Processes For Professional Services Businesses - Case Study & Examples

So keeping it simple, just getting something down on paper is the right way to start. That can be refined and it'll never be done. Systems, that's the beauty of systems and processes. They're never complete, but you can get them into their current form, their most recent version, and that's usually good enough.

Hey, it's Dave from Systemology. We're sharing business owners stories on their journey to building a systems driven business. Today I've got Mike Payne from Boss Advisors. So maybe Mike, just to start, if you can tell us a little bit about yourself and what Boss Advisors do.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Dave. Appreciate you. So our firm is based in Phoenix, Arizona area. We are the first firm in the United States to combine tax, accounting and legal services. So traditional in the US law firms are not allowed to pair up with non lawyers. There's these strict rules about not sharing fees and referrals and things like that. But Arizona is a pretty business friendly state. And so in 2021 we were, we got word that there's going to be a combination, a change in the rules. And so we were the first ones to apply and be approved. And so I'm personally a CPA and a lawyer. And so I was able to get our firm approved to kind of bring our CPA firm and our law firm in house under one roof, which was a huge benefit to me because at the time, you know, talk about systems and everything it takes to run a business, I was running two businesses side by side and it took an enormous amount of pressure off of me to be able to do everything under one roof.

Yeah, love it. And how long have you guys been in business for?

So about six years on my own. Before that I was at big four accounting firms for about 10 years, big law firms, and learned enough to know that that's not where I wanted to be long term.

Yep. And then you started this business and what size is the team at the moment?

So there's about 10 of us, we do about 1.5 million. We've been doing that for a few years and looking to keep growing. Our five year plan is to become a $10 million firm and we're pretty evenly split between accountants, lawyers and administrative professionals.

Yeah. Do you find, do you still hop on the tools or are you kind of in the process of stepping back from that or do you also do a bit of advising still?

Yeah, I'm in that process. I've been in that process of stepping back for a long time, probably a little longer than I'd like to Admit, but I, I spend about 20% of my time with clients, spend about 40% of my time doing business development and 40% of my time instructing my team, educating them, helping them resolve their problems and things like that.

Yeah. And as far as, like the systems are concerned, I know, at least in the accounting space, a lot of people, I find with that background, they're already naturally systems people. And I know also in legal, things have to be done a certain way. So do you see yourself as a systems person, like, even before you came across systemology stuff? Is there. Yeah. Is that the way that you think about business?

So personally, I, I struggle. This is why the whole product, the whole theory and the whole principles behind systemology has been so impactful for me. I first read the book a few years ago and it helped me a lot. I have adhd and my brain does not create structure organically. And so I've always had to surround myself with humans, systems, tools, everything around me that will create structure for me. Once I have the structure, I have a lot of positive energy and ideas. And I can, I can, you know, send river, send, send water down whatever channels are in front of me. But without having some artificial or some intentional systems built around me, I tend, My brain tends to create chaos. And so it's, it's, it's, you know, even though I do have the technical training as a lawyer and an accountant, that's not how my brain naturally works. And so it's, it's especially helpful for me. And I'm sure some of those listening can resonate with that.

But it sounds like you're a true visionary business owner because that's what most business owners really struggle with. Sometimes I see, like I said, in the finance space, I'll see some people who are a little bit that wide, but for a lot of founders, most founders, it's not the case. So I think you're more the rule than the exception with regards to that.

Yeah, I think I tested 110% on the Visionary test. I was off the charts. Yeah.

Oh, perfect. Then. I think you've got a very clear vision on what needs to be done. I'm curious to know then who becomes the yin to your yang? Because you'll need, as you said, to put that structure around you and find the team members that can complement areas where you're not as strong. So have you identified your systems person or systems champion?

