Episode 32: Marketing and Customer Service with Noah Fleming and Gary Turner

Let's go. Let's do it.

I love it.

Let's go, man. Your face was raised in the microphone. Your lips were pursed. I timed it perfectly.

You're listening to the Profit first podcast, episode 32. I was gonna say our theme sounds so plain without grunting.

You both prepped for it. You got the breathed in and waited for the beat.

I like how you did the grandma hand drink you got.

All right, welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I'm Chris Curran, the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First. And you're listening to an episode where we talk about all the elements of profit. If you didn't last last. If you didn't listen last week, what were you doing? And if you're not listening now, how's that possible? You have to be listening now. I couldn't hear you.

You can get our show at Profit first or here's the pause, bruh.

I missed the bra buttons.

I said late on the trigger. You can catch us at itunes and stitcher and soon to be tunein radio. And we've interviewed a lot of cool people, so profitfirstpodcast.com, that's where you can find us. How you been, man?

I've been good. I mean, I've been having a good time. You'll notice my hair is getting sloppy long. So Christina mentioned it today. So whenever we land a new client, there's a song we play by acdc. And I'm going to give you just a hint, Chris. I want to see if you can pick it. It starts off, goes, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

Got it.

What song?

Thunderstruck. But what do you guys say?

We go. So when I say thunder, we go, profit. And then they go, you've been thunderstruck. We go, take your profit first. Yeah, we got the whole thing done. I want to actually do a karaoke version kind of with you if we can, but that would be fun. So my story is as that we. We land a client. A new member. Not a client. We land a member. They join our family. We start cranking a song. Everyone in the office starts, you gotta dance. You gotta have your tongue swinging around.

He's the only one.

I'm really the only one. I'm the only one. And so I start dancing, and Christine looks at me and she goes, your head. Your hair is flopping, like, literally down under my chin. Back up to my head, under my chin. It's getting too long. I gotta cut it. It's getting Sloppy.

There you go. You can be Glenn Danzig for Halloween.

Mother, take your children and don't let them stay out late. Isn't that Danzig?

Yes. Mother, Mother, mother, mother, take your children. Yeah. So, no, I'm actually niching my business down to work with business authors, help them do their own podcast shows, which is. Honestly, in the six or seven years of being a business owner, and I'm using air quotes. Yeah. I haven't been. I haven't ever had a niche, and it just feels so good.

Yeah.

Because all the decisions become so obvious. Can't do that. Should do this. I have to do that. Yeah.

And then when you. What I'm finding is when I. When I pick my niche, which is doing podcast shows for business authors.

Yeah.

Now I talk to other people who are like, let's say an accountant.

Yeah.

And I tell him, oh, I do podcast shows for business authors. He's like, all of a sudden, now they're excluded. They want me more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy. It's a beautiful thing. What have you been up to?

Just auditioning and getting myself all prepped for my concert in a couple weeks. I'm going to be singing some arias and really just trying to hit the grind.

Yeah. You're hitting the city this weekend, even.

Yeah, I have a little workshop with a director who's going to give me some pointers.

I think something clicked for you about, like, two months ago. All of a sudden, everything just started ramping. You're practicing harder, it seems you're hitting higher, harder notes. Anything you want to sing for us right now? Can you sing, Mother, Mother, take your.

Children Tell your children not to tell.

Your children Tell your children not to.

Come my way, my way.

So try that. What's the lyrics? One more time. I want to hear Christina sing it operatically.

Mother, tell your children not to walk my way. Or something like that.

You want me to sing it operatically, Mother?

Yeah.

Mother, tell your children not to walk my way.

That's awesome. That is awesome.

Tremendous.

We gotta get her singing more.

We do. By the way, do people know who you are, Christina?

Oh, no, I'm not popular.

No.

I mean, she's part of our relationship. Yeah.

Yeah. She's the office manager of Profit First Professionals. She helps coordinate all my personal stuff, too, so. Personal assistant slash office manager slash operatic singer slash.

Yeah.

Backbone of Mike Michalowitz.

Yeah. We're going to give Noah, when he comes on a little bit, an opportunity to sing lyrics, and then Christina's going to sing it back to him. That's my idea. And I'm gonna tell you, we got an awesome guest coming up. I met Noah Fleming down at south by Southwest. It's one of the biggest conferences on the planet now. Music, technology, entrepreneurship, food critics. You name the thing, people are there. So I go to this author's dinner I think I told you about a few episodes back. Roger Dooley was there. Remember we had Roger Dooley on the show?

Yes.

