Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the Lifestyle Accountant Show. This podcast exists to help today's accounting firm owners build successful firms while also living a healthy, happy life without sacrificing sleep your weekends or time with loved ones. I'm your host, Meryl Johnston, and in our premiere season of the Lifestyle Accountant Show, I'll be talking to different accountants and leaders in the industry to hear how they are living their best life all through the lens of remote work. We'll be deep diving into their thought processes, strategies, and practical examples that you can apply to your own life and business. I'm so excited to bring you today's episode, how to build incredible culture in remote teams if we have an option.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Now to design this business, what would it look like? How would we want it to be known? How do we want the culture to look like? Then? It was really a business by design Versus I think for me, my previous business was very much a business by default.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: To dive into the nuts and bolts of this big topic, we have today's guest, Carl Hurigan, who is the co founder of Mad Wealth. Mad wealth is an accounting firm for purposeled entrepreneurs on a mission to make a difference. Mad wealth was formed in 2021 following a merger of Carla's firm with Amar Latifs of Latif Accounting. They are now a fully remote team of ten that provides endtoend financial management.
[00:01:29] Speaker C: I had to check with Carla what.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Endtoend financial management meant, but the way they describe it is that they have three divisions. The first is accounts management, and that's similar to bookkeeping on steroids, where they do all of the transaction processing, but also have services like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and up to the kind of work that an in house financial controller would be providing.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: They also have a tax division and an advisory division.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: In today's episode, we'll be drawing on Carla's experience at MAD wealth and my experience as co founder and previous CEO of Beaningers, where we have a team of around 30 people in six countries. We'll be exploring what has worked for each of us when we've tried to build team culture remotely, how we define our values and the importance of why we should do that. Hiring practices in remote teams, the team rituals, schedules, and meetings that we have, the communication tech stack that we use for remote teams, how to ask for feedback, and one of my pet topics, asynchronous communication compared to synchronous communication, how we do it and when is the right time for each.
This podcast is brought to you by a tox automated ecommerce accounting and content snare the easy way to get information from your clients. I'll be sharing more about these products.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Later in the show.
Hey, Carla, welcome to the show. Great to be chatting with you today.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Hey there, Meryl. Good to be here. Nice to see you today.
[00:02:54] Speaker C: We're here to talk about remote teams and building culture remotely. But Carla, could you give us a little bit of background about your current firm?
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Mad wealth is only just ticked over two years. When I thought about this. How did we actually sort of make the decision to go remote? Well, I was going to go back through this sort of history or this journey that got me here. So I guess the decision for us to go remote first with Mad wealth was really based on my own experience and some of the lifestyle desires that I had, with a little touch of strategy in there as well. But I'd had this vision to become 100% remote because I had this lifestyle desire, and I'd already sort of made some progress in that with transitioning and hiring some global team members and introducing some clients to Zoom meetings and those kinds of things, and even operating from a co working space, which is another small business that I owned at the time, rather than having a fixed address. And it was approximately two years into this sort of five year plan of mine that this little thing called a pandemic happened. And pretty much immediately all these so called barriers that I had to moving to a remote first model for me effectively just disappeared overnight. Literally the next day I was operating this goal of mine of 100% remote business. Whilst it was somewhat forced on me initially, after a little while working through the challenges and putting the processes and systems in place, it really confirmed for me that my vision to operate a business 100% remote was not only possible, but it could also be quite a successful and very rewarding business model. So it turned into this intentional focus.
[00:04:38] Speaker C: There's so many questions I have for you coming out of that, so many directions. We could take the conversation, but a quick one is from a lifestyle perspective. You said that your goal originally with the first bookkeeping business was to gradually transition to a fully remote business. Why was that?
[00:04:57] Speaker A: What did you want to do?
[00:04:58] Speaker C: Or what was attractive about that?
