(EP 24) Dianne Semmens (Award-Winning Founder): An Inspiring Story of Customer-Led Growth

I’d like to introduce you to my good friend Diane Semmens. Diane and I met, um, at least 30 years ago when we were in a, uh, graduate boot camp, uh, at Deloitte. Since that time, Diane’s built an award winning ERP software implementation business with 14 staff. Diane, welcome. Thanks, John. Diane, how did you get started?

Well, I start, I started this journey at Deloitte. So when I started as a graduate at Deloitte, I started in the computer systems implementation process. And realistically, the systems in that case were moving from paper to computers, and computers were relatively quite new because it was last century. So software has evolved a lot since that time.

And so now we’re delving into applications or software that is a lot more complex. And deals with a lot more parts of the business. And so what inspired your journey with Acacia? Um, I think that’s all your fault. Right. Yep. So we were both working at Deloitte’s and I was moved out to a suburban office and you looked at it and you went, I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere for you.

So how about you go and work for this thing? small little company that was selling software to doctors. Now I’ve got to tell you, selling software to doctors is hard work. And basically within eight months, unfortunately, that company went into liquidation. And so overnight I had to make a decision about whether I create a company myself or whether I go and work with a head office company that was doing the software.

And after probably 24 hours of agonizing decisions over Melbourne cup weekend, I decided to register the business name and start the process. Right. And so the rest is history. So, pretty much. And in November, it’s 35 years. Oh, wow. I know. Gosh, you’re that old. Yes, she is. Thanks. So, so what were some of the challenges that you faced and how did you overcome them?

I think probably the biggest challenge is the, um, is whether you think you can do it. Tell me more about that. I think there’s always a bit of self, self doubt about whether you’re able to do something. And, you know, I think everyone faces that at some point in time, but I was very fortunate. I had a wonderful husband.

I still do, by the way, same husband. And, um, he said to me, look, you know, have a go. You’re starting a business at the worst time of year being November, heading into December. Um, but if you can make, if you can make the mortgage payments, I’ll support the rest of it. I’ll deal with everything else. And so basically from that point in time in November, I started, which is again, like I said, the worst time of the year to start a business because most people have checked out in December and January, but I made enough to cover the mortgage and basically it went from there.

I did have a lot of support from the software vendors that I worked with. Really? So, they were encouraging, they were, um, if you like, giving me tips and tricks. There was no financial assistance at all, and, and realistically, back in the 80s, because that’s what we’re talking about, 1980, I actually worked from home for probably four years before I took on the staff member.

Yeah. Yeah. Apart from the sort of the, those early year sort of challenges of, okay, well, how do I get enough sales to make a mortgage payment and, and how do I build a bit of a network and so on? What were then the next big challenges for you? The big, a big challenge or a big, I don’t know whether it’s a challenge or an obstacle was to decide to actually, a, take on an employee and b, And that, that came about, that whole decision to take on someone was because I realised I was working six days a week and then I was doing all the administration on the seventh day.

And at some point in time you go, you know, is that wise? Is it sensible? Should I get someone to help me? And, and again, this was probably back when mobile phones were just starting. Bricks. Yeah. Whopping big bricks are fine. So, um, it was interesting to see, it was just that, I suppose, a bit of evolution to go, okay, I think I need someone to help me run this business or to at least back up on the administration side and deal with the first level support issues and then to get an office.

And potentially to set up an office that I could run training classes where instead of doing one to one work I could do one to many work. Yeah, yeah. So part of it was actually buying, that first employee was actually buying back your time. Oh, absolutely. And you know, you can’t put a value on that. It’s one of the hardest things to actually look at and go, okay, do I try and do everything myself?

Or do I actually look and go, okay, I can do X. But I know I can now outsource a lot of this stuff and get someone else to do this, this and this. And you know, I still face that even now. How much am I going to do on the marketing side of things? How much am I going to do on the sales side of things? When I’ve got someone in the office that does a bit of the marketing stuff and I’ve got someone that does sales, but there’s also a little bit of, um.

Forcing yourself to give stuff to people to do. Yeah. And that’s probably one of the hardest things to do is to let go or to give permission to other people to do the job. Yeah. Yeah. And so how do you find that from the point of view of, um, being effective at delegating? I’m dreadful at it. I think, I think once you work with someone for enough period of time, and you, you build confidence in yourself that they can do the same job as you, then, you know, the, the ease of then passing stuff or handing stuff off is not so hard or not so difficult.

Um, you’re still, Wanna know what the outcomes are, but at least then you’re not having to do the, the day to day the, the, the multiple parts of the job. Mm-hmm. I mean, I still, seriously, I still enjoy answering the phone and speaking to clients on the phone. It’s still, that’s still a highlight of my day.

Mm-hmm. Um, so, you know, that’s what, that’s what I do. I talk to people a lot. Yeah. But it’s also that sort of, I guess there’s two parts to the delegation side of things. One is there’s a discipline of actually. Figuring out what you can hand off and formally handing it off. Then there’s also that part of you which actually needs to set clear expectations for the person.

Communicate effectively with it. Help them understand what it is that’s required. Check in, hopefully less and less frequently, that they’re actually on track and they’re doing it. And then effectively leaving them to it to get out of their way. Yep. Absolutely. That’s pretty essential. I, I think one of the biggest things that I’ve had a real focus on in the past year and I’m really only talking about in the past year is to actually say to the team, okay, I want you to do this and actually I need you to get this done by the end of today.

