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Expert Interview - In Conversation with Mark Wickersham

4th Aug 2014
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Hi everyone, I’d like to welcome you to the very latest in the series of the USP expert interviews.  For many of you who have been following this series, you will know that there have been very well known names that we have been speaking to, the likes of Ron Baker and Paul Dunn and Steve Pipe.

What I want to do now is to move us onto the next level, and I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of talking today with AVNs Mark Wickersham.

Mark, for me as somebody who observes the profession; is one of the great emerging gurus that we have in accountancy. Somebody who has helped a huge number of firms develop their infrastructure and been able to really support them in a number of ways to grow their practice.  Sometimes astronomically so, certainly so in some of the firms that I have worked with over the years. They have ascribed a tremendous amount of their success down to Mark, the AVN, and the systems and processes that they provide their members with.

I’m very grateful to have this opportunity to speak with Mark today, and to give a platform to someone who I think we will be hearing an awful lot more from in the coming years.  So Mark, thank you very much for taking up your time to be with us today.

You are welcome.  And I’m flattered that you have called me one of the emerging gurus.

That’s how I see it.  Of the voices that I hear and the voices that I hear people subscribing to, yours is right up there at the top.   

What I’d like to do is to get an idea of how you have arrived here, because obviously AVN is closely associated with Steve Pipe and his personality, and that has changed now.

I’d like you to tell us how you grew from qualifying as a chartered accountant to having your own practice, through to being what is now one of the foremost advisors for accounting firms in the UK?

Sure.  I entered the accounting profession way back in 1988, I qualified as a chartered accountant three years later.  I always wanted to set up and be in charge of my own destiny and become a partner, and in 1996 set up my own accounting firm from scratch, working from a room in my house.  That soon became an office, and then another office and that grew very rapidly.  In fact in the first two and a bit years grew to 200 clients, a couple of hundred thousand pounds of fees, it grew very fast but also I made an incredible number of mistakes in those early years.

Despite the very rapid growth of my accounting firm, I wasn’t making any money.  And something needs to change, it was 1998 when I first met Steve Pipe, and became one of the first accountants to become an AVN member.  So I’ve known Steve since 1998, he completely changed the way I thought about running an accountancy practice, and I put in place a number of things he talked about.  So much so that a year later he asked me to be a guest speaker at one of his master classes, the feedback was overwhelming at the time and Steve asked me to do the next one and the next one.  I’ve done every master class ever since.  Steve and I got together then and started working together since 2,000.  I’ve been working with accountants now for over 13 years.  I sold the accounting firm.

One of the things I learned from Steve was the importance of systems, I systemised it and built it up to a stage where the client manager could do a management buy-out and bought my practice; that was in 2006.  Since then I’ve spent all my time helping accountants, which is something that I am passionate about.

Obviously I come from a background of being an accountant, made my own mistakes in the early years, learned from those mistakes, changed my practice, and I get a huge amount of satisfaction teaching other accountants how to do the same sort of things I did.  I’m very fortunate, very lucky to have worked with over a thousand accountants now since the year 2,000, and many success stories of firms doing some incredible things.

There is a point that I’d really like to investigate further, because using generic stereotypes, the accounting profession is pigeon-holed as being quite conservative.  What you have done is you have built up a practice, systemised it, sold it, and then gone to help other firms.  What was it that gave you the confidence to do that when so many peers and professional colleagues struggle with the very basics of growing their firm in the first place?

Interesting.  I think there is a number of reasons.  For me the thing that, back in 1998, that really grabbed my attention was when Steve Pipe introduced me to Michael Gerber and the E-myth, and we sat down and watched a video and that completely changed the way I thought about how you run a business.  It was interesting, we had Paul Dunn as a conference speaker a few years back and it was my job to interview him and ask him questions while he was on the stage.  A lot of my questions were similar to what you have just asked, and Paul’s response for pretty much every single question was stop doing it, get somebody else to do it.  I think the big problem with us as accountants is we want to be in control, we do everything ourselves and if we are doing everything ourselves then we can’t possibly let go and start doing other things.  We can’t build a successful business if we are spending all of our time working with our clients.  I guess that is in a nutshell the key message from Michael Gerber and it is a thing that has always been at the forefront of my mind, it is about how can we build an accountancy practice that is successful, built around systems that works even if we are not there.

