Mastering the New Financial Year

Jason · 00:00Welcome to episode 197 of The Numbers Game. I'm Jase. I'm here with Nick and Marty. But, and I don't know about you guys, but end of financial year absolutely knocks me around. I feel like I've just recovered. How are you guys traveling? I thought we really battled hard last year. We did pretty well. And then it's done and you're at it again.

Jason · 00:19It's uh, it's uh, just the life of a business owner. But uh, love it. Love the challenge. Yeah. Nick, how'd you find it? Last financial year and we're in a new dawn.

Nick · 00:30Yeah. Look, probably sheltered a little bit from the, uh, from the June chaos. Me personally, I know, um, our financial plan is pretty busy, you know, getting super contributions done and everything before the cutoff date and you know, everyone loves a big party.

Nick · 00:45I think a lot of businesses just, it's an excuse. You know, I was with a mate this morning. It does not have a financial business at all. Uh, and has an end of financial year party, um, coming up. And. I said, okay, so how does that

Nick · 01:00relate to you? Uh, were you really busy in June or he goes, no, no, we're just, you know, celebrating the end of the year.

Nick · 01:06I was like, okay. So I always thought the end of financial year party was because June is just so busy for people like yourself, Chase, accountants trying to get tax returns done, but is it more of a celebration of. The year because then we have another celebration at the end of the year anyway for the year.

Jason · 01:22Well, yeah, I feel like maybe business owners get around into financial gear as a bit of an excuse to get their team together and yeah, do some dinners and some parties. Um, but I also had the same thing. I mean, cause we surround ourselves by, you know, financial planners, lawyers, mortgage brokers, accountants.

Jason · 01:36I feel like I've been more. connected to the professional services world where yeah, end of financial year and start of new financial year is a bit of a thing, but yeah, I guess any business could and should celebrate the end of a year, especially if they've done some good things. Yeah. Interesting.

Jason · 01:52Thought what about, what about this Christmas, this Christmas in July business too? Like, haven't we got enough to do in December with that? You know,

Jason · 02:00can we, can we just have Christmas when it's Christmas anymore? It's funny you mentioned that Marty. And, you know, I did want to talk to you guys today, you know, the first month of new financial year, we're in the 24, 25 financial year.

Jason · 02:11I'm not used to saying 2025 financial year yet. It still hasn't sunk in. Um, you know, our team are busy doing 2024 tax returns. So there's too many bloody years and numbers to remember, but, you know, as you do mention that Marty, I have seen. At the end of July, I did see photos popping up on social media of, um, friends dressed in Christmas gear doing the Christmas in July thing.

Jason · 02:33And I had the same thought. I'm like, man, there is just too much going on. They obviously don't work in professional services, either accounting or financial planning businesses, that's for sure. Um, but somebody turned around and said, we did have our end of our financial year dinner. And I thought I was, uh, had a bunch of children throwing paper airplanes around a restaurant.

Jason · 02:52They were all having a lot of fun. Accountants gone wild. Um, and I turned, I had one of the social committee turned to me and say, actually, Jase, I should probably

Jason · 03:00start to book the Christmas party. And I was just like, could not believe it. But anyway, it's

Nick · 03:07hard to get a venue those days. You have to, you have to be thinking about it in August or you won't find somewhere.

Jason · 03:13Yeah. Well, here's, here's the point. Number one of the episode, if you get anything out of this, it's to start to think about booking your Christmas party. If you are running a business and you haven't booked that yet. So there you go. Value just straight off the bat here at the numbers game. But, uh, guys, I've got a couple of points I wanted to run through with you.

Jason · 03:30Want to bounce off you a little bit and ask some questions of whether you have done this or whether you, you do it or recommend it or not. Um, and the first one, while it's hot on the topic, uh, last week we took our entire team. into a room, um, did our annual planning day, basically where we shared our results for the 2024 financial year, we shared our targets for the 2025 year up ahead.

Jason · 03:53And we had, uh, you know, friend of the show, Adrian Hondros came in, did a presentation to our team on about strategy on a page, which

Jason · 04:00was revisiting mission, vision, values, and some of the objectives. That we have as a business over the 24, 25 year. So I guess, um, as a starting point, do you guys do these kind of strategy and planning days?

Jason · 04:12I think we've talked about it before and, and is it every year or do you guys, you know, not do it every year?

Nick · 04:17Yeah, Jace, we, we definitely do. Um, it's, it's really constant in our business to be honest. Um, we, we, we have a leadership group and we're always talking about strategy and, uh, what we're planning for the next month, really.

Nick · 04:31And this is only something we've done recently, but. Um, it's funny you say it because at our end of financial year, uh, party or gathering, um, we did present the strategy to the broader group, uh, which, which was great. Uh, we didn't so much touch on numbers, um, past numbers, but we looked at, uh, future numbers and where we're trying to take the business this year.

