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Timothy Munro is the CEO & Founder of Change Accountants & Advisors, and Founder & Director of Change GPS. Timothy co-founded his first accounting firm at the age of 19, had a life-changing impact on his clients, and licensed his tools and processes to other firms through Change GPS. In this episode, Timothy and Stuart discuss the importance of establishing a positive relationship and shared values to achieve mutual success for you and your clients. They also talk about the future of how to choose the right clients to work with, emissions reduction, and favorite personal vehicles.
Join Stuart McLeod as he interviews the world's top accounting leaders to understand their story, how they operate, their goals, mission, and top advice to help you run your accounting firm.
Stuart McLeod 00:00:05.912 [music] Hi, I'm Stuart McLeod, CEO and co-founder of Karbon. Welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, the show where I go behind the scenes with the world's top accounting leaders. [music] Today, I'm joined by Timothy Munro, the CEO and founder of Change Accountants & Advisors and founder and director of ChangeGPS. I've long admired Tim as one of the best minds in accounting industry. He's done it all, cofounding his first accounting firm at the ripe old age of 19, having a genuinely life-changing impact on his clients, licensing his tools and processes to other firms through ChangeGPS, hosting his own events, and playing drums in a funk and soul band, jamming with multi-Grammy Award-winning guitarist George Benson. It is my pleasure to welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast my friend Timothy Munro. Timothy Munro, welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast.
Timothy Munro 00:01:04.337 Thanks, Stu. It's great to be here.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:07.322 Congratulations. You had a fantastic win at the Xero Awards the other day. Do you want to-- do you want to tell us a bit about the process of that and what you won and, I'm sure, thank your team, as we should do the right thing, right?
Timothy Munro 00:01:22.787 Yeah. Look, thanks very much for that. We won the 2022 Xero Practice App of the Year for Australia, which is essentially fantastic. It is a great recognition for our team who have done an amazing job. We've got a small team, and we were up against Practice Ignition and Spotlight, who are two great companies. And they're all good friends of ours. We all get on really well. They've won this award in the past, so I'm--
Stuart McLeod 00:01:48.763 Yeah. I'm going to say you've got to rotate it around a bit [laughter].
Timothy Munro 00:01:51.185 Yeah. So it's nice that they did that. But look, during the whole COVID situation, ChangeGPS, the whole team did some amazing things to help accountants in Australia. We launched a business continuity plan. And we think it was a couple of hundred thousand times used across Australia by accountants for their clients. And they charged for it, and they helped keep the clients on track and helped the accountants keep some money in the bank so they could keep going. And that just, I think, really helped so many accountants that weren't aware of us. Now we're on their radar, and they thought, "Wow, what you guys did was so genuine and so helpful. I'll have a look what else you're doing." And that just helped us to have stellar growth. We've grown over 100% the last 12 months, which any fintechs want to do that. We've just got to keep the foot down and keep on going and build on that.
Stuart McLeod 00:02:39.931 Yeah. So what’s the relationship-- so for those that are sort of perhaps vaguely familiar with Change and the branding, talk about the relationship between ChangeGPS and Change Accountants and how does all that work. And have you got any other thumbs in pies around the Change brand, or? How does all that hang together?
Timothy Munro 00:03:02.185 Look, I set up my first accounting business in 1990 when I was 19 and straight from uni set up with a friend of mine. And we were like equal partners. And that went all the way through to about 2010.
Stuart McLeod 00:03:15.926 20 years.
Timothy Munro 00:03:17.164 Yeah. That's a good stint.
Stuart McLeod 00:03:18.804 That's a good run. Was your cofounder still with you at that time?
Timothy Munro 00:03:22.465 Look, he was, but we were at a stage there that I got an exposure to Xero in 2008, and I was always looking for the new-- for how to do things better. And we went through the whole-- we went through the whole [inaudible] Paul Dunn thing [inaudible] results but learnt a hell of a lot and have a lot of respect for Paul Dunn and other people that have been forward-thinkers in our industry. And then exposed to Xero, I think we're probably the third firm in Australia to start using in 2008 before it even had automatic bank feeds. You had to import bank statements.
Stuart McLeod 00:03:54.088 They'd already been going-- so they were listed in 2006, so sort of going three years, right, at that stage but primarily focused on New Zealand. And that must have been around the time Wayne Schmidt was probably appointed in Australia, was he?
Timothy Munro 00:04:10.084 Well, we started using it before Wayne was appointed in Australia.
Stuart McLeod 00:04:12.639 Even before Wayne. Wow.
