Episode Transcript

Please note this transcript was generated by AI and contains errors including missing and misspelled words.

[Meryl: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Lifestyle Accountant Show. This podcast exists to help today's accounting firm owners build successful firms, while also living a healthy, happy life. Without sacrificing sleep your weekends or time with loved ones. I'm your host Merrill Johnston, and in our premier season of the Lifestyle Accountant Show, I'll be talking to different accountants and leaders in the industry to hear how they are living their [00:00:30] best life, all through the lens of remote work.

We'll be deep diving into their thought processes, strategies, and practical examples that you can apply to your own life and business. I'm so excited to bring you today's episode, how to build incredible culture in remote teams. 

Karla: If we have an option now to design this business, what would it look like?

How would we want it to be known? How do we want the culture to look like? Then? It was really a business by design versus I think for [00:01:00] me, my previous business was very much a business by default. 

Meryl: To dive into the nuts and bolts of this big topic, we have today's guest, Karl Horrigan, who is the co-founder of Mad.

Mad Wealth is an accounting firm for purpose-led entrepreneurs on a mission to make a difference. Mad Wealth was formed in 2021 following a merger of Carla's firm with Ahmar Latif of Latif Accounting. They're now a fully remote team of 10 that provides end-to-end financial management. I had [00:01:30] to check with Carla what end-to-end financial management meant, but the way they describe it is that they have three divisions.

The first is accounts management, and that's similar to bookkeeping on steroids, where they do all of the transaction processing, but also have services like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and up to the kind of work that an in-house financial controller would be providing. They also have a tax division and an advisory.

In today's episode, we'll be drawing on Carla's experience at Mad Wealth and my experience as co-founder and previous C [00:02:00] e O of Be Ninjas, where we have a team of around 30 people in six countries. We'll be exploring what has worked for each of us when we've tried to build team culture remotely, how we define our values and the importance of why we should do that.

Hiring practices in remote teams, the team rituals, schedules, and meetings that we. The communication tech stack that we use for remote teams, how to ask for feedback, and one of my pet topics, asynchronous communication compared to synchronous communication, [00:02:30] how we do it and when is the right time for each.

This podcast is brought to you by a two x automated e-commerce accounting and content snare. The easy way to get information from your clients. I'll be sharing more about these products later in the show. Hey Carla, welcome to the show. Great to be chatting 

Karla: with you today. Hey there, Merrill. Good to be here.

Nice to see you. Today 

Meryl: we're here to talk about remote teams and building culture remotely. So [00:03:00] Carlin, could you give us a little bit of background about your current 

Karla: firm? Yeah. Mad Wealth is only just ticked over two years. When I thought about this, how did we actually. Sort of make the decision to go remote?

Well, I was gonna go back through this sort of history or this journey that got me here. So I guess the decision for us to go remote first with Mad Wealth was really based on my own experience and some of the lifestyle desires that I had with a little touch of strategy in there as well. But I'd [00:03:30] had this vision to become a hundred percent remote because I had this lifestyle desire and I'd already sort of made some progress.

In that with transitioning and hiring some global team members and introducing some clients to Zoom meetings and those kinds of things, and even operating from a co-working space, which is another small business that I owned at the time, rather than having a fixed address, and it was approximately two years into this sort of five year plan of mine that this little thing called a pandemic happened and.

[00:04:00] Pretty much immediately, all these so-called barriers that I had to moving to a remote first model for me effectively just disappeared overnight. Literally, the next day, I was operating this goal of mine of a hundred percent remote business. Whilst it was somewhat forced on me initially, after a little while working through the challenges and putting the processes and systems in place, it really confirmed for me that my vision to operate a business a hundred percent.

It was not only [00:04:30] possible, but it could also be quite a successful and very rewarding business model. So it turned into this intentional focus. There's so many questions I have 

Meryl: for you coming out of that, so many directions we could take the conversation. But a quick one is from a lifestyle perspective, you said that you, your goal origin.

With the first bookkeeping business was to gradually transition to a fully remote business. Why was that? What did you wanna do or what was attractive 

Karla: [00:05:00] about that? So, I had my children at a fairly young age, and I had spent the early years of their life working in a nine to five, and I didn't feel that I was able to be present as often for them.

