If I Could Start My Business Again Today...

Jason · 00:00Welcome to episode 203 of The Numbers Game. I'm Jase. I'm here with Nick and Marty. How are you, fellas?

Marty · 00:06Going well, Jase. Going well. Always thinking about business. I know you are. Looking forward to today. Nick, how are you, my friend?

Nick · 00:13I'm good, yeah. No, look, I'm always thinking about business, too. That and among other things, but, um, You know, I'm not thinking about it.

Nick · 00:20I quickly am when you send me YouTube clips at, you know, 9pm on a Sunday. Um, Warren Buffett or something, so. Okay. Looking forward to what Jase brings us today.

Jason · 00:28Oh, beautiful. Guys, uh, I'm excited to have a bit of an open conversation with you. I, I thought, um, something that did jump to my mind was the statement that I heard someone say that if I started a business again today, I'd do this.

Jason · 00:43So I thought it'd be a bit of an open discussion, you know, in the room with both of you guys, uh, around what we would do differently if we started our business again today, or maybe it's not even the business that we know it. Maybe we'd be doing something else. So, um, if you guys are happy with that, I can, uh, dive into the first example

Jason · 01:00and then open the floor and I'd love to get your opinion.

Nick · 01:02Right. Open the floor. Open the floor, Jace, just quickly. Have you, are you going through a different look or you've, uh, trying to work yet, is it? Um, like a surfy look or like a lumberjack kind of manly look. Yeah, I think it's,

Jason · 01:18I think, I don't know, just, I've come off a weekend away with the family and just, um, we, we had Nashville

Nick · 01:24to do

Jason · 01:25Nashville zero con, just getting in the theme of the, the American, uh, vibes.

Jason · 01:29So I think it was kind of like a pickup truck, um, You know, us, I dunno, just, yeah, you're right though. It is a different look. Episode 203. If you're playing at home, you can see me on YouTube. The lighting's all whacked out in the podcast studio at the moment. So you'll notice that I don't look as glorious as I should, but here we are.

Jason · 01:46Thank you for noticing, Nick.

Marty · 01:48Just for our audience, I'm wearing exactly the same thing and the same hairstyle. I've had the last five years. So if you like, Just comfort and foundational stuff. I'm, I'm, I'm your man. But, uh, Jase loving

Marty · 02:00it. I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay. If I started a business

Jason · 02:03again today, I'd probably have a new uniform, something different to, uh, to wear, but, uh, there we go.

Jason · 02:07So getting back on track, the first one here is potentially. contentious, but I'll get you a vibe and opinion on it. So, I mean, it's one that we're always told is the number one thing you should do when you start a business. Now I know that, you know, like, like most, uh, what's the word? Like the painter's house is unpainted or the mechanics cars, the worst car on the road, um, Nick, I'll ask you the question.

Jason · 02:31Innovate's been around a long time, but when you started innovate. Did you have a solid business plan? No, no. So if I said that if I started a business again today, I'd do this. And I, and I told you I would have a business plan. What would your opinion of

Nick · 02:47that

Jason · 02:47be?

Nick · 02:47What's well, it'd be positive. And I'd think positively on that.

Nick · 02:52Um, of course you need a business plan. Um, um, wouldn't say I'm anti business plans, but I do like

Nick · 03:00brief business plans. Knowing what I know in business now that, um, You can't plan out exactly what happens. So to be maybe a one pager, if I did it now. Perfect. Marty, your thoughts?

Marty · 03:11Yeah, I'm trying to think back in the first business, um, a mate of mine started it up out of the bank and it was basically, what were we going to do?

Marty · 03:20What was the point of difference in the market? Uh, and could we make money out of it? And we knew our capabilities cause we're in finance anyway. And yeah, it was basically understanding mortgage broking when it first came out and how we were going to educate the market and provide value to that market.

Marty · 03:38But for us, it was very much, how do we do what we do? In our own business, you know, and then sort of bring it together under a brand, but that's as sophisticated as it got. The main thing was trying to create opportunities, you know, to start with, and then it just got better as it went. But that was the, that was the initial plan.

