Have you made this important decision?
Many bookkeepers haven't.
The decision in question is whether you want your bookkeeping business to make lifestyle income where you trade your time for dollars to hopefully earn $100,000 to $200,000 per year...
Or...
You want to grow your business by creating teachable and repeatable systems so it can run without you and eventually be sold to a third party for potentially bigger profits.
Our guest today, John Warrillow, who wrote the book, Built To Sell, feels you should figure out what direction you want to go so you can align the appropriate actions towards achieving your goals before it's too late.
During this interview, you'll learn...
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Why your profit and loss statement isn't a good business value indicator
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How to determine if your business is scalable using the Trifecta of Scale
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The importance of having teachable systems to help your business function without you and be more attractive to potential buyers
To learn more about John, visit here.
To explore The Value Builder System, click here.
To check out his book, Built To Sell, visit this website.
To investigate his book, The Automatic Customer, go to this link.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
Michael palmer: 01:37 Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper podcast. I'm your host, Michael Palmer and today show is going to be a great one. Our guest is the best selling author of two books, built a sell, creating a business that can thrive without you. I love that, and the automatic customer creating a subscription business in any industry. He's also the founder of the value builder system, a cloud-based assessment tool business owners use to assess the saleability of their company and accounting and bookkeeping firms actually licensed their value builder program as a tool to help their clients and I'm sure a whole bunch of other great things that we're going to learn about today's episode. John Warrillow, welcome to the podcast.
John Warrillow: 02:00 Well, thanks for having me, Michael.
MP: 02:08 John, it's great to have you on the show. I've been following your entrepreneurial journey for the last decade. I've read both of your books. They're in my top five small business books to read and I, I feel a little bit selfish because I, I'm going to probably take this conversation more personally, ask you a bunch of questions that I want to ask of you, but I know it's going to be super valuable for the listener, but for the listener, yeah. For the listeners that has, is maybe just getting to know you in this episode. Can you share with us your entrepreneurial journey up until now?
JW: 02:59 Yeah, sure. I mean, I, in assured I started four businesses, exited them, uh, made lots of mistakes along the word w way and tried to codify a lot of the mistakes I made and some of the, the things that I would do differently in, in the book built to sell, which is a parable about, uh, an entrepreneur who has a business that's a successful business by most accounts but, but is not really sellable because it's too dependent on the owner. And so through a series of tactics and strategies that it, uh, it becomes more sellable over time. And so that is a journey that I've lived myself having again, started and exited four companies. My last one was to a public business, which is an overlay of complexity to it that is, uh, is an interesting twist as well. Uh, and then my, uh, my latest book business is called valuables are where again, as you mentioned the Intro, we work with entrepreneurs to help them improve their value and we licensed the platform to accounting firms and bookkeeping firms. So that's really sort of, uh, kind of me in a nutshell. Value Builder as the name suggests is really designed to help entrepreneurs improve the value of their company. Whether they want to sell now or, or just know that they could sell some time in the future.
MP: 04:05 That's why I love your work because it's like what another reason is there in a business other than to grow a business to be sold? I mean a business that can be sold, whether you sell it or not is a great business.
JW: 04:21 It is and it's, it's not always the most intuitive thing for a lot of business owners because I think we for the most part, use our profit and loss statement as our sort of report card at the end of the year. Right? And the problem with doing that is that not all revenue is created equal in the eyes of an acquirer. So let me give an example. It is a security cap on alike the guys who wire up and install security systems, they have two kinds of revenue. They've got installation revenue and they've got the recurring revenue, what they call monitoring revenue and acquire are coming in looking at a security business. We'll say, okay, we're gonna pay 75 cents for every dollar of installation revenue because it's not valuable to them because there's no tail to it. Yet. When they look at the recurring revenue, they'll pay about $2 for every dollar of recurring revenue. So if you, if you can imagine your recurring revenue, in the case of a security company, he's worth almost three times more. But on a profit and loss statement that's completely lost. Essentially a dollar is a dollar on profit and loss statement, but it's so important for business owners to understand that just myopically focusing in on your profit as your report card is missing the forest for the trees cause it, it really doesn't take into consideration the value of your company. And ultimately that's really what matters in, in, in, in, in many respects.
