The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

119 ⎸ [NICHE] Accounting for Winemakers with Zane Stevens

• Episode 119

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In this NICHE series episode, I chat with Zane Stevens, a Director of Protea Financial. We delve into the challenges and opportunities that winemakers face when it comes to financial management and strategic decision-making.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • the value in having CFOs with a strategic background
  • why it’s important to have standardized procedures
  • how to better understand your Cost of Production & Pricing

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Meet Zane:

Zane Stevens is a Director of Protea Financial. Prior to joining Protea, he was Financial Manager at Syntell, and subsidiaries, in Cape Town, South Africa. Syntell is a leading blue-chip company with revenue in excess of $38m that provides cutting edge technology-based services for Road Safety, Traffic Management and Revenue Collection. Before joining Syntell, Zane was a supervisor at KPMG in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, South Africa, where he led audit and financial and information technology advisory engagements.

Working with a broad host of clients, from owner-managed entities to large listed multinational companies, Zane obtained extensive experience in various sectors including automotive; public sector; food, drink, and consumer products; retail; healthcare and agriculture.

Zane is registered as a Chartered Accountant (South Africa) with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants. He received an Honors Degree in Accounting from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, where he also completed his undergraduate degree in Accounting.


Connect with Zane:

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 119 - [NICHE] Accounting for Winemakers - Zane

Zane: [00:00:00] I could be, you know, I'm a hundred percent leaving, you know, there's, The value based way would give me more revenue, but I don't care. Like, I

Serena: There's also a downside, like [00:00:10] you said, of like having to have the conversations about scope and having to adjust pricing because things are changing. it doesn't make sense for every type of,[00:00:20]  industry. 

 I think it's a good conversation to have because I think there's a lot of, there's obviously a lot of talk in our industry about having to move to that.[00:00:30]

 But doesn't actually make sense for everybody.

Zane:  I think the messaging is a little skewed because there is a very much. It is the only way to build to be successful. [00:00:40] And I'd like to show you the evidence that that's not true. there's other ways to do be successful without. Being stuck to this template, 

[00:00:50] [00:01:00] [00:01:10]

[00:01:17] Introduction

Serena: Welcome back to the ambitious bookkeeper [00:01:20] podcast. Today I have another special guest as part of our niche series, Mr. Zane Stevens, here to talk to us and share his experience within [00:01:30] his niche of winemaking and vineyards, perhaps. Yeah. All right, cool. Well, would you like to introduce yourself?

Zane: Yeah. Well, thanks, [00:01:40] Serena. Thanks for having me. As you mentioned, my name is Zane. I'm the founder of a company called Protea Financial. Uh, we're founded in March, 2014. So nine and a half years [00:01:50] ago. And over time we were born in the mine space and now we've sort of gone into a place where we're fully focused on the wine industry, alcohol beverage, trying to help small [00:02:00] producers, give them the good financial information they need to trust in business.

Serena: Awesome. So how did you end up number one in accounting? I'm always [00:02:10] curious about this and number two in the industry. So whichever one you want to talk about first.

Zane: Sure, we can, we can start back in the beginning. You know, I did accounting at high school. It was a [00:02:20] subject that was offered to us. You know, I was pretty much told go do accounting because you're good at math. And I was like, okay, sure. I don't know what this is. That's great. Excelled in it. Did pretty well.

got really [00:02:30] good grades. So, when it came to that, college, what are we going to do situation? It was everybody was like, you've got to become an accountant. You're good at it. It's going to give [00:02:40] you a lot of earning potential. You'll never not have a job. So go and do it. That's it. Okay. I don't know what that means.

And, I went off and I did a very specific course as my [00:02:50] undergraduate. It was actually at the com in accounting for chartered accountants. So I'm originally from South Africa. A chartered accountant is the CPA equivalent. So I went into a course where that's [00:03:00] what you're going to become, like you're going to study some subjects, three years, get your undergrad, get the qualification off and then do your postgrad, find a job at an accounting [00:03:10] firm and you write the examinations and become a chartered accountant.

I was like, cool, sounds great. No idea what any of that means, but, let's go for it. And so that's sort of how I got into the accounting space. I [00:03:20] just sort of fell into it because good with numbers. And then I was pretty good at accounting. So I was. I would say forced that way, that very happy that I was forced that way, you [00:03:30] know, looking back over time.

It was a really great decision.

Serena: Yeah. Yeah. I, it's always interesting to hear how people end up in accounting. Some, I mean, [00:03:40] I feel like it's very few and far between of people who maybe grew up in a family of accountants and so that's just kind of the path they take, but I feel like [00:03:50] the rest of us kind of accidentally end up there.

Zane: Yeah, I, I mean, you know, my, my parents both didn't have any sort of communication. My dad was a diesel mechanic. My [00:04:00] mom is. You know, legal secretary, you know, dealing with a lot of collections. So, you know, education there, I might have been the 1st person in the whole family to ever go to college. you know, I'm not exactly sure, but [00:04:10] it's pretty close to 1 of the 1st.

So it was all just like new territory for us. So it's, it worked out well because I do love what I do and I really do enjoy my job. [00:04:20] And, you know, it got me to a point where I'm no longer in South Africa. I'm living in sunny California and, you know, tired to complain about where I live.

Serena: Yeah. So did you [00:04:30] start your business, the firm in California?

Zane: Yeah, correct. So, I mean, Straight OUTTA college. After my postgrad, I went to K P M G. Spent four years at [00:04:40] K P M G, moved from where I grow. Grew up in Port Elizabeth, then to Cape Town where my wife grew up. Started working for a listed subsidiary there in the technology space. So at K P [00:04:50] M G, I did mostly automotive and retail type projects, mostly on the audit side as well as consulting.

Moved over to do some tech work at the end of my time. So I moved into this tech [00:05:00] entity and spending some time there while I was doing all of that, she was actually working for a winery in South Africa. They happened to have American ownership. They really liked her. she's a much better [00:05:10] accountant than I'll ever be.

And they decided to bring her over as their CFO. So we made a pretty quick decision. Hey, why not? Let's go to California. Let's go see what it's like. I lived there for a couple of years and [00:05:20] we can always come back to South Africa. 10 years later, we're still, yeah. arrived. I didn't have a job at that point.

She was working, eventually started a position at the same business as her,[00:05:30] in January 2014. The idea is that I was going to do most of the FP and a type work a lot of long term forecasting. Hey, we have this piece of land. How long it's going to take before we can develop a [00:05:40] vineyards, then how many years to grow the sales and be able to sell it at the 10 X multiple.

So a lot of that long term strategy planning. What we quickly realized is that there's only so much of that work that needed to be done. It [00:05:50] wasn't really a full time position, but we found a gap in terms of we have all these new investments, but we don't have anybody to do the box. So we came up with a smart idea [00:06:00] to just start a bookkeeping company and we'll just do it ourselves.

Uh, you know, I've run accounting teams, you know, my last team back in South Africa was 20 odd people that I was managing. Surely [00:06:10] you can do it. So great. We'll go ahead and do it. But, We're going to do it a little bit differently. I know a few people back in Southern Africa that I have a good relationship with.

They were really smart at university, [00:06:20] but they happen to take some time off to have children, and they're looking to get back into the workforce. So I'm gonna reach out to them, see if they're interested and find them part time to get going.

