In this episode, we sit down with returning guest Nick Sinclair, founder and chairman of TOA Global, one of the largest accounting outsourcing companies in the world. Nick shares the unlikely origin story of how a leadership trip to the Philippines revealed the talent and scalability his own firm desperately needed. This inspired him to build what has now become a powerhouse with more than 4,500 team members serving over 1,100 firms worldwide. His personal “why” behind the business was shaped by watching his parents lose everything when he was young. This drives his mission to ensure more people get the financial advice they need by helping firms leverage the offshoring support they need to deliver high-touch service.

In this episode we explore the global talent landscape, particularly why the Philippines has become such a strong market for accounting professionals. The combination of the country’s population size, education, cultural alignment with Western accounting practices, and American-influenced English proficiency are all contributing factors. Nick explains that while many firms cite capacity as their number one growth bottleneck, very few have a true “people plan.” He breaks down his three-part model: onshore staff, global resources, and on-demand support. He also details why firms should always carry excess capacity to avoid missed opportunities, burnout, and revenue ceilings.

We also address the reputation challenges around outsourcing, with Nick sharing the evolution from early IT outsourcing models to today’s more strategic, team-based global staffing. He’s candid that quality issues and cultural misunderstandings in the past created stigma, but emphasizes that most outsourcing failures actually stem from internal weaknesses in the accounting firm doing the outsourcing. Those weaknesses usually include a lack of documentation, poor leadership, inconsistent processes, or unrealistic expectations of the outsourced staff. When done properly, though, outsourcing elevates teams to do higher-value advisory work, much like automation and cloud tools have over the past decade.

Nick challenges the profession’s slow traditional advancement paths and argues for accelerating competency through intentional training, clearer career ladders, and better leadership. He points out that firms who invest in developing their people free themselves from capacity constraints, improve retention, and create a sustainable culture. Without this, even the best outsourcing strategies will struggle.

Finally, Nick shares insights into leading global and virtual teams, including cultural nuances between countries, how to motivate individuals differently, and the importance of understanding each team member as an individual person. He closes with a personal story about creating a once-in-a-lifetime moment for his grandfather, and recommends the book Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, a resource that reshaped the way he approaches time, structure, and leadership.

Timestamps:

• 00:37 – Introduction to Nick and his background
• 02:46 – How TOA Global began
• 04:10 – Early offshoring lessons and growing pains
• 06:40 – The unexpected demand that revealed a real business
• 07:43 – Nick’s personal “why” and decision to scale globally
• 09:12 – Why the Philippines has such strong accounting talent
• 11:25 – Why every accounting firm needs a people plan
• 13:30 – Industry capacity issues and long-term global staffing strategy
• 15:07 – How offshoring perceptions have evolved
• 16:19 – Quality challenges, cultural misunderstandings & outsourcing stigma
• 18:00 – Outsourcing reveals internal firm weaknesses
• 19:16 – Offshoring accelerates local careers
• 20:00 – People are the product in accounting firms
• 22:20 – Human connection as the profession’s long-term differentiator
• 23:02 – Why training and quicker competency paths matter
• 25:06 – Building career plans and accelerating development
• 27:39 – Challenges firm owners face when building global teams
• 28:56 – Cultural nuances in leading global teams
• 31:21 – Leadership, flexibility, and knowing your people
• 32:30 – Nick’s most memorable career moment
• 34:23 – Book recommendation: Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell
• 35:24 – Where to connect with Nick: LinkedIn 

Disclaimer: The following is an unedited transcription of the episode and has not been combed for errors.

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:13:07
Brannon
you on a firm like the best way to, make your life easier is to train your people, build them and so they can take work off of your plate. You know, and build a culture that they want to stay in.

00:00:13:07 – 00:00:29:13
Nick
And I think that it’s a simple thing that, again, we get so caught up in our own business that it just becomes normal and we don’t think about it. And then we train, you know, some people up in, they leave them, it keeps happening and it’s like, well, why are they leaving? So why why would they stay? Yeah.

00:00:29:13 – 00:00:40:08
Brannon
What are you off? What are you. Yeah. What are you doing to keep them? I think that yeah, that’s firm culture. It’s like a it could be an upward spiral or a downward spiral.

00:00:40:18 – 00:00:54:16
Brannon
I’m Brandon Poe, and this is the county’s Flight Plan podcast, where you can enjoy engaging conversations about mergers and acquisitions in accounting, practice management. Listen in on strategies to build a more fun and valuable accounting firm.

