From Time Sheets to Transformation: Ron Baker’s Vision for Modern Firms
In this special edition of Profit First: Beyond the Book, hosts Tim Seymour and Duncan Lloyd sit down with legendary pricing strategist Ron Baker to confront one of the accounting industry's most entrenched traditions: the billable hour.
Ron makes the case for abandoning time-based billing in favour of the transformational subscription based business model that prioritises long-term relationships, consistent value delivery, and client experience.
This episode explores:
✅ Why the billable hour is holding firms back
✅ How the subscription model fosters deeper client relationships
✅ The mindset shift needed to lead true transformation
✅ Why groupthink has stifled innovation in the accounting profession, and how to break free
✅ What to expect from Ron at ***ProfitConUK 25***
If you're an accountant, bookkeeper or coach stuck in traditional pricing, or ready to break free, this conversation will challenge your assumptions and show you what’s possible when you price for outcomes, not hours.
Subscribe now and share with your team, this episode could spark the change your firm has been waiting for.
To find out more about ProfitConUK 25 view all the details of our highly anticipated annual event here ⤵️
https://profitfirstuk.co.uk/profitconuk-25
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Welcome to Profit first beyond the Book, a podcast that takes you beyond the book with Profit first brought to you by Tim Duncan and the rest of the Profit first professionals UK and Ireland.
Speaker A:So hello and welcome to another episode.
Speaker A:And I'm joined once again with Duncan.
Speaker A:So welcome, Duncan.
Speaker B:Hi, Tim.
Speaker A:And I'm also joined with Ron Baker, who as we all know, is a specialist when it comes to subscription pricing and many other areas.
Speaker A:In fact, I talk quite a lot about value pricing with our members and Duncan talks a lot more about subscription pricing with our members.
Speaker A:So, so we're really pleased to have you on, Ron, and thanks for joining us.
Speaker C:Oh, thanks for having me, you guys.
Speaker C:Thanks for having me.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:You're welcome.
Speaker A:No, we're going to go straight in.
Speaker A:And you know, you've long advocated for ditching the billable hour, so why is it that so many professionals are still stuck working with billable hours?
Speaker A:And what's the cost of them staying there?
Speaker C:Do you feel, wow, this is such a great question.
Speaker C:And I have pondered this for three decades, literally.
Speaker C:Why, when we know there are superior methods, certainly superior pricing methods, when there's been a pricing revolution going on in the world of business since the mid-80s, there's a professional pricing society.
Speaker C:I can get a PhD today in pricing.
Speaker C:I can get an MBA in some schools in pricing.
Speaker C: ricing departments in the top: Speaker C:But when it comes to the professions, we're mired in the mentality that we sell time.
Speaker C:This, I, I don't believe in monocausal explanations, especially for something this complex, But I will tell you that this is groupthink.
Speaker C:This is a classic case of groupthink in the professions.
Speaker C:It afflicts doctors, you know, doctors, you know, drew blood for, for decades, century or more, even after they knew it was useless.
Speaker C:They rejected anesthesia, they rejected the idea that ulcers were caused by bacteria, not stress.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:And, and this is an evidence based profession, medicine.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Scientific.
Speaker C:And I think it's groupthink.
Speaker C:And the consultants to the profession, I think also perpetuate it.
Speaker C:I think cost accounting perpetuates it.
Speaker C:I think cost accounting is a scourge on business.
Speaker C:I really do.
Speaker C:And the, you know, there's four defenses for timesheets and the biggest one is, well, we need to know profit per job.
Speaker C:Well, cost accounting doesn't do that.
Speaker C:And cost accounting is wrong for the most part.
Speaker C:It's, it's not even a good guess in terms of why people won't run away from it.
Speaker C:You know, the, the northumbrium word satisfies is a combination of satisfactory, insufficient.
Speaker C:It's a beautiful word.
Speaker C:Satisfies.
Speaker C:We do just.
Speaker C:Good enough.
Speaker C:It's good enough.
Speaker C:People understand it.
Speaker C:Our systems are built around it.
Speaker C:Yeah, the customers whine, but we write off when they do.
Speaker C:And everybody understands it.
Speaker C:It's easy, it's measurable.
Speaker C:Block it.
Speaker C:Satisfied.
Speaker C:We don't, we don't set out to optimize or maximize.
Speaker C:We just set out to satisfy.
Speaker C:It's lazy too.
Speaker C:And the cost, the cost is weaker customer relationships, lousy customer experience.
