Enabling Remote Work with Chad Davis | E027

The phases of and scaling remote work.

In the 27th episode of Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host of the podcast Fintech Impact, welcomes Chad Davis of LiveCA, an all-remote accounting firm. They discuss the phases of workflow development LiveCA has used to get where they are, tips for transitioning to and improving remote work, and more. 

Episode Highlights: 

● LiveCA is an accounting firm that has always had a remote team. 

● The CPA code of conduct stipulates that they had to have a physical office, so they worked with a lawyer to use their address for the firm and to work with CPA Canada to change that requirement. 

● When they started, they had no idea how to manage remote work and had no established project management platform or workflows. 

● One of their guiding philosophies was that they didn’t consider the cost of an app to enable their remote work, they simply tried anything they thought would work. 

● They eventually needed to establish frameworks and processes so that the tools they were using were maintained and stayed useful. 

● People are the weak link in cybersecurity, so educating people on company security measures is a big part of employee onboarding, and everybody uses LastPass. 

● Your biggest signals when your team is remote is happiness of your employees and happiness of your customers. 

● It’s okay to change systems and processes when you realize they’re no longer working. 

● Having everything documented is crucial for remote work so anyone who needs information can access it. 

● The next phase of development for LiveCA was understanding how to function using asynchronous communication, which can be a difficult transition when you’re used to everyone working at the same time and being in the same meetings. 

● Messaging people on Slack constantly can actually be detrimental to their workflow by splitting focus. 

● Ultimately, people want to be able to have control over their own lives. 

● You have to decide who has decision-making power about pricing, quality and scope of work, etc. 

● Training teams has a huge positive effect on a company versus individual training. 

● If you think you know how your employees feel, you should still ask them. 

● If your company stays rigid and does not evolve, you are doing a disservice to your clients. 

● LiveCA works with clients who have about $1 million, or a year’s worth of cash to work with, because it’s those companies who take their finances seriously and want the service that LiveCA provides. 

● Building a good corporate culture starts with hiring and onboarding. 

3 Key Points 

1. The cost of failure to try software and online apps is extremely minimal. 

2. Remote work does require technology, but it’s more about corporate culture. 

3. Asking your employees and customers for feedback with an open mind to find problems before they get too big. 

Tweetable Quotes: 

● “Part of trying things was meeting customers that were also wanting to try things with their accounting firm.” –Chad Davis 

● “The way you approach security is deeply rooted in the way you approach your own life & your own securities. So for us, we're well aware of phishing & trends, we try to keep up on news & we read a lot. Just being aware stops you from clicking on weird links.” –Chad Davis 

● “Rigidity kills innovation.” –Chad Davis 

Resources Mentioned: 

● Website – Jason Pereira’s Website 

● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook 

● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn 

● LiveCA Website – https://www.liveca.ca/ 

● The E Myth 

● The Checklist Manifesto 

● Trillion Dollar Coach 

Full Transcript:

Producer: Welcome to the Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners Podcast. You will hear about industry insights with award-winning financial planner, and entrepreneur, Jason Pereira. Through the interviews with different experts, with their stories and advice, you will learn how you can navigate the challenges of being an entrepreneur, plan for success, and make the most of your business and life. And now your host, Jason Pereira. 

Jason Pereira: Hello, and welcome to Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners. Today's show, I have Chad Davis of LiveCA. I brought Chad on the show because many companies are currently dealing with the stresses of figuring out how to adopt a remote work environment. And Chad and his company have literally done remote work since inception. I thought who better to bring on to discuss the stages, and how to adapt to the changing needs of a business, and how to enable remote work within that business? And with that, here's my interview with Chad. Morning Chad. 

Chad Davis: Morning Jason. 

Jason Pereira: How are you doing? 

Chad Davis: Very good. It's good to chat with you again. 

Jason Pereira: Good. So, Chad, thanks for coming on. This is not a financial planning conversation, but more so, this is of key importance to business owners at this time and place in history right now. And we're basically going to address the subject of remote work. Now, there's a lot of companies scrambling out there to try to understand how they enable the remote workforce, because they've never done so before, or maybe they've done a couple tools, but not the entire thing. And I thought it best to bring you on given that your background is that your firm's always been virtual, essentially, and always been remote. 

Jason Pereira: And not only that, but you have, as you've grown, faced a number of different challenges that have made you reframe and evolve the process. So, I thought that your journey was absolutely invaluable to share it with business owners who are now being forced to go through similar journeys. So, thanks for taking the time to do that first off. 

Chad Davis: Yeah. Thanks for having me. And to caveat that one, I really like to share our experience because by no means have we figured anything out, but we've figured out what worked for us at different intervals, and then learn from it, and then changed, and then learn from it again. And we're still in this learning phase right now. So, yeah, by no means- 

Jason Pereira: That's called life, Chad. That's called life. 

Chad Davis: That's right. 

