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Welcome back to Count Me In,

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the podcast that brings you impactful
people and stories from across the world

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of management accounting.
I'm your host, Adam Larson,

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and joining me today is Mat
Boyle, CEO of Online to Offline,

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to discuss how businesses and management
accountants can make a big difference

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in the world by shifting their focus
from profits first to mission first.

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While this is much easier said
than done, as you'll hear,

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Mat's inspirational story is an important
reminder that it's possible to do well

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in business and even better than ever
when you measure your success by something

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greater than the bottom line.

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Well, Mat, I just really wanna thank
you for coming on the podcast today.

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Thanks so much for sharing your
time with us. And to start off,

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I wanted you to kind of walk through a
little bit of your story with us as we

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were kind of talking,
coming up to this call,

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you mentioned something
that you learned to focus,

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no longer focusing on profit, but on
the impact your business was making,

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and that's not something
you hear every day.

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So maybe you could talk a little
bit about that with our audience.

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Yeah, sure. Adam, thanks
for having us. So the

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sort of condensed
version of the backstory,

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I'd built quite a large
sales training business.

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So I had four offices around Australia.

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We had a stack of businesses that
will help in their sales teams,

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really navigate through the
changes caused by the internet.

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And from a profitability
point of view, it was amazing,

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but there was this kind of hole inside
me that it was really unfulfilling and

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my days was spent training sales
people that didn't want help.

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They needed it, but they didn't want it.

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So it was just this horribly
unfulfilling sort of thing. And

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I met this guy back in 2015 who was
an Australian guy that worked with

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the Thai immigration police.

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And he started talking to me about the
work he was doing over in Thailand and

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how he was involved in rescuing kids
out of exploitive situations and

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women outta sexual slavery
and human trafficking.

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And the more we got talking,

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the more things just sort of
opened up for me and the, you know,

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my heart sort of went,
I've gotta see this.

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So about six months into the conversation,

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and I eventually convinced him
to take me over to Thailand,

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and I spent three weeks working
with him and his team in

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Thailand doing the front lines rescuing
kids outta brothels and women outta

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brothels and just seeing this depravity,

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which is human trafficking, and you know,

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that some of the sites and the
sounds were just horrendous.

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But the thing when I was talking
to all these women and that,

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that the stories were identical,
that they all needed money

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and got caught up in this life
because someone gave them a job that

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they shouldn't have lent to money
from someone they shouldn't have.

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Or they were promised a job that didn't
exist and they were all taken advantage

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of by their desperation towards money.

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So when I was sitting back in Australia
and I'm sitting back in a boardroom

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a few days later, I sort
of had this idea of, well,

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instead of businesses paying me
to train their sales teams not to

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do the work that I've paid them
to do, I've been paid to do.

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What about if I just could
automate and outsource all of these

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elements of the sales process,

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businesses could pay me to build
the systems and manage the systems

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and they're gonna make more money,

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but then I can go and create jobs in
these developing countries where all

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these women are getting exploited and
train them how to operate my system and

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actually be able to use my business
as a way of making good. So that's

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what we started to do and started
to develop all these systems that

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can automate and outsource big
chunks of the sales process,

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but do it in a way that no one actually
ever realizes it's not been done by

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you. And in 2018,

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we ended up opening our first
outsource center in the Philippines,

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which has gone gone amazing.

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And then Covid has gone slowed down our
growth and we are on track to open our

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second center in Thailand sometime
sort of before sort of March next year.

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That's quite a story. I mean,

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to have something like that caused
such an impact on you that you want to

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completely turn your business around,
that can't be an easy decision to make.

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And it's a very risky one.

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It was a very easy decision to make
because I made it with my heart,

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not with my head. It was an
incredibly risky situation.

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And the journey between sort of 2016,

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2017 when the idea came
and where we are now,

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we certainly have faced the
consequences of that, you know,

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of that decision. Because
going through this said,

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I made it purely with my heart of going,
I have to make an impact from there.

