AdviceTech Podcast #21 – Ignition – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the XY advice tech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And the guest joining me here today to deep dive into the ignition app is well someone that’s worked in both the UK and Australian Professional Services tech space has won an Australian digital tech awards. Now to be fair, the app has maybe not used specifically. And I’m guessing is something of a lead foot given his enthusiasm about all things with wheels. Thank you so much for joining me on the show Brendan Allen.

Brendan Allen
Thank you, thank you, I’d love to claim those awards on my own. I like to think I’ve played a small part in it anyway,

Peita Diamantidis
it should be a team effort, right? We should all get to put those on LinkedIn profiles, I think we should be sharing more awards, the better. So I’m really keen to dive into ignition app, the listeners will know that I often approached these very personally in nature in that I want to hear about it for my business specifically, but for the listeners too. But before we dive in, let’s get to know you a bit as you as a user of technology. So what’s your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

Brendan Allen
I do I probably use emojis a bit too much. I am what they call a millennial, although the official term is geriatric millennial, so I’m right on the cusp. Unless you’ve heard that term before. It’s insulting but also not. Because I am still a millennial. I’m just looking at my phone. Now. i This has surprised me. It could just be the most frequent ones recently. You know, the little guy with the sunglasses just like yes, yes, my most frequent one of late but if I had to pick a one that I know is more Americans probably just the the kissy emoji. Just send my wife often. Because she’s wonderful. If she’s listening, shout out to my wife. And probably just like the, it could be the be the prayer one, you will like it some people say it’s 105 I don’t think it’s the grateful I’m very grateful for things. So if I’m in Slack, and someone says something for me that I really appreciate all accumass Little, little thankful emoji.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. And it’s interesting users of slack, I think become a very particular about their emoji usage. And notice we use it to and I’m quite particular, they have specific meeting meanings. Whereas with mates, I can get a bit random with my emergency requests, right? Whereas in the slack environment of like, no, these have very specific messaging because

Brendan Allen
well, he’s an early an early tech tip before we even get into it. Like we use emojis for actual real reasons in Slack. And you may do the same, like, you know, obviously, the simple one is like the checkbox, like check, check. If you’ve read it, you will check or give me the thumbs up if you read this to the point where we even build some automation around you know, emojis, you know, so it’s pretty cool. Emojis have evolved a lot

Peita Diamantidis
in the last few years. Well, and they say so much with so little, you know, awful and I’m with you on Slack. We’re very excited about Slack automation. We’ve done a whole lot of that sort of stuff. So it’s well worth doing. So how about our smartphones, you know, they may as well be surgically attached

Brendan Allen
to us in my hand right now,

Peita Diamantidis
right? If you had to rip everything off it and you could only keep three of the apps what would you keep

Brendan Allen
the first one and this is probably think of light Duolingo nine, I would say because I know I’m gonna shut up my wife again. She’s gonna love this. You can probably hear me in the next For my wife is Mexican born. She moved over to Australia when she was very young, but she and her family speaks Spanish. Yep. And I’m trying my best to learn Spanish so I can keep up with them here if they’re talking about me and you know, when some swear words as you normally do when you’re learning another language, right, theoretically,

Peita Diamantidis
you do all the I’m with you. It’s actually at the top of my list of languages to learn Spanish. It’s so broadly spoken to like it is one of those useful ones. I think you can apply lots of places, so I’m with you there. What so we had Duolingo what else? Yeah,

Brendan Allen
I would keep my Apple Music or Spotify for those of you who aren’t apple. We’re an Apple family here. Yeah. Um, so I love Apple Music. Music is I love that’s actually one of the reasons my my wife get along so well, we have a broad appreciation of music that we have very specific tastes that match now I’m so I love that for music. And there’s always you know, whether I’m walking, jogging, mowing the lawn, there’s always music on. That’s definitely the one there. And probably to a similar extent, the podcast I have here. I love podcasts. And it’s not just because on one one right now, podcasts just provide such a great opportunity to listen and learn. And even just relax, it doesn’t have to be anything too heavy, it can just be something silly. And to that point, even there’s even like a Duolingo podcasts which are listened to, which helps me learn even when I’m just not really doing anything.

Peita Diamantidis
I didn’t know that even existed. That’s a fantastic head down writing down.

Brendan Allen
Now, speaking fluent Spanish.

Peita Diamantidis
It’s terrible. Because I’ve got a like an extreme maths brain. And anybody with extreme maths brain out there will know that means we are horrendous at languages. Like it’s just one of those things it doesn’t, because there’s not a logic you can apply to. So, yeah, that’s

Brendan Allen
a hard way there are things like I’ll say something just was not quite right. Like I’m sure that was right. That has to be right. But no, but when you say it like this with this word in front of it, it’s different. Okay,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah. Exactly. nuanced language is all about you once it is. Alrighty, so let’s dive into ignition, shall we? And this is quite fresh to me, too. So it’s an app that I haven’t come across. And I’m think some of the listeners might be the same. So sure, let’s get a sense sort of bring us up rather than diving into the data straightaway. And if you can give us a sense of where ignition fits in the sort of professional services, tech space, you know, what game are you guys playing? Who do you normally compete against that sort of thing?