Jason Pereira: The second you stop learning is the second you start dying. 

Chad Davis: There you go. 

Jason Pereira: Either as a business or as an individual, whatever you want to look at. So, anyway, so let's get started. So, tell us first and foremost about who you are and your company. 

Chad Davis: Sure, so, LiveCA is the company ... You had my co-founder and business partner there, Josh Zweig on your show a little while ago. Thanks for having him on. We are a CPA firm that started out as being remote first back in 2013 with nothing more than the goal of just being able to work from home and travel a little bit. It's changed over the years into a company where accountants that wanted to try this lifestyle could join us. And now, we get to work with some really interesting companies, with some really great employees, and team members. And we're trying to deliver services in a way that are calm, and enjoyable for both employees, and for the people we're working for, our customers. And it's harder said than done. So, that's what, hopefully, we can talk about today. 

Jason Pereira: Absolutely. So, a couple of things we want to get started with. You've given me quite the guidance document to go through, and we're going to make sure we hit on some of the more salient points. So, before we get started, there's a couple of things you said that are caveats that you wanted to hit upon. And there's one in particular that popped out to me, and that's the regulation aspect. As a CPA firm, you're regulated, and when this first started that must've been an obstacle. Can you speak to that? And the reason I'm going to say that is because, especially, in my industry, one of the big push backs I get is, "Well, I don't think the regulators would accept this, or we have regulation." Or whatever it is. Talk to me about how you dealt with those hurdles when you set off on this journey. 

Chad Davis: So, CPA Canada, and CPA Ontario were our original governing bodies. And they oversee all of the code of conducts, or just regulations and rules around operating as a CPA firm. Deep in the code of conduct was a statement that said, "You must have a physical office in order to have a CPA firm." So, we knew that going in that if we didn't have a physical office, not even a placard, almost, we would have a hard time. So, we used a lawyer's office to have a physical address, and went to CPA Canada, and said, "This is how we'd like to operate. This is how we think firms would like to operate in the future. Would you like to work with us, and help change these rules?" Fast forward, three years later, many meetings with Josh and the regulators, lots of emails back and forth. And we're the first virtual approved, and regulated CPA firm in Canada. And that was back roughly in 2015-ish, '15, '16. 

Jason Pereira: I mean, I see the same obstacles in my industry because there are those similar provisions, which when you think about that, regulation gets stale if you don't update it. And I could definitely track that up as currently being stale. So, let's start off by talking about your journey in general. So, you started off, you guys wanted to travel, and work with CPAs, and you started a company. Tell me about how you enabled early work in the early days. 

Chad Davis: So, how we enabled work was our value prop to accountants was let's use some online tools. You can work from home, and let's see where this thing takes us. So, we were incredibly small. I think for the first year there was maybe five employees or so. And we were absolutely uneducated when it came to running a firm, structuring work, figuring out what tools to use. And that was awesome because we got to make lots of mistakes, but we also got to try things. And part of trying things was meeting customers that were also wanting to try things with their accounting firms, ergo meeting you. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. Maybe. I think I came [crosstalk 00:05:51]- 

Chad Davis: Do you remember- 

Jason Pereira: ... Around stage one, stage two. I can't remember if you guys were at four, or at eight people by the time I contacted you. 

Chad Davis: Yeah, that's right. Do you remember the year that we started working together? 

Jason Pereira: Whenever your transition to Xero. So, I got to look that up. But yeah, it was a while back. 

Chad Davis: Yeah, that's funny. So, I mean, how we enabled work was we had like Google apps. We had the Slack predecessors like Flowdock. We had no server. So, we used things like ShareFile back in the day. We had no real project management system other than the one that came with Xero called Xero Practice Manager. But we were using Asana because it also allowed us to do stuff online. You know what I mean? So, just putting things together that we thought would work, all while figuring out how to hire, how to make people happy with their services. And the mistakes that we made were humongous. 

Chad Davis: We took on clients that we clearly under-priced. We did more work than made it profitable. And we were just lucky that people said, "Yes, let's try this out with you in the early days." So, yeah. Complete mess. 

Jason Pereira: But in fairness, that's every new business, right? 

Chad Davis: That's true. 

Jason Pereira: You don't know how to price, you don't know how to do things. Like you have the artist's dilemma. Right? It's just because you're a good artist doesn't mean you're a good salesperson. Most of them die starving. And you have to learn the business of art, and that applies to every enterprise. Right? You knew the practice of accounting, you just didn't know how to run a business of accounting. And I too found myself in that similar situation early on in my career. It's like, "Oh boy, I actually don't know how to run a business doing this. This is crazy." 