It is certainly a very sound commercial strategy.  This rolls very nicely into the next question I was going to ask, because you mentioned that you had made many mistakes along the way, and you have mentioned there that Paul’s advice was to get someone else to do it.  Beyond those two, looking back on your career experiences to date, if there was one thing that you could change about the accounting profession overnight, what would it be?

That’s a great question.  One of the things that I firmly believe, and certainly is at the heart of AVN is that the accountancy profession is a great profession, it is a profession where we have the power to change people’s lives because we can completely transform their financial situation, whether it is through tax savings, whether it is helping people grow their business, or helping to sell the business.

And so we have this ability to change lives, and I believe that as accountants we deserve to be richly rewarded as a result of that.  However, unfortunately the harsh reality is that most accountants simply aren’t earning enough money, particularly when you consider the years of experience, the professional exams we have gone through.  I think the big problem is, and if I could change something in the profession is I think that professional exams, the way that we are brought up as accountants, the professional exams teach us to be world class technicians.  We are brilliant at doing a set of accounts, we are brilliant at doing tax returns, we are usually brilliant at doing tax planning, but when it comes to running a business most accountants, and it is through no fault of their own are actually pretty uncommercial.  And it is because we are not taught, and I think back to when I started my practice back in 1996, and all the mistakes I made.

When I started in 96, I thought I had all the answers.  I thought I knew it all.  I thought I knew how to build and grow a successful accountancy practice.  And whilst I certainly got somethings right, I got many more things completely wrong because I didn’t understand marketing, I didn’t understand selling, I didn’t understand pricing, I didn’t understand leadership skills, how to manage people.  And I look back at all the mistakes I made and the lost opportunities, the money I missed out on because I was doing so many things wrong.  That saddens me that so many accountants find themselves in a pretty poor situation financially considering the fact that we are a great profession and we can change people’s lives, and yet we are not adequately rewarded because we are not taught these important skills of how to build a great accounting firm.

I think that’s very true, and I think it is interesting that you mentioned that Mark, because the principle audience for this interview today is the next generation of accounting firm leaders.  I think that is a word to the wise there that these things need to be understood early on in the process so as to avoid pain later on.  We sit here having this discussion at the dawn of a brand new year, and you have a very unique perspective because you are able to see what is going on in a very wide and quite proactive cross section of accounting firms.  May I ask in your opinion, would you say there is opportunities for growth for accounting firms in 2014?

Interesting question.  I think that we live in interesting times.  I think that when it comes to growing accounting firms I think that the development over the years of the internet and in particular in the last few years the power of social media, it has completely changed the game in terms of growing accounting firms.

What I mean by that is that it gives the smaller firms the opportunity to have a level playing field because effective growth, effective marketing is not about who can spend the most money on really nice brochures and websites and so on, the smaller firms can compete with the big firms using tools and resources that are available that don’t cost anything.

For example, this might sound controversial but I don’t necessarily agree that a business needs to have a website anymore.  I’ve seen business owners and accountants spend tens of thousands of pounds on a website, and yet if you with a little bit of focus and effort build in a great LinkedIn profile that demonstrates that you are an expert and using that to network and help with people, having a great You Tube channel with two or three great videos that people can see what you are like as a firm of accountants and get some great advice.  Having a Twitter profile and having a great lead page for capturing contact details.

When you put all these things together you can build a very effective online marketing strategy without spending a lot of money.  Also, I think one of the keys with marketing, certainly with the accounting profession, it is about how you position yourself as, what I call, the credible expert.  In other words when you are talking to prospects, why would a prospect want to talk to your accounting firm rather than a firm down the road.  It is about differentiating yourself, it is about demonstrating you are better at whatever it is you want to be the best at.  Whether it is tax planning, business growth, advice, whatever.

There are so many things we can do as accountants that don’t cost a huge amount of money to demonstrate that we are an expert.  For example, having a handful of really powerful videos on a You Tube channel doesn’t cost anything to do, just a bit of focus, attention to detail and learning the skills for doing that.  I think that we are in exciting times because there are so many opportunities to effectively grow our accounting practice using modern technology, and without having to spend a huge amount of money.

That’s a fascinating point you’ve made.  I think that is the first time I’ve heard a view on a practice website in that way, and I think as you were explaining it I was thinking it through, one thing that came to my mind is, it is not the following of the pack and saying we’ve got to have a website because everyone has got a website, or we have to have a particularly sharp website because our competitors have got a sharp website.  It is the intelligent employment of online tools and resources that are available to us to build a strategy that works for our firm specifically.  Like you say, whether it be a lead page, or the opt-in information capture capacity, whether that be an offer, whether that be a LinkedIn presence or a social media profile. It is how you use the resource, not just ‘we’ve got to have a website because everyone else has got one.’  I hadn’t thought of it like that before and that is interesting to me.  Therefore, what that makes you think of now is perhaps my next question.

