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The Wizard of Aus
Regular readers and subscribers to my newsletter may know that I have recently returned from a speaking engagement in Australia.
I was hired as a key-note speaker by 2020 Asia Pacific to address their inaugural annual conference at Jupiter’s Resort & Casino on the beautiful Gold Coast.
This is a membership based network of independent accounting firms across Australia and New Zealand and is headed by Mark Holton, who I have come to affectionately call ‘The Wizard of Aus’.
Mark and I have spoken together many times on road shows over the last few years across Canada and when he wanted to provide an international perspective on what’s happening in the public accounting field, he asked if I’d be interested in an all-expenses paid trip to Brisbane.
Now, who’d turn down a gig like that?
So, there I was, outside Brisbane Airport picking up my rental car ready to drive to the resort in the blistering heat (I left home the previous day with snow almost up to my knees on the driveway) looking forward to learning the different challenges facing the accounting profession in Australia.
The trip coincided with the clean up and repairs starting after the terrible storms that hit the area only a week or two before, and the locals were showing their resilience and sense of humour wherever you went.
The Aussie Accountants were of a similar disposition.
I was given a very warm welcome, subjected to the famous Australian hospitality which involved one or two beers, and made to feel right at home - especially when we got down to discussing the Australian economy and the issues facing accounting firms ‘down under’.
You see, they face exactly the same challenges as we do. During my discussions with delegates in the days before my presentation, I discovered that their main concerns included:
- Finding and keeping good staff
- Succession planning
- Getting rid of bad clients & Finding more ‘A’ type clients
- Creating value billing opportunities with clients
- Implementing Business Advisory servies
- Partner compensation
Does that sound familiar? It sure did to me.
Now, those attending the conference, I knew, were in for a treat. Not because of what I was going to give them (although they did seem to enjoy my session) but because they were going to get first-hand exposure to the ‘Wizard of Aus’.
Yes, Mark Holton was going to give them a little piece of magic and share with the delegates how he took his own practice from compliance to reliance.
It’s a great story of how an individual can transform his firm, move away from the stuff they don’t really enjoy doing and, instead, move towards an area of practice that they simply love.
It’s called Business Advisory Services, and, it’s all premium rate work!
Here’s where Mark’s magic comes into play (and how I gave him the ‘Wizard of Aus’ nick name):
Take the Caseware file of one of your most promising clients and drop the data into Profit Driver. Run the program to produce a report of strengths and weaknesses, then you simply ask your client if they want to fix the weaknesses revealed by the report.
Let’s face it, if you’re running a business and a trusted advisor shows you areas of concern, you’re going to want to do something about it, right?
Now you have a client with some concerns about their business and they’re turning to you for help. Do you think they’re worried about the clock ticking on a project like this and fees building up? Not if you have already quoted them a fixed fee for the project.
Instead of simply getting down to the business of analyzing the weaknesses, next, you might want to consider asking the business owners how they are going to exit the business when the time comes for them to retire. Most entrepreneurs will tell you they plan to sell the business as their exit strategy and now you have another magical moment.
By asking the client how much they hope to sell the business for, you’ll get an insight into how much they think the business will be worth at retirement, but they probably have no idea what it might be worth right now. Enter your next tool – BStar.
BStar allows you to conduct business valuations for privately held corporations, quickly, simply and effectively.
In most cases, the owner’s estimation of the value of his or her company will be substantially higher than today’s market value as calculated by the BStar software, and now you can create a disturbance in your client’s mind that they will almost certainly engage you to remedy.
Mark calls it a ‘BVG’ – a Business Valuation Gap.
Now your client is totally engaged in looking at ways and means of improving their company’s results, and we return back to Profit Driver to do some ‘what-if’ scenario management.
We all know that tiny changes in one area of a business can often produce massive returns to the bottom line, yet most of your clients probably have never been shown this correlation. Now is the time to dazzle them!
Using Profit Driver to show the client the gold hidden in their business often takes your own status in your client’s eyes to that of ‘genius’ or something similar – much better than the previous conception of you simply being a ‘bean counter’, right?
Add value to your clients’ business and they’ll pay you handsomely for it.
So, after doing some projections for the business after the changes Profit Driver highlights, let’s take your client back into BStar and do a new valuation based on the new numbers.
I would guess your client’s business is projected to be worth rather more now, and this is a project that can be something of a revolving door – address issues in Profit Driver, project a few years forward, feed the new numbers into Bstar and see what the business could be worth if the new changes are implemented.
This type of project is what your better clients truly want from you and value much more than the year-end stuff we do for them.
But there is something important you need to be able to make a success of these types of business advisory services, and it takes me back to the title of this article, or the source of it, the 1939 movie, ‘The Wizard of Oz’.
To make a success of this line of work you will need
- The brain the Scarecrow needs – to plan the work and work the plan. This doesn’t happen all by itself, you will need to select clients carefully, price the work wisely and give thoughtful insightful advice to your clients that will add value to their businesses.
- The heart the Tin Man sought – to communicate with your clients clearly and with passion, you have to put your heart into it. When you do, people notice and you start getting better results.
- The courage the Lion sought – When you take that first step towards providing business advisory services, with your first client, I call that a ‘Butt Clenching Moment’. It takes an immense amount of courage to take that first step, and I guarantee you’ll make mistakes. The secret to success in this area is that your clients won’t know you’ve just fumbled! Keep on talking based on what the software is telling you about the client’s business and keep that passion going and you WILL be successful.
My friend, Mark Holton, ‘The Wizard of Aus’ started down this path nearly ten years ago, and has never looked back. The sooner you start, the bigger the jump start you’ll have over your competition. Good luck.
© 2004-2011, Steve McIntyre-Smith.
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