00:00:54:17 – 00:01:23:08
Brannon
Welcome to the Accountant’s Flight Plan podcast. I’m excited to have a repeat guest on today. Nick Sinclair, he’s been with us before. He is, just a little bit about him again. He is an industry leading speaker on accounting outsourcing. He founded Troy Global in 2013 to address the most common pain points accounting and bookkeeping firms face, which is people write capacity, profitability and time.

00:01:23:10 – 00:01:51:24
Unknown
So now, as chairman of one of the fastest growing accounting outsourcing companies in the world, he is an in-demand speaker. It has grown. Troy has grown to more than 1800 team members, serving more than 600 accounting and bookkeeping firms across Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. And prior to his current role, he successfully ran his own accounting, bookkeeping and financial planning firm for more than ten years.

00:01:52:01 – 00:02:19:13
Unknown
He’s also been nominated for many industry leadership awards and has sat on several boards and committees, the most recent being The Entrepreneur’s Organization you as Learning Director for. All right. What is iPAC Nick? Asia Pacific Asia Pacific okay. As well as you know Brisbane board for two and a half years and I think that’s might be how we got connected originally was through EOH.

00:02:19:15 – 00:02:46:12
Unknown
Some of you listeners might know I’m past president of EOH Charleston and, he has a great organization. If you haven’t heard of it, check it out. Well, welcome, Nick. Welcome back. I should say thanks for having excited to be here again. Yeah. All right, let’s kick it off with, like. I’d love to know how you built your story about how you built to.

00:02:46:14 – 00:03:07:11
Nick
Yeah, well, it was to I. I’ll say I was never meant to be a business. It was. I ran my own financial planning and accounting business and just, you know, we were fast growing, struggling with growth. I actually went to the Philippines, for our global leadership conference as part of I. And I’d never been in the Philippines, to be honest.

00:03:07:11 – 00:03:25:22
Unknown
I had never really paid any attention or knew much about it at all. But I got on the plane, landed there, spent the three days at the leadership conference with I, learning how to be a board member, and then one of our actual members from our Brisbane chapter, had an office there and he invited us to come over looks.

00:03:25:22 – 00:03:46:18
Unknown
I went had a look, and he was a removals company and largest in Australia, and he basically said, look where 3000 homes are listed for sale or for rent every year or every day in Australia. And as soon as they’re listed for random for sale, we’re in contact with them within 24 hours. And he showed us the marketing time he’d built there.

00:03:46:20 – 00:04:10:02
Unknown
His sales team, his outbound sales team were outperforming the Australian call centers. And and I looked at a went the access to talent is just there’s so much of it. This could be the thing that helps me. So I ended up building a team. Where he had within the same company he was using, and that worked really well, except I had pretty large turnover.

00:04:10:04 – 00:04:28:19
Unknown
I went back to Australia, though, and told my general manager that, you know, we’re going to build a team in the Philippines. And she said, there’s no way in the world that that’s going to happen. She was very patriotic, very Australian. Keep jobs in Australia. She basically said, Nick, I’ll leave and I’ll take all the ladies with me if that’s the case, because we don’t agree with moving jobs overseas.

00:04:28:20 – 00:04:44:00
Unknown
I said, well, we can’t find the team here. She said, doesn’t matter. She said, if you want to run it as a side project because you’ll get bored of it and you go and do that. So I owned the business, but she, my lady was telling me this and she ran the business day to day. So I was like, all right, we’ll all set it up.

00:04:44:00 – 00:05:08:02
Unknown
I’ll build out a marketing team, I’ll start a bookkeeping division. We’ll offer bookkeeping in $20 an hour and see what happens. We’re using practice ignition. So we were one of the first uses of that or now called ignition. So we basically set up the service packages on our website. People would be buying it 24 hours a day, would wake up in the morning, and that the new sales, new clients coming in, and it worked really well.

00:05:08:02 – 00:05:27:21
Unknown
But we had pretty big turnover. And my leaders just thought it was me. And my leadership style. But when we went over there, I took I ended up convincing my general manager to come over and she came over and is, you know, the first place we went visit after that, she said, look, we’re flipping the business. We’re putting every team member that does this thing over here.

00:05:27:23 – 00:05:43:06
Unknown
Wow. Then we went and met with her where our team was and realized that we were training them up, and they were just moving them to another client and selling them for more money. So we were doing such a great job at training him, they could get more money for him. And then so we became their training provider, but they didn’t tell us that.

00:05:43:06 – 00:06:06:08
Unknown
So my first young and dumb moment was, it can’t be that hard to run a business in another country. I’ll just set up and incorporate and move into my own office and build out my team. So I did that. And not long after that, the president of our board was a guy called Rob Nixon. So, one of the most prolific, I’ll say, coaches in the accounting space for over 20 years.

