So, you want to grow your business to the next level?
As you probably guessed, it's not easy, but it can be done and there are many ways to get there.
For our guest, Cheryl Knight of the Balcatta, Australia-based, Carbon Bookkeeping, she partnered with others to form a mega firm where she runs her $1 million dollar business inside a $7 million dollar one.
It's a unique situation, but it's one that likely wouldn't have happened if she hadn't set up her business for success beforehand.
During this interview, you'll discover...
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The power of documenting your business procedures and writing checklists to teach staff
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The importance of being open to new ideas that could provide profitable opportunities
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Why you should be adaptable to industry trends to always remain relevant and valuable to clients
To find out more about Cheryl, click here.
To learn about her bookkeeping firm, view this link.
To explore her training centre, go here.
You can also chat with her on The Successful Bookkeeper Facebook Group. You can join at this link.
To access the Pure Bookkeeping Business Blueprint, visit here.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
Michael Palmer: 01:09 Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper podcast. I'm your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a great one. Our guest is located all the way in Bell Cata, which is a suburb of Perth in Western Australia. She is a partner with carbon bookkeeping, which won the 2017 national bookkeeping firm of the year at the Australian accounting awards, which is pretty exciting. We're going to dig deep into that today as well. She has a great list of individual qualifications, including a cert four in mortgage brokering, bookkeeping, and workplace training and assessment and certifications in zero MYOB, calc, SCA and workflow Max. Cheryl Knight, Welcome to the podcast.
Cheryl Knight: 01:55 Thank you so much, Michael. It's great to be here
MP: 01:58 Thank you for being here and I'm sure it's, you know, a crazy hour or way, way on the other side of the world from where we are here.
CK: 02:06 Eyes, eyes are a little bit tired.
MP: 02:08 Yes. Well, based on all the things that you've accomplished and the awards, I'm sure we're catching at a time where you know, you're, you're not going a million miles an hour because it sounds like you're one of those types of people that just absolutely goes full-on every single day.
CK: 02:26 Yeah. Yeah. Every day. And I'm at work pretty much is trying to get home is the hardest bit to finish on time.
MP: 02:33 That's right. That's right. And you've got a beautiful place where you, where you live, which I'm sure you want to get home and to enjoy the beautiful area of Western Australia.
CK: 02:43 Yeah. Yup. Beaches are lovely. Here.
MP: 02:46 They are. They are. So let's start off with letting our listener know about yourself and your career journey leading up to where you are today.
CK: 02:57 Rodeo I like because we do teach bookkeepers as well as a training center. And I do explain this a bit. So, um, I like to always start with before I was a bookkeeper because a lot of it is making a decision to become a bookkeeper. And I'd had my kids and I felt like, um, for my second job, you know, after I've had a break and had kids that I should really be able to pick what I want to do cause I'm getting a bit older now, a bit more mature and um, yeah, I really liked, um, working with numbers and I like computers. So I chose bookkeeping and it's great because the second, you know before kids' careers compared to after kids' careers, I just love my job. So it was a really good choice. Yeah. Beautiful. So that was, I think I started back here in 1999.
CK: 03:44 It was the year before DST was brought in to Australia. So it was, I think at that point I think we sucked in a lot of bookkeepers because the GST legislation brought in a lot more work at the end of the desk of a bookkeeper. So I suppose I got, I got, um, you know, propelled in with all that juicy legislation and got a lot of work at very fast at that point and a lot of training as well because everyone was trying to upskill on the GST tax laws. So that was a really good time to join. I was just very lucky. So we mainly started with NYOB software and a long time ago and eventually ended up training in the classroom for NYOB love training in the classroom, love businesses, love people, love to teach people. So eventually I set up my own training center and a couple of years after I set up my own training center, the cert forum bookkeeping became a registered course in Australia. So we started teaching that and that got very busy because then, I don't know how long your listeners have been in bookkeeping, but the foreign bookkeeping came out in about 2007 and 2010 after many, many years as threatening. The government did bring in the legislation to do the best agent legislation. So it was a really busy time for us getting to upskill everybody at that point. I suppose I can imagine. And how far do you want me to go? Well, you know, it's about 10.