Timothy Munro 00:04:14.635 Yes. I remember good old Wayne Schmidt there at the very beginning. So that was the stage, really, where my business partner wanted to have your classic accounting business, and I was this more forward-thinking-- [love the cloud?]. And I think some in our business wanted to keep things on MYOB the way it always was or QuickBooks, and I wanted to launch in this new direction. And it gets to a point in life where I said to our business partner-- and it's tough conversation. But I said, "Look, at our age, you want to do this, and I shouldn't have to kind of bend to what you want to do, and vice-- I want to do this, and you shouldn't have to move your comfort zone to what I want to do. So even though we were in business 20-odd years, my suggestion is we split. I'll leave." I made it easy as possible. He could take everything, keep the name. I'd set up a new business, new name, new premises. I think I took about a third of the clients, the ones that I was super close to. "I just want to make it easy and move out." So that's when I set up Change Accountants and Advisors in 2011 to be a cloud-only business fully based on using Xero and whatever other cloud products I could find because I just didn't want to have a server and all the rubbish that goes with that. The ChangeGPS was based on something that we half-did with Count Financial. Barry Lambert saw what we did in our business and said, "Wow, this is great. We should license this out to others." So back in 2016, I actually bought my entire business from CountPlus, which included ChangeGPS. And that's when we started putting a lot of money into going to the third version of our platform where we rebooted from scratch and had a dev team come along and set that up.
Stuart McLeod 00:05:58.505 I remember talking to you at that time. And that wasn't that easy, was it? That was a bit of a-- I know you don't swear, so I can for both of us. But that was a difficult time for you. It was a bit of a shitshow at certain junctures, wasn't it?
Timothy Munro 00:06:13.535 Yeah. Look, nothing is ever easy. To do anything good in life, to make money, there's no easy approach. So yeah, we had ups and downs with trying to work out various things, the best way to do things. But fortunately, I had a very clear mind in my mind what I wanted to do. And at the end of the day, it's all about helping accountants to better communicate the value of what they do to their clients. So monetise your advice. You can charge what you should be charging for that work. And your clients, at the end of the day, it's helping accountants with the words and the tools to report to their clients and explain things so they really get the respect back from their clients, and the clients really value what they do. That's something which you know that I'm passionate about.
Stuart McLeod 00:06:59.399 Did you think that Count wasn't sort of helping you along the way? Was that the issue?
Timothy Munro 00:07:05.866 Well, Count Financial, before they got taken over by CBA, were great [inaudible]. So it wasn't really that. But when we were owned by CountPlus, they just didn't understand, I think, what we were doing and how we were doing it. And they wanted to de-risk and go just to not owning a software company as part of it and everything else like that. So yeah, it was a tough time to get through that and to negotiate and to extricate. And you've got to go through the tough stuff to be able to get to where you want to go. And we've just boomed since then, which has been [great?].
Stuart McLeod 00:07:40.533 And so how many staff in each of those businesses now?
Timothy Munro 00:07:45.021 Actually, the ChangeGPS fintech's outgrown the accounting. We've got 15 in accounting and 16 in ChangeGPS now.
Stuart McLeod 00:07:51.501 Oh, there you go [laughter]. So now you're formally a [inaudible] entrepreneur.
Timothy Munro 00:07:58.570 Yeah, formally.
Stuart McLeod 00:07:59.950 Who would have thunk it?
Timothy Munro 00:08:01.797 I know. I know. So we've got our accounting firm. We've got our wealth advisory firm, which we're just beating up in a big way. We've got a few announcements coming out soon about that with a few people that are joining us and groups that are going to make it a lot bigger. [inaudible] that a big push we'll be having in Australia for the next period of time with some new apps we're bringing out is we're actually creating a thing called a wealth transfer plan. In Australia, we talk about estate planning. But you don't want to have money in your estate because people can attack it. So why do we talk about estate planning if the best result is zero in the estate?
Stuart McLeod 00:08:36.503 Well, you're dead, for a start [laughter]. You can't spend it when you're dead.
Timothy Munro 00:08:42.554 Exactly. Just spend it now [inaudible]. So we're building this wealth transfer plan app and to make it super easy for accountants to help their clients to understand how to transition it and how to keep your money in your family bloodline. And so doing things like that.
Stuart McLeod 00:08:59.362 Yeah. Don't have a mistress. There you go. There's a good start [laughter].
Timothy Munro 00:09:03.165 Don't get divorced.
Stuart McLeod 00:09:04.667 Yeah. Don't get divorce.
Timothy Munro 00:09:06.998 Choose wisely the first time. Yeah.
Stuart McLeod 00:09:08.364 That's right. Good advice from two fathers - there you go - to their daughters.
