Former Accountant Building a Virtual CFO Business That Helps Companies Grow Profits

Tom Simic: there's no point sitting there and expecting work to come to you or expecting opportunities to come to you. because I basically say yes to everything. And a huge amount of people don't realize that if you just ask for an opportunity, people will very often just say, Yeah, sure.

Carmen: Hey everyone, this is Carmen Devat and I am the host of today's episode of Behind the Founders. Joining me here today is Tom Simic. Tom, welcome. Can you introduce yourself?

Tom Simic: Hi, Carmen. Thank you for having me. yeah, my name's Tom Simic. I'm the founder of Simic Financial. we're a virtual CFO advisory business and we've got pretty ambitious plans. I'd I I'd say we're trying to become the biggest and best in Australia as quickly as possible. so we offer a range of services from really high level CFO offering for startups, ambitious, fast growing businesses, all the way through to full service bookkeeping as well.

Carmen: Good, Tom. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction as well. I had the chance to have a look at your LinkedIn profile, and you definitely have quite interesting experience, especially coming from a finance background as well, and then working a way to start CIMI Financial over three years. So tell the listeners a little bit what inspired you to pursue the entrepreneurial path in starting CIMIC Financial?

Tom Simic: Yeah, for sure. I've always been very entrepreneurial, I think, since I was younger. Like I was always selling basketball jerseys out of my locker at high school and, you know, always had side hustles all the way through. I think it probably comes from my my parents. They were also a bit a little bit entrepreneurial. that sort of meant that when it came time to go to university, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I just knew that I wanted something that would help me. in in business long term. so I went down the path of doing an accounting degree and a law degree combined. knowing that whatever those skills are, they're gonna help me long term with whatever I decide to do. And I just kept studying after that. So I ended up there was a there was a five year degree, finished that and started working as an accountant. But then continue to study while working full time as an accountant. So I've studied and done six university degrees in total now across chartered accounting, a law postgraduate degree. So basically I guess your equivalent would be getting admitted to the bar and then a even a degree in property and executive leadership after that, just to continue refining the skills and continue getting better. and then side side hustles and fun jobs and fun businesses all came out of all of these things like Even from the property degree, we started an Airbnb management business for a while and bought an Airbnb. which was good. Didn't didn't work out probably due to I would say market timing more than anything. but we've had a go at a few fun things and because I love businesses and have been obsessed with, you know, just treating other businesses like they're my own as as their accountant, Sorry. I became very good, I guess, I you I guess you'd say at accounting. probably more so than other accountants because I love it and I love businesses. And that led to last year being named the Young Chartered Accountant of the Year by C A A N Z, which is very cool, very exciting. and I've gone further on on those skills in Starting CIMIC Financial. Like it really, it became a thing that I could see working in this accounting firm that hey, people actually don't need this retrospective financials, tax returns. You know, they they need those things, but they're not moving the business forward. They're always looking at numbers and they're always looking at data that's 12, 18 months old. We're ticking compliance boxes, but it's not the most important thing for this business. They actually need someone that can help them make future-looking decisions. And so That's where Civic Financial came of. It was, hey, we actually wanna start an accounting firm of sorts that just looks at the forward looking stuff, that just helps with the really big decisions. like we've done all the research. We know we've got the highest l caliber accountants and CFOs. They shouldn't be wasting their time just ticking boxes. We should all be doing forward looking things and helping them make better decisions using data. And it's it's been incredible. So yeah, like you mentioned, we've been going for just over three years now. And some of the client results we've got are incredible. I think the year before last, we only had g we 'cause we only work with a small amount of clients each, just to get a really personal feel. So year before last

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: I only had twelve clients and five of them increased their net profit by more than a million dollars in one year. So we

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: Yeah. Yeah. So it's been fun. It's been a it's been a exciting growth journey of just figuring out, firstly, does this Is there a need for this service? What does the actual service we provide need to look like? And then just expanding on it from there, pricing, all those fun things.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. I think it's definitely very exciting as well, especially in the beginning stages, as you mentioned, experimenting what kind of model works best, what kind of clients you're working with, and definitely very exciting. And I I have actually quite a lot of questions. I I don't even know where to begin, but I guess for starters, we can take a couple of steps back. There's probably a lot of people out there who don't come from an accounting background or financing background. So If people were to stumble across on what you do at Simic Financial, how would you best describe what is what is the goal that you're trying to achieve and help, especially with the startups or the different clients or the companies and so on?