MP: 05:11 Yeah, well I think it's interesting. I mean the certification for bookkeepers in North America, there it is. It is not certified, it's not a licensed profession at this point. I mean there are bodies that, that creates a certification like ICB USA and ICB global and the IPBC here in Canada, uh, have a designation, but it's not like Australia, Australia is ahead of the game from that perspective, but certainly it can hear that whilst you've gone through these massive changes from the GST and as well as, you know, an industry shakeup, if you will, with a certification. Right. And so, um, yeah, the training organization, very busy. Uh, and then where did it go from there?
CK: 06:01 Well, I suppose all through that I also had bookkeepers doing bookkeeping. And so we had three sections, the training, we had bookings doing bookkeeping, and we had what we call consultants. So those are the ones that would go out and set up businesses in software and specialize in software and accounting. So I'd look back on it and there was a lot of it were busy time setting up the RTO and, and doing the training and everything. And I had a little good of paper in my hand where I'd written, I think it probably around about 2006 I wrote where I wanted to be and I got every single one of those things that I wanted on that bit of paper and I wish I would have kept it. I don't know where it is now, but um, I've got everything. And then things just sort of got a bit boring for me. After that. We started moving from NYB to zero. Um, my bookkeeping wasn't making a lot of money and that's when I, um, just got closer to Deb and Pure bookkeeping. So I had this big target to become a black belt in the Pure bookkeeping, which do you guys do that as well?
MP: 07:00 Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Yeah,
MP: 07:04 Absolutely. But, but explain it because the listener may not know what a black belt means in the pure bookkeeping world. So go ahead and explain that. I'd love to hear your perspective on it
CK: 07:14 Full cause I'll sort of flicked through the bookkeeping. We didn't make a lot of money in the bookkeeping. I just sort of left it there and it was sort of ticking along. Whereas the consulting made good money, the training made good money because we charged for, you know, big dollars for what we're doing sort of thing. But the bookkeeping people didn't want to pay you to do data entry. So I didn't make a lot of money. And I think I was talking to Deb at one of the conferences and I decided to take on the pure bookkeeping. And from there you can see, I could, I could show you numbers. We started making money almost straight away because a lot of it was me ringing her when I couldn't understand what was in the manuals and things and her saying, Oh and it's, you know, I do it this way, do it that way, et cetera.
CK: 07:54 She was just awesome. And Yeah, the seven secrets seminar I think you do there you hand out a bit of paper on it. And so I had the on my wall in my office and there's a bit of paper, it's got them different colors you go to and I think blackbelt is where you've got a full time second in charge and they're running a lot of the business and your trying to step out a little bit and I can't remember, it was about five to eight staff, I think it was under the bookkeeping and it probably had a sort of gross margin you should have or maybe I've got that gross margin off. Um, Deb, I can't remember, but that was my target really was to get there at that point. So got all the sections going. Well, got zero rolled out, which was a bit of a change. Um, you guys use QBO over there a lot, don't you?
MP: 08:40 Your QBO is, is absolutely growing for sure. In the last probably 36 months, it's taken a huge uptick.
CK: 08:48 Yeah, we, we've got QBO here now too. So we started, it was everything was NYOB and now all of a sudden, you know, coming to later years, we have to know every software out there pretty much. And you try not to know everyone, but you do need to know the core ones. And for us, it's inward. The zero and QBO. We just starting to do quite a lot with QBO as well. So, um, yeah, we rolled out QBO. Um, and like I said, I think it was about 17 years into my business and I teach bookkeepers and teach them about business. And there's this thing that we put up on the projector or on the whiteboard saying, you know, this is great, this is a startup business, this is a growing business. And then you get to the material vision business and it's got this like a flat line and that's really scary.
