Adam Rundle is the Co-founder of CleverProfits, a firm that helps online businesses become more profitable. CleverProfit’s team excels in accounting, tax, and growth strategies. Adam founded the company with Bryan Nguyen after realizing that many online entrepreneurs were failing because they didn’t understand finances. Together, they created a solution that enabled business owners to plan, forecast, and predict their future financial performances and effectively scale their businesses.
Adam is also the Owner of CFO Coach and an Assistant Rugby Coach for the United States Naval Academy. Before starting CleverProfits, Adam was a Financial Manager for C&A Friedlander Attorneys and a Varsity Cup U20 Rugby Coach for the University of Cape Town’s rugby club.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Adam Rundle talks about his journey creating CleverProfits and why he loves coaching
- The benefits of having a great business partner
- Adam explains the six-week Profit Accelerator program
- The three tiers of services CleverProfits offers
- How CleverProfits opened up effective communication with clients
- Common client pain points and Adam’s solutions
- What is The Perfect P&L?
In this episode…
No one wakes up in the morning and says, “I can’t wait to pay my accountant today.” But most businesses can’t survive without one, either. So, how can you find a happy and healthy partnership that will help you build a solid financial future?
CleverProfits is a financial firm with an innovative solution. Rather than signing your life away at step one, you can join their six-week Profit Accelerator program. With this process, they help you strengthen your company’s financial foundation, develop unique growth strategies, and create a personalized tax plan. If you find their services beneficial (and most participants do), you can partner with their team throughout your business journey to take advantage of their excellent financial intel and tax genius.
In this episode of Agency Journey, Gray MacKenzie is joined by Adam Rundle, the Co-founder of CleverProfits, to discuss why a firm financial foundation is essential for your business. Adam talks about the services CleverProfits offers, how they develop unique solutions for each business they work with, and why simplicity is always the best option.
Presenting Sponsor:
ZenPilot:
And be sure to check out ZenPilot, where we help agencies optimize their operations using our proven systems and processes.
ZenPilot knows that you are tired of wasting time on trial-and-error — that’s why we provide tried-and-true solutions that will help you grow and scale quickly and sustainably.
So, what are you waiting for?
Go to zenpilot.com to learn more.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Adam Rundle on LinkedIn
- Adam Rundle on Facebook
- CleverProfits
- The Perfect P&L
- Email: adam@cleverprofits.com
- Remington Begg on the Agency Journey podcast
- Gray MacKenzie on LinkedIn
- ZenPilot
- Entrepreneurs on Fire podcast by John Lee Dumas
- Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential by Greg Crabtree
Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Agency Journey podcast where we connect with agency leaders to uncover the hidden systems and processes that drive their success. Now let’s dive into today’s show.
Gray MacKenzie 0:17
Alright, welcome back to another episode of Agency Journey. This is Gray MacKenzie from ZenPilot. And this week, I’ve got the pleasure of bringing on Adam Rundle from CleverProfits. Adam, I am a current customer of Adam’s, one of Adam’s customer, customer sounds.
Adam Rundle 0:32
It’s a customer. We have a client actually, but you can see Right, right.
Gray MacKenzie 0:37
So I’m excited we’ll dive into to what CleverProfits is and CleverProfits story what you guys are doing our working relationship. All that good stuff, Adam. Thanks for joining me, man.
Adam Rundle 0:45
Right. Thanks for having me. Yeah, great to be great to talk to you and share some thoughts with you and your audience. And thanks for being a client. Clearly, we’re doing something right, somewhere. We only heard about that at some point. That’s a good thing to let us know what to do. Well, pleasure to be here.
Gray MacKenzie 1:03
So let’s get a little bit of the backdrop because obviously people listening are like, Oh, he’s not from Pennsylvania. I wonder, I wonder what’s going on here. So your story, there’s so many things I want to hear about, but give us kind of the backdrop. And then how the accounting side of things bookkeeping world came about.