Tom Simic: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It to be honest, this is something we've been debating and arguing about for the last few months on

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: how do we refine our pitch into something that's that is that is

Carmen: Okay. Yeah.

Tom Simic: under w without doing a pitch pitch, but we struggle to articulate what we do because it's so broad. But I I think of it as hey, three three things we imp improve your cash flow, improve your profitability. And we give you full financial clarity over your business. And the way we do that is having a really hands on advisor with a financial background that's involved in your business and can help you using your own data or getting your

Carmen: Mm.

Tom Simic: data ready if it's not ready, to make better forward looking decisions. So th I guess I've I've heard all sorts of different descriptions of it. Some people say, it's like a business coach, but your coach is

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: a super qualified accountant. It's kind of that combination between probably a proactive accountant and a coach.

Carmen: Okay. Yeah. I I definitely want to mention there that there's definitely a lot

Tom Simic: Mm-hmm.

Carmen: of power when it comes to using your own data to see what exactly you can do to maximize and grow business on a financial aspect as well. I'd be curious to know. I mean, I one of the first questions that I would love to know is you are really helping the founders becoming more prof profitable in a more strategic way from the different Founders or startups that you've worked with, what would you say have been the biggest financial challenges that you've seen some of the business owners make when they're trying to grow?

Tom Simic: Mm. Yeah, it it usually comes down to cash flow. I'm sh I'm sure you've probably seen it, but

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: cash flow is what kills businesses and particularly when we're talking about I I I guess two examples. One is working with some larger electricians at the moment and their their individual contracts, like they might be doing the electrical work for schools or large commercial buildings and they don't have much control over the timing of their payments. And so if they're

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: not careful and they're not specific about when they put in their claims, they might be doing work for a very large builder, but the builder won't pay them for two months. And so it's planning ahead to know, all right, well Let's assume not only that, you know, let's say they should get paid in one month, let's assume a worst case on this and make sure we've got at least an extra month's cash spare because I'm finding it very common that these large builders just won't pay them for another month. They'll find any excuse and say, yeah, but you didn't do this right, or we're gonna contest this little piece you did, and so we're gonna withhold the whole payment. And when you're paying for a h an entire month's worth of staff at that level, that might be two hundred, four hundred thousand dollars that all of a sudden you need to have you need to have it aside. Otherwise your business could go over go under overnight because your staff just can't be paid. And so

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: eventually it might be profitable. You might be profitable in three months when you see receive all the payments. But right now, if there's no cash there, your business is pretty much done. It can't continue at all. so that's one thing that I've seen a lot recently. But then also similar but a different type of business is startups like tech startups. You know that that's the case going in, and so that is the entire planning process. It is all right, we've just been given eight hundred thousand dollars. How how much can we afford to spend each month before that bank balance hits zero? So let's say we're perfect example, I guess, would be we've been given eight hundred thousand dollars. We're currently spending a hundred thousand dollars a month on expenses with no income. We're a pre pre revenue product. basically divided by eight, all right, we've got eight months. We have exactly eight months before our bank balance hits zero. So by month six, you either want to be making so much revenue that the entire business is now profitable. And let's say let's say we're going down and then at month six it starts going back up. Or at month six be looking to do another capital raise of some kind, knowing that hey, this this product is half built, but it there's there's a further stage to this. So you're constantly looking in a business like that at all, well, what's our burn rate? What's our I guess cash deadline before we hit zero and will we achieve profitability before that date?

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, definitely for sure. I think definitely makes sense to always think and plan five, ten steps ahead as well, before it the cash flow hits zero as well, which is often something that needs that shouldn't be overlooked as well. so I wanna explore the other side of things because you also mentioned that you have successfully helped founders generate significant growth in profits as well. What would you say in terms of strategies have worked out really well to make this possible?

Tom Simic: Yeah, and probably the easiest one, which most people can do themselves. They just don't know how to do it or what to

Carmen: Tell you.

Tom Simic: look for, is looking at the gross profit margin. And so if you're a service-based business, that's been gonna be basically your wages minus your rev sorry, your revenue minus your wages. If you're selling goods, it's generally just your revenue minus the cost of goods. And

Carmen: No.