CK: 09:30 And then I suddenly realized I'm on this flat line, you know, I'm on this, this and this flat line where you have to do something or the next stage from there is down. I don't know if you've been saying that, Michael, have you seen those graphs? Yes, I have actually. So when you've had a business for 17 years and you're married, you can realize I'm a mature business, I'm, my next stage is down, which is a really scary, funny way of looking at it. If you don't do something quick, my next stage is down. So, um, the, I started looking at the different ways that I could bring fresh, fresh blood into my business, I suppose. And one of them was to get your staff knows two buying. So bookkeepers that I had, see if I want to take something into the business. A lot of my staff were at home moms that did part-time work.
CK: 10:20 So I didn't get a lot of feedback from there that they were willing to step up at all or invest any money at all into the business. So that's where we ended up merging in 2016 with Karbon, Karbon bookkeeping. So we merged. So I brought on two partners.
MP: 10:35 Beautiful. We'll tell us a little bit about that journey in merging with carbon.
CK: 10:40 Yeah, that's a whirlwind. Definitely. Huh. My business is quite big and I think, you know, for a bookkeeping business it's about a million turnover, including the training company. Um, so my business is quite big. Yeah, I know. But then we merged with a company that's probably six times our size, so I thought always going fast until you step on that bus. So yeah, it's um, it's been a bit, the two lovely guys, I don't know if you've met them. Um, Jamie and nice and they're two lovely guys. They're very patient. Um, the other thing I knew is I sort of need people that are not the same as me. When you bring partners into your business, you want somebody that has a different personality, has a different outlook on things or else is just to have the same thing and you're not going to get anything better. And, um, yeah, they're two very different personalities to me, but whereas we still get on quite well. So, um, and I really know this stuff, so it's been really good.
MP: 11:50 Well, I really think it's exciting for someone like
MP: 11:54 yourself on the podcast who has grown their business to over a million dollars. I mean, that is a remarkable achievement and the blueprint that you're speaking of, the pure bookkeeping, bookkeeping business blueprint for the listener, you can check this out at Purebookkeeping.com/blueprint and we'll have links in the, in the show with all of it, with all of this as well in the show notes, but to go from where many of the markets would be and probably below a hundred thousand dollars not probably, definitely below $100,000 in revenue and you're up over a million, you're a black belt. What? What do you think it takes in order to be someone who's gone way beyond the average and grow in such a large business? What do you think is necessary to do that?
CK: 12:51 I've got it. I've got a few tips that I would say, I mean a lot of these people use themselves already. I'm sure a lot of your listeners are already doing these things. You know, you're always going to make mistakes. I don't really think they're a bad thing. I just learn from my mistakes. And you sort of pick yourself up and go, oh well that wasn't a good idea, and change it really quickly. You see it's wrong. Change it, fix it. We treat our treat everybody with respect, treat my staff movers, treat my clients, treat my suppliers, treat everybody with respect. You know, everybody has a bad day. Um, so you just, they, they treat us the same way I suppose. But I think a lot of the growth in my business has been from an, I don't know where I learn these things as I go to a lot of seminars and conferences and I do a lot of, you know, isn't when pure come to the, to Perth now, I still probably, you know, one at a two times.
CK: 13:40 I'll go and sit through that again. Even though I've been probably 10 times with, with, um, Devin and sat through, listened and Dave and Pete are still, you pick things up so you'll learn things by going out and talking to people and reading things and listening, um, going to conferences, et cetera. But I looked for changes in the market and I think one of the big growth areas where, you know, I was lucky I got in with the GST and then with the training, it was a whole change in the industry with DJ zero that was, I had to basically pin my staff down. Whereas we usually work as a team, you know, and they sort of go, oh, that sounds like a good idea. And they give me ideas too. But with that one, I'm changing from NYB to zero. I had to basically pin them down and say, you will do this now. And I've never had to do that before with them. Um, that Xero was taking over the market. So that was a new area. It's just basically having to move quickly when things move quickly in the industry.