Adam Rundle 1:25
So yeah, definitely. I’m not from Pennsylvania. Born and bred South Africa, and a little town called Pretoria. We’re not little it’s actually a capital city. But not many people know that but Pretoria in South Africa, and then went down to the University of Cape Town, which is by far and away the best part of South Africa, on the coast, studied their standard accounting. And was very fortunate to be involved in a law firm. As I finished college as they’re in as an accountant as they you know, the way things happened in the world is was pretty incredible and reflection, but they pretty big law firm 150 people and old school leadership or like old school partners and everything and the guy who was running the financials at lawyer, who was the head of the finance firm that transitioned out they were kind of looking for someone I met a guy, you know, the rest is history, I kind of come in as this little whippersnapper, new new dude on the block just to help him. And there’s really enjoyed the environment, it was very fortunate to kind of grow over those four years with them pretty pretty heavily to us, eventually, essentially, the CFO and we’re sitting in the executive meetings and chatting some of the guys who have been there for 45 years, how much they can pay themselves and what kind of bonus they can take was it was kind of fun. And I just learned this, I learned the practical application of what I’d studied, which was a lot of fun. And I really I think I got an incredible opportunity to do that in a unique way. And not just sitting on a big you know, big four firm working on like one small part of finance I kind of got to see the whole picture and, and more importantly, how the picture translated to decisions. And I think that’s where that’s why CleverProfits is what it is, it’s why I am who I am is because that’s the part I enjoyed the most is anyone can run a p&l anyone can reconcile an account but would you do with it is where everything that’s the value. And so I got to I got to experience that firsthand, which was a lot of fun. And then my wife, we wanted to do something a little bit different, she’s as African as well. And we she lived here in America for a couple of for a year 2014 to internship on Capitol Hill, blah blah blah, and we wanted to do something different and we decided America will be fine and so we moved to Annapolis where she was from where she spent that year incredible community of people and I had to make some money so I decided to start my own little accounting firm and it’s called AVR consulting originally, I’m pretty sure most people listening here would know about conversions.ai de Braga Moser they were running a business called before proof actually called the Providence scale and entrepreneur Alliance they were my first ever client they used to live in Annapolis that took three partners and they got me connected to a lot of people more clients you know exposure and then they ended up starting proof and then went off with the door SAS thing and move to Austin and stuff which is awesome for them and then just that grew and was happening and then I met Bryan Nguyen who’s my business partner now he’s the tax guy based out of California and just realized okay I can’t do this without him like we’re five I don’t have a tax guy I’m nothing and then get CleverProfits was formed you know he he had to have a taxes was his business so we stole his IP and his name and his logo and everything through my clients in the ring and we came together and CleverProfits was born and now we have 35 people and Yeah, lots of clients and trying to change the world. You guys.
Gray MacKenzie 4:46
Obviously there’s a lot of similarities between what you do and what a digital agency i’d same type of. client relationships like you know, structure would look a lot similar between between both But you mentioned something there. It’s kind of like a throwaway comment, not really throwaway comment, but just a one liner. That’s similar between you and me. But you can definitely see mountain the way they live, which is focusing on what decisions do people make off of that? What do you actually drive? What’s the behavior that gets driven, but it’s produced from the financial team. And you see that coaching art in everything that you’re doing, even with some of the stuff that you’re building out, kind of on the not the core of our profits business, but also from a coaching perspective, which transitions me and what I’ve really had you on to talk about for 30 minutes which rugby beer one says that at some point, you’re still you’re still coaching, right?
Adam Rundle 5:45
I am. Yeah, look, I might might does I missed over this because I’m an accountant. Now I’m going to come forward as an accountant. And my biggest desire growing up was to become a professional rugby coach and I was coaching at a very high level in South Africa.