Brendan Allen
Sure. So we’ve sit in a fairly unique spot, which is great for us. We have done so since day one. Now, if you want to sort of look at where we sit in terms of users, we are focusing heavily on accountants and bookkeepers. Okay, and that’s not because it’s, it is a great fit, which is why we decided to stay there and double down on what we know best. But at the same time, I don’t classify the ignition app as a accounting software. Right. I it’s actually, I like to think of it as a business software because it can be used across multiple multiple businesses, especially professional services of a broad stroke. Yep. But it’s a great tool designed to help businesses, accountants and bookkeepers, in particular, manage the client relationships in relation to engagement, letters compliance, but most importantly, making sure they get paid and valued for the services they provide. And we’ll probably expand on that a bit later. But that’s basically the gist of it. So I guess our cut target would be professional services providers, accountants or bookkeepers who sort of maybe fall over a little bit around that initial engagement piece, maybe it’s takes too long, maybe they’re not landing enough clients because that process is a bit convoluted. Or maybe there’s just not enough automation there. Or maybe they’re struggling to get paid, which is our biggest, biggest draw card is that whole I’m sick of waiting months and if not used to get paid by clients or if at all, that’s all we really come into it so we can expand on that later. But that’s that’s where we sit. Yeah, okay.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s, it’s something that you know, the financial advice world has changed a lot and lots of advisors are still get paid potentially via st might be a fixed fee through a superfund or other places, but more and more advisors are getting paid directly. And that has its own blessing challenges. And so I think anything that can both streamline that from our side, but also from the customer side, so that it’s easy for them. Yeah, that’s the thing of friction on their side, like you’ve got no chance if you know that’s what I honestly think most people aren’t paying not because they don’t want to it’s because it’s hard.

Brendan Allen
Exactly yeah, I mean, look yeah, we’ve all been in that position before across some sure all of our careers and lows where there’s a bill come in and they just I just haven’t even looked at that email yet. I just can’t look at that email. Yeah, and yeah, it’s a blessing in disguise and a lot of people come to look at our software and think oh, this was great for me. But don’t think about the the other the flipside is your clients are actually be very happy. too, and that’s probably the biggest hesitation we get from people is I don’t want to rock the boat. You know, I’ve been sending my client invoices for years now and they’ve just been paying them. Um, but what about that one time? They don’t? What about how much of it? They probably think it’s a pain as well, you don’t? So yeah, it’s a good point you bring up is you getting paid quicker is often a great thing for your clients as well.

Peita Diamantidis
Yep. Yep. And so in terms of that primary problem you guys are solving is, is like, was the driver to just just get paid or get paid faster? What was the thing that sort of was the initial push? Or was it the you know, like turning something? I mean, we all think, you know, accounting, I don’t know, as many bookkeepers but accounting, there’s a lot of paper that they’re still using. So is this kind of, let’s bring everybody into the, you know, the current century as well?

Brendan Allen
Yeah, well, I’m lucky enough and privileged enough to be able to pretty much know what ignition has been like from day one. I started started in 2014, which is a long time ago in startup us. And we’re initially when I started, it was literally a glorified e signature, right piece of software. Right. So and it was a great solution, people were loving it, because it was tailored to the industry. Yeah. And because it was that simple and easy to use. And we were marketing it to this industry. It was a great piece of kit back then, because people had understood the value of their time, and understood that compliance has to happen. So why not make it again, as frictionless as possible, like you say, and again, if from from the from the advisors perspective, versus the clients perspective, Everyone’s a winner because it’s, it’s easy to do, I like to when you mentioned before I moved to the UK for a little bit of three years in the UK, and their rental system, I’ve rented obviously, over there. And when I was it is somewhere to live. And I there was the company I rented through had this very cutting edge like onboarding system for their new tenants. And it blew me away, like I’d been, you know, going in Australia, when I was renting back in the day was going through into a real estate agent and filling out paperwork after paperwork and to handle living it or mailing it back. And they had this system that just blew me away like this is this is wow, this is very interesting, given what I’ve just started doing for work. So

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, it really does make things a lot easier, doesn’t it? And I think it’s something that professional services are broadly bad at is we’re so focused on the service, the thing we’re providing the expertise, often payment falls by the wayside. You know, it’s it’s broadly it’s just across

Brendan Allen
ironic, it is the ultimate irony. It really

Peita Diamantidis
is, like, really, you’re in financed, honestly. Exactly, exactly. So then in terms of the so maybe some basics that people can get their head around it. I can I can imagine, you know, an invoice, so a specific, Lumpy amount, that then the client could pay using some basic bedding, direct payment or credit card, all that. So talk me through what the experience is for the consumer.