MP: 14:37 I think, you know, it's, it's interesting that you say you've been to the seven secrets seminar and close to 10 times, and there was, there's always, I have a graph when I'm, I'm speaking to bookkeepers, I'm talking about the mindset of, of a bookkeeping owner and an entrepreneur, if you will. And they're always learning and they're now they're looking at things from almost a child's mind. The child's mind is one that doesn't know everything. It knows it doesn't ever know everything. So everything is, it's like, it's looking at a child. I have a just a little over a two-year-old, uh, everything is fresh. It's, you know, look underneath, over top, though, you know, poke it in all sorts of different spots. You know, I have no idea what this is, but I'm really curious to know what it is. And I think that's a sign of success. Either a successful or future successful business person. Because you know, for you who's got a business that's successful, it could be really easy to say, you know what? I know at all. And I have a lot, there's a lot of people like I'm across the bookkeeper's cover has that, than actually looking at it that way, it's like I have a hundred thousand dollar business and I, you know, I'm doing everything right. I'm, I'm successful. And for them that is successful. And there's nothing wrong with that.
CK: 15:54 However, being happy with what you're doing.
MP: 15:55 That's right. Right. And so, but, but yet there's, there's, here's yourself who's going and doing education that you've already been to, but it's like, what am I going to learn next? What and what might I not know-how, you know, a new perspective of something someone's gonna say. So you mentioned Debbie talking to Debbie and being, you know, somewhat mentored or, or, or mastermind masterminding with Debbie, if you will, to sort of push each other in new directions, which has lifted you up. And here, you know, you have a very, very successful business. So I think there's something to be gleaned from that. It's too to stop. And this is for the listeners to stop and, and every now and then, because we're adults, right? We're going through life. If we treated everything like we were children, our minds would probably explode, but it's not a bad idea to stop, stop and say, Hey, what am I be missing here? And look at things from a new perspective. I just love that and thank you for sharing that. It's great, I think to do for everyone today is just to stop and think what, what might not be seeing a step back a little bit and look at yourself, look at your business from a different perspective.
CK: 17:04 Yeah. Well, I mean even if they can't find a mentor, if there's another bookkeeper, you know, not somebody with the same personality issue, but somebody that has a bit of a different outlook on things, you know, you'll be two half people make a whole, you know, another bigger person together by teaching each other.
MP: 17:21 Absolutely. You know, a mentor is always good too.
CK: 17:25 Yeah. I think it's, I think meant, I said mentor and mastermind because now mastermind would be more of what you're saying with a bookkeeper, right? It's that you're around other people who want to progress. And it's not that everybody listening should think, oh, I want to build a $1 million business. That's not what, what, what, what it is. It's about what is it that you do want? And then go and out with people who are, are moving in a similar direction. Often people are looking ahead of them and they're looking behind them. But what about people that are going right next to you moving in the same direction? Those are very valuable perspectives that can be gleaned. And so yeah, finding another bookkeeper though the successful bookkeeper Facebook group is incredible. I see the conversations happening on their online now this is digital and you're not there personally with them. And I think it is important to be in the same space as people at times. But connecting with people online is a really great first step.
CK: 18:24 All those, those um, online chat groups use so much comes up there and it's one of those, you know how nowadays people are learning at a bite-size information, you know, every time you read one of those comments on, on one of your industry chat lines, it's just a bite-sized piece of information that your brain can take in and, and process. So you'd always be learning I think from those things.