Marty · 03:58Uh, we went to the Keg in

Marty · 04:00Ringwood, had a discussion and, um, we come out of that discussion going, we should do this and left the bank within a day after that discussion. So that was pretty exciting.

Jason · 04:09I like, uh, I like a business that starts at the pub. So, uh, that's usually the start of many success stories and then also many, uh, not so good stories, but, uh, that's got, look, um, love, great, great comments.

Jason · 04:20Absolutely. Perfect. And kind of around the angle that, that I was thinking to look, um, if I was to start a business again today, or if we all were, I think we'd all have at least a one page business plan, just something that outlines a bit of an executive summary around the purpose of why we exist. Why are we creating this business?

Jason · 04:36Um, flowing on from that. You know, Marty, you touched on as well was around market analysis. Like, you know, what's the market, who are you catering to? Who are you servicing? And then also the financial projections, just, just a bit of an idea of if a business is going to stack up and if it's going to work, you need to know some, some of your basic numbers.

Jason · 04:52And, you know, the stats are around, you know, uh, 20 percent of businesses. That yeah, so

Jason · 05:0020 percent of businesses are more likely to succeed if they had a business plan, you know, so the, the failure rates of businesses are huge. I think, you know, there's something around three in every five businesses don't exist within three years of starting.

Jason · 05:12So this is where I think the whole begin with the end in mind, you know, start the business plan, get a rough idea and look, I mean, while it's nice to have a clearly articulated mission and a beautiful vision and all of your core values worked out, I think they're the things that you can kind of work out over time.

Jason · 05:27So I'm not saying you need to go and articulate and write all those things down, but a basic summary written down of what you're doing. Um, and then we're going to talk about how to analyze the market of who you're trying to service and then some financial projections.

Marty · 05:38It's a great point, Jason. The thing, I might've been loose with my early terminology at the pub there.

Marty · 05:43But again, a part of that discussion was we knew the market was there, people needed money. We knew that there wasn't a lot of choice in the market so we could save people a lot of money. Um, our biggest threat initially was educating the market to realize a broker is who you come to

Marty · 06:00for advice, not just when you can't get money anywhere else.

Marty · 06:03So for us, our big mission was to turn it into a staple instead of it being an afterthought. Um, but yeah, it, and we knew it could be very lucrative if we did it well, but our whole purpose initially was we could put money back in people's pockets because when we're on the other side of the fence at the bank, we knew the instruction was to, To strip people for, for as much money as you possibly could.

Marty · 06:28And we didn't align with that value. So we felt we could empower clients. And now when I look back, you know, 24 years ago, which sounds amazing in my own head, um, and I look where the industry is at, 70 percent of loans are written by mortgage brokers, and we really are like, almost like private wealth type service providers in the way we look after people, you know, even referring them to your good Self Jace, uh, for accountancy when they need it, uh, for advisory and into financial planning.

Marty · 06:59So we were

Marty · 07:00doing a lot of the things that the bank was trying to do, but the bank was more coming from how much can we strip from where, and I think things have changed now, but it certainly felt that way 24 years ago, whereas now I feel like it's a really huge value prop. And I love that. I love how far we've come in our industry.

Jason · 07:17Yep. Love it. We'll probably circle back to that in a second, the second one and question back to you guys, if you had to start a business again today, how this looks different, but, um, Nick. And Marty, we'll go one by one. How sophisticated was your, I guess, financial management system, your reporting, you know, your ability to run monthly figures, budgets to actuals, you know, that, that kind of, um, even your cashflow forecasting, did you have a sophisticated system or how was it at the start?

Nick · 07:43No, definitely not. And, um, what I will say though, is, you know, I didn't consider myself a business person when I went into business. So, yeah, I think. Knowing what I know now and also the, um, the

Nick · 08:00access to education and content. Now it might be a very different story, but no mate, it was, you know, um, they'll definitely Excel spreadsheets, but it was pretty basic, you know, income expenses and the, and the major ones, uh, what, what was left over.