I have, yes. So for when I first started, I brought in a business partner. He very much tested as the integrator type and he was taking that on, but that became a lot because he was trying to run our tax practice as well as implement our systems and processes. And so eventually, he and I decided to hire a practice manager, who then became the integrator, and that person became the systems champion. She did a wonderful job getting everything documented. And for the first while, what we had her do was literally just walk around and watch what people were doing and take notes. And then afterwards, she'd say, okay, I have no accounting or legal training, but it looked like you started with this, then you did this, then this. Does that sound like the process that you normally do? And. Yeah, for the most part, except when there's these exceptions. Okay, well, let's write those in, and then let's go through several. Several iterations of that until we get a pretty, you know, well defined working process. And then let's put that, you know, somewhere where we can all access it and make sure we do things the same way.

Love it. And how did you come across Systemology then? Was that like a referral, a recommendation? Did it happen to pop up on Amazon for you?

No. I heard. I heard about it on a podcast. I think I heard you on a podcast. I don't remember which one. I listened to a lot of podcasts, but there was a podcast. It might have been. It might have been David. I can't remember his name now. Have you done a podcast with an accountant, an accounting type podcast before? In the past I've done a couple.

So. But I. Yeah, so. So podcast. That's good. And then was it something that, like, spoke to you in that interview or what made you go, all right, I'm gonna investigate this a little bit more?

Yeah. So I had. I had started my firm with the intention of scaling and. Interesting. I started the law firm with the intention of that being a solo practice. But the accounting firm, I could see, you know, that I could run that as a business. I could scale it. I could leverage bookkeepers and tax preparers and have, you know, like, the big four accounting firms do multiple layers of management. And so I wanted to scale and grow. The problem was, as we grew, we did a few hundred thousand dollars the first year and then, you know, doubled the second year and doubled again the third year. I became this tremendous bottleneck because pricing, every. Every pricing decision had to go through me in terms of the way that we actually generated the work and completed the work that Adolph go through me. All of the relationships with the clients were my relationships. And so the clients wanted to work with Me directly. And so it became chaotic and overwhelming and I got to the point where I wasn't sleeping. I would work, I would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning and go into the office and I'd put in a 16 to 18 hour day. And I was doing this. My health started to suffer. And then when I heard this podcast, it described this systemology as a system for creating systems. And so I immediately, as we all do, jumped on Amazon, ordered the book, couldn't wait for it to come. So I jumped on Audible and ordered the book, started listening to it and it just, it just all started making sense. It's all started clicking. It was exactly the solution I needed at the time was it was just, I needed an infrastructure where I could just plug everything in. And that's exactly what Systemology principles did for me.

It's funny, a lot of business owners, you were quite fortunate working in that big four to get insight into how a business that has scaled looks. I find a lot of business owners when, if they're the technician and they've started the business and they've only ever worked for themselves and they've built this business up from the ground up, they have a picture in their head because they're the visionary and they can only imagine a business where that's them, they are the business, they're involved with everything and they build this picture based on what they see in their head, which is just the picture of them in the business. Whereas you've had the benefit of seeing, ah, this can be done. And I heard it in your language there where you were saying, well, I knew it could be done in the accounting space because I've seen it done. Which then makes it infinitely easier because that first step is to see the vision and have the belief that you can do it. And then that kind of inspired you to take action. Read the book. Were there any principles and you said a few things started to make sense for you after you went through that. Looking through the book and even looking back now, you're a bit further down the journey. Were there any lessons or insights that you picked up from the book that have been quite impactful?

Yeah, well, let me first address, you know, I did have the, the good fortune to work at a big four accounting firm had been established for, you know, decades and decades. I also had the benefit of working for a law firm which was large for our state, but really, truly ran as a siloed law firm, meaning each, each individual lawyer ran their own siloed practice. And so they did not attempt to scale. They did not even want to hire associate attorneys or paralegals because they wanted to keep all the work themselves because that's how their compensation structure was modeled. The more billable hours that they worked, the more they got paid. And so I saw these two stark contrasts and absolutely my conclusion was this can be done. And then in terms of the book, what I learned was the first thing is I get overwhelmed very easily with my adhd. And so what I've learned through the book and then subsequent podcast episodes is keep it as simple as possible and start with something. I think recently one of your podcast guests talked about. If it doesn't fit on a two by two piece of paper, it's too complicated. And so keeping it simple, just getting something down on paper is, is the right way to start that can be refined and, and, and it'll never be done. Systems, and that's, that's the beauty of systems and processes. They're never complete, but you can get them into their current form, their most recent version, and that's, that's usually good enough.