MP: 05:40 Yeah, it's interesting and I don't know that I've, I've actually heard it from that angle and I think that's me right there. It begs the question I think of, well, what do you, what do you start to do about it? Because it isn't intuitive. And for, for many that are listening, this could be brand new information. Where does a person that's just sort of found your work? Where do they start?
JW: 06:07 Well, I think they have to start with the insight that for business to be valuable to an acquisition, it's got to run without the owner. I mean, this was, this was something Michael Gerber first talked about 20 years ago when talked about working on and not in the business, but essentially for your business to have any value to a third party, to someone who wants to acquire it. Um, it's got to be able to run without you. And, and that sounds kind of 30,000 feet and sort of basic, but the, the next step I think folks want to take in, in, in that journey of becoming more independent from their business is to really think about the services that you're providing today and identify which ones meet what I call the Trifecta of scale. So that means that they are TVR tr teachable to employees, valuable to customers and repeatable.
JW: 06:58 And so for a lot of entrepreneurs, we will, um, you know, go through like broadening the set of services we offer, uh, because of clients like what we do. And so, so bookkeeper, for example, I might say, okay, we're, I'm going to do just the month-end, right? And, and the month-end goes well and they build a great relationship, but they in the business owner says, you know, in addition to doing the month-end, could you like, do reconcile our bank statements and could you do our merchant processing stuff? And you know, every once in a while we have to send a wire. Could, could you sort of set that up with our banker. And after a while, the bookkeeper's offering way, way too many services to really be differentiated on. And that happens in bookkeeping. It happens in virtually every industry. And when you start offering too many services, it means you can't train employees to deliver just one thing really, really well.
JW: 07:46 And that's the killer, you know, the death knell for most businesses is when you can't teach employees to deliver. It means you can't scale beyond you personally. And again, in my experience, what that means is you've got to stop what most of us do as entrepreneurs, which is to sell too many things to too few customers. And the most valuable companies are doing exactly the opposite. They sell just one or two things to lots of customers. And that's a real headspace shift for a lot of entrepreneurs in particular in the service industry where you're, where you grow up thinking that you've, you know, you've got to serve the customers, you've gotta be customer-centric gotta listen to your customers, you got to respond. Your customers well, pretty much, you know, like Steve Jobs is famous for saying no one thought that they wanted a thought, a thousand songs in their pocket, right? Uh, and if all you do is sort of listen to your customers all day long, you can really, you suck you into a rat hole where you're serving a few customers with a lot of services and your business is completely basically unsellable to anyone.
MP: 08:55 Yeah. I love, I love that you've brought up Steve Jobs. I think there was an interview that he did where he had a small table in front of him and he said every, we do x or EMEA. I don't know what the amount at that time was, but the company does billions of dollars and all of their products fit on that small little table. And it is brilliant. And I think it's interesting, you know, the human condition that we would be battling against is that we want to be helpful. We want to serve our clients and we want to make money. So we think more is better. And uh, and we have a Trump top role saying no to our clients that ask us to do certain things. And I'm sure the listener is nodding their head right now. How do you, how do you get people to start to say no?
JW: 09:42 Well, realize that that saying yes doesn't do you any good and it doesn't do the customer to get because the chances are that you're the best in the world. That doing more than one or two things is very, very rare. Generally, it's out of convenience that customers ask you to do something out of convenience to them more so than it is to you. And pretty soon, again, if you say yes to too many things, you're not serving yourself, but you're also likely not serving the customer very well in the end of the day because there are probably better people out there to do some of the ancillary services, some of the adjacent things that you're not really differentiated on. So, so I think one thing is to realize that that's probably not serving either of you terribly well. Again, the panacea here is to find one thing that really is something that you are better than most people at doing and teaching other people and your employee's overtime to do that one thing that makes you infinitely more referable.