And you know, I probably wasn't in a position to be able to make any other choices either. But when I reflected back on that, I wanted to make some changes for myself and have more flexibility in my life, be more present and available for them as they moved into their teenage and adulthood years. And [00:05:30] so that was probably one of the key reasons.

Um, And then when I looked at from a financial model point of view, you know, what are the potential cost savings and also what are the potential opportunities? So that was the touch of strategy that I was talking about, that my, my desires and my experience was that I wanted to be more flexible and, and more present for my family.

Meryl: Yeah, that, that's fantastic. And I can relate to that. Bes actually did start out a hundred percent remote, but I had a business before that, which [00:06:00] was more locally based in Queensland. So that was something I had thought about. That was part of the criteria of my next business, was wanting to have more flexibility that back then I didn't have kids.

So it was more about being able to surf in Bali and still be able to run a business. But over time the the reasons and the benefits of. Remote work changed as we're having this conversation. You are based in Darwin, which was, I believe, a spontaneous move that you could do, cuz you've got a business that you can pick up and, and run from [00:06:30] anywhere.

Can you talk just briefly about how you 

Karla: managed that? Yeah. I went on a fishing trip and didn't go back, so that's pretty much, that's, that's the, that's the brief summary. Obviously, you know, it's with support of my business partner and my team in allowing me to be in different locations. So it was a bit of a transition phase for a while, but effectively with Internet connection being the and and the right equipment, it, it doesn't matter where [00:07:00] we're located, when we're doing our work.

I love 

Meryl: it and I think that's such a great example. If you have a remote first, You can make life decisions like that without impacting your team and and without impacting the business. So love it. Yeah. Alright, well let's dive into talking about culture and values. So if you were to talk about, or pick one of the mad wealth values c, could you explain how you would talk about that with a team member and how you try and [00:07:30] embed that into the culture of the business?

Not just having values written down somewhere on a piece of paper and, and not referred back to. 

Karla: Yeah, so values are so important in our business. We went through a process when, before we even decided to agree and sign on the dotted line to merge our businesses, that we, we would define what our personal values were like and what they, where there might be overlaps and how they might play out in business.

And that exercise was really, Imperative for [00:08:00] us because that's where we found commonalities and it set the scene for what type of business Mad Wealth is in the culture. And so the very first one that came out of that, so for instance, we had people first is one of our values and that still remains, but we've re sort of engineered it to be human at heart.

Mm-hmm. . And that is probably the highest on the list of our values and. When we're talking about what that means to our team, and we even speak about these things with our clients, it's [00:08:30] about acting with kindness and having empathy and caring and, um, putting that first before other certain things. So, you know, our people are the most important asset in our business.

That's our team and our clients. So without them, we wouldn't have a business. So it makes sense to have that at the forefront of your mind. So there's, there's a lot of meaning behind. From, from our stand. 

Meryl: I think that's a Richard Branson quote when he says [00:09:00] that his team is more important than customers.

I'm sure I didn't that've heard that before. Yeah. 

Karla: But I like the way you, you can put me in the same category as Richard Branson, if you like. Yeah, no, 

Meryl: I believe that too. The, the team is the, at the core, and, and that's who you wanna, you definitely want happy clients as well, but keeping your team happy.

That's fundamental to the business. That's right. But it's funny, when you were talking about how you created your values, I have memories. So initially being just had no values because I had no idea that that's what you did as a business owner. And then I read some business [00:09:30] books and about a year and a half in, I realized, oh, that's, I read a traction.

So the Entrepreneurs operating system, okay, you need a mission and values. We were a remote team, so we, we tried to bring people under the Gold Coast, and then we had people on Zoom calls trying to break into little groups, getting everyone's input about. Different perspectives of, of what the values could be.

And I've still got, I completely relate that photographs of the whiteboard of try trying to figure it out there, there was something like 25 and then we still go over, 

Karla: narrow it down. Yeah. Like, and [00:10:00] you, and like I think values are important to continue to go over. They still relevant, are they? It's almost like a principle to adhere to.

And if there's something that's more. Prevalent. Like they can be, they can evolve and I can relate to your story of, again, going back to that previous business, it's, it's almost like that were, that was the lesson of all the things that I didn't do right in business . Yeah. And I found that I was sort of, I had this business for a period of time and I hadn't gone through those exercises.