So actually giving them, giving them A, the permission to do the job and B, this is the timeframe I need it in. So I was not very good at the B, this is the timeframe that I want it done in. Yeah. In which case it sort of gets done. Just gets done. You know, one of the things that, yeah, I think one of the things that so many business owners talk to me about is a frustration about a lack of urgency, you know, I think if I don’t do it today, I’ll get done tomorrow.

No, actually I’ll get done today. Yep. And in fact, that happened this morning. I actually said to one of the junior members of staff, you know, you’ve been working on this stuff, or we’ve had this on your agenda for the last two weeks. I really need this done by the end of, close the business today. And by 11 o’clock, I had my email with, with it all actioned.

So it wasn’t that he couldn’t do it or he didn’t have the tools to do it. It was just, there wasn’t that time expectancy. So I’m trying to really get a culture into my team of. Here’s the time expectancy and communicate that with the clients. Because if you’re not communicating that with the clients, then the clients don’t know where you’re up to or what you’re doing.

Exactly. And the same thing happened, um, earlier this week with a client who’s got, um, a couple of sales guys who were, He’d tasked to do lead follow up, which frankly, they should have done by themselves, they didn’t need to be told. Yeah. Um, and, um, um, you know, they had 150 leads, which was what, uh, 12 million in, in revenue that they had to follow up, hadn’t really done much in it for two weeks.

And then, um, you know, in the space of three days, they got through the whole lot of it, including updating the CRM. Um, so. You know, the hair pulling frustration of, you know, a sense of urgency that’s missing um, is, is a real challenge. But it’s also something that, you know, that sense of urgency comes from the leader down.

And if the leader’s too busy trying to please their employees. Then they won’t set realistic targets and they won’t set expectations that it actually gets done. Yeah. I think the big part of this also is that my team are working from home three days in the week. Right. So they’re in the office two days a week.

You know, I get to see them visibly working. I get to see them, you know, talking to each other and, and, you know, relating to each other. Then three days of the week they’re at home. And again, I think that, um, self regulation of work to be done, the senior people in the team. You know, that’s what they do, you know, but some of the more junior members are just a little bit less focused and, you know, their dogs at home with them, their, their child’s at home with them and they’ve got all these distractions and whether they’re going to be able to get the work done.

Now, some of them are brilliant at it. They just, okay, I didn’t get that done during the day, but Diane’s expectation is that I get this amount of work done and they’ll actually do it when it suits them and I’m okay with that. Yeah. As long as you communicate that with the client, it’s fine. Yeah. Yeah.

However, when they’re at home, home is supposed to be a relaxed, rejuvenating environment. And so I sometimes wonder whether there is a challenge for them to shift into work mode in a relaxing environment and approach the work with the same level of urgency that they would if they were in the office.

And this is not about bagging work from home, it’s just, you know, the reality is, um, things probably are a bit less urgent at home and, and, you know, um, things like, uh, Uh, doing the washing and the cleaning, um, or other things that probably actually get done at a glacial pace too. The only thing I will say to that, again, I, I don’t know whether it’s just the team that I work with, the team that I have, but most of them have a dedicated office space.

So they’re actually, you know, getting out of bed and not rolling out of bed and getting to their desk in the same motion. They’re actually getting up, getting dressed and moving to another part of their house. And that makes a huge difference. And that’s why I can’t work at home. I don’t have a dedicated office space at home.

So I always go into the office. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes perfect sense. So how did you go about funding the business once you got started? My husband, definitely joking, as in, there was not really anything that needed to be funded except for the purchase of a computer. And, and I was lucky enough that when I was at Deloitte, Deloitte actually had a program of, um, of you could buy a computer through your salary.

And so I’d actually started that process and actually had, had that funding there. And then the only other thing that I had to get was, um, the car because, um, uh, I was lucky enough to be gifted a car from my parents, which was the car that they’d bought nine months before I was born. Right. So at, um, you know, in my twenties, I’m driving around in an old EH Holden, which had rust right through the body and whatever else.

And it finally gave up the ghost just as I was starting the business. So I actually had to go and get a car to be able to drive around to the clients. Cause that’s what you did back you drove to save people. So largely your customers have funded your growth. Yeah. All the way through. Absolutely. I’ve never had.

Oh, that’s not true. I was going to say I’ve never had to take a loan out. But when I actually established the business, I, I got a, um, an overdraft facility for 7, 000. Mm. And it’s only recently that I’ve actually got rid of that overdraft facility because I don’t really need it. Well, really, probably only for sentimental value alone.

Exactly. So, how did you, you talked about, um, your first employee, how did you then go about building and managing a time? I think as we got busier, as more clients came on board and as the roles Of the people came in. So the first person who came in was a, was in theory, an administrator, receptionist type role, answer the phone, take down the details.

As she became more experienced with the software, then. She could actually do some of that, um, software conversation or that first level, no, no, no, hold on, you need to do this, because she herself had been using it as a software. So, then when we brought on someone else, we brought on someone who was incredibly junior, who was, I think she was only 18 at the time, didn’t have a license.

So she’d take three trains to get to our office. But, um, you know, and so then you bring on the next employee. So the next employee was actually a friend who came back from living in Paris of all places. And she worked with us and, and she was a very stabilizing force in the business because she’d worked in a software support agency before.

