Podcast

Summary

• Preparing to Sell Your Firm
• The Importance of Niching
• Steps to Productizing
• Adding Value Before Selling 

Helpful Resources

• Visit John’s website specifically for listeners like you! 
• Buy John’s books 
• Contact Built to Sell
• Free gifts: builttosell.com/growing

Meet John Warrillow

John Warrillow is the best-selling author of Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry, and The Art of Selling Your Business: Winning Strategies and Secret Hacks for Exiting on Top. But before becoming a writer, he ran his own business and thus is well versed in what it takes to maximize value in your business to prime it for potential buyers. 

In today’s podcast, John explains some of the key points to readying your firm to sell, the importance of niching, how to productize, and why adding value before selling is essential to getting the offers your business deserves. 

Preparing to Sell Your Firm

In John’s book, Built to Sell, he explains that for your business to be valuable it needs to be transferable, meaning it has to thrive without you doing the work in order to sell. It’s a tough concept for many business owners to wrap their heads around, so to clarify, he equates it to parenting. 

When you raise a child, your end goal is likely to raise them in a way so they can eventually move out and survive on their own. You want them to be independent. You should have the same mindset when it comes to your business. It should be able to produce its revenue stream and profits without your help. 

It can be difficult to make the switch from a business that entirely runs on your work to a business that essentially doesn’t need you. One of the most common mistakes made during this transition is when owners come up with something very different to set themselves apart from the rest but can’t teach it to someone else. 

To help avoid this mistake, John suggests sticking with services that are teachable to employees, valuable to customers, and can be easily repeated. From there you can make your product or service different. He used an example of a firm owner who got rid of all of their “extra” services and packaged together all of their simple, back-of-office services into one all-inclusive package. Now, instead of selling a service, he is selling a product. The product is very simple to teach but is an incredible value to the customer. 

The Importance of Niching 

Niching down and positioning your products to customers in a unique way is the best way to add value to your business. However, it’s easy for many people to argue that there’s nothing unique in the accounting world. And while many people offer the same services, you can differentiate a commodity as something unique. 

John referred back to the firm owner and his B.O.S.S. (Back Office Supply System). The product includes the same services other accountants offer, but the way it’s positioned explains the services in an easy-to-understand way and is priced based on the product cost, not the service time. Using this tactic makes your product far more appealing to the customer because instead of selling a collection of services, you’re selling one product. 

Additionally, because these are basic services, you can easily teach other employees how to serve your customers and hire salespeople to make the sales, considering you’re no longer selling yourself; you’re selling a product.

Steps to Productizing

Niching down is the first step to productizing. John mentions that a lot of businesses have a bad habit of looking at all of their clients and trying to find a product that works for all of them. However, this leads to a diluted offer.

Instead, find which of your clients have a unique set of needs, segment them into groups, and think about what they need regularly. 

David’s Tip: Start saying “no” to areas/services/clients that you can say no to. 

John added to David’s tip by explaining that taking that step starts to separate you from the rest and makes you more referable. If you are providing services for one specific niche, the people within that niche will start to refer you to others. This moves you from a generalist category to a specialist. 

Adding Value Before Selling

In John’s latest book, The Art of Selling Your Business, he focuses on how businesses can sell outside of their weight class, meaning that they are selling for higher than their value. 

To do this, John says it’s important to work towards getting multiple offers instead of biting at whatever offer comes first. It creates a bidding war and boosts the price significantly.

Raising the value for your business before you sell is beneficial. John provided three key ways to raise your value:

• Monopoly Control: This means your business or product is unique and can‘t easily be replicated. 
• Recurring Revenue: He suggests having a steady stream of revenue, and avoiding fluctuations from month to month (or busy season to busy season) when possible. 
• Hub and Spoke: Try to run a business that doesn’t need you. If you’re not doing this, then when you go to sell, you’ll likely be caught in a lengthy earn-out. 

David’s tip: If all a buyer is looking for is revenue, they’ll have a tough time running a firm. They need to also find value in your services. Productized firms lead to larger offers. Larger businesses are more likely to buy a firm that offers a product/service they wish to provide and scale than they are to buy a revenue stream and try to scale it. In regards to the latter, this is because they already have money and don’t need your smaller (in comparison) revenue; they need a business that knows how to serve a particular customer. 

John emphasized David’s tips by adding that there are three types of buyers: 

• Individual Investors 
• Private Equity Groups
• Strategics

Strategics are the buyers that buy for products, not revenue streams. These are your target buyers because the’re willing to pay more for your business so they can scale it to improve their overall revenue stream. 