Jason Pereira: And let's go back to your solutions a year back because you mentioned a bunch of very simple off the shelf ones. Back then, there wasn't a lot of remote work enablement. There was a lot of online cloud tools coming out, but not a lot of remote work, any of them like there is now. So, there's a lot more interconnection between things, and integrations than there were before making it easier. So, if anything, people starting now are in a much stronger position than those of us back then when we were starting. Now, one of the things I want to hit upon here is you'd mentioned about like four or five different vendors. How much did it cost you per person to just implement one of these solutions? 

Chad Davis: It didn't matter. And we probably didn't care. We would pick an app because it made sense, and we wanted to try it. And I think that's one of the philosophies that guided us through even until today. Now, we're at 70 people. So, when you want to have a per user cost, there's a true math calculation that you have to go through along with switching costs, and all the other intangibles that go along with putting something in at a bigger size. But in the beginning, I don't think we ever said no to an app because it was expensive. In fact, I remember this one- 

Jason Pereira: That's because they are expensive. I mean, that's the point I'm getting at is like you can try any of these things for less than probably 50 bucks per month. Like peanuts, right? So, the cost of failure on a software in the consumer world, it's borderline non-existent. Some of these [inaudible 00:08:43] can give you like 90-day trials. 

Chad Davis: Yeah. I remember one time we were trying to get into dashboarding, and our own firm's dashboarding, and clients' dashboarding. And this was back in 2014 or so. And there was lots of good tools out there, but to get things the way you wanted to get them, you literally had to be a programmer. And we had this company called Grow, and I don't know if they're still around, but hopefully, they are. But they were around ... This was back then, it was like $500 a month U.S., and we could have a couple boards or something like that. And we carried that app for probably a year and a half, two years, but we never used it. It just kept coming up because we wanted to see like our job closure rates, and open numbers of jobs. Because our project management system couldn't tell us that really easily. 

Chad Davis: Then we just realized, "Is this worth this much money?" And we of course said no, and then switched off. And then, eventually, switched off that system. So, it's really funny when you find your breaking points. 

Jason Pereira: Well, and I think there's a nugget of advice there that all too often people screw up in the early days is, "Hey, this looks really cool. Let's get this." But if you're not ready to dedicate the time to implement properly, immediately, it's a waste of money, right? I've known people that do that with $30,000 softwares and a year later, it comes up for renewal, it's just like, "Oh wow, we never even started the onboarding process on this." But the good thing is that the vast majority of these things it's peanuts. So, basically, you started off small. You're young scrappy, experimental, true believers, basically, figuring this stuff out. When did the first framework start to feel pressure, and need to change? When was the second stage? What was the leading up to that? 

Chad Davis: Yeah, so that was the first stage, like chicken with head cut off stage. The second stage was similar in nature, but it changed with the number of employees. So, I remember first couple years where we started realizing that, "Okay, now, we have people involved. We need to have procedures. And the procedures need to be somewhat tight because now we're not managing people, we're guiding people." So, when it comes to that, maybe five to 20 people, the framework started. But let me tell you, just because they started didn't mean they were any good. They were good for us at the time because they were better than what we had before. 

Chad Davis: I think that's the theme that we've learned so much over the years is that what you're building is what you're building for now, and in the near future. Who could have ever seen COVID and its related effects on the industries, and the economies the way it has? No amount of ... I mean, having a certain framework- 

Jason Pereira: [crosstalk 00:11:17] other than that. No one. 

Chad Davis: Yeah, exactly. So, it's like for this framework stuff, we started. We started putting procedures in place. We tried using different tools. I mean, we stuck with ... I think this is about the time when we introduced our knowledge gathering tool, or it's called Guru. And Guru is interesting because it sits as a Chrome extension or as a web app, but it allows you to have these cards. And the cards are for a topic that can be linked to each other. But the problem is if you're not constantly validating them, and keeping them up-to-date, it can be really tough to rely on them. And that's why it's good today, and we're still using it. 

Chad Davis: But like any piece of information or knowledge base, you got to have dedicated people that are working on it. And for us, we chose the culture side of things where people would have a culture of updating this if something new came. So, while we have lots of work to do in that one, it started really early, which was cool. But we also introduced things like new roles. So, in that second stage, we realized we needed an onboarder. We realized we need someone on the tech team. We realized we needed a assistant CPA. We call them associates. We just realized we needed a lot more support. So, that framework building is something that we went through. Every company goes through when they're first starting to proceduralize things. And we just learned the hard way about where we stood on things like security, and hiring policies, and stuff like that. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah, I mean, it's a natural succession, right? You get to a certain point where you can't just turn to the two or three people next to you to divide up labor. You have to start actually designing actual job descriptions, and specializing in tasks, and raising your game in that respect. So, anyone who's basically reached that stage knows what that's like. You mentioned security. Let's actually stop there for a second. So, tell me about the struggles, and results there, because that's always a big concern for anyone any time the internet's involved, even though, I would argue that your office isn't exactly the most secure thing in the world, either. It's just a couple of doors to get to the files isn't exactly security. 