So she put, wrapped a whole lot of policies and procedures around, um, What I was just doing naturally, which came to me naturally, but it set up that infrastructure for other people to join the organization. So that was really the start of the Acacia way. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Right. And so, is there now a really clear Acacia way?

Well, that’s a really good question. Look, I would say. We have an KCOA. Do we use it every time? No, we do not. I think there needs to be more rigor put around things that we’re doing. You know, we were talking before about, you know, how do you send out emails that look the same to customers to make sure they get the same message and, you know, how do you have that same tone of language?

Or that same style of speech, we’re, we’re, we’re still working on that. And I think that’s, that’s always going to be a continuous process because as new people come in, they try to bring their style to it. And you sort of have to iron them out and say, no, no, no, that’s not how we do stuff. But, but they also bring skills that you may not have had, which also adds to the equation.

True, true, yeah. So, whenever you bring a new team member, and I’m about to bring in a new team member on Monday, and that whole process of induction and where do you find the team members, Well, we do find the toilets, all the, what we call the OH& S stuff, but then you’ve also got that overlay of, okay, when you send an email, it’s important that you talk about this.

It’s important that you don’t use three letter acronyms. My God, if I see an email with three letter acronyms. You need to explain things clearly to people and make sure you’ve spelt stuff out. So there’s no, ambiguity or uncertainty. It’s got to be really clear. Yeah. So how did you go about educating the market that A, you exist, and B, that you’ve got an approach that’s a bit different?

Because you’ve got plenty of competitors in your market space. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you stand out? We’ve got competitors. It’s both you, um, deploying the same software as we deploy, which is, um, MYOB Acumatica, which used to be called MYOB Advanced, um, and, and, you know, that’s a product that’s been in the Australian market for 10 years now.

And still people don’t know about that product, let alone know about Acacia. Yeah. Because MYOB, people just think about the thing that they buy off the shelf at Officeworks. But this is not it. Right. Right. No, no, no, this is not it. This is that next level up where you’ve got better control over your stock.

You’ve got materials planning if you’re doing manufacturing. You’ve got project costing if you’re doing projects. You’ve got a CRM inside it if you need a CRM. So it’s, it’s way bigger than what that is. So who typically would use that? Uh, typically businesses that are, have been, you know, maybe 12 to 15 plus employees.

Like that’d be the starting point. And ideally from our purpose, we like to have a reasonably high level bookkeeper or accountant. I don’t want to have to be teaching people how to do accounting. I want them to say, okay, you’ve, you’ve got a tool that I can use. How, how’s best do I use that tool? Yeah. So how do we make ourselves known?

And I think just. Talking about it, being, being part of conversations, writing articles on LinkedIn, responding to, to a variety of different platforms. Um, MYOB is also good at not endorsing us and, you know, not doing anything like that, but at least giving us a platform to talk about it. And that, that’s, you know, really, really encouraging from that perspective.

And the same thing happened with our, the previous software that we were using as well, that we’re no longer supporting, was the software vendors are encouraging and supportive and more than happy to give you a platform to talk about. So then how do we differentiate ourselves from the other people? Yeah, because they’re doing the same thing for everybody else.

Well, we’re not. We’re not because we’re different, but, um, but that’s, but that’s what the suppliers are doing. They’re offering the same support to everybody, I guess. So how do you differ? How do you differentiate yourself to the marketplace? Yeah. I think fire our personalities and the fact that we’re not a huge organization.

So often with some of these, some of our competitors, they’re large organizations and the way that you have to interact with them is either via a portal or via, via an email trail or something. Whereas, as I said to you before, if you phone. And if all the other consultants are on phones, I’ll pick up the phone because my attitude is if someone’s got a problem right now, and if it’s one of those problems that’s not going to let them sleep at night, or as I put it to my staff, if they’re hanging from an edge of a cliff and their fingernails are bleeding, then we need to answer the phone and we need to help them.

You know, it’s got to be a now thing. You can’t push people aside or whack them into some sort of queuing system. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, customer service is pretty high on the list of differentiators. Yeah, very high. Very high. And, you know, I’ve never really surveyed the clients, but I survey them in a quite a different way.

And that is that a lot of our clients we’ve had for more than 20 years. Yeah. And so the fact that they’re willing to come back and talk to us and they appreciate what we do, I take that as a good sign. And over that 20 year period, you must have actually implemented a variety of software for them because most of the software you started with 20 years ago is now redundant.

Correct. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So, so we’ve taken them from whatever platform they were on and we’ve put them onto another, another platform if it suits their business. Like, at the end of the day, any client that we talk to has to see value in the process that we’re introducing to them. And if the product that we’re showing them, they can’t see a value in, or conversely, they can’t see a value in our service, then they shouldn’t deal with us.

Hmm. That’s the short answer. And I mean, it’s probably the same with you. If your clients can’t see value in what you bring to the table, then we have to stop. We have to stop, exactly. Yeah. So, okay, so

I’m going to dig into this a bit more. So, so you’ve got a competitive environment. Yep. Money’s tight. Um, business owners, many business owners are, uh, uh, stepping up from What they had, which was a basic bookkeeping package, frankly, maybe a bit of payroll. Um, and they’re looking for something bigger. How have you built your reputation in the market so that you’re the one that they’re actually interested in even having a conversation with?