Nick · 08:13Um, I think at the time we used, um, would have been mild as an accounting, uh, system, which was nowhere near what it is today. So, yeah. I would say.

Marty · 08:25And I can second that. Uh, I always remember our first business card was, uh, created off wingdings and it looked cheap and tacky. And the car was blowing smoke out the back cause it was a really cheap car.

Marty · 08:38So we'd always have to park it on a Hill so we could get it started and walk around the block to the client. So we didn't embarrass ourselves. But. It was, and even in regards to financial management, we would look at, you know, income that came in and what income did we want to come in? First of all, we set that goal and then we would look at the expenses every week and go, how

Marty · 09:00can we keep this as lean as possible until we really built those cash flows up and then we use those cash flows to better the business as we went.

Marty · 09:09And I saw other brokers. Get a lot that started businesses at the same time, get a lot less traction because they were trying to get the business to look right first. So they more had that emphasis of everything looking a certain way, but for us was we just want to save people money. So we just want to get out.

Marty · 09:27Save people money, show the benefit. And then they just kept telling their friends and it just kept evolving and evolving. But like Nick said, and, and part of this is what I loved about it is I got, it was so raw. We were finance people. We weren't business owners. We learnt that along the way. And it was great, you know, it was so raw.

Marty · 09:48And, um, you know, as, as you go on, you do become more sophisticated and you invest money into that. And that's great too, but there's something really great about that early phase as you get

Marty · 10:00going.

Jason · 10:00Yeah, a hundred percent. I bring that one up, you know, uh, I'm fortunate to be in a position where I see a lot of business owners that, you know, start to look for an accountant or an advisor.

Jason · 10:08You know, a couple of years into the journey, you know, maybe they're one or two years in and realize, shit, maybe I better get on top of my, my GST, my taxes, get it all lodged and up to date. So, you know, while yep, step one, make sure you've got a business plan. I'd do that differently if I had my time again and tell a lot of clients this too.

Jason · 10:24Step two is also, you know, Putting some energy and effort into setting up your accounting system, your structures to make sure that you're getting the right tax deductions, paying the right amount of tax and also managing cashflow effectively. If you don't have a good sophisticated accounting system and an ability to manage that, that's where most, you know, I think it's 80 percent of businesses that fail report poor cashflow and poor accounting management as.

Jason · 10:48The reason why they failed. So, you know, that's, that's a huge number of failed businesses that happened because of poor accounting data or poor cashflow, which, you know, all ties into each other. Um, you know, again, by setting up the accounting

Jason · 11:00system right from day one, again, we're accountants, I talked about the mechanics car was the worst car on the road.

Jason · 11:04We didn't even look at it ourselves. We went, Hey, let's get the fancy website going. Make sure clients can sign up online, hand out those business cards as well. That was probably printed on, you know, one of those mass, you know, You know, printing things and Greg and I were handed them out like candy and, and away we went.

Jason · 11:19So again, it's what I've learned now of what I do differently. And it took years for us to recover after the fact to go, well, hang on a minute, let's rebuild our, our accounting system to show the figures this way. And then let's, let's bolt our systems together. So making sure your apps and your tools that you're using to run your business are actually talking to each other.

Jason · 11:36That's a great place to start rather than figuring it out down the track.

Marty · 11:40Yeah. It's a good point.

Nick · 11:41Yeah. I'd agree with that.

Marty · 11:42Jase, can I, can I just say on that too, this is something to be careful of. I've seen a lot of people do. Well in business based on those grassroots efforts and really work and lead and, and getting those revenues up and actually seeing whether they had a proposition, but sometimes

Marty · 12:00people have an exit and they do really well out of that exit.

Marty · 12:03And then they go and start another business, but they invest heavily into the infrastructure and also the branding to make it look good and start burning through cash. Without creating sales. So it's really important to get that proof of concept on your purpose and what you're attempting to do to get reinforcement back from the market, get the cash flows running through.