Timothy Munro 00:09:13.688 But see, that's the thing. I was just talking in another interview about this earlier. Accountants are so focused on helping the clients to legally reduce their tax. No one wants to pay tax. But you know what? If I said to all the clients of accounting firms out there, "Unless you do proper wealth transfer planning and asset protection, next year, there's going to be a 100%-- there could be a 100% tax on your assets, not your income."
Stuart McLeod 00:09:39.710 Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. It's Australia going to the [laughter]-- it's Australia going to the left with like the Democrats. Don't you have a right-wing government? What happened? They broke. They spent it all on JobSeeker. They need to find some more.
Timothy Munro 00:09:56.237 I think all the governments all over the world, left-wing, right-wing, everyone's kind of all over the place and just frustrating the mums and dads who are in the place that just want a bit of stability and want a bit of sensibility rather than all the [ridiculousness?].
Stuart McLeod 00:10:09.743 Oh, yeah. That's the problem with common sense, mate.
Timothy Munro 00:10:12.036 There's none.
Stuart McLeod 00:10:13.482 It's not very common.
Timothy Munro 00:10:15.224 Especially in the [inaudible] [the planet?]. Yeah.
Stuart McLeod 00:10:17.680 Yeah. Well, yes. Yeah. Yeah. We could have a whole-- let's not do a climate change discussion, given that that's coming up soon on an accounting podcast. That'll upset my team. One thing I really enjoy talking to you about is the success that not only you've had, of course, but also with your businesses and particularly the Change business that you've got going at the moment but the success of your clients. You've got some amazing clients. Don't name names, but-- well, you can if you want, I guess. Give them a shoutout. Give us a story or two about just working with somebody that you've worked with for a long time and had some amazing success in their business or in their life or in their family.
Timothy Munro 00:11:00.486 Look, there's a lot. We're not the sort of business that focuses on, I suppose, a vertical market or anything like that. We love helping anyone, big or small, that's got that spark about them, that want to do something well, and their values, they're a decent, nice person. I think one of the biggest things in business I'm finding is that things work well when you've got a similar value set. So that's why within ChangeGPS, when David Boyar came on board, we've both got a very similar value set, different religion but similar value set. And we get on so well. And similar with yourself. That's why we get on. We've got a very similar value [crosstalk].
Stuart McLeod 00:11:38.533 And our religion's different too.
Timothy Munro 00:11:41.556 Exactly [inaudible]. We love our kids. We're passionate about our software, the work that we do helping people, passionate about our team. We want to work with other people in the industry that are nice. And we both know there are some organisations, some people that--
Stuart McLeod 00:11:56.935 I could say it. I'm allowed to say it on the podcast [laughter]. Arseholes. And life's too short to work with arseholes.
Timothy Munro 00:12:03.556 That's exactly right. So it's great. It's wonderful when you can work with people that-- it might be in different businesses, but you've got that same value between you. And I think with clients, it's a very similar thing. I just, I'm going to say [inaudible]. So I sacked my largest client four weeks ago, $350,000 a year-plus in fees. What happened was he really started pushing us to go harder and harder on reducing his tax. And it's really interesting. Some people have just got a feeling. It's almost like they feel that they shouldn't pay the same tax that others do. And none of us want to pay tax. But we know that the corporate rate in Australia this year's like 25%. You [can't?] [inaudible] lower than that. If you're taking out more than certain tax rates, you might end up paying an average rate of tax 26, 27, 28 or whatever. But you can't get-- and this client felt that he should, at the end of the day, pay no more than 15% and wanted to get it down to that. Well, when I explained how we had actually-- with all the write-offs and other things like that, we've effectively got him down to 15% of revenue.
Stuart McLeod 00:13:20.381 Some portions. Yeah, yeah.
Timothy Munro 00:13:21.091 But he was really pushing for more and wanted us to go back on prior years and adjust things. And he'd been through [inaudible] sets of accountants. And he [inaudible] go through because he's sure that other accountants hadn't claimed things properly. And so we went through, and we had a look. And when I looked at some prior-year returns, it was amazing that the financials showed millions of dollars of profit, yet once everything had flowed through at the end of the day, there's only a very small amount of tax paid, like less than a 10th of the profits for a couple of years.
Stuart McLeod 00:13:53.619 That sounds pretty aggressive anyway.
Timothy Munro 00:13:55.741 This is just not right. So I chatted to him about it, and he just changed the subject. Didn't want to talk about it. And I brought it up again, and he was very testy about it. And we spoke about this with that team, and from a value position--
Stuart McLeod 00:14:10.361 Or values perspective. Yeah.