[00:05:00] Speaker B: So I had my children at a fairly young age, and I had spent the early years of their life working in a nine to five, and I didn't feel that I was able to be present as often for them. And I probably wasn't in a position to be able to make any other choices either. But when I reflected back on that I wanted to make some changes for myself and have more flexibility in my life, be more present and available for them as they moved into their teenage and adulthood years. And so that was probably one of the key reasons. And then when I looked at from a financial model point of view, what are the potential cost savings and also what are the potential opportunities? So that was the touch of strategy that I was talking about, that my desires and my experience was that I wanted to be more flexible and more present for my family.
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Yeah, that's fantastic and I can relate to that. Beanages actually did start out 100% remote, but I had a business before that which was more locally based in Queensland. And so that was something I thought about. That was part of the criteria of my next business, was wanting to have more flexibility, that back then I didn't have kids. So it was more about being able to surf in Bali and still be able to run a business. But over time, the reasons and the benefits of remote work changed. As we're having this conversation, you're based in Darwin, which was, I believe, a spontaneous move that you could do because you've got a business that you can pick up and run from anywhere. Can you talk just briefly about how you managed that?
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I went on a fishing trip and didn't go back pretty much.
That's the brief summary, but obviously it's with support of my business partner and my team in allowing me to be in different locations. So it was a bit of a transition phase for a while, but effectively, with Internet connection and the right equipment, it doesn't matter where we're located, when we're doing our work.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: I love it and I think that's such a great example. If you have a remote first business, you can make life decisions like that without impacting your team and without impacting the business. Love it.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: All right, well, let's dive into talking about culture and values. So if you were to talk about or pick one of the mad wealth values, could you explain how you would talk about that with a team member and how you try and embed that into the culture of the business, not just having values written down somewhere on a piece of paper and not referred back to?
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So values are so important in our business, we went through a process before we even decided to agree and sign on the dotted line to merge our businesses, that we would define what our personal values were like and where there might be overlaps and how they might play out in business. And that exercise was really imperative for us because that's where we found commonalities and it set the scene for what type of business mad wealth is in the culture. And so the very first one that came out of that, so, for instance, we had people first, is one of our values, and that still remains. But we've re sort of engineered it to be human at heart, and that is probably the highest on the list of our values. And that when we're talking about what that means to our team and we even speak about these things with our clients, it's about acting with kindness and having empathy and caring and putting that first before other certain things. So our people are the most important asset in our business. That's our team and our clients. So without them, we wouldn't have a business. So it makes sense to have that at the forefront of your mind. So there's a lot of meaning behind that from our standpoint.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: I think that's a Richard Branson quote when he says that his team is more important than customers. I'm sure I've said that before. Yeah, but I like the way you.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Can put me in the same category as Richard Branson, if you like.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I believe that too. The team is at the core, and that's who you want to definitely want happy clients as well. But keeping your team happy is. That's fundamental to the business.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: It's funny, when you were talking about how you created your values, I have memories. So initially being just had no values because I had no idea that that's what you did as a business owner. And then I read some business books, and about a year and a half in, I realized, oh, that's. I read traction. So the entrepreneur's operating system, OK, you need a mission and values. And so we were a remote team, so we tried to bring people onto the Gold coast, and then we had people on Zoom calls trying to break into little groups, getting everyone's input about different perspectives of what the values could be. And I still completely relate photographs of the whiteboard of trying to figure it out. There was something like 25.