The Wize Way

Hosted by Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers

Business Entrepreneurship Education

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Episodes

224

Latest episode

Oct 2026

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EN-GB

About the show

Feeling stuck in your firm or on the edge of rapid growth but don't know how to build the business so that it’s not reliant on you? Join the Wize team as they share the insights, stories, strategies and tools that have helped transform the businesses and lives of our Wize Guys and hundreds of Accounting, CPA and bookkeeping firm owners around the world. In each episode, we dive into the leadership, marketing, sales, systems and mindset tactics that'll get you to your goals without burning out. Subscribe to transform your challenges into opportunities and build a business that can run without you.

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60 recent

October 28, 2026Episode 22516 min

Episode 225: The AI Client Ranking System for Accounting Firms

Who takes up most of your firm's time? Often it's the clients paying the least. In this episode, Wize mentor Thomas Phabmixay shows accounting and bookkeeping firm owners how to rank their clients from A to D, so the firm's time and attention go to the clients who matter most. He uses the Wizer AI Coach to turn examples of a firm's best and worst clients into a scoring system, a reusable prompt for grading clients from emails and call transcripts, and a draft SOP your team can follow. You'll learn: ✅ How to use AI to build a client grading framework from your best and worst clients ✅ How a 1-to-5 scoring system places every client into an A, B, C, or D category ✅ The prompt that grades clients from raw transcripts, emails, and staff notes ✅ Why your C and D clients tend to take up the most time and attention ✅ How to define your ideal client starting with your top 10 ✅ The criteria to rank on: revenue, ease of working together, complexity, referrals, growth potential, and openness to advice ✅ How senior and assistant client managers split A and B clients from C and D clients ✅ Why every client's ranking needs to be visible in your CRM If you've ever felt like a handful of difficult clients are running your team's week, this episode will change the way you think about where your firm's time should go. Part of this episode is a live demo, so if you want to see the Wizer AI Coach build a client scoring system as Thomas works through it, tune in to the episode on YouTube. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

October 21, 2026Episode 22421 min

Episode 224: The Onboarding Mistakes Costing Accounting Firms Their Best New Hires

A new team member's impression of your firm starts well before their first day. If their email isn't set up, the team doesn't know they're arriving, and your SOPs are buried where no one can find them; even a strong hire can start to wonder whether they've made the right move. In this episode, Dani Bray, Head of WizeTalent, and Kristy Fairbairn, Wize mentor, break down what a strong onboarding process looks like in an accounting firm. They cover what to sort before day one, how to set clear goals for the first 90 days, and the early hiring mistake that taught Kristy to be upfront about where her firm was at. You'll learn: ✅ What to have sorted before a new hire's first day ✅ How onboarding buddies and intro calls build rapport in remote teams ✅ How to spot adaptability when hiring experienced team members ✅ How to set 30- and 90-day goals, KPIs, and performance reviews from the start ✅ How to use Loom SOPs, recorded training and shadowing to speed up learning ✅ How to tell when a performance issue is really an onboarding gap If you've ever hired someone great and watched them struggle through their first few months, this episode will change the way you think about onboarding. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

October 14, 2026Episode 22331 min

Episode 223: The Referral System Ed Chan Used To Grow His Firm

Ed Chan started his firm from a home office with no money for marketing and grew it to around $2.2 million in three years on referrals alone. This is the habit that built it. In this episode of The Wize Way, Ed breaks down how he turned every job into a referral, why the last 20 minutes of the work matters more than the hours before it, and what he built afterwards so the clients kept arriving without him. You'll learn: ✅ Why relationship work earns referrals and transactional work does not ✅ The 20 minutes of a job that delivers most of its value to the client ✅ What kind of clients advertising brings you, and the problems they create later ✅ The goodwill maths Ed uses to justify spending 5% of turnover on marketing ✅ Why the marketing tap can never be switched off once it is running ✅ How more marketing reduces how good your salespeople need to be If you are the reason new work walks through your door, this episode will change the way you think about what your firm would do without you. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