How do you build a lead strength? I think, um, I think as businesses recognize that they’re starting, that, that, the, their, the application they’re using is not fulfilling their requirements. So they’ve got whatever base application, they’ve then got a CRM, they’ve then got maybe 50, 000 spreadsheets, well, not that many, but they might have say 10, 10 spreadsheets that they’re manually updating every day or that people are spending hours or weeks.

Then you start to, they start to realize that what they’re doing is, dare I say, stupid or, or potential risk, risk that you might take these figures and transpose them and put them into something else and then rely on those figures later. So it’s a little bit of the customers going, okay, I’ve got a problem.

And then. I’ve got to tell you, the internet has changed the way that people buy our products or integrate with us. They go online and they will look and go, okay, so what’s the next thing that I, they might even go to ChetGBT. What’s the next step up from MYOB? What’s the next step up from Xero? What’s the next step up from whatever they’re using now, whether it be Cybiz or whether it be QuickBooks or something.

Um, and so then they might go searching on the internet and go, Oh my gosh, there’s a product called MYOB Acumatica. I didn’t know MYOB had a product called Acumatica and that it does all of these functionalities. We’ll start investigating. So when they come to us, they pretty much know sort of what the product can do.

They don’t know the intricacies of the product and they don’t know the workflow processes that are possible. And that’s probably the biggest thing is to actually define or decide what the workflows should be. And so then our level of engagement would be to go and I actually like to go and visit and actually see their business because there’s nothing like actually walking into.

a welding shop or a manufacturing process. And, and for me personally and my team, we actually look at the wall and we look at, okay, what’s on that whiteboard? Okay. Who’s walking around with that piece of paper? What’s that piece of paper in their hand? And then we’re looking at, how did the information get onto that piece of paper?

And what do they do with that piece of paper afterwards? There’s just been, well, that’s okay. We don’t have to worry about it. If someone writes something on that piece of paper, and if there’s a chance that that piece of paper will get lost. then that’s a chance that we could do to make their processes a bit more efficient.

So it’s about making sure that us ourselves, making sure that we can add value to the business in some way, shape or form, whether it be increase their sales process, increase their sales through a better sales process, whether it be decrease their stock value because they’re holding way too much stock, whether it be Just generally looking at their expenses.

Not that I want to have less employees, but look at ways of making what the staff do is more efficient so they can actually do tasks that add value to their customers. Because you don’t want, really, what do you want people to do? You want people to interact with other people. You don’t want them sitting behind a desk doing an Excel spreadsheet.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

So I said at the start that you’re an award winning business. Tell me a bit about the awards and accolades that you’ve collected over the years. Um, MYOB assesses, uh, offers to, offers to people. Sorry, start again. MYOB and the other softwares that we work with offers to the users of the software that they can actually put in place and use.

Uh, recommendations or they can rate not only the software, but the people that provide the software or service the software that they use. So our end users have the facility within the software to respond to surveys and MYOB then collect those surveys. Now the first year that we won a customer excellence award, which is where the customers say, Hey, you’re quite good.

I wasn’t expecting it. I had to be convinced to travel to Sydney to the awards ceremony and I’m like, gosh, why are they doing this? I don’t want to go to Sydney. I know it’s too much of a hassle. And so there’s that, there’s two things in that. One is, first of all, the clients that we deal with have to value what we do to, to actually put themselves out and to respond to a survey.

So from that, it was, it was humbling. And I gave the most. Terrible speech, but it was really quite humbling to actually get the award, to first of all be nominated and to be sitting in a room where there was no way known. I thought that we, we were up for any award, but to then hear that we were in the top three and then to actually win it for Australia and New Zealand wide.

It was really, really humbling and exciting. And, you know, to go back to the office and say to people, Oh my God, look what we won for how, how incredible is this? And those sorts of accolades, when they’re given by people that you work with mean more than to me than, okay, you sold a shed load of software or you sold.

You sold heaps of software and you’ve got lots of people that you’re dealing with. That’s not as important to me as making sure that the clients are being looked after. Yeah, totally, totally. So, one of the words that we’ve become, uh, painfully, uh, used to is this concept of pivoting. And over the, the last 30 something years, you’ve had to actually pivot your business a number of times.

Tell me a bit more about that. I said, I look at this and I go, why did we pivot or why did the business change? So in the, in the times of the, of where the business changed dramatically, we’re typically taking, taking advantage of an opportunity. So in two plus cases, I’ve had people that. Decided for whatever reason that they no longer wanted to deal with the software that we were, we were dealing with.

So, dare I say in the marketplace, we were, we used to be competitors, but we had a healthy relationship. Um, and so at some point in time, they decided, okay, we don’t want to do, we don’t want to do this. Or. Um, financially, we’re not capable of doing this. And so at that point in time, I then took over the staff and the list of clients.

So that’s one way that we did it. Um, and in one particular case, sort of two acquisitions, yeah, yeah, two acquisitions. Um, and in, in one particular case, it was bringing on a team that was already a team and trying to integrate them with my people that were also a team. And And I will, I definitely would say that that was not an easy thing to do because I brought five people into a company of seven.

So you’ve got a tribal council. Yeah. And a survivor. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, you know, bringing those five people in who had preconceived ideas about what they did, how they did things, that way, whatever, and then having them almost dictate to the existing employees, well, this is how we’re going to do stuff because this is how we’ve done it and it’s been very successful.