Timothy Munro 00:14:12.925 Yeah. And when people are like that, they don't change. And they would put us under intense pressure to do something we wouldn't want to do in the future. And I thought my team, some of the team had seen these financials, had seen what he had done. It appeared to be a deliberate under-reporting of profits over a space of a couple of years many millions of dollars. And I thought, "This client does not have the value set that we have." And [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:14:42.865 Yeah, yeah. That's a couple of people in fees that you're short. Right?
Timothy Munro 00:14:48.031 [inaudible] the same token, our team, it sent a message to my team, "We don't put up with this. We're not going to do--" and we're not reporting him. It's gone back a number of years. He'll get found out in the future, 100%.
Stuart McLeod 00:15:01.142 Yeah, the [inaudible] bustle will sort him.
Timothy Munro 00:15:03.159 Yeah. But the thing is at the end of the day, I explained to him, "Our values aren't the same. You've chosen to do that. I'm not judging you." But I cannot and permit my team to work with someone that wants to do that. It was such a defining moment for our team because they know that's the way I roll.
Stuart McLeod 00:15:23.625 Yeah. But when the rubber hits the road, and you're kicking out more than a quarter of a million bucks out of your business, well, I'm sure they're very thankful for you and your value system that your actions speak louder than words. Right? You're standing up to the values that you instil in the team.
Timothy Munro 00:15:41.056 Because so many people would just--
Stuart McLeod 00:15:43.320 Yeah, "We can't afford to lose that."
Timothy Munro 00:15:46.942 But see, my thing is we're in control of our clients. And that's why our mutual friend James Ashford, I love what he says so often like, "We need to educate our clients." Too many accountants allow themselves to be bulldozed by their clients. And it happens again and again and again [laughter].
Stuart McLeod 00:16:01.227 You should speak to Bruce. He'll probably tell you the same thing.
Timothy Munro 00:16:06.084 Well, no. The accountants strike back. This is in control of your business and your clients. And one other way [inaudible] when you remove a client-- now, we sack bad clients once a month. When you remove a client, it creates a vacuum in your business, and you always end up sucking back into that something [better?]. And the day after I sacked him, I got a phone call from a client who's been a friend for 20 years. He's been struggling to get things over the line. And he's just pulled off one of the biggest international trade deals that I'm aware of. It's just insane. And the fees that will come through from that-- and he rang me the day after, and he owes me some money, and I've kept [inaudible]. The fees we'll get through from that work will more than cover this. And it happened the day after. And not just that, we got a second client like that the week after as well. And our team go, "How does this happen?"
Stuart McLeod 00:17:01.015 How does the world-- how does the universe operate like that?
Timothy Munro 00:17:05.209 Well, I said, "If you move out something that's just not fitting in for you, have the guts to do that, there's a vacuum created, and you suck better stuff coming back in." Just to say to accountants out there, "Have the guts to stand up for your own values. Set an example to your team." Easy to say that's what we do. But when it comes down to-- at the end of the day, those fees, it's not going to affect my team. It's going to affect my bottom line. So it's me that's effectively losing. But I'm not going to take money on the basis of it being-- knowing that someone's involved [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:17:36.606 Yeah. And Liechtenstein's not that good this time of year anyway.
Timothy Munro 00:17:39.983 No. I mean, that's just [inaudible]. But we've got so many clients. Like we've had doctors that have been with us for 20 years just loving what we're doing. We're finding now because we do our tax planning so well each year using, obviously, ChangeGPS TaxPlan Plus [inaudible] that when it [inaudible] the end-year accounts, the end-of-year meeting, it's a lunch and a chat and a [inaudible]. They don't explain the taxing because they already know that, and we've already-- it's just such an easy process moving forward with everything. So I'm just educating clients, training them what to expect, and staying super close to them. Now, we're not perfect.
Stuart McLeod 00:18:16.846 Yeah. There's always issues. It's still a service business at the end of the day. Right?
Timothy Munro 00:18:21.925 It is. And as an owner of that, I need to keep repeating this. We call it repetition for emphasis. I keep repeating to our team, "4 o'clock in the day, check your emails. If you haven't responded, make certain you get back to a client saying, 'Listen. I haven't got back to you. I'm going to get back to you midday tomorrow with this. I just want to let you know I've got your message.'" Or if you can't get a job done, you jump onto Karbon, and you find you're kind of missing the due day, contact the client. Let them know how, "Listen. This has taken longer. This is why. I just want to keep you in the loop." And sometimes even [inaudible] just to pick up and talk to a client. "Listen. I've got no update for you. I just want to let you know everything's under control [inaudible] it's all good." They love that.