00:06:06:08 – 00:06:40:05
Unknown
He’s an absolute amazing coach. There’s trends from lots of accounting businesses. And he took me on his roadshow called capitalizing on the cloud. Throughout Australia, New Zealand, 13 cities, 1400 plus accountants. And I was just telling my story about what I was doing because he wanted he was obviously talking about transitioning to advisory and running businesses better and talking about, well, you know, young people like Nick again, to come in and start outsourcing 20 bucks an hour, it’s going to take, you know, compliance work away and you’re going to not be able to compete.

00:06:40:07 – 00:06:59:16
Unknown
What I did it now is after the first event, I had five firms coming to me saying, Nick, love what you do. We don’t want to set up overseas. Do you have some spare? And I’d taken out taking a 50 said office. I had 30 people in it, 20 spare. That’s all worked out well, if I sell those 20 spare desks, then that will cover my rent.

00:06:59:16 – 00:07:21:13
Unknown
It’ll cover my all the air and talent and housekeeping and all the team that I needed. So I said yes. But over the next three weeks of that roadshow, I said yes 90 times, and it sold 90 rolls. And then the next year we became 200, then the year after 400, then I was like, well, this is a proper business now, this is a business now.

00:07:21:15 – 00:07:43:24
Unknown
I needed to make a decision of, you know, do I keep running my accounting and financial services business or this other one? And the big thing is my parents lost everything when I was 18. I, I don’t say it’s because the accountant, but I say it’s because I didn’t get the right advice. So my I suppose drive or why for being in business was largely about trying to help people not have to go through what my family went through.

00:07:43:24 – 00:08:01:01
Unknown
My parents particularly, they lost everything. They ended up getting divorced. Financial impact was definitely part of it. It wasn’t the sole reason. So for me, I had this drive to do, you know, and to be able to get advice in the hands of everyone so that they wouldn’t have to go through those challenges that my parents did.

00:08:01:03 – 00:08:28:06
Unknown
I think it would have been a lot better if they got the right advice. So that for me was a pretty easy decision. I’m like, well, I can give as much impact as I can, 1 to 1. And with the time that I built. But I couldn’t really run a business. It was so reliant on me. But the outsourcing, we could build a global organization and that’s Nigel was only meant to be serving Australian clients, and I could build a business that didn’t rely on, and it wasn’t just about me and my advice that could have a greater impact to accounting firms.

00:08:28:06 – 00:08:50:00
Unknown
So you could then impact all their clients. So that was the initial driver. And today where, four and a half odd thousand people, 1100 firms across, several. We got offices in the US, we’ve got offices in Australia, we’ve, we’ve got team members in South Africa, predominantly the Philippines, but we’re also in the process of putting on team members now in Colombia or in India.

00:08:50:02 – 00:09:12:04
Unknown
So it’s it’s gone well beyond my wildest dreams that the stuff that what a great story. Why do you think, why do you think the talent pool is, is really strong in the Philippines? Or why was it, you know, why was there you know, so much good knowledge and, you know, how do they get educated? Well, why aren’t they employed?

00:09:12:08 – 00:09:34:04
Unknown
You know, I’m just kind of curious about the landscape there. Yeah. It’s just a big population. I mean, there’s 100 plus million people there. So like if you compare that to Australia, there’s only 25 million. If you compare America, it’s it’s a huge population. And and accounting is one of the top degrees. And nursing is the number one in accounting is probably within the top, you know, 3 to 5 degrees.

00:09:34:04 – 00:09:56:16
Unknown
So there’s over 20,000, 20, 25,000 people going through the university every year. It’s still seen as a safe and stable job. They have had declining numbers like everywhere else, but there’s just such a huge talent pool. There’s hundreds and hundreds of thousands of accountants there. And the great thing about the Philippines is it was a territory of America for a long period of time.

00:09:56:16 – 00:10:21:23
Unknown
So they taught American English from birth. It’s part of their education system, their accounting, the way that everything is done there is largely American because of the influence in America had on it, for a large period of time. So there’s there’s a lot of strong points that are aligned to, I suppose, the West being America. And then that flows on to Australia and New Zealand and Canada and other countries.

00:10:22:00 – 00:10:49:10
Unknown
And out of all of Asia, they’re written and spoken. Is is some of the what I call cleanest and best. But then you look at places like we’ve got teams in, in India, for example, and, you know, more than 100 million people live there. And, you know, there’s a huge talent pool. Colombia, you know, South Africa, there’s accounting in in these developing countries is significantly more highly rated than what it is.