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: We still go over, narrow it down. Yeah, I think values are important to continue to go over. Are they still relevant? It's almost like a principle to adhere to. And if there's something that's more prevalent, they can evolve. And I can relate to your story of, again, going back to that previous business. It's almost like that was the lesson of all the things that I didn't do right in business. And I found that I had this business for a period of time and I hadn't gone through those exercises. And so it was more challenging to sort of transition and bring forward these values and this culture than what it was. When we sat down and we decided to merge, it wasn't just, okay, let's merge. It's like, if we have an option now to design this business, what would it look like? How would we want it to be known? How do we want the culture to look like those kinds of things? And it was really a business by design versus, I think, for me, my previous business was very much a business by default.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: I think a lot of business owners would like that opportunity again, because it is so much harder to change culture or change things when there's something established. So that opportunity to take all of those lessons and then apply it to something fresh would be fun.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Agree.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: I think I'll share one of our core values, which is freedom, and that's embedded into what our mission is as well. And that probably initially started with me wanting that ability to go and surf in Bali and to work from anywhere and not work too many hours. But I think that attracted, when we were hiring back then seven years ago, it attracted other people who wanted that flexibility and the ability to work remotely and have flexible hours. So it was interesting that as we went through that exercise, that is still one of our core values, and it impacts decisions that we make, like not having a phone number that's manned during office hours, because that would mean team members would have to be working during those times. So instead it's about scheduling meetings and being really responsive via email or our team doesn't have set work hours outside of. If someone's new, then for training for a couple of months, they do, but then people can pick their own schedules. And so decisions like that, we try and tie back to that core value of freedom. And sometimes you can make a decision and then think, oh, well, hang on, that's good for the business. But actually, is that in alignment with what we're all about? And so that's something we try and be conscious of.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think values are the core at every decision. If you're making decisions that don't align with your values, then you maybe need to either look at your values or look at your decision making process. We've got some pretty solid ones there. And I think for us, we talk about them with our team all the time. So we have certain processes where they're bought up. We have certain meetings or sessions where they're the focus of that session. So that it's not just like you said, put on paper, forgotten, it's a lived value.
[00:13:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
When it comes to running remote teams, could you share maybe a win and a loss when it's come to culture? So something that's worked well and something that maybe didn't or you do differently.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: One thing that's gone super well is hiring based on those shared values. So off the back of that, it's because we did that work from the beginning. When we hired, we found the type of candidates that seemed to just fit within our business because we'd done the work, and we embedded that into our hiring process. And so our team are so aligned and are on board with us for all the right reasons.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: And I have to ask a follow up question. Yeah, go. What would be an example of that? So, of one of your values, do you then embed it into the interview process or a questionnaire or something like that? How do you do it?
[00:13:54] Speaker B: There's a couple of ways that we do it. We do have knockout questions that are simply, if you do not pass go, do not collect $200, if you don't meet the minimum requirements, like, what makes a good team member for us, and vice versa, we won't be able to deliver on their expectations if they aren't meeting those sort of minimum requirements. And so that's one way that we do it. But we also have, the part of our recruitment process is getting into the interpersonal skills of that person and understanding what's meaningful to them. What are the habits or the activities and things that they're passionate about outside of work? And that sort of aligns with our other values, which is about, are they sort of sheep that follow the mold, or are they one of our values, which is daringly bold? It's about being transparent. Are they open, authentic? Are they stepping outside of their comfort zone? Are they trying new things? Are they being a little bit left of center instead of just following the mold? And then other things, like passionately playing is one of our values. So do they just have fun, have a joke, don't take themselves too seriously? Are they inquisitive? Do they explore? Are they those kinds of personality traits? So we do that through different stages of that hiring process, and it's been good because it shows us quite early on in that process where we've got some strengths. And essentially the two things, if you don't meet the values and our remote first mentality, then that's where the line stops for you.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Amazing.