Stuart McLeod 00:19:06.420 Accountants of today don't pick up the phone, do they? Or not in my experience, but.
Timothy Munro 00:19:10.602 Look, we need to go old-school.
Stuart McLeod 00:19:11.519 Yeah, absolutely. Just pick up the phone. Have a lunch. We'll go to a nice Brisbane River lunch, and that's where all the business should be done.
Timothy Munro 00:19:20.405 That's where I absolutely do my best work. Look, you know in our office, we've got Gemma and Emily. They love Karbon. Gemma is your biggest fan in Australia, seriously. If we stop using Karbon, she'd leave.
Stuart McLeod 00:19:31.099 Oh, well, there you go. There you go.
Timothy Munro 00:19:34.056 Being able to see where things are due and then keep people in the loop. And what I tell to my team about accountants these days, they just want to push send. "Oh, it's done," and they can get off. They don't want [inaudible]. And the whole thing is push send. Pick up the phone. You have to talk to clients because clients read what they want to read. You can send a client an email and say anything.
Stuart McLeod 00:19:58.971 Yeah. Three different items in a long list, I'm going to pick up on the one that annoys me the most probably.
Timothy Munro 00:20:06.688 Exactly. So you need to actually pick up the phone and say, "I've just sent you this through. I've got I've minutes. Let me read through it." And you know what? Read through that with them. And this sounds really [strange?]. Read through the email with them and say, "Now, what that means, Stuart, is this, this, this. Is that okay with you?" And once you've done that, you'll find that the connection with the client is so good, and even if it's good news, if it's bad news, you need to have-- you need to [inaudible] with the client. Have that in writing. Talk to them about it. That's where many accountants fail. And as an accounting firm owner, I need to keep reminding-- my team are great. But you know what? I remind them three times a week. We have a team meeting at 9:45. We use Microsoft Teams. We've got a team all over the country. And we all talk the three parts of our business tool, and I remind them the same things time and time again. Follow up. Make sure everyone's contacted by 4 o'clock. [inaudible] 4 o'clock. Don't let any [inaudible] go. If there's a client that-- if there's something missed, let me know. We'll work with the client together. It's just that service we've got to really maintain.
Stuart McLeod 00:21:10.966 It is a truism. And working with you for so long, you've done such a good job in setting expectations and creating such value for clients that you have put yourself and given yourself the capacity to make these decisions that you as a person and you as a company feel the right to make because you've got a fee structure. You've got a scoping structure that allows you to be selective with your clients. Right? So many firms just don't have those fundamentals in place. For 90% of firms maybe - I don't know - maybe more, a loss of fee, to lose your largest customers is basically unbearable, and they couldn't bring themselves to make that decision, like you have. So as you pointed out before, James Ashford is always on about this. But creating value is not just about what the services cost. Everybody has got to be in that client-partner or that client-accounting relationship to win. Right? If your margins get so skinny that you can't make decisions like that-- and you've got a great business. Imagine if you had to let two people go in your staff or three people go because you sacked that client. Right? That makes those decisions so much harder. And not many firms get themself into the place where they can make those decisions with confidence. It's a dramatic difference in life.
Timothy Munro 00:22:46.863 Yeah. I agree with everything you said there. It's great when you get to a point when you can make those decisions because you do feel free. Everyone has so many expectations on us in life, isn't it? And you get to a point where you do everything because everyone else has expectations, and you're actually not living life yourself, and you're not happy. But when you can truly make those calls, not be bound by everyone else's expectations, you do feel free, and that's when you can do your best work. And I think too often, accounting firm owners aren't-- they're not thinking that the primary reason that firm exists is for them and their family. At the end of the day, you're going to make a profit. It's about me and my family. And I know we love our team. But if I have to fire people so I can keep profit a certain level so my family can continue, I'll do that. I think too many accountants don't make hard decisions, and they kind of think, "Well, I can't do that. I can't move that person on if they're not performing," or if business isn't going well. But you've got to think number one, you and your family, your family and you. Your family is your number-one client of your firm. So you've got to make that decision. And I always will. That's something that I've always-- now, I don't want to fire anyone. We're growing. We're hiring more accountants. But you've got to be strong enough to actually make the hard calls when you need to. In the past, I haven't early enough. I'm learning. I'm getting better at that.
Stuart McLeod 00:24:16.905 Yeah. We all get better with that stuff with age.