JW: 10:40 And referrability I think is the secret sauce to a lot of small businesses. When when one of your customers can turn to their, their friend or colleague and say, that's the guy you, you know, if, if I ever had, you know, a roof tile, you know, go off my roof, he's the guy who replaces roofs better than anybody else. She's the best guitar teacher out there. You know, if you're just a music teacher, it gets squishy. Uh, but if you're the best guitar teacher, if you can, if you specialize in doing one thing, it makes you so much more referrable than being sort of a generic. You know, bookkeeping is such a generic category that you could, you could argue that it's not specific enough. Whenever there is a name for your category, chances are you probably want to, you find a way to differentiate yourself and get yourself out of that category.
JW: 11:32 Because as soon as, as soon as you are just a bookkeeper, well then they can compare your apples to apples with all the other bookkeepers on price. They'll say, well, you know, my bookkeeper charges $30 an hour. What do you charge? Oh, you charge 35, oh, well, you know, I'm going to use mine because you've self-defined as a bookkeeper. Therefore you're, you're relegating yourself to live in that whatever the going rate is for a bookkeeper. Whereas if you have the, you know, the, the five-step accounting solution or the seven secret sauce, you know, bookkeeping, formula, whatever, that's something that you can own. You can name it and then you've got differentiation and then you could teach employees to deliver that. You can scale and ultimately build something that's beyond just you.
MP: 12:14 Absolutely. It, it, it, uh, Debbie Roberts, our founder of Pure Bookkeeping and the early days, it was one of the things she almost did. It was like, well, maybe I could do this and I could go into tax and doing taxes and all sorts of stuff. And her business coach, Peter, who became eventually became a partner, said, Whoa, Whoa, whoa, Whoa, whoa. Narrow focus. You know, get great at doing what you do, which is full cycle bookkeeping and providing the knowledge that you have. That's a differentiator is that many bookkeepers were not able to actually help business owners grow their business. And so she became known as someone who actually helped them put more money in their jeans at the end of the day. And, and that is why we called it pure bookkeeping. And, and so I love what you're saying and I think there's a lot to be learned from for our listeners because I see them making these mistakes, the industry making these mistakes all of the time.
MP: 13:11 And they put themselves into a box, a box. I'm just a bookkeeper. And as well John, they don't actually even value the work that they do as just a bookkeeper. And that's what we're trying to change is to go, wait a second, you do something that's really great, you have experienced, that's really great. And if you're one of those that have done the training and done the work and have the experience and you really can provide value, then it's to take it to the next level that John's talking about, which is to, to actually say, this is my process, this is what I'm great at. And I love that you've said, name it, and, and focus on that. That becomes something that's not about the hourly rate. It's about the value it delivers.
JW: 13:56 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, go back to this acronym. TVR stands for teachable, valuable, repeatable. And I think as a bookkeeper you already have two boxes tick. Because you know, teachability is about, can you teach what you do? I mean, we're not putting a man on the moon here when we're doing bookkeeping. I'm not suggesting it's not complicated at all or it's not important work, but it's not putting a man on the moon. So you could probably teach employees to, to execute the actual bookkeeping. So you get a checkmark on teachability. Repeatability means to, customers have to buy this on a regular basis. And bookkeeping, by its very nature, is repeatable revenue, right? Customers have to reconcile their books every month. So it gets a checkmark there where I think most bookkeepers fall down is on value. And so value, uh, it's, it's not the best name, but essentially the opposite of a valuable service is a commoditized service.
JW: 14:47 So value is in the eyes of the consumer, the actual business owner. So if you could plot, if you will, your products on a continuum left to right on the left-hand side, those that are highly commoditized and on the right-hand side, those for which you are truly differentiated. And, and it's for most bookkeepers, it's going to be lots of stuff on the left, right? So it's, it's a generic bookkeeping service, which is how most people define it. And, and again, you, you get a big x zero out of 10 if you will, on on the degree to which that service is viewed as valuable by the customer. What you want to do is carve some unique territory out for yourself. Come up with a name for what you do, which is different than just generic bookkeeping services. Come up with a, you know, a set of services that are truly differentiated.