Yeah. How are you going getting the team on board? Because you're, you've bought in and you're all in on this idea of building the right culture and it sounds like you've got the implementer to help as you've introduced it to the rest of the team. Did you find, was there any resistance or pushback or how's it been received?

Yeah, initially when we rolled this out, it was during COVID 2020 and we had some more experienced team members who frankly rejected the idea of. Because in their minds, the way that they did it was the best way for them and they didn't care if you did it differently, as long as it, this works for me and that works for you, then we don't have a problem. And so we had some pushback when we started and the way that we got through that was really trying to back up, look at, you know, gain some perspective, look at the big picture and understand that in order for us to build and grow a firm where we have a consistent work product, where clients have a consistently positive experience, we need to do these things the same way every time. So at one point we, we didn't actually watch the film, but we, we did a whole team meeting about the, The Ray. The McDonald. The McDonald's founder.

The movie was called the Founder. Yes, with the founder.

Right? Yeah, Ray Crockett. So we had an entire meeting and we dissected that film and the way that they Systemized the creation of a hamburger and fries and shakes. And that was, that was eye opening because we all think, well, McDonald's just, we never think, why does McDonald's have the same product? And I lived in Ukraine for two years, and I can tell you, Big Mac menu, Kolafanta Sprite in, in Russia, tastes pretty much the exact same as it does anywhere else in the world.

Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty special. And I think the big thing that a lot of clients crave is that consistency. I mean, McDonald's proved that it doesn't have to be the best hamburger, but at least no matter where you are, you know what it is that you're getting. And clients love that level of consistency. And I think all business, like small businesses, struggle with that consistency. And I think that's, I mean, that's really the problem that we aim to solve with building a systems culture. As you've started to do some of these, like roll this out, have you got any stories or wins or anything where you've realized, hey, our business is different now this is in place?

Yeah, absolutely. We get a lot of compliments on our onboarding process. And so we get, on average, we onboard, I'd say five to ten clients a week are coming in, bookkeeping, tax or legal clients or nonprofit. We have got that system down so well that, you know, for a relatively small firm, you wouldn't know you were working with a small firm. I think our having worked at four different firms, our, our onboarding process is heads and tails above anyone else's that I've seen. And that's because they get a, they, they're getting the consistent. No matter what the issue is and no matter where it's coming from, whatever source, everybody starts at one point. And so a lot of referrals come through my text messages or through my Facebook account or through my LinkedIn account, or just a random phone call from somebody off Google. And every single time, they're referred to this landing page, which is a form that gives us all the information we need. And then immediately when the form is complete, they get a link to calendly to schedule time. And then from there they have a discovery meeting that's scheduled within a certain timeframe. I think we're at two to three days. We're trying to schedule where they have actual human interaction. And within 24 hours after the discovery meeting, they're getting a written proposal which is professional, has a video from, from me welcoming them to the firm, explaining what the next steps are, explaining, you know, what what's inside the proposal? And so all they have to do, and we use a tool called ignition for that, all they have to do is put their payment information in, electronically sign, and then they're ready to go. And so the whole process, they can be engaged within a few days. And you know, we can do it more quickly if there's urgency to it. But it's start to finish. There are no disruptions and there's no need for them to follow up and say, hey, where's that proposal you promised me? Or where's that meeting follow up you promised me? So we overall, a lot fewer things are falling through the cracks than we had previously.

Yeah, I love it. Are there any other systems that you consider essential or that have been really impactful for the business?