Timothy Munro 00:24:21.281 It definitely does help. But yeah, it's important to have the guts to make that decision. I think that's why within ChangeGPS, there are so many accountants loving what we're doing because we're actually giving them the oomph to actually make a decision and do things, right, for their clients to offer new services and offer different things and also how to run things within your team and to make sure that it's productive and delivering things that clients want. And also, I think pushing accountants out of their comfort zone. They so just want to stick to the tax and the GST and the financial statements. But a big push that we have in Australia come up is with this wealth transfer plan. Accountants understand their clients better than anyone else. They do, and yet they think, "Oh [inaudible] lawyers." Well, the lawyer botches it up 9 times out of 10 unless they're a estate planning expert because they don't take into account your business structures and everything else. So there's different ways that accountants can actually give this advice and partner with people so they can help get better off, which is good.
Stuart McLeod 00:25:23.498 You're a family that loves to travel, travel fast too sometimes in red cars. Well, A, what's the latest vehicle? And now, B, with Australia finally, finally, finally bringing Joe Biden and getting a couple of vaccines down there so that you can actually operate like a normal country again, what are the travel plans for 2022?
Timothy Munro 00:25:48.802 Couple of big questions. Latest vehicle is a silver Ferrari Roma.
Stuart McLeod 00:25:53.464 Oh, the Roma. I see. The Aston's gone, has it?
Timothy Munro 00:25:57.433 Aston Martin DB11 has moved on. So Ferrari Roma.
Stuart McLeod 00:26:01.218 Right. Moved to the big Aston Martin hole in the sky.
Timothy Munro 00:26:04.097 Yeah. [inaudible]. But Ferrari Roma's the best car I've ever had. It's just beautiful to drive. Yeah. We've done some marketing work with some of the car dealers around the place, and we've got to know other people there really well. And having a vehicle like that, we get clients because of having those vehicles. So it's a great marketing tool. I don't claim any of it as a tax deduction because you can't [laughter], unfortunately. But because of having that sort of vehicle, and people talk, and the dealers talk, you end up picking up clients, so it makes it worthwhile, so.
Stuart McLeod 00:26:39.012 It's a terrible conversation for two old men to have, but I'll give you a race. Happy to race the Roma at any point in time. I'll be on the other side of the road, though, so don't hit me.
Timothy Munro 00:26:51.684 With your Tesla, hey?
Stuart McLeod 00:26:52.897 Yeah. I won't make as much noise as you do. I won't look as good as you do. But might get to the end of the quarter-mile a bit quicker.
Timothy Munro 00:26:58.650 You would. After five runs when the battery start to get hot, we'll see how we go [laughter].
Stuart McLeod 00:27:03.097 Oh, yeah. Yeah. We'll be there all day until you finally beat me, and I'll have stopped halfway.
Timothy Munro 00:27:10.476 That would be fun to do one day. But coming on to travel plans, look, Savannah's 11 and three quarters. She turns 12 at the end of March. We'll wait and get her Pfizer jabs then. Don't want to travel-- don't want to miss those. And then I reckon our first trip-- we used to go overseas once a quarter, and we've really missed that. So we're just going up to Sofitel Noosa every school holidays at the moment, which is a beautiful [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:27:33.818 Oh, wow. Yes.
Timothy Munro 00:27:35.615 I reckon our first overseas trip will be Honolulu. We'll go to Maui, Honolulu July 2022. I'd like to be over there for 4th of July. They've got [inaudible] on Waikiki Beach there. They've got great 4th of July sales and everything, so we'll stock up on clothes in the outlet stores. And I reckon that'll be our first-- and then maybe at the end of the year, I'd love to go back to [inaudible] in the Maldives again. That would be great. So I reckon they're the two that-- maybe sneaking to Queenstown, New Zealand, in between. How about you?
Stuart McLeod 00:28:07.113 We didn't do too badly this year. Mexico is great. The problem, we've got three kids. Right? So lugging a three-year-old around the world is not my idea of a holiday, as much as I love him. So we try and keep it pretty local. I mean, there's so much to do from Lake Tahoe and out of Reno. We went down to Mexico for a bit. And that was good. And got the girls doing some surfing. And yeah, we actually went to Maui this year. And Maui or all of Hawaii was really safe, we thought. Their COVID-- I mean, America's-- we can-- I jest that Australia's sort of stuffed up its vaccination program. But US fucked up the whole thing astronomically more. But out of all of the US, Hawaii did a really good job. It was sort of testing before you went and then when you got there. And you had to be vaccinated, all of that. So that was good. And I think you'd feel very safe there, especially in another six months. And get out of an Aussie winter and up into a Hawaii summer. That'll be nice. Go and watch the whales and everything. Maui's wonderful.
Timothy Munro 00:29:13.161 Yeah. Our family love going there. We've been there many times and can't wait to go back.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:18.419 Yeah. Well, the whales are still there. Don't worry. They're waiting for you.