JW: 15:36 I mean, uh, Darren root does this really well. Darren root is a guy who runs an accounting, uh, association a little bit like pure bookkeeping in away. Do you know Darren, Michael?
MP: 15:55 I don't.
JW:16:01 Okay. So he has his organization called Rootworks and basically, it's a membership organization, a of a few hundred firms, accounting firms who, uh, you know, uh, basically learn from, from Darren root about how to run a successful and profitable accounting firm. What they offer or what they suggest their members offer is something called the boss system says for a back-office support system. And what they've, what they do is they target medical professionals, uh, dentists, physiotherapists, et Cetera. What they've realized is that those people want to see patients, they hate spending time on the back office stuff, the, the reconciliation of the banks, the bookkeeping, the, the account management and so forth.
JW: 16:24 And so what Darren says is, look, we offer the boss system and it's branded boss as a trademark around it. And what it is, is basically the back office support. So you basically hire Darren's company on the backend and they do the monthly reconciliation. They do the bookkeeping, they do all the account management, associated all the medical filings to the, uh, to the insurance companies, et Cetera. And you basically outsource that entire system to route works. Now you could just call that bookkeeping if you wanted or generic back off the support, but he's done something very special, which is, he said, we offered the boss system and all of a sudden you could buy the boss system for $1,000 a month. We're not now charging by the hour. It's not $30 an hour versus $35 an hour. It's, it's, it's, we're the only guys who offer boss and, hey, we get to charge whatever we want to charge for it because we own it. We've named it, we own it, and we charge $2,000 a month for it. And again, it just gives you more margin. It differentiates you. The services are the same. They're bookkeeping services.
MP: 17:20 Beautiful. Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's very similar to what we've done with pure bookkeeping. It just a little bit of a different model in that we give that root system that he's developed, the boss system, we give that to our licensees and they can call it whatever they want. It's, we're not a franchise, right. So it's, it's basically we're building a whole bunch of Darren roots out there in the marketplace for bookkeepers that want to grow beyond themselves as just a solo, a solo bookkeeper, you know, that will help them improve their efficiencies and those sorts of things. But what I love that you're, what you're talking about is, is really to actually leverage that differentiation. Because if you're doing something different and you have your customers know about that and they value that as being valuable, you, well you can, you can charge more. You can create a longer longterm relationship and the value more. Yup. Yup. For sure. Love it. Love it. And definitely follow up with a Darren root. It sounds like a really interesting company.
JW: 18:19 Yeah, he's an interesting guy. A couple of companies. It's called Rootworks, R. O. O. T. Works, W. O. R. K. S.
MP: 18:25 Very cool. Very cool. So let's, let's jump back a little bit into, so we talked about, you know, having the business at an arm's length. So the, the work is being done by others, that systems process, those sorts of things. And that's part of that t that train trainability teachability. Uh, and then the, the middle was, um, I value TBR. I was getting t r V so, so if, if we're going to be looking at like what I think would be interesting to talk about for the listener right now is as well in the book built to sell, there was this concept of envisioning the future and If I forget the fellow's name that you in the, and I know it's a real person that was in your life. Uh, I believe anyways.
JW: 19:18 Well he's an amalgam of, of a number of different elaborate yeah. Ted Ted. Ted Gordon was the kind of mentor character. Yes. Yeah. And Alex Stapleton was the, uh, was the sort of mentee, if you will.
MP: 19:31 Yeah. So I think I'd be great for a little teaser on what that the power of actually where to begin. When Ted set the sat, sat him down. You know, that was sort of the beginning is to look at what is it, where are you going?
