Jonathan Bello, the owner of One 8 Solutions and a Top 100 ProAdvisor Award winner, joins Gary DeHart for the debut of Insightful Accountant's new podcast, Accounting Insiders!
Jonathan Bello, the owner of One 8 Solutions and a Top 100 Award winner, joins Gary DeHart for the debut of Insightful Accountant's new podcast, Accounting Insiders!
Live from Scaling New Heights 2022, Gary asks Jonathan specifics about how he runs his firm, what his preferred tech stack is, and how he's shaped his firm to be successful!
Listen now to learn the importance of succession planning in your firm, how adapting to new technology can save you hours of your work day, and how winning the title of Top 100 ProAdvisor has helped his business.
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Gary DeHart
I am Gary DeHart. I am the publisher of Insightful Accountant and I we are here to launch our initial podcast the Accounting Insiders podcast. And joining me today is Jonathan Bello from One 8 Solutions. Jonathan?
Jonathan Bello
Good morning, Gary. Thank you for having me. And this is I'm a podcast virgin. Here we are, I don't even listen to I don't even listen to podcasts that much. Now you did. Now I'm going to now at least one I'm going to listen to at least one.
Gary DeHart
So tell me a little bit about your practice. Alright, so kind of things we want to cover. Okay, a little bit about your practice. But actually before that about your you've been in the Top 100 for multiple years, one of our award winners, I can't remember which one but
Jonathan Bello
The Appologist.
Gary DeHart
The Apologist, that's right? Funny stories around that. I'd like to learn a little bit about how you've leveraged the top 100. And, and as the award that you receive in your practice, and then tell us a little bit about your practice a little bit about yourself, and then we'll go through a couple other questions.
Jonathan Bello
Okay. So the top one, again, the top first getting the top 100 award from me, is extremely gratifying. It validated the work and the effort that I was putting in to get knowledgeable in the Intuit product line. And, you know, developing a practice that got noticed, and also working with my peers, it was extremely gratifying to get my first one right here from the sixth one is no less gratifying. Okay? Getting the QuickBooks Online integrations, Apple. See, I can't even say the QuickBooks Online integrations, pro advisor award of the year was extremely gratifying. And I still have hopes that one day, I may be that pro advisor of the year working at it. Right. So. So how does it work in terms of me developing my practice? Well, it is a huge feather in my cap. It says that to people who are looking to work with me, that I've been noticed and receive accolades from my peer environment. You know, because you know, of course, people outside of the QuickBooks ProAdvisor world are not as familiar with insightful accountant. But if you explain to them that, you know, you're the preeminent online resource for pro advisors, then it helps add more credence to it. So I do a lot of network marketing. I actually joined a provider's group, if you ever heard of them. And that gets confusing because you have pro advisor and pro visors. Okay, I've not heard that. What is that? It's, it's a BNI. You're familiar with BNI? Yes. Okay. It's a more of a b2b BNI. It's very attorney heavy, but there's other a lot of other accountants on it. And then you have other service professionals, and but the P, the quality of the professionals are in there. So in the Boston area, some of the top notch law firms and accounting firms are there. Yesterday, I happened to just talk to a gentleman who's in mergers and acquisition for a top firm, and I told him my story a little bit. So in adding them coming down, I got to top 100. We are now connected in LinkedIn, and he may have some referral business for me.
Gary DeHart
Okay, so for you kind of the BNI it's more referral, you're not looking for direct customers there.
Jonathan Bello
No, I'm looking for referrals. Yes, absolutely. So that lends a lot of credibility. It also lends a lot of credibility when I'm recruiting people to work for me, and that they're going to they feel a because I tend to recruit people who are not as experienced. This way I can train in the way I want my best practices to be. And but it adds credibility to them saying that I've been again noticed by my peers,
Gary DeHart
And how many people do you have working for?
Jonathan Bello
Including me because I am a W 2, 10 of us and and it breaks down, I have some high level people. A CPA, one person, another person with a master's. So I have about four accountants, including me, about four bookkeepers and then I have a person who is my project manager. And then I have a controller, one of the other people is a controller, Operations Manager. And then I have another person who her name is Tu Ashcraft you've you've done emails with her Yes, she's my sales and marketing manager since the last the last like the last time we were together a lot changed and grown when my firm.
Gary DeHart
So are you all in a single office or remote? I wouldn't think so. I bittering what our next topic is...
Jonathan Bello
I have always I've been an independent most for most of my life since high since 19. I have fan clubs. Since 1987, I hung up my first shingle. Yeah, I have almost all the time worked for myself. I've been very, I think, since then three times a W two employee. And this has been going on since 2001.