You have now gone through quite a process that many of our audience will not reach for a number of years.  You qualified, which our audience has done, you have formed your own practice which some have, you have built that practice, you have sold that practice, you have developed a very rich suite of solutions for AVN members.  So did you expect, in all honesty, to see the level of success that you have and what do you know now, having done all these things, that you wish you had known back in 1991?

The first part of that question is a hard one, did I expect the success?  I guess to some extent the answer is yes because I’ve always been confident in my abilities, and I think that having a belief is really important, believing you can achieve something.

I think the way I was brought up by my parents as a child was the mind set of you can achieve whatever you want in this life, as long as you have a focus, have some goals.  Certainly meeting Steve Pipe back in 1998, that reinforced that because Steve talked a lot about the mind set and having goals and focus.  So that has always helped me through life.  What was the second part of the question?

What do you know now that you wish you had known back in 1991?

Everything.  As I said earlier, I look back on particularly the first two years of my accounting practice, and I look back and I’m horrified at mistakes I made, particularly in the area of pricing, which is why I’m so passionate about pricing.  Because I left tens and tens of thousands of pounds on the table because I didn’t know how to price.  That was one of the biggest mistakes I made, I’m not kidding over the first two years of my practice it cost me over a hundred thousand pounds in lost profits through not pricing properly.

I also made some horrendous decisions in terms of recruiting people.  My people management skills were shocking.  But I think the problem is, certainly my problem back then, and I think a lot of people can relate to this, there is a danger that we think we know it all.  I certainly thought I knew it all.  I was in my mid-thirties, setting up this accounting practise.  I had watched some of the gurus, I had been on some of the conferences, and I thought I suddenly knew it all.  The reality is there is so much that we need to learn that we have got to think about it as being on-going learning.  For example, I typically spend most Friday afternoons as learning time.  I find that my type of person, I’m a visual person, and so I don’t learn very well from reading books, but I learn from videos.  I buy lots of online training in marketing, pricing, selling skills, how to use You Tube, how to use LinkedIn.  I absorb all this stuff every Friday, and I do a bit more learning, because we have to have that attitude, we have to have the attitude of knowing that we don’t know enough.  There is always more stuff we need to learn, and so if we can adopt this constant improvement, constant learning something new and learning new skills, it will start to transform our results.

Very much so.  And it is crystal ball time now really because what you have made me think of there is the DNA of success if you will.   You mentioned there belief in own ability, you mentioned there understanding self-awareness to know what type of learning suits you best.  What time you set aside, what works for you.  All of these factors are part of the DNA of a successful professional and personal life for you.

Many young professionals complain of not really understanding what it takes to make it to partner.  You mentioned that you had made a number of horrendous people management decisions.  I think we all fall into this category of thinking we know it all.  Speaking then to the next generation, if you were still in practice today and you had senior manager level of professionals trying to catch your eye as the future of your firm as partner potential, what would be your blueprint in terms of what they needed to do to make it to partner?

My advice to young professionals wanting to make it to partner, that’s an interesting question.  Actually I’ve got a fairly glib answer, and that would be don’t go into partnership.  Which is when I was working as a chartered accountant, for a firm of accountants, that’s what I wanted, I wanted to be in partnership, that was my goal and realised that fortunately I was working for a large firm but wasn’t looking to take on new partners, which at the time seemed like a bad thing.  But it forced me to realise I had to go it alone and set up my own practise, that wasn’t my first choice preference, I would have preferred the easier route of going into partnership.

However, in hindsight I think that going into partnership is full of pitfalls, problems, and I think there is a major change going on in the accounting profession from a number of aspects.  One of which is we are an ageing profession, the baby boomers have come along and most partners are in their fifties and sixties looking to retire.  Yet there is not enough young people coming through to buy out their practices.

So there is a huge succession issue, there is a huge problem facing the older partners in terms of their retirement strategy, and it is something that a friend of mine Mark Lloydbottom is very passionate and talks about.

I think there is the problem at that end of the spectrum that there aren’t enough young people looking to buy into partnership.  But also when you look at it from the perspective of the young partners, why would you re-mortgage and take out huge loans and huge debts to buy into a partnership and be saddled with debt for years, and also I say a big problem with doing that is the fact that because things are changing, and I mentioned with technology and social media, and the fact that we have got this ageing profession.