Serena: [00:06:30] Yeah, I love that. So, and that was in

Zane: March 20, March 2014. So we started with just me and one person [00:06:40] back in South Africa and sort of just grew over time, sort of in the beginning. A lot of the focus was sort of trying to pick up, you know, moms who wanted to find a little bit more flexibility. I mean, [00:06:50] we've been working from home since day one.

I mean, we have an office. I'm in it right now, but it's a, you know, it's a registered office space and it's effectively just an address for Google [00:07:00] and somewhere for the mail to go. And I come here maybe once or twice a week. Nobody else comes here. It's just, yeah, it's just me. Everybody else is at home and, uh, we've grown over time.

You know, [00:07:10] currently we are 39 team members. There's 8 of us here in the US, 6 in California and then 2 outside of California. And then we have 31 team members back in South Africa.

[00:07:19] International Company

Serena: Wow. [00:07:20] So there's probably some complexities with having, a us based company employing team in South Africa.[00:07:30]

Zane: Uh, yeah, we've got a wholly owned subsidiary down there. So it's a separate entity that looks down there. Just, you know, ownership is all up here. So they're all employed. Down in South Africa by [00:07:40] the South African entity as full time employees, all of our employees are full time or part time if they work shorter hours, but their employees of the company, we don't have any contractors.

and we've just built the [00:07:50] structure where, even though we're in different continents, we're part of the same team. So we do, you know. Obviously, everybody has communication with each other, either through our practice management software or regular catch up calls. [00:08:00] Uh, we also then do team events across.

Cross border twice a year, you know, we get into small groups and everybody meets with each other and spends time together. And then once a year, we have a big, [00:08:10] get together. We normally do some sort of game show, online where everybody gets to have some fun and spend some time with each other.

Serena: Oh, that's exciting. It's always interesting to hear, [00:08:20] How you do manage the camaraderie and the team culture across so wide of a space.

Zane: Yeah, I mean, even in the, you know, [00:08:30] in the US, it's even tough because we have 1 team member in Washington state and 1 in New Hampshire. So there is still 6 of us in California, but, you know, 2 of us in Marin County, 2 in Sonoma [00:08:40] County, 1 in Lake County, 1 in Napa County. So. Yeah, even just for like, we tend to have a lot of events in the Santa Rosa area, just because it's most central out of everything, but.

[00:08:50] You know, my person in that, that's still 100 miles of travel when we do that, you know, it's 50 miles each direction. It's it's a lot. So there is a lot of complexity around it. we've instituted a [00:09:00] get together once a year with all the US team members come together. So we've got that. Uh, annual 1 coming up in October, which will be a lot of fun.

Everybody get together. We'll do some training on 1 [00:09:10] day, some meetings and then day 2 is really just some, just some fun. I just get together, spend some time with each other, sort of see the other side of us, not the work side. Yeah, because [00:09:20] we do work pretty siloed. You know, we do have, you know, we always have an environment of team.

So if you have a question, you can reach out to everybody and see who can help you with it. but generally we all [00:09:30] have our own book of, of business and we sort of get on with it, right? There's maybe three or four projects where we have some sort of overlap where we have, you know, it's of, of a [00:09:40] complexity where we need two years based team members.

 But generally it's just you and your, your, you know, your, your team members down in South Africa, you know, we have two team members per project.[00:09:50] So every team is three people and those people are connecting on a lot of time, but, you know, so it's developing those relationships. It's understanding everybody in South Africa, you know, and you're talking to management down [00:10:00] there, then knowing how your, you know, your team members in the U.

S. work, because especially in January, when we're really, really busy, you know, we have 150 clients and they all have. [00:10:10] I think it's like all but four have December year ends. There's a lot of moving pieces and people have a bunch of projects. So you have to, you sort of have to know each other because, you know, to be able to communicate and figure out, okay, what [00:10:20] is the biggest priority today?

Is we both have a deadline today, but which one's the most important and which one can we move or adjust?

[00:10:26] Zane's Role

Serena: Yeah. what do you spend most of your time [00:10:30] in the business doing 

Zane: yeah, it continues to sort of evolve. you know, I used to have a lot of clients. I still do have a book of clients, but it's getting smaller as sort of clients age out or [00:10:40] move on, at this point. So it's a much smaller part of my business. I would say vast majority of it. My time is either on client acquisition, uh, you know, bringing in new clients.[00:10:50]

And then the other portion is sort of running the business. So the day to day admin, as well as, you know, overseeing the HR side of it, you know, the people side of it, that takes a lot of time. You know, I try to talk to [00:11:00] my account managers, the US based people, you know, three times, two to three times a month, each of them.

I talked to my management team in South Africa. Once a month, I talked to HR once a month, [00:11:10] I talked to ops manager once a month. And then I try to talk to every other team member twice a year. That was just. You know, just about a year ago, I was talking to every team member every [00:11:20] month, but obviously, when you start adding up, there's more people than business days, it becomes a little bit crazy, even, even for me, who gets up at 425 to work, and I generally take my calls with the South African [00:11:30] team at 5am in the morning.

[00:11:31] South African Team Role

Serena: Okay. Wow. So the South Africa team, are they mainly the like bookkeepers or is it a mix [00:11:40] of, cause you said you have management down there, which you would need, right? So what does that structure look like?

Zane: It's a pretty traditional, like, audit firm type structure, tax firm [00:11:50] structure, where we have accountants, senior accountants, junior manager, manager, and senior manager. So they, you know, the management team is formed by the junior managers, managers [00:12:00] and senior managers, and then they have team members underneath and performance manage.

So that's sort of how we've managed that structure. So I'm talking to the manager so I can get feedback on the team members. [00:12:10] And then obviously, they all talk to HR as well at the same time on a monthly basis to get additional check ins. So there's that type of structure that works, though. It's still a fairly [00:12:20] flat structure.

You know, it's not some super crazy hierarchy where, you know, bow down to me. I'm the manager type situation. They're all pretty collaborative, but then on every project, it's sort [00:12:30] of set up a little bit different, right? So each project has a U. S. based account manager. Who's the point of contact with the client?

The person who, if we have questions reached out to the client, if they have [00:12:40] questions that that's who the client reaches out to. Thank you. And they're supported by 2 team members on a project. We call them juniors and seniors. So the junior does work at the senior reviews. The senior does work that they can't manager [00:12:50] reviews.

And most of the work that we're doing is sort of controller level downwards. So, you know, for people who don't sort of speak accounting firm terms, it's been, you know, when they talk business terms, I'm always like [00:13:00] going. Hey, think about it as a bookkeeper, senior accountant on the controller. That's sort of the structure that we've got on every single project.

[00:13:07] Shifts in the Company Services

Serena: Yeah. That makes sense. [00:13:10] And back at the beginning, you were talking about how you were doing some kind of like CFO work, uh, FPNA, for the vineyard or winery that you started working for. [00:13:20] So is that a big part of your business too nowadays?

Zane: Uh, yes, I started the FBA role and it was a winery investment and consulting company. So, you know, [00:13:30] generally what they would come in struggling business, come in, offer, you know, operational supports, and instead of getting paid cash, they paid in ownership. So that was a lot of the [00:13:40] structure. The other option was, hey, there's this really Great one maker, and they want to start a different project will help them raise capital and we'll come in.

