The Mastermind Vs One Man Show | Edmonton Accounting Firm

There’s issues that I have just never seen myself or someone else in the firm has seen it repeatedly.

Yeah, I can see why. Cause it’s mad.

Hi. Thanks for joining us for another episode of ask [inaudible] CPA did, they were talking about the mastermind versus the one man show. And I have a Trevor here with me again and I, I think Trevor’s seen the benefit of the, you know, how more, you know, more brainpower can give you a better solution sometimes. Yeah, you can, you’ll get other ideas from people who have maybe been down a road that you haven’t been yet and they can help give you guidance, insight and tools that you beforehand did know. It can really help you in your business and in your life. Yeah. So one of the quotes that we have here is, you know, Michael Gerber, author of the e myth, one of my favorite quotes is the fatal assumption is if you understand the technical work of a business, do you understand the business that does that technical work?

And of course, you know, what are, uh, what our businesses are set up for is, is, is to guard against the fact that 50% of all Canadian small business business then five years, and this is completely avoidable in our view. Um, and the story that we have is, you know, clients will often hire a one person firm and sometimes that’s a one person accounting firm, a one person marketing firm, and they think that they’re going to get a better level of service because that’s that one person. For you, what are the questions you think that those business owners should be asking? Is there a lot of administration work done in account? So in the accounting world it’s 100%. There is a lot of administration work is not just what goes into that year end. It’s, you know, filing the returns, doing any of the, the bookkeeping, you’re adjusting any of the bookkeeping that went up to date, you know, responding to the correspondence that comes to the door.

So there’s an exceptional amount of what I would call administrative work as opposed to just the CPA, um, related work. And I found out with a harsh reality in my, uh, in my first year, I thought I would operate the whole first year just myself. And then I made it about, uh, Edmonton Accounting Firm, about seven months before I realized that there were, this is not going to work, this waiver and I’m just, I’m basically going to be a secretary, a for half my time here is if I don’t get some help on the administration out of it. So how do you accounting firms you students to reduce costs on labor intensive work? So in the accounting world, you know, the, the process is if you’re just simply paying, you know, 10 years CPA bets, the expense as you become unmanageable for the average small business owner, it’s just going to be too high a.

So a lot of the work that can be done can be done via students. So students that are going through the accounting process and where they come out at the university, but the four year degree, so they got a good background already. They’ve gone to school for four years, Edmonton Accounting Firm, getting a business degree with an accounting major. I’m a, they have a lot of skills already. They’re a ways away from becoming a CPA. They’re basically apprenticing, uh, under a CPA to become a higher level CPA to learn this stuff. I couldn’t learn in school, but those employees can be brought on at a cheaper rate than a CPA and they can be doing some of the labor intensive work. So now you can get the CPA, uh, you know when you want, when you need it, but you have the, you know, someone at a cheaper price point, uh, to do the work that uh, you know, you can do with an undergrad degree.

All right, so what are the functions that you want to spend money on a high level CPA? Yeah. So you don’t want your CPA spending time on the phone with the Cra, uh, when you’re trying to find out whether the file program didn’t work for two hours, someone has to do it or else the returns not going to get submitted. But you do not want to be spending 300 bucks an hour on somebody doing that. That’s something that, you know, the, the, the student can be looking at and the stuff that you want your CPAs to be looking at those financial statements, eight checking to make sure they’re right and you think of the, you do some analysis on how they compared to other companies, Edmonton Accounting Firm, you know, and how you can close the gap or how you can outperform other companies and giving you some planning on how you can, you know, reduce your taxes and increased wealth quicker and then giving you strategic business advice in the form of a plan.

You know, these are the things that really add value as a CPA. Um, the things that you, you know, if you have, you know, the people that cheaper price points doing other, the labor intensive work, the CPA can actually focus on those high level work. So if you don’t use students, would you have to take shortcuts on high level work? Probably, yeah. Because now all of that administrative, you know, in a one person Afirma, I know this for sure cause I started out as a one person farm, it would flow back to me. Um, so you would either have to, you know, work ridiculous hours or charge prices that, that we’re completely under market. Edmonton Accounting Firm, or often, you know, what, what will eventually happen, I think in a lot of one person firms is there, they know they have to do the admin work so they’re just going to say I don’t have time for that high level work because we have to get the return filed.

There’s a certain amount of deliverables. So some of the high level where a will get missed probably the in the interest of there’s just not enough budget that the client has then. All right, Josh, so how many people work in the firm right now? Uh, right now we have eight Edmonton Accounting Firm, employees besides myself. So you know, we have a on the accounting side of the team of nine people and then the two people on the inspired side as well. So I mean there’s 11 people working actively in this from a everyday, which is a lot of different zones, skills and expertise. How much business experience do you have? Personal, I mean myself, I’ve been there, you know, studying small businesses are running small businesses or advising small businesses for probably it was a little over two decades now. Um, so yeah, I’ve got some pretty significant experience at this point.

