Why Your Mindset About Costs Is Holding Your Accounting Firm Back

In this video, I'm going to share with you why our natural focus obsession with costs might be holding you back. And a simple mindset shift. Change that. When you do that and start thinking more entrepreneurial, it'll unlock doors and help you explode your firm with growth. One of the things that I found about our profession as accountants and I suffered from this is that we tend to be very focused on costs. Perhaps it's because we're numbers experts. We understand accounts, we deal with accounts, we focus on costs. But many years ago, I heard this great phrase that said, you can't cut your way to greatness. And there's so much truth in that that when you look at successful businesses and successful entrepreneurs, they think very differently. I studied successful businesses after I'd made a ton of mistakes in my accounting firm because I wanted to figure out, why do they think different? What was it about their mindset? And one of the things I discovered is that thinking about the difference between costs and investments, and it has a huge implication. I've seen many, many times on Facebook, groups of accountants, bookkeepers particularly, complaining about things like the costs of software, of apps, and worried about the cost of them. I can't afford that. I don't want that. I'm not paying that amount of money for an. I get that because I'm an accountant. And yes, costs are important, but we have to switch our mindset and think about.

What will it give us back? What's the return on investment? When I started my accounting firm way back now, in 1996, I made so many mistakes. And one of the big mistakes I made was this. Because I was starting and building with no clients. I was focused on cost. I was doing everything the cheap. I would hire the cheapest people. I went and hired school leavers, college leavers, because I couldn't afford to pay for recruitment agents and hire qualified people. What I found was when I hired cheap people, you get what you pay for in life. And I spent so much time micromanaging them, correcting their mistakes, it was three or four years later when I finally understood that you get what you pay for. And I started hiring better quality people and. And I got better results, a better return on investment. And it's the same with many of our expenses. We tend to hold back on things, like things that will make our life easier, like software, like advertising, like training our team.

To give another example, think of Facebook ads. Some people say to me, I can't afford that. I can't do Facebook ads. But the entrepreneur thinks about it. Differently, they think, okay, if I'm going to spend $2,000 on some Facebook ads, what's that going to give me? And if spending $2,000 on Facebook ads gives you a thousand leads, and let's say of those a thousand leads, let's say just 20 of them decide to book an appointment with you, and let's say you turn those into clients and your average client, or even half of those as clients, you get 10 clients and they average a 2,000 annual fee. That's 20,000. So if spending 2,000 on Facebook ads gives you 20,000 of fees, is Facebook ads expensive? The entrepreneur would say, no, I'm going to pay even more money because it's going to give me something back. Now, when we think about software, one of the big things that we get back from software is it makes our lives easy, easier, it makes our firms more efficient, it saves us time. And so one of the things you absolutely must think about is what's the value of your time? What's your time worth to you? I remember many years ago, my father taught me something that's always stuck with me. He said, understand what your time is worth. And then if you can hire other people to do things that you used to do yourself and at a lower rate, then it'll be crazy to do the work yourself. So for the last 10, 15, 20 years, I never done the garden or mowed the lawn. I've never washed my car. I have a cleaner, I have someone come to the ironing. I don't do anything other than what I love, which is training, helping accountants, because I know the value of my time. And yes, sometimes I work weekends, but I do that doing the things I love, building a business, because I can pay somebody else to do the other things, the chores around the house, around the garden, to wash the car. It's a mindset shift. If you want to explode with growth, you've got to recognize that costs are an investment in your future. And you have to think, what is the value of your time? What is it worth to you? What's it going to give you back? If you invest in an app, in software, if it's going to save you time and the value of your time is greater than the monthly investment, then it's a no brainer. If you're always focused on cost, it's always going to hold you back and you'll never grow the way that you want to. If you want any more help from me, underneath this video somewhere, there'll be some links you can click on and get some free stuff. And also, if you like the video, please hit that, like, button, the thumbs up button, and share it with other people. Bye for now.