00:10:49:10 – 00:11:25:15
Unknown
I think in the Western countries, there’s more prestige to it still. And and so, yeah, it’s just by sheer numbers, there’s just. Yeah, huge amounts of, of people that want to drive, an international career for them is a great thing, you know? So. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, you know, in terms of like, equal plans, I know that’s, I talked to accounting firm owners all the time, and I it’s almost every conversation I have is, we, you know, our main bottleneck is people.

00:11:25:15 – 00:11:48:17
Unknown
We can’t grow our firm. We just don’t have the capacity. So how does a people plan? Help. How what should every. Why should every accounting firm have a people plan? It’s a great question. It’s something that, to be honest, when I was running my own firm, I didn’t have one. And it was something that, you know, I’ve become passionate about.

00:11:48:17 – 00:12:04:17
Unknown
The people saw the businesses as I’ve been running Doha, as I’ve been building it, and for me, it was the fun. I mean, when I look back now at my own firm and look at our struggles of growth, we just never had the capacity. And I look back and it’s just because we never actually built a plan.

00:12:04:19 – 00:12:22:08
Unknown
And a people strategy, to me, is the first thing that you should do as part of your business plan is work out what capacity do we need now and in the future, and how do we always carry excess capacity? And it really is. I call it the accounting talent mix. It’s breaking it up into three key areas. It’s what on short time do we need?

00:12:22:10 – 00:12:42:03
Unknown
What global resources do we need? And then what on demand talent do we need to ramp up or ramp down, either through tax season or if we get a few large clients at once, how do we have a strategy that we can call upon some short term resources to be able to put that in place? A firm should never have to knock back clients.

00:12:42:03 – 00:13:09:14
Unknown
They should never not be able to grow because they don’t have the ability to do the work. But yet our industry as a whole is overworked. A large amount of them are underpaid for the amount of work they do, and there’s this constant stress of trying to get work out, and there is sufficient people that it takes three, five, six, seven years to build a proper team structure out, particularly with global teams.

00:13:09:14 – 00:13:30:02
Unknown
It’s not a short term fix, it’s a long term strategy, and a lot of people just aren’t willing to do the work. And, you know, whenever I ask when I speak and how many of you have a people strategy in place next to no hands, go up the big firms do in a way, but not really. Yeah. It’s a it is a hard thing to work on.

00:13:30:02 – 00:13:52:19
Unknown
I know we kind of built out, we call it the accountability chart, you know, which is a year term for those of you on iOS. And it’s, it’s it’s really just looking at, an org chart, you know, it’s like you build this chart and it’s it’s hard. It’s hard to know, like, okay, what seats do you need?

00:13:52:21 – 00:14:36:06
Unknown
What what do you need to wrap up? But it’s such valuable work. I agree. And then, you know, I do think the reputation of offshoring has changed. I think we sold, Gosh, it’s gone on ten, maybe 16 years. We sold a firm in Canada that was an early adopter, and they had basically all of their team in Canada was client facing only, and all the prep was done, in the Philippines and, you know, when we put it on the market, we weren’t sure how it was going to be received.

00:14:36:08 – 00:15:07:08
Unknown
And, it actually, you know, people were very intrigued by the model. You know, when we’d show that deal to buyers, they were very intrigued. And, we didn’t have any trouble selling it. And that was quite a while ago. And, and I think, you know, fast forward to today, I think more and more people are willing to, I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s as negatively empowered as it was.

00:15:07:08 – 00:15:09:21
Unknown
I think it’s becoming more accepted.

00:15:09:21 – 00:15:33:16
Unknown
What are you, you know, do you have any thoughts about, like, why offshoring might not have a stellar reputation? And why it’s is important for the success, for. Yeah, I definitely do. And I think, you know, we’ve been beating these drum for over 13 years, so I’m glad that, you know, perception has changed.

00:15:33:16 – 00:15:50:19
Unknown
I remember when I first spoke on that stage with Rob Nicks and I got booed off stage. I got told I’m an Australian. I got told that I’m taking jobs away. I’ve got I got cold, everything under the sun. And even when we’re first in America, when it was, we’re trying to beat the drum there. It was the same thing, you know, you know, taking jobs away from America.

00:15:50:19 – 00:16:19:22
Unknown
And, it’s, you know, the quality’s bad. And I think that if you look back at the history of IT outsourcing, was where it all started. So where you send a job and get a job back, and, you know, I use that for my own firm and and quality varied and it varied. On the more successful the outsourcing firm was, the quicker that I had to train people, which normally meant the lower the quality, because it’s like with any accounting firm, if you’re growing really fast, you need to chuck more resources at it.

00:16:19:24 – 00:16:35:06
Unknown
If you’re throwing more resources at it in a developing country, and predominately it was India to start with, to be honest, when most the outsourcing was being done, which meant they’re just trying to hire people and train them up as quick as I can, but they’re also trying to keep the work going out the door, because I want to keep the customers happy.