Nick · 04:54Um, so yeah, so as a, as a leadership to answer your question as a

Nick · 05:00leadership group, yes, we do get away, um, every year. Uh, we review the business plan, cash flows, all that stuff. Uh, look at the key things we want to focus on, but it's only recently we've started sharing that with the wider group. And, um, yeah, it was, it was actually.

Nick · 05:15Amazing for lack of a better word.

Jason · 05:17And I had some fantastic feedback from the wider group based upon it. It was just great to see the vision of the business, like knowing where the business is going year on year. And, um, and even we had two people inducted as partners, uh, on the day that had been with us for five years.

Jason · 05:35Luke Mace, who's been on the show, and Justin Coghlan, who's probably our top, or he's our top broker. Um, And again, that really encouraged the other people within the business as well to go, this is where I could get to, you know, over the course of the journey. So it's, um, I think people came away really buoyed with some of the things that went on and just having the high level understanding

Jason · 06:00of how the business wanted to evolve.

Jason · 06:01And Nick's very, Right in saying like we have leadership catch ups, like even in the sales team, we have, uh, quarterly goals we set that we want to hit. And again, yes, it's driven by the business a lot of the times, but a lot of times, you know, particularly individuals don't realize. Why it's driven for the business and how, so they link it more to their personal situation and their personal goals.

Jason · 06:26So just aligning the two visions, I think is really, really important and that people have absolute alignment of buy in to not only want to progress individually, but. Uh, to know how that, that contributes to the, the, the building of the business, which then creates opportunities within the business. I think just getting a view on all that was very, very powerful, which I thought was brilliant.

Jason · 06:51Absolutely love that. And, um, look, sounds like there's some synergies, obviously future advisory hasn't been around as long as Innovate. And I always look to, to innovate, you

Jason · 07:00know, for inspiration on how well you guys do things. And yeah, for years, you know, I've heard the stories of your, your planning days or annual strategy days and, um, you know, following in your footsteps, we rolled out ours the other week and yeah, the, the feedback from the whole team was that it was the best one yet.

Jason · 07:15But hands down, you know, we get better and better year on year, but it was more the sharing the vision with the whole team so that you have buy in from, from your employees, your, your team that rock up day in, day out, need to understand why they exist and why we exist as a business, but also part of where we're going from a vision point of view.

Jason · 07:34So step one is a big one. If you haven't shared the vision for your company with your team, if you haven't laid out. The map or the roadmap, have a bit of a look at, you know, your 23, 24 performance, have a look at 24, 25 and start to create some, formulate some plans for where you want your business to go.

Jason · 07:52So I've started on a big meaty one, um, but I just wanted to touch on, you know, obviously we've shared how important and how valuable that was for both of our businesses.

Jason · 08:00And if you're not doing that, it's a really good opportunity to start to look at your business planning at this time of year, before you get too deep into the year.

Jason · 08:06This is the mistake that we see a lot of business owners make is that all of a sudden it's August. And if we don't, you know, carve out some hours to do business strategy and we just get stuck in the day to day, as we said, it'll be Christmas before we know it, and we'll be trying to book venues.

Nick · 08:21Just one more thing, Jase, on the sharing of the vision and the strategy.

Nick · 08:24I think, um, I think a lot of businesses, uh, would feel strange about that. I know I did in the past. Um, an example, you don't want, you don't want your staff to know how much money you're making. Um, that's, you know, that's probably the biggest thing or how much money you're not making hypothetically, depending on the business.

Nick · 08:43But I think the reality is if you've got a good business, you're making money. And I think most staff should accept that. But what's sharing that vision does and showing the people in your business that you're trying to grow and that you are making money, it gives them real confidence

Nick · 09:00that they're in the right seat.

Nick · 09:01And it will prevent them going somewhere else if they think there's a lack of opportunity or you're not taking the business forward, which is then going to provide that opportunity for them. So I'd encourage business owners to think outside the box and, Actually, I'd suggest that it's okay. It's okay to show how much money you're making or what your profit margins are.

Nick · 09:21That's pretty much what we did, um, in our strategy, Jay, last, um, last week. Um, we showed the revenue, we showed our, um, our, our target profitability. So people can quickly do the sums and work out how much money we're making. But that money means we can reinvest in the business and we can grow and we can provide more opportunities.

Nick · 09:40So. Don't be closed and think it's a bad thing. Um, it's more than okay to share that you're making. Profit and that you're taking the business forward and growing it.

Jason · 09:50I couldn't agree more. And look, I concur or agree in the same way. Greg and I have sat back and gone, you know, Oh, like it feels a bit weird.

Jason · 09:58You know, how much can we share? Do

Jason · 10:00we overshare as a business? And, you know, but as long as you've got the right culture and the right people to be able to do that. Then that's not going to be an issue. And, you know, if you feel like you can't share that, then maybe it's a bit of a time to do a culture review and a review of the people that you've got working with you.

Jason · 10:15You know, they should want you to be successful and want to work for a successful organization. So quite important in that aspect. You hit the nail on the head. It's, if they're not a part of that vision, wanting to be a part of that vision, obviously the business does well, they do well and vice versa. So if it's not aligned, Then it's not the right person.