So doing a lot of that type of projects, [00:13:50] we then obviously needed to do the accounting. We have got to a point now where FPNA is a very small part of our business. We do help our clients with annual [00:14:00] budgets, but really, once it gets over 12 months, that's when we step aside and I'll rather bring in an outsourced CFO, specifically somebody that has had a strategic[00:14:10] sort of level within a company.

So generally a C level executive from the wine industry that can talk to the clients, not just about the numbers because the numbers are just 1 part of it. A [00:14:20] lot of the people who need those longer term forecast are looking at growth. And in the three tiered system, that is the alcohol beverage world, they need the strategy to understand how [00:14:30] they would penetrate those different markets and how they can broader, you know, cause you get to watch somebody's like, great, we want to double case production, like, right now, where are you going to sell it?

And they're like, well, you know, we do 80 percent DTC. So we're just going to [00:14:40] do, you know, we're just going to carry on in that percentage, which is like, probably not realistic, right? It's just, there's only so many customers that are willing to buy your product. So unless you have a great strategy to do that, [00:14:50] you're probably not going to make it happen.

So the double production, you're most likely going to have to move into distribution, and that is just a whole different world. Because you need to find the right distributor and a [00:15:00] distributor that actually cares about you. You know, that, that's just a crazy world. There's 10, 000, you know, 11, 500 wineries in the U.

S. Like, you have to stand out to that distributor and they have to [00:15:10] care about you. Or. You have to pay to play and you have to understand what the implications on your cash flow as well as your profit margins are going to look like with it with a move like that, but [00:15:20] sometimes it looks great on paper.

And then you run through the numbers and you're selling every single 1 of those cases at a loss. Because you're having to pay for a good shelf space at, you know, the grocery store.

[00:15:31] What Can an Accountant Provide to the Client with the Numbers

[00:15:30]

Serena: Yeah. I can see where, yeah, you would want to, it's a very in depth project that would take up a lot of your time if you were doing that for [00:15:40] one or two clients.

Zane: Yeah. And that's why we sort of take it over to these outsourced CFOs that have a strategic background. And most of them have either been like a COO or a [00:15:50] CEO, in another business. So they have more than just the finance side and just, you know, understanding the numbers behind it. They understand what the implications are, the staffing needs to [00:16:00] be, what your marketing budgets need to look like, what changes in production you have to make.

Which as an accountant, I just don't have that information. Like I don't know what that's going to, you know, you want to double your production. I don't know if [00:16:10] you need to buy another bottling line that whatever, like, you know, figure it out. That's all I can tell you. I can tell you how much it's going to cost, what that's, you know, what that's going to do to your overall case production [00:16:20] and what it's going to do to the cost per bottle.

But I can't tell you

Serena: Yeah. Yeah. There's so many other moving pieces operationally. And that's where it gets like,[00:16:30] I have this conversation a lot with, with, with clients and other students is like, there's only so much you can do with the numbers. It then becomes the business [00:16:40] owner's job to go figure out how to market that and how to make that happen.

Like, yeah. On paper. This is how much you need to make to hit your goals or, you know, your [00:16:50] profit, but the executing of that strategy and coming up honestly with that strategy is up to the client.

Zane: That's what we have sort of found a good, [00:17:00] um, step into the market is that we do inventory costing pretty well. it's one of our strengths and a lot of the wineries that come to us, they don't actually know the true cost of their inventory. you know, because most [00:17:10] of them are at a size where their taxes are down on cash basis.

So, they only care about cash based like, you know, my tax is done where obviously you're selling a product, especially a product that ages. I mean, our [00:17:20] average client is at least aging the wine, you know. A year, so that imagery is sitting there, just, you know, gathering costs, which they don't think about, right?

Like, it's overheads and labor just [00:17:30] sort of forgotten about. They're just sort of disappear or, oh, I paid for those grapes 3 years ago. Why is it sitting in my cards right now? Well, because that's how much it costs to manufacture that line. So, we've [00:17:40] helped clients a lot of the time or come in and they're like, oh, what that's how much I'm making per bottle.

I didn't know that. I'm like, yeah, well, that's why you can't really sell that product through distribution [00:17:50] because. Yeah, if you're selling it at 50 percent off. Your retail price, you know, all of a sudden you're a break even margin. And then if you have to pay billbacks or, you know, distribution allowances or anything like that, [00:18:00] you're effectively making a loss per bottle.

And if they don't have that information, you know, a lot of them are just going, hey, I know my glass costs, my call costs, my label costs, and that's how much I paid for [00:18:10] grapes. So I've got a general sense. Then they're like, what about your salary? What about your production team salary? What about that bottling line that you had to bring in and rent to be able to bottle that wine? Those types of things just [00:18:20] quickly get forgotten about. So they can, they can get themselves into trouble, especially if they're using that cost analysis to set their prices. We do find a lot of clients that come in and they've just set the price [00:18:30] too low. And, you know, I can't really help them with that because they're. You can't just say, okay, it cost me, you know, 20 to manufacture a bottle of this wine so I can sell it [00:18:40] for 40. You also have to go, how much will the market pay for this wine or what wine from this region at that, you know, that quality normally sells for 35 bottle. So you [00:18:50] 40. You have to set it at 35, figure out a way to, you know, distinguish it.

So it is at the next price point, which is 55. So you have two choices. You're either going to improve the quality [00:19:00] or you're going to reduce the costs. And now you've got to make a decision what that's going to look like. And obviously if you're, once you've set the price, it's really hard to change it. So we did, you know, you do obviously see wineries [00:19:10] will come out with a new label and sometimes it could just be the same wine or it's improvement on that wine, which is generally what happens, you know, instead of buying, you know, [00:19:20] those grapes for one source, they go like, well, there's a slightly more expensive source over there. It's a better quality. It's a better region. You know, it's just a little bit more North where it's more sought after I've been able to [00:19:30] get it. I can prove this quality of the wine. And I can't resell that wine. Like if people expecting to pay, you know, 35 a bottle, he pundles and say, well, now it's worth [00:19:40] 55 because we've got a better, you know, grape sauce that doesn't make sense.

So then you'd have to, you know, make the strategic decision to create a new label and that sort of thing, where they need that [00:19:50] strategic help, which we step away from it,

[00:19:51] Client Acquisition

Serena: Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. You don't, you don't really, this is why I love doing these interviews about the [00:20:00] different niches because this is what makes it so much better to the niche because you're able to have these conversations. And so my next question was, is a lot of your client [00:20:10] acquisition, I'm sure a lot of it's referrals, but do you do a lot of like speaking or, anything like that in the wine industry?

Zane: Very little, [00:20:20] actually, I think I've given one presentation and that's mostly, I mean, I haven't, I haven't really tried. It's sort of, you know, it's been on my to do list probably for two years right now right. Find speaking engagements and I just [00:20:30] sort of just keep putting it off. I would say it's, it's close to like 95 percent of our work comes in through referrals without two main referral sources being [00:20:40] CPAs or bankers.