Awesome. Well, there's another guy sitting next to me, and he's just espousing, like, genius stuff. My God, who's the freaking genius here? Like, how are people so smart? I'm like, what, does he think he's Noah or something? And I look at him, he goes, hi, I'm Noah. I'm like, oh, that was a build up to a lame joke.

Christina's joking over here.

Yeah, he wrote a book called Evergreen. We'll be talking about him in a second. But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors. Fundera for here for a year and you know it. Fundera.

Sometimes I just lay on the beach and look up at the sky and just mumble.

Fundera, how you doing? We have nextiva, of course. And we have T sheets. Of course.

T sheets.

We'll talk about them in a little bit.

Corporate sponsors, right? Partners.

Corporate partners.

Corporate partners, Right.

Yeah, we've been tripping that for 12 episodes.

Yeah, yeah, we'll never get that sorted out. All right, so let's get right to our guest. He's been waiting patiently to our bullshit.

Oh, Bo.

Noah, take it easy. No.

Oh.

Oh. Put him on. Make sure he can't hear us for a second. No, he can hear us. This is a technical problem we're having. He's off. Can he hear us?

It's a little tricky.

Okay, I need a word of the day real quick.

He cannot hear us. All right, we need a word of the day.

Shenanigans. Shenanigans. The T shirt.

Shenanigans you're wearing.

Okay, so shenanigans. And we all got to use it one time, but we got to use again inappropriately. You can't be like, oh, that's a bunch of shenanigans, like, jokes. But you got to say, oh, did you ever shenanigize it that, you know, just have some bastardization, but say it seriously. Yeah.

And instead of a noun, you could.

Use it as a verb, verb, adjective, or pronoun.

Okay, Should I let him hear us again?

Yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. And if it's used as a pronoun, you get a bonus.

Money bonus.

I love Chris.

Like, panics, always dials.

You're turning.

Like, I gotta turn them up, turn them down, turn left, turn right.

I should tweet. Live tweet. Although we're not live, so.

Okay. Anywho, Noah. Noah Fleming is a marketing expert. But listen, there's a lot of marketing experts out there. There's not many who understand that marketing is not a one time event, come to your door and try to sell the crap out of them that it's got to. It's about cultivating a relationship. Good marketing cultivates a relationship. So not only is this guy the expert at it and literally serves hundreds of companies, does he serve hundreds of companies with his philosophy? He wrote a book. So anyone, including you and me and I have the book and I have read it, can use his philosophy of going evergreen in your marketing and having customer loyalty like no one else does. With no further ado. Hold on.

Or is it.

No, we totally messed it up. With no further ado, we proudly announce Mr. Noah Fleming. Welcome, sir.

Hey.

Thank you.

That was incredible.

It was right?

He's like, who are these people?

I have never been on a podcast like this. This is really, really special.

What did you get yourself into special?

There's a few things they call special, like buses. The special bus. Yeah. Noah, where are you calling in from today?

I am in a little town called Kingsville, Ontario, which is Canada's most southern town. So interesting note about Kingsville, Ontario. We share the same equator line as California, but we still get a ton of snow.

And.

And I live right next to Leamington, Ontario, which is the tomato capital of Canada, so used to be the home of Heinz ketchup until they packed up and left and left 8,000 people out of jobs.

Is Heinz a Canadian company?

Well, Heinz, one of the. I guess, sort of the main headquarters was here, but they also were headquartered in Pittsburgh, I believe. And then Warren Buffett, recently Warren Buffett, one of his partnership companies, recently bought the entire company. This factory had been here since 1908. I believe it was the homestead of the entire town. We have more greenhouses and farms than almost any place in the world beside Mexico. The repercussions of this are still happening now because they essentially just said, well, we're leaving now. And so that doesn't just impact the workers at the plant, but the farmers and everybody else. So it's a huge, huge thing for this area.

Is your city. You can literally say your city is south of the U.S. i mean, of some of the U.S. cities, right?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

We are pretty south.

So, Noah, tell me about Evergreen and the concepts from your book.