Speaker C: when I started my own firm in: Speaker C:But we did it because we wanted to emulate businesses that had great customer service, what today we would call customer experience.
Speaker C:You know, outfits like American Express and Lexus and Disney and, and all of that.
Speaker C:And, and we just did it because we thought it was better for the customer and the customers loved it, even though we made every mistake under the sun.
Speaker C:So I, I'm gonna pin it on groupthink.
Speaker C:It's really hard to change a profession's mental model, their paradigms, if you will.
Speaker C:It really is.
Speaker C:It takes sometimes decades or centuries to do so.
Speaker C:This thing's a hundred years old, by the way.
Speaker C: ing and timesheets started in: Speaker C:It's 106 years old.
Speaker C:I think the world has changed a little bit.
Speaker B:Yeah, 100.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Beautifully put, Ron.
Speaker B:And your, your book Time's up, which I think think is behind you.
Speaker B:I mean, I read that last year and it's, it is, it is absolutely packed full of practical advice on, on, on how, how to price effectively, you know, co written with Paul Dunn, good friend of ours.
Speaker B:Paul's part's the first bit, the theory bit, your part of the second part, the practical bit.
Speaker B:I, I absolutely love this.
Speaker B:One of those books where the world tilts slightly.
Speaker B:You just have to do things differently.
Speaker B:Well, once you've read it.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C: he Firm of the Future back in: Speaker C:The publisher approached us and said, how would you like to update.
Speaker C:Do a 20 year update, you know, firm of the future, 2o.
Speaker C:And I basically said, don't want to write old books, want to write new books with new ideas.
Speaker C:And we pitched the subscription model to them and they loved it.
Speaker C:So, yeah, it was great teaming up with Paul again.
Speaker B:And you know, in my accounting firm, we have implemented Subscription pricing slowly at first, but you know, we've gone all in on it.
Speaker B:It's been great.
Speaker B:I mean, you articulate the pricing journey, you know, from the billable hour value pricing onto subscription pricing.
Speaker B:And I think the beauty of, of subscription pricing, I think that there are three things to it.
Speaker B:You know, one, it simplifies customer acquisition.
Speaker B:It removes friction.
Speaker B:We're not saying to a customer, when they say, how much is your service?
Speaker B:We don't say, well, it depends.
Speaker B:And if we say, you know, for, for your niche, for your, this package, here's the price makes it dead easy for my team to sell.
Speaker B:They don't have to go into detail software and edit, edit a report.
Speaker B:They just say, this is the price.
Speaker B:And it disciplines us to focus on the customer.
Speaker B:You know, we're constantly looking for how we add, how we add value to that customer relationship because we're capturing a proportion of that value for ourselves.
Speaker B:So we're always looking for how we improve that experience.
Speaker B:So for those who haven't read the book, why don't you just give us a quick summary of what subscription pricing is?
Speaker C:What?
Speaker C:Well, for one thing, subscription is, I think, a business model, not just a pricing method.
Speaker C:Now you, you can find other professional pricers out there that go, that will say, oh no, no, it's just another pricing method, just another arrow in the quiver.
Speaker C:It's not, it's a true business model revolution.
Speaker C:And when you change a business model, at least two things change.
Speaker C:One is your pricing strategy.
Speaker C:Uber does not have the same pricing strategy as taxicabs.
Speaker C:Airbnb does not have the same pricing as Marriott or Hilton.
Speaker C:The second thing that changes is the KPIs that you look at.
Speaker C:The KPIs for Uber are not the same as taxicabs and same for Airbnb.
Speaker C:And subscription has told it's got a different income statement because it starts with ARR.
Speaker C:Annual recurring revenue backs out.
Speaker C:Churn categorizes expenses not based on gaps matching principle, but based on the type of expense.
Speaker C:Therefore, we can compute certain KPIs that, that people have found predictive in a subscription model.
Speaker C:So the KPIs change, the accounting statements change.
Speaker C:That's a business model change.
Speaker C:It goes way beyond pricing.
Speaker C:I hear firms tell me all the time, oh, we do subscription pricing.
Speaker C:Our, our customers pay us monthly.
Speaker C:That's a payment term.
Speaker C:That's not a subscription model.
Speaker C:The big thing about subscription, like you said, Duncan, is you've got to plus the offering, you got to constantly.
Speaker C:Plus the concept I shamelessly stole from Walt Disney who constantly plus the Disneyland park because he knew intuitively that the value of a lifetime customer was fantastic.