Yeah, our pricing. So this is something that I struggled with tremendously. When I started, our pricing was all over the board. It was almost, I never actually asked the question, but it was almost like, well, how much does this cost? Well, how much do you got? And fortunately I never asked that question. But you don't really know when you're starting out how to price according to the market. You don't know what the market bears. You don't know how much something's worth. We always took the position that we wanted to bill based on the value of the services being rendered, not based on how much time it took us. And so we've never done hourly billing at our firm, which creates a big challenge because we're not putting the risk on ourselves that we can do the work in a way that's profitable. And so I spent about, I'm ashamed to say it took me about a year through all the different iterations to come up with a dynamic pricing tool that looks at every, Considers every possible deliverable that we would have within our firm. And it mentions how it should be priced. So with which methodology? Flat fee, subscription based, value based pricing, or in the very rare circumstance, hourly, what the range should be and then how it's calculated. And so I've actually created a tool to where anybody on my team can go in and use the tool and price out an engagement. So the bookkeeper, who's sitting with the client and the client says, hey, we just added another entity. We hired three employees and we have four, four new bank accounts. Our bookkeeper is able to go into the pricing tool on the spot, make the adjustments and say, okay, great, your new fee is this. We'll get that adjusted for you. And nobody has to come back to me and ask me well, how should we price this? I've already answered the question 9 out of 10 times. When I get asked pricing questions, I refer them back to the tool. There's always that one weird circumstance, which is good because that's why systems and processes are flexible. Because there always is a circumstance where you say, hey, well you know what, that is a special circumstance that we should probably build into the tool. So I'll work on that. And then from there that question's been answered going forward.

I love that. And I can see the culture that you're building with the team where you're training them to go to the system, because really that's the gold standard is where the default answer is, well, let's check the system. And they only come to the supervisor or the team leader when something's off script. And hey, this is not quite following the process. And we also want to train our team members to think like just because we've got a system, that's the starting point and you need to think through how does this apply to this situation and do variations need to be made? Going back to that thing that you had mentioned earlier about with McDonald's and the movie, the founder, that's always something that I have sort of come back to where there are some differences in the business that you're building versus McDonald's and it's good. You, I can tell you've picked up those distinctions because you're probably not recruiting 13 year old kids and training them how to make hamburgers who've never had a job before. You're recruiting trained professionals that have some level of training and knowledge. So we obviously need to write the system accordingly to a level that's appropriate for them. Are there any other insights like that that you've picked up? Or if you could look back and say, oh, I kind of wish I knew this earlier, or if I could give myself the younger Mike some advice. What advice might that be when it comes to building systems culture?

Yeah. So I think one thing that I've realized recently is that our firm is not set up to be the firm that educates, brings in brand new college graduates and gets them from that point until they're experienced professionals. And that's been a big eye opening discovery for me because it has allowed me to start focusing on hiring those professionals who have already been through their first or second job and now are ready to put in front of a client and advise the client. And so my systems are not set up and they never have been to teach you how to do Basic accounting and tax and legal work. My systems are set up to, you know, and written in a way that they need to be managed by somebody who has a requisite level of experience already. And so that realization changes a lot of things for me. It allows us to just keep our, our language when we write our processes. We can keep the language technical because we know that the users are going to understand that. And it also eliminates the volume or the number of processes that have to be written down. We don't have to explain how to do an E signature. That's a very basic stuff that anybody who's been in practice for five years will understand that by now. And then finally, it's helped us with our hiring. So going forward, I will not be looking for interns or law clerks and I won't be looking for first year college graduates. I'll be looking for three to five year experienced associates who I can plug and play, who can look, you know, meet with clients on day one. And so that's, you know, there are other firms that are set up to do that, to be very good at training brand new graduates, but it's not our firm. I'm grateful for them because we'll happily take their graduates once they get burned out from working there. But that's just okay. It's okay to realize that your, your firm, your company doesn't have to be set up for every situation. We can, it's okay for us to be a team of only experienced professionals without having to have, you know, multiple layers of, of professionals. And the way, you know, there still is administrative work and there still is data entry type work that needs to be done at an entry level. And so how we've accomplished that is we've hired offshore actually in the process of hiring our first offshore team and using, using our systems and processes, it really eliminates a lot of the need for lower level data entry type individuals because our tools typically automate those processes.

Fantastic. You are piecing all of the pieces of the puzzle together perfectly. I think there's a magical sweet spot where with this offshore talent process and especially what the changes that we're seeing with AI, I mean, you're going to see a huge amount of development in your industry. I'm already seeing it significantly in the tax side of things. I'm assuming legal at some point, if not already, is going to get turned on its head. But if you can figure out how to get those three things working together, it really does become a tremendous competitive advantage.