Jason · 10:35So it's, um, you know, there's no room for selfishness. And if there is, it's, um, yeah, again, you've got to be on a rising tide together. Otherwise you're in real strife. Couldn't agree more. Um, one of the things, uh, I'll lead this into and kind of reverse a few of the smaller parts. I mean, not everything's going to be as big and chunky and take as much action as what a strategy or a planning day would.

Jason · 10:57Um, but you know, going back to business 101

Jason · 11:00is having a budget. Um, we've talked, I've talked about it time and time again, it's one of my favorites or one of the ones that I'll hop on about is if you don't have a budget for month to month, what your turnover and your profit should be, and then all the parameters in between, and then extrapolate that out for a whole year.

Jason · 11:16So, you know, you've got the data of your last financial year, for example, 23, 24, it's done and dusted basically to get started, dump that down into a monthly profit and loss and have a look at it and go, well, what can we do different in the 25 financial year? What months should we do more revenue than what we did last year?

Jason · 11:33Or especially if you've got a seasonal business, you might be doing black Friday sales, for example, and you know that November is going to be an absolute banger or Christmas sales. You might have quiet times in January or February, depending on the market that you're in. These are all the things. Things that you can kind of revisit.

Jason · 11:48And by look, you know, dumping it out on a bit of paper and sticking it up in front of you, you can start to see things, your numbers should tell a story. And if you're unsure how to read the story, your numbers are telling that's where you've got to jump in a room with a partner, an

Jason · 12:00advisor, a coach, an accountant, a finance broker, you know, a financial planner, whoever it is that you need to get in a room with and go here are my numbers.

Jason · 12:08Help me tell a story. Yeah. And I think what's really important is how much money are you keeping? Like again, how much cash are you keeping in the business? And then how are you reallocating that cash as well? Because they are really important decisions to keep that business thriving as well. A lot of people get.

Jason · 12:27Caught up on the profit and loss, which is really important. But then what money is actually coming in and how are you investing that capital successfully? Because it's very, and we've seen it, we've all been in business a long time. Yeah. You could quickly spend that money and not be in the exact right areas.

Jason · 12:44And you can burn cash pretty quickly off the back of a great result. So really important to have those capital discussions with the senior team in order to go, okay, what's the allocation? Where is it best served to keep doing the great things that we're doing in

Jason · 13:00order that the way forward is just as strong as where you've come from.

Nick · 13:03And also putting in the time to monitor that. And that's where in the past I've gone wrong as a business owner. We've set up the 12 month budget and cashflow, but it's not monitored. You need to review it every, every month because you can't, you can't turn a ship around quickly. So you can't get to six months and go, Oh, we didn't get to where we need to be.

Nick · 13:25Um, you know, I want it to be a 20 percent profit margin this year. I'll, I'll do my best to do it in the next six months. It's too late. So you need to look at it every month, understand what the lead indicators are. And then from there you need to make changes. So whether that change is, if you're not on track, okay, well, what didn't we do last month?

Nick · 13:45We need to bring more revenue in next month and moving forward. If we can't, then we need to drop some expenses. Otherwise, we're not going to get to our target. So if you set the budget up and you don't review it on, in my opinion, it needs to be monthly. Um, Then it's all pointless

Nick · 14:00really. Uh, unless of course you're smashing your targets.

Jason · 14:02Yeah. We've all been there. So we're talking from wisdom on this. It worked very well. It's very good. And if it doesn't quite go according to plan, if we're not monitoring it, yeah, it's amazing how you can bleed. So it's important to stop the bleeding.

Nick · 14:16And just one more thing on that, Jason, I really like the seasonality aspect, because that's something that we only bought in recently.

Nick · 14:22Um, if you don't understand your seasonality, you're going to have cashflow problems because you can have months. You can't just go, uh, okay, we want to make a million dollars the next year and divide it by 12. It generally doesn't work like that. And we've even gone, and this is, I'd encourage people to do this as well, particularly if they're in sales.

Nick · 14:40I actually had a meeting this morning, uh, with a new financial planner in our business. Um, you know, looking at how much revenue, uh, she wants to bring in to the business, which will then obviously impact her income and we're looking at seasons and, you know, she needs to bring on five new clients a month and which is, you know, 60

Nick · 15:00clients for the year.

Nick · 15:01Yeah. The reality is in December and January, from a financial planning point of view, no one wants to talk to us because they're busy with Christmas parties and they're busy organizing holidays. January, they've got school holidays, so they've got kids at home, so they're not talking to a financial planner.

Nick · 15:17So you really need to get 12 months of your target into 10 months. So it's no longer five SOAs a month or five new clients a month. It's actually 6. 5. So I think the seasonality, the seasonality factor is absolutely imperative. And I think the good, a really good way to work it out, you'll, you'll know it in your own head anyway.