Chad Davis: Yeah, this is interesting. Because I think the way that you approach security is deeply rooted in the way that you approach your own life, and your own securities. So, for us, we are well aware of phishing. We're well aware of trends. We try to keep up on news, and we read a lot about this. So, we're aware. And just being aware stops you from clicking on weird links, which are typically the largest cause of a lot of security issues. So, we started with education. And you might think like, "Why not start with a tech solution?" Well, because people are the weakest links in security. So, you must educate. 

Jason Pereira: Every time. 

Chad Davis: So, that education is part of our onboarding. It's part of our core approach to security. So, when it comes to the actual tech solutions, we start with a password manager. And every single person here uses one pass for all their personal, and work related items. When it comes to how secure is that entry-level or that entry passphrase, it's got to be really long. It's got to be many words and phrases, and really hard to crack. We also- 

Jason Pereira: Which is one great thing that those password managers do. And I use LastPass, there's another one called Dashlane's worth looking at. And the great thing about that is that they also don't only store your passwords, and share your passwords, but they also generate the super complex 20 digit random sequence. Right? So, yeah, I never worry about anyone guessing my password. 

Chad Davis: Yeah. I worry that people default to their default passwords when it's hard to generate it, or you're in a rush. So, that's why it's really cool in one password to be able to look at an overall audit of reused passwords, and being able to go to people and ask them to change things, remove access. We have a lot of sensitive information, and a lot of different tools. And what's really great is that we segregate the access by volt, by customer. So, if someone's working with Jason, only the people that work with Jason have access to Jason's stuff. And by virtue of that, all the passwords are masked. So, they couldn't copy them if they wanted to, they could just click and access. And for us, that's great. We know there's possible issues out there, but not for the standard user, which you might clarify essence. And we're happy with that level of access control. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, a big supporter of the company. Now, I'm also going to go back before we move on to the next stage to talk about organizations recommend two books. Two books I recommend to entrepreneurs all the time, one is the E Myth, which is all about systemizing processes in your business. The other one is Checklist Manifesto, which is all about building effective checklists to reduce cognitive burden on decisions, and to basically systemize processes. And if you're looking for a tool to do that, there's a great tool to get started with called Process Street, which lets you build these checklists, and also automate them, which is [inaudible 00:16:12]. So, as you continued to grow, we entered what you call stage three, or outgrowing frameworks. So, tell me when that happened, what happened, and how you address those issues. 

Chad Davis: Yeah. I mean, your biggest signals when you're remote are happiness of your team members, and the happiness of your customers. Maybe that doesn't change over the course of your life, but if you really listen to it, people can tell you a lot about what's wrong. And for us, three, four, five years into it, what we started noticing were that the people that were with us for a few years maybe weren't as happy as they were when they joined, or maybe they weren't the right people for the type of company we were building that was growing quite fast. So, combination of those two issues caused a lot of friction, and a lot of turnover during those years. And when you look back at it, you realize, hmm, maybe the structure of the role that we built in the initial framework isn't sustainable. 

Chad Davis: It was sustainable for the time, but it's not sustainable now that that initial issue was resolved. So, for us, that happened in between like 20 and 40 people. During this time, something really important happened. We introduced the HR role, right? Having one person dedicated to HR versus it being one of the partners. When we recreated the work, I remember there was this one time when we came back from one of the retreats, we realized that our manager role who oversees a relationship, it needed to be cut down by almost 50% of the responsibilities in order for it to be enjoyable by the CPAs. 

Chad Davis: It also helped us have other people that had a part of the relationship as well. So, just a lot of these things that you start with it's okay to change. And that third stage of us redesigning these frameworks, and listening, and making these framework changes, ultimately, started working. Now, it wasn't perfect because nothing ever is, but I think in any remote company, people want to see that things are changing for the better. And as someone who's in charge of the remote management, and responsibility aspects of a company, whoever that is in your company, you've got to listen, right? You've got to pay attention. So, for this, we also realized that our job management system was completely outdated, and we needed to change absolutely everything about the way we worked. 

Chad Davis: And one of the biggest complaints we saw in the remote workforce revolution here was that if something wasn't written down, and easily accessible, it was like it never happened. And being able to see other people's emails when it relates to a customer was really important. So, some people listening might say, "Yes, that's why we use this CRM. Or this is why we use this email tool or these access tools." [crosstalk 00:18:59]- 

Jason Pereira: [crosstalk 00:18:59] carbon copy everybody, and cause a disaster in your inbox. 

Chad Davis: That's right. 

Jason Pereira: By the way, that's not scalable [crosstalk 00:19:03]- 

Chad Davis: Yeah, or use like Zapier to put something in if there's like a filter or something. There's all kinds of ways to get around it. But there was this one company that as an accountant, you either love it or hate it. It's called Karbon K-A-R-B-O-N. And what they did was they said, "Look, let's have threads and comments on emails, let's triage your email like a hospital triage that's paged patients that come in. Let's let you assign emails to different pieces of work, let you assign it to different contacts." And for us, that was game changing because we could now spread information across every piece of work. And while you think that might be a little overkill, it's really important because you probably learn one of the biggest lessons in our growth, which was everything needs to be written down and accessible if you're working on a customer. 