Sure. So you spoke earlier about thunderstruck. Right. Everybody sings this song when you land a new client, and that's pretty cool. And you also mentioned it when you were talking about, when you were introducing me, that too many of us see the getting of the client, the closing of the sale, the closing of the deal as the end. It's the end point. It's the outcome that we're all trying to reach. In reality, it's not. The biggest mistake that most companies make, most entrepreneurs, most large organizations, is that they do exactly that. They treat it as the end and they move on to getting more. The concept of Evergreen. The philosophy of Evergreen, much like the tree. I wanted to know why do some companies stay green all year long? Why do they thrive in any sort of competitive environment, regardless of what's happening? Why are there some restaurants that don't have a slow season? Why are there some entrepreneurs that thrive all year long while the rest of us, and not us in general, but some people, they have trouble, and they're more like deciduous trees where they drop their customers like dead leaves. They have to continuously struggle to find new ones. That's really the philosophy of Evergreen. How do you become the type of company that can thrive in any competitive landscape, any marketplace? How can you dominate? But more importantly, how can you cultivate those relationships? So you're maximizing customer value all the time. It's not just about keeping every customer and building this great relationship with everyone, because some customers are not worth keeping. Just like an evergreen tree to grow, you need to shed as well. You need to shed some branches, you need to shed some leaves. Those are the types of things I work on as well, is making sure we're taking care of the right customers, but also cultivating the new ones or the ones we want to have.

Be careful about using big words like deciduous. That totally throws me off. Tell me about this need to differentiate customers. The customers that are no good and the customers that are good. How do you execute on a process like that?

Well, for some companies, it's simple. For some companies, it's looking at their client base and asking ourselves, are there certain clients that while we might consider them loyal, they might be here often, they might shop with us often, they might spend money with us often. They might not necessarily be a great client for us because they might SAP us of time, they might SAP us of energy, they might SAP us of resources. I have A couple of names for these clients. I call them our customers. Hungry Hippos and problem children. So I love the sound effect.

Yeah, yeah, you knew it was.

You remember the old Hungry Hippos game where everybody would hit the hippos, right, and they would go for the marbles? Well, some customers are like hungry hippos. They just want to take advantage of us and continue to get more, more, more, more, more. So they're ones that are constantly asking us to lower our prices, to give them discounts, to give them deals. They can be hungry Hippos. And sometimes even though they're considered, again, loyal in terms of they come here often, they spend money with us, they might not be a great customer. So for them, you might want to shed a few of them. The other ones are the problem children. Problem children are just never satisfied. They're insatiable. We can't please them. They're constantly complaining. So you have to look at your customer base and figure out, are these really the types of customers I want to deal with?

I assume they're a massive, massive profit suck. A customer that requires, you said, more time, more energy, more resources. There goes all your money.

Huge profit suck sometimes. Even though we're saying we're going to be evergreen and we're going to give every customer the benefit of the doubt, we're going to try and cultivate a long term, profitable relationship with the customer, not every customer is going to end up being worth keeping. I was just with a CEO this morning and we were meeting and he was telling me about somebody again who had been a long standing client with this company. But continuous problems, continuous complaints. They had to look at it very carefully and say, is there some validity here? Is it just us? Is he giving us valid concerns, feedback and complaints that we can learn from? What they came to realize that, no, this was a customer that for a long time had been doing exactly that, sapping them of time, energy, resources and money. And while they looked profitable on paper, they weren't that profitable. This is one of the customers that they're slowly shifting some of that service away from to focus more on customers that have a better chance of being more profitable, better customers that fit their ideal customer profile more clearly.

Hey, Noah, you talked about, well, your book is called Evergreen and you talked about how.

You always got to clear that throat of yours.

I'm totally. No, I have a question. When you help teach companies how to stay green throughout the year and not have down seasons and all this stuff, when you make them evergreen, does that necessarily mean they're more profitable?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, if you're doing everything you can to maximize customer value, if you're doing everything, everything you can to reduce customer acquisition costs, if you're doing everything you can to maximize referrals, for example, or word of mouth opportunities, then yeah, of course your profits increase. I mean, I haven't seen many cases where this isn't the case. More often than not, you actually create, what's the right word here? An even greater sort of advantage against your competition because they just can't compete with you. So I have these clients. I'll give you an example. I live in this small town, and so I have a lot of these small companies in town that want to work with me. There's one restaurant in this town that's been working with me for seven years. I don't claim any magic that I'm bringing to the table to help them, but they thrive all year long. They thrive through October, November, December, January, February, March. When every other restaurant in town struggles. They struggle to pay the bills, they struggle to buy the food to serve the people. The difference is that they've embraced this sort of strategy of becoming evergreen by really focusing on the existing base, really nurturing those relationships, and really just making it the key overall strategy. So every customer that comes in again starts with the opportunity to become and is looked at as one of the most loyal customers they've ever had. Then we start to figure out, okay, how do we now actually take that to a very profitable relationship? Again, we look at the other restaurants in town. One egotistical part of me says these people are foolish, that they are not lining up at my door to work with me. But two, at the end of the day, they also look at it as, this is the nature of the business. It's not the nature of the business. There's a better way to do things. To answer your question in a long winded way, yes, it's absolutely more profitable.