A lot of traditional partnerships are very old fashioned in the way they think, and one of the things we see at AVN is very often a young, new partner will come along to one of our productivity events, get very excited about doing things very differently, going back to their older partners, and the partners saying we don’t want to change, we are retiring in the next two or three years, why do we need to change?  So the younger partners get very frustrated because they can’t do the things that they want to do.  I think going into partnership is a – expensive, and b – it is going to leave people frustrated.  Whereas setting up in practice as a sole practitioner, I mentioned earlier the fact I see that thanks to things like social media a smaller firm can compete on a level playing field. 

Steve and I did a survey a year or so ago looking at some of the most successful firms within AVN, and what is interesting is that we find that the most profitable accountants within AVN, the ones right at the top, the top 5% are in the main sole practitioners.  I’m firmly of the belief that if you have got the right mind set and the right access to the right tools and the learning and wanting to learn, then as a sole practitioner you can achieve incredible things that you can’t do when you are saddled with other partners.  So my glib answer was don’t go into partnership.  Look at starting your own accounting firm, which is much cheaper, you don’t need to spend a huge amount of money, particularly on things like marketing.  The big problem of course, again that I touched on earlier, is you have then got to acquire the skills.  But I would suggest that it is worth spending two or three years acquiring those skills than spending tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds buying into a partnership.

That’s where I was going to go with it actually, and the reverse of that coin of course if that you are now a business owner, from being a manager you are now a business owner.  There is no-one to make your brew anymore, there are no resources like you used to have; there aren’t the systems that you used to have.  It is a reinvention of the wheel or invention of the wheel as it were when you start your own practice.  So there is tremendous risk involved even though it is cheaper, and there is a great degree of personal resolve required to be successful in that environment I would have thought?

Yeah, and if anybody is watching this who is either thinking of setting up in practice or newly started.  I would suggest that they check out some of the interviews I’ve done on my You Tube channel where I’ve interviewed people like Phil Elaby who is a soul practitioner up in the north or England, Steven Briginshaw is based down in Reading, he had only been in practice 15 months at the time of the interview a few months back.  Someone called Shaz from AA Accountants, and these are all sole practitioners who are doing things very different, and getting extraordinary results.  So I would recommend to anybody watch those videos, learn from those other accountants.  One of the best people you can learn from is not gurus like me, but learning from other people who are in the same position.  People who have started up an accounting firm and are doing great things, doing different things and getting great results.

Absolutely, peer level learning is a vital part of the whole process, I agree. Having said that I think you have brought a number of ideas to this interview today that have given a lot of food for thought.  As we come to the conclusion of that now, thank you very much for that.  One more thing I’d like to finish on, one of the know it all mistakes that we have talked about that I make is that because I’m familiar with the AVN, and because I have worked with many AVN members over the years, I assume that everyone knows about the AVN and exactly what it can do for practices of varying sizes.  I am wrong.  And indeed that is not always the case.  So for those reading this Mark, if they want to take some first steps towards understanding more about the value that AVN  brings to practices and where it provides support what should they do?

Great question.  A couple of things, firstly they can get in touch with me very easily.  I encourage all accountants to connect up with me on LinkedIn, and when an accountant connects on LinkedIn with me I send out a message via LinkedIn with links to all sorts of free resources I have created for accountants.  So that is a really easy step, just connect up on LinkedIn, and also connect with Steve Pipe on LinkedIn.

The second step then is if you want to find out more about AVN, Steve and I run about eight times a year a proactivity event, AVN proactivity.  It is a one day event that Steve and I run where we go through and will share dozens and dozens of ideas of how to build a successful accounting firm, and over the years we have been running proactivity for many years and we have had thousands of accountancy firms go through the process.  So that would be a great next step, and if an accountant connects with me on LinkedIn, I’ll happily send through a link so they can find out exactly what proactivity is all about and how to book a place on it.

That’s great.  I have witnessed proactivity first hand Mark, so I can certainly testify to the effectiveness of it and how it facilitates a tremendous amount of thought about the future of the practice.

On that note there, it just remains for me to say thank you very much for the time you have taken to speak with us today and to reach an audience that not everyone takes time to reach.  I very much appreciate that.  I’m fascinated by some of the ideas that have been presented today and we will explore those in more detail.  I wish you all the very best Mark, thanks very much for your time.

Thank you and thank you for inviting me. 

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