Marty · 12:25And I've had many a business owner go, stuff it. We're not investing anymore until we get this top line. Right. And if. So I'll just give you that because I've seen, you know, successful people go in and over invest and forget about what actually works in the first place. So really keep, keep, you know, keep onto that.

Jason · 12:46Now, and the extra point to add there is that getting your accounting system set up or, you know, making sure that you are using a zero and that you've got it set up from day one, rather than kind of going a year later, is that it's also doesn't have to be expensive. You know, there are

Jason · 13:00ways you can get this set up and it doesn't have to be, you know, it's not a huge capital investment upfront, but it's the time, energy and effort to make sure that it's presented the way that it needs to be presented and that you find yourself a good partner upfront, a good accounting partner, bookkeeping, financial planning, mortgage broking.

Jason · 13:16These are all the people that generally are an afterthought or do you think they're too expensive to get involved early on? Um, you know, so there again, the things that, you know, for a lot of business owners, if they had their time to start again. There's something else they would, they would review.

Marty · 13:29And I identify that because again, yeah, as exciting as it was, if I had had a lot of advice early from the right people, you just would have saved so much in different ways.

Marty · 13:40So I think it comes a time, or, you know, very quickly in the pace that you need to have good professionals around you to making sure that you're, you know, you're getting the maximum bang for your buck on the efforts that you're putting into.

Jason · 13:53Uh, Nick, question for you. I'm always targeting you first, but.

Jason · 13:55At what stage did you start investing in digital marketing

Jason · 14:00or SEO? Uh, that's a really good question. Um, how many, how many years in do you reckon you were?

Nick · 14:06Yeah, I would say SEO, I'm going to say probably seven or eight years in, uh, I think, you know, then that's, that's probably when we got serious about a website and, and, and whatnot, but it was still very, you know, we're still flirting with it more than anything.

Nick · 14:23Um, When did we get really serious about it? Um, and when I say serious, I mean, understand it ourselves as in not just paying someone else to do it, but actually understanding it ourselves. It was probably, you know, five or six years ago. Yeah. Which was just to say that's, that's 11 years in. Yep.

Marty · 14:43Yeah. Wow. We didn't have things like SEO back in the day, Jase.

Marty · 14:47We actually had to go to barbecues and eat chops. And I wonder why Marty

Nick · 14:51was staring at you, just selling beers

Marty · 14:54and actually sell our value face to face. Remember, uh, remember, uh, those days,

Marty · 15:00but I, look, I, I did like the, uh, idea. I remember when Facebook first came out and we thought because 90 percent of our business was virtually word of mouth, we do a good job.

Marty · 15:11They tell someone else when Facebook came out, we sort of thought, well, how can we, how can we build that same digital trust to a wider market? That was the one question. And initially. It was a very simple strategy, but when we settled a deal, we would actually have the client, uh, put a post up and thank, thank the business.

Marty · 15:32And that was actually really interesting because then all their friends would chip in on that and then we'd just befriend them. So it was like, we were sort of building a pipeline without even recognizing. It was just street smarts, but then obviously as things become more sophisticated in that digital space, there's some remarkable stuff with That I've seen that just actually builds direct trust with the market that you could never do on that entry level that we were starting at.

Marty · 16:00Um, and people literally have been watching our website and watching, reading our blogs over sometimes four or five months and they go on a journey and, and by the time they ring, they're ready for action. And I just think, yeah, I think that's remarkable. And that's something you really can't ignore in this day and age, because I think you'll get left behind pretty quickly.

Jason · 16:20Yep. Couldn't agree more. So, you know, the, the points around that are, you know, rather than, I mean, the times have changed as well. When we started businesses now, what we know about SEO and digital marketing, even just a marketing plan in general, it's very different to back then. So for the new age or the people who are thinking about starting business now to be looking at, you know, modeling the masters who else out there is absolutely nailing their digital marketing.

Jason · 16:44They've got an engaged audience of raving fans that are happy to be their customers. So that's kind of one part of the, the digital marketing, um, but it's then if you need to get in front of other people's customers to, you know, potentially woo them to become your customer.