Brendan Allen
Yeah, good call, let’s pretend this potato, I’m the professional services of others. I’m your accountant, Vietnam, and you’re a potential client. And we’ve had a chat. And we’ve decided on a broad set of services based on your needs. I would either on the spot, open up my laptop or go back, let’s say a pop up to my office the next day, I open up ignition, and I go to create a new proposal. Yep, we call it a proposal or smart proposal, I would then input the services that I we discussed, right. Now the really cool thing is if I think there’s some other services that you might be interested in, that you may we may have discussed briefly, I can include those as optional extras in this proposal. So I can add option A option B, Option C, Option A is what you discussed, option B is compliance plus advisory and Option C is compliance plus advisory plus, you know, additional apps or support or something like that, or you know, phone support, tech support. So I can give you those three option. And then whichever one you choose, you will get a 101 Ultra V on the middle of the road, right? Where you will then be asked to review that, then say I’m happy with the scope of the services. Yeah, I’m happy with the frequency of the building. And that building could be you know, could be an upfront component because I want you to pay me straightaway. So we can do some training or some setup of an app. Yeah. And then there’s the monthly recurring component, or your standard ongoing costs of these. If that’s the way you set it up. That could be an hourly rate in there for a project that could be a bill on completion and not for a fixed amount. So there’s a few depending on where you are in your journey of weaving through the different building types. We can sort of cater for that. So you can have a you can have like a mix match of everything. Yep. And it’s really good for transitioning. Counsel bookkeepers, especially where they can provide this clarity to their clients and say we’re still doing things this way, but I’ve got a bit more control over it right. And the icing on the cake and as far as I’m concerned and most of our customers are concerned. The final step before signing the actual document is collecting, like you said direct debit or credit card details. So you as a potential client Look at this, I’m happy with this. This looks great. We looking forward to working with you, Brendan, here’s my credit card number, here’s my direct debit details. And then you sign an acknowledge all of the scope in that proposal, yep, including the billing schedule, and including the fact that you’ve dropped in your payment details. And then, for example, if it’s an upfront amount, once you sign that document, I’ll take that those funds straight out from your bank account or credit card to say cool, got those funds, I can get paid, I’ve paid now so we can start to work. You know, the fixed fee, depending on the days you specify, it could be the first of the month could be the end could be the 15th. Ignition will divert that money from your account and then send it through to you. And on top of all that we do have integrations which we may touch on later, where we can incorporate the invoice like you said. So we will generate an invoice in your ledger. Yep. Which will then match up to that payment. So there’s also a whole bunch of back end admin that gets done automatically for you as well. Nice. That’s where the magic happens. Right? That’s where everyone comes in, says they love us so much, because they don’t have to lift a finger. But you’re getting paid for literally doing just the work. Yeah, instead of doing all of your work. You’re doing the work for your client, you’re delivering this wonderful work, they love you to bits. Yeah. And it’s all just happening in the background.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice. Nice. And so what in terms of and we’ll talk the camera, because that’s clearly what do you primarily do as, as opposed to on bidding? Not that many advice practices just yet? I know there are some because I got referred to talk to you by by some but yes. Even though from the from the accounting perspective, who do you find? are the primary users up most of the teams having, you know, support or admin being the people interact with ignition? Or is it cans? Like who are the ones that are generally in the system?

Brendan Allen
It’s interesting question, it kind of depends on the size of the practice of the business. You know, we’ve got solid practitioners that come in. And the reason they love it is because they get to run their own business the way they want. And again, then I have to think about all this stuff where normally they may have to hire somebody I know, it’s an old cliche to set out when you talk about apps, but it is like another staff member. In our in that regard. When I start working with like, I worked with some of the bigger customers in Australia, in APAC, and I’m generally talking to the practice manager or admin stop there. And then we have like solid teams as well. Some of the bigger accounts, we have solid teams that have their some of them even have their own ignition account, for they can sort of keep track of it themselves. We do have the reporting and tracking opportunities, as well. So yeah, it’s quite broad. But generally, on the bigger firms, we’re working with an admin team. And then we have like, they have maybe like an internal chain of command in terms of approving proposals before they go out by partners and managers. Right. Okay.

Peita Diamantidis
So if it’s sort of more complicated and detailed, and generally, I’m betting bigger dollars, sort of an approval process? Yes. Well, that’s interesting, too. I mean, that would be, we’ve got a new structure going on, you know, in the industry with professional you, you know, students, but advisors, and then you might have a junior advisor and a senior advisor, and it’d be interesting to have something that led, maybe more junior advisors, certainly price something up, but it has to go up the line, just to be checked on, like, a structure that makes it really quick and easy.

Brendan Allen
Yeah, yeah. And it builds confidence in your staff as well. And one thing that I she is very helpful with that, which we’ve released recently is a templated approach, where if you have built a group of standardized solution, and this is beyond just your standardized library of services is actually like a full, like the three options I said before, you can build that as a template. And that is your sort of, you can tell your junior staff, okay, these are the three templates that you use, we do not really deviate from that. If you need to deviate from ask you talk to me. And then we can talk about, you know, flexing those options. But these are the three main things that we use.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice, awesome. In terms of then, you know, with the businesses you deal with who, who, when they get an ignition on board, who gets it, you know, who does it work for really well, and who struggles? You know, what is there a, either a quality, or a style or a size or anything like that, where it stands out the difference?

Brendan Allen
It’s not so much the business sides that I’ve discovered, like I mentioned earlier, like we anyone from someone who’s just starting up, and maybe hasn’t had many clients left, the amount of people that have come on board, so I want to get this right from day one. I want to get this compliance piece nailed, I want to get the payments, please, I don’t want to deter, and I’m going to be chasing people to find me in my new business. So I’m gonna get you started right now. So we have that, in terms of people who struggled to adapt, I think we have trouble with probably some more of the old school practices. But again, even within the factors, there’s a siloed group of people that often push it. Yeah. They may be a little bit more concerned about the reaction from their clients. Right. Right. And you said it earlier data at the beginning of our podcast, yeah. It’s actually a positive experience, positive experience for everyone involved 99.9% of the times, and I used to say this all the time. And if you’re a customer of ignition, and you’ve heard me talk, you probably heard this before. There’s red flags that you can get in any business and a red flag, as far I’ve often said is somebody who has an issue with a direct debit system. Alright, and if they have an issue with that, there’s a good chance you can have issues within the future. Yeah, you’ve got a whole bunch of content on, it sounds really harsh, but second clients, and identifying these red flags, and we’ve often found that people will come on to ignition, and then just do a massive call of their client base, right? Because we’ve, they’ve got pushback on on the new on our new system. And because of that, they’ve realized that, okay, these people are pulling us down, we want to replace these people with some forward thinking clients, you know, and send them down the street to, you know, Legacy accountants Incorporated, you know, take care of,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah. And certainly, it’s something I haven’t thought of this for years, I am used to work in investment banking, please don’t hold that against me. And one of my, one of my clients, he was actually from the UK, and he had this policy with the business where he paid every invoice in the business six months late. So he just let it go on. And all it was like a cash flow management thing, on and on and on, and really stuck with me that there are some people who are just manipulating you, just some clients that are just doing that. And none of us need that. We just don’t, you don’t need that any life, you know, you don’t, if using a tool like this draws that out in an even more obvious way. Hold on, this is all got, you know, far higher than it should be, then I agree with you. And you know, like, like, even if you don’t sack them immediately, go grab some new clients that are equivalent value, sign them on and then get rid of them. You know, you’re wondering