Speaker C:It costs so much for Disney to get a customer into the park.
Speaker C:Once they're there, they want them to come back.
Speaker C:And the only way to bring them back is to constantly plus the park, to constantly create new experiences that surprise and delight the guests.
Speaker C:And he, he understood that.
Speaker C:So to me, the subscription business model is periodic recurring payments for frictionless, ever increasing value and serial transformations.
Speaker C:Now I realize that's a suitcase definition.
Speaker C:Each one of those words is doing heavy lifting and they need to be unpacked.
Speaker C:But basically, periodic recurring payments, usually monthly, although some firms are using weekly with subscription, which is pretty interesting.
Speaker C:In fact, there's a very big firm out there here in the States that does CFO work and their payment term is weekly, not monthly.
Speaker C:It's weekly.
Speaker C:And ever increasing value is the concept of constantly plusing the offering.
Speaker C:And serial transformations is kind of the transformation economy that I think we're already in and will become what the future of the profession looks like in, in the coming years.
Speaker C:And, and so this business model, change it, it looks at the relationship.
Speaker C:It puts the customer relationship at the center.
Speaker C:It prices the portfolio, not the math of the moment.
Speaker C:You know, some customers are going to need you more in some months than others.
Speaker C:And you got to think about it like a portfolio.
Speaker C:This is what I hate about cost accounting.
Speaker C:It tries to measure profit per hour or profit per job or profit per customer.
Speaker C:You can't do that in an interconnected system.
Speaker C:It's like going on a diet and weighing yourself every two minutes.
Speaker C:It's crazy.
Speaker C:You know, we, we complain about big business being too short term, you know, quarterly focused.
Speaker C:And here we are trying to compute a P and L for every single hour.
Speaker C:It's absolutely nuts.
Speaker C:So rather than looking at the math of the moment, subscription says we're building lifetime annuities that have a greater value than the cost to acquire them.
Speaker C:And that's why when firms go to sell and they have recurring revenue, they're going to get a far higher multiple than if they have reoccurring revenue, which is kind of like a rash.
Speaker C:You never know if it's going to come back.
Speaker C:There's a lot of one off projects, one and done customers.
Speaker C:It's very transactional.
Speaker C:A buyer is going to look at your revenue and put it in those two buckets.
Speaker C:What's recurring and what's reoccurring the recurring is going to get you a much higher multiple.
Speaker C:We're seeing multiples of 8 to 14 of gross revenue for service subscription businesses.
Speaker C:Not just professionals, but just service businesses.
Speaker C:And that's amazing.
Speaker B:That's incredible, isn't it?
Speaker B:Eight to 14.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:I love the concept of plusing.
Speaker B:Like, like I say earlier, it kind of.
Speaker B:It's a discipline for us to make sure that we are constantly reinventing ourselves, serving our customers as effectively as possible.
Speaker B:I see a bit like a fitness club.
Speaker B:You know, they may upgrade the gym, they may appalling but you know, you don't necessarily pay a higher fee.
Speaker B:You just, they're just constantly making it, improving the experience and developing their relationship.
Speaker B:So one of the things that we did, for example is that we introduced Mastermind.
Speaker B:We put our customers into mastermind groups just as part of the subscription.
Speaker B:Are there other examples that you would like to offer for accountants, bookkeepers and coaches things that they can do so to plus there relationship that they offer to their customers.
Speaker C:That's a great one, Duncan.
Speaker C:I mean kind of stole my thunder with that because a mastermind group is fantastic.
Speaker C:Especially if firms are niched.
Speaker C:You know that I always say, you know, start a CFO roundtable or maybe a CEO roundtable or, or a C suite roundtable.
Speaker C:You start a book club, you know, read a business book a quarter or whatever and then get on, get online or meet and talk about it.
Speaker C:But basically what you're trying to do is leverage your knowledge rather than your pair of hands.
Speaker C:We have so much knowledge and we create so much value with that knowledge, even just by the simple thing of asking a more beautiful question.
Speaker C:And we think as accountants the only way to make money is to provide a service.
Speaker C:So we want to, we want to stack services like bricks, you know, into these towers that reach to the skies.
Speaker C:But they're hollow because what, what we're really paid for is our knowledge, our wisdom, our understanding, our being able to synthesize different types of things.
Speaker C:And so I, I'm a big believer in, in creating groups like the Mastermind.