So anybody who has like a stick is a really good referral source for us. You know, so CPAs where they're like, well, we can't do the taxes if your books aren't in order. [00:20:50] Uh, you got to speak to Zane or a banker goes, Hey, your books are just not clear. I either can't give you the money or I'm not going to be able to renew this line of credit. You probably should speak to Zane and get your books in order. [00:21:00] So those are two places where we've got a lot of referrals and where I spent a lot of my time, um, in terms of networking. It's with those people. So you're having lunches with them, grabbing [00:21:10] coffee, going to events where they will be at, going to their events, just getting to know those people. That's really, really important. But I do go to wine industry events where you do run into these people and, you know, [00:21:20] a lot of them, there's a couple of, especially on the insurance side and bank side, you're very well connected, been in the space for a long time. And if you stand with them long enough at an event, you're going to meet a bunch of winery owners, [00:21:30] because they'll come over and talk to them, you know. So sometimes I use that sort of just cling on and hope for the best strategy at some of these events. You know, I'm still, I'm still a newbie in the space, you know, I've only, only really been around, [00:21:40] you know, just approaching 10 years of being around the wine space.

And for the first four years, honestly, zero networking at all. I just sort of sat in my, my office getting work done. [00:21:50] Before the team grew, so, you know, realistically, I've only been out and about for six years, which is not a lot of time to get to know all these people, you know, starting to learn who they are.

And, you know, there's definitely the ones where I've been [00:22:00] introduced 10 times to them. Like, Oh, saying great to meet you. Yeah. I met you at an event like two weeks ago. That's good to see you again. apparently I'm pretty unrecognizable. Or they just don't want to [00:22:10] recognize me by the way, or the other, you know, people there.

There are people who have very good relationships with some of our, you know, competitors and they, they're just never going to be my friend, [00:22:20] which is fine. I want my competitors to do well. There's not a ton of us doing. Uh, winery accounting, um, and I want all of them to be successful because again, you know, I said [00:22:30] earlier, 11, 11 uh, it's something like 10 and a half thousand and produce less than 10, 000 cases.

And that's our target market and it's unlikely that [00:22:40] I could service all 10 and a half thousand wineries. You know, it's just physically impossible. Um, and that's my team grew significantly. So I want other people to be doing really well. So I actually [00:22:50] make a point of knowing who these people are and trying to reach out to them on a regular basis as well.

You know, we'll go to the same events and I'll definitely make a plan to go talk to them. And, I also try to refer, you know, clients that I [00:23:00] feel like, you know, when I'm talking on the phone, like they, maybe they're not that convinced in the way we do things, or for some reason they just don't like me and that I'll be like, well, you should speak to, you know, these three other people as well, and [00:23:10] yeah, come back to me and let me know what you think afterwards.

Serena: Yeah, that's so smart and it just shows a level of integrity that then that client might be like, well, [00:23:20] you're willing to share the business then maybe I do want to work with you.

Zane: Yeah. And part of it for me, it's just like, I can't be everything for everybody. Like it's just never [00:23:30] going to work. There's just, you know, there are clients that come to me and then they're like, you're remote. I'm like, yeah, we have been from the beginning. I really want them to come to my office and like, well, that's probably not the greatest fit for us.

[00:23:40] Unless you're really close to one of my team members and they've got capacity, like maybe we can make it work, but that doesn't make a lot of sense. I, you know, part of our sales [00:23:50] proposition is because we have a team in South Africa, we can keep our prices pretty low. So, as soon as they're coming to the office, now you're having to build in hours at a higher rate.

And all of a sudden it doesn't [00:24:00] become that attractive. So, like, it's not a good sentence. So, I do, you know, that's a good reason to sort of do it. And then there's other times where, you know, a couple of my competitors [00:24:10] do focus a lot more on the CFO level works. They've got a bookkeeping team because they need it to do their CFO level work where.

You know, I'm not interested in that at all. So if I get a [00:24:20] client who I can hear, like what they really need is a CFO that can handle some bookkeeping, then I'll push them that direction as well. It's just a better fit for them because I'm, you know, I'm a big [00:24:30] believer in don't over promise, under deliver.

I like to go the other direction. So that those are sort of the reasons I will will give people other options. And you know, just sometimes, especially [00:24:40] newer wineries, I guess, especially if you come to a client like, hey, it's our first vintage, we haven't started selling yet. I'm like, well. This is what I can do for you.

This is what's going to cost, you know, I know we can help you, [00:24:50] but because you're brand new, like you're new to the space, like maybe talk to some other people, just get a sense, you know, maybe there's somebody else you're like, so there's, you still have to work with these people, right? So they have to be comfortable with you.[00:25:00]

Serena: Yeah.

Zane: So I like, I like people to have options. I, I don't want people to believe that I am the only option and the alternative is doing it themselves. Because I think that is a [00:25:10] horrible idea for any business owner to be doing their own books.

[00:25:13] The Need for Good Books for the Industry

Serena: Yeah, but an industry like that, I would say there's, I mean, there's a few industries that [00:25:20] that should not be done. And that is definitely one of them.

Zane: Yeah. And most of the time, you know, people who. Starting a winery, it's either they're doing it [00:25:30] because they've done really well in their careers and now want something, that they love or it has a passion and they're putting their whole life savings into it. Right? [00:25:40] So people are putting so much money into these entities, they should spend a little bit of money to make sure the records are correct so that they have a chance for it to [00:25:50] be successful.

You want to create something that you can either pass down to a family member or sell in the future. if you're doing the books yourself, you know, we see it all the time because I want to, you know, we [00:26:00] do get, like bankers on the diligent side come to us as well. And I like, you know, this person's thinking of exiting in a few years, but their books are terrible, so I can't take them to market at all because I, you know, I can take [00:26:10] production numbers and I can take the brand level that, you know, as soon as they start looking at the financials, it's all over.

And that's tough and if you realize that really late in your, your life as well, [00:26:20] like, you could also think, oh, it's a retired 2 years. Also, now it's like, oh, the right time. 5 years because somebody came my books up 1st and that could be devastating to somebody sort of. You [00:26:30] know, path to, to a better life and, you know, the retirement world of just like, let me do, you know, do the traveling I want to do.

And it's also good to just know what the true numbers are because sometimes [00:26:40] there just isn't value there and you'd rather want to know about it earlier than later.

[00:26:43] Where are the Clients? 

Serena: yeah. So, even though you're based in California, you have a lot of team there. Is that [00:26:50] where the majority of your clients are or do you work with wineries and vineyards all over the U. S.?

Zane: yeah, so we've got clients in California, Oregon, Washington, Ohio, New [00:27:00] York, Pennsylvania, Texas. I think that's it. the others are pretty thin. You know, Washington, Oregon with a few more, but the others are sort of [00:27:10] like one or two entities. The vast majority of the work is in California, so we have clients all the way down in the South and Santa Barbara.

 All the way north and Hill, I don't even say [00:27:20] Hillsburg anymore. We just took on our first client in Mendocino, just a week and a half ago. So all the way north to Mendocino and then all the way up to the Sierras, we have clients as well. So fairly well [00:27:30] spread, in all the different regions, Sonoma County is our number one region by quite a distance.

Um, it's definitely our biggest. Concentration of clients, you know, [00:27:40] we've, been pretty successful in that space, but, you know, we continue to see growth in different areas. And, just opened up Mendocino, which is a new part of California. We haven't got into and, you know, the client's like, hey, if it goes well, I'd be [00:27:50] happy to introduce you to a few more friends, which, which is always really positive.