So that was a little bit of a managing people and, and unfortunately, I lost, Two very good people as part of that program, not my staff, the new people coming in didn’t enjoy the, the change or they, they, I don’t know what, who knows. I mean, they’re still very good people and I’m still in contact with them, but they decided to move on.

Uh, the, the, the other one was, um, a much smaller team and the people that were in that company, some of those people were, uh, consultants that I was aware of. and that I held in high regard. So I, I was almost jumping for joy when they approached me because the staff were incredibly capable. And again, when the staff came on, they were just a breath of fresh air because their expertise in the different areas really added to my team and they fitted in so well.

So, so I sort of look at the two experiences ago. Both of them were good, were ultimately good experiences. But the team where I brought in the five people, God, that was hard work. Why was it hard work? Whereas the second team, maybe it was my maturity, who knows, but it was a very different experience. What do you think was the key learnings from that?

Oh, I don’t know. Oh, that’s a really hard question. Um, I think the key, key learnings to make sure that when you bring people in, you actually outline. What their expertise is, expertise is to the other team members so that all of a sudden you’re actually getting a real respect build. So there’s a, okay, new person coming in, you’ve got this experience and this experience and you know, you’re known for being an expert.

But hey, you also need to recognize that I’ve got these existing people that work with me and they’ve also got a huge amount of experience in that software. Cause, you know, from that point of view, NYOB has. two enterprise products at the moment. They have MYOB XO and MYOB Acumatica. Now, MYOB XO has been in the marketplace in Australia as a company, as a brand name, Exanat, since 2000.

And that was one of our pivots was to take on new software. Right. And from that perspective, so we’ve got a team of people that have got 24 years experience behind them. Yeah. So from a customer perspective, if a customer comes to us and they’ve got problems with their existing provider. It’s typically because the providers have moved on, the consultants have moved on, they don’t really know how the software works.

So at least we’ve got that background of, you know, you know, core competent people who know the ins and outs and can virtually tell you off the end of a phone call, yeah, no, your problem is this. Yeah. So one of the keys to your success in integrating those two businesses has come down to how you’ve tried to meld the cultures.

on the basis of respect for each other’s. Oh, absolutely. Expertise. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s really important in any team is to make sure that that respect line is really quite clear about, you know, the people that we’re bringing in are really competent. They know this role. They know what they’re doing.

They’ve had these so many, so many years experience. And even to say that, even if, even if I don’t fully know what they’re capable of. To, but at least to put them both on pedestals of equal height. Yeah. Yeah. So that they can, they can focus on the business of the business as opposed to, um, competing with each other.

Correct. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So can I go back to one question you asked me about pivoting the business and why we took on different softwares? Yeah. Uh, since about, since, Well, the early 1990s, we’d been focusing on one software application and the, whilst that company was very supportive and very encouraging, the software product didn’t really move or didn’t really change.

So when we came towards, um, 2000 and the introduction of GST, we were a little bit confronted or gobsmacked that in March of that year. the software vendor hadn’t really told us about how they were going to manage GST. So there was that fear from us about You know, how are they going to do this? Have they thought about, have they actually planned it?

They’re not sharing anything with us. And then on top of that, our customers, our clients were becoming more and more savvy and saying, Hey, this application is great. Can you just add in this extra report? Can you just add in this extra feature? We need something to do this. And that software at that time really wasn’t capable of doing that.

And so, at that point in time, that’s when, in 2001, we started supporting Exanet, which was then acquired by MYOB. And what Exanet gave us, which is what Acumatica gives us, is the ability to have extra fields and extra tables and extra business flows and extra reports and, you know, data. Data anyway the client wants to see it is the short answer.

And I think with Acumatica, The end user focus is more in the software. So, again, this comes back to software evolution of being Externet is a little bit of a back end software, or we can do stuff via the back end, whereas Acumatica is definitely a front end software, and the more, the amount of information out there on the internet about what you can do with that software yourselves, without having to engage highly technical people, it’s And the staff nowadays, all of the kids nowadays, have been brought up on computers.

So it’s just native that they understand what computers can do. And so their expectations are a lot greater as well. Yeah, yeah. You also had some other software along the way. Was that part of a strategy to, to, uh, Reduce the risk of being solely responsible with or solely dependent on one. Yeah. Yeah. And look, that’s always a concern.

You know, when you’re, when you’re dealing with software vendors and, and right now we’re in that position, we’re solely reliant on MYOB. We’ve, we’ve made a decision that we can’t learn multiple products. We can’t be an expert in Y’s. SAP B1 next week, we can’t, you can’t do, well, I don’t think the team can focus on multiple different products.

In fact, it’s, it was kind of introducing, it was kind of intrigent, it was interesting introducing MYOB advanced as it was known then, the people that have been using XO for 17 years to try and get them to take on a new product that, dare I say, they didn’t have the expertise in. It was quite confronting for them.

So, in fact, it was actually easier for me to bring in other consultants who had no experience in other products, and they took the new product and ran with it. Mm hmm. And if you like, we now sort of have a, a reasonably clear differentiation with this is the NYOB EXO team, and this is the NYOB Acumatica team.

And even further than that, within the Acumatica team, we then have the payroll specialists and the business specialists and the manufacturing specialists. So you find that you’ve got to, with the consultants, they actually do have to have some specialization. It’s very hard for them to be. generic or generalist across all the platform because there’s just too much in the software.

And do you see that as being now one of the, um, success factors for Acacia that you actually have quite rich and deep specialization within and across your time? Absolutely. I think that’s probably one of the hardest things is if people, if new employees come to me, I really want them to have some experience in NYOB Acumatica before they walk in the door.

