Assemble Help Quickly When Starting Something New with Business Leader Enrico Palmerino

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm here talking with Enrico Palmarino and founder and CEO of Botkeeper and doing bookkeeping for accountants. And Enrico, what does that mean, bookkeeping for accountants?

So we're a bookkeeping automation platform for accounting firms. And you kind of think of this as almost like the bookkeeper, as an operating system for accounting firms. So if you're an accounting firm, you're predominantly structured in three groupings. So you've got a tax department, an audit department, and then what's called a CAS department. Cas and it stands for client Advisory services or client Advisory and Accounting Services. So think bookkeeping predominantly with like a cfo, ARM or layer. And historically the CAS department didn't have any system or platform to run and manage itself, to run and manage its clients, and certainly very little tech or automation to get the work done. And the way that you used to have to do it was there's 1200 apps in the QuickBooks Online and Xero Marketplace. And as an accountant, try to layer together, integrate, assemble the apps and then do a lot of manual entry, keying, processing, Excel sheets for managing. And we basically built a software platform that makes the management running operations of a CAS department a lot easier and has a machine learning and AI layer embedded in it to automate away a lot of the core bookkeeping processes, the categorization, classification and other accounting treatments.

Now, did you have to do a lot of the geek part of this as far as the coding and writing the software and diagramming out the solutions and where, how, how did you, how did you unravel this thing?

So fortunately I had some experience in the accounting sector with the cloud accounting practice prior. But a lot of, I'd say like the out of the gate, like initially the, you know, service offering, the product offering, the workflows, the structures of data, where we're going to layer in robotic process automation. What would the machine learning models look like? How would those machine learning models, what would the structure of them be? How would they learn? Where would the human in the loop assistance take place? What would it take place and assistance on? Do we have competing models for it? And if so, how does that workflow come into play? So a lot of that I would Say I had to kind of put together lots of whiteboarding and structure and diagrams and then even just like some of the algorithmic side of the equation in terms of like, what's the mathematical formula you'd be applying to what data to deliver what result. I did some of that too, and then handed like the schematic to founding engineer and eventually many engineers to continue to build against in a platform.

Yeah, if you're going to be the leader, you got to do the thinking. Or if you got to get the thinking done and the solutions found, you don't have to come up with all the solutions, but you have to make sure they've come down very precisely put together and then you can hand off to implementers that are much better, quicker, faster, better at doing a lot of the implementation. But you've got give them clear instructions, you know, they don't want. Some of the people that are the greatest at doing things, you ask them to think and for an opinion, you say, you know, well, what do you think about this and the other? They have a total meltdown. Have you found that?

Yeah, just I think like some people that are great at doing are not great at process and structure. And so, you know, I think like, I generally am inclined to, I like process, I like structure, things I can systematize. And I also am good at doing. And so I think of, I think of myself as kind of like a captain on a team, more than like a sideline coach. Like, I don't mind rolling up my sleeves, you know, getting stuff done. The team has elected me and I'll call the plays, but I'll also assist, you know, wherever there's a shortcoming and we need some, some help.

Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management, and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellawinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up. Now, talk about from the setting up an accounting program that allows people to.

Be.

Get organized and set up for success and managing their accounting side, the financial side. No one likes to do the books. No entrepreneur likes to do the books.

Totally.

And I personally went 20 years way back into the 80s, paying a six figures and up to CPAs and having one nightmare after another. And the biggest nightmare happened when I hired the CPA of the year in town to come to work for me in my office. And that turned into the biggest disaster I ever had. And you know, it can be. It's just. You can't just throw money at the problem there. You have to get good people. I can see how having a lot of this stuff automated would take a lot of the guesswork out for business owners. But talk about what you've learned about setting yourself up for success in general from the process of learning how to set up this accounting program for success. Because you're obviously got some principles that you're using to set up and run your company that are probably not a whole lot different than the way you've set up your software and you know, your, your platform there. So can you think in those terms, setting yourself up for success? What are some things that you could offer or you could see from experience that are make or break things that you can do? You know, you don't have to be a geek, you don't have to be an egghead, you don't have to be a genius to do these. It just looking at things in an organized way.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think the key comes down to people. So one, don't try to start something on your own because you're likely have a skill set that is inclined in one area or another. There are very few people who are amazing at everything. And so under that fundamental principle, you need a founding team and you need partners in the mix and then that team will grow. That's the reality of it. The easiest way to be successful is hire successful people or hire people who are passionate about an area in the business because you put a bunch of really great people around you and just the problems and the headaches and the challenges to growth and success just magically go away. And they don't magically go away. It's the people that make them go away. But starting with a founding team versus a sole individual is super clutch because you're spending time doing whatever it is that you're good at. And anytime you're spending on that, you're not doing any of the other things. And so even if you were great at marketing and sales and ops and finance and engineering, every hour in engineering is an hour, not in any of the other areas. So team is key. And I can't recommend doing it early enough. And find some people that Share the vision. And then second and actually equally important and part of it is people that share your same values. So what's going to be the culture of your company? Make sure that the founding team have that aligned culture. You know, for us at Vaukeeper, it's go the extra mile, go hard, continually improve, be a caring leader and do what's right. So find people that share those same philosophies because that will ensure unison, integration, you know, weathering of headaches and challenges over time. And then iterate, like, don't spend too much time, you know, trying to mix or create whatever it is that you're going to do and have it be perfect out of the gate. Get a lot of like live trial out there where, you know, clients that are set the expectations right that you know this is alpha or beta and early on and that you're looking for their feedback and maybe you discount it accordingly or you let them try it or use it for free during that period. But get live feedback, it's better than anything else. So you can learn because in the early stage you really like, you're better off creating a prototype. And you know, I use that word instead of MVP because it's just, it's not really your product. Like it's not going to be designed to scale or handle the needs that you need it to. So create a prototype, get it out in the hands of potential clients or users and whether the prototype is a service or it is software or a product, get the feedback, iterate, iterate, iterate, and then constantly just continue to evolve. And then you start shifting prototype things into true product and you kind of go from there. All the while you keep adding more and more A players. And this is not like this is a great guy or girl who seems like they're hardworking a player. This is like they've got the pedigree, the success, the background, the experience to say they really know this and they're better than most other people at it. And putting that caliber on your team is very different than putting a lot of B's on your team.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch, go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.