00:16:35:06 – 00:17:00:12
Unknown
So what we saw is the, I suppose, explosion of their success was actually to their detriment because the quality dropped or depending on how well one person was trained versus another, it depended on who you got. So I think that that was initially where people went, well, the quality is not great because at times it wasn’t. And that was why a big reason why I wanted to set up my own office and control the process, the systems, the training.

00:17:00:14 – 00:17:34:00
Unknown
Our model is very much about giving firms dedicated people, not sending a job and getting a job. And that was the initial reason for me was that control part. But I think that, you know, it evolves something out. So outsourcing has a bad reputation because of the quality, and, or the language barriers. People don’t understand how to manage different cultures, to be honest, 99% of the time outsourcing exposes the firm’s weaknesses in either leadership processes and systems.

00:17:34:02 – 00:17:52:14
Unknown
Or just the way that they run the business. But then they turn around and blame the provider as opposed to actually good. Like we’ve seen the good bad and the ugly. Like we work with over 1100 firms. Our smallest firms, a sole practitioner, our largest is, you know, top five firm in the US. We’ve seen it all.

00:17:52:15 – 00:18:00:19
Unknown
It works really, really well as a strategy where the firm puts it in place. But we’ve seen some absolute

00:18:00:19 – 00:18:16:07
Unknown
trainwreck of businesses that, you know, and some of them are the big influencers out there that talk the big game, but their business is internally not being run that well. And I think outsourcing where you hear most negative stories, it’s actually amplifies some issues that they have internally.

00:18:16:09 – 00:18:32:01
Unknown
Now in some cases that there is outsourced providers, the, you know, small startup ones, they that don’t really have their stuff together. They’re just trying to get up and running. I mean, to be honest, when we first started, we were, you know, 90 people very quick and we were scrambling. We had no idea how to run an outsourcing company.

00:18:32:01 – 00:18:45:17
Unknown
I was running an accounting firm. So you live in you learn. So there is some of that side of it. I’m not saying it’s all firms, but I think right I’ve seen yeah, it does have a bad rep. I think it will sell around taking the jobs away.

00:18:45:17 – 00:18:56:04
Unknown
But there’s some data that we’ve seen and, and this is something that I’ve been championing for a long time is that it actually accelerates careers locally.

00:18:56:06 – 00:19:16:07
Unknown
And the big four, big for transparency. Good. They’ve got some data that shows firms that are outsourcing the acceleration in salaries of the local teams because of that. And I think that yeah, that for me. Yeah. Yeah, it’s for me it’s about how do we accelerate the careers of local people. It’s not taking it away.

00:19:16:07 – 00:19:33:21
Unknown
It’s not taking opportunities away. I mean, the funny one, this is the I’ll leave this last one around. Offshoring always gets blamed for the reason why we have no graduates coming through. And I’m like, if you look at all of the cloud technology, it’s taken away about 30 to 40% of the data entry. Basic work that graduates used to do.

00:19:33:23 – 00:19:51:17
Unknown
Outsourcing doesn’t have that big of an impact I’d love for it to have, but it doesn’t. And then I think that that is small firms don’t want graduates, so they don’t bring them on. They rely on the big firms. The big firms aren’t taking as many these days, so there’s not as many, but they all turn around. And generally outsourcing gets blamed for that.

00:19:51:17 – 00:20:00:01
Unknown
So I think that where the the easy child to pick on because it’s, you know, sourcing is the reason for everything. Yeah. Now I

00:20:00:01 – 00:20:15:05
Unknown
like what you say about accelerating careers of people locally because, it’s completely brings them up to do higher level work. It’s which is the same argument for technology and kind of automations and things.

00:20:15:07 – 00:20:31:15
Unknown
So interesting, interesting. I mean, you’ve said, people are accounting firms, product and, can can you elaborate on that? Yeah. I think yeah,

00:20:31:15 – 00:20:47:20
Unknown
I do think that people are the product. I mean, at the end of the day, accounting is human based business. As much automation comes in, you know, pretty much every tax act, everything we do is available online.

00:20:47:22 – 00:21:21:18
Unknown
So why do clients come to us. And it’s the human connection. It’s the, the relationship, the, you know, the explanation that we give the handholding that we provide, you know, the expert advice they can actually get from what charge of beauty these days? Yeah. So I have always said that people the product. And now I think moving into the, you know, the future industry in the next, you know, five, ten, 15, 20 years, I think that the human connection part is going to be the differentiation and the reason why we’re still in business and it’s not completely automated and gone.