John has mastered the art of selling a business and provided SO MUCH insight into what to do to prepare to sell your firm, the importance of niching, steps to productize, and how to add value to your firm before you sell.  For more tips, tricks, and overall good advice on preparing to sell your accounting firm, be sure to listen to the full podcast above!

This episode was originally published on April 26, 2018, but it’s a favorite among our Growing Your Firm Podcast community, so we’re bringing it back! Share your thoughts on social to tell us if you’ve been listening to the podcast since the original airing of this episode.

Podcast

Summary

• The Struggle Most Accounting Firms Have With New Technology
• Steps to Actually Implement New Accounting Applications
• Tips to Uncover the Best Apps to Use Right Now
• The Magic Power of Zapier

Related Resources

• Learn more about Satterley Training & Consulting.
• Give Zapier a try!
• Schedule a consultation with Heather!
• Check out another episode with Heather on our podcast.
• Watch a recap of a live session Heather presented at our Lift Customer Conference in 2020.

Meet Heather Satterley

Heather Satterley, the founder of Satterley Training & Consulting, opened her practice in 2017. Her specialty is working with accounting professionals and even small business owners on implementing applications with Quickbooks. Heather herself has been a Quickbooks ProAdvisor for almost 20 years.

What she does sounds simple enough, but when you need an entire ecosystem running on auto-pilot, the non-techies can get tangled up quickly. Similar to Jetpack Workflow, Heather believes in the importance of businesses implementing technology to better themselves, save time, and maintain higher profits.

On this episode of the Growing Your Firm Podcast, David Cristello and Heather Satterley dive into:

• When you should start looking into new technology solutions
• Steps to actually implement new accounting applications
• Tips to uncover the absolute best apps to use right now (and more)

The Struggle Most Accounting Firms Have with New Technology

Many firms get hung up on the what, which, why of the technology movement and more often than not, pay for technology without fully understanding the benefits or utilizing the entirety of their programs. This can result in a huge waste of time and money. 

To combat this, Heather recommends doing an app inventory. Taking an app inventory means going over every app in your toolkit and listing out all of the features they provide. You will likely uncover apps with features you need, but didn’t know were available. 

Creating an app inventory will also help you avoid becoming overwhelmed with your tech. When making the transition to a more technologically advanced business, it’s easy to focus on the big picture and only view a mountain of changes. It can seem like too much at once. Instead, Heather recommends “chunking.” Chunking breaks everything down into smaller pieces so that it’s easier to understand. Even Heather uses this system when implementing new accounting applications. 

Steps to Actually Implement New Accounting Applications

Again, Heather emphasized the importance of chunking. She says to think about which application would be easiest to get started with first. In other words, figure out which app gives you the biggest bang for your buck and requires the shortest installation time. This will help your team see that making the transition towards more technology can save your firm time and money. It will show them quick progress, something everyone can appreciate. 

Additionally, this strategy gives you a quick win. It proves you can successfully implement a new application with minimal effort. Showing these quick wins to your team makes even the skeptics more open to change. 

Tips to Uncover the Best Apps to Use Right Now

First, you should define your pain points. Look at your workflow and see where the hiccups are. Sit down with the team members and go through their day. Ask questions like, “what is the least fun part of your day?” For Heather, she hated time tracking. The software would freeze up and delete her data. That’s the type of info to extract. These conversations will put you in your employee’s shoes to know the first step to take and what apps to look for.

Pro Tip: If you’re not clear on what the pain is, then every new app will be a solution for you. Because you don’t know what you’re looking for, everything looks good! Bad trap to fall in.

Second, after getting pain points, evaluate the solutions. Study which applications in the marketplace can talk to each other and which can work with the software you have now. You should start with the must haves before you start catering to nice to haves.

Have your eyes set on applications that provide ease of use, ease of implementation, how responsive the app’s tech team is, and reviews of the product. 

Heather provided a few tips for finding the best apps: 

• Start at Apps.com (Intuit’s vault of applications)
• Read blogs looking for apps (can Google for these)
• Read Zapier’s advice sections for recommendations
• Read CPA Practice Advisor
• Read the Insightful Accountant
• Join a networking group for accountants and ask around

*Note: Zapier is Heather’s go-to resource for connecting applications. 

Pro Tip: Using an app like Zapier might cost a few dollars, but how much time and effort are you saving using this tool? That’s the mark of a firm of the future.

The Magic Power of Zapier

Zapier is a tool that connects other cloud-based apps to each other and allows you to build custom integrations between them. Most apps have open APIs meaning developers can connect to them and send info back and forth.

The dashboard is very straightforward and easy. Our free Zapier course makes it even easier to set up from within Jetpack Workflow. 