Chad Davis: So, from that perspective, Karbon was great, but it wasn't a quick implementation. And this is where realizing what your limitations are is really important. So, we had one woman, her name was [Balkis 00:20:02], and she was our operations manager. So, she took many months, did a lot of planning, did the migration. And I think if anybody did this part-time, it would have been really hard. But she dove in, really owned the process, and then did the pre, during, and post support for the team. So, I would say if you are going to introduce major changes to your workflows, have someone ultimately responsible that you trust, is good at their jobs, and is a really good communicator, and the chances of it working are really high. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. I mean, it's a major challenge I think anyone will admit to onboard new software. And largely it's because of a couple of I think common errors. One is you put too much burden on the end user. There's a certain amount that has to be put on them. And there's certain amounts that can be simplified away or automated away. And I found in my practice, the more I can take away the need to remember to do five steps, and make it one, the higher the success rate. The second piece is training. A lot of people will just sit there, smile, or a nod during the presentation, and be like, "Okay, I got that." But until they're in a live fire environment, they're using it day in, day out, they don't know that they have to understand it. Right? 

Jason Pereira: And they don't become fluent with it unless they have firsthand experience. So, wherever possible, I would always recommend over the shoulder training or remote screen training to basically let them guide the entire process. So, show me how you do this, show me how you do that. And they can learn in live function as opposed to just watching a slide deck or a video. Although, that said, one of the good things about the world we live in today is there's lots of support videos on everything that exists, even stuff not put up by the company, just on random YouTube channels. So, there's no shortage of resources that exist these days. 

Chad Davis: How, do you feel about your workflow? How did you change over the years? And what are you using now? 

Jason Pereira: Well, you're hitting me at a very particular point in time. I spent the last couple of years trying to push certain partners to make certain integrations, and I finally gave up. So, as per our previous discussion, I've mapped out like my master data connection, like workflow, and that is going to be completely overhauled next year or so. So, to date, we have still a workflow that still worked for the firm when it was ... We're still at stage two, let's call it, where we have dedicated people. We have dedicated policies. There's not a lot of digital oversight. There's not a lot of digital integration to ease this, and automate a lot of it. And I think that what we're really going to see ... If you ask me this question two years, you're going to see a much different company. 

Jason Pereira: And then, you ask it again, two years later, you'll probably see a much different company again, but that's part of the entire journey. So, to date, it's been simplification, ownership of certain tasks, and specialization. So, who's in charge of what? How do we make this as simple as possible to get it done? And who's in charge of making sure that deadline happens? And there's just a culture of accountability around having everything ready for the client well in advance or when it's due. 

Chad Davis: What's one tool that you can't wait to get rid of? 

Jason Pereira: Oh God, they're all in my industry though. And see, I host another podcast that basically talks about Fintech. So, I don't want to start bad mouthing possible guests, but we can talk off here. Yeah. So, people can guess randomly what that is. All right, so, let me turn the questions back on you now, all right? So, the next stage you called asynchronous communication. So, essentially, stage four. Your employees expand somewhere between 40 and 60. What happened there that shook things up again? And how did you solve that? 

Chad Davis: People wanted to do work. They wanted to be independent. And this is where you think about like, "What is your actual mission in your company?" And we didn't have a really great one. And it took a long time to figure it out. A lot of co-creation with the rest of the team, lots of interviews, lots of figuring out what we're all here for. And we ended up on something along the lines of a great place ... It's very long. I probably could read it if you asked me to go grab it. But at the end of the day, it's about being a great place to work that has enough buffer to not worry if someone is to leave or not, which means that we can have backup employees that are here in the wings learning and waiting. That means that we've got something that's valuable to customers. 

Chad Davis: And it's not just standard stuff we've been doing for so many years, and people want control over their lives. And that's really important, but it's really hard if you're used to making people work at the same times, being in the same rooms, on the same calls. And what we realized is like we had a culture that was not conducive to people having control over their lives. So, what happened in this stage was we were very direct around what asynchronous communication meant to us. So, it meant that anything related to a customer, or a job, or a task that related to LiveCA that wasn't urgent, it goes in that Karbon system. It's a note. It's a flag. It's a loom video explaining where you're coming from, and posting it into a note, so that some people can watch it or read it when it's convenient for them. 

Chad Davis: What's really cool is this is a movement that is taking shape, and a lot of companies are embracing it. And there's different stages of it. I don't know where we're at with it in complete honesty. I know we have work to do on it, but I also realize how important it is because if you're getting constantly dinged in Slack, or something, or Teams, your mind is not on what it was before. And there's so many studies around how bad that is for you, and for work, and for concentration, and for focused work. And we can really see the difference. So, during this one, we had a new culture emerge where people were respectful. And I was probably one of the worst offenders. 