00:21:21:20 – 00:21:27:03
Unknown
So to have human connection, you need people, and people are your product.

00:21:27:03 – 00:21:41:17
Unknown
Yeah. I think that’s huge part of, you know, where we’re in a service based business, which is relationship based business. And that’s why, you know, if we don’t have the right people, you know, the firms that win are the ones that have the best talent. Yeah.

00:21:41:19 – 00:22:20:13
Unknown
What what that reminds me of I think it was I think Jeff Bezos was in an interview with Tom and said, who’s was asked a question about, you know, what’s changing. Here’s maybe the more important question is, what’s not going to change? What is going to be a constant? And I think this is one of those examples of something that’s not going to change, is that clients are going to, I think, especially ones with more complex personal, business or personal business situations, they’re going to want that person, you know, I just don’t see I don’t see that changing.

00:22:20:15 – 00:22:39:07
Unknown
I people want validation and, you know, the simple tax returns and that, that will potentially go. But, you know, it’s not where we really add value anyway. But, you know, I run a business where you have accountants across seven, eight countries, like we rely on those for that advice. You know, that one go right. We could we could Google it charging to it whatever.

00:22:39:07 – 00:23:02:22
Unknown
We could find that. But we want to validate and know and hear from them that it’s the right thing and we pay for that. Happy today. Yeah. Education. That’s another thing that, you like to talk about is a topic near and dear to your heart. Tell us, you know, about your thoughts on the importance of, of education in the accounting industry.

00:23:02:24 – 00:23:22:14
Unknown
Yeah. One of the things that I really didn’t like it as traditional in the financial planning and financial services background and coming into the accounting, one of the things that I struggle with and and when I first got in the industry, I, you know, I struggled to get a job like as a financial advisor. And it was because of my age and everyone kept.

00:23:22:14 – 00:23:41:04
Unknown
So I went and set up my own business in the end. And I know stuff you, I’ll prove you wrong. But for me, it’s, you know, coming into the accounting space, it’s the old, you know, ten years to partnership is a minimum. And and I’m like, why are we why are we holding people back? Like, why don’t we just get people competent quicker and it’s all now you need to do this for two years.

00:23:41:04 – 00:24:02:08
Unknown
And I remember, you know, when I did when I was doing my degree and I went and did some work experience and, you know, I’ll make coffee and I filed and I’m like, yeah, give me some stuff that I’m actually going to add value and I can accelerate. So for me, the training part is if we don’t try train and develop our team and we don’t accelerate their careers, they’re going to go and find a career somewhere else.

00:24:02:10 – 00:24:18:09
Unknown
Oh, I get I’ve been for a period of time and for me, I just see that we’re holding so many people back. Yes, they need capability and they need technical skills, but how can we? I just challenge every firm. How do we accelerate that? How do we give them the capability and skills sooner so that they can progress their careers?

00:24:18:09 – 00:24:37:17
Unknown
Because the more advanced workforce we have, the better we’re able to serve our clients and the more clients we can take. Where my real passion for learning came in and my siblings and parents and that laugh at this because I hated school. I hated like I don’t believe in university degrees in colleges and I don’t that was not my thing.

00:24:37:19 – 00:25:06:19
Unknown
But what I what I really, I suppose going through this journey of growing to found is that firms are really bad at training some people really great and they succeeded with a global team. Most were really bad and it didn’t work as well as it should have. Yeah. So, you know, I had this real passion of how do we build career plans, how do we start to give the training so that we could accelerate the careers of the local team, but also accelerate the careers of the global team?

00:25:06:24 – 00:25:27:18
Unknown
And one of the challenges with offshoring is when you when you build a really good team, you’ve got some real good capacity. But the biggest challenge we often saw is that the intermediates or the seniors likely couldn’t go to that next level. So suddenly we’ve growing all the people in the offshore team, so they’re great intermediates. Some were even some seniors.

00:25:27:20 – 00:25:45:12
Unknown
And then the gap was they didn’t have competent people locally to be able to lead them. So we started offering leadership training to firms and, and all sorts of training to try and accelerate. But for me, it’s if you want the best people, you’ve got to develop them. Look at every single, they do it. Why don’t we do it?

00:25:45:14 – 00:25:45:23
Unknown
Yeah.

00:25:45:23 – 00:26:15:21
Unknown
If you’re going to track like eight players, they want to be challenged and they want to be able to move up and I think, we could probably talk for a long time on this topic. Nick is is yeah. So many firm owners are they’re so buried in their own they’re still doing so much of the work themselves, and they’re still working many hours themselves that they’re not able to strategically think about training their teams and really invest in their people.

