Empower Your Accounting Team with Product Qualified Leads for Accounting

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hey everybody dave costello here founder and ceo of jetpack workflow and host of growing your firm podcast today's guest is ally garrett she's the founder of all in advisory which uh earned startup firm of the year she's also a top 50 cloud account as well as the top 50 women in accounting uh we started seeing her name pop up goodness knows where it's all across social all these awards that she's won we had to have her on today's episode so we're so excited to dive into her journey building her firm but first ali welcome to the show thanks so much for having me great to come on board absolutely well folks not familiar with all end advisory briefly give us an overview of when you started the types of services you provide and who you serve so we started in october 2018 i'd say we started with a big bang um we had some really successful wins really early on um and we focus i guess on the advisory we like to flip the compliance on its head a little bit so we do transactional bookkeeping we do the tax accounting and cloud accounting and integrations and also advisory pieces so you know the full gamut of services um and you know we exist to empower business owners to achieve their why and we do that through innovation and technology and we really want to thrive with them it's about having a relationship with them and it certainly resonated well with um our client base and contacts yeah and you mentioned you you you started with a big bang and the thing you told me before the interview which which was like objectively you started out the big bang is you said you met your five-year business plan within year one yes right so how how how does this happen we're gonna unpack so much in this interview from the structure to the team to how you got the client but you know first and foremost like you know in year one what was the client acquisition like just to even get to a place where you know you were your that system was running was it all referrals was it some kind of network what's that look like so in my career i'd worked in professional practice for about 25 years and i'd built some really great client connections and networks and contacts and so when we went out i guess i had a pretty loyal client base that was already on board and wanted to come with me um i had a really good exit from my prior firm i was always very open and transparent with them and so they were able to i guess let us go and i and i had a team and some client base behind us but um i guess what we were trying to do was to move a bit more into that advisory space and have a relationship with our clients and so a lot of clients when they heard about us either through the socials and i can touch on that a bit later our story really just resonated with them they really wanted somebody to help them understand their businesses and to move them into the cloud and certainly we had the skill set we had the experience and so it was literally this tsunami of people coming towards us i mean we were winning about a client a day to the point where it was actually pain yeah it was painful we were growing so quickly um and we just didn't realize how quickly it was going to go i mean we had some pretty hefty goals that were just being met so quickly it was a bit of a shock to all of us to be honest and we were worried about sales when we walked out the door but we should have been worried about the resourcing component but we learned we learned very very quickly and um certainly our tech stack and the automations behind that certainly helped us to achieve um onboarding all of those clients and making sure that their needs were met yeah and and so so clearly you had this backdrop of clients that had loved working with you but you also must have had a position in the market that really resonated with the needs of those those clients so i guess what were you offering that was so different than the normal firm uh that folks were flocking towards you like what were you saying what were you saying like come with us and you're gonna get what like why was it such an advantage to work with you i didn't make promises i just told people how we would go about doing it so i lead a lot with the why why are you in business um why are you doing it and that resonated with a lot of people they were very connected with their purpose and wanted to achieve something more i was talking to them in a one you know on an equal capacity i wasn't talking down to them it's a relationship i want to support you my job is to get you there um i was helping them to understand their business and their numbers and i flip the compliance on the head i don't go out to win work to win a compliance job as in an end of year accounts tax return i want to be with you from the very beginning to the very end so i want to help you set up your tech stack i want to help you automate your business i want to help you understand your numbers through advisory i want to help you plan i want to help you grow i want to help you be whatever you want to be and the outcome is a set of accounts and tax returns so the way that i was speaking to them was very very different and i wanted to be a partner in their business um not just see me once a year i'll tell you what tax you've got to pay that's not how i go about it and i think certainly in the adelaide market in australia they hadn't nobody had heard that of that before and i'd had and the other thing i also did was i specialize in tourism and hospitality and cloud services and i had done that for a very long time so cloud since 2010 th l since for 25 years and i built networks and connections in industry associations and also within my industry so i was actually getting referrals from other accountants from other bookkeepers from lawyers from bankers who knew what we did and had people that needed help and so that certainly helped as well yeah and when you when you talk about understanding your numbers or helping your your clients plan like what's an example of or or how do you tactically do that for your clients so the way that i actually run it is through workshops with my clients i give away free workshops to clients and contacts um and it brings quite