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This is your destination for feeling empowered in building your business.
These are the real, raw stories of entrepreneurs and business owners who have built their businesses through the messy middle of $1-20 Million, hosted by serial entrepreneur Matt Tait.
Matt knows what it’s like to scale past the first million, and on this show he’ll be bringing on other serial entrepreneurs and business owners who have been there, done that (or, are currently in it) to share what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what’s next.
Justine Lackey (00:00):
What I learned over time is, first of all, you can't fix everything all at once, and that's our inclination, right? Like the fire is over here. We're going to try this, smack it down. The fire is over here. We're going to try this, smack it down. Really what you should focus on is what's causing the clients the most pain.
Matt Tait (00:16):
Hi, I'm Matt Tait, founder of Decimal and host of After the First Million podcast, and like you, I've taken the leap not just to start a business but to scale and grow it. I've hustled from zero to that first million and now I'm building for the next 50. I know firsthand what the messy middle looks like, and we need more than just numbers. We need strategy, we need community, and we need real conversations about what growth takes in our line of work. Scaling beyond a million means going beyond the spreadsheet. This is where you learn how to grow. This is After the First Million.
(00:55):
Alright, welcome to today's episode of After the First Million. I'm your host, Matt Tait, and I am really excited because today we get to talk to a very serious community influencer. I am happy to introduce you to Justine Lackey, and for those of you that don't know, Justine had her own firm for a very long time, Good Cents Management, sold that firm and really started what I think is her passion, which is building a community and it's today one of the largest communities of accountants in the country. So Justine, welcome to After the First Million.
Justine Lackey (01:28):
Thank you so much for having me.
Matt Tait (01:29):
There are a lot of things that I want to pick your brain on. I want to talk through a little bit of your journey first, and then I want to talk through your firm and selling the firm. And then I really want to spend the majority of the time around the community because one of the things that I think you and I really agree on is that running your own firm can be very hard. How do I grow it? How do I do that well without pulling my hair out is really important and you've both done that and you work with people on doing that yourself. So to start, just kind of tell us a little bit about you and your background.
Justine Lackey (02:04):
Sure, and just a point of clarification, the community that I run is both for bookkeepers and accountants, so I want everybody to feel included. That's really important to me. So I am what I call an accidental entrepreneur. I was just an office assistant in New York City and I bonded with the bookkeeper and she needed help and then it was kind of right place, right time. It was the rise of the .com freelance culture, and so I started doing freelance bookkeeping. We were very hard to find at that point, real unicorns and my firm just solely and organically grew. Then I got pregnant and I was climbing a rickety ladder in a stylist loft in New York City in heels. I'm on this ladder climbing up into a loft, which is where my desk goes, and I was like, oh no, honey, this has got to stop. And so that's how I started doing virtual bookkeeping, which was with Zip drives and FedEx and Messengers, and I just set up my own desk in my own office and my own apartment, and that was really how Good Cents started.
(03:10):
And eventually I founded the firm in 2009. I just couldn't had so much work. I had work coming out of my ears and we added about a person a year. I had the firm for 15 years, and when we sold, I actually shrunk back down. There's something, a principle I call the right size firm. I just started to get an itch. I was inching towards my 50th birthday and I was doing a lot of educating. Anyway, so in 2022 I launched the beta of the incubator program, which it's kind of a hybrid. It's a course, but it's also a community. So there's two components to it. So I have something called the four S framework. It's sales skills, systems and service. You have to have all four of those things. I don't care what sort of business you're running and we, yeah, you have to have the systems, you have to have the sales skills, you have to have actual systems and skills, and you have to provide great customer service. So we ran it in 2022. We had phenomenal results. People four Xing their revenue working half the time just finding peace in their work. And so once I had the verification, then I decided to pull the trigger and sell the firms, and then in 2023, I sold, and that's what I've been, that's my story. So now I'm out here trying to change the world one person at a time.
Matt Tait (04:27):
Going back to the firm, you ran it for 15 years and then sold it. A lot of people really hope for that, but struggle to conceptualize actually doing it. Talk about what put you in a position to actually be able to look at a buyer and say, here is a sellable asset, and know that you could get something of value that you both determined was valuable out of that deal.