Speaker C:I also like if firms could rather than price based on scope of work, price on.
Speaker C:Think about it in terms of nature of work.
Speaker C:So for example, you know, if you were, if you were going to hire an accountant or a controller or a cfo, they would have different responsibilities and they would cover different areas and they'd have different expertise and.
Speaker C:But it, once you hire the accountant, they're going to do anything that's required that an accountant can do.
Speaker C:A controller, you know, would, would an accountant say.
Speaker C:Provides hindsight.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:It looks backwards where accountants tend to be historians with lousy Memories.
Speaker C:A controller can do things that provide insight, maybe move the business from desktop to cloud accounting so you have more real time information and insight.
Speaker C:And controllers can help with bad debts and, you know, write offs and things like that, and procurement, you know, cost of things and all of that.
Speaker C:But a CFO's role is more foresight, it's more strategic, it's more financial planning and analysis.
Speaker C:That's b, that's based on nature of work.
Speaker C:And I think we need to do that.
Speaker C:As accountants, we're too caught up in scope.
Speaker C:And then when scope changes, oh, we have to go to the department of paperwork and you know, get a change order.
Speaker C:And that just introduces friction into the relationship.
Speaker C:It puts pricing back in front of the customer.
Speaker C:They've already decided to subscribe to you.
Speaker C:The pricing decision's over now.
Speaker C:Just plus your offering continue to delight them.
Speaker C:You'll keep them for life.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And so you don't have to keep tossing up the pricing friction between you and them because they've already subscribed to you.
Speaker C:I, you know, we're all probably prime members here at Amazon.
Speaker C:Every time Amazon increases the price, they give me a bullet point list of 12, 15, 20 things that they've done that they've plused since the last price increase.
Speaker C:Even if I don't use any of those benefits, it throws a halo over the offering and I just re up.
Speaker C:Of course I'm going to re up.
Speaker C:Notice they don't blame it on cost increasing, supply chain problems or inflation.
Speaker C:They base it based on value and, and subscription allows us to do that.
Speaker C:And I love that.
Speaker C:Plus I think firms could be offering, maybe depend and this is going to vary by firm based on expertise.
Speaker C:I think profit first is a phenomenal transformation that you can do right out of the gate that adds tremendous value.
Speaker C:Then you can help your customers with their pricing, their KPIs, maybe their strategy, maybe their HR.
Speaker C:If you've got that expertise.
Speaker C:We can constantly add these things into, say you add it into this, the CFO role first.
Speaker C:After several years, slide it down into the controller role as you continuously plus the CFO offering.
Speaker C:So there's all sorts of ways to, to do that, to leverage your intellectual capital rather than a pair of hands.
Speaker C:The other thing is leverage your social capital.
Speaker C:Doctors are phenomenal at that, at this, especially gps.
Speaker C:If I go to a gp, they stay in their lane.
Speaker C:I know what they don't do.
Speaker C:You know, we're defined by what we don't do.
Speaker C:And if I need surgery or something, they're going to Quarterback that relationship for me and find me a referral.
Speaker C:Our social capital networks can do the same thing.
Speaker C:So we can rely on other experts where we don't have that expertise.
Speaker C:We don't have to be a, a one stop shop, but we should be a first stop shop for our customers.
Speaker C:They should contact us first if they're trying to do something.
Speaker C:If we can't do it, it's probably somebody in our network who can.
Speaker B:Yeah, well I hope our listeners are taking notes because there was at least half a dozen great ideas in there.
Speaker B:And one of the great things about the mastermind groups is that they start helping each other and then suddenly there's this.
Speaker B:All this value gets released by collaboration.
Speaker B:One of the one expressions you use is that pricing is the ultimate expression of value, which I think it doesn't have a lot of meaning.
Speaker B:So what does that mean for.
Speaker B:Unpack that a bit.
Speaker B:For accounts and bookkeepers who want to be seen as advisors rather than technicians.
Speaker C:Great question.
Speaker C:Value is what determines price, not cost.
Speaker C:We, we again this is cost accounting thinking.
Speaker C:We've got this idea that a product or a service, you know, moves through a factory and, and we assign cost to it, you know, based on where it is from WIP to finished goods.
Speaker C:But, but a customer doesn't buy a bundle of costs.
Speaker C:They buy a finished product and usually a brand.
Speaker C:I mean I'm talking to you from an Apple computer.
Speaker C:It's 3, 500 bucks.