Chad Davis: How easy it is for somebody who's been there the longest next to Josh, and a couple other early employees to just message you on Slack whenever they need something. I started realizing that that was disrespectful. And it was going against everything we're trying to build. And I stopped it. And I still catch myself sometimes realizing that I shouldn't be Slacking people for stuff that could go in a note, or a job. And it helps. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. So, I mean, you prioritize the communication channels around the priority of the messaging, which makes sense. I will remind people that you can silence Slack on occasion if you, especially, want to focus on something. But yeah, you [inaudible 00:26:13] through. It's funny because we had a similar journey in our own company at an early stage where there was one partner in particular who'll remain nameless, but not bad, but their way of dealing with things was to just blitz things at certain times. Right? But that was terrible for everybody else because you just get like 15 messages in your inbox, simultaneously, from the same person. And you'd just be like, "Come on. You just literally ruined my day. You just dumped a ton of work on someone's desk." 

Jason Pereira: And that just never makes people feel good. And it was a discussion again around ... And then that person also had a propensity for booking things same day in Salesforce, which is just never a good thing to think that, "Okay, this is my day to get this stuff done." And then refreshing, and then like, "Where did this all come from?" So, focusing around what the respectful channel was, and the methodology for it. And does this have to be in there today? Can it be [inaudible 00:27:05] tomorrow? That did relieve a lot of interpersonal aggravation that was going on. And I think everybody was the better for it. But you're right, it's just because we can ping each other constantly doesn't mean we should ping each other constantly. And we should be, again, respectful of the context for what that is. 

Jason Pereira: So, we have a similar setup. If it's something that has to be addressed today or relatively urgently it's Slack. If it's urgent [inaudible 00:27:30] respond to it Slack, it's a text. And if it can wait, it goes in Salesforce, and that's that. So, it doesn't take much. You just need two or three channels to route, you know? And so, people know where the priorities are. 

Chad Davis: Listening back to that, it's just so clear that to get everybody on the same page, everything revolves around the mission. An asynchronous communication when your mission is calmness, and a great place to work is a great link. But if you don't have a mission that's aligned with this, you're pretty much telling people to work a certain way, and the motivation might lack. 

Jason Pereira: And honestly, this is a big mental hurdle for a lot of people right now because the concept of asynchronous communication and work is something that is foreign to most businesses, right? Everybody shows up from 9:00 to 5:00, they work in the same place. They get stuff done around the same time. That's the traditional model, right? Now, basically, I put out something that needs to be done. My staff member may choose to work on that at 11:30 at night, and as long as that doesn't basically hinder everybody else's workflow. That's fine. But a lot of businesses are having difficulty letting go to that degree. I just had a conversation with my best friends the other day about how his boss is insisting on them all coming in two or three days a week now because he likes to see them in the office. 

Jason Pereira: And it's like, frankly, he can do his job 99% of the time outside of the office. There's no need for that. And secondly, especially, with everything going on with COVID right now, access to childcare is a nonstarter for many people. And it's creating family issues. But I mean, [inaudible 00:28:58] you're literally the mindset that you need to see people in the office to make sure they're working, you've got two problems. You got either a people problem where you know you can't trust them to do work. In which case, that's not something fixable, unless you get rid of them, or you have an issue with trust system, which is if you give out work and don't have some mechanism for monitoring the fact that it gets done, or an expectation for when it gets done, and a confirmation, then you're just putting it out there in the ether and wishing for the best. That's not a business with a process. 

Jason Pereira: That's a business that just works on putting out fires nonstop. So, clearly, I mean, a lot of what you talked about here, previous to this, was a lot about processes of workflows or whatever. You've already built those in. So, you have that level of trust. If someone's traveling to ... I'll pick on Josh. One time, I talked to him and he was in Tel Aviv. It's like, that's a big time shifting difference. Right? But he can get his job done. And does it really matter what time of day he gets it done? 

Chad Davis: Sometimes. When Josh and I are on sales, and it's not something where he can say, "You know what? Let's have that call at 10:00 PM at night." That doesn't really make sense. 

Jason Pereira: So, you're right. So, there's definitely ones that you have to respond to the client's need, but if it's independent work, then who cares? 

Chad Davis: Yeah, look, you're bringing a good bridge into the next phase, which is around, so, you have these procedures, things must be working. You must trust people. That's not what happened. So, for us, going into this next phase, we brought everything back to the drawing board. And it was all based on this idea of there are friction points, and the friction points evolve naturally. So, as friction points come up for us, it was decision-making power. Who has ultimate decision-making power when it comes to things like pricing, quality of work, scope, just general advice? Who needs to be involved in this sort of thing? And what we've realized is there's a lot of bottlenecks, not because we planned for them, but because we didn't actively plan for them. 