And so it was more challenging to sort of [00:10:30] transition and. Bring forward these values and this culture than what it was like when we sat down and we decided to merge. It wasn't just, okay, well let's merge. It's like, if we have an option now to design this business, what would it look like? How would we want it to be known?

How do we want the, the culture to look like? Those kinds of things. And it was really a business by design versus I think for me, my previous business was very much a business by 

Meryl: default. I think a lot of business owners would like that opportunity again, because it is so much [00:11:00] harder to change culture or change things when there's something established.

So that opportunity to take all of those lessons and then apply it to something fresh w would be fun. Mm-hmm. agree. I think I, I'll share one of our core values, which is freedom, and that's embedded into what our mission is as well. Probably initially started with, with me wanting that ability to go and surf in Bali and to work from anywhere and, and not work too many hours.

But I think that attracted, when we were hiring [00:11:30] back, back then, seven years ago, it attracted other people who wanted that flexibility and the ability to work remotely and, and have flexible hours. So it's interesting that, that a, we, as we went through that exercise, that is still one of our core values.

It impacts decisions that we make, like not having a phone number that's manned during office hours, because that would mean team members would have to be working during those times. So instead, it's about scheduling meetings and being really responsive via email. Or our [00:12:00] team doesn't have set work hours outside of, if someone's new then that, that they're for training.

For a couple of months they do, but then people can pick their own schedules and so decisions like that all we try and tie back to that core value of freedom. And sometimes you can make a decision and then think, oh, well hang on, that's good for the business, but actually is that in alignment with what we're all about?

Yeah. And so that's something we're try and be conscious 

Karla: of. Yeah, I think values are the core at every [00:12:30] decision. If you're making decisions that don't align with your values, then you maybe need to either look at your values or look at your decision making process. We've got some pretty solid ones there, and I think that for us there, we talk about them with our team all the time, so we have certain.

Processes where they're brought up. We have certain meetings or sessions where they're the focus of that session so that it's not just, like you said, put on paper. Forgotten It is. Yeah. It's a lived [00:13:00] value. 

Meryl: Yeah. So when it comes to running remote teams, could you share maybe a win and a loss when it's come to culture?

So something that's worked well and and something that maybe didn't or you'd do differently? 

Karla: One thing that's gone super well is hiring based on those shared values. So off the back of that, it's because we did that work from the beginning. When we hired, we found the type of candidates that. [00:13:30] Seem to just fit within our business because we'd done the work and we embedded that into our hiring process.

And so our team are so aligned and are on board with us for all the right reasons. And I feel like I have to ask a follow 

Meryl: up question from that. Yeah, go. So what would be an example of that? So of one of your values, do you then embed it into the interview process or a questionnaire or something like that?

How 

Karla: do. We, there's a couple of ways that we do it. We do have knockout questions that are simply, if you do, do not Pasco, do not [00:14:00] collect your hundred . You know, if you don't, if you don't meet the, the minimum requirements, like what makes a good team member for us and vice versa, we, we won't be able to deliver on their expectations if they aren't meeting those sort of minimum requirements.

And so that's one way that we do it. But we also have, the part of our recruitment process is getting into the interpersonal skills of that person and understanding what's meaningful. What are the habits or the activities and things that they're, they're passionate about outside of work? And that [00:14:30] sort of aligns with our other values, which is about are they sort of sheep that follow the mold or are they, what we're one of our values, which is daringly bold.

It's about being transparent. Are they open, authentic? Are they stepping outside of their comfort zone? Are they trying new things? Are they being a little bit left of center instead of just, you know, following the mold? And then other things like passionately playing is one of our values. So do. Have fun, have a joke.

Don't take themselves too seriously. Are they inquisitive? Do they explore? Are they those kinds [00:15:00] of personality traits? So we do that through different stages of that hiring process. And it's been good because it shows us quite early on in that process what, where we've got some strengths and essentially the two things, if you don't meet the values and our remote first mentality, then that's where the line stops for you.

Meryl: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. And what about something that you do differently or that you've. From a, a remote team 

Karla: culture [00:15:30] perspective, I think what I've learned is the importance of systems and structure. But balanced by the ad hoc and connection side of things. So I sort of play in both of these areas mentally, like where I like things very structured and systematic, but then I'm also don't wanna be tied to that type of thing myself.