October 7, 2026Episode 22228 min

Episode 222: The 60 Minute Meeting That Tells You If Your Firm Is In Sync

Plenty of firm owners walk into their weekly team meeting having prepared the numbers themselves, then spend the hour explaining figures nobody else has looked at. Wize mentor Thomas argues it works better the other way around, with the team bringing the evidence and the owner arriving with fresh eyes and a set of questions. In this episode, Thomas breaks down the weekly team sync for accounting and bookkeeping firm owners. He covers the six core agenda items, why 60 minutes is a litmus test for how disciplined your firm really is, and how to keep the conversation focused forward rather than on blame. You'll learn: ✅ Who belongs in the weekly team sync and which roles get left out by mistake ✅ The six core agenda items and how the Fab 5 answers most of them ✅ Why evidence on screen beats asking managers how they are tracking ✅ The owner's three jobs in the room and the one thing they should stop doing ✅ How to keep the meeting focused forward rather than on last week's failures ✅ The rule that stops every continuous improvement item being labelled critical If your weekly team meeting keeps stretching past the hour and finishing without a clear plan, this episode will change the way you think about what that meeting is really measuring. This is a visual walkthrough, so if you want to see inside the WizeHub as Thomas navigates each section, tune in to the episode on YouTube. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

October 1, 2026Episode 22118 min

Episode 221: How To Market Your Firm When You Have No Time For Marketing

Jamie Johns is in his accounting firm about one day a week, and he still gets a tip out to his clients every week without setting aside hours to write it. He spent close to ten years sending technical newsletters that went almost entirely unanswered, and when he finally changed what he was writing about he found the marketing took less time and gave him far more back. In this episode, Jamie breaks down how accounting and bookkeeping firm owners can market consistently without finding hours they do not have. He covers the habit he built from a single calendar reminder, the two questions he asks himself once a week, and the line he draws between being genuinely useful and doing the paid work for nothing. You'll learn: ✅ How weekly marketing becomes a habit rather than another task on the list ✅ The two questions that give Jamie a year of content without planning any of it ✅ Why the content clients actually respond to is quicker to write than technical updates ✅ How to be genuinely useful every week and still run a proper sales process ✅ Why the more marketing you do, the smaller the sales conversation becomes ✅ When to hand your marketing to someone else and what to look for If you have ever told yourself you will get to your marketing once things slow down, this episode will change the way you think about how much time it actually takes. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

September 24, 2026Episode 22018 min

Episode 220: The 40/35/25 Rule: How to Tell If Your Firm Is Actually Profitable

A firm can run for twenty years without anyone looking closely at profitability. Revenue grows, the team grows, everyone is busy, and the assumption is that it must all be working. Then a big client leaves, or wages climb, and suddenly the only question that matters is where the money actually goes. In this session, Tim Causbrook works through how to answer that properly, one team at a time. Tim is a Wize mentor and the owner of Causbrooks Chartered Accountants, and he opens up the capacity planner to show what a profitable team looks like on paper, what the benchmarks should be, and why a team can be flat out and still lose money. You'll learn: ✅ Why firm profitability is really the sum of each team's profitability ✅ The 40% COGS, 35% overheads, 25% EBIT benchmark and what to check when a team misses it ✅ What happens to a team's numbers when it loses a major client and keeps the headcount ✅ Charge-out multiples by role, onshore and offshore, and where the margin actually sits ✅ Why an all-onshore bookkeeping team struggles to reach 25% ✅ How low productivity and write-offs distort a capacity plan and lead to hiring you don't need ✅ Why resource mix matters as much as headcount, and what goes wrong when a senior person is missing If you've never budgeted at team level, or you have a team that feels stretched while the capacity plan says otherwise, this session gives you the numbers to check before the year gets away from you. Want access to the capacity planner and the rest of the WizeHub? Get it here → https://get.wizehub.co/ This is a visual walkthrough, so if you want to see inside the WizeHub as Tim navigates each section, tune in to the episode on YouTube. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

September 17, 2026Episode 21921 min

Episode 219: The Real Reason Marketing Keeps Failing in Accounting Firms

Marketing is the one part of a firm that most owners have already tried and already given up on. They hired an agency, or handed the socials to a junior, or committed to a weekly email that lasted about three weeks. It cost them, the leads never showed, and the conclusion they drew was that marketing doesn't work for firms like theirs. In this episode, Bren Ward pulls apart why that keeps happening inside accounting and bookkeeping firms, from the knee-jerk push that never survives lodgement season to the weekly email that quietly stops going out. He also lays out how to size a budget properly, working backwards from the growth goal to the leads it takes to get there. You'll learn: ✅ Why a bad first experience with marketing says more about the starting point than the marketing ✅ The two things that break firm marketing by month three ✅ Where the content that actually connects comes from, and why a prompt won't produce it ✅ The case for giving your best thinking away for free ✅ How to work backwards from a revenue target to the number of leads your firm needs ✅ The 5% of revenue benchmark, and what to do if you're spending nothing today ✅ The two areas inside your existing client base worth exhausting before you market to strangers If you've written marketing off after one expensive attempt, or you're about to spend again and want to get it right this time, this episode gives you somewhere sensible to start. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