Gray MacKenzie 6:00
Your desire was to be a coach, not a player,
Adam Rundle 6:03
coach, I was never really a good player. And I didn’t think I really enjoyed the game. I played the game, but I just, I love coach coaching side, this passion for coaching. I probably spent more money trying to become a professional rugby coach and I did become an accountant, a lot of investment into that time, time in New Zealand. Time in Europe, it’s just a lot of time and effort and realizing and you know, it’s hard life isn’t really what I wanted, I don’t know, still question wherever young guy, maybe anything can happen. But the transition from America, South Africa to America was a big realization that, hey, I’ve got to, I’ve got to do something else. I can’t just coach as much as I want to. And so that I think a lot of what I brought to the my business world is that coaching element, because I’m so passionate about and I love it. And I think what you’re hitting on is it’s so it’s ingrained in me, I think anyone who’s ever worked with me would say like, oh, you’re a pretty decent coach. And that just because I’ve done it for so long, maybe in a different context, I’ve learned how to do it in this context. But I coach at the US Naval Academy, and which is fine, which is great. And a lot of fun with that healing practice after this podcast, which will be fun. But But nothing that active. I mean, it’s more of a hobby now than it’s not.
Gray MacKenzie 7:20
I don’t know, your LinkedIn says Attack Coach, is that still accurate? Yeah, I’m
Adam Rundle 7:24
the Attack Coach,
Gray MacKenzie 7:25
I have zero idea what that mean. I mean, I would assume that’s an offensive coordinator, right? Like it is. But
Adam Rundle 7:31
But I mean, the, the, the relationship between rugby and football is very different to football is a very different type of game I have a ton of respect for and I actually find it hard in some ways to watch. But if I love watching it in some ways, and
Don Keninitz 7:45
you know, football
Adam Rundle 7:47
is a lot more strategic. And so there’s a lot more people involved in that world where rugby’s a little more simplistic in that it’s a lot more of a free flowing game. So there’s only three coaches, there’s only three of us, you know, we don’t have a 15 man coaching staff. So as an offensive coordinator is like managing players, team personnel, debt, darts or segments, and just manage a group of guys on the field and the ball to where you want it to be. I mean, that’s kind of my job.
Gray MacKenzie 8:12
And that’s awesome. So when did you and Bryan get together?
Adam Rundle 8:18
Told me dates, and I can’t remember the exact time I mean, I think it was middle of 18. Okay. I, we had a mutual client, and I just realized, okay, this, this is the guy I want to work with. It’s the kind of guy I want to do this with. And we just had awesome conversations from there. The the union was simple. And
Gray MacKenzie 8:35
then the goal because you guys have grown a lot in a short amount of time. was the goal, similar from the beginning? Or is this kind of organically evolved? Was it?
Adam Rundle 8:44
Yeah, I think the goal was, you know, I don’t know if I don’t know, if we truly articulated the level of growth. And I don’t, I don’t I don’t know, I don’t think we were probably a little bit surprised by the level of growth, to be honest. But we always knew that this was the vision that we wanted to build something and build something of decent size and decent impact. And our visions aligned there and, and, you know, we work exceptionally well together. And, and it was, you know, I’ve consulted many, many, many people on partnerships to my job, and CFO and help people think about partnerships and stuff like that. And I always have to remind myself that my, my, my real life experience with Bryan was like, the easiest thing in the world. Like it was like three or four phone calls. And we knew we wanted to do this and we just carried on and some people don’t have an experience some people it’s pretty painful experience attacked. So just what I’m trying to say is like, we were just so aligned, and said, yeah, we can do
Gray MacKenzie 9:42
this, right. I’m going to describe what you guys do from the outside, so that you can,
Adam Rundle 9:48
you’ll describe it better than me, that’s for sure. That I don’t I just don’t think
Gray MacKenzie 9:53
so you guys start similar to what a lot of agencies do, but you guys start you call it the Profit Accelerator. It’s a six week process. It’s actually a little bit different from what agencies are doing. Strategy is a piece of it, but you’re doing a lot of historical like catch up bookkeeping kind of get you up to speed in terms of where you are now, get the benchmark in place, and then forget what needs to happen. Because your recommendations were a lot of agencies, there’s a little bit of time and attention spent on where your current marketing is, but most of the time, I think there’s, I think there’s a lot more forward looking strategy and ideas, then catch up work now that you guys aren’t doing the forward looking strategy. But most agencies aren’t doing as much in terms of, hey, let’s go back and fix things as part of this. Then you move into what agencies think of as the retainer model. And that’s where you guys are doing the Bookkeeping and Tax prep? Or clients? The has that has that been the model from the beginning? Or did you get start selling straight to the retainer?