Brendan Allen
what exactly. And hopefully, if you’re going down the route of you know, looking at apps and automation, you should have some more time to find those clients. That’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it? Correct. So between, between your old colleague or your old boss, who was deliberately paying late and those, you know, admittedly like myself, who sometimes just doesn’t even open that email? Because I know it’s there. Yeah, got the money. I just, I just can’t do that right now. I’ll do it. I’ll do it next week. I’ll do it next week. Yeah. So yeah, that’s where we start to really come into our own.

Peita Diamantidis
And what in terms of you’ve just reminded me actually, in terms of then, you know, I’ve, I’m a client of an account, and my, maybe I’m paying via credit card, and my credit card is going to expire? How does that work in this system, in terms of timing doesn’t only come up when a payments then do? Or does it come up earlier? How is that handled?

Brendan Allen
That’s a really good question. And no one’s actually asked me that explicitly, before, there’s two, it’s a two phase, the first thing is you’ll get a notification as an advisor or as a user of ignition, a will ahead of time that this call is coming up to expire, when then you could be prompted to send a specific link through to your client to say, Hey, Peter, your cards expiring next month, use a form to fill out when you get a new one. And then the I guess the safety net from that is if the you do have an actual payment rejected you yourself as the advisor, and also the client will get an email to say this has been rejected. And the client can then update their payment details in that step as well. So awesome. Yeah, we’ve thought of them. I’m glad we have because that was a good question. If you’re gonna have a solution, I’d be like, I’m kind of going to have to guess.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, look, it’s just something that’s it is a bit new to advisors, because so much of our income previously has been collected via sort of product providers, you know, your super funds and stuff, then it is a new world to us. And I know that sounds strange, but it is so all of us are in counting these Ah, wait a minute, that cut regroup, you know, that bounce back now, what do we do sort of stuff. So anything that makes that easier? And like you say it, I hate it when those that are tasks absorbed, the Team Drives me nuts like that value. You know, there’s so many other things we can do for clients,

Brendan Allen
I think I think the theme of the podcast is friction and friction all along the line. And that’s not good for anyone.

Peita Diamantidis
No, no, not at all. So then in terms of any other interaction, or the way the client, you know, sorry, the way the app connects the say account or advisor with the with the client, what else does it do? What are the other things that can sort of bring them closer together?

Brendan Allen
Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m going to talk to a thing that we’ve probably talked about more than anything else, maybe even more than payments. Is scope. Correct? Okay, well, we’ve heard this term. Yep, we’ve done we’ve just done a whole month worth of webinars on scope creep. And we will continue to do webinars and content on scope creep. Yep. And this may not seem like an obvious one, when you’re talking about the way you interact with your clients. But the level of service you offer your clients is obviously defined as scope. And if you are offering sort of a fixed, fixed fee, approach to yield pricing, it’s really easy to get those two things out of sync with the amount of work you’re doing for a client doesn’t match up with the actual, the payment. So even leaving the fee side of things like that’s an opportunity and unfortunately an opportunity for you to get misaligned with your clients expectations. Yeah. And you kind of neglect that regular discussion around that scope. Yep. And that into some people might think, again, some people who are in the right the wrong mindset might think, Oh, I don’t want to talk about that because I could rock the boat. I bring that up. But he you are doing work for free. We’re an actual reality, it’s an opportunity for you to offer even more better services to your clients, which you didn’t even realize they wanted or needed, because you haven’t had that conversation. Yeah. So I feel like outside of the compliance piece outside of the cash flow piece, ignition gives you the tools and the confidence to approach these conversations and actually have a at least an annual meeting with your client to say, let’s talk about your engagement. Yeah. And let’s talk about what you need from us. And let’s make sure you’re on the right plan. Let’s make sure we’re still working well together. What else do you need and do those reviews regularly? Whereas, you know, we had people come to admission who haven’t had a the updated engagement letter signed for like five years plus, right? So you’re missing out on that opportunity. So it brings the client advisor relationship, you know, it improves it in that regard. And, and it’s something that’s not as obvious until you really sort of take stock, and look back and think I haven’t had a new engagement letter signed for five years, right. And I if I actually MBI and tracking my time and tracking my costs, and I’m coming out on, you know, not coming out on top here.