JW: 19:48 Right. So, you know, Ted goes through this, this exercise in the book where he has, uh, Alex the young entrepreneur get a, a recipe card out and he says, look, I want you to write down what you want your business to be worth at some point in the future. And you know, first Alex kind of box and says, well, you know, like, it's never going to be worth what I want it to be worth. And Ted goes, you know what, just suspend reality for a second. Write down your number, the number which someone would need to basically write you a check for to have you walk away. So what's your sort of walkaway number? I think everybody sort of has one in their mind. Uh, and so ted asks Alex to, to put that down on paper and everything sort of stands stemmed from that for the rest of the book.
JW: 20:35 You know, Ted, the, the mentor used that as this sort of guiding light and sort of put it back and Alex his face saying, look, you know, I think in the case of, uh, of Alex Stapleton, he wanted his business to be worth $5 million. And at the time you wrote that down, it was probably worth, you know, four or $500,000. So, you know, it was a 10 x improvement over what, what it was worth at that time. And uh, and so the mentor at throughout the book kind of keeps going back to that like number. And he says, look, if, if your goal is to get here and he holds up the recipe card figuratively, uh, then you need to do these things. And I think one of the things that he acknowledged, it's through the book, and it's part of his advice was, was that, you know, you can create a very successful, very small business that's, that's relatively easy to do.
JW: 21:25 So if you sell your time and you've got a unique service and you've got a good customer experience, you can create, you know, a business that has a good lifestyle income, 100,000 $200,000 worth of sort of income. But as soon as you run out of hours in the day to sell and as soon as you reach the ceiling beyond which you can't charge more for your service on an hourly basis, you simply run out of runway and you reach a plateau. And for some people that is totally fine. It's a great place there. They're earning a living and, and that's all that they want their business to deliver for them. And then when they, when they sell or when they kind of want to retire, so to speak, they will sort of close up the shop and no value will be created beyond that. There's another cohort of business owners, I believe, where they actually want to create something beyond just themselves beyond the hours of the day. They want the flexibility that comes with owning a business that's not necessarily dependent on you personally. And that's really where some of these harder lessons are involved. These are some of these things where you have all you wanted to do was create a lifestyle, businesses generated profits. You wouldn't really need to do a lot of them, but if you want to build something bigger, more successful, there's a, there's a, you've got to cross this kind of chasm as Jeffrey Moore said, where you, where you've got to make some of these really tough decisions.
MP: 22:48 It's wonderful. I love, I love that. I think that's, you know, reason every listener should pick up this book. Number one is just to, to actually go through that process. And I think the book does a great job of being a guide for someone that wants to be in that last, um, group that you mentioned. And uh, and I remember reading the book and, and actually thinking very differently about business and just the mindset that a business owner needs to have in order to end up in the destination that they really want to end up. And then did you got to know, well, what does that look like? And so it's a, it's a fantastic read. So your value builder program I think is really interesting. And one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the, on this podcast is you're working with accounting and bookkeeping firms and you're helping them license the work that you do to help their clients.
MP: 23:43 And one of the things that we, we constantly talk about on this podcast are that the role of a bookkeeper is to empower business owners around their finances and help small businesses be better. You know, that's, that's who their, their clients are. These people that are out there, uh, just like you and I and the listener, we're all small business owners and we want to see others grow their business and have the life that they want and the freedom that they want, all that good stuff. And you're actually, you provide a service that helps bookkeepers help their clients as well from this perspective of helping them build a better business. So tell us a little bit about that and I'd like to get into even some, some examples of how, how that's looked for your business.
JW: 24:29 Yeah, sure. So, so what value builder, again, we work with business owners to help them improve their business. But a while ago we realized that actually not a lot wild guy. When we first started the business, uh, we realized that, uh, there was two sorts of delivery models we could have chosen. We could have chosen to go directly to business owners and try to build rapport and trust with them. Trust to the point that they would, they would, they would and trust us with their financial information or we could choose to go to market through the people they already trust. And in our case, we chose the latter route. So on hundred percent of our revenue actually comes from bookkeeping, accounting and other advisory firms who license our platform and then in turn use it with their customers as a way to be more strategic with their customers to go beyond just sort of entering the monthly numbers and saying, Hey, I can go beyond that for you.