Jason · 17:00How are you going to do that?

Jason · 17:01You know, what, what are the methods to do and, you know, a bit of a random example, but you know, you've got a Loon croissants in Melbourne. You know, that, you know, they became famous though, you know, very social media. People would go and buy a croissant and take a photo on social media. There'd be digital marketing involved, but then you've got all of a sudden, um, there was a tarts and on, uh, Gareth won the dessert masters on master chef.

Jason · 17:26He started a tart business. baking business during COVID. And that all came through social media. They posted beautiful pictures of tarts. They told people they could go to the website and, you know, start to buy these tarts online. So you've got businesses that have grown through digital marketing, and they've been able to look at other people in the way they've done it and grow their business that way.

Jason · 17:45Now, again, we're in financial services, but it's all kind of the same. There's people who are online looking for services and it's how they're going to find you. And the other part of that digital marketing point is the SEO. You think about the search terms very early on in the

Jason · 18:00business you're starting.

Jason · 18:01Again, you've done that solid business plan. You've got a bit of a market analysis. You'd think about how would people find you? What would they look for to be able to find you? And it might be, you know, best mortgage broker, North Melbourne. You know, my bet is that innovate would probably be number one on Google.

Jason · 18:16It's because you're due to the investment in SEO and the blogs and everything else that goes on. So it's those kinds of things. If you invest in them from day one. Imagine another seven or eight years of SEO investment from very, very early on, on Google, Nick, imagine just how, you know, far up the, I guess the, the Google food chain innovate would be with an extra seven or eight years of blogs, SEO content, um, Google reviews and all the rest of it.

Nick · 18:41Yeah. And, and the other thing I'll say is also dealing with the right group. So one of the biggest lessons, um, I'll put marketing and tech in very similar baskets, right? Sometimes. When, when, when you're on the other end of the conversation and you don't,

Nick · 19:00you've got no clue about the, the service provider on the other side, I think there's a lot of circumstances where you can, you can be with the wrong group or with, have the wrong strategy.

Nick · 19:10Um, so, you know, we definitely have, um, wasted money for lack of a better word, purely because we're with the wrong people on the wrong strategy. And this isn't just SEO, this is all things, right? Tech, tech included, seems to be tech and SEO. So it's obviously hard to, to determine who is the right person for you, but I guess what I would encourage people to do is talk to other business people that maybe are in the similar industry, which is going to be difficult if they're a competitor or, you know, someone like yourself, Jase, your accountant, but yeah, it's one of those things where you can spend a lot of money on marketing and SEO being captured in that.

Nick · 19:50Uh, for zero result and it's a quick fix with someone else who comes, who comes along and says, Oh, no, that's the wrong strategy while you're doing that. You could have done it for half the

Nick · 20:00price and you just needed to do this, this, and this. And the reality is that you don't know what you don't know. So, you know, if you're sitting on the other end of a meeting and you've got no understanding.

Nick · 20:09Yeah, you need to educate yourself or at least, um, talk to some other people that have had success and who, who they're using because you can get caught out pretty quick and spend a lot of money with no ROI.

Marty · 20:19Yeah. Nick, Nick called it. You don't know what you don't know. And that gap costs a heap. And, and really the best way to overcome that, if you are bringing someone on, go and speak to three of their clients that are getting results.

Marty · 20:33And work out how they're getting results and make it industry specific. So again, there's a lot of pitch in a space that's wide and you want to be really, I mean, that's the lesson I take out of it. You just want to get real results and get some evidence of that. Um, big, big lesson. Yeah, less than

Jason · 20:52a hundred percent.

Jason · 20:52Uh, this one potentially a little bit left of field, but it's one that, you know, I'm, I'm learning more about recently myself, but would you say that,

Jason · 21:00and potentially again, might be different for your, both your businesses, but maybe not ideal target customer. Did you have someone in mind when you first started your business or was it anyone with a dollar who could, you know, use your services?