Gary DeHart
Okay, so yeah, so we started Insightful Accountant, nine years ago, actually, June, 13, 9 years ago. Wow. Yeah, it's hard to believe. And so I've encouraged my boys, that's really the first time I've ever been independent. So I encourage my sons from day one. And like, if you can get out of school, and let's find a business, get you started in that business. You can learn a lot working for other people, no doubt. I mean, learn a lot, especially for the bigger companies...learn things. But it's not as quickly as you learn it when you have to hang up your own shingle and figure out, I don't do X I don't eat. That's right. It makes a big difference. Yep, absolutely. So workflow is your thing, workflow. process development...
Jonathan Bello
It's...look, I can't take a claim for it. It's Joe's mantra that I have, I took to heart. But, you know, being a process driven firm, with a tech stack that's scalable, and repeatable. And over the past two years, starting with COVID, it was always I knew if I wanted to grow my firm, I have to be that because you have to put in tools and everything in place for people to use and use the same way. And then when COVID came around, I really realized that I gotta kick this into high gear. And even with that, the time commitment to getting the infrastructure in place, along with doing marketing, operations, production work, it was, I was at hamster on the wheel. But I wasn't getting it to the place that I wanted to be. And then I had some great luck. We brought on Tracy, who was my book, initially a bookkeeper in training. And then I realized all the process management experience that she had all the project management experience. So I would say these are these are my holy grails. And she has really been very instrumental in helping me implement them. So the concept is, can't do it all by yourself. Richard Roeper, another interview another person out way along the way, finding that implementer you really if you you know, he's got to own it. Yeah, somebody's got to own it. I wanted to, I couldn't be it. And I realized it.
Gary DeHart
That's good. And if you have the right people backing up here terrible with who wrote what books, but right, the right people on the right seat on the right class, right. And, and it's critical...
Jonathan Bello
And I got lucky, I really have gotten lucky.
Gary DeHart
And I think the hard part for for business owners, whether it's small business, large business, whatever, some of it's the letting go. And it's not because you don't trust people, it's just a lot of times that by myself, Oh, it's easier for me just to do it. I can take 22 minutes to explain it to you, or I could do it in five. But where that's so short sighted is, well, I'm gonna have to do it. It's gonna take me five minutes, every day for the next rest of my life, right? Or I could teach you in 22 minutes and never have to do it again.
Jonathan Bello
But here's the thing. If you want to have a business, that, you know, I'm 62 years old, at some particular point, I'm going to exit the business, every beat again, getting back to another reason why I also have taken on that mantra is having processes in place, having workflow in place, is going to increase the valuation of my business. And it in a conversation with Joe not too long ago, Joe really said you're doing the right things. And I was very proud to hear that from him. I said, "Picked it up from you."
Gary DeHart
He gets it right. And just for people who may be listening to this, who don't know all the players Joe, you're talking about Joe Witter? Yes, I am with like with a group at heights, which is the show that we're at, right, so yes. So let's move a bit deeper on the workflow, process development. And you mentioned tech stack. So what's in that tech stack?
Jonathan Bello
Oh, good. That's an easy quick I should have the answer. Currently, my client facing tech stack is starting up with DAX, one of the versions of QB Oh, because QBO really is the center of the universe and implemented these tech stacks. And then they work more seamlessly in the get, and also, a lot of this is disbursement AP focus side, we tend to most of our clients on the AR side, or at least handling the estimate invoicing portion of it. So a lot of that focus is on themselves. Yes, yeah. So the focus on the AP side, so Dext into QuickBooks, Melio , for built in payments, Relay for external payments, they really have beefed up their product. Since I got introduced to it three years ago. We showed it to my team about two weeks ago, everybody on their team thought the same way that I thought about which client could use it in this way. Then on the end, followed up with the informational side, Tally street, I like a lot, because it gives a great metrics that are easy to read and easy understand tally Street. Yeah. And what is that? Oh, Tally Street is a a weekly and monthly sales and AR metrics newsletter, and they have attachment work and some spreadsheets. They were on their own. And they recently required acquired by right networks. And they're getting it in, they're getting in there here. Brian Sutoff his speaking. Cashflow tool is a helpful tool. Also, we're working with future cash flow with the client. And then on the reporting side, I like a lot of the built in capabilities of what's available for the type of information sharing I do with my clients. I do a lot of trend analysis, and some KPIs with them. But mostly trend analysis on the internal side. So let's, right now, our sales process starts with Outlook outlook is our CRM, we know we need to improve that we're using process Street for our initial intake form. So one of the things that I've started to build out really early is an assessment process, which is very detailed, and had a static component about the business workflow component, then research and deliverable aspect. And then finally, engagement with the client. So the first part of the assessment is now being sent out to the client as a self survey, if they don't get through the self survey. That's what we do in our first appointment. Once we onboard a client, financial sense, is our workflow management. The way we got into workflow, financial sense, was schrom had reached out to me on LinkedIn, he copied the interest. He then referred me to a couple people that were using it, I talked to them, I actually made another contact from that conversation that was helpful in some of the marketing aspects of what we're doing. And see, so we got, and we are using internally, QuickBooks time for the costing of what people are doing. We're using QBO with automated sales receipts. And I think that's pretty much it off the top that I can remember.