And we've grown a little bit in the central coast and maybe not as much as we wanted to. It's a, it's a very difficult [00:28:00] markets. And then Santa Barbara, it's always an interesting market as well, because the type of people buying wineries there, a lot of them have. Yeah. You know, some other business ventures.

So they have an outsourced accounting firm that they've been using with [00:28:10] their entertainment company or tech company for 20, 30 years, and they'll try them first. So a lot of the time we see us coming in at a later stage where they brought a consultant in [00:28:20] at the CFO level for some help. And they're like, well, clearly this person who's been doing your books doesn't know the wine space.

So we should get you an expert in. But, yeah, it's, pretty wide. [00:28:30] We'll take clients anywhere. Actually, I think I did speak to a client once that's in Arizona. I didn't even know they made 1 in Arizona.

Serena: Yeah, we have wine.

Zane: so I spoke to 1 winery [00:28:40] there before, didn't quite work out. Mostly because I didn't think he realized I was in California.

He was like, yeah, you can just come in every now and then. Right. I'm [00:28:50] like, little far, but we can talk about it. I don't know if you want to pay for flights and he's like flights. I'm like, yeah, it was in California. Oh, okay. But yeah, mostly in California, but [00:29:00] we'll take anybody.

[00:29:01] Attending Events 

Serena: Yeah. And as far as events that you go to, how many of those are you generally attending in the industry?[00:29:10]

Zane: So we're sponsors of 2 wine industry events, 1 being like a wine financial symposium. Well, they both really are 2 wine [00:29:20] financial symposiums brought by 2 different publications. So, so we were sponsors of those. And then I attend, like, 3 to 5 other events a year. [00:29:30] So about, you know, 5 to 7 a year in terms of the advance, just depending on timing.

And then, you know, I attend a couple of accounting events a year as well, like this year, [00:29:40] there is one of the events we sponsor that I'd love to attend, but one of my team members is going to go because I'm going to be at QuickBooks Connect at that time, so they're literally the same days for conferences, which [00:29:50] is unfortunate, that, you know, I do need to Go get some professional competency hours and all those types of things and also go look at technology.

So I'm [00:30:00] prioritizing the QuickBooks Connectors here versus the Wine Industry Event.

Serena: Yeah, I was going to ask you something else. Oh, so you said originally [00:30:10] for the 1st, 4 years, you weren't really doing much networking. You were just doing work. So, has a lot of your growth happened in these latter 6 years since you started attending [00:30:20] events or.

Zane: There's definitely a different trajectory in growth and the team has grown a lot. 2020, second half of 2021 and 2022 is really good for [00:30:30] us. I think obviously people getting comfortable with people working remotely on their businesses in 2020, uh, really helps, you know, remote bookkeepers in general, and we [00:30:40] saw a lot of growth , in that, 18 month period.

So a ton of growth in that we've had steady growth since day 1, like, every year has just been being really good. I think we've had [00:30:50] 1 flat year, um, if I'm looking at, billable hours in a year. Uh, 1 flat here, and then this year, most likely will be it as well. flat here. we've had a year where we have had a lot [00:31:00] of clients sell and, you know, that's.

Number 1 way that clients leave us is they get sold and. Can relate to a bigger company that already has a 50 percent strong accounting team. [00:31:10] So, we'd sort of move on from that. So this year has been a lot of just replacing those hours. But I would say. There's definitely growth increase [00:31:20] because of the networking, but I think the biggest part that I've taken from networking and getting out there is the development of brand recognition.

when my name comes up in these [00:31:30] conversations, or the brilliant name, it's kind of conversation people like, Hey, we know who they are. We know they do good work. I've got a friend that sort of used them before. Which, you know, when I started the whole networking [00:31:40] process and talking to more people, I spent a lot of time explaining who we are, how we do it and why you should choose us.

Versus now, the conversation is, this is what we do. This is how [00:31:50] we can help you. When do we get started? So the networking has really changed a lot of the conversation and it's been a lot about brand [00:32:00] development more than, you know, truly chasing the sales, the sales have sort of followed the brand recognition.

[00:32:06] Branding 

Serena: Yeah, is your branding [00:32:10] something that is easy to identify that it's like. For the wine industry. Like if someone goes to your website or sees your logo or whatever, it is a very like connected with[00:32:20] that visually.

Zane: Well, our logo is a protea, which is the national flower of South Africa. So nothing to do with, wine space at all. You know, it's more important to sort of show the connection, to [00:32:30] my home country, uh, which was important when we started the company. Our website is very wine focused now. it is a new change that we made like six months ago.

it was, you know, the [00:32:40] website before was maybe a little bit more, accounting generic. so we've gone a little bit more full in. when we first started, we didn't, you know, go headfirst into the wine space. We were very much more like, okay, we'll [00:32:50] help whoever, you know, we've had all sorts of different clients.

 And especially in the first four years, our biggest client was actually a music festival. now that still has wine [00:33:00] connections because it does win prizes for best wine and food. You know, one of the best wine and food festivals in the country, even though it is a music festival. So that was a very, you know, a really big portion of our [00:33:10] business for a long time.

And we've just sort of grown into the wine space more and more. You know, it's made our life a lot easier to be able to focus on 1 space [00:33:20] 1 from the networking standpoint, but mostly from the conversations internally. So, standardizing our templates, standardizing our training, and being able to have a conversation [00:33:30] about what is affecting our clients.

you know, it was really general. It's like, yeah, the economy is a little bit tough. So these clients are doing terribly. But, you know, these ones are doing well because that gets really [00:33:40] confusing where now it's like, you know, having the conversations like, you know, the wine industry has had a tough year case volumes are down.

This is affecting our clients this way. You know, it's very [00:33:50] specific conversations that I can have. So just from a communication standpoint, it's made a lot easier. But the standardization and processes procedures and training material has gone a long way to [00:34:00] making us a lot more efficient at our jobs.

[00:34:04] Hiring and Training

Serena: And your team in South Africa and here really too, have [00:34:10] you brought in people that already had experience in the industry or are you kind of introducing them to this and this is how we do it for this industry and kind of mentoring them?[00:34:20]

Zane: Yeah, so interestingly enough, I am the only person on our US team that had no wine industry experience for getting it. So I'm the, [00:34:30] I'm the anomaly on that team. So they've all come from a wine space. You know, one of our team members, she came from a similar firm to what we do. So, you know, she'd been there for nine years and had a ton of [00:34:40] experience and that was great to bring her in where everybody else had come from a winery background or, you know, or a sales company distributor, somebody within that space, which has [00:34:50] been great.

Um, it really makes painting them a lot easier because they can straight away have the conversations. In South Africa, it's less likely. the offices in my hometown of Port Elizabeth, [00:35:00] it's automotive and industrial. There's not, I think there's one winery in the town and it's, it's fine. but all the wineries are out in the Western Cape and Cape Town area, you [00:35:10] know, and surrounding.

So. Nobody comes in with any winery experience. So we are teaching them a fresh. So, you know, they're having to learn, uh, us gap versus [00:35:20] IFRS. They're having to learn the wine industry versus what they came from. They're having to learn this weird system called QuickBooks that they've never seen before in their lives.