Tom Simic: what we find in most businesses, particularly at the moment, because it's a real high inflation period, is All your suppliers are generally putting the prices up on you. And you know, wait, employees are getting pay increases. All those little one percent things are going up regularly. The clients aren't putting their prices up. Or they re ar they aren't readjusting their pricing packages. And so what's really happening is all right, like I I guess great example is I did some work for a fruit a fruit shop, fruit and vegetable market, and they used to make about six hundred thousand dollars a year. Something had happened, they didn't know what, because they'd never looked at the numbers, but all of a sudden they could not make enough to survive. And it was just a one family, husband and wife working in the business. And they couldn't figure out what had happened. And I reckon it took me five minutes to come in and say, All right, well look, the price of your strawberries has gone from two dollars to three dollars over the last two years. But you're still Just selling them for four. And so you essentially your potential profit on that has halved. You need to make sell pot like significantly more strawberries to make the same profit. You're already

Carmen: Right.

Tom Simic: a very busy store. They have a very, very high turnover. Like there was lines out the door every day, so it wasn't an issue. And you can work backwards reverse engineer that and All right, well, to get back to six hundred thousand dollars of profit from I think they were down to sixty thousand. We can reverse engineer and say, all right, well, you need to put your prices up eleven percent to get you back to the stage that you were at. And I think people get people get very much in their own heads on, no, I couldn't put the prices up, like it will it'll damage the business. Yeah, it'll push people away. We're here to c we're not here

Carmen: Mm-hmm. You'll push people away, yeah. Yeah.

Tom Simic: to, you know, compete. We're we're we're trying to provide a good service. But at the same time,

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: this this is not a large supermarket chain. This is a local market that people are knowing They're going there knowing what they're getting. They're getting the freshest and they're getting lovely customer service. They're not there because it's extremely cheap. And so what we did that's exactly what we did. Like I I think when we put it down to an individual item level, I just said to them, Hey, this price of strawberries, we're only putting up eleven percent. So from four dollars to four dollars forty five. That's it. Like these everyday people, they're they're not really gonna notice a forty five cent increase. But for you, it's the difference between your business going under because you can't pay wages and you making significant profit and being able to further increase the store and, you know, continue to build an awesome business. And it's little tweaks like that. Like i if it's pricing, it's pricing packages. It might be doing a similar thing with your staff wages and your on charge rates if that's how you do things. But it's those more than anything, it's just checking yourself and saying, all right, well. Prices have gone up the last few years. What have I done about it?

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: Yeah.

Carmen: Just wondering, we did discuss a little bit about this as well. When it comes to the the profits and increasing the prices, a lot as you mentioned, some people are a

Tom Simic: Mm-hmm.

Carmen: little bit hesitant or have reservations to increase it for the fear that it might affect the business in a negative way. What in your opinion, what do you think are the other reasons that are holding people back from Taking this action.

Tom Simic: on changing their pricing? Yeah.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, increasing the pricing because it might may mean the other customers they might

Tom Simic: Yeah. Yeah and

Carmen: not even want to afford it and so on.

Tom Simic: Yeah, well people often think that they have to compete on price.

Carmen: No.

Tom Simic: that it's sort of what we're brought up to th to, you know, if you are brought up doing any kind of business degree, often they'll say, well, you need to compete on price because that's how you win customers. And in in some industries that is right. Like if you are if you're a new large builder, for example, it might be limiting if you were to go significantly above on price. But more than anything, people underestimate how much people will pay for peace of mind and knowing thing things are going to be done right. So

Carmen: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: I th I think another example we have is a commercial cleaner that we were doing some work with and they were very much like, no, we need to compete on price or we're not going to win these jobs. so they would just go for huge amounts of jobs and do them all, but they were almost all at break even. Like they weren't making almost any money off these jobs, but it was so much so much effort And so much workload, and they had they built up like 50 staff, but they were making no profit off it. And

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: so we said to them, Hey, can you go and ask? Like we we've came up with with a deliberate mini survey and said, Can you please go to the key decision makers at all of your customers you're working

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: with? They may mainly did post construction job cleanups. So they were just dealing with

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: a handful of large builders, and they said, Can you just get them to fill out the survey that says Basically why? What are the main reasons that you use us as a service? And every

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: single one came back and said, well, you're a really nice guy to deal with. You're very punctual. Like your team is never late, which for cleaners, I don't know if you know much about cleaners, but that is a perpetual issue where cleaners don't show up or they're not on time. And everything is ev

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, the home cleaning process.