Justine Lackey (04:56):
Well, I don't want to brag, but I had 28 buyers interested, which for my side firm was great. So that's where mindset comes in. And we talked about this at Scaling New Heights, just the power of positive mindset. And it was actually a friend of mine who made me realize 10 years before when I was at 250K annual recurring revenue where I was just so frustrated. This is why Decimal is so important and the work that you're doing around franchising is so important. I was just burned out and beat up and I had three young kids and I was in tears. People don't talk about the underbelly of the accounting world and it's really hard.
Matt Tait (05:41):
Entrepreneurship, not just accounting, entrepreneurship.
Justine Lackey (05:43):
This is true. And she was like, well, you could just sell it. And I was like, what? So that was poverty consciousness. I didn't even understand that. I, she's like, you have recurring revenue and you could just sell it. And that was like chink. I was like, oh, that was a complete, I felt my brain twist. Then I went out and I bought this book. It's a fictional book. It's called Built to Sell by John Warrillow. You could read it in four hours, a fictional story. And then I got really determined that I'm building a business to sell it. And this is one of the big things that I mentor people in my community around where it's like, okay, all right, great. You only have a hundred thousand dollars firms. You're going to tell me, let's just say you've got one time the annual revenue, and we know firms are selling for more than that. I'm going to leave a hundred grand on the table who has an extra hundred thousand dollars sitting around that they're going to leave on the table. It's a big mindset shift. So that was sort of how that we can.
Matt Tait (06:46):
It's interesting. I always tell our clients, I always tell firm owners, I tell any type of entrepreneur, you should always build your business to sell it because even if you're not going to sell it, the 10 years that it took you to sell your firm, you were making more money, you were happier, you had built a better asset for yourself because you had built it to sell conceptually. That's a good framework to get in the minute you start your own business.
Justine Lackey (07:15):
Yeah. Well, and here's the other thing I will say, which I think is really missing from the conversation, and I get it. New business acquisition is exciting. That's initial sales conversation, closing the deal. That's great. We live for that stuff. It's like sexy time, but really it's all about retention.
Matt Tait (07:39):
Yes.
Justine Lackey (07:40):
So what made my firm so valuable was that my client list, my oldest client had been with me for 20 years when I sold my firm was with me pre-incorporation hosted my baby shower. So that's really attractive. It's not about the acquisition, it's about the retention. And people don't realize that. And the gap, the gap is when you don't have your service offering and your ability to deliver on your promises dialed in, this is what we teach in the program. That's where your retention will fail. When you don't communicate, when you don't deliver those monthly reports, when you botch payroll, when you X, Y, Z, that's where you erode the trust in the client relationship.
Matt Tait (08:29):
The analogy I always use with my team at Decimal is our goal is to build a snowball that grows as it rolls downhill. And the only way that happens is if you're not losing snow.
Justine Lackey (08:40):
I like this, right? It doesn't matter if you're acquiring two clients, if you're losing one along the way, it's going to take you a lot longer to get where you want to be.
Matt Tait (08:51):
Now, one of the things that, and I'll be interested as you talk with your community and your four S system, I think is very, very telling and good for this is where I see a lot of accountants and a lot of firm owners struggle is focusing on the right things and making sure that they're working on the right things and their team is too at Decimal. We have a rule that us accounting staff isn't allowed to actually do accounting work. We tell them the age of doing is done. Their job is to make sure the work is great quality and to focus on the relationship and advising to help people succeed. And if you're able to do those three things really, really well, that's how you retain clients. And then we work down a layer deeper on here's exactly how to do each. But as you work and as you've seen in your own firm as well as your community, how do you work with people or how did you figure out how to do the most valuable things and to get out of doing the things that were less valuable? Because that's what I find particularly in bigger firms, is their staff becomes so occupied by doing, they then don't have the ability to focus on the relationship. They're overwhelmed in one area and they can't focus on the real value add, which is relational.
Justine Lackey (10:10):
So first, let me just say, it took me a really long time to learn how to focus on the bigger picture. I didn't come from corporate. I had this little tiny part-time gig as an office assistant when I was 21. I went right from 21. I didn't get a college degree until years after I started my business. So I didn't have these frameworks. I had no filtering mechanism. So it was a real struggle for me. What I learned over time is first of all, you can't fix everything all at once, and that's our inclination, right? The fires over here, we're going to try to smack it down. Fires over here, we're going to try to smack it down. Really what you should focus on is what's causing the clients the most pain. Because if you can solve that problem, then you solve them one at a time.