How it works is that each action is called a zap. A zap is a trigger inside of one application that begins a chain reaction of tasks. It could be an email you send, an entry in Quickbooks, adding a new client to your CRM, etc. When this zap happens, the information is automatically shared with the other apps. This saves you time making double entries or repeating easy tasks.

It can be a struggle to implement new technology but with Heather’s tips, and tools like Zapier, you could be saving more time and money. To learn more about how Heather aids firms in successfully transitioning to a technology-based firm, listen to the full podcast above!

Podcast

Summary

• Challenges to Hiring in a Quickly Growing Firm 
• Perfecting the Interviewing Process
• Creating a Successful Team Culture
• Tracking Growth

Connect with CMH Advisors 

• Visit their website https://cpataxteam.com/
• Follow CMH Advisors on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Send an email to team@cpataxteam.com

Meet Craig Hausz of CMH Advisors

Craig Hausz and his wife are a tag team like no other. After working for Arthur Anderson and other various-sized accounting firms, they created CMH Advisors. Craig currently leads growth activities and is seen in more of a visionary role. He also is the co-managing partner with his wife, Michelle Hausz, who’s also the CFO.

Their desire to start CMH Advisors stems from their passion for helping everyone they come in contact with. It’s their goal to help their clients get 1% better every day through tax and financial strategies so they can achieve their goals and heart’s desire. 

Since opening its doors in 2014, CMH Advisors has grown from a team of two to a team of 12. With clients in over 40 states, they set an example of growth they hope will spill over into their work with their clients.

Challenges to Hiring in a Quickly-growing Firm

Craig says one of the biggest challenges to managing a quickly growing firm is finding the right people. He and his wife found early on that the two of them could not keep up with the high demand from their clients. So to add to their team, they started searching for a technical expert, who could do a job similar to what they were doing, and an administrative assistant. Because they had yet to establish a culture, their first hire in the assistant role was not a good fit. 

This taught Craig the importance of a slower hiring process and placed understanding the interviewee at the top of his priority list. Since then, he has formalized his hiring process and has implemented new tools and tactics to help them find the right person for the job.

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With the team in mind, Craig conducts an initial interview to better understand the interviewee and their interests. He gives them (and current employees) an activity inventory list which is meant to give Craig a better understanding of what they enjoy doing and what they could live without. From there, he determines if their interests match what is required of them in the role. If this is a good fit, he then moves into personality testing to get a better understanding of how they will work within the team. 

Craig uses Kolbe testing and relies on their Enneagram numbers. These show how employees will perform when they are at their best, and traits to look for when they aren’t performing at their best. If these don’t align with what they are looking for, it helps Craig with the narrowing process. 

Interviewees will typically go through 2-3 meetings with him: the first a phone call; the latter meetings including various team members. Because he is the visionary of CMH Advisory, he looks at every interviewee as a long-term fit for the firm. He wants to ensure his firm’s success and theirs. 

Creating a Successful Team Culture

Because Craig focuses on the team and a cohesive flow, he likes to stay in touch with what’s going on in the firm. He does this through project management and workflow software which is updated daily. They also perform weekly team meetings called Level 10 meetings, that are designed for each member of the team to rate them a 10 out of 10 in terms of productivity and helpfulness. 

Craig feeds off of optimism and enjoys starting each meeting by discussing what he feels the team is doing well. With this comes his celebratory mindset which adds a whole new level of fun to the firm. He takes pride in celebrating things like national pretzel day and Cinco de Quatro (a fake holiday created from the TV show, “Arrested Development”) because they add to the culture and keep employees engaged. 

CMH also works hard to ensure employees are not spending more hours working than what is required of them. They believe in keeping employees happy and avoiding burnout whenever possible. Craig says he wants happy people, not more revenue, a focus not too many people in his industry prioritize. 

Tracking Growth

From a numbers standpoint, Craig compares revenue and profitability to the number of employees to ensure CMH Advisors is on their projected growth path. However, his priority is more focused on the clients. If they are happy, referring others, and sticking with them, Craig believes they are on the right track. 

With a goal of 65% growth in 2021, Craig is able to compare his budget to his revenue to see if they are behind, on pace, or ahead of the game. He can then implement incentives or track employee production rates to see where they need to improve or where they are doing well. However, Craig stressed again that he is more concerned with client and employee happiness over the nitty-gritty of hours worked. 

With one thing in mind, the team, Craig has been able to successfully grow his partnership into a team of 12. Through a formalized interviewing process, a strong culture, and metrics designed to track growth, CMH Advisors sets a strong example for scaling an accounting firm from an internal perspective. 

To learn more about the tips and tricks Craig relies on to help grow his team, listen to the full podcast above!