And so I kind of go, well, we need to have some flexibility and we need connection, and we need the human side of things as well. So what I think I've [00:16:00] learned is that it's not necessarily one or the other, it's how we make those two fit together. Well, yeah. And. Something more recently is how do we bring the experiences of face-to-face or in real life to a virtual environment and what can we do to enhance that?

So that's, that's been a bit of an evolving thing. I think it's an ongoing process for me, is what the things that I'm learning about being. [00:16:30] Is gathering feedback and then sort of acting on that and, and testing new ideas within the team and with our clients. Yeah, 

Meryl: the social and connection side. If I think about what would a win be for bees, it would be around that, that the last couple of years we've invested more in that.

So we've got a team member in the Philippines who's in charge of culture, and then she runs a little culture committee and they do social events like karaoke. So, The more formal events, but we [00:17:00] also now do one-on-ones, and that's been really effective because some of the quieter team members might not get to know everybody in that big group environment.

So every month they get matched up with a different person to have a one-on-one chat. And we've had good feedback on that, but that's a nice way, particularly for the quieter staff to, to get to know each person in the team. Yeah, 

I 

Karla: like that idea. That's, that's great. I might, I might steal that one. . Oh yeah.

We've done something similar. And Emma, I might be jumping. [00:17:30] Tune here a little bit, but we've recently implemented what we're calling a mojo , and that's to lift your mojo. So essentially it's, you know, being remote, it has the benefits of being able to do deep work and get stuck in and get things done. But obviously the connection piece is you have to be creative in how you bring that forward.

So we are trialing a, a virtual room, basically a virtual tea room, virtual kios, whatever you wanna call it, water. Where you people can drop in anytime. So it's not in the metaverse at [00:18:00] this point. It's actually just a, an online meeting room. But, you know, if you think about it, it's that that's what's happening out there is people are meeting in different spaces online and connecting that way.

So we've just got one that's open for a period of time each day, and we're trialing that for, for three months to see. Does that enhance connection across different team members? One day I might be in there and somebody that I don't connect with very often might be there and we can have a chat. It's like running into somebody in an, uh, in an actual office.

So it'll be interesting to see what the [00:18:30] results of that are. But that's the type of thing that I think based on feedback, we're trialing new ideas and, and experimenting. The, 

Meryl: the water call is interesting because if I think about my office days, that's where relationships were built. It was when you were in the kitchen making a cup of tea, or you were walking outta the office.

Going down the lift at the same time as someone or walking to the station. I don't think it was so much doing the work and having meetings with someone. It was more all of those ancillary incidents where, where you bumped into [00:19:00] someone and had a chat. So it's an interesting way of recreating that. I like it.

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Karla: documents. 

Meryl: So if I, I have to think about one of the things I found challenging. Remote team and culture. I used to have a lot of direct reports.

I, I don't anymore, but at one point I was doing one-on-ones with about 10 people a week. I was trying to do the one-on-ones cuz I thought that was really important to check in with everybody, help them plan their [00:21:30] work. And that was just overwhelming. My calendar was just full. So I've changed how I do that.

Cause I think in an office you probably don't need to do one-on-ones as often because you're chatting with people. Yeah, so I've rejigged how I do one-on-ones and I do it more asynchronously via loom videos to help everyone with their schedule and kind of check in with how everything's going. And then it, back then it was a once a month call because some things you can't do asynchronously.

It's is better to actually have a chat. You can ask follow up questions, [00:22:00] particularly if there's something going wrong or someone's not happy. But I found trying to balance that of how do I build good relationships with team members? How do I make sure every. Feeling good, not burnt out, but how do I also manage my own schedule so that I'm not just on calls 

Karla: all the time?

Yeah, that's so relatable and, and I can just speak to the fact that we've just recently gone through a process of reviewing our meeting rhythms to just sort of, Check in, what is their intention and is [00:22:30] the delivery method of them still in, in line with what we we're trying to achieve? And it has made us do some changes around that, that side of things as well.

And specifically around one-on-ones I, I can relate to the idea that. You, you want all this connection, but it doesn't always have to be done in the one delivery format. And so this is why also peer to peer kind of connections and things and the relationships are equally as important as the direct report types of relationships.

I think. [00:23:00] 

Meryl: Yeah, I remember chatting with you about your meeting review. I think it was, it might have been close to when Shopify announced they were just canceling all meetings, . 

Karla: I was like, that's a great idea. , Shopify can do it, then I can do it too. Look, it's, it's been a, an interesting process and it has made us think about that.