a few people into the room and i sit them down and i work them through the absolute basics because what we forget as accountants is we have all of this knowledge but our clients do not they go into business because they love what they do or they're passionate about it or they have a skill set they don't understand how to make a profit or how to make cash sometimes they do and it's wonderful but i'm not sure they actually understood how they've done it and so i really just take it back to the basics but i run these workshops for free to give away um i guess knowledge that will empower them and when you sit in a room with say 10 or 20 people and you tell them how to understand their numbers when they run businesses for maybe 20 30 years and never really understood all of a sudden all these light bulbs go off and they want to work with you i can tell you every workshop i've ever run i would walk away with two to three new clients every single time um what's the most surprising light bulb moment that you've that you feel like is a very common thing you're like i never would have thought that would have been a lightbulb moment for the audience but this is like pretty consistent is it you know breaking yeah did you know the most common thing yeah is that profit doesn't equal cash right so actually tr tracking tracking them through their profit and loss balance sheet and cash flow and actually how they all interlink sometimes it's a shock for people to realize they have a balance sheet and they don't you know this common question of you're telling me that i've got tax to pay but i don't have the money um actually teaching them why and where that cash is is a light bulb moment for them and it's something that we just assume that they know they don't and how are you getting the 10 or 20 people into that room is that through your network and referrals as well it's through network and referrals it's also on the social so we play heavily in um social media instagram facebook twitter linkedin we've won clients from every single one of those mediums um and we do it organically we it's all in-house we just try and keep it as real as it can be um and you know we've get a lot of traction from that so people may not be engaging that we see but it's about branding and putting yourself basically in their face literally every day and this subconscious thing happens where if they need you all of a sudden they just think ah all in advisory um and then they make contact um so look it certainly helped us from a social being point of view but and also those contacts and referrals definitely and also you know you mentioned that we had a few awards um other people are doing our branding for us um if you win an award it's amazing how much traction that can get how much credibility that can build that was actually a strategy for us um when we started out to actually put in for some awards um and and see how it went and and you know we were incredibly lucky to um have won a few which helped to build that brand to build that credibility yeah and you you know you mentioned your network but you know i think a lot of folks listening they probably a don't realize they have a really big network already that they that they they're not communicating with or interacting with but then b and what what practically have you done to uh you know for lack of a word work your network like are you like how are you maximizing you know the great reputation you have and the relationships you've built in a very thoughtful way are you sending one-to-one messages to remind people are you connecting with them often what does that look like there's actually a couple of ways i do it um you know i worked at a firm called deloitte um you know a little while ago and i learned enormous amount around branding and marketing for you as an individual um which i guess for most accounts you don't actually think of yourself as a brand um but when i actually came to realize that's what it was um i had this light bulb moment myself so i started being really strategic so i specialize in tourism and hospitality so i don't have an enormous amount of time because i'm you know i have three kids at home so i had to be really strategic with my time so i found the best industry associations attached to tourism and hospitality and i worked out who were the major players in that industry and i would go to networking events and i would literally be aligned to that person and i would introduce myself to them and start a relationship i wouldn't ask anything of them i would just literally be want to get to know you you know asking lots of questions people love that they love talking about themselves um and so i really just got to know them and then i offered my services i'd offered to run a workshop or i'd offer to do a presentation and so i got a lot of one-on-one connections if people asked to meet with me i would even if i couldn't see an instant connection because it's amazing who people know and giving my time being kind you know offering up you know and helping you know and always being consistent um has really helped but also on the socials i realized the power of linkedin when i moved from deloitte to another firm called cms i'd connected with a lot of people over my time but never really had a lot of engagement with them but gosh did i realize how much people were following my story when i moved and that's when i actually realized the power of the social network and just continuing to post continuing to share my story continuing to give knowledge and being and for me it's around building community and so that's a really authentic thing to me that's something i love to do to build relationships and it's just and i've done it over a long period of time it wasn't like i entered the market worked hard for six months and got all these contacts i actually was in this market for a long long time and had given back to that industry for i didn't ask anything really i just wanted to give because i'm really passionate about that industry and i think a lot of that was then returned to me when we started all in um because people felt like one we were really clear on our message and who we were looking to help so people understood that and two they trusted us and i think those two things together really