing A Firm

I am wearing all the hats and I do everything. I’m doing the notice of assessment letters as well as the preparation of the tax returns for the group. There’s waves in workflows which causes the turnaround time to blow out. I didn’t love having a non-leveraged team.

Inspire 2.0 – Growing A Firm

It’s the opposite of Inspire 1.0. You’re the bottleneck for reviews and technical questions. You have to turn away clients or you’re taking ages getting their stuff done, which can damage the relationship.

Inspire 3.0 – Growing A Firm

New work comes in faster than your team can deliver. We still get waves with workflow, as I’m sure every firm will. At the same time, we are hiring new team members to deal with that capacity. You’re still on the tools way too much. The team is too big that you don’t have a handle on all jobs and all clients. Some clients come on board and I don’t even know their names. That was a really weird thing for me compared to Inspire 2.0 and not having that ability to know everyone.

If you want to learn how to grow a fun, super rewarding accounting firm that runs like clockwork, join our next High Performance Accounting webinar. You’ll learn the 7 Steps of creating your High Performance Firm.

Play Video about How We've Hired 3 Accountants In The Last 3 Weeks

It’s been extremely difficult in the last 12 months when it comes to finding and hiring accountants.

We think that’s not a surprise, not only in the accounting industry but in ANY industry.

We’ve just hired 3 accountants in the last 3 weeks!

Hiring Accountants

There are 4 ways that have worked well for us:

Seek Ads – We have a constant Seek ad for Junior Accountants to help our team grow. We get a couple of leads through that every few weeks.
LinkedIn Ads – We’re using the free job posting section on LinkedIn. We did pay for it at one stage but we had limited response there.
Careers Page – We have a careers page on our website which has the roles we are recruiting for.
Recruiters – We used to have 1 recruiter, now we’ve engaged with 3 and we’re getting quite a few inquiries through that

So, those are the 4 areas we are looking at when it comes to finding and hiring accountants for our firm which has resulted in 3 accountants in the last 3 weeks.

Play Video about Accounting Firms Giving Away Free Advice To Get Clients Landscape

Are you an accounting firm that’s giving away free accounting advice? I want to encourage you to stop, there is another way to do it.

We made a change in the business in 2014 where we started charging for our sales. Prior to that, I’d meet with a client for about an hour, sometimes longer and I would pour out all this value in the hopes I might impress the client enough that they might come across. However, at any moment, they could walk out the door, take that knowledge with them, and go to a cheaper or another accountant to get that implemented. The problem is, I spent so much time, effort, and value. I got paid nothing for that.

How we stopped giving away free advice

What changed the game for us was that we implemented the ‘Look Under The Hood’ or a second opinion on your tax. We started charging at $500+GST but for the last couple of years, we’ve increased it to $750+GST.

The goal is to find at least, if not thousands of dollars in tax savings for the client. It’s a paid engagement. There’s a paid report they receive and a meeting as well. This has changed the game with conversions and sales. So, I highly encourage accounting firms to stop giving away free advice, your time and energy is valuable.

High Performance Accountants Webinar

If you want to learn how to grow a fun, super rewarding accounting firm that runs like clockwork, join our next High Performance Accountants webinar. You’ll learn the 7 Steps of creating your High Performance Firm.

The steps I took were pretty simple (for our no timesheet firm):

Inspire 1.0 – Growing A Firm

Inspire 2.0 – Growing A Firm

Inspire 3.0 – Growing A Firm

Hiring Accountants

How we stopped giving away free advice

High Performance Accountants Webinar

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