Timothy Munro 00:29:22.103 [inaudible]. You might have to meet me in Singapore for a Grand Prix one year as well.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:24.945 Oh, yeah. I don't mind the Singapore-- the Austin Grand Prix looked pretty good, didn't it?
Timothy Munro 00:29:31.566 It was brilliant. It's a great track there.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:34.539 Yeah. I mean, I don't quite want to put more economy into Texas than I have to with their stance on a few things at the moment. But the Grand Prix did look pretty good. I mean, have you done the Monaco Grand Prix? I mean, that's got to be a--
Timothy Munro 00:29:50.360 No. That's on the bucket list as well. So I'd love to do that. Yeah.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:53.943 You're a much more rev-head than I am, but. And we did that Melbourne Grand Prix one year together, and that was great fun. And yeah, if I was ever going to do a Grand Prix, a Monaco one would be all right.
Timothy Munro 00:30:04.285 I agree.
Stuart McLeod 00:30:04.639 You can stop by Liechtenstein on the way home to move your taxes around [laughter].
Timothy Munro 00:30:10.851 Well, at the end of the day, that's why we do what we do. Life's about experiences and enjoying things, and. Now, while we're not going on holidays, we're using [our money?]. We go out on Friday, Saturday nights different restaurants around town [inaudible] and Savannah's trying different foods and doing things. And that's what it's all about. And that's what we say to people. So many people think you've got to save for your retirement, and you can't spend money. It's all got to go away in your super plans, whatever.
Stuart McLeod 00:30:39.021 Are you ever going to retire? You're not going to retire, are you?
Timothy Munro 00:30:42.346 I'm not going to retire. But do you know what? One eye for now, one eye for the future. You've got to spend money now. You've got to enjoy life now. And you've got to have a plan. And you can do both at once. And that is the best financial advice a client could ever get.
Stuart McLeod 00:30:53.325 If you weren't doing the Change group of companies, what would you want to be doing?
Timothy Munro 00:30:57.410 That's a really good question. I have actually never pondered that. I think, though-- no, I haven't because it's just one of these-- I think I would look to do something with like-minded people [inaudible] similar value set, people who are positive and happy. Again, something that goes down to helping people. I think I've got a school set that I've learnt from others that we need to clearly communicate and explain things. And that's something I'm passionate about, helping people to understand why they should do something or how they could be better off. And that's one of the things. Not that it's like process design or industrial design or anything like that. But it's communication that's something that really fascinates me. And I think I'd look for something in that area to help to find an industry or a process that isn't communicated well and be able to help people to do that so at the end of the day, people are better off. That's what I enjoy.
Stuart McLeod 00:31:56.057 There you go. Not that you asked, but I'll tell you anyway. Here's my prophecy that what's happening today is nearly every company is a technology company. I think in 10, 15 years, maybe 20, hopefully not so long, but I think nearly every company is going to be a climate-reduction company or a emissions-reduction company or emissions value company, something like that. I think the impact on climate change or the impact on the earth from climate change is so significant and it's getting so much attention now that we're going to overshoot all the estimates by not getting emissions down quick enough. And the cost to sort of escalate the recovery is going to be so significant that there's just the capital piling into emissions reduction and all those kinds of technologies is fascinating. So that's why we called it Karbon. No, that's not why we called it Karbon, but [laughter].
Timothy Munro 00:33:00.837 [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:33:04.922 We might keep the name one day. But yeah, if I wasn't doing-- if I wasn't doing Karbon, I'd be doing carbon. There you go.
Timothy Munro 00:33:11.524 Well, I've just seen here in Australia that they're not going to start reducing their beef to stop the methane. I need my barbecues. I love that, so.
Stuart McLeod 00:33:18.811 Have you tried an Impossible burger or the veggie burgers?
Timothy Munro 00:33:23.102 No.
Stuart McLeod 00:33:23.495 Go on. You can do it. You can do it. You know, what is really good, really good, is they do a ground beef like a bolognese with the Impossible burger is right up there, right up there, even if you can't do a steak [laughter].
Timothy Munro 00:33:39.572 I love my steak. I do.
Stuart McLeod 00:33:40.611 It's hard to drink a big red with a veggie burger, isn't it?
Timothy Munro 00:33:44.327 I've never tried that. I think I'll [inaudible]. But yeah, look, it's fascinating where the world's going. And I was just talking earlier with someone. The amount of money that's just being poured into various things like this and poured into renewable energy and everything else. And what's happened here in Australia with JobKeeper and the billions that are just being put in to keep things going.