(10:59):
So for example, if you're not nailing your onboarding process, and it should be warm, it should be elegant. My whole jam always, because I worked with very high profile fashion art people, was always we're the Ritz-Carlton of bookkeeping. It is a five star customer service. You're going to come in the door, we're going to have a cocktail waiting for you line the whole thing. And so that's really important. If you don't nail onboarding, that's like showing up late to your first day at work. If you're having a problem missing deadlines and your clients are mad, you focus on that. If you are avoiding a client's email, it's either time to terminate that client or built in some accountability. So in terms of managing the team and how you run your firm, I love that because quality control is a real issue. Some employees are going to be better at it than others, and you have to put in layers of management, which then of course makes the firm move slower if they're front facing, they have to be personable. But she said something that was interesting to me, which I want to touch on, which is we teach them how to be a trusted partner. And with all the conversation around CAS and client advisory services, the language is such that even I think we're getting there, but I think there seems to be some disagreement even within our industry, what CAS means. I don't think that the general main street entrepreneur yet knows what CAS is.
Matt Tait (12:29):
No clue.
Justine Lackey (12:30):
No clue. You're like, oh, I provide client advisory services. They're like, huh, I think we can change it, but we are going to need a larger push. We need to all get on that marketing bandwagon. But the way that I language it to my students is you're a co-CEO, you're helping them make decisions. They're coming to you and they're saying, we're a PR agency and we have all these expenses and we have to rebuild them back to the clients and we're losing revenue. And well, then you go out and you find the apps and you come and you say, this is the solution. This is how we're going to solve this problem.
Matt Tait (13:05):
I actually just had this conversation with my VP of Finance, Nicole, she's amazing. She started with us I think about three or four years ago, and she's worked her way up from accounting manager to running the accounting team to now she's leadership team. I tell her, I said, your job is to work your way into being that kind of consigliere. You're my advisor.
(13:25):
I need you to advise me. I need you to be that person. I am going to make the ultimate decision, but I need you to lead. And we had a really good example pop up this week, and I even used it with our internal team in their team meeting earlier today. And I said, okay. She came to me and she goes, we have this new expense. Do you want to pay it? I don't think we should pay it right now. I think we should argue on the expense. That's a very accountant answer. And I said, great. What is the effect of doing both? I said, look, if we don't pay this expense, no big deal, we figure it out. We pay it next month. If we do pay it, we're going through something right now where it will actually increase some value for us with this group that's looking at it and it will create an additional leverage point, which I think could help us down the road.
(14:19):
And she goes, I hadn't even thought of that. I was like, look, every expense is a pebble you throw into a pond. Go see where the ripples are. And what I want you to think about is where should I be looking? What do you recommend? An expense is not an expense. An expense is a strategic lever, and what I want you to do is help me understand what happens if I push or pull it. And our team thinks about things in very much the doing of work. You and I have talked about this, talked about it earlier today. We are exiting the age of doing work in accounting and whether it is globalized workforce doing the work, whether it is AI doing the work, whatever is there today, more is coming. And so you have to figure out how do you be that advisor? And where I struggle is so many people in our industry are focused on helping businesses survive and not thinking about what pushes them forward to succeed.
(15:18):
And that I think is a mindset switch. I was very lucky I came into this. I'm incapable of doing accounting work and they don't let me sell because apparently I sell bad deals. But it meant that I was able to help work with our team on focusing on the right things because my entire job is that, and now I have a COO whose entire job is that, and a co-founder whose job is built on building technology for that. So we've built a company in a very different way, but the premise of how we do it should be applied downstream to everybody.
Justine Lackey (15:51):
Because you've been successful at doing it. It's so funny because you're not supposed to have favorite children and you're not supposed to have favorite clients. But I definitely had favorite clients and one of them, she used to call me her consigliere because I was her trusted confidant. So I think what you're saying, this comes back to the co-CEO component where I have this deal on the table and helping somebody really get a 360 degree view. One of my first mentors said to me, we can't see our own blind spots. This was a blind spot when you're talking this through with your COO or CFO about tell me about A and B.
Matt Tait (16:29):
VP of Finance.
Justine Lackey (16:30):
VP of Finance, but then you presented option C and that was a blind spot for her. But now you have three things on the table and you can start to look, but I read recently that if an executive team makes a decision, let's say they make decision A and they wait for at least a day and they come back and they evaluate A, B and C again, even if they make the same choice, the likelihood that that choice will succeed increases. So just by taking the beat and actually thinking through that choice.
Matt Tait (17:06):
It's good decision making processes.