Gary DeHart
CRM, yes, really outlook. But yes, not really a CRM, but..
Jonathan Bello
So I do heavy categorizing in it. So I think there
Gary DeHart
It's pretty it's pretty powerful. Right?
Jonathan Bello
Right.
Gary DeHart
I'm very shallow, right? My use of it. It sends email, but I know it has a lot of things that can do you find that you can run your practice right now with that as the CRM?
Jonathan Bello
Yeah. But yes.
Gary DeHart
Probably 15 people out there on the show floor can tell you differently.
Jonathan Bello
Yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And next year, I'll bring to you to this, so she can go and research that that would be a good goal for her.
Gary DeHart
So great tools, right? Certainly, again, with using workflow and process, the automations that can be built into a lot of these tools, we use though Zoho one, looked at that?
Jonathan Bello
Not recently.
Gary DeHart
And again, not endorsing, Zohoit's just what we use, and they are one of our customers, but it's not why we use it. We were using it long before they were customers. But Zoho one has about 40 apps that come with a license. And I think right we're seven licenses I think we pay like 3500 for the year, something, which I think is very reasonable. And it's um, it's every year it's, it's the CRM itself. Yep. It could be books, we don't use books, right? He's hardly any of it was really focused on the CRM, but it has a campaigns tool. Yes. As a replacement for zoom, which when we looked at it, we use Zoom
Jonathan Bello
oh, zoom, we use Zoom phone. Okay. So everybody gets a Zoom, zoom phone, at least to start they then they get their own meeting room when they need to set up Calendly. Slack are other tools in our tech stack for communication.
Gary DeHart
Go talk with Zoho right here. It's amazing that they have now I don't And again, I'm not, I don't know everything about everything Zoho but when we looked at kind of the thing that was called Showtime or something like that, which would would replace zoom when we looked at it a year ago, but why didn't seem like it was like ready for primetime. But now Val at Zoho is telling me no, it's really good tool unless we can look at it. Because, again, it's not huge money that we spend on on Zoom, zoom.
Jonathan Bello
I'm spending probably about what we don't use the phone. Yeah. So the 170 a month? Yeah, in the phone, the phone runs about $11 per person, I taught how to assess. I taught how to assess a new client and have better engagements and get paid for it 2018 here.
Gary DeHart
Which that will get people's attention, right?
Jonathan Bello
Oh, yeah, I had a packed room, there was only 50 minutes, I should have done longer.
Gary DeHart
Oh, we should talk about that. We should talk about doing a webinar series, whether it's...
Jonathan Bello
Absoulety! But, you know, I you know, the after getting that pinnacle, notification, you know, notoriety of the category award, I stepped back from doing a lot of the things that made me notice, you know, the writing and trying to teach, and I'm ready to step back in.
Gary DeHart
But but that was also the time when you're building out your workflow in the process, right?
Jonathan Bello
Yes. So you can only do so many things, right?
Gary DeHart
Even if you outsource, you still gotta be there, right? Or outsource. But delegate, you still have to take a look at it every now and then. Alright, so we talked about your apps talking about the workflow. We've got you now we're gonna sign you up for 52 webinars. So yes, a year and a half. Focusing down again, we're gonna keep using that current workflow process X, right. Sounds like that really has been kind of the key for your practice. Right? Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Jonathan Bello
And by the way, we're still tweaking things. Okay. We're, you know, as an example, I let Tracy take over some of the training for me, because I wanted to see how she did and see if we had stuff, everything in place. Tracy has a very good head on her shoulders. But she didn't have enough experience yet. And so some of the rookie things that you would see in accounting and bookkeeping, they were showing up. So that meant I still had to come back and do some more of the onboarding training. So then I can again, offload it because I know like, if you didn't get it right the first time, she'll get it right the second time, right. Yeah.
Gary DeHart
So the so we talked about your practice, and when I have to look at my cheat sheet and say, All right, I'm gonna completely botch something up here.