MP: 18:47 It's incredible. It's incredible. And just to search, I know for me, you in some of the groups, I'll just search up something. I have a question and I know that that group there is, you know, one group that I, I go into often around business, there's 10,000 members. I know there are probably a thousand people in there that are mastering what I, what I'm trying to figure out. And I just simply search it in. A conversation will come up and it's like you say, it's a bite-size. It's a, it's an, it's a solution or it's a multi-perspective approach to my problem. They're not all, they're not all answering exactly the same, but there are three or four different opinions around the way to go. And it's very powerful. I mean, never in our history if we had something that powerful that you know, to tap into information, which is pretty cool.
CK: 19:38 Yeah
MP: 19:45 So, so getting back to your Karbon now, you won the, uh, 2017 national bookkeeping firm of the year at the Australian accounting awards. Tell us a little bit about that award and what had you win it.
CK: 20:02 Um, well, it's basically it's something that you, you, you put an application in. Um, I suppose all awards do that and they sort of gauge it. So, um, you know, there's different, you just have to give your best answers and they gauge from that who to choose. I suppose it's, it's in a, amongst the accounting awards. So now they've got a bookkeeping section in there, but I think it's more about a lot of Karbon is, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to merge with them is that they, they offer package deals to their clients. So instead of charging per hour, and I was just so sick of charging per hour. So instead of charging per hour, we offer them a package deal. So we say, what tasks do you want us to do? And from our experience, those tasks are going to cost us this much.
CK: 20:46 So then say, okay, well this is how much it's going to cost you per week. And they go, right, I like that amount, let's go with it. So it just really lets you support your clients in the way that they want to be supported. I suppose it was growing as well. We had to report our growth is we grow continuously because our database is on a fixed amount per week. So as long as we look after them, keep them, then the new ones that come on, um, are growing a turnover every single day. So as long as you don't lose your clients and you keep gaining new ones because they don't, they don't get this invoice at the end of the month or whatever and go where, how come it cost me st much? They just know exactly how much it's gonna cost them and they tend to stay on longer with us and they tend to then come back to us to ask for more tasks cause they've, you know, they've swallowed the amount they're happy with the amount is settling into their budget quite well.
CK: 21:37 Um, we can afford a bit more, so maybe you could give us the end of month reports instead of quarterly or something like that. So we do with grow existing client turnover and plus we gain new clients. So we're continually growing. I suppose it's probably part of why we got the award, but it's also giving back, I mean, carbon, we put away 1% of our turnover, it goes towards a donations fund and that um, goes towards whatever charity where you think a viable charity I suppose. Yeah. And so amazing. Amazing. I like that part of it. I liked that. Um, you know, this, the business that I've merged with the been around for a long time, so they've got some really great strategies that they're using and things that they already have put in place and we just get to jump on board and go, yeah, we like that. A cool idea is on Tuesday.
MP: 22:28 Okay, beautiful. That's amazing. And is really large group carbon in that you have locations all over the place, a whole bunch of people working, many different, uh, attributes of the business. What do you think, you know, it's very different than what the typical bookkeeping firm would look like. The business would look like. What do you notice about from even from when you were working independently to then working in a, in a group like this? What, what did you, what were the dipping differences that you saw?
CK: 23:01 Well, what I saw originally was I thought my office was really cool actually. And then, and then the two boys came in to have a look at my office. This is why we're still talking. And they're like, oh, it's okay. I don't think you always what's from my office? And you go into their office and it's really, it's really, um, I don't know how to explain it. It's well set out. It's quite a quickie. Everything they do is a little bit quirky. It does look in a very professional way. Everything looks very professional. All of their packages are on, you know, glossy flyers, glossy pamphlets. So you can give the client in their hand, this is, this is our level. Do you want to pick a, B or c? I don't know if any of your bookkeepers have read about it, but giving people a choice, they're more likely to pick one of them than to just say, no, thank you. So, they've got a full-time marketer basically. So that marketing person presents stuff so that people will like it. When you get to that size, you have other things that are really helping out.