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And I kind of threw out all
conventional business acumen

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around, well, what happens
to your existing customers?

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What are you gonna do with
everything you built up?

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And so over a period of a few months,
we ended all of our contracts.

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I just stopped prospecting for new
business and didn't replace them.

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And just focused our whole
energy on trying to fix,

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solve this problem and, and tried to
create these systems and open the center.

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And, you know, as is often the case,

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it always takes twice as long as you think
it's gonna take and takes three times

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the amount of money that you think
it's gonna take. And, you know,

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through all of that journey,

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the consequence is we actually went
through complete financial meltdown and we

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lost our house, lost our cars,

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and basically went down to
having $50 to our name at

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our kind of lowest point. And you know,

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that's kind of where we were able to
kind of keep persevering and keep getting

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through.

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So like fortunately now we're in
a much stronger financial position

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than we ever have, and the
business is going great,

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but there certainly was a big
journey from start to where we are

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now, which has been challenging.

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So maybe we can talk a little
bit about that journey,

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about becoming to the success you are now.

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I know a lot of that contributed to
getting the right people in place in your

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organization to make sure that you were
doing the business in the right way.

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Maybe we can talk a little bit about
that to how that became successful.

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Yeah, so there

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was a few kind of phases where I was
first in that survival phase where it was

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just me. I was just hustling.
I was just, you know,

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I was robbing Peter to pay Paul and
I didn't really have a financial

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strategy in place other than how can I
pay this week's bills type of strategy.

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And that, you know, although
that was getting us forward,

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that was creating other holes
with taxation and a heap of other

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kind of just areas that,

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because I was so single minded
focused on the goal at hand and

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trying to do everything
myself or being left behind.

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So I started to look for support teams and

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one of the sort of first pieces I put
into place is actually bringing on a

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fractional CFO. I've been working
with a lot of the accountants and,

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you know, all the accountants,

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all they kept doing was just filing
my tax returns and telling me,

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because you've done A, B, and C this
way, this is what we've had to do.

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So they're just telling me about their
problems and how they've stuck a bandaid

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over it rather than actually working
with me to try to solve the problems.

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And that just kept making,
compounding the problems, you know,

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and just putting us deeper and deeper
and deeper in a hole. So I'm, you know,

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one side, I'm, you know,
busting, busting everything.

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I've got to try to get ahead and
with boosting our revenues and

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bringing on more staff.
But on the other hand,

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I'm now creating this big problem with
taxation and all those other kind of

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compliance matters because I'm just
putting every cent that we make back

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into growth.

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And the accountants that we're working
with just didn't actually stop me and

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shake me and kind of help me
put a proper plan in place.

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So I brought this CFO on,

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who spent the time to kind of just
understand what we were doing,

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understand where we were at the
business, and really kind of, you know,

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on an emotional point of of view, helped
me kind of, just kind of, you know,

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remove the shame around that.

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But then from a logical point of
view actually said, Well, we need,

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let's just get, get a clear
understanding of where you are now,

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but let's put some frameworks in place
and let's start the process of kind of

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digging, you know, digging you outta
this hole and doing it properly.

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So that's been, you know,

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been an amazing kind of thing where
he doesn't know what the answers

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are to the questions about how,
for how me to grow the business.

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But what he's been able to do for me is
be able to ask me the right questions

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and keep the right focus to make sure
I'm putting the right information

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and then building the right frameworks
around it to be able to, you know,

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allow me to kind of, you know, slowly
get on top of the taxation issues and,

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and slowly start building a really
stable foundation underneath the business

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that we had that's gonna allow us to
continue to grow and make a bigger impact.

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That's great to hear. I mean,

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there's something that has been written
about on many research papers and

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articles at IMA is that
the CFO of the future is

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not just a number cruncher, but is
somebody who is truly a business partner,

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has a seat at the table
and hearing your story.

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It shows that your CFO is
sitting there doing that.