I used the word marketing very liberally when we were starting up to introduce evergreen. But really the marketing, I think people think that means advertising. Advertising and stuff. You really are positioning it around. At least how I read from the book was customer service and customer orientation. How accurate is that? And can you give us some very practical, executable tips to market through customer service to keep our clients permanently?

Sure. One of the things I always say is exactly that. I say that you're foolish if you don't believe that marketing is customer service and customer service is marketing. You're exactly right. People look at marketing as a couple things. First, they look at it as the way we get new customers, the way we get new clients through advertising, through our sales efforts, whatever it is, how we get them. Then everything that happens after is a byproduct of that. It's not marketing, but that's the mistake. Practical tips on how you do that. I've got tons of them in the book, but let's talk about a few key things. First of all, first is, I'm sure we're going to talk about this. I don't know, but there's sort of these overarching concepts in the book that I talk about. The first one is character. I call them the three Cs of evergreen companies. Character is really this idea of positioning, which we all know about. You talked about it earlier. Positioning is sort of the key thing that comes to the customer's mind the moment they think about you. Now, for a small business, for a solo entrepreneur, for even a large business, it's really the brand personality. It's who customers think they are. For people to do business with Mike Michalowicz, for example, I hope I said that correctly. Or to do business with you were very close.

Assuming they just said Mike McAlachitz, love that space alien. All right, I totally threw you off your game.

That's okay, that's okay. Or for people to do business with me, for example, for the long run, the thing I give them is not as important as the character. The person, the idea, the belief, the core, the why. How do you actually turn that into your marketing? Well, it starts again long before the sale is ever made that first impression to what it is you do, whether it's they pick up your book on the shelf, they hear this podcast and all the funny sound effects. It's that first impression of you. But the value that you bring to the. So that's one of the key components here is character is understanding that the thing you give isn't enough. The thing you give isn't enough to keep people coming back again and again and again and again. In the book, I walk people through different ways to really define that, because let me make a distinction here. It's not a mission statement or a value proposition. Just sort of put on this bronze plaque in the office. That's not pragmatic. It's not practical. You have to take this. I talk about this great book called Start with why. I'm sure you guys have heard this Simon Sinek, Everybody's heard this guy speak. He's A very smart man. But you have to take that now and turn it into pragmatic and practical actions that people can actually take and use in their marketing to make it better, to make it more effective, to understand that they're going after people that fit the profile of the type of customer they want and that gel with their own character. That's sort of a really poor explanation of the character.

We had a little shift up in scheduling here, so we actually got to rock and roll. But one thing I want to give you is my little tip. Simon Stakes, to start with why, your book teaches how to stick with why.

I love that. Yeah, you have to start with why everybody does. But then you have to take why to a much, much deeper level. That's really what the concept of character is all about.

Our listeners, I know they want to get this book invested. You got to get this book. If you're listening, get this book. It was on my night table for three or four weeks, easily every night just reading, reading it. It's awesome. It's a big book, a good book. Where can they learn more about you, Noah, and where can they pick up the book?

They can learn more about me on my website, which is noahfleming.com n o a H F L E M I N G Evergreen can be bought really anywhere that anybody likes to buy books, there's an audiobook version read by the same guy who wrote a six volume series on the the Third Reich in Germany, which is quite an interesting connection between my book. Kind of weird. So they can buy the book anywhere they like to buy books and they can learn about me on Twitter. Noah Fleming oahfleeming they can go to my website pretty much anywhere.

Yeah. And guys gotta listen to his stuff. We'll have it all in the show. Notes and anywhere you can buy books you can pick up Evergreen. Except for a garage sale. That's where you can get my books. It seems someone recently found one there. You won't find. Noah's there. Go to Amazon right now and get it. No. Thanks so much for being on the show.

Thanks, Noah.

Thank you.

So, dude, we got another great guest coming up and I'm a little embarrassed. We've had him on hold for a little while. I hope Gary's cool with that. But I know I have to give you the tip of the day first.

I know we want the tip of the day. And by the way, I was gonna say he said his books available anywhere. They have books. You know, I was just in Boulder, Colorado and they have these Little roadside libraries. These little. It's like a little bookcase. Little bookcase. Almost like someone's mailbox, but it's a little bigger, and it's just like, maybe 20 books. And you could just take a book anytime you want. Anyone can take a book, and you could put a book in or you could take one out.

I've seen those.

Wow. I forget what they call it.

Yeah, give a book. Take a book.

Like a community library or something.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, let's get to the tip of the week.