Tom Simic: Yeah. And everything's spotless. Like you guys do a ten out of ten job, you're clearly

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: the best service. And so that gave them the confidence to say, All right, well, they're not using us because we're cheap. There's lots of cheap options out there and they don't do nearly as good a job as we do. Like they use us because we have high standards. And so

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: they use it as an excuse to put the prices up about thirty percent and all of a sudden they go from break even on these jobs to thirty percent marginal on these jobs. And at the turnover they're doing that comes out to about two million dollars profit a year. Just like that. And it's having

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tom Simic: the confidence to do that. And and they don't lose any they didn't lose any customers. And I've seen that with multiple business. I've seen it with engineering business doing the same thing. Multiple accounting firms, particularly because accounting firms are really sticky, they might be charging $150 for a tax return or a thousand dollars for company financial statements, which is very cheap. And They get to a point where they're like, I'm exhausted, I'm working so hard, I'm not making any money. And

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: so we've just said, double double your prices. And

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: they do. No customer leaves. And all of a sudden they're

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: like, well, great. Now I've gone from making nothing to making a million dollars a year. I can put a great manager in. I can start improving my systems. I have the freedom to do these other things now because I'm making the profit out of this that I should be for the amount of effort being put in.

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's definitely also like a huge weight off the shoulders rather than doing the double work while not seeing the results as well. And I think that's also a very helpful and refreshing insight for any of the business founders out there who are trying to find ways how to generate profit to be able to implement such strategies as well. So, Tom, I would like to Have you reflect a little bit on your three-year journey of how Civic Financial has evolved in the three years? tell us a little bit about the beginning stages, the challenges you faced, and also the evolution of what CIMC Financial has to offer.

Tom Simic: Sure, sure. yeah, it's changed a huge amount. I I would say from the start, it almost well it be begins as just me as a consultant, basically, just trying to

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: figure out what the service looks like, what it's called. I guess it wasn't called virtual CFO at the start. It was more like, I guess I can do some management consulting, but also do some accounting and come in and help businesses in a really hands on way. And then I kind of realized like I saw went to an went to a webinar about virtual CFO and I like, that's exactly what I'm doing. I I should just c start calling it that. Because it comes across a bit more premium. particularly in Australia, Virtual CFO is not really a well known service. And so it's been our struggle since day one on, you know, just awareness of it as a service because it it is a massive need for clients, but it's how do we get it in front of people because they just don't even know what CFO stands for.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: so it's just been a constant marketing exercise. I think from my perspective, I expect it to grow a lot faster. it started as almost like a an individual consulting business and I was still trying to trying to figure out what we offered, if it could be grown or if it had to stay as just something that was just me. What do we do pricing packages? What do we what's included, what's not? and who's the right kind of customer. I think particularly early days, I took on a lot of very small businesses and found that Yeah, we can make we can get a heap of quick wins for them and we can fix up a lot of things very early, but th there's not enough going on in these very small businesses to continue to provide virtual CFO services. I I sort of found that a a few of them left, which sort of stung early days is y you know, you work hard to win these clients and then but you realise at the same time, all right, we've got you all the easy wins and now we're just charging you and that's probably all the wins we're gonna get. so working out, all right, well, who's the ideal client? I did a lot of volunteering. at a tech startup co-working space, just trying to give free advice to anyone that needed it there. And then that turned into a couple of quick wins. I basically volunteered there a day a week for six months. because I had lots of spare time at the same time, like growing this business early days.

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: but I've also like I've set quite ambitious goals and not hit them most years despite the tremendous amount of networking. I think I think what probably put me at a real disadvantage is I was working in an accounting firm and then a tech startup before starting my own thing. But I ne I never put anything online. Like I never did any sort of I never went to any networking events. I never put anything on socials.

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: I was not active on LinkedIn and I was so when I started my business, I was starting really from zero. Like almost no network and no social presence.

Carmen: Okay. Yeah.

Tom Simic: And so I went to a tremendous amount of networking events, coffee catch ups. Like I think I have two hundred and fifty coffee catch ups a year still. with

Carmen: wow. Yeah.