Peita Diamantidis
It’s certainly something advisors are really conscious have a front for the first engagement, because it’s fair to say our experience of sort of discovering a client is as long as a piece of string and the whole thing, you know, it’ll start to unravel. And you’ll say it like, oh, okay, great. And there’s no worse feelings and advisor when a client engages with all Yeah, just there’s the super fun, I need some assistance. Awesome. But when you start digging, there’s actually four super funds. Yeah, like, yeah, okay, that’s a different exercise entirely, because that’s a whole lot of work and follow up. And invariably, right, lots of advisors would end up taking that hit, you know, they just because they’ve already quoted, so to have something that that forces that consideration, can either be factored in, I think is fantastic. And so you’re

Brendan Allen
just upfront. It is it is. That’s, that’s, that’s the other half of that is being upfront and being honest. Of course, if you let this stuff go on too long, and then you try to jack up your prices, or have that conversation a couple of years in, then that’s, that’s when they get cranky with ya, and rightly so. Yeah, like, yeah, so we have a great feature called sort of banging on about features, but it’s very relevant, trust me, it’s unit based pricing or unit based billing. So if you’d have a new client was coming on board, and you obviously haven’t had a chance to suss them out yet, because you haven’t worked with them yet. Yeah, you can provide if you do want to provide, like, if you do have a package or a fix for ice package, as an advisor, which I know isn’t too common, but it does happen. Or if you are offering even just hourly based billing, that’s fine to chuck it into the proposal. But you can actually say, you know, I charge x per Why not charge x per item. And we have this awesome unit based approach where you can actually create your own item. So you could charge $200 Per, I’m just looking at my desk here, $200 per glass of water, you know, which is right next to me, you know, like, if that’s something you charge for, you can charge for that. And it doesn’t need to be challenged, but it’s sitting there to let the client know that if this happens, that’s the right, I’m going to charge you THIS MUCH for Yeah, so you can kind of build yourself a safety net, using a proposal engine.

Peita Diamantidis
Nice, nice. And I’m betting that merely the process of having to think that through is powerful for a practice, you know, really, because if some, that’s the other thing that you know, some of the season you do advisors is some of this is maybe done on the fly a little, you know, like, just come up with that quote, right? It’s this figure, instead of having something really structured, his time is this many plus that plus that he’s the fee, you know,

Brendan Allen
and that’s actually some feedback we get too is they love the fact that it’s prompting people to make sure we’re putting crossing every T and dotting every eye when it comes to the initial engagement, because that’s where it falls over. Right? If you don’t get it right from the beginning, that’s when you start to get these little corners lifting up. And then before you know it, it’s too late.

Peita Diamantidis
Right, exactly, exactly. Now, I’m a big fan of integration. When I saw this blasted logo, when I did some research, I saw this Zapier logo, hallelujah, exactly. In part just from it’s a mindset to me. And I’m betting that it’s been that way in accounting, as well as in advice where the internal systems are often quite closed. And in this day and age, it just doesn’t work. You know, we’ve got to have things that can talk to each other. We’ve got to get those those synergies. So talk me through what the tool can integrate with embedding something like zero for a starting point, but talk us through how that can work and what value that can add.

Brendan Allen
Yep, well, let me start small. We’ve built a lot of automation into the app itself good that don’t rely on other apps. For touch on those briefly, we’re talking about just simple things like those notifications around credit card expiry, or that some simple stuff. Even just simple things like choosing who gets notified when a proposal is accepted. So you can do you know the next steps? Yep. So as you can imagine, we can build automation into our app, but the most After automation, we can build his out of the app after the proposal is been accepted. Right. So let’s, let’s get to that shortly. But we also have, as you mentioned, zero, yes, it will be a very safe bet. We’ve integrated with zero and zero Practice Manager since day one. Yep. And the zero integration I kind of touched on before where if you have a payment coming, being collected by ignition will also raise the corresponding invoice in Xero for that amount, whether it’s a one off invoice or a monthly recurring invoice, and assignments will match up, and there’ll be reconciled. Okay, so that’s all happening in the back end. So that’s a legit connection. The powerful connection we have beyond that is the Xero practice manager. So I don’t know how many of your listeners listening now use SPM. But we do have the ability to also deplete jobs. So again, right, look at our example, right, you’re a new potential new client, I have offered you, I don’t know, a proposal with four services in it that are ongoing. Once you accept that proposal, those four services will trigger the corresponding job template in Xero, practice manager, it will assign staff automatically it will refer monthly, quarterly, weekly, whatever you need it to recur, or just to play an annual job, so your staff can get started and working on it. So a lot of the initial setup for a new job would normally be done in X Pm is done in ignition so that a trigger point is proposals accepted, jobs are deployed, payments are being collected, payments are getting reconciled. invoices are getting created. It’s all happening. That’s just zero sweet. We also integrate with QuickBooks Online the same way in terms of ledger. We also integrate with native native integrations. We also integrate with carbon as well, for another workflow tool. In a similar way. Your services in a proposal are connected to jobs in the job templates in cover, and we push those across. Those are the native ones in this region. Yeah. Then we talk about the magic of Zapier, which you mentioned, which you seem a bit like me and I could probably nerd out about Zapier all day, and I have that is where we start to get really cool stuff happening and the majority of the of the Zapier fit for those who don’t know is Zapier, and I’m sure you’ve spoken about it on this podcast before Zapier is I like to call it the middleman. Yep. It connects apps like ignition to other apps like I don’t know, Microsoft suite, Microsoft, Gmail or whatever. Yeah. And Zapier does the talking like it lets these apps connect to each other, when normally they wouldn’t. So yeah, we integrate with Zapier, which opens up to literally 1000s of other apps that we can work with, I’ll just rattle off some common ones, like a really basic one is your, your email client. The other would be Gmail, or Outlook. If a proposal is accepted, or for a specific proposal is accepted. If your proposal is accepted, with a certain service in it, net services only managed by one or one person in your team, then you can send an email to that person only to say, hey, this proposal has been accepted. And it had an a superannuation element to it and you’re super person. So I want them to notify Oslo send me slack, like we said earlier. Yeah. So that’s a really basic one all the way think through things like, you know, building customers workflow in other apps like Trello, or HubSpot, or you know, marketing comms, you know, if somebody signs a proposal, again, with a specific service in it, or over a certain value, then maybe you can send them a gift basket, or maybe you can put them onto a certain marketing newsletter or something, you know, they get they get this one, they get that one. So, yeah, I’m my heart rates going up just talking about out geeky. But we’d love to have you here. We use it a lot internally. I mentioned earlier, we have a lot of automation built and all of that is built on Zapier. And if you are an ignition customer, we can actually offer a service where we kind of help you build some of your own automation through Zapier and I did one was I did to last week, I’ve got a few more to do before the end of the year, we will actually essentially, review your tech stack, see where ignition fits at that one or you know, we’d have to talk about and then see where we can help you recommend some automation is exactly awesome.