Adam Rundle 10:50
Yeah, we started straight to retainer. I mean, originally, you know, my first first few clients will just retain are like, hey, how can I help you get better and we realized is we were, you know, not we’re sticky service, you know, not not everyone’s looking for a new accountant every second day of the week, or new doctor or new lawyer, and be relatively grudge purchases, you know, no one’s like waking up in the morning, I so can’t wait to pay my accountant today, well, I can’t wait to pay my lawyer like this, you know, it’s that it’s that kind of world. And we’re not, we’re not naive, we know that that’s the kind of world and so the profit accelerator was designed to do two things, it was to give us an opportunity internally to really figure out whether we can help someone. And, and, and there lies the fundamental of the historical work. Like, if we don’t do the historical, I don’t have, we don’t have a crystal clear objective view of what’s happening in your business. Anything I tell you is going to be sh 20. Anything I you know, I can tell anyone, how you can build a skyscraper like is that anyone can do that. But can you do it based on your foundation and where you are, and what you’re doing is a different story. So there’s that part. But then also, the part that we realized for the client is, this is this is a, this is a, this is a commitment they want to make, and they’re not looking to have as you know, I think agencies are more disposable, you know, people can kind of bounce around a little bit, they can have two or three different agencies in here. And it’s not that painful. I’m not saying it’s not painful, it’s painful, but it’s not as overwhelmingly painful as having two or three different encounters that will be excruciating. And so we just respectfully to people, like hey, we don’t expect you to sign your life away, like just this do six weeks, like you’re gonna you’re gonna get what you need anyway, like, you need the foundation, whether you think you need or not, you have gap, but you’re going to get the strategy which is gonna help you, you’re gonna get a tax plan, which is going to help you. But also you’re going to be like, hey, these, like some up, it’s like, I don’t want to work with him, or you’re going to be like, Oh, this guy’s cool. I enjoy working with him. And I think there’s I think that’s a good way to start the relationship. I think it helps both parts
Gray MacKenzie 12:50
isn’t much more tactical question. But why six weeks, and
Adam Rundle 12:57
four major deliverables. And so four weeks would be like GPU would be really good, because you can’t miss up a week and eight weeks would be too long, because the pooling of them. So I think six weeks to feels like a good buffer point, good timeframe. And we said, everyone, it’s six weeks, but it’s really till delivery, right? If it takes us quicker than another, we could get delivered. They’re just longer. We’ll communicate through that. But the timeframe is read graphics. Right? Right.
Gray MacKenzie 13:24
Make sense? That’s awesome. On the back end, you guys are is every client doing bookkeeping, in tax prep.
Adam Rundle 13:32
So we have a couple of tears so so our lowest tier, we have three tiers. The lowest tier is the compliance officer, mainly just bookkeeping, accounting and taxes with a monthly report from your account manager with all new videos saying, hey, this, what’s happening, and axios and slack kind of chat to us and your account manager and your team whenever you need it. That’s kind of a lower tier. The next tier is more strategic, big emphasis on Team growth on you trying to grow your team trying to hire people, both compensation structures, that kind of stuff. So we were looking at you, you know, you have an account manager you’re going to meet, you know, once every two weeks, you’re going to have a little CFO strategy call once every two weeks to get the lay of the land, what’s happening normally weekly reports are sent out. And then everything else that’s below that, obviously, all the bookkeeping, accounting and tax work is carried through. And then the top tier is the next level is at the executive level. So sitting as a CFO and your executive team. So yeah, we’re looking at businesses who have an executive team or they have a CEO CFO cmo, that you know, there’s a group of four or five people sitting at the top every week sitting in executive meeting making decisions, we will sit on as the CFO in that and there’s normally just more calls more interaction more interaction with the team, just a little bit more in depth hands on business.