Nick · 15:37But what you said, just download the last year, even the last two years. And you'll see the trends.

Jason · 15:42And the beauty of that is, right, look at the conversations we've just driven out of talking about downloading your last 12 months worth of data and setting some goals, right? So the old saying, what gets measured gets managed.

Jason · 15:52If you're not measuring how many leads you need to hit the target, the sales target that you've gone for, or what profit margin are

Jason · 16:00you aiming for as a business? If you're happy to fly blind and get to the end of the year and You know, your accountant gives you a tax bill 10 months after the year's over.

Jason · 16:08And you go, Oh shit, I've got to pay that. I've got to pay that much tax, but I've got no money left. You're completely flying blind. Everything should be proactive and done in advance rather than reactive. So that, that the simple idea of having a business budget and downloading your numbers, doesn't really work.

Jason · 16:23There's, there's some magic to this where we've just talked about all these extra things that come out of it. So it's, it's one of the number one things that I stress any business owner to do. And that 10 months sales cycle is, is pivotal. Like people, business owners quickly forget that people go on holidays for four weeks every year.

Jason · 16:39You know, we all think, Oh, there's a couple of people away in a month, but over the course of the year. They're all away for four weeks. So I really like that 10 month sales cycle and even, you know, budgeting with individuals, you know, on their, on their goals to be 10 month goals. And, and like I said, you see this in real time where someone is just missing

Jason · 17:00on a goal.

Jason · 17:01So you have to overshoot on that 10 month period in order to hit the goal and know that you're going to hit it rather than just falling short every year. So they're the type of things that can move your business substantially forward. Critical. Look, I won't go into this one too much more, but just where we've seen some impact with real life stories here is that example, Nick said, we had a business that said they needed to turn over 300 grand a month to hit, to hit their targets and I was like, okay, cool.

Jason · 17:26How'd you come up with 300 grand a month? And it was based on the number of engineers and the number of hours per engineer. Would work. And I went down, I was kind of unpacked it when, okay, cool. But by the time you, you take out December holidays, January holidays, April, Easter, March, all this thing, I said, some of those months, you actually only have the capacity, the actual ability to build 220, 000 or about 200, 000.

Jason · 17:50So in all of the other months where you got your full team on board, you actually need to be hitting 350 to 370, 000 a month. And it was kind of like this, this eye opening moment for the business owner to

Jason · 18:00go, Oh. Okay. Wow. So for some of the months where they weren't hitting those targets, that they were under capacity, their, their team weren't billing what they were capable of.

Jason · 18:07So yeah, huge one for business owners to understand is that budget it's one on one, uh, but it does drive so many awesome conversations if you then start to unpack it. Well, well, even from an individual standpoint, like you, it's funny when, when you, when you're in a sales manager position, you kind of see patterns of behavior too.

Jason · 18:27So when someone's just falling short on a goal and it's a simple sometimes saying, I want to do 30 million in settlements a quarter and they're falling 28, 27 every quarter. The only issue was we weren't shooting for 36. And we hit 33 and all of a sudden the, the, the strategy was already there. We just had to put some fuel and a couple of moving parts in the strategy piece to attain that next level goal.

Jason · 18:52So we've all been there. We've all dropped short slightly, but how do you ensure you don't drop short? You know, by. You know, by over

Jason · 19:00calculating the upside. And then if it comes back a bit, you're still in front. So you, again, that's all the mental pieces around the strategy as well, where human beings are linked to that you got to work through.

Jason · 19:10So it works at a business level, works at an individual level from a sales perspective. But you can control it. And that's the thing. The individual can control it if they know what to be shooting for. And, and I think that's what we always need to be clear on. What are we shooting for? Yep. A hundred percent.

Jason · 19:26Um, changing away from, you know, your business planning and your budgeting into something that, you know, obviously I get a little bit excited by, and, you know, I'm wearing a dashboard insights t shirt from a technology front. But, um, the next one to have a bit of a look and a review of heading into, you know, 24, 25 is as things keep advancing with technology, I think it's always important to stop and have a review of the technology you're using.

Jason · 19:48Um, one of the sayings that's going around, especially in the accounting industry at the moment is that AI. Won't replace accountants, but accountants using AI will replace accountants. So if you can

Jason · 20:00apply that to your industry, it's relevant for some, maybe not so relevant for others, but it's more, and not just AI, this is just a technology, a broad thing around the, you know, the cloud systems you're using.

Jason · 20:09Are they integrated? Do the, does the way you're running your business, uh, is everything talking to each other? Um, if you've got disconnected apps and disconnected systems, it's making your business less efficient. Um, so, you know, my, my next point here was around having a review of your technology, having a look at how AI might be able to be implemented to streamline some of your systems and processes.

Jason · 20:31Um, but, you know, again, not here to kind of harp on about AI and chat GBT and those things, but just, there are some really neat, small little things that you could do. to really take your business to the next level, but you need to have the, I guess, the, the mind power or the time to create some innovation time for you and your business.