Justine Lackey (17:08):
It is. This gets to be a challenge as a leader because I think by default, one of my personal values, it was also a value at Good Cents is constant evolution. I want to be better tomorrow than I am today, but that's my personal value. So we're thinking like, okay, we're going to constantly evolve, we're going to respond to the market. We know that we have global workforce coupled with AI now, so this means our work changes and we're excited about that. Like this is new and it's cool and the world of possibilities, not everybody's like that. Not everybody wants to constantly evolve. And sometimes those people are good. We need bean counters, people who are very fastidious about ticking boxes, but how you're going to cultivate that person with these changes I do think is a leadership challenge. It's hard and it's great that you guys have a culture where you're actually encouraging people to do this and actually setting the expectation for that.
Matt Tait (18:19):
Well, one of the things that we talk about a lot and that I always advise people on is do your communicating intentionally. So I have a very, sometimes people don't like when I say this, but I have a strategy with clients. Anytime a client calls me, I put it to voicemail every single time.
Justine Lackey (18:36):
Interesting.
Matt Tait (18:37):
It doesn't matter when they call me what's going on, but I immediately send 'em a text back, Hey, sorry, I'm busy either in a meeting or with my family, whatever it is, I listen to the voicemail first. Let me circle around with a team and I'll get back to you. ASAP and key there is we'll get back to you ASAP. So I take this client escalation because guess what happens on that voicemail? Number one, nobody ever calls me happy. I love my clients. They're fantastic.
Justine Lackey (19:04):
They're not calling you saying, Hey Matt, I'm calling to celebrate my win.
Matt Tait (19:07):
If they have good news, they're shooting me an email or a text and they're asking me to hop on a call a hundred percent of the time. So a phone call means a phone call means something went wrong, which is okay. It happens. Thousands of clients, it's guaranteed to happen. So I put 'em to voicemail, I text them that I got the voicemail, I'm circling around with the team. We will circle around with a plan. We means I don't have to do it by the way. It means that I can have my team. I got to find out what's going on, what's our plan, how are we going to communicate with the client? And we get back to them very quickly. Been doing this for years. What I found is that phone call is never a good phone call and it never actually helps move the ball forward. Really venting to my voicemail is probably better for them anyway. Mentally. They know that we're working on it. I was extremely responsive, so I built trust through that whole process, and yet I did not pick up their phone call. All I can do on that phone call is build less trust and I work with my...
Justine Lackey (20:03):
When you're talking to somebody when they're angry, they're irrational and I learned to really manage them very well. But even though I could be a stalwart on a phone call, you can just tell somebody that you've just found the solution for world peace. And if they're in a tear, they're in a tear. But this time why I say something and we'll have to go fact check and ask ChatGPT, although it's on a bender now that we have version 5.0 out, I think that I read Napoleon would have his secretary hold his communication for three weeks because he found that problems would resolve themselves when you just tabled it. And then if so, it's kind of like it's similar to what you're doing. You're like, okay, I'm just going to put this pause here. You're going to take action. But I like the fact that you're communicating because that is one of the number one things we know that people complain about. I got so much business building my firm, which I have this bookkeeper, but she goes, MIA or I have this bookkeeper and I can't get in touch with them, or I don't like just communicating via email. I know that she's doing the work, but I don't understand it. So that high touch approach of you being respectful and professional in saying, Hey, listen, I got the message. I can't handle it right now, but I'm on. It makes people feel safe and taken care of.
Matt Tait (21:34):
And heard.
Justine Lackey (21:35):
Correct.
Matt Tait (21:35):
I would say. And you hit on it right there. I can't tell you how many clients come to us and they're like, I just don't know what's going on. What's up? Just being responsive. It was one of the first systems. It's not actually a value at Decimal because if you don't do it, you're not going to last long. We've also built systems around responsiveness. We track who in our team is responsive, what clients are we most responsive to. I can give you data on each one of my team members, how long it takes them to reply to emails, how long it takes them to reply to first time emails. They get performance bonuses based on and in their performance reviews. One of the top things is their responsiveness, because that should be table stakes. We are in a relationship game and nobody else is tracking at that incremental level A level. And when our clients hear and they're like, so-and-so didn't get back to me. And I'm like, well, actually, I'm looking here. They get back to you within 36 minutes. Every time I'm tracking this, their boss is tracking this. They're like, that's really nice to know. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry if that went, but tell me in the past they've been really good. What changed? And they're like, well, alright, you're on it. I totally get it. And the fact that they see that and know that builds trust.