Tom Simic: lawyers, bankers, all sorts of complimenting businesses. And that's been incredible. Like it's it's built my network really significantly in three years. particularly because I'm in Geelong, which is a s slightly smaller city, developed quite a good name already from that. And then particularly I I've sort of had this floating goal of, you know, I I'd like to be the biggest virtual CFO firm in Australia. The results we're getting show us that this is really what businesses do need. They just don't know about it. And so with, you know, all the AI and automations, I think a lot of tax accountants are seeing the writing on the wall that their jobs are going away and this is where all the really good accountants are gonna end up because it is the fun kind of work and it's a really hands-on anyone any accountant with good relationship skills should end up in this area if they're good enough. But at the same time it's how do we get that out there? how do we expand quick enough? And we we we've sort of really committed. this basically since January I had a bit of a chat with a mentor of mine and the question came about of like, well It's all good to have this floating goal, but when are you going to achieve it? And as a result of that, we sort of set a deadline and said, All right, well, we're gonna be the biggest, but we're gonna do in three years. And so three years is a super ambitious goal to become the biggest in Australia, but it has changed all of

Carmen: Yeah, of course.

Tom Simic: our decisions. And so we're a lot more aggressive in marketing strategy, marketing spend. We've hired a an awesome business development and salesperson recently, full time. Because I realised, well,

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: working backwards from how many clients I expect to be the biggest in Australia would be and how many CFOs we need, it can't just be me doing the sales and marketing. Like it it

Carmen: Course.

Tom Simic: actually needs to we need to start growing a sales and marketing team, start expanding a lot more rapidly. And it is just it it's changed the types of decisions we make on, you know,

Carmen: No.

Tom Simic: are we gonna spend time nurturing this one small client? Well, maybe later when we've got the resources, but right now we're gonna go bit more of a mass marketing approach. you know, running seminars, webinars has worked really well for us and just trying to grow a bit more aggressively. And then on the other side of that is training these new CFOs to replicate the super high quality service that I was able to provide when it was just me. It's a bit trickier when

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: a lot of that comes down to individual skills and the owner caring so much that every client gets the gold standard treatment. How do we replicate?

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. you mentioned, of course, a little bit about how, you know, towards the the evolution, the recent stages, you started to expand your sales and marketing team because obviously you mentioned you can't run all of this on your own as well. tell us a little bit about your current operational setup, how many of you are, who is doing what, what are the unique roles and functions that everyone's fulfilling.

Tom Simic: Sure, sure. so I guess we've expanded more in the last year on full service bookkeeping as well, because it just made sense as a complimenting service. Like we were finding that a lot of clients we were getting in and the CFO wanted to make high level decisions, but the data wasn't nearly good enough. And so for us to bring the bookkeeping in-house made things a lot smoother. So we've got four CFOs all in Australia, including myself, four book really good bookkeepers in the Philippines.

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: really, really good ones. So we're super happy with them. and then we've got our sales and marketing guy. And then my wife has also recently joined us as a practice manager just to more than to help with

Carmen: Right.

Tom Simic: you know new client onboarding and training of other staff and all those

Carmen: Yeah, yeah.

Tom Simic: fun bits and pieces. So we've kind of found that it's a bit of a balance that you we tend to get one CFO and one bookkeeper can manage

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: a client group together as almost like a little pod team. And we're just trying to expand that.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, like a minute team. That that's really cool as well. You mentioned that you hired a couple of bookkeepers in the Philippines. are they I assume that they are virtual remote, virtual assistants, offshore hiring process in the Philippines. What was your experience like going through offshore hiring?

Tom Simic: Yeah. ups and downs. I I initially a couple of years ago, you know, as you do, you get approached by an agency and the agency wanted to hire someone in India. and I said to them, Hey, this is my first hire overseas. I just want someone that's really good. Like give me a very senior manager level person because I'm gonna use

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: them to train other people in the future. And there was no interview process, there was no nothing. They just basically allocated me someone.

Carmen: okay.

Tom Simic: But the person they allocated me was only about twenty, twenty-one years old. And

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: and I s and I was like, hey, this this is not a senior, senior manager level. And like, no, no, by our standards, this is senior manager. And and it was okay, but I felt really uncomfortable because he was working in an office in India where every time his camera was on, it was very hard to hear and there was 20 people behind him. And I was like,

Carmen: okay.

Tom Simic: I don't like this. So we ended that. I went and hired someone direct in the Philippines through my own job ad and I loved

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: her. She was very lovely, but this quality of work probably wasn't there. so I

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: had her for more than a year and then more recently got a h hired direct our awesome bookkeeper, Zina. She's an absolute superstar. And that's just

Carmen: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Tom Simic: changed everything. Like getting someone that's really good has just changed everything. And now like she basically runs that team. I have full, full confidence in everything she does and she every time it's time to hire someone else, she's like, yeah, I know this person. We should poach them, they're really good and she'll almost manage that process for us as well.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, that's great. So when you made the direct hire in the Philippines, it was it wasn't through an agency, it was you how did you find the people there?