Because the length of time that it would take us to normally bring a consultant A, on board, you know, then B, get familiar with the software. And then be competent with the software and then be an expert in software, you’re talking maybe 18 months for them to get to that expert level. And when I say expert level, it’s that, Oh, can the software do that?

Oh God, I don’t know. Okay, the box says that you can do this, but hey, what can we do outside that box? And that’s probably one is the team members I’ve got now, that’s probably one of their biggest attributes is they can say, okay, the software is published and the public, the MYOB says it can do this, but hey, what about if we did this, this, this, we could actually use the software in a different manner and get a result, get a better result for the client.

Yeah, absolutely.

Tell me about the leadership of your business from the perspective of your advisory board and your advisors to help you along the way. How have you negotiated that? Um,

I think this also, this comes back to, so having external advisors or having people in the business advising comes back to that confidence level. So, um, I would say to you that I’ve got an external lawyer, I’ve got an external accountant. Do they have much of an impact on the business? No, they don’t. Um, people that have an influence over me in the business is probably our external marketing firm.

They have a lot of influence over what we do, how we say that, that’s how we represent ourselves. Cause obviously that’s a big part is how we represent ourselves in the marketplace. I’ve just become part of a new, um, advisory board group. And that’s been kind of interesting. I’ve, I have been a little unwell, so I haven’t been able to take the greatest advantage of this.

But I can see that trust, that level of trust that this group brings. makes me feel a little bit more comfortable to share this sort of stuff. And that’s what you have to get to. You have to get to the point where you’re happy to, dare I say, air your dirty laundry and say, Hey, I’ve got a problem with this.

Um, how do I fix it? I think there’s also one thing I didn’t get as a graduate, which is when I talk to graduates now, I say to them, the best thing you can do for your career and the best thing for you, you can do if you have a business is actually get out there and talk to other people. Network, take your socks off.

If what you’ll find is that. Okay, you may not be an expert. Well, I’m definitely not an expert in leasing finance or finance of equipment. But through the partnerships or the networks I’ve had, um, associations with, I’ve managed to meet people that feel that need. So all of a sudden, I don’t have to be that expert.

I can have a conversation with someone about, um, you know, one of the clients came to me and he says, Oh, look, I, I said, how’s your new factory going? He goes, Oh, it’s still foundation stage. I said, what? That’s been two years. He said, well, yeah, I can’t get the finance. I’m dealing with two of the major banks and they just keep asking for more figures.

They keep asking for, you know, all of this information and he said, I’m not getting anywhere. So I’m, I’m just sort of, and he said, and in the meantime, the costs of all the materials have gone up. And so the cost of the project’s gone up. So at that point in time, I said to him, look, I’ve met these people, this second tier bank and their focus is on businesses.

You need to go and speak to them. He said, And I’m really pleased to say he’s actually talking to them as we speak, which is great. And that when, when I thought about that as a graduate coming out of university, I didn’t quite realise that that’s actually the gift that other people bring to you. The fact that you can actually say, Oh, I know this person who does this.

I know this person that does equipment, lease financing. I know this person that does marketing. I know this person. I know this person that does videos behind the camera. Thank you, Robert. Um, and you know, even yourself, John, mentoring, you mentored our business for three or four years, and it was all about us, me opening my eyes to what’s possible.

When you start a business at 23 and the business grows over time, You don’t necessarily put in place the right structures. You don’t necessarily put in place the, the right, um, tools or the, you know, or, or anything. Well, you’re largely self taught. Yeah, I am. I am largely self taught. Well, but, but all business owners are largely self taught.

Very few of them have actually got, like you have, a business degree. Yeah. And a business degree doesn’t prepare you to actually run a business, let alone set one up from scratch. No, it doesn’t. And, and, and, you know, so I think there’s that whole. There’s this whole process that business owners that have been running a business for more than 20 years actually need to step outside the business and bring someone else in for someone else to actually look at the business and go, Hey, what are you doing here?

And why are you doing it that way? Yeah. And it’s only through doing that, that you’ll actually get success. That’s a really valid opinion about well, Jesus Christ, why are you doing that? I mean, it’s a little bit like what I do when I actually go out to manufacturing businesses. I go for a walk around, I look at what they’re doing and I say, Hey, why are you doing that?

That’s the way we’ve always done it. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s that. And that’s actually one of the things that I’ve noticed when I’ve taken you out to my clients is that your. You look at their business from a different perspective. You’ve got great diagnostic skills and great observation skills and, and because you know manufacturing businesses or process manufacturing businesses or food processing businesses or freight businesses or medical devices businesses, you can go in there with that wealth of knowledge and ask questions.

The obvious questions that help them sort of notice that actually, actually, I don’t know why we still do it that way. Or is there another way to do it, which is the other question? Yeah. Yeah. Look, I’d agree with you. One of the, the biggest things that you and I, as external consultants can do, walking into a business is to ask why.

Why are you doing that? Yeah. Why do you do it that way? Why do you do it that way? Why do you do it that way? Yeah. What value does it add? Um,

So, what do you see as being the top three challenges that you’ve had along the way? And how would you have dealt with them? Um, probably the top of the list. Well, there’s, as you know, you’re right, there’s a few tops. The, probably the top of the list is staff. The, the hardest thing is to get someone that I can, well, I might sound like I’m a little bit difficult, but to get someone that follows my ideas about how, how businesses should be run.