Jason · 20:49So if you're looking at, you know, your month of work or you're 40 hours a week, How many hours per week are you stopping to look at how you can improve the systems and

Jason · 21:00processes in your business? And that comes to, you know, one of those things might be technology. Do you guys had a bit of a review of the technology you're using and, and how it can help your business, Nick?

Jason · 21:08Uh, nonstop,

Nick · 21:09nonstop. And, um, number one, introducing tech that can measure, um, data. So sales, uh, lead indicators, conversion rates. Uh, all these things, you know, where, where are we tracking, um, in comparison to our goals. So yeah, from a tech point of view for us, it's been able to get across data, but probably our other big learning is we don't need to reinvent the wheel as well.

Nick · 21:34Um, the reality is we're an SME, we're a medium sized business with, you know, 35 to 40 people. Uh, we don't have the budgets to, to spend on, you know, producing amazing tech. Uh, there's tech businesses out there that do that. So I guess the, the big learning for us too, has also been, we'll see what other big groups are doing and just leverage, leverage off what they're doing.

Nick · 21:56Don't try and reinvent the wheel. Um, cause I think we can,

Nick · 22:00we think we can do it better sometimes, but tech is just this money pit. Um, So copy what's been done well.

Jason · 22:07Yeah. Is, is it perfect enough? The tech, like sometimes it's not going to be a hundred percent to what you want it, but the expense of building it is extraordinary and it takes up a lot of time, money and distraction.

Jason · 22:18So can you get something that's perfect enough out there in the system and then implement it? And I, I even look at our business to what it was four years ago. You know, a lot of the data we were making decisions of was pretty assumptive, you know, in regards to, cause we just didn't have the front end data.

Jason · 22:35So for us to be doing well, or even be challenged, we probably wouldn't know till later in the piece. And now, We get so much insights from when a lead comes in to when documents are sent out to clients, the conversion, when those documents are back, um, we get real time data and daily data that we can make decisions on in the day.

Jason · 22:57We know who to call, when to call them, why to

Jason · 23:00call them right now. And before we might not have had that discussion until three months later down the track or two months. And that is sometimes the problems already arisen. And you don't know it yet and you're not sure what to do. And sometimes it's like hitting the dog on the snout three weeks later after they've, uh, dropped a big load of crap on the bloody floor.

Jason · 23:20So this way, yeah. And this is in the positive too, right? This is in the positive. You see really good signs that things are going well. You're getting that up front so you can encourage momentum off it. So it works in all, sorry to bring a dog crap into the equation, but, uh, I need to butt

Nick · 23:36in there. I need to butt in.

Nick · 23:38I had a, um, I had a, I had a meeting this morning with two guys from our office and, uh, it was a review meeting and they'll listen to this podcast and they'll laugh. And I said to them, it's like Marty Vid said, says, there's no point smacking the dog on the nose a week after it does a crap on the carpet.

Nick · 23:58This is this morning. And they

Nick · 24:00both said to me, he does not say that. I said, yeah, he uses it at least once a week. And then you've pulled it up today. You got evidence. You got But Hey, I just want to say one thing. I just want to emphasize what you said there about not being perfect. You know, I think, um, nothing is perfect with whether it's a CRM, um, or, or a workflow tool, whatever it is, you're never going to get utopia.

Nick · 24:23You're just never going to get utopia. And I think a lot of businesses will not make decisions because of that, or they would think they can do it themselves, or they'll just wait till they find the best, or what they think is going to be utopia, but I can almost, you know, You promise you that it just doesn't exist.

Nick · 24:39So you've got to, you've got to look at what's available. So, okay, well, can this create efficiencies in my business or advance my business forward? And if it can have a go, um, and then, you know, be prepared to change if you need to, but. I love what you said there, Marty, about, you know, it's not perfect. So it's just never going to be, um, but don't let that hold you back.

Jason · 24:57I've seen business really cook

Jason · 25:00their, cook their revenues on time, looking for something perfect time and time again out there. And it's like, like I always say, perfect enough works really well. You get efficiencies. If something better comes along. Then you utilize that, but it's got to be working well, but it's never going to be perfect.

Jason · 25:16You're right, Nick. It's, uh, geez, it can burn a lot of time trying to find perfect. Uh, little, little hot tip as we roll on from technology to the next one is the budget I mentioned before. If you compare this year's tech spend to last year's tech spend. Are you spending more, but did you get more out of your tech?

Jason · 25:31So you often say subscription creep, where you've signed up to things or, you know, bought new apps or new technology into the business, and maybe they never ended up getting used, or maybe you've added more users, but you don't need all the users. So, uh, you know, from the budgeting 101 to revert back to it, what gets measured gets managed.

Jason · 25:49If you can cancel some of the crap that you're not using and put some money back in the pocket of your business, go and have a look at those things you're paying for that you're not using. So do you, that, that's a great, great piece of advice, Jase.

Jason · 26:00It's almost a category in itself in budgeting, isn't it?