Like I said, the meeting, the delivery method and the way that we've kind of gone through it, and again, With anything. It's, let's see how that, if these changes work, if they don't, then we [00:23:30] change it again. But we try to find the solution in the first phase that we categorize it basically that. , anything that sync is focused on connection and strategy.

So for example, if we're doing long-term planning or brainstorming or troubleshooting, and the way that I think of it is that when there's no clear path and you've just got a starting point, a question, a challenge, and you've just got nowhere to move from there or. , you have a, an [00:24:00] end in mind, but you don't know how to get there.

There, there the either ends of the spectrum, that requires a lot of dialogue. That's best for sync for us. Mm-hmm. . And then on the other hand, we've got. Anything for async, anything that's focused, that's tactical, that's structured, that's repetitive. So for updates, for example, for follow ups and in particular circumstances where you might be reaching a wider audience.

So company updates and when scheduling is challenging, because let's face it, our calendars are [00:24:30] just. Cha's most of the time. And to keep that balance that you want to have as why we work remote isn't so that I can work into the evenings cutting into my dedicated family time. Like all my exercise, so-called exercise time there.

That's when you know we can utilize that. You know, the different methods and so yeah, we've, we've sort of shifted and changed up some of the rhythms and combining those two different types of delivery methods. So instead, we [00:25:00] might have had previously a monthly meaning, for instance, And going forward, we might make it bimonthly, async, and bi month, the opposite month sync.

And we have a mad monthly meeting. And this is usually where we do all come together as a company and it's about bringing forth the vision and the values of the business. And we have. Thought provoking topics and discussions based around the values and the visions. So that's one way that we keep connected, but there's no outcome of that.

It's actually just inspiration. [00:25:30] It's, it's keeping us in line with what we are here to do. I 

Meryl: really like the way you broke that down of, alright, is, is this about connection or is it solving some kind of strategic problem where there's not a clear endpoint or there's not a clear roadmap to get to that endpoint compared to things like the status updates and some of that more regular work.

I haven't heard it articulated like that, and I think that's a really nice way of thinking about it, particularly on the connection. [00:26:00] That sometimes can be better actually if it's a sync meeting, but I, I think a lot of accounting firms could turn a lot more of their communication, asic, and it is a pet topic of mine, particularly things like status updates.

There's no reason that everyone needs to have a meeting in their calendar to get an update when that could have just been written or my favorite. Video talking through everything 

Karla: I've, I've learned from the best Merrill, I've learned a bit from you as well. And that is, and now it's becoming my passion project, is to, [00:26:30] to look, review the, that's one of the reasons why I've gone through this meeting rhythm review.

Because I do think we spend too much time doing not meaningful stuff in meetings. And that takes away from the deep work and the time that we need to do with the more strategic. Connection type of things. And to your point, it's, it, it's not necessarily that we won't talk about, you know, certain updates and things like that, but the actual update piece happens.

For us async. [00:27:00] And then we come to that meeting and we go, okay, based on that update mm-hmm. , what are the actions that we, well, let's brainstorm what are the actions that we need to, that we might have or we could do. And then we come out with a resolution and have an action at the end of that. So it's, I think the combination is important for us at times where it.

It's, it's not going through the numbers in the meeting, but it's looking at the numbers or whatever that is or whatever that update is, and saying, based on what we [00:27:30] all already know, cuz we've read it all async, then let's strategize and do that sync. 

Meryl: Yeah, so we've talked about Loom. What are some of your other favorite tech tools when it comes to communication?

Where do I start? . I'm talking to one of the tech gurus 

Karla: in the industry here, little bit of a tech fanatic. You could call me, but look. If I, again, if I break it down, I think way we've done it is we've streamlined our communications into [00:28:00] traffic by arranging it into these types of funnels, more pipes, so they fall into two main categories, internal comms and external comms for our internal comms.

Predominantly we're using teams, so I'll just go through some of the things that we are doing within Microsoft Teams. So for General Chat and fun, we've got a channel for that. That all goes through Microsoft Teams. When it comes to anything that's related to the divisions of the business or the internal comms around the divisions, then that all will go through Microsoft.

[00:28:30] Microsoft teams, so company-wide updates from a people perspective, which is our team and recruitment. We, we manage our attendance and our approvals and we our one-on-ones, so those team member one-on-ones meetings and chats, all with the permissions, sit sitting around that who can access it and that sort of stuff.