00:26:15:23 – 00:26:34:02
Unknown
And, you know, the ironic thing is that’s how they get freed up. You know, I can’t hear you on a firm like the best way to, make your life easier is to train your people, build them and so they can take work off of your plate. You know, and build a culture that they want to stay in.

00:26:34:02 – 00:26:50:08
Unknown
And I think that it’s a simple thing that, again, we get so caught up in our own business that it just becomes normal and we don’t think about it. And then we train, you know, some people up in, they leave them, it keeps happening and it’s like, well, why are they leaving? So why why would they stay? Yeah.

00:26:50:08 – 00:27:01:03
Unknown
What are you off? What are you. Yeah. What are you doing to keep them? I think that yeah, that’s firm culture. It’s like a it could be an upward spiral or a downward spiral.

00:27:01:03 – 00:27:09:10
Unknown
Right? Yeah. And happy people don’t mean productive people like you can have a really happy team, but it doesn’t mean that productive and effective. Yeah.

00:27:09:12 – 00:27:39:17
Unknown
True. That’s true. What do you what do you think is the biggest challenge you have with getting promoters to build a global team? I think the stigma of it. That would have been the first, you know, 5 to 7 years of of our running title. But these days it’s more around how do they document and build their process and systems for consistency is probably one of the biggest challenges.

00:27:39:17 – 00:28:01:19
Unknown
And how do you do that while you’re building a global team? Because if you wait to get that all built out, you’ll never do it. And then the second one is is really around leadership. It’s people that because we’re putting teams underneath, you know, seniors or managers, predominately really the seniors and even intermediates, and they’ve never really had exposure to leading people.

00:28:01:21 – 00:28:21:00
Unknown
Or if they have, it’s 1 or 2 people. But when you’re building a global team, there’s more. So I think leadership, is probably the biggest challenge as well outside of the system and process so that there’s consistency. Particularly when you’ve got multi directors, they don’t want to do it their own way. So when you have a global team, there should only be one way within this neighborhood.

00:28:21:00 – 00:28:56:00
Unknown
So should only be one. So for consistency and an ability to scale out the workflow. So yeah I’d say workflow. And then the secondary one being leadership capability or skills for people to lead teams that, leading teams probably earlier in their career than they would have traditionally. Are there any, any unique aspects in your mind of leading a offshore team or even maybe, just a virtual team that you don’t have in a brick and mortar environment?

00:28:56:02 – 00:29:15:04
Unknown
The global team is the and a part of the global team is around culture, meaning the culture of that country, the culture of India for example, is very different to the culture in the Philippines. So the culture in the Philippines about pleasing. So they’ll always say yes, even if they if they may, no, they’ll just tell you yes because they don’t want to.

00:29:15:04 – 00:29:32:15
Unknown
They call it saving face. They don’t want to say no because it looks bad. So they’ll just say yes and then they’ll try and work it out even if they can’t. So you’ve got a culture in that in India. You’ve got a culture of hierarchy. So you’ve got, you know, people that will only work in manager level roles because that’s their family status.

00:29:32:15 – 00:29:52:21
Unknown
It’s like, but you’ve got to start lower. So, you know, understanding today’s culture. And you know, if you get a Philippines team and then you just speed, you know, train them and then you go, do you understand? They’ll be like, yep yep yep yep. And then you come back three hours later and nothing’s been done. You’re like, it’s going on.

00:29:52:23 – 00:30:11:15
Unknown
But so you know and they want to save face I don’t want to let you down. And then if you were to you know and and again leadership styles if you’re passive aggressive and you may not be meaning to but if you’re like you, you basically tell them that that’s not acceptable. They’ll just not turn up tomorrow. They’ll never come back.

00:30:11:17 – 00:30:36:19
Unknown
So because I want to save face, I don’t want to, you know, that’s the their reputation has been, you know, impacted amongst their peers now. So understanding the culture is is the part I call it. It’s really the sacred source. And we trying all of our clients, we’ve got full training programs on this so that they really understand how to get the best out of them based on cultural differences, just even little things like bonuses.

00:30:36:19 – 00:31:04:21
Unknown
If you pay a Filipino bonus. The majority of our team members that work for us are the primary income earners for their family. So if you pay a bonus, it goes to the family and the hierarchy. The matriarch of the family then distributes the money across the family so they don’t actually get it. But if you were to go and buy them like a day spa or a massage or something that they would want for themselves personally, they’re going to while their family gets the impact of the money and they definitely appreciate it.

00:31:04:23 – 00:31:21:09
Unknown
It may be more impactful every now and again to go, look, I’ll put you in for a three hour day spa or something that is, you know, where do you want to go on holidays and give them something that’s more impactful? So it’s it’s really understanding the culture. But also understanding how to maximize and get the best out of people.