Gray MacKenzie 14:47
very intrusive question, but I’m gonna ask it anyways, feel free to decline to answer I would assume in a business like that. It’s similar to any distribution where 80% or whatever the majority are, hey, lowest here and yeah,
Adam Rundle 14:59
fast. I mean, I think we’re on an allied to you now because I don’t know the exact number, but I think 50 or something I don’t normally client, something like that. And I would say it’s 1520 on the top end, maybe 5060 in the middle, and the rest, right? And we know you know, our hope. And this is not sales talk, it’s just our hope is that we move people along the cycle, like grow open space, if you be smaller and just started we want to help you go through the tears and get to the top. That’s, that’s helpful for us. It’s good for us and it’s also good for you. So that’s, it’s all geared for that. I mean, that doesn’t always happen. You know, that’s, that’s neither here nor there. But that’s the vision. Yep.
Gray MacKenzie 15:44
I mean, I haven’t worked with a million accounting firms we had Josh barely on cast probably, I don’t know a year and a half ago. A good friend and accountant. He Have you ever heard of the podcast entrepreneurs on fire? Yeah, Entrepreneur on Fire.
Adam Rundle 15:57
What’s his name? Is he BAM? I didn’t know his name is john Dumas isn’t?
Gray MacKenzie 16:02
Yeah, correct. That’s the the podcaster so john Lee Dumas got super famous for not super fan. I mean, in our very small niche area. He got famous for having a podcast every single day doing these entrepreneurial interviews. Josh Bauer, Li, accountant, CPA Empire, cold email, john thing, hey, podcast, you need some tax help as he was going out on his own. And it would have been perfect timing, so you got to deal with him. I did not know that time. But maybe a year or two later, I’d heard john on the podcast, we needed a new accountant. I called emailed him. I said, Hey, your website’s terrible. We need an accountant, website. Trading services back and forth for a number of years where we do the marketing and web stuff, or or financials and bookkeeping. Which cell phone funny. That long story short, we don’t work with a ton of different accounting firms but you guys interface with your clients in slack. So the cool thing is, there’s a monthly report you send it with a loom video each month, and obviously depending on what year of service you’re on monthly or weekly or whatever. But you’ve got slack access so you guys have these things that are embracing more and more firms will move to this but a pretty modern communication tech stack at least with clients. Am I right? That’s abnormal. And then is that been a piece of I feel like that was undersold and this might be positioning Oh, that was almost undersold, I’m taking
Adam Rundle 17:32
notes and taking notes
Gray MacKenzie 17:36
of the distinction I guess in communication styles between that and a number of past experiences
Adam Rundle 17:43
Yeah, I think it also morphed itself we were we were email originally and and I’m trying to wrack my brain now to to remember why we did this. And I remember why we did the weekly report and the monthly report that was also not a thing for a long time and that started because I found it hard to keep up with all the clients it originally was just me and I had a small team of people but I found it hard for me to keep up with where everyone was at. So what I did for two months is I just created a report for myself to know where people are and then the guy on my team was like I would just send this to people because this is super helpful and then there was the report was born and it’s a massive bot so that was pretty cool. I think that the communications and that’s part of the communication is we were that that helped us improve communication and and we don’t think that that look this CleverProfits Okay, like I’m not that great. I didn’t do we didn’t do the report to improve communication we did a report and I’ll be helpful but what it did do is it massively improved communication because one of the biggest problems with accountants is lack of communication and and so the longer that the communication is there’s long as there’s a lack of communication both parties I mean this important people to understand both parties fit because you’re going you’re a client doing well if this like I need my stuff again I want to know what’s going on but I can guarantee you that the accountant is gone so far that it’s hard for him to even just or hurt to deliver because they just so far without the note and that was my problem I was like I can’t keep up anymore and so I created this mechanism for me to keep up which now became better communication so that was not born out of trying to be innovative just born out of a little desire and then I remember the slack was just clients clients were using slack and we’ll ask the question and comments use slack and we’re like, what is it let’s try I mean we tried it and realize like, yeah, if you want to know the age old story if you want to, if you if you want to solve someone something go to their world, go into their world and be part of their world and then you can you consulted it. So if we want to serve our people go into their world, they tell them that and next to their button on slack so that they don’t have to make it easy for them. And I think it is pretty a pretty pretty modern I guess, but I would I would say imperative in the modern age. I mean, I feel like in a communication is key. And then our services were done for you not done with you, we don’t for you. Communication is key. We need to know what’s going on. We need to know what’s going on and symbiotically, we can do our job if we don’t know you can’t do your job, if you don’t know. And so communication is huge. And we just had a creative project internally, two weeks ago and three weeks ago on how to improve communication with staff because we don’t feel like it’s good enough. So you’re great on slack. But we’re still trying to improve that because I feel like it can always be improved, because they are fundamental to our job.