So there's a lot of learning that goes into it. So their [00:35:30] onboarding training is a lot more, In depth, you know, training and a lot more, it's a longer, right. It's like the whole first week that they're with us, where it was the kind of managers, like, Oh, let's get going. , just so you know, [00:35:40] they, they, at least, you know, talk the language a little bit more.

So we are teaching them all of that. A lot of them have manufacturing experience, which obviously winemaking is manufacturing. So the [00:35:50] concepts are not too foreign from them. It's just trying to get their heads, mostly wrapped around terminology. Obviously South African English and U. S. English are very different as well.

So just learning some of the new words [00:36:00] there and then trying to get their heads wrapped around this extensive period of time that winds would be on the boats. You, especially for entities that have their own vines, it's like a growing year and then like, [00:36:10] you know, three or four years of aging. So what you're keeping inventory, you've got like five or six years worth of inventory.

Like, yeah, well, it's sitting in a tank. It hasn't gone to borrow. It's not ready to sell yet. So, [00:36:20] you know, getting their heads around what you call work in progress is the toughest part of the job for most people.

[00:36:26] Records and Software in the Industry

Serena: Wow. So many cool things.[00:36:30] the years and years and inventory is, interesting. But with that, like, you know, industry wide, kind of what to expect, depending on the types of wineries you're [00:36:40] working with. Right.

Zane: it's very regulated as well. So wineries have to report. How much wine they have and, you know, in their winery. So in theory, [00:36:50] we get very good records, of what is going on. I say in theory, because sometimes they do have it in remote warehouses and they're relying on other people.

So we might not get the reports on time. And so [00:37:00] it's difficult to take an appointment. And then there's just that concept of. This is a product that evaporates, right? So you can't freak out if it went from 1000 gallons to [00:37:10] 990 gallons this month because well, that happens things evaporate it gets sucked into the barrels.

Like, there's going to be some natural losses. That doesn't mean there's a loss of [00:37:20] your financials. It just means. Your cost per gallon is just like increasing every month because of these natural processes that take place.

Serena: interesting. And you said, [00:37:30] so you use QuickBooks, do you use QuickBooks online? Is there a specific version that your clients have to be on?

Zane: No, I mean, we are focused on on QuickBooks. I would [00:37:40] say we probably have 10 clients that runs on QuickBooks at this point in time. So, we've made a big move towards that. We work on both QuickBooks online, QuickBooks that stock and QuickBooks [00:37:50] Enterprise. But I would say it's like 65, 70 percent of our clients on QuickBooks online and growing, you know, with QuickBooks, when Chuit making the decision to go to the [00:38:00] subscription base for the desktop version, that sort of broke in the shackles for a lot of people going, okay, I don't know why I'm on this anymore because I have to pay for it again.

You know, we, a lot of the desktop clients we [00:38:10] have, they're on desktop because, well, they paid for it 10 years ago and I also have to pay for it again. So it's an easier conversation to convert them. I think QuickBooks Online is the best option for all the wineries, and we [00:38:20] tell all the new wineries to go into it.

You know, some of them maybe already need the ERP capabilities of QuickBooks Enterprise. And that's fine, and we're happy to work on it. But [00:38:30] most of our clients are on small size, where that is just overkill, and they shouldn't be investing the cost.

Serena: Okay. Is there a, I'm sure there's other types of inventory tracking [00:38:40] systems and reporting that, that they're using that are outside of QuickBooks for the regulations or no.

Zane: there are some that will, spend [00:38:50] the money on, on like winery software, but that's not all of them. So a lot of it is reliable, which is sort of reliant on, On keeping Excel spreadsheets, so there's a lot of use of [00:39:00] Excel that comes into it. And then a lot of our producers are sort of manufacturing, you know, either a custom crash facility, you know, facility that they're using to make their line or third party [00:39:10] warehouses.

So those people are keeping record for it to make sure they're compliant. So we get warehouse reports on in terms of gallons. Bulk line is a lot easier to keep track of than the case goods because case goods, there's all sorts of things [00:39:20] that can happen, especially with multiple vintages. If you have a 2019 and 2020, those bottles look exactly the same.

So, you know, there is. This instances where the 2020 was stripped instead of the [00:39:30] 2019 or vice versa. And then, you know, you use it in the tasting room. Did they track it? We thought we use 6 bottles today. We actually use 7 bottles today. Like those types of things can happen. [00:39:40] So inventory reconciliation on a monthly basis is quite a process.

so we do try to force our clients to do it on a monthly basis, but some of the strongly produced quarterly or twice a year, [00:39:50] obviously a lot more, if you, you know, the less frequently you do it, but that's everything around inventory is where we spend a ton of our time and a big difference maker for our clients.

Because it is [00:40:00] complex. There's a lot going on and it is a lot of the time reliant on human inputs. There's human inputs. There's going to be a mistake somewhere along the line. So it's identifying those and then [00:40:10] asking the questions to make sure we know what's going on with the system to understand if it's a true write off or if it's just a problem.

It's in transit sometimes, you know, uh, we had a [00:40:20] client once where there was two fulfillment sites for one of the warehouses they used. Sorry. It'd be like, I'm short a thousand cases and you can see the thousand come out of the one warehouse, but [00:40:30] it. It hasn't gone to the other 1, even though there's a proof of delivery.

It happened. It's taking that whereas a couple of weeks to catch up on their paperwork. So you constantly got these, like, well, I see it going out, but I haven't [00:40:40] seen it come in. And then the next month ago, I see it coming in. I don't see it coming out. Like, what's going on? You know, so you deal with that as well.

As with a lot of industries, you know, technology is still a little [00:40:50] bit behind and, you know, smaller companies are still trying to catch up with, with the latest and greatest and not just small companies. You know, there's some big companies out there that are still running on dot matrix [00:41:00] systems and all sorts of weird things.

Serena: Yeah. And it's such a, a longstanding industry too. It's like the life of those businesses, if, they're doing things correctly, [00:41:10] they've been around a while. And yeah, it is hard to, change and adopt into new software. And even with technology capabilities, there's still the process where there has to be a human [00:41:20] checking things in and marking them off in the system.

Yeah. Yeah.

Zane: And that's why, when you asked about the tracking systems, I'm like, yeah, there exists, but you know, they are very much [00:41:30] garbage and garbage out systems. So if you know, the people that are supposed to be using it on trained in it, or it's not seeing as a priority. Things can go really badly wrong very, [00:41:40] very quickly.

So it's we try to work closely with them because the system actually do have the ability to capture a cost on a monthly basis. So it can actually do a bunch of our cost and work [00:41:50] for us that. They have to actually ask the questions and make sure they're getting the right information. They can't just assume that's what they spent money on as well.

Serena: Yeah. Yeah, and it requires someone staying on [00:42:00] top of it with the boots on the ground.

Zane: Exactly.

Serena: That's always been my issue with inventory based businesses.

Zane: You know, that's [00:42:10] the reliance is like, Oh, I've got an inventory count. Great. But the inventory count is wrong. I can tell you it because you just counted a skew that we haven't had yet. Or you just told me you're bottling next week. [00:42:20] So like, I don't know where you got those numbers from. You know, those types of things do happen and it's just error, right?

It's on. They've got a spreadsheet and they're like, Oh, okay, yeah, we're gonna bring this in. They counted and it's actually the skew by the door, you know, [00:42:30] they've packed in correctly. And that's, you know. 18th on the outside and 19th in the middle, it's just, you can go wrong so quickly. You normally see it, you can sort of see it on the inventory reports.