00:31:21:11 – 00:31:45:17
Unknown
Money for some is more important than a day spa, but for others, it’s like I just need a break from the family, the kids, the the work, the everything. That’s get me some doubt that I would love that. So I think, yeah, it’s all of those things that when you’re outsourcing, you don’t think about that. And I think that even flows on to when you’re managing a team locally is truly understanding your people, understanding what drives them, understanding the things that you know they’re dealing with.

00:31:45:17 – 00:32:00:23
Unknown
You know, I’ve had a team member of ours in Australia that, you know, single mom for seven years, she worked with us and, you know, there was no one else to get the kids sometimes. So she had to go. Or if the kids were sick, she had to go. But, you know, some people would be like, no, you can’t leave.

00:32:00:23 – 00:32:30:00
Unknown
It’s like, no, no, you need to be flexible. She always put the work in work that side of the house. But understanding the individual and the flexibility that is needed is different with everyone. Yeah. Interesting. Well good stuff. I got two more closing questions. We’re kind of getting towards the end here. What has been, you know, one of the more memorable or maybe even outrageous experiences you’ve had in your career.

00:32:30:02 – 00:32:55:06
Unknown
I’ve had so many, lots of stories. How you started, how you started Tesla was, it was one of those that’s when you put that one in this, I got lots, lots ones traveling with clients, and that would probably not appropriate for this. I’d say I want wanted to be the most memorable for me is honestly, we run a conference every year called to work on, when we get our clients and we bring in guest speakers, there’s two days of just.

00:32:55:07 – 00:33:19:07
Unknown
It’s like I conferences, just world class speakers that have got nothing to do with accounting. And I brought in probably one of the best sporting coaches in Australia. My grandfather has idolized and watched this coach his whole career. My grandfather’s, you know, in his 90s. And I was able to get him to meet his idol, which is this coach, a couple of years ago.

00:33:19:07 – 00:33:37:20
Unknown
And that for me, when I look at, you know, it’s not outrageous. It’s nothing to do with really anything other than for me to be able to get him to meet his idol and in his 90s and just see how he felt from that just gives me goosebumps thinking about every time, oh, that’s cool. Business gets allows us to be able to do some cool things.

00:33:37:20 – 00:34:02:17
Unknown
But yeah, I’ve got lots of stuff I just wouldn’t tell on this podcast though. Yeah, yeah. What was your grandfather’s reaction like? Stunned is probably the word. He didn’t know how to react. I mean, it was like a kid saying he’s odd over saying a 19 year old and say someone. I mean, he followed this sporting team that this guy coach for 15 years, he was a life member of the club.

00:34:02:17 – 00:34:23:00
Unknown
He went to every single game, every single week. Like, he was like, yeah, he dedicated. Yeah, like for a long time. So to meet one of his heroes in life in his 90s was. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. All right, last question. The book recommendation. What do you what do you have for guests today? Just move ahead.

00:34:23:00 – 00:34:42:12
Unknown
For those watching it on camera. Damn motels buy back your time. Yeah, but at the top for anyone like this one. Yeah. You wrote that book. Denmark. So I’ve heard of this book. Yeah. By my back in time. I’ve. I’ve had an eye for a long time, and I thought I was Maxim, although it was pretty good.

00:34:42:12 – 00:35:01:18
Unknown
It maximizes my time, my diaries. Normally at eight months in advance. I’m pretty. I’m very structured. Organized. Then my tail kicked me in the butt when I read this book, I’ve gone and done, masterminds, mentoring, coaching and everything with him. I’ve spent a good amount of money since I read this book. But, yeah, if you haven’t read it, highly recommend it.

00:35:01:18 – 00:35:24:11
Unknown
It’s either. Every time. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a game changer. Yeah, yeah, check that out. All right. Awesome, Nick. Always fun. Always enjoy having you on. Thanks for coming. Appreciate you having me on again. And yeah. Always loved doing these with you. Where, if people want to follow you or check you out online, what’s the best way across all social media platforms?

00:35:24:11 – 00:35:35:01
Unknown
Whatever. Whatever is your preference? Someone pretty much all of them. So yeah, across all, all social media, reach out, say hi. I love talking to people. Cool. All right. Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Brian.

00:35:35:19 – 00:35:50:03
Unknown
Thanks for listening to the Accountant’s Flight Plan podcast. You can keep the momentum going by subscribing and sharing your thoughts with us. Visit our website at PPL Group advisors.com for more resources, and tune in next time for more exciting conversations like this one.

00:35:50:05 – 00:35:56:04
Unknown
This podcast was produced and edited by Liesl Eppes of her group advisors. Thanks for listening.