I say the day. It's the tip of the week. It's gonna be the week. It has to be. And it's gonna be app of the week going forward. Not app of the day.

Okay, could be app of the day.

So remember last week I talked about the questions you got to ask?

Yes.

What am I doing right? Second question. Go to your best client and ask, what am I doing wrong? Now, here's the thing about this trick. When you asked earlier, what am I doing right? They are not telling you what you're doing right. Your best customers are telling you what they notice, what you have to improve. Now, here's the second tip. When you ask someone, what am I doing wrong? They won't tell you what you're doing wrong because it's socially inappropriate. It's like saying, hey, how do I look? You're like, oh, you look fine. Besides disgusting. This that you won't share. But if I left the room, then you and Christine, big. Oh, God, Mike looks hideous. We don't tell the truth to someone to their face. Only when they're out of the room. So here's how you ask that question. Ask your best customers. What's wrong with my industry? You know, you probably worked with other podcast producers or other authors or other opera singers. You know, what do you think is wrong with the opera singing industry? What's wrong? Then they will tell you the truth. Because now you're talking about the person outside the room, and what they're actually telling you is your opportunity for improvement. Movement. So genius.

Genius.

Boom. Heads exploding, kids laughing. Just insane.

Just makes me want to just take a breath.

I'm not gonna play that alien sound effect anymore. It's just killing me. Too weird? No, the whole joke.

Kills the vibe.

Kills the vibe. Yeah. I think it's gone.

We like that, don't we?

Okay, well, I don't want to hold you in suspense anymore. Our next guest. His name is Gary Turner. Gary is the managing director of the UK division of Xero, spelled X E R O Xero is the biggest up and comer in accounting right now in the us but it ain't the biggest up and comer in the world because it's already established in New Zealand, it's already established in Australia, it's big time playing in the uk. So we want to learn what's going on here and it's coming into the US Now Gary's going to give us cool insights on what's coming our way in the future because they already experiencing it in the UK. With no further ado, Mr. Gary Turner. How are you?

I am great, thank you. Thank you for inviting me to talk to you.

Oh the crowd loves you, Gary.

Already.

Yeah, they follow me around everywhere.

Yeah. I don't know if you knew you had so many American based fans. So tell us a little about your role just to set the stage for our listeners about your role at Zero.

So, Managing Director, I've been with Xero building up the UK business now for six years. We've been going as a company for eight years, nearly nine years, and in the UK for about six or seven years and in the US for about two or three years. And so my job is to make sure we don't screw up and ensure that we're people and growing our business so we're no longer a startup. I don't think. I think we still feel a little bit like a startup in our attitude, but we're quite a big deal now. My job is to make sure that we stay on track and we continue to grow and have thousands of very happy customers. So lots of things. My motto is, and this is a really cool philosophy I use, is that if we do something right or if we really achieve some great success, then it's to the credit of my team and it's to the credit of the company and the team that I'm part of. And if we screw up really badly then it's my fault. And so that's my philosophy. That's kind of my job.

Oh well, you're my kind of boss if you take the blame. But tell me you're really not. I mean you're a startup. Maybe in your new company and the the States, maybe Zero is even perceived that way. But I think you have a pretty big customer base. Can you give us a sense of that?

Yeah. The thing is we grow really quickly. I guess internally we still think that we're small and up and coming, but we grow really fast. We're coming up on nearly half a million customers globally, we have way over 30,000 businesses in the US. We're coming up on 100,000 in the UK. We have a load in Australia and New Zealand. We actually have customers. I think the last count was about 180 countries around the world are now using our product. We belong to a new generation of cloud software. Sometimes it's called software as a service or SaaS or cloud or online. Our mission is to really, we think it's quite a purposeful one and we want to build the first accounting platform that people actually love using. Because nobody really likes using accounting software. Traditionally. Nobody likes doing accounting. We often hear of people talking about doing things like bank reconciliation and bookkeeping as a real chore and they'd rather face root canal surgery with no anesthetic than doing banks.

Yeah, I don't know if you've heard that. That was me hitting my head on the table. Yeah. Doing reconciliations is killer. So tell me, how do you make a necessary application like an accounting system from a tedious necessity to a fun experience? What's the trick?