Tom Simic: Yeah, no, it was it was direct. we also tried using

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: TOA Global but found

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: around Christmas and

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: found that they overpromised, under delivered and put

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: some pretty I I guess promised that they were gonna that they had about ten really good bookkeepers for us. And then the ones that they got us to interview were very low standard and I was like, All right, well this is shaking the confidence quite a lot.

Carmen: Course.

Tom Simic: So I hired direct on online jobs dot ph which is a pl Yeah,

Carmen: okay. Yeah, sort of that.

Tom Simic: which is a platform I'd used in the past, and had some success with. And more recently my senior bookkeeper had advised that we just hire on LinkedIn, through LinkedIn jobs, but set the area to Philippines, which is we got where

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: we got our most recent one from and she's been incredible as well. So now that we've got this really high standard for the bookkeeping, we've got an awesome team. I

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: think they're doing a really good job of like that that that part of the business just flows and there's no issues with it. The clients are super, super happy. Like the feedback

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: we get from clients, we get these lovely messages all the time that is like, Hey, thank you so much. This is incredible. Like I can finally relax on my holiday for the first time in years. Like I I'm

Carmen: Where's

Tom Simic: so appreciative of your team. Like it's incredible getting

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: feedback feedback like that. So we know that we're very happy with that part of the business.

Carmen: Course, yeah. No, I mean I can definitely see that you've there's definitely a lot of trial, you know, and experimentation in terms of where to look for talent, where to find someone you can actually trust as well. And yeah, I'd actually be curious to know a little bit more about the process you mentioned about you were hiring someone in India, but you didn't get the chance to meet or speak with the person. So so how does that work? You were speaking with the agency and they just presented you with someone and then you how does that work? Okay. Okay.

Tom Simic: Yeah, yeah, they just Yeah, I just told them what I wanted and they basically just said, Yep, we've got the perfect person.

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: and then and then more or less just had them start. And I was like,

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: I'm not sure if I like this process. There was no yeah, they basically had someone ready to go and said that they met

Carmen: Course. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: all the criteria, but I don't think they did at all.

Carmen: Ja

Tom Simic: Yeah, it was a bit of it was a bit of a funny process. It it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

Carmen: Okay, for sure.

Tom Simic: both for both for using India and for using agencies. I was a bit like, there's there's

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: definitely pros to using an agency. and I do recommend that for most people. but now

Carmen: Mm. Of course.

Tom Simic: that we've had a lot of luck going direct, I'm sort of like, okay, well I'm I'm pretty happy with my team.

Carmen: Of course. Of course, of course. Was that the only agency that you tried or have you also tried other working with other remote staffing agencies?

Tom Simic: just just the the TOA global one. that

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: that that that was a different one. That was only around Christmas last year, just gone.

Carmen: Okay. That makes sense as well.

Tom Simic: Yeah, yeah. And 'cause but they specifically I don't know if you know them, but they specifically do like accounting hires. And they they'd be the big they'd

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: they'd be the biggest one in Australia.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: they'd be the biggest one in Australia that does that. so they're

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: quite well known. Most of the accounting firms I know here. have used them at some point. Some had good things

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: to say, some not so much.

Carmen: Course.

Tom Simic: Yeah, yeah.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. Of course. I mean, at the end of the day, when it comes to hiring remotely, it is really about finding someone you can really build that trust with as well, who you can really be have full transparency and good communication, and also have the chance to be able to meet and speak with them, get an intuition, get a feel, and that of course plays a huge part as well. And you know, relationships are definitely everything as well. But I'm really glad that you're able to Find a team that you're really happy with and that your clients are happy with, and that's really the end goal, isn't it? so having looking

Tom Simic: Mm. Let's see.

Carmen: at that, in terms of like your team, do you have any current, I would say, challenges where you're like, okay, in terms of a capacity, if I could delegate some tasks to someone, what would that role be?

Tom Simic: potentially and it's not one that I thought a r about much, but potentially training.