Jonathan Bello
It's your first podcast, man. We got to work out the kinks.
Gary DeHart
Usually sitting in my basement. So its biggest challenge. In the practice? Yes, currently. And then let's kind of tie that into kind of closing the loop here. So biggest challenge in your practice currently, and talking to other your peers? Yep. What are the steps that they need to look at or be thinking about to get the process and the workflow going? Because it's not an overnight? You have to have the right text? Decide the right tech stack and how do you implement it? So that's a that's like a nine part question. So good luck answering all that.
Jonathan Bello
Well. Let's start with what is the biggest challenge in my practice right now. Quality control is the biggest challenge. We onboarded for new people, including Tracy in the past six months. One did not work out. She got stretched too thin and are on on life. We Our onboarding, we on boarded four new accounting and bookkeeping clients plus a migration client. And so all of a sudden, we have all this work coming in, we're trying to get the process, the capacity built out, I was very upfront with people, that the that the people that are going to be working with them are new people. And I'm going to make sure that, you know, I stand behind the quality of work, that one eight solutions stands for recognizing some of this fairly quickly, put a break on new client acquisition, make sure that everybody understands their work processes. So we're doing good work for our clients, is the paramount thing. So if you're growing your business, and you're in that position, where you have that, you know, are you going to grow the production side? And then fill in with capacity or fill up with capacity? And then fill in productive investment? Right? Yep. If if I was saying to anybody, I would go with the capacity side, first, make that investment upfront, make that investment up? Yeah, make that capacity because the with the economy having been the way it's been, we have a lot of uncertainty in the future. I would still go with that route. Might be a little scary,
Gary DeHart
Especially if you're currently a solopreneur. Right, like adding a second person that expense, etc. And the time again, we talked about Yeah, you can't just go, Hey, here's the job. Right. Gotta be there. You got a mentor, you got to kind of carry on through the process. So absolutely. There's a lot of steps, but I think that's great. So it's, it's Build Your Capacity. Yes. Make the investment. Yep. And then because, again, you go get as many clients as you want. It's not by an acquisition, probably not the hard part.
Jonathan Bello
Right now it's not.
Gary DeHart
It's so where we were was built capacity. Yep. Yes. Then make sure got trained up, make sure we understand the process. And do you have a workflow? You have like a process map? We have that mapped out? Yes. So Mike has a document that if you're out the office thinking, Oh, that's right. I'm supposed to go ABCDE.
Jonathan Bello
Tracy is a Visio whiz. Okay. Oh, my God. It's amazing. It's so great to see the little blocks and the decision trees. Because it's super helpful. Oh, my God, it's, it's it. And she needs to train me how to do that. So in case something happens to her right, I can continue to still do that myself. And we're building out our best practices manual too.
Gary DeHart
We have told you, I went through that Goldman Sachs in that class. And part of that one of the weeks was process going on. So you had to kind of identify, I think we identified three roles, and then made the workflow for those months job descriptions, and job descriptions. And like most small businesses, like what's the job description is just to get the job, right.
Jonathan Bello
Actually, my greet my agreement is somewhat of an employee manual and job description. So you know, I specify specify what a bookkeeping level tasks, what those tasks are, what are accounting level task. And so you know, they definitely know what their job is and what those tasks are, then we're building out the instruction set on Okay, working with decks. Okay, this is, you know, here's your decision trees. So absolutely, we're heading that direction.
Gary DeHart
That can take a lot of time to build it out. But the amount of time it saves over the long run is countless. Absolutely. Any parting parting wisdom? I think, Bill, we've shared some good stuff.
Jonathan Bello
Have fun at scaling new heights, learn and learn from your peers, because there's a lot of good ones here.
Gary DeHart
Yeah, I think that's really good, too. And I'll add to that, just the point of scaling, if I tried it is the training. Let me know if it's in disorder, training and community. And it might even be reversed. It might be community and to come get the training because the community is so important, especially with so many small businesses. You don't get that community. It's hard because a lot of work in our basements or remote. I mean, it's got it. Yeah, it's hard. You don't have community.
Jonathan Bello
Absolutely. I'm not sure Joe Juana would want to hear this but I haven't picked up my sessions. Yet. You know, I am here, you know, for the community to see people to learn people to see the, the the vendors and and the classes or the breakout sessions. As I figure out what I'm going to be doing shortly, right, all right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it to be part of your inaugural.
Gary DeHart
And so, Gary DeHart and I want to say thank you to Jonathan Bello when he solutions for joining us for our inaugural podcast. Thanks for being here.