Chad Davis: We didn't spend the time where we needed to spend the time. So, that's what my favorite part of COVID time is. It has exposed so many cracks because you're breaking things down to basics, what's needed? What do people want to pay for? And how do you do it? Not the fluff. So, that's where [crosstalk 00:31:15]- 

Jason Pereira: Yeah, all the extra bells and whistles matter less now. So- 

Chad Davis: They do. 

Jason Pereira: So, yeah, you [inaudible 00:31:20] stage five, back to the drawing board. So, you've gone back to the drawing board several times. So, you've exposed the cracks. How have you been addressing this in general? 

Chad Davis: So, one of the things that I really like is that the partner group is working a lot closer than we normally used to work. So, there's five partners in the group in areas of people operations, strategy and finance, client accounting services, marketing and branding, and then the CEO role. And we enlisted a corporate coach, gentleman by the name of Keith Hanna from StepUp Consulting in Calgary. And what was really great about Keith is that he's a team coach. He's not an individual coach. So, we read that book ... Oh shoot. I think it was Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach from Eric Schmidt. That was a great book. And it just talked about how training teams has such a great effect on a company. And we all really love that idea. And what Keith brought was this new lens around what our purpose was, what the mission was, how each of us play into these pillars of responsibilities. 

Chad Davis: And then that translated back to a lot of listening, and co-creation. So, I think that's probably the second or third time I said the word co-create because we realized like everyone here that chooses to stay as a team member, we're happy that they do this, but we also don't want to build or direct a company that's going in the wrong direction. So, one of the things that Josh has been doing, and some other of the partners, especially Chris, Dave, who are early employees, and Tyler, they're doing a lot of employee interviews, and group interviews, and getting as much information as possible about what is and isn't working. 

Chad Davis: And we thought we did this early on. Man, We talk to people, but never in a formalized, really deep way where when you start ... This is a quote from Dave McPherson our strategy and finance partner is like, "This is the first project that I've embarked on where I have no idea what the outcome is going to be." And that's pretty deep because you know it could go any different way, but just listening to some of the results that are coming in after these interviews, we realize we're moving in the right direction. But a lot has to change, fundamentally, around things like how calendars are booked in. What does free and focus time look like? What does it mean to have a framework of decision-making versus micromanagement of decision-making? 

Chad Davis: Like we're right in the middle of this project now. And he's going to be probably pulling out a lot of different strings, and then bringing it back, and working it through. But I'd say if you're in this remote work journey, and you think that you got it all figured out, you really need to ask your team, and be incredibly aware of how they feel, and then go ask customers as well, because there is definitely stuff that's wrong. And we're finding this out now with a complete open mind. And it's exciting because we get to focus on things like the cashflow planning, the government calculations, getting stuff done faster, creating variable levels of quality depending on the customer's wants and needs, right? 

Chad Davis: There's all kinds of things you can do to create more capacity, and to do more for people that paying you more or value you more. And this is a pretty interesting thing we're going through, and we're not finished, but I'm very excited about this phase. 

Jason Pereira: Oh, I mean, you're doing a gut check. You're taking a hard look in the mirror, making sure you get everybody's opinion about it, and reframing the company. So, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, here's the thing, and I expected this as much too. I'm sure many people jumped on this expecting a conversation about tons of technology. If you want that, I've done that conversation a million times over on Fintech Impact. I'll even link in the notes. I think the key takeaway from all of this is that so much of this is about two things. One, corporate culture, as I think you, basically, very much nailed that. It comes down to the people you're dealing with, and making sure that they are in line with the goals, and values of the firm, but also about the Kaizen approach of constant iteration. 

Jason Pereira: And frankly, I'm always amused by people who think they can design their business once, and then leave it in place for 30, 40 years. Yeah. That never happens. Oh, actually, sorry, does happen then they go bankrupt. So, that just doesn't work. Right? We all evolve, and business has to evolve too. And if anything, I think ... I can't remember who said it, when you really look at it, every business owner, it's not the product or service they sell that is the product or service, it's the business is the product, right? Like that's it. It's the delivery mechanism that truly enables the end sale or service to the client. And if you don't get that right, then it doesn't matter what you deliver because it's going to be terrible. It doesn't matter if you deliver, it's going to be terrible. So, there was a couple of overall messages you wanted to hit on. So, last words of advice when people are at different stages of transition. 

Chad Davis: When it comes down to it, we really love accounting, and taxes, and helping in whatever situation we can with companies. And it means that, we pretty much have a minimum of about a million dollars in revenue or about a year's worth of cash to work with somebody because we put so many people on a team. We're not a traditional account where you get an account, or a bookkeeper. It's more like you get two CPAs, and a bookkeeper, and a payroll person, and an accounts payable person, and a bunch of tech people, and some high level tax people too. 