And from our systems, our infrastructure, we, we plug in status updates using r s s feeds and things like that for zero updates or ATO online services for agents for whenever that's [00:29:00] down, which is often, and, and from a growth or our sales and marketing. So we, it's, it can be people driven. Chats on in any of these channels, or it can be these, um, AI driven chats or integrated driven chats.

So using Zaps for telling us that an engagement's being signed and things like that. So all our internal comms predominantly happen in Microsoft teams, and that's using chats and those sort of integrations. And they've just recently introduced [00:29:30] video clips. So a little bit like a mini Zoom. A mini loom, sorry.

Mm-hmm. . And as an alt. Teams is sort of really just an alternative to Slack, so I'm sure that those Slack users out there are using it Similarly from a internal comms around clients. So we currently using carbon, so all of our client comms sit within the carbon platform and against that client record, external comms is where it's a little bit different.

All of our live meetings are done using teams. Our phone system is [00:30:00] currently. On Zoom, but we're shifting to teams calling. So trying to just make the most of all the features in the platform that we predominantly use our recorded video. So if we're doing internal recorded video or recorded video for external, we'll use Microsoft Stream.

Oh, so that's a relatively new. While they've relaunched it, there was Stream Classic and they've now relaunched it under stream. So it's very similar to loan, but we're using that internally because it saves it straight into our SharePoint site and where our [00:30:30] document storage is. But on that external comm side of things, our client requests are all in carbon.

So again, all of our client communication, whether it's internal or external, sits within carbon. So that's the summary of our app stack. We use a lot, but we are trying to. Look at the tools that we have available to us in the platforms that we've already got, and make the most of them and reduce our app stack a little.

Meryl: Yeah. Otherwise it can get overwhelming with, with all [00:31:00] of the, the apps that are available. So that, that makes sense. I've tried to consolidate it down. I know that we've had those challenges before we, I'll, I'll talk a little bit about our. Tech stack for communication, but we ended up having to write a communication policy to figure out, okay, what goes in Slack compared to, we use Help Scout for client communication, which is like a help desk email ticketing system.

So, , we're using that for client dis, but, but if you wanna discuss what someone has [00:31:30] said about that, do you, do you put that on the Help Scout note? Actually, no. We want that back in Slack. And then we use teamwork, which would be, so teamwork plus help Scout is what I imagine your carbon is. So all of the project tasks and checklists and, and all of that to complete the work or in team.

And then the client communication is in Help Scout. We did look at moving to Carbon and it does look amazing. Our, our challenge was that we have one central email address, but it looks like carbon is run [00:32:00] on a, on a team member basis, and then it was just too much of a pain to to move project management software.

And also all of our email software. So yeah, we moved to teamwork recently away from Reich and considered carbon and, and if I was starting again today, I'd, I'd probably use carbon, but just too, when you've got a bigger team, it's, it's just was too much of a. 

Karla: How is your 

Meryl: team? We're 

Karla: around 30 now. Yeah, so you are getting scaling up and I think that's exactly the [00:32:30] barrier that I initially had to moving to carbon because the way that I was operating my business previously, which I did have that central email as well, and I had a lot of communication traffic coming into that email and then essentially delegating that internally.

The system I was using previously did that and handled that quite well when we decided to merge. Benefits, other benefits that we could see that carbon had for us outweighed that one thing. So we had work created a workaround for that. And part of the [00:33:00] feature releases is they're actually releasing shared mailboxes coming soon.

So that problem will be resolved. We, uh, fingers crossed for us, but that's, we can't move again. Well, if you said, if you got, if you got to start again, never say never. Never say never. If, if that comes, like that's gonna be quite a big pain point for us itself. Oh, we do get a lot of other efficiencies through the other features of carbon, but we do use that central email as well for all client communications and then we [00:33:30] triage that ourselves internally.

Mm-hmm. to who it needs to be flagged against. So if we can do that more seamlessly, we're looking forward to that feature. Please go. Yeah. , . 

Meryl: So a couple of other topics I wanted to go through with you. How do you seek feedback when it's a remote team? Because when it's in person, someone can just kind of swing by your desk.

If they're not happy about something or you can even see it, you'll notice someone's demeanor. H how do you get feedback and, and keep an eye on, I suppose the, the temperature o of [00:34:00] how, how everyone's feeling? 