September 10, 202626 min

Episode 218: Inside WizeHub: How Firm Owners Build Freedom One Step at a Time

Have you ever finished a training, felt completely clear on what to do next, and then looked up three months later to find nothing in your firm had actually changed? In this episode, Raul takes us inside the WizeHub for a full walkthrough of the tools built to close that gap. From the Freedom Map steps to the Task Hub, he shows how firm owners turn what they've learned into work that has an owner, a date, and a place to be followed up, so freedom gets built one step at a time instead of staying an intention. You'll learn: ✅ How the Freedom Map sequences the path to a firm that runs without you, laid out as Discover, Plan, Execute, and Measure ✅ Why every step carries its own tools, resources, training, and project, so you are never hunting for the next action ✅ How to break a step like appointing a senior client manager into the position description, the A and B client analysis, and a capacity planner placeholder ✅ How to hand those smaller pieces to your admin assistant or production manager so progress stops depending on you ✅ How to link a step to your executive or weekly managers meeting so it lands on an agenda instead of a to-do list ✅ Why learning about a role does not let you mark the step complete, and what finished actually looks like ✅ What to record when you put a step on hold, so it's ready the day your firm is If you've got steps sitting at 70% complete because the next move felt too big to start, this episode is your reminder that momentum comes from one bite of the elephant, not the whole thing at once. This is a visual walkthrough, so if you want to see inside the WizeHub as Raul navigates each section, tune in to the episode on YouTube. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

September 3, 202623 min

Episode 217: Right Person, Right Seat: How Accounting Firm Owners Get Both

Before Tim met Ed Chan in 2019, hiring at his firm worked the way it does in most firms. Someone said "we need more staff," so they threw more bodies at the problem. No structure, no org chart, no way of knowing whether anyone was in the right seat. Then he and Ed spent five hours mapping every person in the firm, strength by strength, weakness by weakness, and placing each one in position. That exercise is what this episode is about. Wize mentor Tim walks through how firm owners can answer two questions that sound like one: is this the right person, and are they in the right seat? The answer applies equally to last month's hire and to the team member you promoted three years ago. You'll learn: ✅ Why the capacity planner is where every seat decision has to start ✅ How write-offs and productivity numbers expose who is too slow for their role ✅ The resource mix problem that keeps work stuck even when capacity looks fine ✅ When a client manager genuinely needs a production manager beside them ✅ Why two complementary people in the right seats beat one unicorn every time ✅ The 3-times rule for telling incompetence apart from inexperience ✅ How clear outcomes let you judge any seat within 30 to 60 days Every firm owner gets a seat wrong eventually. Tim has, Jamie has, Ed has. The difference is having a system that catches it in weeks and fills that seat with the right person the next time. This is a visual walkthrough, so if you want to see inside the WizeHub as Tim clicks through each section, tune in to the episode on YouTube. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

August 27, 2026Episode 21615 min

Episode 216: The Vision, Mission, and Values System for Accounting Firm Owners

Kristy Fairbairn wrote her vision, mission, and values early in her business journey. She pinned them above her desk and told nobody. Not her team, not her clients. For years, they changed nothing about how the firm ran. In this episode, Kristy walks through what she does differently now, and how those three statements became the filter for who she hires, which clients she takes on, and when she makes her next hire. ✅ The difference between vision, mission, and values, and why owners collapse all three into one vague paragraph ✅ The fill-in-the-blanks prompt for writing a mission that is specific enough to act on ✅ Why a vision that feels comfortable is a vision that is too small ✅ How one value, balance, screens job candidates before the interview even starts ✅ The link between your values and your capacity planner, and how to spot a team member who has fallen out of alignment ✅ Where your eulogy exercise fits, and why your business values and personal values should not be different If you have never done this work, start with one statement this week. If you did it years ago and have not looked at it since, this is your prompt to open the document again. ________________ PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm: 1. Download our famous Wize Freedom Map for FREE - Find out the 101 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here 2. Need to hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here 3. Work with Jamie and our mentors for 8 weeks - Build a custom business plan for your firm - Apply here

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