Gray MacKenzie 20:31
Big point that I think every early service provider gets wrong, which is thinking silence is good. If I don’t hear anything, and things are good. It’s good.
Adam Rundle 20:40
Like it’s good. And silence can silence. Silence can happen, which doesn’t have to come from you. For sure you make noise, you may get silence in return. But you want to keep asking the question, don’t stop asking the question. ask for feedback, I suppose. What do you need? Just don’t stop? Because that that’s important thing to do? Yeah. Okay, so
Gray MacKenzie 21:00
let’s, let’s switch over, I could ask you a million questions about the business and in life graphs, or some of those will probably still think through. You guys work with a lot of online entrepreneurs agencies, worse, greater, like people in online education and agency service type space. And if I’m Miss categorizing, feel free to clarify that but common mistakes, kind of principles of what you guys apply these similar to. So we get this whole methodology and work with clients. Here’s the when there was actually a ton of compatibility with kind of our framework for how businesses should run and your framework, probably another layer of detail on the financial performance side of the business. You guys have a specific methodology specific way of breaking down categorizing work. So before we get to that, is what are the common pain points that you see when people are coming to you? What are the common things that you have to go in and fix that you wish that agencies similar visits that we just get? Right? Yeah, it’s
Adam Rundle 21:57
I’ll try and get you some concise answers. I think the first thing is the simplicity factor, I strongly believe in simplicity, keep it simple. And the very few things in the world need to be truly complicated. Very, very few things. And I’m not saying that it’s so much an absolute statement, there are things that do need to be but very few things need to be I can tell you right now, finances does not mean complicated at all. It can feel complicated, and it can feel overwhelming, but doesn’t need to be. And we achieve that by key drivers. So what we identified is what are the key drivers to make any business work? So this business focused on those? And I think the mistake that people are making is they’re not focusing on that’s the mistake is that there’s too many sideshows, you know, often get on a call with someone. So yeah, I just need to do my, my bookkeeping so I can file my taxes. And I’ll go, You do realize that that’s actually it’s a 100%, byproduct of your business filing taxes, important fundamental conduct, do it, you have to do it, and there’s an obligation, so everyone freaks out about it. But it’s a 100% byproduct. If you want if you if you’re only interested in the world, just to file taxes, please don’t ever pay a bookkeeper. At the end of the year, take all your stuff, find someone on Upwork, who understands accounting, thought of them, say hey, can you please prepare my books for me? Give him a week. 500 bucks, available for you send it to your accountant and file your taxes and your Karen, great. You want to make you want to run a business so that you actually have taxes to pay, you’re going to need that stuff every week. You want to know what’s happening every single week. And so it’s that focus point where what are you focusing on? That’s just one of them? and other ones are? I’m focusing on? Do I have the right software in place, okay, cuz you should watch a software buddy, you don’t have an acquisition model. You have no people paying you money. So forget about what software you just go find out how we get what people pay us money. So we can actually have a business or I’m trying to think about whatever and I’m thinking about my team. You’ve got to it’s just a focus point. And it’s it’s understanding what is what is the focus point, and I talk a lot about constraints and other stuff I do. Everything in the worlds is a series of constraints, you identify the most important one, you solve it and you move on to the next one, you move on to the next one, you move on to the next one. And it’s just hierarchy that just got a hierarchy, you got to get the hierarchy, right, you got to go do it. And I think that’s the mistake a lot of people are making is this jumbled, it’s they’re putting they’re putting the byproduct first. They’re putting things that are really not needle movers at all front of mind putting a lot of time and effort into an 8020 principle. And they’re just losing a losing opportunity losing our ability to truly grow at scale at the rate they want.