Karla: Uh, in short, we do what we call pulse checks. So we have a platform we're using, which is Office five.

Again, tech does do a lot of work for us when, when we're not in that face-to-face environment. So Office Five pushes out pulse surveys on a regular basis, and we've created policy. We expect the team to complete it. It can be completely anonymous, but we're getting a, a gauge as whether the team are, [00:34:30] how they're feeling, and it categorizes it into 10 areas and we're ke keeping an eye on that every week in our metrics.

So we have a, a metrics kind of session where we are looking at what. What are the triggers that we could pull internally to move our metrics in the right direction? So for instance, if our team, uh, mps is down, what are the, what's the underlying issues that might be there? What are the things that we could be doing and what are the Yeah.

Things that we could pull that would change that. [00:35:00] That's overall as far as the team. And then we can push out sort of custom surveys and things like that whenever we need. And we use teams, Microsoft, so Office Vibe integrates with Microsoft Teams. So that reminds our team, again, that internal communication.

And we also do ad hoc polls and things like that through Microsoft Teams as well. From a feeling point of view. Well we, that's where we are reliant on everybody within the team to bring that information back to us. So if somebody's on a meeting. Somebody else, and you get a sense [00:35:30] it. It's to be human. And that people first ask them, are they okay?

Is there anything I can help you with? And if you're just recognizing somebody's not going so well, or there's a problem or a challenge going to your direct report and raising that, and they're just flagging it, maybe you wanna check in with that person or whatever. Everybody's responsibility internally is to take care of each other and to bring forth any of those conversations.

And they've also got a specific one-on-one channel where it's open that anything that you've got [00:36:00] to raise, if there's a question, a, a problem, whether that's business or personal, we want you to bring everything your whole self to the table. So we, that's built into our culture to be open and look it. We do see that there's some challenges around that.

I think when I talk about. It's our culture at Ma Wealth, but it's not necessarily, um, culturally we have a team in the Philippines and their culture isn't to sort of typically come forward and be so open with what's happening personally and might be reluctant. So it, it has meant that we've [00:36:30] have to put extra effort into developing those relationships to, um, and instilling that we we're here to support them in, in times of crisis or, um, whatever that might be.

So it's ongoing. We 

Meryl: had similar challenges around that with our team in the Philippines. I think we went in expecting that they would tell us more about how they were feeling without us necessarily having invested enough in those relationships. And I remember in the early days we had someone resign, [00:37:00] thought, resign.

I had no idea that you weren't happy. You were, you were feeling burned out. What? What's going on? And in that situation we, we did manage to turn things around and that was a great team member that stayed, but we realized that we need to put more. Into this and a couple of things that we've done that have helped.

One's having that manager in in the Philippines so they've got someone local that they can have those kind of conversations with. That's, that's been helpful. And then we do an employee mps as well. We don't do it weekly, so maybe we [00:37:30] should look at how often we do that. We do that once a quarter. And that gives us a score so we can kind of see how are things tracking in the, are things going in the right direction?

But also there's a section for feedback. And so we've had useful feedback about needing more training on different things, workload, some benefits, things came up in that. And so that was really useful if a team member didn't feel comfortable, we, we want them to be comfortable, but if they didn't, then there was that kind of forum where they could raise it as well.

So that's, 

Karla: that's been useful. [00:38:00] I found that the more regular mps or pulse surveys have been the most beneficial because it gives us an opportunity to, Exactly do what it says, check the pulse of how things are, because certain things might occur during a week. And to see, you can actually see from the stats the direct impact that that might have.

So one example is every time a deadline's coming up, the stress metric just goes like, Terrible. We're just like, [00:38:30] we don't need to be stressed if we're on top of things. So what can we do to keep moving in the right direction? How do we remove the stress when it comes to deadlines? And that is, you know, meeting deadlines before the deadline.

So do, if we bring the deadline forward to the, then what the actual literal deadline is and we bring our deadline forward, do we remove some. Stress and, and just trying different things like that. And the platform we have allows us to make a note of what change we made to see if the metrics change. So one, [00:39:00] again, going back to that mojo meeting, I made a note in there that we've introduced a mojo meeting and it'll be interesting to see, uh, the metrics going to change.