Jason · 26:02It's like, you know, did our tech return more money to the business through efficiency or revenue? And, um, that, that's, that's a great independent discussion, I feel. Cause so often I'm seeing people talking so much about tech, but relevancy falls away and then they're spending stuff on trying to find a way forward with no real idea of what that way forward is.

Jason · 26:24So I think it's great to be able to monitor that and discuss that probably month to month. Well, and this, this will roll into the next one. So I'll segue through, but from a tech point of view, what are We implemented last year, probably our most successful tech implementation. So again, this is all part of the review, right?

Jason · 26:40Where you look at last year versus what you want to do this year. We implemented a bit of technology that manages our ATO mail. Now, if you, if we've got call it 3000 clients, give or take between companies, trust individuals, and each of those clients might get an average of. Five to 10 pieces of mail from the ATO.

Jason · 26:58So let's just go to the upper end, call it

Jason · 27:0010. We've got to manage tens of thousands of pieces of ATO mail coming and going through our business. And this used to be done manually. It used to be download the PDFs from the ATO or physically get stacks of mail sent to our, our, our address. And we had a team member in our client services team that would open all the mail, scan it in, rename the document, file it into a folder, decide to send it to a client or not, all manually done and decided by a human, how to do all that, when to do it, we've put this bit of tech in called ACO mate.

Jason · 27:33Automated the whole thing, it downloads the mail, it renames the mail, it files the mail, and it follows a set of rules on whether to send it automatically to the client or not. So then instead of 30, 000 pieces of mail that a human would have to touch and manually review and send, we'd probably only get 20 documents a week that one of our client managers has to actually look at and decide how to handle it if it didn't fit a set of rules.

Jason · 27:57So that's, that leads into my

Jason · 28:00conversation around customer relationships. You know, so if you've entered into this new financial year, one of the things that you should be looking at is, Are we servicing our clients as well as we could, you know, your customers, your clients, they are the lifeblood of a good organization.

Jason · 28:16As you know, as much as your team eternally and the people running it, if you don't have customers, you don't have a business. So one thing to look at would be. How are you servicing your customers? Are there more services or products that you could sell them or that you should be selling them? And if you haven't asked for feedback or done a survey or a review, this is probably an opportunity to, you know, and future advisor is about to do it.

Jason · 28:38And part of me is shitting my pants, but part of me is also really excited to see the results. We're going to do what's called an NPS. Um, so, um, we'll survey our clients. They'll be asked on a scale of, you know, one to 10, how's future advisory going? Are they offering good services? Is there anything else we can do for you?

Jason · 28:55And we're gonna be able to take all that data back in house to our team and our leadership team and, and our, and our

Jason · 29:00client managers and, and everyone in between and go, here's what our customers are saying about us. Can we do better? What can we change? And this is a bit of an opportunity just to get a bit of a pulse check and see how we're going with our, with our customers.

Jason · 29:13Have you guys done a NPS or anything like that before? And yeah, I'd love to know a bit about the process. It's constant.

Nick · 29:18So, um, every one of our clients that goes through the process with us, uh, gets, gets a survey at the end. Um, and not all of them complete the survey, but a lot of them do. Um, Yeah, I think we sit around, I'm not saying this to brag, I'm just saying this to, to show that if you give it attention, it actually does, uh, it does yield results, but we sit around sort of 97, just North or South of that.

Jason · 29:44Wow.

Nick · 29:45Yeah. And, um, is

Jason · 29:47that on a net promoter score?

Nick · 29:49Yep. Yep. Wow. That is, that is huge. Well done guys. Yeah, no, we're, we're, we're proud of it, but it's Yeah, it's You don't know what you're doing wrong if

Nick · 30:00you're not, if you're not doing those, those surveys. So yeah, we've, we've only recently introduced it to the wealth business, but the finance business, we've been doing it, um, we've been doing it for years.

Nick · 30:10Um, and we constantly tweak the survey to make sure we're getting the right responses as in not the responses we want, but you know, we're asking the right questions, get the right feedback so we can be.

Jason · 30:20mix that in with the Google reviews, like the five star Google reviews. I don't know how many hundreds of that we've got, but we've got social proof, but also like to give you a specific example, our brokers are remunerated.

Jason · 30:33Um, as a part of that is their portfolio retention as well. So the customer service, so the actual incentives are aligned. With really great customer outcomes and customers returning back to innovate as well, and it impacts them individually as well. So it's all tied in, but that we are getting a lot of response from the market due to those five star Google reviews and the high MPS scores.

Jason · 30:58And apparently

Jason · 31:00like, not that I'm comparing, but that's very good in the general market, um, to what we're doing on that. And it's having an impact definitely. I'm, I'm sitting here absolutely so impressed with you guys, like 666 five star reviews for starters on Innovate's Google page, as well as an NPS of 97.

Jason · 31:19You guys should be absolutely stoked. So well, just a little moment to say well done to the team at Innovate right now, because that I'm gobsmacked and I didn't know that heading into telling people to look at their customer relationships. That is amazing.