Justine Lackey (22:50):
I'm like, I want to see under the hood. I'm like, this is...
Matt Tait (22:53):
Oh yeah.
Justine Lackey (22:54):
Sounds amazing. And our biggest lessons come from when we fall on our face. So...
Matt Tait (22:59):
A hundred percent. Fail forward.
Justine Lackey (23:01):
I really wish it wasn't like that, but you have to go through something really challenging and the key is to go through that experience and get out on the other side of it and say, this is a problem and how am I going to solve it?
(23:15):
So one year I had this client, he was from Italy and he had the most amazing Justine, I'm looking for my taxes. It's just great to work with. But he had a corporation and he called me on, I don't know, March 10th or something, and his books were done. It was a wrap, and somehow we had failed to send the final QuickBooks file to his accountant. It just somehow got lost. So we put together this entire dashboard where we would watch all the different things that happened during tax time. We had this 40 line item checklist for quality control. These are things that I teach in the incubator, but what I did is we instituted a bonus based structure for bookkeepers getting out what we call the DTP, the digital tax package. We didn't do tax, I only did bookkeeping. And so at the end, we were putting together this beautiful package for the accountants and then the employees would get a bonus based on when that package went out and all of our packages had to get out by February 28th.
(24:22):
Corporations first you do it. And it worked out awesome because now it cost me a little bit of money, but it was an investment because team had an opportunity to make more money. They were rewarded for performance and the clients loved it because they knew they weren't going to file an extension. This was our commitment to them. So as long as they did the things that we would outline in the email at the beginning of the year, they knew that their books were getting out. And I was transparent with the clients where if you really love your bookkeeper, work with her, she's going to get a bonus to get your books out faster. It was a fantastic program.
Matt Tait (25:03):
Oh, I like that. My wife would also really, like I've never filed my taxes on time, and so she would love having that Decimal files our taxes on time every year. But for some reason, personally I've never been able to and she really would prefer if that wasn't the case.
Justine Lackey (25:17):
Well, you've already stated that you're terrible at accounting, so maybe she should take over that job.
Matt Tait (25:22):
I'm kindly invested in a lot of companies and getting them to get their K ones to me so that I can do my taxes is...
Justine Lackey (25:28):
That's a challenge.
Matt Tait (25:28):
A problem.
Justine Lackey (25:29):
Yeah.
Matt Tait (25:29):
Yeah.
Justine Lackey (25:30):
Well, I can't solve that for you. I'm sorry.
Matt Tait (25:32):
I know.
Justine Lackey (25:32):
Well, maybe if those people were using my digital tax package practices.
Matt Tait (25:35):
I think they would be. I actually tell them all. I'm like, if you would let Decimal do your work for you, I would be in a much better place with my wife and happier about potentially investing further in the future. It's worked once or twice, but not on everybody. One of the things that you and I are circling around here is as you scale your firm putting the right systems in place, and when people think of systems, they think technology, they think software, but that's not actually the case. To me. A system is much more than that. But what does it mean to you?
Justine Lackey (26:08):
So I have an expression that I teach a lot, which is lo-fi is hi-fi. So the fastest way I can create a repeatable process that is error free is what a system is to me. Now, sometimes that's going to be a big platform depending on the size of your firm. Sometimes you can accomplish that with a Google Sheet. I mean, we ran our entire operation on Google Sheets. Now you have all these beautiful platforms out there to run a firm. It was not like that when I was building Good Cents. And we actually incorporated one of the first firm management softwares and after three months my team was like, I hate it. We hate it. And so we reverted. We had spreadsheets for everybody tests and it worked. And I think a lot of times we think that we're going to implement this system implementing systems, take time platform.
(27:01):
There's a learning curve, there's finance, there's time lost servicing clients or getting new business. And I think a lot of them fall short because of feature overkill and then you have to start all over again. But yeah, I'm really big on keeping things as simple as possible. And that comes from my design background. There's the form and function. And so in 1950s modern design, it was how much can you strip away and still have the object function? So how many things can I strip away in this system and still deliver the end result, which is accurate? Financials delivered regularly and on time.