JW: 25:24 I can actually be a strategic resource for you. And so value builder is essentially a program where the business owner will invest $10,000 a year or about a thousand dollars a month with their bookkeeper, uh, to go through this 12 step process that we offer. It's all enabled by a cloud-based accounting platform like a cloud-based system. So both the business owner and the bookkeeper have access to the system. And then the bookkeeper basically keeps a hundred percent of the revenue they derive from doing valuable there for their clients. If you have, I don't know, 10 10 clients on value builder, it's a new sort of hundred thousand dollars service line for your Chi, your bookkeeping firm. And we basically charge up the bookkeeping from a, a licensing fee for the platform. So, so that's basically the business model and, uh, there are eight, uh, drivers that, uh, that we sort of coach bookkeepers to coach their clients on helping them improve.
MP: 26:16 Beautiful. So what, uh, what have you seen, uh, in terms of how that's helped their clients?
JW: 26:23 Well, statistically we, we, you know, one of the things that's kind of luxury is that we get data. So when business owners complete the value of that or questionnaire, we asked them a whole variety of things about how they run their business. So not only things like what industry they're in, what, what, how much revenue they derive, but, but also kind of describe their management team. I'm, it's recurring revenue. They have, how differentiated their service or product is in the marketplace. And based on all those questions or we give them a score of 100, it's called the value builder score. And we know that the average value builder score through the life of our, our company, uh, which now touches more than 30,000 businesses we served is 59 out of a possible 100. And those businesses, when they go and sell our offered 3.6 times their pretax profits.
JW: 27:10 So if you've got a company with $100,000 in profit, it's worth around $360,000. If it's scoring average 59 on the value of the questionnaire. When we isolate just those customers of ours who have achieved a value builder score, 80 or greater, those businesses are getting offers that are 6.3 times their pretax profit. So again, if you've got a value builder score of 80 and you've got $100,000 of pretax profit, that business is likely more like trading at $630,000 almost double the business. That is our sort of our average performer. So we know empirically that improving your valuables or score or helping your clients improve their value, their score will have a direct, quantifiable relationship to the value of their company. And they really, that's what, you know, the bookkeepers, a licensed assistant, that's how they convinced their clients to go through the system. They don't say, you know, trust me, I'm your bookkeeper.
JW: 28:06 They say, look, 30,000 businesses have gone through this and we can see quantitative quantifiably the impact these, these, uh, these exercises have on the business. So don't trust me, trust the system. And so that's, that's sort of our approach. But again, we do it exclusively through advisors because you know, whether it's an accounting firm or bookkeeping firm, you're, you're the one who's in the business at least monthly. You're the one who's got access to QuickBooks. I mean, you're the one who's doing the work and already has the trust of the business owner. So that's how our structure works.
MP: 28:47 Beautiful. It's remarkable results. And I mean, what I love about it is that it's another way to differentiate their business and in a way that's very complimentary and not, not overwhelming, overwhelming them without having to figure something out or do anything. It's a, it's a, it's a way to take the expertise that they already have and combine it with a very proven system to help their clients. And it's certainly worth taking a look at. Uh, if you're listening, I think it's very much in line with where we're a bookkeeper should be thinking about how do we help the, this customer of mine grow their business and have the life that they want and get all the benefits they want out of their business while said, it's very cool. Well, there's lots, lots here, John. And um, you know, I think last question I'll ask is, you know, what do you see the big mistakes that business owners, and we'll, we'll include bookkeepers in that, but just, you know, generally what big mistakes do you see them making out there?