We had to start with a blank sheet of paper and really throw out all of the ideas and all of the ways that people had been approaching accounting. Now I have to say that our focus is small businesses. So we only deal with and we only work with small micro businesses, entrepreneurs. We'll have some businesses that may employ 50 or 100 people, but they're the outliers. The vast majority of our customers are what we call small businesses. We love small businesses. And so small businesses have really been trained to think of accounting or accounting software as really quite painful. Something that they would leave until maybe the end of the week or the weekend or the end of the month and then they would, they'd do what we call binge bookkeeping. They just get in there and they'd get it all done and they'd kill their Sunday afternoon and not spend any time with the family just to do the minimum that they need to, to get their billing done or managing their cash flow. And so it would be really easy for us to look at that existing way of working and to reconstitute that in an online way or on a smartphone. But that's a really painful experience. And so we started with a blank sheet of paper about eight years ago and actually spoke to a lot of people who were running businesses and we just watched what they were doing and we looked at the day to day grind of an entrepreneur or somebody that's managing a business. We really analyzed what a day looks like for an entrepreneur. Then we actually got together with a bunch of people that weren't accountants and weren't technically qualified in accounting and thought, well, what would you expect to see a technology product doing that would make you want to use it and help you overcome some of that resistance? So we started with a blank sheet of paper and we really thought about how we set ourselves the challenge of. And our strap line as a company is beautiful accounting software, which is really provocative because most people would never describe accounting or accounting software.

It sounds like an oxymoron, but actually.

It'S not that hard if you really apply yourself and come up with, well, what would I want to use if I was running a business? What would be important to me? So we try and hide a lot of the unnecessary, necessary evil, but the kind of things that you don't think really help you as a business owner and help you focus in on the two or three really key things that small business owners face. And one of the problems that everybody faces is we don't have a lot of time. I'm running around trying to service my customers and trying to win new customers. I don't have time for accounting. So how can we make it that we can automate a lot of that and try take away some of the drudgery? The other area that every business struggles with is cash flow and just getting money in and actually keeping on top of where they are. It's really cool. Doing research into profit first and understanding about your philosophy. I think this is a bit cheesy, so I'll apologize, but I think for most small businesses, it's profit last because they don't even think about their finances or their profitability until it comes to tax season and they work out what their tax liability is and how much profit they've made. And so a lot of businesses push it to the back end and don't really take proactive action when it comes to managing cash flow. And how can they work with their customers more closely? So how do we help them manage it from a time perspective? How do we help them keep on top of a cash flow, and how can we help them get their customers to pay more quickly and get that cash in? We've just built a whole lot of really cool. We've tried to gamify it so that when you're doing your bank reconciliation, you get a little endorphin hit because you're clearing the decks and you're kind of moving forwards. And people, we found, have a real sense of control and positivity when they're on top of the paperwork. I don't know about you, but I know when it comes to doing my tax filing, it's always something that you put it off, you put it off and you put it off. And then when it comes to do it, it's not that big of a deal and you feel really good about having done it. We've just tried to take that philosophy and build that into software that these small business owners can do a little bit often. So they may do five or 10 minutes on their smartphone, on their tablet, in a coffee shop, wherever they are and just keep on top of it every day.

Yeah. And by the way, I don't want you to feel at all like it's cheesy to say something that compliments my ideas. So that was great. That profit last is how many businesses are. But let me ask you this, this software, now I'm not a zero user per se. I am a non user. I have, my accounting company just handles it. They provide reports. Actually, maybe I am a zero user, I don't even know it. But let me ask you this. The software that I'm seeing out there is becoming more and more sophisticated. It sounds like Xero is kind of leading that and it's almost getting to a level of artificial intelligence where it's doing reconciliations for you, almost like projections and stuff. What's the future look like for Xero?

I think you're probably describing where if I get a bill from my telephone company or my rental, my car company and that comes through my bank and I'll have the payee name there or the reference code, what software can now do and what our software does is once I've told it that when I get a bill in from the telecom company, then code it to this account and don't ask me again. Xero is smart enough and we're not at the point where software is really becoming smart enough to remember that so that it is automating a lot of the grind. So you're not keying every single transaction. I think it's going to go down that route even more. We also see, I think if 10 years ago or if you'd spoken to me and I said that, do you know what, guys? I think by 2015 a camera and photography will be an integral part of a bookkeeping workflow. You probably would have hung up on me and thought it was some kind of whack job. But actually we now have a situation where we're all carrying cameras in our pockets, courtesy of smartphones and we have solutions now and this is all already in products like Xero and some of the great tools that we connect with where if I get a bill or I've just been on a cab and I've got an expense receipt for my cab fare, I can take a photograph of that with my phone, which is always around with me, and that automatically is going to be captured by your accounting tool. And depending on how smart that is, it will actually read the number. Maybe cab fares are not a great example because writing is really difficult to. Certainly the cabs I drive around in don't have.

They don't do printouts, bill, they do handwritten books.