Matt Tait (27:41):
We're in a world where using the last letter in this acronym is not kind. But I really do love the KISS principle and I think it doesn't matter what tools you put in place. I talked to a firm a couple of months ago and they were three years into a workflow management system implementation. And I was like, that's what I said. And they asked me, they said, we use Keeper internally. And they said, how long did it take you to roll out keeper? And I said, 90 days. And they said, really? How did you roll it out in 90 days? And they said, well, we spent 90 days building a plan. We spent 90 days testing it, and then we spent 90 days rolling it out and I said, that is exactly how it went. So by the time it hit our team, it was done and they knew it. We also don't give 'em choices. It's kind of like my kids, I think it's cute. They have opinions.
Justine Lackey (28:27):
With your size team. I know I met your partner Jacob. A lot of the people that I with are either solopreneurs or their max size is really 10 people. So they don't have an IT person to lean on, it's just them. So they might have a COO or client services director. So that implementation piece of whether it's Keeper or financial sense or client hub becomes a barrier to sale, right? It's a real friction point. They're just completely paralyzed and overwhelmed and they're willing to still have the problem stay front and center versus working through the solution. It's easier to just kind of keep going. And...
Matt Tait (29:09):
There's a concept in implementations where it's I'm okay with the problem. I know rather than the solution. I don't understand.
Justine Lackey (29:16):
Correct. So one of the ways that I guide my students through that overwhelm and that paralysis is the small chunks. So just don't make the mistake. I did, which is where that first implementation, we probably had 50 or 60 clients and we spent months setting it up and then we figured out that everybody hated it. Do a taste, try keep with three clients and then add another one, add another one, and then add another one. It's like health or anything else. You have to make these small changes, but you can't grow your firm, retain your client and keep your sanity unless you have systems. It's just not possible.
Matt Tait (29:58):
Oh, a hundred percent. You touched on something I think is really important and we don't talk about enough.
Justine Lackey (30:02):
What?
Matt Tait (30:03):
You need to give yourself and your team a little bit of space to be able to try and test new things.
Justine Lackey (30:08):
Oh my God, yeah.
Matt Tait (30:10):
You can't be always at capacity all the time. It's gripping the steering wheel. You have to have a little bit of time and space, and this is going to sound crazy. You should calendar it out. You should create very specific times, set times to say, this is my test and try time. Because if not, you may never find it.
Justine Lackey (30:31):
Well, and I think that that is also a mindset, that culture of experimentation that let's play, right? I know that I had told you this before, one of my mantras is the more fun I have, the more money I make. So let's play, right? No, as long as we're not messing around with anybody's tax return or what can we do to make this process faster, quicker, more efficient, so that way you can work 30 hours instead of 40 hours. I'm to all game for it. So going back to that mindset piece, I came from a hyper traditional blue collar family, Irish, Italian Catholics from North Jersey, full Soprano.
(31:14):
The last scene of the Sopranos was filmed in the restaurant I used to go to with my grandmother at my high school actually, but just real hard workers and I'm proud of all of them. So long lines of civil service. But the mentality that I grew up with was if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. If you want something done, you have to do it yourself. And God, that's such dumb advice. I never want to be the smartest person in the room. I want to be around people who are innovative and thinking, and actually there's a lot more people who can do things a hell of a lot better than I can. So that was a learning curve for me where then when I started to invite my team in to support, help and really help the company grow, when I laid down my arms and decided I didn't need to be a martyr and I didn't need to do all this on my own and I was actually going to accept help and I was going to invite people to help me, that really changed my life.
Matt Tait (32:17):
I think that's a big challenge and change that most people, those of us that have been entrepreneurs for long enough, we all go through it at some point. You break, you fry out. It's a guarantee. You will at some point burn yourself out. I've been there, I've done that. I now build an entire career around not burning out again and making sure that my doesn't. And quite frankly, we actually talk, I had a conversation with one of our employees this week and I said, look, right now your workload, you're burning out, but I'll accept 40% of responsibility for that. Here's why you're 60% of it. And we talked and she struggles with delegation, she struggles with trust. And I said, look, you've got to relax and you've got to figure it out. And I said, and guess what? It's my job to trust them and it's your job to do it.
(33:10):
And I said, if you struggle and they keep putting out things that aren't worth your trust, you tell us we'll change it. It's not your job to do everything perfectly. It's your job to trust them. And this is a team, and I think that's a big thing. I want to transition the conversation a little bit. I want to end on your passion today community, which I think is such an amazing passion. I also think it's something that is becoming a growing force in our industry. People are looking for a community. One of the things that I have found as a struggle with communities is, and I think you help solve this with your courses as well, you have a lot of good intentions followed by poor execution.