Gray MacKenzie 24:49
Yep, definitely see that. I mean, then thing in our world. We just did a webinar earlier today with a spot Talking about automation can make HubSpot and ClickUp, the platform that we implement primarily on work together, please like, please don’t try and keep automating this stuff until we actually have a process that we’re skipping ahead here, it’ll break. You guys have this model called the perfect p&l, which is, I think, are my outside perception, what you’re like one of the core methodologies that you’re known for. translated to agency world. It is probably this, it’s still the same rough numbers, but there might be some tweaks to that model, you walk into the perfect piano.
Adam Rundle 25:37
Yeah. So the idea of perfect being is born out of a couple of things, I was really enjoy playing chess when I was younger. And I remember learning, like how to how to position your pieces in the best possible way to for success, and the likelihood of you achieving that is very low, because you are reacting to someone else. But if you understood, you know, where do I want my work, or where do I want my dish or whatever, to give them the best, the best effectiveness on the board, it’s an important thing to understand. So I remember I remember that I remember that I read profit first. Then I read another book called Simple numbers, big profits, and realized, like, I feel like there’s just a lack of a framework of what is good in this world. So I was beginning very self self self issue, I’m working with these clients perfectly. And I came later as I’m working with these clients, and when I don’t even know whether they’re doing well on it. Like I’m still trying to figure out whether that’s a good profit margin, or they’re spending the right amount of money. They’re asking me and I’m trying to figure that out. And so again, at a massive personal desires, like I need to, I need to know what is good or bad. And so we started formulating this thing called the perfect dinner, which is essentially, what the perfect business would look like. And again, it’s, it’s a very generic term that every business is different, but it’s just a framework of what the perfect business would look like, and where you’re spending your money. And then we identified that big, big thing I don’t like about traditional accounting is just because it’s a random list of expenses. in alphabetical order, which is even worse, this random list of alphabetic order expenses, you know, p&l, that kind of makes no sense. And actually, every now and then I have to look at one because I, we get one from someone and I don’t even know how to read it in one sex confusing, because the way I look at ours is just got a uniqueness to it. And so we realized, okay, what, what we actually want to be doing is we want to be identifying the key areas of the business, and we want to be measuring them, so we can manage them, not just overall profitability, it’s not enough, I need macro numbers and numbers less than 510 15%, to manage, so that I can manage them and get a better good outcome. And so we identified what the key drivers were. And there are only two key drivers in every business, no matter what kind of business you are, there’s a there’s a third of you manufacturing or a SaaS company, which is development or product, building the product or manufacturing the product. But by and large, if you don’t have that, there’s only two. And it’s client acquisition and fulfillment, your ability to get a client and your ability to deliver. And those are the key drivers. That’s the heartbeat of every business, we called it the golden ratio, that’s where businesses thrive. And then the third one is over it again. So you have to have a plan, but there’s a byproduct, how much you spend on rent, software, insurance, utilities, merchant fees, like it’s all because of the other two, okay, so we don’t let those be the drivers we need those be the following. ads, the perfect game, I’ll just simply state Okay, top line revenue, what percentage of your revenue are you spending on acquisition? What percentage of your revenue are you spending on performance? What percentage of revenue? Are you spending on overheads? And then what’s your pre tax profit? In an ideal world, if you’re an agency, you want to be spending about 10% on acquisition, about 45% on fulfillment, and about 15% on overheads get your 30% pre tax profit number, awesome number really robust are factoring some taxes, you got a great net profit. That’s the perfect p&l Now obviously, give or take percentage points here or there based on different nuances. But that’s the blueprint high level view of what the perfect p&l