helped to build this big bang of it just all kind of came together at once yeah i love it i love it and and just you know we're going to get into the capacity and fulfillment end of things because i'm sure anybody listening right now is probably thinking one client a day i mean it makes you want to throw up if you don't have to use this place or even if you do i mean it's just a mind-boggling uh workload in year one um but but before we dive into that um you know i want to talk about pricing i also have to ask just just just as a as a uh interested party is all land is that a reference to poker or not no um it's not one of my favorite sayings and i said it to clients a lot was all in a rule out there's no halfway and i can't live my life that way um another is that um my name ali has al and another lady um that i that came with me from um my prior firm starts with lee so put our names together it's all so just kind of fell into place but no no reference to poker i don't even know how to play it yeah hey fair enough fair enough i had to ask but so you know with this modern firm what is your approach to pricing you know what what are you selling packages services and you know when you started at year one what what was the average client like paying you for for a year if you're or a range you know whatever you're comfortable giving yep okay so because i had some um clients that had come with me um and i they were quite large um so you know some of those fee bases were 50 and above so um let's let i'll talk about i guess the new clients that kind of came on board and how i would price them because we were doing advisory packages i like to fix a fee but i don't have a particular package i'll meet with the client give them a lot of time initially like an hour of my time to really unpack what they're looking for what they need what their experiences have been what their why is and then i will fix a fee that i then build monthly during out through that period and that would include depending upon what the client wanted the cloud services and the automations and integrations the bookkeeping the planning the advisory and the year-end work so some of them had all of it some of them had bits and pieces of it some of them i would start out you know really hard early and then kind of taper off at the end once they'd learnt their business a little bit and so i would fix that fee and that could range between 10 to 20 000 um and that's about the average that we would do so you can actually understand if you're trying to win a compliance job at 5k but you can turn that into a 10 to 20 why wouldn't you and the client's getting value all the way yeah the retention might skyrocket because that's the thing it absolutely does because you hold that whole relationship you know that you're already a trusted advisor when you meet with them once a year and do their accounts and tax returns but when you flip that relationship into a daily weekly monthly relationship where you understand their business and understand why they're in business and that you're helping them achieve their goals it is such a sticky relationship and that's where we get a really strong referral ser source so you know even during covert i mean it just hit warp speed because we were proactive with our clients we were literally holding their hands we were in front of them all the time to give them security and that was a strategy for us we wanted them to feel safe they would then send our communications and socials on to people that weren't receiving that so the the in-flood of clients we got from on my account hasn't said anything to me i don't know what's going on they're so busy um and that's another thing um i never tell my clients we're so busy because it makes them feel like they wouldn't be able to refer anybody to us or am i going to get looked after so i always make them feel confident that we've got enough resources to cover their needs and expectations but it's just amazing i think when you think about how you're communicating and what you're communicating and what your purpose for that communication is it really does um help to bring those referrals in yeah well you're you're you've built this engine you have all these clients coming in you have your pricing you have your positioning they're kind of locked in almost from day one and i love that you had to find the niche so early right it wasn't like we're gonna help every business it's like this is my background this is my interest it's where i see the opportunity so i love how methodical you were about launching your firm but obviously it grew much faster than you thought so how did you think about the ratio of like how many clients who do i need to hire how did you how did you start building the fulfillment part of your business or the the the workflow part of your business um how do you think about that even today so it was two there was two clear phases the first one was um getting our tech stack right so we were fully automated um we didn't actually have admin for like the first year um because we wanted the tech to do a lot of the grunt work so we put we put enormous amount of work into our tech stack and made it work and so we made sure that it was integrated with each other so every single product we use has to be able to integrate to the other to the other part we don't do you know processing information in one to then process it in another we just don't do that um and then on top of that i we overlaid an enormous amount of systems and processes so my way of looking at the business was if anything can be done by tech that's what we're going to do number one if it can't be done by tech how do i then automate that and that means systems and processes so anything that is wrote which is an enormous amount actually of an accounting firm i put a system in processing and gosh that was hard because it just took so much time and we used a product like called asana which is like for instance in our transactional work our bookkeeping all of our clients have an asana checklist and that lists out day by day minute by minute every single task who's responsible so that somebody could come in tomorrow and literally do it and behind that we then use product like loom for videos on how to's and then if we didn't do that we'd have a procedure behind it so every system that could be automated was and that proved to me that we could grow quickly through scalability because we did so we relied heavily on the tech heavily on the systems and processes yeah just to get a sense because i think just to take a step back i think what you said is so uh outrageous i wanna i wanna make sure people didn't miss it so first year you didn't hire an admin person in the first year of your firm when people are experiencing growth that rapidly that's almost the first hire that they take on or second so what to entertain you feel comfortable what revenue did you reach or how many clients were you supporting until you hired your first admin person uh approximately 150. 