I thought of this one to have this one's [00:42:40] down. Okay, great. Clearly somebody's counted something wrong or you've shipped into me correctly. Can you let me know which one it is?

[00:42:45] Pricing Model

Serena: Yeah. So the only thing that I don't think we did really talk [00:42:50] about is what your pricing model looks like. So are you doing hourly? Are you doing some packaging? Like what is, what is the story?[00:43:00]

Zane: Oh, the controversial question of the accounting world at this point. We are 100 percent an hourly, charge. So we have hourly rates for the different level team [00:43:10] members. And we effectively build by the minutes. I will use QuickBooks time to keep live tracking. And that's how we build. We've done it since day one and have no reason to change.[00:43:20]

Serena: Yeah. And I honestly, I think it's, it fits. certain industries such as this with the inventory because some months you can have an issue that takes [00:43:30] someone five hours to reconcile and the next month it's an hour. So

Zane: Yeah, I mean, that is one of the reasons there also is a lot of seasonality, right? There's times in the year when they bottle, [00:43:40] there are higher periods of time where they sell more, you know, they have DTC shipments, which then does take a lot more work, especially if they, you know, they do the release on the website on two days before month end, like [00:43:50] you're going to have some big differences at that point.

 So that, that is really important. And then we also found it to be really helpful that sort of clients can use this as they need us as well. So we don't have to have these [00:44:00] conversations around scope all the time. Okay. So we have a lot of clients who will just be like, you know, three months in like, okay, great.

I love you guys do a little bit more. And then a few more months in there. Yeah. I don't want to have to [00:44:10] renegotiate every single time and rather give them a flexibility. And then when things are going badly, they can pull back as well. we had a client at the moment who, you know, they've got some cashflow issues and they're like, just [00:44:20] do the bare minimum to make sure that the books are accurate.

So, you know, we just dropped off hours. Now people are probably going off from a business owner standpoint. That's a terrible idea. Like maybe. And it's not great [00:44:30] for me projecting my revenue and understanding my planning, but I'm doing the right thing for that. They need a reduction in fees right now. And if I put them in a situation where [00:44:40] it's like, sorry, I can't do that because we've got an agreement.

Well, then they're just going to fire me and that's not a good sense either because. Who knows what they're going to do, and it's not going to help them get out of the problem, [00:44:50] but this was specifically great in 2020, when things just shut down, like. You know, through for about a year, a lot of my clients actual hours went [00:45:00] down, even if their sales went up because there's no expense claims to do anymore.

We've hourly payrolls that we have to do for a tasting room staff. So there's just these tasks that do take a [00:45:10] lot of time, which we just didn't do for that. And they weren't having to pay for it. We're able to just sort of like, well, we were at the work list hours and, you know, most of those hours recycled into other things like let's get your [00:45:20] PPP loan or help me with this forecast or, you what do you think about this? We use the hours other places, but they weren't then tied to like, well, this is my fee, so you've got to do it. Or, and I'm going to have to make a [00:45:30] decision. And we saw clients, you know, the consultants do run fixed fees. They just got rid of them. Right. That was it. And with us, they're like, great.

Well, your first book came in, it's [00:45:40] down. Wonderful. Great. Let's just keep going. So I found a lot of benefit in it because of the seasonality people to be able to sort of decide how much time they want from [00:45:50] us. And it's worked for us. And I, every time I, these articles come up about value based and all that, I look at them, I try to understand it.

I try to figure it out, but it's just, yeah, [00:46:00] I don't sort of want to be sort of. Spending tons of time trying to figure out if we're within scope every month, we have 150 ish clients. Like, it's a lot. And I don't even know how our packages, you know, [00:46:10] every winery is different. They all got different production cycles, bottling cycles.

Releases, and then they all have different production levels as well. I mean, I can't really make a package for a 500 case [00:46:20] winery. That would. You know, the service for all the service out there for 500 case winery versus all the same service of 4000 case wineries. Be 7 a month versus 25 a month. [00:46:30] Like, how do I even package it?

Like, I've got to make packages per case quantities, or I'm going to have like 700, different value added propositions, which just doesn't make sense either.[00:46:40]

Serena: Yeah. Well, it sounds like what you're doing is working. So, I mean,

Zane: I mean, I could be totally missing the boat

Serena: break [00:46:50] it?

Zane: yeah, I could be, you know, I'm a hundred percent leaving, you know, there's, The value based way would give me more revenue, but I don't care. Like, I

Serena: There's also a downside, [00:47:00] like you said, of like having to have the conversations about scope and having to adjust pricing because things are changing. And, and yeah, so it [00:47:10] might, it doesn't make sense for every type of, industry. Especially with the complexities that you have. yeah,

Zane: I probably went a little bit on a tangent there.

Serena: no, I think it's a good [00:47:20] conversation to have because I think there's a lot of, there's obviously a lot of talk in our industry about having to move to that.

 But doesn't actually make [00:47:30] sense for everybody.

Zane: I think that I think the messaging is a little skewed because there is a very much. It is the only way to build to be successful. And I'd [00:47:40] like to show you the evidence that that's not true. there's other ways to do be successful without. Being stuck to this template, that's, you know, somebody agreed upon somewhere along the [00:47:50] line.

Serena: is there ever pushback when your hours are higher and the client wasn't expecting that?

Zane: We try to keep the communication levels to the [00:48:00] point where they are doing it. And we're, you know, through the billing process on a monthly basis, they kind of manage if there's a bullet tie, we're like, let's talk about it. Yeah, I'm also not [00:48:10] scared to like, write off hours if we. Screwed up, right? we're very open about it.

Like, you know, they'll be like, oh, yeah, we messed up that recon. We had to redo it. It took us an extra 3 hours. I'm like, [00:48:20] well, well, you shouldn't be billing for that. You know, I understand if they had their own person, they would. So we'll do have those conversations, and be prepared for at the time pushes back, but [00:48:30] most of them know what we're doing for them.

It's not like it's some big, you know, secret what we're doing and. We don't have too many conversations about it, you know, just last month, we had a client for each other. He's [00:48:40] like, yeah, you know, that bill is high. I was expecting it. You know that that's not sustainable, so let's just figure out how we, know, reduce the ball back to a better normal level [00:48:50] going forward.

Great. That's fine. Like, well, this is what we think it's going to look like going forward. Let's talk after one cycle. See how it comes out. You know, we'll finish the billing cycle for us ends this week. So [00:49:00] we'll have a look at it next week. See how close we came to expectations if it wasn't why and then just communicate that to the client, you know, so that they're aware of it.

 So we have those conversations. It's [00:49:10] never. Okay. This isn't something crazy. I don't, we've never had any, like, really, like, I'm not going to pay that type of conversations. But the conversations to come up.

Serena: Even if you're value billing, [00:49:20] the conversation is going to come up because the scope creep on our end. Right. So

Zane: the other side, well, you said you're going to do all this. I'm not really using all of it on, like, like, well, but you need this. And [00:49:30] so you're not package 2, you are package 3. And, you know, the same issues run it. So,

Serena: yeah, either way it needs to be managed by [00:49:40] a human.