So how much business experiences there in the firm that that’s the key. So even know my two decades pales in comparison to the master, to the skill of the, the entire firm. You know, if it’s just me, you know, my, you know, two decades pales in comparison to, you know, we’d probably have, you know, 50 to 100 years of experience of, of different business circumstances that people have run into that I might not have seen personal. So even though I have really significant experience, it’s nothing compare to the experience of the group. So are there often problems that staff within the firm have more experience with? Yeah. So here’s where it is. So even though, you know, I have a lot of experience in the business issues, there’s issues that I have just never seen myself or someone else in the firm has seen it repeatedly in multiple times.

And, you know, I might’ve been, you know, focusing on these types of projects where other people in the firm might have been focusing on this type of the functions themselves. You know, it’s certain things that are done in, uh, Edmonton Accounting Firm, quickbooks or some of the third party apps. Um, you know, I’ll be sitting there trying to research it and someone else in the firm has done it a dozen times before where they just know it immediately. So we get from the answer, um, you know, so much, uh, quicker by using that, that group knowledge that, you know, I would even as an experienced CPA myself, uh, you know, two decades as a small business experience working in advising, um, you know, study. I, there’s no way that I could do that, you know, have that same knowledge base. Yeah. In one head you just can’t have it.

The team is better than any one of the people. So how do you leverage that experience in morning meetings? So, you know, our day here as for and associate, like it starts off very defined. You know, it starts off with a morning meeting at ADM and we go through some of the, you know, the winds that we’re having and then some of the challenges that we’re having. Um, we get a game plan, but also we have that kind of period where people can ask questions on something that they’re stuck on. They know that they’re going to be doing this right away and this is going to come up. And you know, rather than them spend a few hours spinning their wheels on something, they have the opportunity to ask the entire group, you know, uh, if they have a solution to figure it out and that can save hours and hours off of, you know, Edmonton Accounting Firm, people’s workflows.

And so that morning meeting is extremely valuable that you just have the knowledge of, you know, you have the knowledge of sometimes 11 people just in one session you have that mastermind to figure it out or you know, just say it’s, you know, you’re more likely to get the right answer and you’re more likely to get the answer in a time efficient manner as opposed to, um, you know, just trying to come up with it yourself. Yeah. And the other side of that, Josh, is if more than one person is having the same problem yet they’re all trying to figure out this, this solution to that problem individually. One person has that solution already. So it saves time in troubleshooting. Yeah. Yeah. You can just task though, if everyone’s having the problem, the ones solving it, just task one person to solve it and then the clients aren’t spending, you know, Edmonton Accounting Firm, they’re, they’re spending one, one fifth and you’ll feel they have five people in the firm all having the same problem.

We get one person to figure it out and everyone else had addresses, doubles back to it the next day. And if you’re a one person from, guess what, you paid 100% of that bill and usually they’re billing by the hour. Sure. You didn’t do that to Edmonton Accounting Firm, you know, it’s one of the reasons why we can, we can bill, you know, flat fees that way as well. So how do the workstations that you use in the, in the firm help you leverage the mastermind? Yeah, they’ll help us do, you know, live reviews as file. So, you know, conventional workstations, they involved, you know, you’re trying to pure over someone’s shoulder on a small screen, eventually get frustrated. So you just go in your own little cubicle or workstation or office and you review it yourself and you’re poking around and stuff and you’re not quite sure, uh, you know, but in these sorts of workstations, we can pull up information on the screen that everybody can see, you know, everybody on the team, the manager in the middle of the two team members and we can collaborate and what’s working, what’s not working.

We can, we can figure problems out, Edmonton Accounting Firm, you know, quicker and we get more opinions to, you know, often when you look at a business issue and you know, if you just get one opinion, even myself, uh, you know, I have enough experience, but if I just get one opinion, it’s not going to be as good as someone trying to poke holes in my opinion because, and that might sound, you know, challenging. But we want to poke holes and other people’s, you know, strategies first here in the accounting office. And before that strategy gets put into place in the real world and the real world, you know, it’s not the video game. There’s no reset button. We can, you know, we can’t go back on it. Um, so the decisions matter and it helps us get to a good decision, you know, before we ever put that into practice.

And we’re able to just collaborate on that information and bring up, you know, the information and get everybody’s thoughts aligning in the right direction. So I think that’s what we have here today on a, you know, the, the mastermind versus the one man show. Um, and is always a police at the like and subscribe buttons. So we can continue to deliver you tips on how to beat the odds at business. And we look forward to reading your comments in the section below so we can respond and know what you guys would like to address in future videos. Thanks very much.