150 clients yes wow so just just to you know let that sit in for the audience 150 clients and at 150 clients so if the admin hire wasn't the first tire who was the first hire also my first hire um well i came across obviously as the founder principal um and lee my general manager came with me our first hire was a senior accountant um who we'd worked with in the past we then hired um uh so then we went to towa global which is um outsourcing because we were growing so quickly um and we hired a bookkeeper and an accountant and then we hired the support and admin support wow and so so walk me through the and i love the point of it's like we're growing we need we need we need we need the tools or we need to automate it we need a standard list of procedures we need to have videos so people can walk through it before we make the hire because what we've seen is if you make the higher then guess what you want to make another higher you make another higher and you start going down this path where you're always solving problems through the higher which and that's not the answer yeah yeah it's so it causes so many pain points and resourcing is the most expensive part of our business so i want to make sure that that is is being utilized in the best way um and not through you know stop gapping um you know training somebody when it you know it shouldn't really take an hour or somebody's time it's literally a video that somebody watches for 15 minutes so anything that we do repetitively or that could be put in a process is where we spent an enormous amount of time and i'm not joking it hurt there was a lot of time spent on that but gosh the reward that we get now you know like it most probably took us a year to get those systems and processes down pat but now the reward that we're getting from that it's paid for itself enormously and you know what the big thing is i tell my clients to do this on a daily basis so i'm not going to be the fraud who doesn't do it myself so everything i ever said to my clients i had to live that myself and that was actually one of the reasons we went out on our own i felt like a fraud because i couldn't get the firms that i worked with to do what i was telling my clients to do and i didn't want to do that anymore i wanted to prove that it could be done and we did and so for the you know for that i'm grateful but we needed the support of the tech partners to do that i couldn't have done this without the tech we needed support of um toa global who were able to resource us quickly and correctly and so all of those things had to come into place but you know i had so many ideas because i'd been in professional practice for so long and i'd worked in you know micro small mid large big four i'd seen the full gamut um so i kind of took the best pieces of everything and thought i'll just do it myself thanks and um and we'll have to link up because we've interviewed nick from toa but um i guess walk us through your current organizational chart and then and then including you know the folks that that you've been able to work with at tour because they their model is you'll they'll get they'll give you kind of a one-to-one outsourced bookkeeper right and so yeah i guess we treat them like they're our staff yeah yeah right perfect and so what is your current organizational chart today then yep so there's me my general manager who basically i do more the sales and marketing my gm looks after the operational tech stack systems and processes hr type stuff we have a senior um compliance person and we have a tower member supporting them we then have in our transactional um the lee who kind of heads up the transactional space managing that we then have um joe from toa and half a resource in chris from toa so every australian team member has a support member in the philippines we also have um eliza who we've put on for payroll so payroll in australia is a very complex system and we do actually punch well above our weight with the types of clients we do all of the back end payroll for so hundreds of staff and so we needed someone to specialise so we brought her on to specialise and we also have now helena who was our admin assistant who is now moving into that transactional space and so we've just replaced her with another admin assistant so we have three who who reports to you and who reports to the gm or how does that work most report to the gm um i do check in and do um once every two months i'll check in with my team and do their 12-week plans um but in saying that i guess we're a flat organisation in the sense that everybody can come to me like you know we have an open floor office so i'm on the floor with everybody else i know exactly what's going on and we have a really informal um i guess space where everybody kind of knows everyone's business so um the reporting around you know if something's from an accounting perspective it goes to red if rick doesn't know it goes to lethal he doesn't know it goes to me you know and from a transactional point of view it you know same we go up that we go up that list but um my whole the way that i've resourced is this um we have a person on the ground in australia to help with the relationship and any high level stuff any advisory work um all the systems and processes and rope processing we get done by the philippines and then everything else is the technology so that's how i've kind of layered my organization and a big play that i told talk about and also i really believe in is making sure people are doing the right jobs um and doing the right things so even