Peita Diamantidis
And that’s that’s an that’s a fabulous offer actually, because I know there will be somebody listening out there that’s like Peter, we know you’re always talking about the Zed thing, it’s ridiculous. Right? I don’t know where to start, but if if something like ignition is appealing, they have to use that as the base like to go Alright, I’m going to do this and then get your help. Alright, let’s start with some basic steps. I mean, I can see for us you know, one of the first ones would just be you know, when whenever a new a new engagement letter is accepted or paid then we definitely have a Slack channel where we just all woohoo that you know like we just had to do a high five channel or something and just celebrate that you know, that sort of stuff is so and things it’s so easy and slack yeah so for sure and creating that momentum and energy in your team when we’re all working more virtually now to you know it’s it can be really powerful. Yet easy. Would it make sense?

Brendan Allen
Yeah, I’m I’ve started working remotely full time about six months ago. And slack is my window into the world at the moment and I’d be lost without it.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, apps salutely Absolutely. All right. So in terms of then your current users, is there any part of the tool that that you go, I just can’t believe more people aren’t using this because it’s gold? Like, is there something that, that, you know, you think, well, I could just turn that on or use that better or use it differently? And it’d be amazing. Yeah,

Brendan Allen
I’m gonna give you to kind of give you two. Definitely the first one, and it’s just more of a shout out because it is cool. And it’s getting traction. Here’s the templates feature. Yep. The amount of time saving that you can have by standardizing some of your service offering, yeah, templating it, that means the difference between getting a proposal out the door in five minutes or less versus five hours, because you have to pull things in. So that’s a great one. Another one that I think is underutilized is our embedded video function. Because as advisors, everyone’s always looking to create a point of difference between yourself and your competitors. Create that kind of human, I guess, touch when it comes to, you know, your clients and the the correspondence you send them. So you’ve probably heard of, obviously, with YouTube, you would have heard of Vimeo? Have you heard of a loom? Yes, yes, great. I use loom all the time. Yep. And loom is a great little tool that you can use just to record sort of short, five minute or less videos. Yep. And just embed them into an email. But we have a loom embedded feature in our proposals. So what you can do is, if I’ve met with you, Peter, yesterday, and I want to impress you even more than I already have, I would record a little short live video to say, Hey, Peter, great to meet you yesterday. Thanks so much for the coffee. Here’s your here’s your proposal looks through it. If you have any questions, let me know. Looking forward to working with you. You know, that could be the difference between you getting you, me lending you and you going somewhere else down the street, because you’ve just given that personal touch. So I have seen a lot of people take that up, which is great. I’d like to see more people use it. I’ve even seen people sort of go full Spielberg on it and create some really cool stuff that at the very least just create a little loom with just your your face, saying, Great to meet you look, whatever, even if you’re doing things like renewals, you know, a lot of people, everyone uses our software to do annual renewals. So hey, you know, here we are, again. 2023. Coming up, looking forward to working with you again. Let me know if you have any questions, just simple stuff like that. Yeah, the video function.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, it’s a video so powerful. We actually recently took on a book of clients. And so you sort of, you know, you’re reaching out to them. And you know, the formal letter goes from the previous place. And then now that it goes on, boring, boring, right, and then but what we did put together was a just a welcome video that was sort of like the two talking heads, and it was me, and then the other advisors, and then a number of great feedback we got on there from even much older clients, because it felt personal, even though yes, it wasn’t to them specifically, it feels personal. And that’s the way the brain processes it, you know, and so, and I think all of us can use a lot of that stuff, too. And also, it’s quick, you know, typing, I mean, I’ve started using voice to text a lot more in a whole other Gmail suite, because I’ve realized that I can talk a lot faster than I can talk.

Brendan Allen
You know what, I haven’t done that yet. Check that out.