Speaker C:There's lots of other computers I could buy for 800 and I can't tell you why.
Speaker C:I paid four times more for this machine.
Speaker C:I never did an ROI.
Speaker C:I never opened up a spreadsheet and weighed the cost and benefits.
Speaker C:I did it because I'm attached to the brand.
Speaker C:I'm loyal.
Speaker C:There's a feeling that I have about Apple.
Speaker C:Same with Amazon and other companies that we admire.
Speaker C:So the market has, the market's a great discipline, you know, the invisible hand of the market, they say sets prices.
Speaker C:Well that's not exactly true.
Speaker C:You have, there's a lot of dexterity in the fingers of the invisible hand.
Speaker C:You have a lot of control where you position your firm.
Speaker C:Do you want to be McDonald's or do you want to be a high end steakhouse?
Speaker C:Both serve meat.
Speaker C:But they're targeting a completely different audience with a completely different positioning statement.
Speaker C:And what's frustrating about a lot of professional firms is they don't want to say no to anybody.
Speaker C:They want to be all things to all people.
Speaker C:And you just can't be an expert in all these different industries, especially today with all the different tech stacks that you need to operate a restaurant, a dentist office.
Speaker C:I mean, there's no way anybody can comprehend all of this.
Speaker C:So pick a niche and stop.
Speaker C:You know, I think sometimes if accountants were veterinarians, they'd have a sign out said that said veterinarian and taxidermist.
Speaker C:That way they could say, either way you'll get your cat back.
Speaker B:So we often have that conversation about niching or niching.
Speaker B:It's an ongoing debate.
Speaker B:I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker B:Not least because your marketing talks to a specific person who is prepared to pay because you can solve their problem.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker C:And, and you can transform them because you know everything about them.
Speaker C:And there, there is no doubt, you guys, that if I had to communicate one thing, it would be that the most profitable.
Speaker C:Now that's not my only indicate indication of success.
Speaker C:But if we're just going to look at pure bottom line, the most profitable professional firms in all sectors, not just accounting, law, I T, advertising, consulting, doctors, whatever, they're all specialized.
Speaker C:Yeah, the medical profession doesn't have a scope creep problem because the medical profession stays in its lane that you know, what a surgeon can do and what they, and more importantly, you know, what they don't do.
Speaker C:Just like my gp.
Speaker C:The last thing I want to hear from my GP is oh, well, you know, I dabble in heart surgery on the weekend so I can take care of you.
Speaker C:No, I'm going to go to the doctor who's done this tens of thousands of times.
Speaker C:We tend not to do that.
Speaker C:We want to take all comers.
Speaker C:I don't know if we're trying to please everybody, but it doesn't work.
Speaker C:It may be great for your intellectual curiosity to work with a lot of different businesses.
Speaker C:I admit that's, that's why most of us probably got into or stay in public accounting.
Speaker C:But it's not, it's a crappy business model.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Speaker B:And when, you know, in our firm, when we went down this route of subscription pricing, we increased our prices significantly.
Speaker B:We were making a statement by doing that.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker B:And when I, I started having fewer conversation with, with prospects.
Speaker B:But I didn't, I needed fewer customers.
Speaker B:And in fact, one of the very early ones that I spoke to couldn't believe how cheap you were.
Speaker B:And that for me has a real light bulb moment where I thought, you know, a couple years ago I would never have dreamt of charging these prices.
Speaker B:Now people are saying, well, you're quite cheap, aren't you?
Speaker C:Because see it's relative to value.
Speaker C:That's how I feel about my apple.
Speaker C:But you know, it's not a 700 machine, but to me it's worth every penny and much more.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker C:Yeah, and, and you know, there's great nobility in being paid what we're worth.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker C:But if we go to the market with a common offering, like everybody else, guess what, you're going to command a common price.
Speaker C:But if you go to the market with an uncommon offering, and I think subscriptions, very uncommon, done correctly, then that's going to command a premium price.
Speaker C:And I'm talking multiples of three to five times more than what you were paid before.
Speaker B:Well, subscription with profit first, with a, with a niche is a, is a, is a great combination.
Speaker C:It is.
Speaker B:Ron, you've mentioned a couple of times transformations.
Speaker B:And we interviewed Richard McCann, the, the motivational speaker on our podcast recently, and he also talks about transformations.
Speaker B:It's, it's something that we, we also talk to our members about a lot.