though you can do it should you be doing it um and making sure that people are doing the right level work that's that's been really really important to us yeah at a high level when you say 12 week plans what what is that oh so my team um basically have a 12 week plan that we run through and it talks about their why it talks about i guess their key performance indicators what goals they have over the next 12 weeks so big goals and then broken down into micro goals it just helps to keep it just helps to keep them i guess aligned to ry you know and tracking to a goal and it's not just all business goals it can be personal goals as well you know like running a marathon or you know finishing your studies it could be any of those things but it's a really great way to have a conversation with a team member and it just opens up the conversation piece and it's not just okay so you've met your productivity how's your write-offs going um it's so much broader than that you know my team are my superstars without them we don't function and because we work in advisory we need to have great relationships with our clients and that means my team needs to connect with them and so i want to make sure on a holistic level that everything is okay and then i'm supporting them across everything and so those 12-week plans is really more about a determined connection point so that we can actually sit down and talk about how are things going me investing time into them and feeling like they've got some value yeah i okay i love it i love that idea it's such a big takeaway there's so many big takeaways today um before we wrap up i you know i have to ask and this is this and of itself is an entire interview so maybe we just have to do part two i don't know um the you know some of the things you talked about publicly was kind of you know the concept of having it all how do you juggle home life with work life uh you're a mom you have a few kids right you're running a business the business reaches school in one year instead of five things are blowing up for you so i mean can you have it all i mean how how do you how do you develop the the the framework the structure of the lifestyle to both run a highly successful practice while still you know being present at home yeah and i you know in answer to can you have it all yes um but it's different for every single person and you know whatever that means to you i think one you need to decide what that is and for me it was about having my own business and also having a family and being present and being engaged so from the moment my first was born who she's now 15 i have worked part-time so i was very very clear on setting boundaries so i work monday to thursday um and i've done that for forever and so my clients understand that my team understand that and so clearly communicating what your boundaries are is incredibly important resourcing so that you can maintain that lifestyle i do over resource and i do it because so that we can all have a lifestyle that's my personal choice um so i i do that as well but i had a moment really early on in my parenting where there was a my marriage pretty much blew up in a day and at that point i realized what is important to me and i'm actually incredibly glad it happened really early on my stage of you know motherhood because it engaged me in a way that made me really really clear about what was important to me so when i'm when the kids i am present i am engaged you have my full attention you know i will go to their school events i am there for you i am going to pick you up and drop you off and so being able to start a firm which is fully cloud-based so i'm not stuck in an office anywhere and that helped during covert i can tell you um and having that technology to support me so i rely heavily on the tech heavily on my resourcing so that i can engage at home and i actually have a if you connect with me on linkedin i have a little story video that i've just put up recently watch that and it's about um i worked for a a particular partner for about 13 years and he wouldn't promote me past past manager and we had this really open conversation about why that might be and he basically said to me ali you can't have it all and i just really fought that concept of why why are you telling me i can't have it all who are you to say that to me and it kind of made me have this really clear moment of yes i can but i need to be strategic so i'm very strategic very goal-oriented i have plans and i meet them but i also know my resource that i'm lowest on is time so that's my most important thing and that's the most precious thing to me so how do i manage that and so i'm very very conscious of time boundaries things like that yeah amazing and and you know we we covered such a wide range of topics and i mean there's so many nuggets and tips and tactics to pick up here but you know somebody's listening to the interview and they do want to reach out to you on linkedin or learn more about you and your services and everything you put out in the ecosystem what is the best way for them to connect with you so um all an advisory um is our social tag look that up and you'll be able to follow us also under um it's either aligarh allison garrett other one on linkedin i'm more than happy to connect with people personally so if you send me a connection i will definitely connect with you and um yeah follow us see the journey and i'm just one of these people i'm really i love building communities so if you hear the podcast and want to have a bit of a chat connect with me i'd love to hear from you absolutely if you're listening right now and uh you couldn't jot down all the notes we what we're going to do is going to do a full summary of today's interview at jetpackworkflow.com blog jetpackworkflow.com blog we're going to link up your linkedin your your website maybe a couple other resources you might have mentioned all on that summary page i highly encourage everybody listening if this really resonated with you reach out to ali uh if this really really resonated to you leave a review and share this with a fellow firm owner that might need to hear some of the information we talked about today ali this has been a real treat uh thanks again for coming on thanks so much for having me it's been great thank you