Justine Lackey (33:53):
In communities in general?
Matt Tait (33:55):
In communities in general, and the people that join communities, they do it too with the good intentions of improving themselves, but then they lack the follow through of ever doing it.
Justine Lackey (34:06):
Right.
Matt Tait (34:07):
It's one of the reasons why we really jumped on franchising was because we were like, look, let's get all the people with skill sets and good intentions and let's just go change it for them so they don't have to Talk about how you've kind of seen really good successful people in your community bridge the gap between good intentions and execution.
Justine Lackey (34:28):
Good intentions and execution. The first thing I want to say is one of the ways that I sort of cultivate these relationships, we're talking about testing out software, is I run challenges throughout the year to invite people to sort of get a taste of what I do and how I help people. I have one running in September, it's called the Modern Firm Challenge, and we learn real stuff. Everybody goes to webinars and they don't get what they came for. And it's like this long sales pitch. No, we actually work on the month end workflows, the client onboarding experience and how to price packages or your services. It's a guided experience, so people can find that at justine lackey.com/register. If I'm not running a challenge that month, you'll get to a wait list page and trust me, I run them a lot. But what you're talking about is pattern interruption, and at certain point you just have to decide that you're not going to take your own BS anymore.
(35:23):
I'm very clear with my people. This is like, here comes the Jersey girl, I shoot straight. I don't sugarcoat anything. I'm not telling you you're going to build a $10 million business overnight. I'm not here to make empty promises. I'm here to give you the support and education you need and the structure to do it. So how we actually materially do that is when people come through the program, there's over 20 masterclasses. We have two q and a sessions per month. But here's the kicker is we actually have two CEO hours on Tuesdays and Fridays. Sometimes those change, but those are coworking sessions where the entire community comes together and we actually say what we're going to work on for the next hour, and you can't work on client work. So here we provide a container, a structure for people to do those needle moving activities that they always promise themselves they're going to do, but when their seat lands in their chair in the morning, they have 10 emails from 10 angry clients because they don't have the systems set up to prevent those emails from the get-go.
(36:32):
I've worked really hard on designing that program in a way where people get results because I think that we talk about courses and communities and everybody's bought shelf help, but I don't want your money unless you're going to actually take the action. I really don't. You're going to end up feeling like it's like resent money and I'm going to feel like I didn't serve you even though I gave you everything on a silver platter, and I'd rather work with a smaller number of people and get better results than work with a huge pool of people and have mediocre results. That's just how it goes back to that five star customer experience again. It's not worth it for me, really.
Matt Tait (37:10):
We do the same with our clients. I even was on a sales call yesterday and just kind of sitting there and sidecar it with our sales guy and we're on there and I slacked him halfway in the call and I said, you know this isn't going to make a good client. Please tell 'em that.
Justine Lackey (37:25):
Yeah, it's okay to turn people away.
Matt Tait (37:27):
It's okay. I actually switched and I said, Hey, I know exactly who would be a good fit with you. And I was like, here's a recommendation. I told Sam, the sales guy, and I said, look, you will get a referral from him. At some point, you will get a referral from the person that you just told. No. And this is your karmic thing.
Justine Lackey (37:47):
I love.
Matt Tait (37:48):
This one thing that you hit on. So by the way, fact check, you were totally right. It was three weeks for Napoleon and his secretary, ChatGPT was listening actually.
Justine Lackey (37:56):
Oh yeah, I know.
Matt Tait (37:57):
I love that. And I'm stealing that story. That's amazing.
Justine Lackey (38:00):
Just for students because all the time I'm like, I learned this. I read that I did this. Yeah.
Matt Tait (38:05):
One of the things I talk a lot with our leadership team on, and I'm interested, have you ever heard of the Eisenhower Matrix?
Justine Lackey (38:12):
Yes. It's the cube, the four.
Matt Tait (38:15):
Yep. What's urgent? What's not urgent? What's important, what's not important? And I talk with our leadership team about it, and we actually talk with our accounting team because we're in the business where not a whole lot is actually urgent. You messed up their books. Guess what? Changing it today versus tomorrow doesn't make a difference. You can still go back and change it now. You mess up payroll that is both important and urgent. So figure out what fits into what matrix. And for those people listening, just Google it. It's all over the internet. It's a great way to start to conceptualize taking action because so often, and you kind of talk about this with people wanting to, we've talked about it with space, we've talked about it with building plans, people that run businesses, accounting firms, any type of company, you get caught. Firefighting problem happens, go fix it, problem happens. Go fix it. Problem happens. Go fix it. It's the wrong thing to do. Problem happens. Take a deep breath, decide is it urgent? Is it important? By the way, if it is urgent but not important, delegate it. Delegate it. That client call that. I get that voicemail. It is important, but it's not urgent. So delegate it. So these are the things that you really got to hit on.