You know, having a, an employee in the business who is not following what everybody else is doing is, is a real disruptor. It’s a real disruptor. To the point that they, everybody just gets on edge and that whole negativity, it’s not that the person might be negative, it might be the way they conduct themselves and might be, you know, what they’re doing inside the group and how they’re managing or, or presenting themselves.

Yeah. And. Creates that friction. Oh, huge. Huge amount of friction. Um, so that’s, that for me is probably the most critical thing. The other thing is software. Software has upgrades. Software has nothing is 100 percent bug free. You know, it’s that whole, um, okay. So client A rings and says, I’ve got this problem.

And you go, Hmm, is it really a problem? Is it the way they’re using the software? Okay. Go and investigate. What do you know, as well, you’re investigating that client B’s got the same problem. Client C now starts to talk about the same problem, so then you know you’ve got a bit of a cohort. But you do start to doubt, I mean, I start to doubt us as a team.

Have we not done the training right? Yeah. And do, are all of our clients experiencing this because they’re all doing it our way and it’s the wrong way? And it’s only when I actually get to, so I do talk to other, other, um, consulting practices in this space and actually ask them the question, or how have you approached that?

And then if you get, you know, six pings in the same millisecond that, hey, yeah, we’ve got the same problem. Crowd, the CrowdStrike problem was, was a big issue. You know, at 2. 30 I had one client ring and say, hey, I’ve got a problem accessing my database. I’m like, well. Hey, it’s Friday afternoon, it’s telling you to go home.

Joking, laughing it off. Then when the third and the fourth comes online and then you start seeing that our access to the system is also failing and then you start, you know, you go online to the age or actually the ABC, ABC News, well done ABC News, was the first to actually report that it was a problem that was worldwide.

So this, so basically from two o’clock till five o’clock we were fielding calls saying, hey, my system’s not quite working. And so then you’re dealing with the urgency of, you know, we’ve got this problem that we have to get done today. Yeah. You know, sorry, you’re not going to be able to do that. And if occasionally the software, the vendors actually do put out software that has a fault in it, you know, getting them to admit that yes, this is a fault is a really hard work.

Good luck. Yeah. So that’s two. I’m not quite sure what the third one is. I’m sure if I ponder it a bit, I’ll come up with something. Hmm. Okay. So. Um,

you’ve now been in business for 30 something years. I like to say. You like that? Yeah, cheers. 30 something years. What advice would you give 25 year old Diane? Oh,

be bold. Tell me more. Trust, trust that you know what you’re doing and be bold. I would say to you, I’ve probably been. very conservative in how I’ve approached the business. Um, I’ve seen other people do a similar part to me and I’ve looked at what they’re doing and gone, Ooh, that’s a brave move to do that.

But in the end, they’ve come out okay. And so, is it that, um, self belief, that self confidence? So I would say to anyone, be bold, but be bold with good market background. Like I’ve been at a conference this week and I’ve been speaking to young students from Deakin University who are going, Oh, you know, I’m in the HR space, you know, should I go out and make my own company in the HR field?

And I’m sort of going, Oh God, You know, that’s a really hard field to get into, and you’re not in that field now. Yes, you’re doing that job, but you’re not actually known as an expert in that field. So, my advice to them was, start writing articles about it, start getting known as being an expert in that field, or As I said to my son, go and get an internship with a big company.

There’s nothing like working with a big company to give you that business model of how to run, how to conduct yourself, how to be present in, in meetings, how to, how to, you know, be part of the room. That, then you’ll then start to go, well, okay, I’ve now got experience in that business. It’s in that field.

So now I can now go out and offer my services. And then it’s a matter of convincing people that you can do the job that they’ve got. Because that’s the other thing, finding the people that want your job. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um,

so what do you think’s been your number one success? No, you need to ask it differently because I don’t know what you’re asking me. So actually, I’m okay. I can.

Do you want to do it again? Yeah.

Yeah, I do. Um,

So you’ve built a high performing, high performing, very competent uh, team that serves its customers really well, as judged by their longevity. Um,

and you’ve been successful in the industry over multiple decades. What would you say is your number one success?

I’d probably say the fact that we’ve managed to get a team of really good experts that have wanted to come and work with us. That’s, that’s one, one really big success measure. And the fact that we’ve, um, we’ve got new clients that we’ve had clients that have started their journey on this ARP process with another vendor and have moved away from them and moved to us and then stayed with us for a number of years.

So it’s, it’s about that service model, service to the employees or teamwork with the employees. I’m not quite sure what you call it, but the, the fact that they actually do want to work with us and again, most of the employees that have stayed with us for. years and years and years. It’s a bit amazing when you have someone who’s not quite 30 who goes off on long service leave that you then start to realise, okay, they’ve been with us a while.

Yeah, um, and Simon Sinek talks about this as service leadership. Yeah. Yeah. And look, I think he’s got, um, I mean, I love listening to Simon. I could just listen to him all day because he’s got so many good ideas about, you know, about that whole issue about service. And I think when you stop giving your client service, when all you do is do an email, as I call it, the email table tennis.

you will lose clients. Yeah. Or when you’re not present with the client and talking about what their issues are, you’ll lose them. So we try to be present with all of our clients. I’m not saying we do a very good, we do an excellent job of it. We do a passable job and we really need to get out more and talk to more about the clients about what’s keeping them up at night.