Well, in the uk, no, exactly. In the uk, a lot of the cab fares are not printouts. But whether it's a cab fare or a hotel bill or whatever, that's automatically going up to your accounting. And when you check in on a couple of days to see where you are, how's my business doing? All that stuff's there and I can bin, I can throw that stuff in the trash can and never worry about it. Automation, we have a philosophy is that anything that can be automated should be. And we are definitely seeing that. So the future will be a lot more stuff happening in the background and you checking in and just making sure everything's going cool and almost running your business by exception, allowing you to focus on servicing your customers, getting more customers, and to be confident that although accounting is something that previously people really hated doing, because we take the pain away and because you feel in control.

Our.

Customers love what we do for that shouldn't be the case. People shouldn't be in love with accounting software. It's really an alien concept, but we feel really good about it.

Let me ask you this. You have thousands of bookkeepers and accountants flocking to Xero here in the us it's now a very noticeable trend. But what I'm hearing is your software actually replaces the need for an accountant or bookkeeper. How are you getting such a avid following from the people that you're actually replacing? How's that working?

So that's a really great question and it's a really natural one because, well, wait a minute, why do I need a bookkeeper or a CPA or an accountant if I'm using a product like Xero, Surely that makes them redundant. And certainly automating a lot of that paperwork or that accounting bookkeeping front work certainly means that if I'm an accountant or a bookkeeper, bookkeeper. And that's all I do for my clients Then I may have some issues. But actually what we increasingly see, and we have something like globally, about 15,000 accountants and bookkeepers now are working with Zeer, with their clients. So why is that? Why are they so attracted if it's potentially threatening them? The reason for that is that they didn't qualify to be accountants and bookkeepers just to do somebody's basic accounting and record keeping. They actually qualify. And we hear this a lot to help and advise and guide those small businesses. And so what we've got is a pretty dysfunctional setup where a lot of accountants and small businesses don't talk enough. They perhaps speak. I don't know what the frequencies of tax season are in the U.S. i think maybe at least once a year. But in the uk, there's an annual one and there's a quarterly one. And you'll only speak to your accountant when you need to speak to them, Only when there's a real issue or a challenge. By automating the bookkeeping aspect of that relationship, yes, that means the accountant doesn't have to do that anymore, but they can then become a much more trusted advisor to you and almost like your wingman, as you're going through, rather than speaking to your Accountant Once every 12 months, you might speak with your accountant once every month or once every couple of weeks. Or they will proactively because it's in the cloud. They can log in, they can check on how your business is going. They will say, actually, Mike, you're having a really good quarter this quarter.

I appreciate that.

And here's what your tax liability is going to be. Well, obviously every quarter is amazing for you, Mike, but a lot of businesses, you know what I mean, it's really coming in and helping them on a proactive basis and to practice the skills that they learned to be accountants in the first place.

Yeah.

And so that's why it's so attractive.

It's funny, in the past, it used to be I would call my accountant and say, what are the numbers? Now with zero, I'm calling my accountant saying, what do we do with the numbers? It's changed from that. Tell me to advisor Gary, it's been been an absolute pleasure having you on the call with us today. If our listeners in our entrepreneurs, our accountants, our bookkeepers want to learn more about Xero, where should they go?

They can just go to Xero.com, that's X E R O dot com, and we've got lots of information there. And people can take out a trial and have a play and we'll answer any questions they have. But it's been great. I'm really grateful for the invitation to come on and speak to you guys. So thank you very much.

Yeah, no, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for joining us. I know it's late night out where you are or at least early evening, so thank you so much, Gary. And we will see you around real soon. And look for a book in the mail. We just mailed it out to you yesterday. So take care, Gary.

Thank you.

Thanks, Gary.

Bye. Bye.

Bye.

Yeah, so that was a lot of shenanigans.

That was a lot of shenanigans.

We forgot the word.

Yeah, I forgot the word went. Oh, shenanigans.

You forgot to say it.

Oh, my God. I was totally thrown off because the guests flipped.

Yeah, that was.

Dude, you're gonna edit the crap out of this show. Oh, we got a lot of things to do in literally less than 7min. First things first, we got tips to share about app of the week. We got to recap. I want to thank our sponsors. You know, the three just now.

Fundera.

Boom.

Ow.

Love Fundera One Stop Shop for funding.

Yep. Who else?

T sheets.

T sheets.

Ah, Time tracking. Thank you.

And who we waving to? Oh, my wife just walked in for the next episode.

Okay.

And then. Then. Nextiva. How could you forget?

Oh, yeah.

I love nextiva. Oh, baby. Oh, oh, baby. Every time you're like, oh, baby.