Stuart McLeod 00:34:07.362 Just treading water. Right? The debt to the next generation is enormous.
Timothy Munro 00:34:11.986 Yeah. But does it? And see, this is the whole thing that if one country-- I'm going to try my economics 101, which I'll probably fail dismally on. But I haven't had anyone really explain this to me. But if one country does a lot worse than another country, and there's a lot of borrowings there, you can understand why there's no change in currencies and interest rates because it has to be paid back. But the whole world's been in the poo. The whole world is just borrowing and printing money, the whole world. Now, if the whole world's on the same position - no one's better off - is it actually going to-- does the money have to be paid back? Will it ever be paid back? Now, I can [inaudible] that it does. But you know what? If they can't pay it back, what do they do? They'll print some more [inaudible] some more credit, or they'll do whatever.
Stuart McLeod 00:35:00.071 Here's a good one for you. There's a book by Stephanie Kelton, I think, Stephanie Kelton, called The Deficit Myth. And her argument to just propose is that that is all true. That is all true. But currencies like the US currency, because they can more or less-- well, they control the world's-- well, until they bloody default on it. Right? And while they control, essentially, the world's currency, they can actually print more money. But countries like Australia and those that are pegged or baselined against others will find it much more difficult. So what happens if the whole world goes bankrupt? I mean, there you go. There's an esoteric question for all of us.
Timothy Munro 00:35:51.325 Well, you know what? Nothing. It's going to continue.
Stuart McLeod 00:35:53.634 Greece wasn't that flash when it went broke.
Timothy Munro 00:35:56.090 No.
Stuart McLeod 00:35:57.247 You weren't running over to Mykonos [laughter].
Timothy Munro 00:36:01.226 See, if it's the whole world at roughly the same time or if America can't pay back its debts or China can't--
Stuart McLeod 00:36:09.633 I think they'll have to sell Alaska to China just to pay back the trillions that they owe.
Timothy Munro 00:36:16.367 Well, America will just say, "I'm not paying anything back."
Stuart McLeod 00:36:17.630 What are they going to do? Take Joe [laughter] hostage until he pays it? I wouldn't put it past them.
Timothy Munro 00:36:25.463 It would be like all those movies when they go in, and White House Down. Yeah.
Stuart McLeod 00:36:29.281 That's right [laughter]. But Joe getting hostaged out of the White House. Oh.
Timothy Munro 00:36:36.898 But it's [crazy?] times that we've been talking about this sort of stuff. The financial side of things has just turned on its head. And that's why we're talking. And I have no idea. And the crazy thing is no one has any idea. That's the absolutely crazy thing. Everyone's writing books about everyone's proposition, what's going to happen if inflation goes up or this or that.
Stuart McLeod 00:36:56.716 All we can possibly do is create value for the accountants in the world and therefore go on and create value for their customers and see them successful because what we do know more than anything else is accountants just love helping people. They love seeing their friends and their clients become successful. And if you and I can do our tiny bit in that part of the world, then we have hopefully contributed positively.
Timothy Munro 00:37:25.122 I love that, totally endorse that. Love what you and the Karbon team have done. Can't wait to see what you've got coming up. I know you've got some amazing things in the pipeline, which we can't wait.
Stuart McLeod 00:37:34.698 There's a big announcement in the next couple of weeks. And well, hopefully, we can-- well, I don't know whether we'll be able to celebrate in person. But maybe they'll let me in January. Maybe they'll allow me and my vaccinated status to come down and see you guys.
Timothy Munro 00:37:50.552 Well, if you're here in January, I've got the steak and red wine teed up for our long lunch.
Stuart McLeod 00:37:54.968 Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. The never-ending lunch. And then we'll make it a steak from an animal. We won't insist on a veggie burger.
Timothy Munro 00:38:04.835 Otherwise, I'll [inaudible]. But anyway [laughter]. But no, love what you're doing with [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:38:10.137 Thank you, mate. Thank you. Likewise. We love everything the Change team does and hope to catch up in person soon. And, Timothy Munro, thank you for being such a fantastic guest on the Accounting Leaders Podcast. [music] Thanks for listening to this episode. If you found this discussion interesting, fun, you'll find lots more to help you run a successful accounting firm at Karbon Magazine. There are more than 1,000 free resources there, including guides, articles, templates, webinars, and more. Just head to karbonhq.com/resources. [music] I'd also love it if you could leave us a five-star review wherever you listen to this podcast. Let us know you like this session, and we'll be able to keep bringing you more guests for you to learn from and get inspired by. Thanks for joining, and see you in the next episode of the Accounting Leaders Podcast.