Nick · 31:32Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I appreciate it. And it's. You know, I'm thinking back to the whole topic we're talking about here is things that you must do as a business, like anyone that's not focusing on Google reviews for their business and then pushing that to their employees.

Nick · 31:48Like at the end of the day, it's our employees that deliver a service. So they're the ones that are going to get reviewed, not, not innovate. So obviously we get, we get captured in that review. So to Marty's

Nick · 32:00point, you know, we're really pushing, pushing our team to get Google reviews because these days. As soon as someone is, um, determining whether or not they're going to use your business, they, they, they go to Google and if you don't have the right amount of reviews on there, um, then they're, they're going to turn it to someone else.

Nick · 32:18So I think, yeah, businesses really need to focus on what is their online presence, not just how good your website, people don't really care about your website. They do to a degree, but they're going straight to Google reviews these days to make sure that they're not jumping into the fire. So. Definitely put a strategy in place.

Nick · 32:35If you don't have one.

Jason · 32:36Love it. Well, I'm glad, I'm glad I brought that one up because even I'm going to walk away from this a little bit fired up to make sure that we continue to progress in that area, because that's a new one for us. And, you know, again, every, every year business is about progress and progress is a word that we've used a lot internally with our team.

Jason · 32:51It's about the progress that we make year on year, and we don't claim to be perfect either, like most business owners. We, again, Marty, you talked about not being perfect and, and. Kind of having a

Jason · 33:00go. Um, so that's the one for us as well, that, you know, we're not perfect, but we want to progress.

Nick · 33:04And I'll just one more point on that, because I actually hopped on this with our team last week, but it's actually the final piece of your marketing plan.

Nick · 33:11So, you know, we, you, you to test this chase, you're pouring money into online marketing. You're trying to get your website to look sexy. You're trying to drive online lead flow in your business. And it doesn't matter if you service based or product based, whatever it is. You're trying to drive lead flow into your business by spending money on marketing.

Nick · 33:29If you don't have the Google reviews or the NPS there to compliment that, it can be a complete waste of money. If you're driving lead flow in, so you're getting the attention on your business and your website, the next thing people are doing, they're going straight to Google to see if they should be using you.

Nick · 33:46Now, if the reviews aren't there, you've spent that money driving that lead flow in for absolutely no reason. So it's the final piece of that marketing plan. Um, and you need to tie it in tight back to your staff.

Jason · 33:58And I've always been a big believer

Jason · 34:00like coming out of different generations of business, that your clients end up being your strongest sales force.

Jason · 34:05If you do a great job by them, they will tell friends that they will tell others. And the change probably from 20 years ago to now. Is they're prepared, the friends are online and those Google reviews are the friends and it's social proof that the business is doing well in the past. That would have been just expanding within communities, um, by word of mouth.

Jason · 34:27Whereas now you've got a double effect where you're getting the word of mouth, but also you're getting that digital, uh, proof with the Google reviews. So, um, Again, and the NPS score, you know, sort of locks it all in because they're having a great experience as well that they want to share. So it's, um, yeah, it's a really great play to get that right, to keep opportunities revolving back to you as well.

Jason · 34:50Love it. Uh, conscious of time and we could go on forever about all the things business owners should do. So I might touch on a real nerdy one just to, to kind of close out some of the things that we need to be

Jason · 35:00focusing on, but compliance and risk management. Now, when it comes to compliance, I know it's boring, but laws and regulations change all the time.

Jason · 35:07Um, so you need to say on top of this, so some of the stuff coming up that would have changed over between 24 and 25 might be superannuation rates. So look, most good payroll software will automatically update the superannuation rate for you. Um, but it's things around the, the minimum award rate changes, um, as your employees go from year one, year two, year three, year four, they might be in particular awards.

Jason · 35:29It means as they get older, as they qualify per year, their wages need to change, um, as well as single touch payroll, um, that should be filed by now so that your team members can go and do their tax returns. It's going to be done by the 14th of July every year. Then into August, you've got. taxable payment and your reports.

Jason · 35:47If you're a tradie running a business or, you know, not even just tradies these days, but if you're paying contractors, you need to report to the ATO, which contractors you've paid. So there's a lot of compliance and a lot of this, you know, then falls back into

Jason · 36:00risk management. And if you're not doing it properly, you end up getting yourself in a bit of stripe.

Jason · 36:04We've touched on payroll tax before, have a look at the thresholds. If you are over 700, 000 last year. You might've been paying payroll tax, but now the rate is 900, 000 or more for paying payroll tax in Victoria. So you might be able to review and go, well, maybe I don't need to pay that crappy tax anymore that Jason and Nick always get really angry about.

Jason · 36:24Um, and work cover, you know, you need to do your work cover remunerations. There's a couple of quick, quick kind of quick fire compliance and risk management things that as a business owner, you got to make sure that as much as the boring stuff, it's the stuff that could really come back and bite you in the ass if you're not covering it.