And what about something that you do differently or that you've learned from a remote team culture perspective.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: I think what I've learned is the importance of systems and structure, but balanced by the ad hoc and connection side of things. So I sort of play in both of these areas mentally, like where I like things very structured and systematic. But then I also don't want to be tied to that type of thing myself. And so I kind of go, well, we need to have some flexibility and we need connection, and we need the human side of things as well. So what I think I've learned is that it's not necessarily one or the other, it's how we make those two fit together well. And something more recently is how do we bring the experiences of face to face or in real life to a virtual environment, and what can we do to enhance that? So that's been a bit of an evolving thing. I think it's an ongoing process for me, is what the things that I'm learning about being remote is gathering feedback and then sort of acting on that and testing new ideas within the team and with our clients.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: Yeah, the social and connection side. If I think about what would a win be for Bean ninjas, it would be around that. That the last couple of years we've invested more in that. So we've got a team member in the Philippines who's in charge of culture, and then she runs a little culture committee, and they do social events like karaoke. So there's the more formal events, but we also now do one on ones. And that's been really effective because some of the quieter team members might not get to know everybody in that big group environment. So every month they get matched up with a different person to have a one on one chat. And we've had good feedback on that. That, that's a nice way, particularly for the quieter staff, to get to know each person in the team.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that idea. That's great. I might steal that one. Well, we've done something similar, and I might be jumping off tune here a little bit, but we've recently implemented what we're calling a mojo, and that's to lift your mojo. So essentially, being remote, it has the benefits of being able to do deep work and get stuck in and get things done. But obviously the connection pieces, you have to be creative in how you bring that forward. So we're trialing a virtual room, basically a virtual tea room, virtual kiosk, whatever you want to call it. Water cooler, where people can drop in anytime. So it's not in the metaverse at this point. It's actually just an online meeting room. But if you think about it, that's what's happening out there is people are meeting in different spaces online and connecting that way. So we've just got one that's open for a period of time each day and we're trialing that for three months to see. Does that enhance connection across different team members? Because one day I might be in there and somebody that I don't connect with very often might be there and we can have a chats, like running into somebody in an actual office. So it'll be interesting to see what the results of that are. But that's the type of thing that I think based on feedback, we're trialing new ideas and experimenting.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: The water cool is interesting because if I think about my office days, that's where relationships were built. It was when you were in the kitchen making a cup of tea, or you were walking out of the office, going down the lift at the same time as someone, or walking to the station. I don't think it was so much doing the work and having meetings with someone. It was more all of those ancillary incidents where you bumped into someone and had a chat. So it's an interesting way of recreating that. I like it. I'll feed that one back to the Beanages team.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: And now a quick word from our sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by a tox automated ecommerce accounting. I'm the founder of Beanages, which is a specialist ecommerce accounting firm working with brands in Australia, the US and UK. We've tested all of the ecommerce accounting tools out there and a tox is a core part of our tech stack. I'm going to share an example of how we use a tox with one of our clients. This particular client sells swimwear, which they manufacture in Asia and sell in the US. Their sales channels are Amazon and Shopify. And they had a recent challenge where they were trying to get accurate financials for a loan and were struggling with this. When they moved over to Beaningers, they wanted accrual accounting, but previously their prior accountants had only done cash accounting and because of that, it was difficult for them to show an accurate gross profit and net profit figure when they were presenting their financials to get the loan. This was mainly because of the lumpy stock purchases. Moving over to Hox and using the cost of goods functionality meant they could move to accrual accounting. We could then help them prepare their financials faster and ultimately they were successful in securing a loan. So if you're an accountant with a client on Shopify or Amazon. Then make sure to check out a tox to automate some of the accounting work.
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[00:20:54] Speaker C: Use it for client onboarding any of.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Your tax or any time you just need answers from your clients.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: My favorite feature automated client reminders.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: With all client files in one place.
[00:21:04] Speaker C: Your team can work on actual accounting instead of spending all their time in.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Email looking for documents.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: I have to think about one of the things I found challenging with remote team and culture. I used to have a lot of direct reports. I don't anymore, but at one point I was doing one on ones with about ten people a week. I was trying to do the one on ones because I thought that was really important to check in with everybody, help them plan their work, and that was just overwhelming. My calendar was just full. So I've changed how I do that because I think in an office you probably don't need to do one on ones as often because you're chatting with people anyway. So I've rejigged how I do one on one and I do it more asynchronously via loom videos to help everyone with their schedule and kind of check in with how everything's going. And then back then it was a once a month call. Because some things you can't do asynchronously, it's better to actually have a chat. You can ask follow up questions, particularly if there's something going wrong or someone's not happy. But I found trying to balance that of how do I build good relationships with team members? How do I make sure everyone's feeling good, not burnt out? But how do I also manage my own schedule so that I'm not just on calls all the time?