Speaker B:And we, and we asked him about what he would advise we, what, what accountants or bookkeepers need to do for their customers.
Speaker B:Now his answer was they need to help them achieve transformations.
Speaker B:So how would you personally define transformation in the context of client relationship?
Speaker B:Client relationships.
Speaker B:What should accounters, bookkeepers and coaches be thinking about in the context of transformations?
Speaker C:Yeah, this is, this is so exciting.
Speaker C:This is such an exciting topic because, you know, products and services, they save us time.
Speaker C:You know, I, I'm sorry I got gardeners out here, but I don't mow my own lawn because they save me time.
Speaker C:And I can do what I do best.
Speaker C:I don't change my own oil.
Speaker C:But products and services exist outside of us.
Speaker C:When we get up the value chain a little bit higher, we get into experiences.
Speaker C:Now experiences take place inside of us.
Speaker C:If the three of us were to go to Disney World, we'd all have different experiences internally about how we felt about various things in, in the park and whatnot.
Speaker C:But transformations change our identity, change who we are.
Speaker C:So a transformation is usually a from to proposition.
Speaker C:You know, I want to go from smoker to non smoker, from meat eater to vegan, or from just a wine drinker to, you know, somebody who understands and appreciates wine or, or can cook or from a, you know, tone deaf to musician.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:These are all personal transformations.
Speaker C:And because we humans, we all have aspirations and they, they center around four spheres.
Speaker C:We want to be healthier, wealthier and wiser and live with purpose and meaning.
Speaker C:Well, businesses can contribute to each one of those Spheres, maybe more than one, probably not all four.
Speaker C:But, you know, like, I don't know that we accountants can have much to do with somebody's health except for peace of mind.
Speaker C:But doctors take care of our health, we take care of their, their wealth and their prosperity.
Speaker C:But it all contributes to human flourishing and transformations.
Speaker C:Since they're aspirational, you don't have to gin up demand for them.
Speaker C:You don't have to do social media posts about, you know, come to us because we solve this problem.
Speaker C:I mean, solving problems is great, but if all we do is solve problems, we just revert the customer back to the status quo.
Speaker C:We're not advancing them.
Speaker C:I think we're privileged because we're in a spot where we can advance the customer and change their identity and we guide those transformations.
Speaker C:The customer has to want to change, but we can be their guide through that process.
Speaker C:And they can be small things or they can be very large things, like taking an accounting firm, for example, from hourly billing to subscription or value pricing even, that's, that's a metamorphosis, right?
Speaker C:That's a, that's a transformational change.
Speaker C:Profit first, I think, is a big transformation.
Speaker C:This is the kind of thing that professions were designed to do.
Speaker C:It's the highest, it's the highest calling and the greatest privilege to be able to guide somebody to change their identity.
Speaker C:It's not about the products and services.
Speaker C:The products and services are a means to an end.
Speaker C:The transformation is the end.
Speaker C:And that's how we kind of think about it.
Speaker C:Because in the transformation, the customer's the hero of their own journey and the customer is the product because we're changing the customer.
Speaker C:It's not about the products and services.
Speaker C:We really have to move away from that because that is going to be subsumed into transformations.
Speaker C:And if all we're doing is pushing products and services, they're going to be more and more commoditized.
Speaker C:If that's all firms are doing and talking about, or this, this dreadful move to productize services, that's a step down, a big step down to productize a service.
Speaker C:It's all about transformations, I think, in the coming years.
Speaker A:Thanks, Rob, appreciate that.
Speaker A:And, and you're, we're really excited that you're going to be joining us in London at Profitcon UK 21st on 22nd September.
Speaker A:And without giving everything away, what's the core message or the question that you'll be challenging our audience with?
Speaker C:Wow.
Speaker C:I guess the kind of the overarching theme of all of this is, you know, disruptive threats come from new business models.
Speaker C:It's not just technology.
Speaker C:Technology is usually necessary, but it's not sufficient.
Speaker C:You know, Uber wouldn't be able to exist without the iPhone and GPS and all that, all the tech.
Speaker C:But Uber is still a very innovative psychological innovation and, and a new business model and that's where disruptive threats come from.
Speaker C:You know, what kills us usually doesn't look like us and accountants have all these threats, you know, fintech and everybody's trying to get into the game and, and we have to really stake out of ground as professionals and say no, no, we're not just providing solutions to problems and we're not just providing products and services, we are guiding you.
Speaker C:Products and services advertise, look at what we can do.