Zane: There has to be a process involved either way, so that when it does come up. You can have the conversations and, you know, a lot of the times. The conversation goes great. I totally [00:49:50] understand it, but you're also still with extra work. This is what it's going to cost. I mean, can we adjust it is something else we can use somebody internally that this is a section of work that it's really manual stuff.

[00:50:00] That's taking us a lot of time. Is there somebody on your team that can do it? Those are the type of conversations we try to have. To not really negotiate, but find the [00:50:10] collaboration so that they're using the resource to have available to them and using us in the places that are most important so that they can get the good information that they can run their business and be [00:50:20] successful.

[00:50:20] Advice from Zane 

Serena: I love that. Okay. We're almost at time. So I have I think a couple more questions. So a lot of our listeners are Maybe still in [00:50:30] corporate trying to start this bookkeeping or accounting thing on the side. And I would love to know if you have a word of advice for [00:50:40] someone that is just starting out, like, what do you think has been one of the bigger game changers for you as you, if you can think back 10 years to starting [00:50:50] your business.

Zane: It's obviously different for me because I, you know, I just, let's go. Let's see what happens. Right. I didn't have anything else. So this was my whole life from the get go. [00:51:00] So I don't really have like, how do you make it work? Um, if you're trying to start getting it going on the back end, I don't really have much feedback for that.

I mean, part of it is at some point, you have to [00:51:10] just make the decision to go for it. And sort of, if you're going to have 1 foot in, you're probably going to stay with 1 foot in. So just jump to both feet into that boat and keep going.[00:51:20] But I think 1 of the biggest things that I learned early on and probably took me a bit longer than it should have.

Is standardizing your procedures is really, really important. [00:51:30] And those procedures can be flexible, but the templates should exist so that you know what you're doing. And that's templates in terms of this is what I normally monthly [00:51:40] processes look like. This is what I'm monthly process like, just like these are the things we have to do as well as some standardized procedures on how to do certain things.

I think that's really important to try to get that [00:51:50] in place as soon as possible. If you can standardize across your team or across your clients, you know, then later, it makes things a lot easier because you don't having to relearn procedures every [00:52:00] place you go, which can lead to mistakes because, you know, if you've got a multiple going on, they get mixed up in your head.

The other part of it, especially once you have a team in places, figure out your [00:52:10] communication channels early and make that a priority that you understand what those look like. What platform they should be on, you know, how many of those need to be, you know, [00:52:20] face to face like we're doing right now or in person versus how many can be a phone call versus text or slack and set those standards really, really early and use them and look [00:52:30] at them often and change them as you need them to be.

 I think communication is really important and it's not just internally. It's with your clients as well, like understanding how often you should communicate with them when you need [00:52:40] to get with them. And then the only other thing that I can sort of really recommend is get a practice management software sooner than later.

 We definitely started that way [00:52:50] too late and trying to manage deadlines on an Excel spreadsheet for a long time was just chaotic. You know, when we eventually implemented one, which took us like nine months, and I was definitely,[00:53:00] you know, the bottleneck in that whole process. And I was always the one saying I didn't like it.

Eventually, we were, you know, implemented Karbon and. my wife works for the company as well, and she was, you know, the lead on the [00:53:10] implementation and I'd worked on it like an hour and I just walked over to where she's working and said, yep, you were right. And I went back to my desk because it was amazing and it was life [00:53:20] changing.

And, you know, it took me away from, I dealt with a lot of days where it's just like fire, fire, fire, like, oh, we've got to do this for the client. Great. I guess I got to just punch through it. Right. Where now I [00:53:30] don't have those days, like, I don't run into a situation where, we forgot something. It's just, you know, the process there.

People can go check. They do their work. We get it done. We move on. It is [00:53:40] such a big game changer if you know what to do and when to do it. Versus sort of just like, see, do your pants and what's going to pop inbox today.

Serena: Yeah. [00:53:50] Yeah. And I think that's a big shift from what. How people are used to working, like maybe in a corporate environment, it's it you're at the mercy of your [00:54:00] email inbox in corporate because you're kind of like they own you.

Zane: Yeah, that's the thing. It's all like, you know, part of, for me, why it became so important is that, [00:54:10] you know, everybody's got their own level of what email is, you know, I was getting a point where I'm getting five, 600 emails a day. So if I had to sort of be dictated my day by my inbox, [00:54:20] that's a problem, you know, even just trying to identify where the fire is, is hard enough.

 So having that system and knowing that my team knows what to get done and can [00:54:30] communicate to me where the process is, it's just a, it makes such a big difference and, you know, you don't need to have something as powerful as carbon. You can jump in or some, you know, smaller [00:54:40] is just organizational tools that allow you to do that.

You know, even a shared calendar can work, but have some sort of practice management software to help people know what they need to do and when they need to [00:54:50] do it. We'll make such a big difference and it'll also create consistency. And I always say like a book, good bookkeeper is a consistent bookkeeper and clients love [00:55:00] consistency.

They would like to know that they're, they don't have to ask for things. It's just going to come when they expect it.

Serena: Yeah, that's so true. Oh, so many good pieces of advice. Thank you. That and those [00:55:10] honestly apply to, you know, anyone in their business at whatever level, because you'd be surprised people will be five years in and don't have a system set up. They're still writing everything in [00:55:20] a notebook or whatever.

Zane: Or like I was just sort of, okay, what's, what's next to my inbox. You know, that it's, it's a horrible method and yeah, that's why I worked so [00:55:30] many hours in the early times. I mean, I still work a I had a full team, like a hundred hour weeks happened. And you don't wanna do that, it's just, [00:55:40] it's just stupid.

[00:55:41] Conclusion

Serena: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on and being willing to share all of your wonderful insights. If someone wants to connect [00:55:50] with you, where's the best place to do that?

Zane: I'm on LinkedIn and I'm there every day, posted to daily. And so if you, you can check me out there, you just St. [00:56:00] Stevens on there. You know, if you want to see Protio Financial, what we're doing there, pro financial.com is the best place to go. But we do have a LinkedIn and Facebook and all those things as well where we share a lot of good [00:56:10] information.

And then we also have a YouTube channel called Pro Academy. Which we share a lot of basic accounting knowledge and, you know, different series. And every now and then, like, twice a year, [00:56:20] I run some live series where I basically talk into the abyss because I'm live with nobody. But, um, you know, I talk about anything that sort of comes up with accounting and, you know, I just [00:56:30] sort of share some of my thoughts there.

So those are the best options.

Serena: Awesome. And then, and those like the YouTube channel, is that geared toward the wine industry or more toward [00:56:40] accountants?

Zane: little bit of both, there's some basic accounting stuff out there that's really Good knowledge for somebody just getting out and started an industry as well as, you know, small business owners that want to learn about it. [00:56:50] And then there are some very specific line industry stuff. A lot of the stuff that I'm doing on the website on the YouTube channel right now is mostly.

General accounting stuff, and just sort of [00:57:00] running a business, how to be successful. Yeah, let's talk to things. Yeah, thanks

Serena: Awesome. Well, I'm excited to check it out. We'll make sure to link all of those in the show notes and thank you [00:57:10] again for coming on and sharing today.

Zane: for your time. Sorry that I spoke so much.

Serena: Don't worry about it. All right. We'll talk to you soon.[00:57:20]

[00:57:30] [00:57:40] [00:57:50]

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