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Yeah, that's so relatable. And I can just speak to the fact that we've just recently gone through a process of reviewing our meeting rhythms to just sort of check in at what is their intention and is the delivery method of them still in line with what we're trying to achieve. And it has made us do some changes around that side of things as well, and specifically around one on ones. I can relate to the idea that you want all this connection, but it doesn't always have to be done in the one delivery format. And so this is why also peer to peer kind of connections and the relationships are equally as important as the direct report types of relationships. I think.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I remember chatting with you about your meeting review. I think it was, it might have been close to when Shopify announced they were just canceling all meetings.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: I was like, that's a great idea.
Shopify can do it. Then I can do it too. Look, it's been an interesting process and it has made us think about that. Like I said, the meeting, the delivery method, and the way that we've kind of gone through it. And again with anything, let's see how if these changes work. If they don't, then we change it again. But we try to find the solution in the first phase, that we categorize it basically that anything that sync is focused on connection and strategy. So, for example, if we're doing long term planning or brainstorming or troubleshooting, and the way that I think of it is that when there's no clear path and you've just got a starting point, a question, a challenge, and you've just got nowhere to move from there, or you have an end in mind, but you don't know how to get there either. Ends of the spectrum, that requires a lot of dialogue. That's best for sync for us. And then on the other hand, we've got anything for Async, anything that's focused, that's tactical, that's structured, that's repetitive. So for updates, for example, for follow ups and in particular circumstances where you might be reaching a wider audience. So company updates and when scheduling is challenging, because let's face it, our calendars are just chalkers most of the time. And to keep that balance that you want to have as why we work remote isn't so that I can work into the evenings, cutting into my dedicated family time or my exercise, so called exercise time, that's when we can utilize the different methods. And so, yeah, we've sort of shifted and changed up some of the rhythms and combining those two different types of delivery methods. So we might have had previously a monthly meeting, for instance, and going forward, we might make it bimonthly, async and bimonthly the opposite month sync. And we have a mad monthly meeting. And this is usually where we do all come together as a company. And it's about bringing forth the vision and the values of the business. And we have thought provoking topics and discussions based around the values and the visions. So that's one way that we keep connected, but there's no outcome of that. It's actually just inspiration. It's keeping us in line with what we're here to do.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: I really like the way you broke that down of all right, is this about connection, or is it solving some kind of strategic problem where there's not a clear endpoint or there's not a clear roadmap to get to that endpoint? Compared to things like the status updates and some of that more regular work, I haven't heard it articulated like that, and I think that's a really nice way of thinking about it, particularly on the connection side that sometimes can be better, actually, if it's a sync meeting. But I think a lot of accounting firms could turn a lot more of their communication async, and it is a pet topic of mine, particularly things like status updates. There's no reason that everyone needs to have a meeting in their calendar to get an update when that could have just been written. Or my favorite loom video, talking through everything.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: I've learned from the best. Meryl, I've learned a bit from you as well.
Now it's becoming my passion project is to look review the that's one of the reasons why I've gone through this meeting rhythm review, because I do think we spend too much time doing not meaningful stuff in meetings, and it takes away from the deep work and the time that we need to do with the more strategic and connection type of things. And to your point, it's not necessarily that we won't talk about certain updates and things like that, but the actual update piece happens for us async and then we come to that meeting and we go, okay, based on that update, what are the actions that we, well, let's brainstorm, what are the actions that we might have or we could do, and then we come out with a resolution and have an action at the end of that. So I think the combination is important for us at times where it's not going through the numbers in the meeting, but it's looking at the numbers or whatever that is, or whatever that update is, and saying, based on what we all already know, because we've read it all async, then let's strategize and do that sync.
[00:27:35] Speaker C: Yeah, so we've talked about Loom. What are some of your other favorite tech tools when it comes to communication?
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Where do I start?