Justine Lackey (39:27):
So we talked way earlier about a filtering mechanism. You were asking me, what do you pay attention to? And it's like the thing that's causing you the most pain. It's the Eisenhower Matrix is a filtering mechanism. It helps you actually put things in containers and then actually make choice. And we actually do have to think about these things from a strategic perspective. But I would add to that toolbox, which is something that I learned from my mentor or one of my mentors, Michael Hyatt, which is the after action review. At the end of every tax season, we would go through an after action review. And so if you're not familiar with it, go Google it. But it was developed by the US military to evaluate missions after they were completed to see how they can improve. Did they achieve the goal? What went wrong? What went right?
(40:19):
How can we improve? So if you are sitting at your chair every day and you're getting the same emails over and over, you got a process problem. So when you dive into the after action review, that's how you figure out what's going to change. And I'll put this in a real world example, this 1099 time, and we got to the 31st, and I just found myself grinding it out. And I was just so angry, Matt. I was like, we have this whole team. Why are we doing this again? So February 2nd, February 1st, I swear to my team, I take a vow. We will never have another 1099 season like this. The expectation is you're going to do this and all these different things to do. So it comes to July and I come to do a little spot check. We were right in the same place.
(41:08):
And I went full on a credible Hulk. I was like, it was not my shining moment as a leader. But the point was if we had an after action review and I was taking a stand for myself saying, I'm not going to live in this insanity anymore, I'm not going to be a bad mom and come home cranky and late because we didn't do what we were supposed to do, and we have the solution right here. And then after, I mean, I love the fact that immortalized all of this on Facebook, I can look and be like, January 26th, we filed 710 90 nines today. We're done. We were done days before the 31st. So you have to be proactive in interchange.
Matt Tait (41:49):
I love this. I think we've hit on a lot of different ways that people can scale better. So you gave us the website earlier, but where can people follow you, learn more and look to improve themselves?
Justine Lackey (42:04):
Sure. So my website is just Justine Lackey. It's J-U-S-T-I-N-E-L-A-C-K-E-Y.com. You can find me on LinkedIn. Matt and I are often bantering. I have a Facebook group called the Incubator, so you can find that. That's a free group that's open, just people posting there and get advice and tips. And although you can't come and vent about Intuit raising their prices, not my jam, if we keep the vibe high.
Matt Tait (42:32):
That would just repeat every three months.
Justine Lackey (42:34):
No, it's just I can't. And you can't be mean to newbies either. That's like, these are my hard and fast rules for my Facebook group. It comes back to culture. What sort of community do I want to create? Create a community that's solution focused, not...
Matt Tait (42:48):
Don't complain, look for help.
Justine Lackey (42:49):
Exactly. Let's not focus on the problem. Let's focus on the solution. So my website, Facebook, LinkedIn, I'm on Instagram. I've really kind of tabled that more over the past years. I've developed more LinkedIn relationships, but all the places.
Matt Tait (43:05):
Well, Justine, I really appreciate you taking the time today. I always really enjoy our conversations and I think there's a lot that people can take away from this. And thank you. Appreciate the time.
Justine Lackey (43:18):
Thank you for having me. I always love talking shop with you.
Matt Tait (43:21):
Oh, we have fun.
Justine Lackey (43:22):
We do.
Matt Tait (43:23):
We'll do it again offline and probably just record it so we can send some outtakes. And my language gets worse when I'm not recording anyway. But...
Justine Lackey (43:31):
Hey, I have to keep the inner Jersey girl. She's got to be contained because, you know.
Matt Tait (43:36):
No, me too. But it's just...
Justine Lackey (43:38):
Colorful language. Yeah. So we were good. I'm proud of it.
Matt Tait (43:44):
This was good. This was good.
Justine Lackey (43:46):
Yeah. All right.
Matt Tait (43:47):
Well, thanks again for joining me.
Justine Lackey (43:48):
Yes. I always enjoy the time.