Nick · 21:13For me, anyone with a dollar that can use your services in the initial stages. And yeah, this, this for me is one of those things where you can get caught up in, you know, in the woohoo, so to speak, like at the end of the day, Marty said it before, it's the only thing that makes you succeed early is hard work, um, and, and drive.

Nick · 21:34So one thing that I have learned and I'll, you know, we've talked to this, uh, talked to our producers about this all the time, but. Every person that you, you see is an opportunity for you to do another deal. So whether it's their, you know, their sibling or their cousin or their, um, or their colleague, if more people you help and you do a good job for the more people that are aware of what you do.

Nick · 22:00Um, and sometimes that means you do jobs for less of an ROI than you would have hoped for. And we've done plenty of that and we still do plenty of that. Um, but I think in the long term, it's the best way to go. You just help as many people as you can within reason. You obviously got to make sure you're making money, but there'll be times when you, you'll have a deal come across your desk and you'll think it's not really enough money in this, but think outside the box and think about what opportunities you can create off doing that deal.

Nick · 22:29And you know, sometimes, sometimes your marketing is you actually doing a deal for less money versus. Paying someone else to try and attract a deal in, you know, it's just considered as a marketing cost and yeah. Yeah, particularly in the early days,

Marty · 22:43I think your time is your marketing. And if you can give a client a wow experience and you can demonstrate value, um, you know, you'll spend that time because that person, if they're happy with the service, we'll be with you for the next 10, 15 years.

Marty · 22:57So every deal is sacred. Every

Marty · 23:00person is sacred, or you're starting a business. And at the end of the day, the extra zeros come as you build out. Um, And, um, and yes, as you get more and more busier, you have to be smarter about how you attract, but I think the avatar, you know, sometimes you started avatar, absolutely great.

Marty · 23:18So it depends where you are in business, but when you're first starting, I'll tell you what, every client, you just want to over service because it leads to the next opportunity, if you're not spending a heap on a marketing budget.

Nick · 23:28Yeah, no, I'll preface that by saying, Jase, you, you go after the clients that you want, you actively go after who you want to deal with.

Nick · 23:36But the reality is you're going to get some others as well. Um, and hopefully one day you're in a position that you don't deal with the others and that's fine. But in those early, those early stages, you know, it's, it's not only. It's not only, um, the fact that it provides more opportunity, but it also gives you ability to learn, um, particularly in the early days.

Marty · 23:56Yeah. And I still, like, I think back 24 years ago,

Marty · 24:00I still haven't had a sort of subliminal avatar. I knew the banks were servicing, now don't fall over, uh, 200 grand deals were like, You know, they could service them pretty well, but anything sort of 400 to a million was underserviced and over a million bucks, which is probably equivalent to two, three million today, but was, was private wealth.

Marty · 24:22So that was very competitive, but there was this beautiful space between 200 and a mil that was totally underserviced that we could give a private wealth experience to, and really give exceptional service. So. Even though we didn't have it mapped out exactly, we knew exactly where we could have an impact in the market.

Marty · 24:42And I think that's the thing you, you look, you learn this through street smarts, but also being in the bank. So you get a direct line of sight as to where the opportunity is. But again, I've done 50 grand deals that ended up turning into 500 grand deals because the neighbor wanted to come on board. So it's

Marty · 25:00like, yeah, so there's a, there's a bit of that as well.

Marty · 25:02You take on everything, but you become more focused as you go to.

Jason · 25:05And, uh, lastly, uh, a question. I mean, look, there's so many different areas that go into here, but these were the few that I kind of jotted down before the app, uh, be what, how far into business were you before you had a business coach or a mentor or somebody else advising you on the business formally?

Nick · 25:21Uh, probably, probably 10 years for me, which is too long. Um, no, it's probably one of the things I would change. Particularly find someone in the industry who'd done, been on a similar journey. Yep. Um, I think if you can do that, uh, from day one, really is that's definitely the way to go. There's people out there that are willing to help.