MP: 23:57 Yeah, that's a, I mean, absolutely. To have a full-time marketer working on your business. I mean, that's incredible. Yeah. But yeah, but as well I would think from your own mindset, you know, going from working in your independent business to working in a group like this, there would've been some differences or things that you, you may have like were there any challenges that you faced when you, you did this?
CK: 24:22 It was really a lot of armor, a very trusting person. I'm very open to new ideas so a lot of it was finding out the way they do things and we're still finding out how they're doing things because we're still trying to run $1 million business inside a $7 million business and still trying to keep our clients happy and not let them see there are changes happening in the background. But we're busy. I'm changing towards their procedures. And you know, some of the comments that have come back from my staff, they're very, some of my very professional staff is we just love how automated and organized they are with everything. They've got checklists for everything. They've got procedures for everything because I think at that size you have to have all that. And we did have it. We did have procedures, but they just not as many, I mean 10 times as many procedures as we had.
MP: 25:06 Yeah. The more people you have, the more functions that you're, you're really tweaking out. I mean, you could have a whole system and process documentation for the marketing. You know, they'll have the sales. I mean it just, the bigger the company gets, the more systems and process that needs to be documented because you have more people, more people doing different things. So that's very interesting. Yeah.
CK: 25:27 Oh, they've got, they've got procedures for onboarding a client and they've got procedures for running payroll. They've got procedures for, um, you know, I always had a checklist for preparing a lodgement to the tax office, but they've got procedures for that and procedures for all of the other tasks that the bookkeepers do as well. Yeah. So we're just learning those one at a time. Whereas we would, you know, I know a lot of bookkeepers worked by themselves, so we hit my bookkeepers. It was a true business because the book is would do things the way this they're told to do them, but you know when it came to how to pay superannuation, they would just figure that and do it themselves. Whereas under carbon they have procedures for as many things as they can here.
MP: 26:08 Beautiful.
MP: 26:17 It's amazing looking at the time, how fast these interviews go and I have probably a dozen more questions, but I'm really curious, you know, to go back to a little bit of the growth of the business, right? You, you're in carbon, it's, it's an incredible business. It's growing. You've won awards for your growth and for the type of business that you are. And just looking at your website and I recommend the listener go have a look at their beautiful, it's a textbook of as to how a book a website should look. Yeah. For, for any business really. But you know, tips on scaling a bookkeeping firm. What would you say if someone's listening and saying, you know what, I want to grow to be a black belt or I want to go beyond where I am today. What would your, your, what would you say to them? What would you recommend they do?
CK: 27:06 It's so funny you said that because I've got one more little thing I had jotted down in the bit of paper in front of me and I'll see you. I'm looking at it to get a chance to say that one and then you're asked the exact question. Yeah, this is perfect. I think it's more that when you, because a lot of the listeners will probably be the one man band bookkeeping firm, you know, by themselves and they want to be a black belt. So it's more from the beginning, you know, how do you get staff on board? Because at the moment it's just, you're sitting there doing the job, but you want to bring your staff on board or you get really busy, you want to hand it to somebody else. So I'm a bit of a process. If you, if you want to write it down, it's um, you know, do it yourself.
CK: 27:44 Document what you're doing, write a procedure about what you're doing or even do some checklists so that you can tick off everything you've done. So I used to create a checklist. I'd sit in the position of a client, just me and the client, doing your job as a bookkeeper. I would write down what I did, I'd write a check list, and then the next time I sat there, next week, if I went there weekly, I would check the checklist and make sure it's thorough and that it covers everything that I did as if I was a staff member. I would sit there and take it off myself a lot. My staff member was going to do it. And then once I thought the procedures are right, then I'll bring a staff member in and I'll get that staff member to sit while I stood behind them and I'd get them to go through the checklist and do the tasks.