JW: 29:54 Well, you know, it's, it's actually kind of a, a, a little tactical thing that may or may not resonate with all of your listeners, but I think it is one of the biggest mistakes that, uh, that entrepreneurs make is, it kind of goes back to something that we talked about right in the beginning of this conversation, which was the [inaudible] that your profit and loss statement is an important document, but it's actually not the most important document as it relates to a business owners life. A really a life. The life-changing document for most business owners is the valuation statement is what's the company worth? That is what gives them, if they choose to liquidate that, you know, their businesses choose to sell her business. That's what gives them financial freedom, freedom over time, money, etc. Etc. So, you know, I think I've seen many, many examples where we're business owners sort of spend a lifetime, 20, 30 years building a company and not basically paying themselves at a market rate, deferring income saying, you know, I'll make it up when I sell, I'll make it up when I sell, I'll make my money when I sell.
JW: 31:01 And then they get to the end of the road, uh, at, you know, 50, 60, 70 years old. And they, and they say, okay, now's the time I want to sell. And unfortunately, the business is just too deeply dependent on them that they can't sell and they haven't been making money off the table along the way. And it just ends up being these sort of very tragic stories. And so I would recommend, you know, people, bookkeepers, and other business owners think about, make the decision upfront early. Like, am I building a business to sell a, in which case that's great. Let me, let me understand what I do there. Or I'll I building a lifestyle business that will never sell, in which case, let's, let's do everything we can to, to basically draw as much money out of the business along the way. And I think the tragedy happens where you have situations where business owners think they're one thing and get to the end of the road and find out that the other, and uh, and that's the real tragedy.
JW: 31:53 So I would just encourage people to get really clear on what, what their personal goal is. And then as a bookkeeper, I think you play a tremendous role for business owners to be a mirror, to hold up a mirror to them and say, look, are you making decisions today that, uh, are designed to maximize your profit and the amount of money you could take out of the business because you know you're never going to sell. Okay, that's fine. Let's make those decisions with our eyes wide open. Likewise, if you know their goal is to sell and they're making decisions to maximize, for example, their profitability, they expensive their value, then I think you can play that strategic role for them. And say, hold on a minute. That's, you know, that's, that's not the decision that you should make if your goal is to build a more valuable company. And I think you're in a very unique position to do that because again, you've already got the trust of, of business owners.
MP: 32:38 Well said. I think it's, it's the foundation, uh, that every listener should be thinking about, do this thinking, think about where you're heading. I mean, lots of, lots of information for both their customers, for themselves, but that one quote, hey, hang up the mirror in front of them that if there's anybody that can do a great job of that, it's the bookkeeper, you know, the financials of that company. And you can start to ask these questions of your business owners, which is kind of really put you into a really valuable light, uh, and being a, an asset on the team to be doing that kind of leadership. And that's what we're encouraging you to do all the time in this and this, in this podcast. And in our, in our groups. It's, I mean, that's the foundation of John. And that's why I knew you'd be a great person to have on this, on this podcast. I am very generous. Thanks. Uh, let's have you tell everyone where they can learn more about you and uh, any kind of offers or things that they should go and start to check out what you're doing.
JW: 33:39 Well, go to Valuebuilder.com and hunt and peck around there a little bit. What I'd encourage you to do is actually complete the value builder questionnaire for two reasons. One, I think you'll find it interesting. It takes about 15 minutes to complete, free to do and you can see how you score for your own firm. And then at the end, it'll say, hey, are you an advisor? Are you a business owner or are you just here as a student or whatever? And just check adviser. And the reason to do that is then we'll follow up with you. We'll give you a free demo of the platform. You can take five days and free of charge, go through it and actually get underneath the hood, try the tools, see what it looks like and really kind of evaluate it, how it might be helpful for your clients. So I think all that's available just by going to value builder.com and completing the valuable, the questionnaire,
MP: 34:28 Beautiful, so simple, so valuable and lots to learn from you, your books and the work that you do. And I know I get your emails all the time, they're very valuable. So there are lots of great things too. To go and learn from John Warrillow and we'll have all of the links in the show notes. So again, John, thank you for being on the podcast today.
JW: 34:46 My pleasure, Michael
MP: 34:50 that wraps another episode of the successful bookkeeper podcast. To learn more about today's guests and to get access to all sorts of valuable free business-building resources, you can go to Thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com until next time.
MP: 35:04 Goodbye