You mentioned before the CEO masterclass. What have you taken from that so far? that’s been of real value to you? I think what I’ve taken from it, and this might sound like a little bit of a weird answer, but, um, it’s forcing me to think about the business. So, you know, you, you work in the business, you do stuff in the business, you do this, you do that, and yeah, yeah, you’re thinking about this, you’re thinking about that.

But this is actually getting me to go, okay, so, So, for example, one of the questions that you asked me about was, you know, what’s your profit margin been for the last, you know, compared last year to this year, and I, and I compared, I went, Oh, okay, well, that’s interesting. And then I went, so, so then I go down the rabbit hole of looking at the figures for the last five years, because, you know, is this consistent?

Do we have trends? Where are we spending more money? What are we doing? And, you know, that’s something that you, you’d probably do relatively, that I do relatively easy. getting that information out of Acumatica now, but I don’t have all that history loaded into it. And so basically I had to, dare I say, I did the Excel merging and consolidation of data and got the figures out.

But it was kind of interesting to actually see that, that Whilst our figures, if you looked across the line, it looked, oh yeah, that’s pretty comparable over five years. But there’s changes meant that our profitability or our profit was either dramatically very good or dramatically bad. So then I go, well, hold on, should I investigate that further?

Should I see whether it’s a timing issue? You know, those, those sorts of questions, but it makes you just stop, stop and think, stop and look, stop and investigate rather than. Going at a million miles an hour and not actually ticking everything off. Because I never tick everything off in the day. I think that’s probably one of the biggest disappointments in myself is the fact that you’ve got this to do list, but again, my attitude is if a client rings or if an employee needs help, they come first, clients first, employees next, then my work.

So I just have to make sure that I don’t accept as much work as I normally do and say, no, no, hold on, I can’t do that, you’ll have to do that. So how do you deal with the overwhelm? I wake up at five o’clock every now and again trying to get an hour or two done. Um, yeah, I don’t know that I deal with it particularly well.

I think there’s a little bit of um, pushing some stuff to other people. Um, I certainly don’t rant and rave about it because you’re not going to get anywhere with that. Um, but I think that overwhelmingness is one part of it but then When an external thing comes in, like, um, yesterday I was dealing with a whole lot of issues.

And then amongst of all of that, I got a statement from my mother’s care, mother’s aged care facility. And I’m like, what the hell’s happened here? And you know, that’s just like the icing on the cake. When do I find time to deal with my personal stuff when I’m mostly dealing with business stuff? So I think you just pick the top three.

When, when you get overwhelmed, you pick one of the top three crisis or critical, critical few items. and address those, those critical items first. Thank you. So, thinking about your client base, um, who are right in the sweet spot of our audience today, the medium sized businesses in the 5 to 100 million turnover range.

What would you tell them would be a One or two of their critical few actions that if they did nothing else would help them improve their business. Get your staff right. Look at each individual person and look at what they add or distract from the business and then make some conscious decision to either improve that person or if you can see that they’re not going to change.

Piff, get rid of them. Just move them on in the best possible way. I mean, make sure you do it with proper structure of giving them the opportunity to improve themselves. But if they’re not going to improve themselves, then they’re just going to bring everybody else down. And you want to lift everybody up to that level.

So definitely, I would say to people, staffing, check your staffing, get your team right, Right people on the right seats on the right bus. Preferably pointing in the wrong direction. Yeah. Preferably. And then the other thing for me, especially when I’m dealing with manufacturing businesses, is stock. It is amazing how many manufacturing businesses that I go to that don’t actually understand the time it takes to build the product they’re building, the materials they need and what sequence and when they need it in that process of building whatever it is they’re building.

And so therefore they either have. way too much stock, or even worse, they’re waiting to deliver a 120 grand project for this 50 stupid product that they should have had in stock. So the stock management is critical if you’re working with anything to do with stock. Diane, it’s been fantastic to discuss where you’ve gone, where you’ve come from, and where you are now.

Tell me, what does the future look like? That’s a, that’s a good question. Uh, we’re going through a bit of a planning phase at the moment as a result of the CEO masterclass, where we’re actually working out whether we do need to take on another product, whether we don’t need to take on another product. My feeling is we don’t.

My feeling is that we’ve got a, an excellent core product and that realistically we need to investigate these. link these products that add on or augment, yeah, or augment the software, because again, this comes back to, we’re a smallish team, how do we have the expertise to give the best service to the clients?

If we take on a totally different product, then there’s that massive learning curve of understanding and knowing the product. Or if we work with individuals that already work in this space and already work with the product, then that in my mind is a better option. So it’ll be mostly around exploring.

what other products work well with the solution and fit in to our main focus, which is around the distribution, the businesses that do distribution and the businesses that do manufacturing, which are primarily our focus. Um, having said that we work with a lot of not for profits too, but, um, so the manufacturing is the thing that excites me.

When I walk into a manufacturing plant and there’s welders there, it brings back fond memories of my dad. My dad was a boilermaker welder. And so smelling the welding. Flux. Yep. Absolutely. It really brings back memories. So I think it’s a period of definition, consolidation, and looking at the external opportunities that we can bring in to augment what we’re already doing to help our clients get better solutions.

Thank you. Diane, it’s been an absolute delight to have this conversation. I really appreciate it. Thanks, John. You know I do too. Cheers.