Marty · 25:44Yeah. We were, we were fortunate. We used to hold a lunch back at the keg. We must've liked the keg back in the old fashioned pub, but, um, we'd invite, um, six business owners along that had proven success. So Craig and I, we were good at writing

Marty · 26:00deals, but we weren't very good at business and, and, you know, that was something we, we had a lot, a lot to learn around.

Marty · 26:06So that was really, really helpful. We pick people, we have one from the finance industry and we had various others, probably about four or five others from different industries. And why we did that was just. Getting scope of perspective because we knew finance pretty well. So we needed to have someone to bounce off, but we wanted to get insights from other industries so we could actually pick up some subtleties where we might have a point of difference as well.

Marty · 26:33So that was, that was really great. We made good friends out of them. Uh, but we learnt a lot. They were older than us. We were late twenties. They would have been late thirties into mid forties. So picked up a lot out of that. And, um, might've been once a month, but it was great fun and yeah, learn a heap. And they backed us too.

Marty · 26:53So if they saw an opportunity, they liked us cause we paid for their drinks and the meal and, uh, it was, uh, that

Marty · 27:00was pretty handy when I think back.

Jason · 27:01Well, shout out to the keg, um, gonna have to get an invite to go to the keg with Marty at some

Marty · 27:07stage. Aren't they, aren't they dissolved? I haven't seen them for years.

Marty · 27:10Yeah. You stopped drinking, Marty. They went broke. I stopped drinking. That was the end of them. No,

Jason · 27:16that's it. Okay. And look, great. Great. Extra points added by both you guys. Um, I couldn't agree more and it's the reason I added that one in there as the kind of the big, the big finale wrap up, um, took us years to start working with, um, you know, any mentors or coaches.

Jason · 27:30Um, and I also think, you know, getting somebody on board earlier and if it's not necessarily having to pay a formal mentor or a coach is what you said, Marty, it's being able to surround yourself by people and Nick, you said this too, find a couple of people in the industry that are doing what you've done.

Jason · 27:43Make friends with them, get them in your circle, you know, and add value to each other. It's not all about what you can take from them. I know very early on, Nick, you know, we had several conversations where we'd share ideas with each other and bounce off each other. And that definitely helped me a lot in the early parts of my journey.

Jason · 27:59Um,

Jason · 28:00and even now. You know, fortunate enough to be on the CPA public practice committee in a room full of accountants every month, uh, the zero platinum partner breakfast that I go to against like, and I sit there like in awe of the other accounting firm owners that I'm in the room with going, man, like they are doing great things.

Jason · 28:16They've got epic ideas. So if you're not putting yourself into another room full of other people in your industry, doing brilliant things, you know, and whether that's, you're in e commerce and you need to join an online forum where all the e commerce people hang out or, you know, whether it's finance and it doesn't matter your industry, it's finding people that you can surround yourself with that are doing amazing things so that you can learn and, and, you know, grow from that.

Jason · 28:39So lovely, a little addition, love that from you guys as well, the extra points. And, uh, thank you for challenging some of my ideas as well. It's always good when, uh, Things are kind of fired back at you to, to challenge the idea, but Marty,

Marty · 28:52what would you do now? If you couldn't be an accountant, what would you do?

Marty · 28:57I'll put you on the spot.

Jason · 28:58Yeah, definitely. Look, I think,

Jason · 29:00um, how

Marty · 29:00would you make that decision?

Jason · 29:01Oh, good one. Um, I, I'm pretty set in a sense of, you know, from an answer of this, I don't have to think too much about it. You know, I, I do what I do because I love helping people. Um, now while accounting underpins, you know, a lot of what we can do to get business owners in a room and I can do the compliance or my team can do the tax and everything else.

Jason · 29:19A lot of what I do is just sit with an accounting, uh, sit with a business owner and talk to them about their business. So I think the natural progression, if I wasn't running an accounting firm and having an awesome business surrounded by business owners, I would look to do that last point that I talked about being a mentor or a coach.

Jason · 29:36Um, and just. Getting business owners out of their own heads to talk about their business and what's working, what's not, and streamline and guide them to where they want to get to. Bit of that accountability.