CK: 28:25 So then basically I'm telling them this is the way I want you to do it cause it's on a bit of paper in front of you and you're ticking it off as you're doing it. So they're doing the checklist. Watch, watch your staff members do it. I had so many bookkeepers over the years come to me crying saying my staff members let me down completely because they have made such a mess of this client. I'm thinking, well you've actually let them down. I don't say that cause it's a bit rude. I say you've let them down cause you haven't checked what they'd been doing when they first started with you. And if you don't communicate what you actually want by going back to them, you can't just sit down with them once and say here do that thing and expect that they're going to remember it.
CK: 29:06 I suppose through the training center, I know that people, I remember one-third of what you tell them. If you have to tell them at least three times so then you have to go back and check that they know how to read the checklist and how to do the checklist. You have to go back a few times and check that they're doing what you expect and then you have to take a look at their data file and check everything they've entered and made sure it is how you want it and feedback like within the first couple of weeks, no, after three months you need to let them know straight away or else they're just going to be gobsmacked because they would have tried their hardest and you haven't picked it up early and they're going to be upset. You're going to be upset, but I suppose that's why you do it is just put yourself in the spot.
CK: 29:46 Write yourself a procedure, put your staff in the spot, keep going back to the staff, make sure they're doing the right thing. Don't expect to pick it up overnight and that's the way you grow is every time you put a staff member in a spot, you're freeing yourself up to go get another client and to grow your business a little bit further and that's all that I ever did is just sitting in a position myself. Then get somebody else to sit in a position and check. You have to check that they're doing what you expect them to do because guaranteed they're a different person than you and they're going to do it totally different than you what you thought. It's really none of that helps.
CK: 30:17 It totally helps. I think it's, there's a couple of things to point out inside of that is that people hiring people does not solve a problem. Hiring the right people and having them do exactly what it is you want them to do, solves the problem that you're, you know, people are trying to grow their business. Why they want to make more money. You want to make more money, you need more clients, you need to service those clients. So people get busy and then they think having a staff member is going to make things better and give them more time. And often it does not. So that's where the beginning. Yeah. And it will it in the beginning or forever and less. They do things that you've just said, which is talking about management. I mean, building your business and having systems and processes in your business and then managing and ensuring that that process is being followed to the standards that you have, that you have as a business owner.
CK: 31:16 Otherwise, if you let them go and just, Oh, I hire someone and they're going to do the work, it's not gonna go that way. I mean it might go that way about as many times as you'd see a unicorn jumped by. Right. But you know, it's going to not likely go that way. Everything needs to be, have checks and balances. And so it's, it's, it's something to think, it's not a bad thing. It's just the way that people are. People will do it the way they'll figure it out. If you're not giving them the solution or the process or the journey or the steps to take, they'll figure it out on their own. And guess what? It's not very different, very different. So that's, that then leads to just that, you know, understanding what, what people are doing and checking in with them and making sure that your, your business is doing what it is that you want it to do.
MP: 32:06 And you're, you're a clear, clear demonstration of that. And, and it's, um, it was just yesterday I saw a post on one of the groups and it said, you know how I want to make my business passive? I want to have, you know, I just wanted this business to, you know, make money without me. I thought, wow, a long way to go between, there are very few businesses where you can not have somebody involved in your business, some input and you know, it's, everything's possible, but it's such a leap, you know, to even be asking that question. Such a leap. There are so many other foundational things that you've just mentioned that need to be done before ever possible to even consider that. And I mean Pure Bookkeeping, we have systems and documentation. I mean that's what it is. And maybe you can share a little bit about how you integrated that into your own business. But yeah, if you don't go and implement those things and follow those and train and teach people those systems that they're useless, they're absolutely useless.