Speaker C:Whereas transformations message, look who you can become.
Speaker C:We can take you from, you know, we can help your kid once he's born, get into college.
Speaker C:We can help you build your dream home.
Speaker C:We can plan your legacy for after you're gone.
Speaker C:We can help you build a business that's going to be worth more so you can retire sooner or you know, enjoy the golden years or whatever it might be, whatever your aspirations are, we can help guide these journeys.
Speaker C:And to me that is not.
Speaker C:It can't be done under hourly billing.
Speaker C:I don't think it can be done.
Speaker C:Value pricing maybe, but subscription is just fits like a hand in glove to the transformation economy because, because again it's focused on the relationship, the lifetime value and because we can do these transformations from womb to tomb, we can take care of somebody literally from womb to tomb.
Speaker C:That's a ser.
Speaker C:That's.
Speaker C:Those are serial transformations we can do, you know, over and over again.
Speaker C:That's going to be the big message.
Speaker C:I want firms to change their business model.
Speaker C:If you're out there hourly billing, you're in 106 year old business model.
Speaker C:It's time to change.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:And, and I, I mentioned to you before, you know, my, I sold my business four years ago but, but moving into value pricing helped me massively.
Speaker A:But I know for a fact that niching and subscription would have taken it to the next level had I chosen not to sell.
Speaker A:And so I would have gone down that route just like Duncan has because I can see that the benefit from it straight away.
Speaker A:So what do you think the role of the accountant will be in 10 years time with all this in mind?
Speaker A:And who, who's going to get left behind?
Speaker C:Oh wow.
Speaker C:I think the role of accountant should be guiding transformations and the firms that get There first, I think, are going to have an enormous competitive advantage because they're transcending the competitive landscape.
Speaker C:They're not talking about the products and services and solutions to problems.
Speaker C:Even tax savings.
Speaker C:I love tax savings.
Speaker C:Accountants are great at coming up with tax savings.
Speaker C:But I have a buddy in the uk.
Speaker C:You guys might know him.
Speaker C:It's Paul Kennedy, formerly o' Byrne and Kennedy.
Speaker C:And when he met with new customers, part of his conversation, his beginning conversation was, if you work with us, we will do everything we can to minimize your tax.
Speaker C:But that's not the objective.
Speaker C:The objective is, One of our KPIs is you're going to pay more tax.
Speaker C:And if you don't, we failed because we're here to maximize your income and your wealth, and you're going to pay more tax as a result.
Speaker C:That's a completely different view than minimizing taxes.
Speaker C:I'd rather have an accountant who maximizes my wealth and income than minimizes my taxes.
Speaker C:And it's kind of like a doctor who just cures you when you're sick, reverts you to the status quo, or a doctor that keeps you healthy.
Speaker C:It's just a different way of looking at the world, and it transcends the competitive landscape.
Speaker C:And you go to the market with an uncommon offering that can command a higher price.
Speaker C:So it's the pinnacle of value.
Speaker C:There's nothing we can do that's of higher value than guiding transformations.
Speaker C:Nothing.
Speaker C:Nothing.
Speaker C:And I am absolutely convinced of that.
Speaker C:And I'm starting to see more and more companies, from the Mail Clinic to Nike to Audi and other car companies even start to message around transformations.
Speaker C:It's not about what they sell, it's about what you become.
Speaker C:That's where the future is.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:And what can accountants and bookkeepers do now in respect of pricing and how they deliver their value?
Speaker C:Well, the easiest thing they could do is just offer three options.
Speaker C:You know, come up with three options, use artificial intelligence.
Speaker C:It will name the options for you, it'll give you very clever names, and you can come up with three offerings and do it not based on scope of work, don't count transactions, don't count number of employees.
Speaker C:Knock it off with this.
Speaker C:We're professionals.
Speaker C:We're not paid for tasks.
Speaker C:A professional is somebody who's responsible for creating an outcome, not delivering a series of tasks.
Speaker C:If I want a bunch of tasks done, I'll hire a day labor, you know, walk my dog, clean my gutters, you know, mow my lawn.
Speaker C:I go to a professional for an outcome.
Speaker C:And if, if we can do that, then we should be pricing our work based on its nature.
Speaker C:What are we going to do for you?
Speaker C:Every one of our tiers, if we offer three, should have an outcome attached to it.
Speaker C:For example, just give you a real simple example.
Speaker C:My landscaper, he offered me basic maintenance.