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: the CFO training, which is a r which is a tricky, tricky one to be able to delegate. Like it's it's something that's come up more recently as we've had two new CFO hires in the last four months. is all right, well, every CFO, there is no degree, there is no training course for becoming a CFO. Everybody has their own individual experiences with 10 different businesses and then just jumps across and starts doing CFO work. And

Carmen: Hmm.

Tom Simic: you either work your way up internally or maybe you've come from public practice. But it's a real

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: mix of experiences that everyone has. And so it's all right, how do we bring them all into one then say this is how we need our service delivered? And these are the things you should know that you can raise in client meetings as potential issues because they may or may not be across those things. like I've done a tremendous amount of study and even person personal development after starting the business on here's what to offer. He's had to make it a really good client experience. He's had a recap with client what the savings have been, but other people haven't done that. And so the training has all of a sudden become a really big part of it, particularly as we want to grow really quickly. that that that and the sales and marketing, which is our perpetual nightmare that we just haven't got right. Like we've spent a tremendous amount

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: on sales and marketing and we just cannot get it right. even like the social media stuff, it's like, is it worth it? Is it not worth it? We've spent a lot on ads. but the trouble is we're such

Carmen: Okay.

Tom Simic: a trust-based and and a high ticket trust-based item. that it's really hard to sell people on this service just from an online ad that they're gonna click see at once.

Carmen: Yeah, 100%. this is quite interesting that you mentioned it. actually, I've, you know, also at Cherry Assistance, we've worked with clients and one of their biggest struggle, of course, is of course, you know, they do such an amazing job at what they deliver, but of course, there's a huge one element that's often overlooked, which is of course the the marketing piece, really getting themselves, bringing in the visibility and trying to find strategic ways to strategically plan run the campaigns while being very cost efficient as well, rather than spending lots and lots of revenue and not seeing the leads coming in as well. That's definitely

Tom Simic: Mm.

Carmen: a challenge too. So just wanted to acknowledge that.

Tom Simic: Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. It's it's just something we we've tried so many different things. advi

Carmen: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Tom Simic: advice I got yesterday was actually to start a podcast. And I was like, okay. May maybe maybe may Yeah.

Carmen: okay. Really? Well, here we are. Here we are. And maybe hopefully this would also be a chance for you to you know create a bit of exposure as well. But podcast is definitely a lot of fun. It's why we're talking here.

Tom Simic: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is good practice.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. Well I'm glad that we're able to jump on this chat as well. Okay, well Tom, just like a final question. I'd like to ask every single one of the guests coming onto our podcast if there was one or maybe a couple takeaways that you could pass on to people considering starting a business, aspiring entrepreneurs, what would it be?

Tom Simic: Yeah, I I'm a really big advocate for making yourself a magnet for luck. And

Carmen: Yeah.

Tom Simic: l but what I mean by that is do as many things as you can. Get in front of as many people as you can. there's no point sitting there and expecting work to come to you or expecting opportunities to come to you. because I basically say yes to everything. And I guess two levels to that. One is saying yes to things. But the level above that is asking for opportunities. And a huge amount of people don't realize that if you just ask for an opportunity, people will very often just say, Yeah, sure. Like I think this time last year, I was speaking to a professor, and he was telling me that he's taking a group of students over to the NBA in Las Vegas. And I was like, that's awesome. I'm a massive NBA fan. Can I come? Like, I'm not even

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: studying at this point. I literally had just bumped into this guy and he's like. Yeah, sure if you want. And so as a result of that, like three weeks later I was flying over to Las Vegas and got to meet all these NBA players and NBA coaches and I was like, This is an awesome experience that most people wouldn't think that you can just ask if you can do these things.

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Tom Simic: and it's worked really well in business as well. It's like ask for the work, ask for the collaborations and the partnerships. People will say yes most of the time, but it's just b not being afraid to ask.

Carmen: Yeah, of course. Being proactive as well is definitely key because you never know what doors may open, what kind of paths it'll lead they will lead as well, which is also about taking that leap of faith to just put yourself out there as well.

Tom Simic: Mm, a hundred percent.

Carmen: Yeah. Great. Well, Tom, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with the audience and the listeners out there about what you've been building and your journey from the financial accounting all the way to leading CIMI financial. Definitely sounds like very exciting challenges and adventures ahead as well. And I definitely truly wish you all the success and the best of luck. in what's to come as well. So thank you so much again and be sure to stay tuned for the next episode of Behind the Founders.

Tom Simic: Thanks, Calvin. I really appreciate you.