[00:27:44] Speaker C: I'm talking to one of the tech gurus in the industry here.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Little bit of a tech fanatic you could call me. But look again, if I break it down, I think way we've done it is we've streamlined our communications into traffic by arranging it into these types of funnels or pipes. So they fall into two main categories, internal comms and external comms. For our internal comms predominantly we're using Teams. So I'll just go through some of the things that we're doing within Microsoft Teams. So for general chat and fun we've got a channel for that that all goes through Microsoft Teams. When it comes to anything that's related to the divisions in the business, all the internal comms around the divisions, then that all goes through Microsoft Teams. So company wide updates from a people perspective, which is our team and recruitment, we manage our attendance and our approvals and our one on one. So those team member one on ones meetings and chats all with the permissions sitting around that who can access it and that sort of stuff. And from our systems, our infrastructure, we plug in status updates using RSS feeds and things like that for zero updates or ATO online services for agents for whenever that's down, which is often and from a growth or our sales and marketing.
It can be people driven chats in any of these channels or it can be these AI driven chats or integrated driven chats. So using Zaps for telling us that an engagement's been signed and things like that. So all our internal comms predominantly happen in Microsoft Teams and that's using chats and those sort of integrations and they've just recently introduced video clips. So a little bit like a mini Zoom, a mini loom, sorry.
And Teams is sort of really just an alternative to Slack. So I'm sure that those slack users are out there are using it similarly from internal comms around clients though we currently using carbon. So all of our client comms sit within the carbon platform and against that client record. External comms is where it's a little bit different. All of our live meetings are done using Teams. Our phone system is currently on Zoom but we're shifting to Teams calling. So trying to just make the most of all the features in the platform that we predominantly use our recorded video. So if we're doing internal recorded video or recorded video for external we'll use Microsoft Stream. So that's a relatively new. Well they've relaunched it, there was stream classic and they've now relaunched it under stream. So it's very similar to Loom but we're using that internally because it saves it straight into our SharePoint site and where our document storage is. But on that external comm side of things, our client requests are all in carbon. So again, all of our client communication, whether it's internal or external, sits within carbon. So that's a summary of our app stack. We use a lot, but we are trying to look at the tools that we have available to us in the platforms that we've already got and make the most of them and reduce our app stack a little. Yeah.
[00:30:57] Speaker C: Otherwise it can get overwhelming with all of the apps that are available. So that makes sense. I've tried to consolidate it dowN. I know that we've had those challenges before.
I'll talk a little bit about our app tech stack for communication. But we ended up having to write a communication policy to figure out, okay, what goes in Slack compared to we use help Scout for client communication, which is like a help desk email ticketing system. So we're using that for client.
But if you want to discuss what someone has said about that, do you put that on the help scout note? Actually, no, we want that back in Slack, and then we use teamwork, which would be. So Teamwork plus HelpScout is what I imagine your carbon is. So all of the project tasks and checklists and all of that to complete the work are in teamwork, and then the client communication is in helpscout. We did look at moving to carbon, and it does look amazing. Our challenge was that we have one central email address, but it looks like Carbon is run on a team member basis. And then it was just too much of a pain to move project management software and also all of our email software. So we moved to Teamwork recently away from Reich and considered Carbon. And if I was starting again today, I'd probably use carbon. But just when you've got a bigger team, it was too much of a. How big is your team? We're around 30 now.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So you getting scaling up. And I think that's exactly the barrier that I initially had to moving to carbon, because the way that I was operating my business previously, which did have that central email as well, and had a lot of communication traffic coming into that email, and then essentially delegating that internally, the system I was using previously did that and handled that quite well. When we decided to merge, the benefits, other benefits that we could see that Carbon had for us outweighed that one thing. So we had created a workaround for that. And part of the feature releases is they're actually releasing shared mailboxes coming soon. So that problem will be resolved. We fingers crossed for us, but we can't move again.
Well, you said if you got to.