Peita Diamantidis
I mean, for file notes alone, it’s amazing. But even just for emails, I just, you know, in Gmail doesn’t, you can just click the little icon, and I’ll tell you go,

Brendan Allen
does it does it? I would worry about my arms and article probably undenied, about 50 million times already today. But yeah, that would be my trouble. But I could probably get to it. Yeah, like that. It’s it’s

Peita Diamantidis
quite quick. And I think it’s similarly for, like you say, there’s a proposal or something you’ve put together that you’ve put some time in the video won’t take you long out of all of that effort. But it’s so personal, you know, it can have so much impact all that’s, that’s an orphan or someone we love that. What about the future? What’s on the development path? What’s on the list? What’s coming up,

Brendan Allen
let me get my crystal ball out. Okay, I’m gonna go back to scope creep. Again, because this is a big, I’m a big fan of managing scope creep Well, or eliminating it altogether. We’ve actually just released something in the last two weeks. It probably won’t mean too much to those who haven’t used ignition yet. But it will make sense when somebody signs a proposal that previously was somewhat difficult, not overly difficult, but still wanting to take up the minutes to change an element of that proposal based on those things. So the person that did that based on them saying, Oh, I don’t need that service anymore, or even just based on your your, you’re recognizing that there has been some scope creep and you need to add a dataset or move them up from the bronze to silver or the silver to the Gold package. So previously, you would have to basically end that whole proposal and go through and all the current services and then create a whole new proposal. Okay, we just recently released a feature called service edits where you can just come into that bronze package and change it to the silver package or the gold package and then just basically do that internally and then that updates, all the future invoices that are going out. You know, the next month payment will be a bit higher because they know on a higher package. Yeah, so that’s been a great feature. But the reason I bring that up is because we are going to do even more work around giving you the ability to kind of add work in ad hoc. So as things come up, yep. And as any professional services provider will understand that, you know, signing something, even last week, can change to display. And you maybe you’ve forgotten to put it in, maybe they’ve asked for something specific. And you don’t want to have to kind of overhaul the whole engagement process just to add this little element. Yeah, maybe, maybe there’s a piece of work that’s coming that needs to be done urgently. And you can’t wait for them to sign that. Okay. I’m just going to send you an ad hoc invoice indicates the beauty of that is because we actually store those sort of payment details, we clients securely mind you, of course, you’ve got the ability once that job has been done once that job that they were desperate to get done by yesterday is finished. You can then go ahead, okay, cool, ad hoc job and ignition, send it out, invoice it collect it, perhaps. So, yeah, look, I probably annoyed the dev team by brute saying this on a podcast, but don’t quote me on this. Don’t ask for a date on it. But we’ve just started talking about that. And it’s obviously it’s a natural progression for an app like ignition to go beyond just that sort of engagement piece and start looking at how we can support advisors, accountants, bookkeepers, yeah. Throughout the year, once they’ve engaged with the client, right?

Peita Diamantidis
And actually, there was a quick question I had, if there’s a monthly so some people will have a ongoing, and that’s just an ongoing service, and it goes through, some might have a 12 month, an extra month. So does ignition lets you do that. So the term period for Payments perfect,

Brendan Allen
you can you can so you can actually create your own custom schedule. And for example, you may have, you may, you may give them a discount for the first three months on service a. And then after the third or fourth month beyond that service, it returns to the normal price. And all you can do you know, a proposal with three services in it, one of them goes for three months, and then the next one kicks in. And the third one goes for the whole top off period. So you’ve got this massive flexibility. And I commend you for some of that safety net stuff around making sure you include things that may not particularly need to be done. But your client knows how much they cost if they do come up, and you can just do it.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, awesome. Awesome. All this room engineer, is there anything we’ve missed? We’ve covered a fair bit,

Brendan Allen
we have covered a fair bit. If you don’t mind, I might, I might shout out the my colleagues in the CX team in general. Yep. Um, we already spoke about the the ability to do like, we call it a process mapping where you can actually talk about your app stack, and what automations you’re looking to build. But for new people who are on a mission, and you know, with any app, it’s always a bit daunting to come on and start using a new app. We do have an onboarding team, the 100, CSM team shout out to the CSM team. They’re awesome. And they helped you in the first 90 days to set up those templates. Make sure your service library is you know, industry specific and even talk to you about some of the more conceptual stuff that you might be going through at the time, you know, in your business and trying to change the way you’re billing change the way you’re approaching, quoting, you know, what kind of stuff? So that’s, that’s a big part of the app, because it’s all good. Well, to provide this amazing technology, if you just sort of said, What do you got? Good luck with it go? Yeah, exactly. So we’ve got a great team there. And then I’m the Senior Account Manager. So my account manager team, which of us, there’s eight, were there to help you stay up on that. So, you know, I know there’s a lot of apps out there that kind of just sort of leave it with you. But we’re here to sort of help you. Again, it sounds so cliche, I hate saying it, but we’re like another staff member. Yeah, they give us as that person, especially during the onboarding period where you know, you’re trying to figure out the best way to do things and best practice. You know, that’s, that’s always a question. Go ahead. What are what’s everyone else doing? What are what are we? What are we doing wrong? What are we doing, right?

Peita Diamantidis
Brian? Exactly, exactly. All right, advice. Explorers. If you’d like to find out find out more about ignition, which I’m paying, they’re going to then website link is in the episode show notes. But we’ve also shared Brendan’s LinkedIn details, so you can always poke him on LinkedIn, and it will point you in the right direction of who to talk to. Thank you so much for joining us, I’m actually really excited for financial advisors with these sort of tools, because we are a bit newer to this game. And, you know, to get up to speed such that we don’t need to hire another person, you know, to not do all this stuff, which I think some practices are probably seriously considering right now, then and in the labor market, good luck. So you’re having to have a solution that can just streamline it, you know, things are getting done. It’s easy for us. It’s easy for the clients, you know, that’s a big tick, I think for most advisors, so, so excited to see more advice practices, taking the tool up. So thank you so much for your time.