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How has your CFO been
able to help guide or help

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give the best advice for
strategic decisions moving
forward as you look to the

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future as your business continues to grow?

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Well, it's really, he's been
both a hand broken accelerator,

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so he's really kind of just
worked within us of going,

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understanding my vision,
understanding where I, you know,

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where I want to go and
where I want to take this.

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And then also understanding what
the risks, what the risks are.

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So in certain areas,

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like with our growth with wanting
to open our second center,

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he's really pumped the breaks on that
and said, Well, let's cost it out.

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Let's budget it out.

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Let's make sure we've got
the sustainability before
we go and commit to it.

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So he's helped us get very
clear on where we need to be as

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a, as a company

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before we can take on that extra risk.

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He's also sort of just helped
us look at where our income

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comes from and what,

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what income has been kind of in the
one-off project work versus the recurring

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everyday work and kept challenging
me to refine our product

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offering to build better sustainability
and increase that kind of

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lifetime value,

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which has enabled us to sort of
accelerate growth on the other end.

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So he's really been that, you know, again,

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he's just the accelerator and brake that,

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just telling us when to speed
up and when to slow down.

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As I'm hearing you talk
about the different growths
and being able to, you know,

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stop when you need to stop, put the
brakes in and go when you need to go,

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what role has technology played in this
whole process of growth within your

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organization?

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Well, look,

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technology has just really simplified
communication and simplified sort of

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tracking. So we've built in the,

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the systems that we're
still, still refining,

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but we've built in these systems of
sort of financial tracking that we know

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exactly where we are as a
company at any point in time.

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We know what our liabilities
are, we know where our income is,

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where it's coming from.

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We also know where we are and benchmarking
where we are compared to where

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our goals are and where we need to be.

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And because all of that's
happening in real time,

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we can have more of the conversations
we need to have about how can

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we increase our revenue this month? Why
is our expenses, you know, you know,

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why our expenses more than what we
sort of budgeted for. And, you know,

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either resolve issues and what I call
kill the monster while it's small.

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So deal with issues while they're
small or be able to kind of just

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go out there and make some,

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make some adjustments to go and bring
some more income in to keep us on track.

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So it's been vital.

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Yeah, that's, that's something
we've been hearing as well.

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Just the fact that it kind of shrinks
everything down to make it communication

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better to make financial
statements better,

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to make it easier to analyze your data,
to understand where the money is going,

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to understand what things are
looking like for the future.

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So it seems that it's having the same
impact that it's having for a lot of other

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organizations for you as well.

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Something that's really important
is communication within the

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organization. And how has, I mean,

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I don't know how big your organization is,

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but how has your organization as a whole
kind of shifted in this whole changing?

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Well, we've kind of been able to
empower a lot of our team from there.

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So part of our sort of modeling with all
of this and looking at our growth is we

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really wanted to gamify and
incentivize our team for, you know,

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our client retention and all that kinda
stuff. Cause the longer we keep clients,

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the less churn we have, the more,
you know, more growth we have,

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the more profit we make.

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So we've been able to kind of
flow all of that kind of data down

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and actually really incentivize our team

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for their performance and for, you
know, for keeping clients. So, you know,

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through that we've been able to sort of
just have those sort of daily progress

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reports that all of our agents
see, you know, how they're working,

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you know,

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the results they're delivering for
their clients compared to benchmark,

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if they're ahead of
target or below target.

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And if they are ahead of target,

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what type of bonus and incentive
they have in place. So having that,

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that there, that they can
see on a daily basis and,

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and had that in real time numbers has,

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has been a massive help in
them actually reaching out.

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It's really changed their behavior that
they're reaching out and asking for help

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and being more proactive with making
some of the changes, you know,

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to the campaigns that are helping us
deliver better results for our clients,

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which therefore improves our bottom line.

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So if we go back to kind
of where we started,

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where you were talking about how you
wanted to focus no longer on profit,

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but on impact, how has that
had personal effect on you,

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as in your leadership style and how
you've kind of guided your team through

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this?