CK: 33:10 Yeah. Yeah. I came across Deb after I'd been running my business for probably eight to 10 years. And uh, so we already had some procedures. So starting to roll out hers was they knew there were procedures and they knew. All my staff knew that we had procedures. So I suppose when you gave them a different procedure, it was just slightly different than ours and they were sort of used to it. But if I do, and I do say this to all my book hitting students, if you can start up with pure really early because I wasted a lot of time writing procedures and I could've just, if I knew back then gone back onto pure bookkeeping and used hers from the start because it does take time to write them a lot of time. So yeah, absolutely. I'm also that I'm to do with staff pure has that great skills assessment test, which was one of the first things I instigated because you don't, you know when you're watching over new people when checking that they're doing what you said. That's I suppose if you are watching them carefully you can see straight away they're not going to work as well, but the best thing you can do is to make sure they've got the skills that you need at least before the startup. And those skills tests were really good.
MP: 34:19 Beautiful.
MP: 34:25 Well, it's just an interesting perspective because I'm sure there's a listener listening and you know, has a business and it's, it's working. Just like the people that I spoke of earlier who said, you know, by businesses going along great, Eh, you're busy, you would have been very easy for you to say, Oh, you know what, I already have systems. Why do I don't need other systems? But you were, you took a look and then you integrated other systems, different systems, pieces, parts, bits to, to augment what it was you were already doing. What's the mindset? What's the thinking behind that? How come you were able to see that when so many others are not?
CK: 35:07 Uh, no, I think through the training yet some people were over minus, some people were close and I don't know if you born like that or what happens. But yeah, having an open mind, I think it's always a benefit because you can then do whatever you want to do and progress to wherever you want to be by learning. Um, and if you think you know, it all, there's no way on don't I that a lot of the reason I did the merger with Jamie and Nathan is that they have things that I don't know and I've learned so much from them. Uh, you just keep learning all the time I think.
MP: 35:38 I think that's the theme of this episode is the, is to, to be a learner and, and, and it's not, uh, a lifelong learner really. But there's a great saying that goes when the student is ready, the teacher appears, is that the way it goes, I always butcher these, these sayings, but when the student is ready, the teacher will appear and it's an, and sometimes you're ready for something and sometimes you're not. You've just built an incredible business. You're onto something completely new and you hit that plateau and it's going to go down or it was going to go straight up and, and you're going straight up. It's been so much fun having a conversation with you today. Cheryl, can you share more? Like, how, if people wanted to learn more about you or want to work with you or get involved somehow, what's the best way for them to do that?
CK: 36:31 Did you say your market's just America or is it fine?
MP: 36:34 No, we have, we have listeners all over the world and just about, oh, we're on every continent. Maybe not Antartica but we, we have listeners, uh, signing up and going in and, you know, we've got all sorts of free resources and, and, uh, we've got The Successful Bookkeeper book that we give away for free. And so we see where people are on the world. And I'm blown away. I mean, just about every single continent, all over, all these different countries. So a lot of listeners in Australia, but as well, most, you know, mostly the North American market.
CK: 37:09 Yeah, yeah. Um, well it's a bit hard to deal with that sort of market, but I'm, yeah, I'm only in the Australia market. I'm, I'm working through one of the bookkeeping associations and becoming a mentor through them. So people in Australia that have, um, started a bookkeeping business and they want to become the best agent, a lodge make lodgements under their own name. Um, so that's where I worked directly with them and just check what they're doing and make sure they're doing it correctly and um, give them my advice I suppose on, on what they're doing there. But that would probably only be for the Australian market. That would be for sure. That's my next venture. Well, I've sort of qualified for all that. I just need to get it on my website.
MP: 37:55 Beautiful. Well that's exciting and I think, uh, and for those, you know, perhaps we can put a link to your LinkedIn profile for those that are, you know, want to be black belts or want some mentoring, uh, or training, they can connect with you as well. And we'll have all of those links in our show notes.
CK: 38:15 Yeah, sure. Sounds good.
MP: 38:17 Wonderful. Well, thank you for being on the show.
CK: 38: 20 Thank you, Michael.
MP: 38:22 That wraps another episode of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast. To learn more about today's guest and to get access to all sorts of valuable free business-building resources. You can go to Thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com until next time, goodbye.