Right? Just gets her every time.

Every single time.

It just wears your heart.

It does. It warms your heart. It warms your heart. So, yeah. Nextiva voiceover IP phone provider. Literally the fastest growing phone provider in the us. Join the insanity tips you learned from Noah Fleming.

He lives near the tomato capital, the former tomato capital of Canada.

Yeah.

And he lives in Canada. And he's south of some states, some.

Cities, he's in the same latitude as California.

Yeah. I think flat is now. Yeah. And they lost 8,000 jobs.

And I liked how he said that the sale. Most companies look at the sale as the end point, but his whole thing is that, you know, when the sale is made, that's the beginning of developing the relationship to making your company evergreen. And he also talked about shedding. Shedding. Or most people say firing.

No, shedding. He has a skin problem. This weird shedding problem. And I know we didn't.

Right.

Oh, no.

Like firing bad clients. That's basically.

Yeah, yeah, I totally was that. What I learned was that customer service and marketing is synonymous. I love that he said that. All right, let's go on to Gary. What did we learn from Gary?

Gary. I liked how. Sorry, Christina, Go ahead.

No, that's fine. No, I like that when he said, if we do something right, it's to the credit of my team and my company. If we do something wrong, it's my fault. And I think that that's such a proactive way to look at it. It's really everybody. It's everybody's responsibility. It's not just the blame game.

Right?

I really like that.

Yeah. You're looking at me like, I gotta take on the blame more. I'm always pointing. Christina, why are we winking at.

Mike knows.

Yeah.

So I liked how he talked about. He basically went out polling the people to find out what. How he can tweak the software and to find out what his customers want. He talked to all of them.

Dude, I'm with it. So what? I like the accent. I mean, so I like. I love that accent. But the other thing I loved was that he started with unqualified users. I thought that was interesting. He said, I went to people that knew the least, that were gonna use our applications, as opposed to people that understood accounting. And we learned more that way. What a genius idea.

Genius.

Genius. App of the week, Christina. Lay it on me.

Ifttt, which stands for if this, then that it is a marvelous marvu. Wow. I can't even say the word. It is a great way to program your life without actually having to know anything about technological programming. For example, if I post a status on Facebook, you can then have it published to WordPress automatically. Or if someone comments on a blog post, you can send me a text message. If someone follows me on Twitter, it sends them a thank you autom. These are all things that you can just pop in the settings and it does it for you.

All right, so you know what we gotta do? We gotta sit down at the office next week and talk about things that we can link together with this ifttt. What does that cost? Do you know?

Yeah, it's free.

Free.

Free tool.

Everything's free. I love this stuff.

There you have it.

Okay, dude, we gotta rock and roll.

Great job, Mike.

Literally four minutes.

This has been awesome. Thank you, Christina.

Thanks, guys.

Dude, where can people find out more about you, bro?

Fractalrecording.com producing podcast shows for business authors who want to take over the world.

Hits it on the downbeat.

I killed it.

You killed it. You killed it.

How about profit first Professionals?

Yeah.

Listen, if you're an entrepreneur and you want to make your business more profitable, come to Profit First Professionals. And click on the find button because we find the accountants and bookkeepers that Gary Turner was just talking about today. And if you're an accountant or bookkeeper or a business coach that's actually driving, wants to drive profitability for your clients. If you're a bookkeeper, accountant wants to be more advisory oriented, click on the Become button and join the force at Profit First Professionals.

There you have it. Thanks, Everybody, for listening. Profitfirstpodcast.com is our website. Check out all our previous guests and thanks again to our corporate partners.

Partners, thank you.

And here is Mike's opportunity.

Bruh. Almost a little.

You're getting too good. Thanks, Michalowitz.

Later. I got that button, too.

That's a tongue twister right there.

I love your giggle in that. Right?

There you go. There you go.

Do you ever grunt when you're speaking at events, Mike?

I do, I do, I do.

All right, thanks, everybody.

I never spoke again.

Peace out. I'm gonna fade the music and leave the mics on. Let's see if Mallowitz says any funny anything.

First of all, I never would really, so. But I am thinking about ditching this space alien stuff. I mean, like, why is that freaking count?

I don't know.

The distortion.

Not even like alien. It's just, it's.

I. I still love this one, though. I'm assuming you just said Mike McAll.

Maybe I can EQ it to play it again. I'm going to take one more time.

One more time. I'm assuming you just said Mike mc.

That was better.

Better? Yeah, it's the high end.

I just. I think it's a beautiful soundtrack. Dude, two minutes. We gotta go.