Gray MacKenzie 28:56
is. Yep. That’s awesome. That framework was really helpful. as we were going through the profit accelerator to compete and we have a very similar we break everybody’s cup up for an agency, there’s growth delivering operations, which your parlance acquisition, fulfillment and overhead, super similar on that side, but even just putting putting dollars and cents to it. What does that mean from a comp structure perspective, from a retainer? balance perspective, there’s a lot of decisions, go back to earlier that come out of how you structure because that you guys probably have looked at this. Do more clients come to you looking for bookkeeping help? CFO help or for tax help? I would assume that’s all
Adam Rundle 29:42
very seasonal. And, yeah, this time of the year where every single person just stacks up and they start from here with a nice, pretty seasoned, I don’t know, I don’t know what the split is. And the reality is, you know, if you’re looking for help with one, yep, there’s a high likelihood that you have You probably need help with the others right? Because they feed each other you know if you had a really solid bookkeeping thing in place yes you may need some tax help but it’s normally easy to find because you’ve probably connected to the guys doing your bookkeeping or person who’s doing a book. So yeah, and it’s a bit of a mix seasonality is big and we try and just help people where they can so if that’s your focus, we’re going to help you with that and if we uncover anything else say we’ll see if we can help you there
Gray MacKenzie 30:27
right right that makes sense I’ve got so many other things I can grow yeah but we’re at time here so I’m gonna let you go but before we do let’s put people are interaction CleverProfits.com is the site is there a better way Adam outside he’s going to the site and booking a call through the site and reaching out to the site
Adam Rundle 30:46
I mean, UK Yeah, yeah, my email is adam@cleverprofits.com you can send me an email you can see me on Facebook and just say what’s up and WhatsApp on WhatsApp on messenger and I’ll say what’s up back and we’ll have a chat and see if you want to chat to you or not to Yeah, we don’t have it’s funny. We’ve grown exponentially we, I would say got a fairly sized business but we’re pretty simple. In the sales side. Go one guy, Jacob Goodson. He’s our sales guy and you know 90% of our work is referral so we actually don’t do any marketing rarely a little bit here or there with some videos in landing paid like you know, little things out there. So we just chatted us to say what’s up and we’ll say what’s up with bringing help we can help if we can’t, we can’t wait to get connected so keep it easy.
Gray MacKenzie 31:35
Awesome. Wasn’t been really fun to do. We’ve enjoyed working with you and the team I think is important resource for folks to know about. There’s a lot of I’ve seen a lot of pop ups in the like outsourced CFO positioning world heard feedback on a bunch of different people Remington bag was on podcast recently he gave a count fully a shout out is another good for me. There’s a handful of them. But we hear about a lot that are not your experience, but a great experience with you guys. So I appreciate your time coming on be willing to share them. Thanks for
Adam Rundle 32:04
joining. Yeah, great. Thank you. Thanks for having me into your audience. Just Yeah, thanks for listening. Sorry for the accountings. Always everyone’s strong suit, oh, enjoyment factor of listening to we try to make it a little bit more exciting. I think we’re young people trying to make a difference in the world. But yeah, thanks for having me, man.
Gray MacKenzie 32:21
Thanks for listening
Outro 32:22
to the Agency Journey podcast. Visit agencyjourneyinsiders.com to join the podcast community and be sure to subscribe for future episodes.