Brendan Allen
Absolute pleasure. Yeah. And if anyone wants to reach out to me directly, yes, shoot through LinkedIn. And yeah, if you have any specific questions, I’m here,

Peita Diamantidis
Done. Thank you.

Brendan Allen
Thanks so much, Peter.

Peita Diamantidis
So I am betting There probably isn’t that many of you out there that are actually current users of ignition, as it’s a app, that’s primarily currently accountants and bookkeepers, and people like that. But there are advanced practices using it. So, you know, if you are one of those, then hey, if we’ve missed something, or you agree or disagree with what we covered, please head over to the ensemble community platform, I’d love to hear your take this as a sort of element of the tech stack that probably many of us haven’t considered to date. So I know, I would, and other advisors would love to hear your experience with ignition. So now, in my thoughts, you know, things have changed so much in advice, and in particular, with how we get paid, right? I mean, that the whole lot of the focus, in the last call of the decade has been how we get paid, should we should we not? What’s the appropriate way, what’s the appropriate place, the timing, the amount, all sorts of things. So I love the fact that tools like ignition, that are focused on fee engagement, and scope, and payment, are coming up to make it easy for us that are giving us options to consider of how we do engage with clients, you know, in the fact that it can then integrate straight into Xero. So that whole keeping track of the payments and you know, upfront versus ongoing, all that sort of thing can be a bit more streamlined for us, I think he’s just fantastic. And the thing is, as an industry, we haven’t had a lot of experience with collections as a problem, right? Whereas I guarantee our accounting colleagues would share with us that it’s a complete pain in the neck. So having a system that can up automate, or organize the processes around collections, or even minimize the need for it at all, I think will just take a significant amount of pressure off. And hey, if utilizing a tool like this actually brings to the fore clients that maybe over time, we need to exit out of the business, maybe they, you know, accidentally don’t pay, and it’s just through, you know, sheer confusion or, or they just forget, or maybe they’re intentionally delaying payment either way, you know, over time, we can exit those as we get new ones, we can exit the others that just don’t respond to these tools that require sort of more immediate payment. And hey, when you get some support to onboard, that also includes helping you connect to Zapier and therefore other tools, then, I mean, that’s exactly what I want to hear from a tool I’m considering for my tech stack. So I’d be curious about whose this has got thinking for you, you know if this all that’s interesting, I’m going to check it out. If you’ve had a bit of a play, maybe you started using the tool, in your practice, please reach out, I really would love to hear how you find it. I think we’re going to need more and more tools like this. So I’d love to hear about your experience. Now. As you know, if you’ve listened to the podcast before, there’s really only one skill, we need to become bionic advisors. And that’s avid curiosity. And you know, that always provides something to sort of feed that curiosity in each of us. And I’ve picked something that’s a bit topical for me right now. So today’s curiosity corner app that caught my eye is Rome research. You can find them at Rome, R R O A M research.com. And they described themselves as a note taking tool for networked thought. It’s an easy sort of, you know, it’s as easy to use as a document. But it sort of works like a graphical database. So it helps you organize research or thought for the long haul. And this has come up for me because mad as it sounds, I’m considering writing another book for the public. And so the thing is, when you start writing, you have these random thoughts at the most random times. And it’s very hard actually to collect those together in a coherent way. Because normally the way we write, say it’s even a blog or or a series of blogs, is we sort of do it in a linear fashion blank piece of paper headline, right? Okay. And particularly in our industry, that’s how we do it. The challenge is, when it’s something a bit bigger than that, like a book, it’s you just can’t write it that way, you’ll go insane. And so you need something that helps sort of collate those random thoughts over time, and links them back to each other across multiple topics or themes. So this tool lets me just sort of dump a thought that I just had, I’m like, Oh, that’s a great anecdote. I need to capture that. I can link it to other things that I’ve already said or written in the tool. And then if I go back on that theme, it’ll list for me all of the different things I’ve said about that. Topic. So, you know, I think, for those of us that are a bit more left brained, you know, or maybe mathematical brain, whatever it is, then while we may think we need structure, creativity actually can be stifled by too much structure. So having a tool that gives us freedom lets us dump our thoughts, but keeps us sane by actually organizing those thoughts can actually be really powerful. So, I’d suggest if you’re, you’re in that game, maybe you’re just looking at writing a series of videos, you know, you’ve got to write those scripts and you really project you know, you’re really thinking it through and brainstorming, then something like room research can really help you sort of just drop those sorts of as you have them. Welp, that’s all we’ve got for this week, folks. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you’ll get your advice, tech fix automatically sent to you each Friday. And hey, if you’d like a speaker to run your audience through, you know, the next thing in advice tech for 2023 Being client portals, then, you know, I’d love to come and either do maybe initial webinar or even a full blown in person masterclass. For your group we can cover not only to work out if you need a client portal, but how to implement it in the practice to ensure it successful. So please reach out if that’s of interest. We’re going to also be covering this as a case study topic as part of our upcoming niche down and scale up workshops. And it’ll be a case study after we work through exactly who you want to serve in 2023. We’ll use a client portal as a case study to work out what tech you need to serve them. So if any of what I’ve just described is of interest pletely please reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find me on forward slash Peita MD PEITAM de otherwise all look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explorers: Stay curious.