[00:33:12] Speaker C: Start Again, never say never say never.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: If that comes, that's going to be quite a big pain point for us. That solve. We do get a lot of other efficiencies through the other features of carbon, but we do use that central email as well for all client communications. And then we triage that ourselves internally to who it needs to be flagged against. So if we can do that more seamlessly, we're looking forward to that feature, please.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: So a couple of other topics I wanted to go through with you. How do you seek feedback when it's a remote team? Because when it's in person, someone can just kind of swing by your desk, they're not happy about something or you can even see it. You'll notice someone's demeanor. How do you get feedback and keep an eye on, I suppose, the temperature of how everyone's feeling?
[00:34:02] Speaker B: In short, we do what we call pulse checks. So we have a platform we're using, which is Office vibe. So again, tech does do a lot of work for us when we're not in that face to face environment. So Office vibe pushes out pulse surveys on a regular basis. And we've created pulse. We expect the team to complete it. It can be completely anonymous, but we're getting a gauge as whether the team are, how they're feeling, and it categorizes it into ten areas. And we're keeping an eye on that every week in our metrics. So we have a metrics kind of session where we're looking at what are the triggers that we could pull internally to move our metrics in the right direction. So, for instance, if our team MPs is down, what's the underlying issues that might be there? What are the things that we could be doing and what are the things that we could pull that would change that? That's overall as far as the team. And then we can push out sort of custom surveys and things like that whenever we need. And we use Teams, Microsoft. So Office Vibe integrates with Microsoft Teams. So that reminds our team, again, that internal communication. And we also do ad hoc polls and things like that through Microsoft Teams as well. From a feeling point of viEw, that's where we're reliant on everybody within the team to bring that information back to us. So if somebody's on a meeting with somebody else and you get a sense it's to be human and that people first ask them are they okay? Is there anything I can help you with? And if you're just recognizing somebody's not going so well or there's a problem or a challenge going to your direct report and raising that and just flagging it, maybe you want to check in with that person or whatever. So everybody's responsibility internally is to take care of each other and to bring forth any of those conversations. And they've also got a specific one on one channel where it's open. Anything that you've got to raise. If there's a question, a problem, whether that's business or personal, we want you to bring everything, your whole self to the table. So that's built into our culture to be open. And look, we do see that there's some challenges around that. I think when I talk about it's our culture at Madwealth, but it's not necessarily culturally. We have a team in the Philippines and their culture isn't to sort of typically come forward and be so open with what's happening personally and might be reluctant. So it has meant that we've have to put extra effort into developing those relationships and instilling that we're here to support them in times of crisis or whatever that might be. So it's ongoing.
[00:36:45] Speaker C: We had similar challenges around that with our team in the Philippines. I think we went in expecting that they would tell us more about how they were feeling without us necessarily having invested and asked in those relationships. And I remember in the early days, we had someone resign. Resign. I had no idea that you weren't happy or you were feeling burnout, what's going on? And in that situation, we did manage to turn things around, and that was a great team member that stayed. But we realized that we need to put more effort into this. And a couple of things that we've done that have helped. One's having that manager in the PhiliPpines, so they've got someone local that they can have those kind of conversations with. That's been helpful. And then we do an employee MPs as well. We don't do it weekly, so maybe we should look at how often we do that. We do that once a quarter and that gives us a score. So we can kind of see how are things tracking, are things going in the right direction? But also there's a section for feedback. And so we've had useful feedback about needing more training on different things, workload some benefits. Things came up in that, and so that was really useful. If a team member didn't feel comfortable, we want them to be comfortable, but if they didn't, then there was that kind of forum where they could raise it as well. So that's been useful.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: I found that the more regular MPs or pulse surveys have been the most beneficial because it gives us an opportunity to exactly do what it says, check the pulse of how things are, because certain things might occur during a week. And to see, you can actually see from the stats the direct impact that that might have. So one example is every time deadline is coming up, the stress metric just goes like terrible. We're just like, we don't need to be stressed if we're on top of things. So what can we do to keep moving in the right direction? How do we remove the stress when it comes to deadlines, that is meeting deadlines before the deadline. So do, if we bring the deadline forward than what the actual literal deadline is and we bring our deadline forward, do we remove some of that stress and just trying different things like that. And the platform we have allows us to make a note of what change we made to see if the metrics change. So one, again, going back to that mojo meeting, I made a note in there that we've introduced a mojo meeting and it'll be interesting to see, are the metrics going to change? Are they going to improve in the areas of connection and wellness because of that, or is it just going to be a nice to have.