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Well, it's been been massive,

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and it's one of those things
I get asked that regularly,

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and it's really hard to answer
from an exact point of view

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because who I am now to versus who
I was six or seven years ago, I'm a

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completely different type of leader.

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But the probably the biggest
impact that everything has is

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when I wake up in the morning,
it's not how much, you know,

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my focus isn't on how
much profit I can make.

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My focus is on how many
jobs I can create. And,

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and that's that whole driver.

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And then when I am looking at
my organization, it is about,

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you know, right, how can I
build the best team culture?

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How can I support the community
that our center operates in?

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And how can I support my team as
much as possible and make their

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life better for being part of our team?

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So everything has gone around that.

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It just happens to be that
the byproduct of all of that

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has been that we serve our clients
better, we give them better results,

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which means we actually make more money.

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So it happens to be that the
cycle we've created is the

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more impact we have, the more profit
we make, and the more profit we make,

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the more impact we have. But,
you know, when I started this,

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it wasn't about making profit
and it's something that I had to,

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through the journey get quite comfortable
with in the fact of I can actually

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have this business that is making
such a profound impact in lives,

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and it happens to make, you know,

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make it a tremendous amount of profit
that I can live off and I can live very

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comfortably off. And there
was a lot of guilt, you know,

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that I had to kind of work through
with that because it was, you know,

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I couldn't give it away fast enough.

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I couldn't put enough money
back into jobs fast enough.

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And every time I did that, there just
happened to be more money coming in,

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coming in as a result of it. So

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it's been a great consequence,

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but the focus now is
not about about profit,

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it's about about jobs and being able
to impact our communities and sort of,

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you know, improve the
lives of people around us.

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It's something that just makes
you think and wonder like,

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what if every organization
was focused on that?

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Would we live in the
same world we live in?

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I don't think so. I think there,

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there is a shift and it's
coming and it's evolving.

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And I know that sort of journey
that I went through was, you know,

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from a very selfish
business that, you know,

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it was just about me and my family and,
you know, putting food on the table.

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And there was nothing
kind of wrong with that.

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But then I had my eyes sort of
awakened to something that I'd,

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you know, had no one knew
existed. And, you know,

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we had six kids very close together,

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and as I'm hearing these stories about
parents having to sell their kids

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into these exploitive
situations or renting them out
in exploitative situations

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and, and that, you know, my heart
just opened up and went, like,

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I just had to see it. And
then when I saw it, you know,

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my mind kept opening and then I went
through this phase of I'm just gonna keep

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growing my business here and making more
money here so I can donate more money.

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And that was that kind of thing of,

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I'm gonna make more money so I can make
more impacts. And then it evolved into,

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I'm just gonna make more impact
so I can make more money.

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So that was kind of the evolution that
I went through and that took a period of

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00:19:03,411 --> 00:19:06,070
time. And I can see on the broader scale,

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a lot of businesses are kind of at
different phases of that evolution toward,

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you know, moving away from
profit and onto impact.

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But I surely

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believe that if more businesses
focus on genuine impact and genuinely

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00:19:25,470 --> 00:19:30,430
improving the lives of people around us
and improving the environment we live in

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00:19:30,431 --> 00:19:35,270
and making some positive impact in
the world and in whatever, you know,

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00:19:35,310 --> 00:19:38,270
scale or whatever sort of
area is important to them,

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00:19:39,470 --> 00:19:44,190
if more people did that, things are gonna
change and change for the positives.

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This has been Count Me In,

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00:19:48,420 --> 00:19:52,670
IMA's podcast providing you
with the latest perspectives
of thought leaders from

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00:19:52,671 --> 00:19:54,230
the accounting and finance profession.

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00:19:54,231 --> 00:19:57,710
If you like what you heard and you'd
like to be counted in for more relevant

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00:19:57,711 --> 00:20:00,910
accounting and finance education,
visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.