Are they gonna improve in the areas of connection and wellness? Because of that? Or, or is it just gonna be a nice to have . 

Meryl: So we're, we're getting close to time, but the, the last thing I wanna talk to, talk about is in person and, and whether you have any opportunities. I know Amaya lives in a different city [00:39:30] to you, but I'm think I've seen you at conferences together.

H how do you manage and how do you think about the in-person part of running a 

Karla: business? Yeah, like in-person is still so super valuable. . If anything, it's I, I believe that the most important time for in person is when it's not structured and it's not, doesn't have any agenda to it, and it's just enjoying company connecting, getting to know people on a deeper level, [00:40:00] building on those relationships.

So for myself and Ammar, we've gone through a transition phase of this. We initially had a very structured, okay, let's. From the outset, let's do a quarterly in-person strategy or planning session to make sure that we're on top of our goals and we would meet and we would tie in a little bit of fun and things like that.

Look, that hadn't really worked out so well for me specifically because I was so transient in where I was, what location I was gonna be, so I was not able to keep to the schedule that structure as often. So we did end up moving some of [00:40:30] those two online types of sessions, still achieving the same sort of thing.

What appears to be working better is if we are able to tie in, as you said, those types of events, conferences, things that we wanna attend in person or are only in person, and then building some time around that to spend together. And so that's from us as founders point of view, that appears to be working.

Better. Um, probably from my side of things, more than anything. Uh, it works better from my lifestyle and it [00:41:00] gives me a bit more flexibility when it comes to our team. We haven't had an opportunity to bring everybody together at this stage, but it's definitely on the cards and just trying to find the time in our schedules.

It's just like anything. It's gotta be fit in and around. Current work schedules, family commitments, family holidays and things like that. So yeah, it's just a matter of trying to get the schedule to line up for everybody. 

Meryl: Yeah, we do something similar. So with my business partner, Wayne, but also other business partners like Tom, we've tried to time [00:41:30] it with different events.

So we're already traveling. To get somewhere where we'll be together and then just having some extra time together. So Wayne and I did that with QuickBooks Connect in Vegas last year and then just had a bit of extra time at the start and the end. Not a bad place 

Karla: to connect. . 

Meryl: We had so much fun. It was, 

Karla: it was fantastic putting it on the list Connection places.

Vegas , . 

Meryl: We're actually planning, well, we had planned previously a team retreat in the Philippines, but [00:42:00] it got canceled due to Covid. So our first one is gonna be this November. And it's interesting that you were talking about that in-person time and being unstructured. So I've been getting advice from other accountants that have run retreats in the Philippines and asking what went well and what didn't.

And there's an upcoming podcast episode on that. But one of the key points was having less structured time, so more time just for people to have. Conversations rather than having a, a set agenda. Yeah. I thought 

Karla: it was, it's funny you said that. From [00:42:30] my experience, my previous business, I did do in-person with my team in the Philippines, and we did.

everything unstructured had a blast too, and I felt like I got to know them on an another whole level, and they're still with us today, so. Mm-hmm. , they've come through the journey into MAB Wealth and they're still with us. So I think there's, there's a, there's a lot of value out of that. I'll be interested to see your next, or listen to your podcast session on that and, and see if I can learn something.

Meryl: Yeah, AB [00:43:00] absolutely. If you've got questions and saying for any listeners, if you've got any questions on team retreats, send them over. And I'm no expert, but I'm bringing a couple of experts on and, and we can ask them all about it. So, Carla, thanks so much for coming on today. It's been such a fun conversation.

I've definitely got some things that I'm gonna go away and think about and, and take back to the beginnings. And looking forward to seeing you at Accountex in, in March. I wasn't planning to be there. And then, uh, FOMO hit, and I, I've booked my flights. , 

Karla: you've made the right [00:43:30] decision. Meryl, I look forward to seeing you there and thank you so much for having me.

It's been an awesome day. Thank you. So there we have it. 

Meryl: I hope you've enjoyed this episode, exploring the ins and outs of building team culture remotely. And if you did, it would mean the world to us as a new podcast. If you could leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I wanna thank Carla Hogan again for sharing her wisdom and knowledge with us today.

And please check out the show notes for links to connect with Carla and learn more about Mad Wealth. [00:44:00] For more information on the podcast, head over to lifestyle accountant.co. See you next week for another episode of The Lifestyle Accountant 

Karla: Show.