[00:39:19] Speaker C: So we're getting close to time, but the last thing I want to talk about is in person and whether you have any opportunities. I know Amar lives in a different city to you, but I think I've seen you at conferences together. How do you manage and how do you think about the in person part of running a business?
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Yeah, in person is still so super valuable. And if anything, I believe that the most important time for in person is when it's not structured and it doesn't have any agenda to it and it's just enjoying company, connecting, getting to know people on a deeper level, building on those relationships. So for myself and Amar, we've gone through a transition phase of this. We initially had a very structured, okay, from the outset, let's do a quarterly in person strategy or planning session to make sure that we're on top of our goals and we would meet and we would tie in a little bit of fun and things like that. Look, that hadn't really worked out so well for me specifically because I was so transient in where I was, what location I was going to be. So I was not able to keep to the schedule, that structure as often. So we did end up moving some of those two online types of sessions, still achieving the same sort of thing. What appears to be working better is if we are able to tie in, as you said, those types of events, conferences, things that we want to attend in person or only in person, and then building some time around that to spend together. And so that's from us as founders point of view. That appears to be working better, probably from my side of things. More than anything, it works better for my lifestyle, and it gives me a bit more flexibility when it comes to our team. We haven't had an opportunity to bring everybody together at this stage, but it's definitely on the cards and just trying to find the time in our schedules. It's just like anything, it's got to be fit in around current work schedules, family commitments, family holidays and things like that. So, yeah, it's just a matter of trying to get the schedule to line up for everybody.
[00:41:23] Speaker C: Yeah, we do something similar. So with my business partner Wayne, but also other business partners like Tom, we've tried to time it with different events. So we're already traveling to get somewhere where we'll be together and then just having some extra time together. So Wayne and I did that with Quickbooks connect in Vegas last year and then just had a bit of extra time at the start and the end.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Not a bad place to connect.
[00:41:47] Speaker C: We had so much fun. It was fantastic putting it on the list.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: Connection places, Vegas.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: We're actually planning. Well, we had planned previously a team retreat in the Philippines, but it got cancelled due to COVID. So our first one is going to be this November. And it's interesting that you were talking about that in person time and being unstructured. So I've been getting advice from other accountants that have run retreats in the Philippines and asking what went well and what didn't. And there's an upcoming podcast episode on that. But one of the key points was having less structured time. So more time just for people to have conversations rather than having a set.
It's funny you said that from my.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: Experience, my previous business I did do in person with my team in the Philippines, and we did everything unstructured. Had a blast, too, and I felt like I got to know them on another whole level. And they're still with us today. So they've come through the journey into mad wealth and they're still with us. So I think there's a lot of value out of that. I'll be interested to see your next or listen to your podcast session on that and see if I can learn something.
[00:42:58] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. If you've got questions, and same for any listeners. If you've got any questions on team retreats, send them over. And I'm no expert, but I'm bringing a couple of experts on and we can ask them all about it. So, Carla, thanks so much for coming on today. It's been such a fun conversation. I've definitely got some things that I'm going to go away and think about and take back to the big ninjas team and looking forward to seeing you at Accountex in March. I wasn't planning to be there, and then FOMO hit and I've booked my flight.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: You've made the right decision, Meryl. I look forward to seeing you there, and thank you so much for having me. It's been an awesome day.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Thank you. So there we have it. I hope you've enjoyed this episode exploring the ins and outs of building team culture remotely. And if you did, it would mean the world to us as a new podcast. If you could leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I want to thank Carla Hurrigan again for sharing her wisdom and knowledge with us today. And please check out the show notes for links to connect with Carla and learn more about mad wealth. For more information on the podcast, head over to LifestyleAccountant Co. See you next week for another episode of the Lifestyle Accountant Show.