Yeah, absolutely.

In the tail end I mean, you chat with businesses and business owners, I mean, that's just part of what you do and the work that you provide. Understanding how business owners think, how can we build the case for them that this is a worthy investment? Because it takes time and energy and money up front to create these systems and processes. And we have to allocate team members and oftentimes we don't see the ROI straight away. Like it's takes time for these systems to build on top of each other and you know, further down the track. Then you go, wow, that was the best thing I ever did. But that's always the hardest bit for me, especially for small businesses where resources are tight. I don't know if you've got any tips or suggestions on how we can build the case for building process in, in small business.

Yeah, I would say it's not for everybody. I would take a counter argument. There are, there are certain business owners who want to be soloists and who will never be convinced that they want to scale or grow their firms. And maybe, maybe they want to grow. But growth for them means I'm going to produce 100 widgets instead of 75 this year and I'm going to personally produce 150 next year. That growth is fantastic. But growth is not the same as scaling. And there will be, especially in these kind of old school professional services mindsets, solo attorneys and solo accountants that never want to scale. And so for them, systems and processes are still helpful because it makes sure that they are. They're not, you know, for their own professional ethics and their own professional liability, using checklists and things like that is really beneficial for them. But they won't be as beneficial as they would for someone like me who from day one decided, I'm going to grow this thing, I'm going to scale it. This is, this is bigger than me. And I'm going to do this in a way that I believe I know how to do the work. I believe I know how to teach people to do the work. And I believe that we can do the work at a high level, you know, leveraging, you know, staff and tools and teams. And so I, the first, the first, you know, to answer your question, I don't think everybody will buy in, but those that, those that do have a true desire to scale, the way to think about it is this. If you had, if you had to go personally and you know, say you're doing something like a car wash where there's going to require some physical touching of each vehicle and you wanted to grow that in a way that it becomes bigger than you ever imagined. Are you going to personally be the one that cleans every car? No, you're not. Are you going to be the one that personally delivers every car to the driver? No, you're not. Are you going to be the one that personally does the finishing touches? It's impossible. You'll run out of time and money and you'll. Excuse me. Run out of money. You'll run out of time and space in your lot because everybody will be waiting for you. And so, in order to get your cars clean the same way every time, you need to have a written process that starts with the main wash and then gets down into the details and then writes out exactly what happens to exit the car and how to get it out of the system as quickly as possible so a new car can come in.

What I love about that example is if you put yourselves in another business and something that seemingly might require less skilled labor, it seems more obvious. And then when someone sits in their own business and they know how to do the things, and maybe it's professional services where it feels like it's more complicated or, oh, but I've got to touch every client. It's easier to trick your brain when you're sitting in your own seat thinking about your own business there. But in that example that you just shared, really, every business is like that car wash. And it is possible to build a business where you aren't the person vacuuming the car and cleaning it and handing those keys over. So hopefully I'm confident we've inspired a few people today. Mike, I don't know if there are any final words or things you would like to leave us on, but yeah.

Yeah. I think the fallacy that I believed for a long time that I want people to understand is that as good as you are, you're not the only one that can do that task. Whatever that task is, it can be replicated. It can be written down and followed. There's so many tools available now where you can. You can do it in a way where somebody can replicate it nearly precisely the way that you would do it. And even if they don't get to 100%, 95% is generally good enough. That's going to get you the work again. Everybody's going to be happy if. If you have that work being done at a 95% level. And so there's. There's just almost nothing that only you are able to do. Somebody else can help, so. So let them help.

I love that. I am going to pop a link through to boss advisors so people can check out the work that you're doing. Especially if you want to see the mesh between legal and accounting in the U.S. that doesn't happen. So to see it actually happen, and not only that with assistance driven approach, I think it's definitely a business worth watching. And yeah, just want to say a huge thank you Mike for your time and your shares today.

Yeah, thanks for having me Dave. Really appreciate it and I'm a big fan. So keep, keep doing the good work.

Thanks Ma.