Jason · 36:39Yeah, really good. And the other thing I'd add to that. As well, um, is again, review, think about how much money you're making by finding these efficiencies, like people always think it is as a time suck sometimes, but you're, you're making money by creating efficiencies as such. You're freeing up time to create

Jason · 37:00more revenue, uh, opportunities.

Jason · 37:02So. You know, just think about it from that standpoint, and even with compliance, if you could automate your compliance the best you can to get it right, you're freeing up more time to generate more revenues. It's a must, but while you haven't done it, and if you're doing it half baked, It's costing you time and it's costing you a potential penalty for not getting it right.

Jason · 37:24And it's never a problem until something bad happens. And then it becomes not only a move away from revenue. It costs you revenue at another level again. So it's very important, even though it can be seen as boring, but, uh, boring is good once you've locked it away and it's working well. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Jason · 37:44And actually maybe like a little bonus round I'll throw in just cause I saw a message from a client. Um, some of the work we do closely with the team at Innovate around asset finance and business finance. Um, so if you have done the things that we've talked about today, you've looked at your

Jason · 38:00business plan and strategy.

Jason · 38:01You've looked at your budgeting, um, and, you know, looked at technology. You may or may not need to put in place. So other things you might notice, notice is assets that you need to purchase for the business, or you might need the funding to allow for the growth that you've dictated in your business plan for the following years.

Jason · 38:16Um, so a big one is getting in early and having that conversation with someone who understands how to get finance for a business, um, and that's where, you know, the great people like Marty get, get involved and speak to our clients at, at future to talk about this.

Nick · 38:29And just one more thing on that is also reviewing your current terms, like Marty's mentioned it prior, but commercial lending has evolved a lot, particularly in the last two to three years.

Nick · 38:42So, you know, if you've got commercial facilities out there, you should really be going back to your bank on an annual basis and saying, okay, what's our rate? What's our repayment terms? Are we, you know, we're over 10 years. You know, that's, that's a fair hindrance on our cashflow. Can we move the term to 15 years?

Nick · 39:00You should be putting that as part of your compliance and going back to your bank every 12 months and, and, and trying to negotiate better terms. The longer you're with the bank, as long as you're doing. The right thing as far as meeting your repayments, you're actually become a better asset and a better client to them.

Nick · 39:15And you should be leveraging that as much as possible every 12 months.

Jason · 39:18And you wouldn't believe what clients are leaving on the table to the banks. Like just by not doing that. Literally thousands and thousands of dollars that are automatically going back to the bank. And Jase, you touched upon it too, like being proactive with your finance arrangements.

Jason · 39:36Don't leave it to the last moment. If you want to do something, get the advice upfront because it puts you in a position of strength. I call it bankability. You know, talk to us, you know, make sure that the opportunities bankable. So you can get great terms and you can put that opportunity out to tender and get great rates.

Jason · 39:55And once you do it reactively on the backend, the banks hold the power, and then

Jason · 40:00obviously rates can go up and they can control the situation a lot more. Lots of clients have got so much security within the banks. That give the banks comfort, but could be utilized to create revenue in some other way as well.

Jason · 40:14So important to get people around your business. You're great at your business, but we're great at representing your business and how to get great terms and great rights, really important. I don't want to see business owners losing money. For no reason on finance. There's no excuse when we've got so much more flexibility and opportunity in the commercial market through assets and buying property, whatever the case may be, or business acquisition, uh, set yourself up.

Jason · 40:41And Jase, I've been thankful to yourself too. You sent through people on that front end and we can give real clear guidance to put them in a position of strength. It's, um, it's tremendous. Uh, it's the dream team, mate. So, uh, for listeners out there, we appreciate your time and hopefully we've given you some actionable things to kickstart your 24,

Jason · 41:0025 financial year where things are just ramping up and getting started.

Jason · 41:03Um, you can find Nick, Marty, and myself on LinkedIn. If you do want to reach out to any of us. You can obviously find us at innovate or future advisory. And look, we do love getting people onto the numbers game podcast page on Instagram. So if you haven't followed Instagram, it's quite live and interactive.

Jason · 41:19Marty does go viral. There's plenty of videos where he's got tens of thousands of views and Nick and I get about a hundred per video. So if you want to check that out outside of the YouTube channel, you can find shorter. Punchier snippets of us at the numbers game podcast on Instagram and there you can send us messages as well Which are yeah, marty's very good and interactive at replying and uh, he's the popular one Even all my clients have chosen marty as the the favorite podcast host.

Jason · 41:43So here we are Appreciate you listening and until next time I'm not really that good. I think, uh, I think the marketing team is doing really well. But hey, love and the love. Game over. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The

Jason · 42:00conversations are of a general nature and do not qualify as financial or tax advice.

Jason · 42:04We recommend before you make any financial decisions, you consult a licensed professional. Individuals on the podcast may hold positions in the companies discussed. ---