Speaker C:He offered bring your yard up to neighborhood standards so you stop getting, you know, nasty notices from the homeowners association for being out of compliance or best curbside appeal because we know you want to sell.
Speaker C:Ron, because he asked me, this is how you discover aspirations.
Speaker C:You have conversations and you ask questions.
Speaker C:He knows I want to sell with within a few years, so he's slowly upgrading my yard to best curbside appeal.
Speaker C:He's doing it on his timeline, he's doing it when he has capacity.
Speaker C:And I could care less how long he takes.
Speaker C:It does the time to.
Speaker C:It doesn't matter.
Speaker C:What matters to our customers is not our time, it's their time.
Speaker C:To the extent we measure time in this business, it should be customers time saved, customers time well spent when we interact with them, and customers time well invested when we guide them through these transformations.
Speaker C:It's their time that's important, not ours.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:And then I just want to take it back to ProfitCon.
Speaker A:Need to mention yet again that you are joining us in London on 22nd September, and I know you've spoken all over the world.
Speaker A:What makes events like ProfitCon different from simply reading books and listening to podcasts?
Speaker C:Oh, wow.
Speaker C:There's nothing better than live, live interaction.
Speaker C:You know, we can learn a ton from reading books, and I do.
Speaker C:But if you give me the option to read a book or interview the author, I'm going to take interview the author, even if it's only for 20 minutes, because I'm going to learn all sorts of tacit knowledge.
Speaker C:It's kind of like if you wanted to learn to play golf and would you rather read a book by Jack Nicholas or Tiger woods, or would you rather go play around with them?
Speaker C:I'd rather go play around and, but, but what's great is the attendees of Profit Kong can do both.
Speaker C:They can read the book and they can come and listen to the authors like Mike.
Speaker C:And you know that that's phenomenal.
Speaker C:So I kind of like, I see it as let's do both.
Speaker C:But I think to some extent learning is a social activity or it can be enhanced by conversations, especially with colleagues.
Speaker C:There's.
Speaker C:And there's no replacement for that.
Speaker C:I think there's more energy in the room.
Speaker C:It's it's better than a zoom, you know, webinar or something.
Speaker C:It's just a more dynamic environment.
Speaker C:Plus, I think the networking is, is sometimes more valuable than the actual content that's delivered.
Speaker C:Just meeting with your colleagues and be able to chat with them, you, you might meet somebody who changes your life.
Speaker C:This is how I met Paul Dunn.
Speaker C:I met him through a colleague who read my book and sent it to him.
Speaker C:Said, you need to read this and then you need to meet this guy that changed my life.
Speaker C:Would have never done that unless I was at a live conference.
Speaker C:That never would have happened.
Speaker B:Amazing.
Speaker B:Well, we are so excited to host you, Ron.
Speaker B:And for people, I think it's the first time in your UK for a number of years, maybe even five years.
Speaker C:Yeah, pre Covid.
Speaker C:Yeah, pre Covid for sure.
Speaker B:Amazing.
Speaker B:So the fact that you're, you're our event is a real honor for us.
Speaker B:So thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker C:Oh, thank you.
Speaker A:Thanks.
Speaker A:Thanks Ron.
Speaker A:I could carry on talking and listening to you all day.
Speaker A:I'm not going to lie.
Speaker A:I've really enjoyed this podcast.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for spending time with us and sharing your wisdom and knowledge, which of course shows the value and what people pay for.
Speaker A:So, so thank you very much, Ron.
Speaker A:Really appreciate it.
Speaker A:There's a banner for those watching the screen if you go to profitfirst uk.co.uk you can see the the Profitcon UK page and you can find out more about by Ron, about the rest of our speakers, about what's going to happen on the event.
Speaker A:So, so please click on there.
Speaker A:Come and join us for the day and we'll have a great time.
Speaker A:And you're going to learn so much from listening to our speakers, especially Ron.
Speaker A:And we can change the, the profile and pricing of your whole accountancy, bookkeeping and coaching business.
Speaker A:So thanks very much for joining us today.
Speaker C:Thank you, Tim.
Speaker C:Thank you, Duncan.
Speaker C:Appreciate it.
Speaker A:Thank you for joining us on our podcast today.
Speaker A:Profit first beyond the book was brought to you by the Profit First Professionals UK and Ireland team.
Speaker A:If you'd like to find out more about Profit first or becoming a Profit first professional, head to our website, profitfirstuk.co.uk.