Marty · 29:46It's, it's great answer because it is a lonely game out there for business owners. And we've all felt that at various different times.

Marty · 29:52And that's why, you know, I'm always wrapped. We've got the camaraderie because, you know, around us too, just to chat because it's, um, and, and

Marty · 30:00people need that advice. It's amazing how business owners get isolated. In their own industry, in their own ideas. And just even, like I've said before, Jayce, like putting a business owner that's doing well, but could be doing better onto you and getting that third party advice and guidance.

Marty · 30:17It's just so empowering to the actual business owner to go, wow, I've got the next level forward here. Whereas they've been, you know, they've been working hard to get to this point. And you'll know when that point is, when you need extra support and it's, it's time to get it when you know, you need it and you haven't got the answers, you know, certainly reach out and, um, you know, give, give Jase a call, uh, his team are fantastic, and I know like stuff that Nick's doing in regards to financial wellbeing, you talk about.

Marty · 30:47You know, good community, um, you know, adding value to people going into firms and talking to their staff about how to be more financially secure in the future. I mean,

Marty · 31:00this is an area that's so under service, not. Not taught well at school and people make money, but they don't know how to set themselves up for the future.

Marty · 31:09And, um, they could just get so far advanced with the right people around them. And, and even do that. Like I used to think to myself, like a novice coming out of the Yarra Valley. Right. I didn't have the means to go on, you know, hire coaches at that time as much as I would have loved to, but you still can find people along the journey that you respect, that you're aligned with, that are getting results.

Marty · 31:33And you can talk to those people and they're happy to share back because you're enthusiastic about what you do. And then, you know, you can then take that advice in your own way and remold it into something very successful for yourself. So people always say, Oh, you know, you've got to have money to make money.

Marty · 31:52But you know, it's, it's like first you got to work out how to make money and you got to, but there's people available.

Marty · 32:00Along the way to help you make it as well. It's just, sometimes you have to think outside of the box and don't be afraid to reach out and ask the question. Plenty of good people around.

Nick · 32:09And, and, and don't engage a business coach. That's the other thing I'll say it. Uh, don't pay a business coach. I think, um, I think there's a lot of business coaches out there. I'm sure there's some great ones, but I think there's a lot that are not so great when I say a lot, maybe 90 percent of them, Jason, you probably got a better lens on this than I have.

Nick · 32:27So. I think when we're saying, uh, look for people that will help you, um, there's just some legitimate business owners out there who will want to help you and will give you the time. Don't go and pay someone that you saw online.

Marty · 32:40I take a lot out of what you think, Jase, like in regards to, you'll give me a different perspective.

Marty · 32:45Nick will give me a different perspective, Geordie, the GM, Caden. Like our team members, you know, it's, you talk to them and you're always learning and you create efficiency in the game, which is, I like, maybe that's just me. That's my

Marty · 33:00perspective, but I really like that. How do you get stronger based on the reality of where you're at and what you're doing, something pretty magical about that.

Jason · 33:09Well, that's it. Hopefully if you've, uh, managed to listen to all 203 episodes of the numbers game. Now you're feeling empowered. You're feeling, uh, well and truly educated and, uh, you're up and about doing amazing things out there too. So thank you again for joining us. Um, if you're only new to these, uh, episodes, feel free to go back through the catalog.

Jason · 33:25There's only a few episodes there. You'll hear me celebrating at about the one 10 mark for the journey to 200. So it's always good fun. Um, do like subscribe, depending on what channel you're on. Give us a follow. Follow, 5 star reviews are always welcome and as Marty said, you can always reach out to Nick, Marty, and I.

Jason · 33:41We created this podcast to help people so that's what we're here for. Until next time though,

Marty · 33:46keep having a crack. Business is good. Game over.

Jason · 33:51This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The conversations are of a general nature and do not qualify as financial or tax advice. We

Jason · 34:00recommend before you make any financial decisions, you consult a licensed professional.

Jason · 34:04Individuals on the podcast may hold positions in the companies discussed. ---