Chad Davis: And what through that process has taught us is that companies that take money and their finances really seriously want a service like this. So, if we stick with our rigid ways, and the things that we've done in the first few years of operating, we're doing them a disservice, and we're never going to live up to their expectations. So, because we love the product and the business, as you said, we are being disrespectful if we don't change things. So, I love the idea of completely scrapping things, and trying them from new. Having customer discussions around what they value to try to change the relationship up a bit. 

Chad Davis: And to answer your question specifically around how do we want to leave this? There's this idea that rigidity kills innovation. And to me, that means when new things pop up, like new tools, it doesn't mean you have to go try them right away. 

Jason Pereira: [crosstalk 00:37:45]. 

Chad Davis: I think it's easier to do it when you're smaller. Yeah, [crosstalk 00:37:49]. You're pretty much the one person I know in this world that will try everything at least once. But for us, there is a real cost. And we still don't have a dedicated person trying these ... We don't have a Jason in our team that will go out and try these things we want to, but there is a cost, right? It's at the expense of something. You're right, we focused on the culture, which was really important. This is an interesting one. We actually stopped doing in-person retreats when travel was allowed because the extra money, we had some retreats that cost 150,000. 

Chad Davis: The reason why we stopped was because that money was better put into things like regional meetups, not forcing people that had family lives, and other commitments to leave their place to be able to come out to us. We realized that choice was really important. So, reinvesting that in other things was better for the company. And we listened to that messaging. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. No one likes to be forced to attend something because their boss says they have to, right? I can't tell you how many times that's the message, like, "Well, I got to go because I'm expected to." And actually, you hit on a key point here. So, one of the things that I think is very new to the world in general is how do you build that corporate culture in general when you're not meeting face-to-face on a daily basis? So, what are the best practices for building the team that you want when we're semi-limited in how we communicate? 

Chad Davis: For us it starts in the hiring process. So, we've done lots of presentations and stuff. And so, on our press page at liveca.ca there's some links to YouTube videos, and things like that where we've gone through like a whole hour deep dive into what we've done for hiring remotely. The Coles Notes on that one is involve many people and have an objective framework, so that you can test people in an objective way. We bring people in for two days, remotely, to see what it's like to work with them. They get to meet certain members of the team. They go through a course that we designed. And it really gives them an idea of how we think about training. How we think about our team members. How important culture is. And it gives them an opportunity to think about how they can contribute in making that culture better. After training, the onboarding piece is important. 

Chad Davis: So, Chris Frame and Brianna on the HR team, they are incredible at dealing with onboarding. And what they've learned is that, a lot of education, having buddy systems in place, having check-ins, having a robust checklist of things to do during probationary periods. It sets the tone for the culture right off the very bat. And then throughout, having discussions in group meetings, and education sessions. Every company is doing stuff like that. But I think what's special here is that everyone is willing and able to help. And if someone poses a question, it's not like, "Oh, this is my job. I need to help someone out here." 

Chad Davis: It's more like, "Oh, I really hate that this person's struggling. I want to help." And I think that's what I'm most surprised to see even after all these years is that people are here for the community, not because they love accounting. And that's what makes it really special. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. There's lots of firms to work at if you're an accountant. And finding one you love to work at, and has that team mentality is probably more rare than not, unfortunately. Especially- 

Chad Davis: A lot of turnover. 

Jason Pereira: ... If you're talking about the big ones. 

Chad Davis: Yeah. Look, there's a lot of turnover. And even now, there's a lot of messaging out around layoffs in big firms, and especially, in the auditing departments and some internal admin teams. It's the reality we live in these days that there's going to be layoffs, but knock on wood. We haven't laid off a single person. So far during COVID, we've hired eight people since March. And our goal is not to be filthy rich during this. It's to protect people's jobs, and to give them the support to be able to do the work that they can do well. And that, ultimately, turns into good, valuable work that people are willing to pay for as a customer. 

Jason Pereira: Excellent. Well, Chad, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to take us through your journey. And I'm sure there's something relatable for just about every business, given the different stages of your evolution we went through. And again, the tools are valuable. You can find tools. I'll link one of my podcasts on this. In addition to that, Google is your best friend. I need a solution for X, easy to find this stuff. You can find reviews on Capterra. But so much of it comes down to the culture, and the framework for constantly going back to the drawing board, and making the actual widget better. Where can people find you? 

Chad Davis: Our website has every piece of information you'd ever need, liveca.ca. That's L-I-V-E-C-A.C-A. And there's lots of videos, lots of examples of case studies of what we've done with other customers, and just a general form to fill out if you'd like to chat. 

Jason Pereira: Thank you for that, and those lessons. 

Chad Davis: Thanks, Jason. It was a pleasure. 

Jason Pereira: So, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Chad Davis about enabling remote work. And I hope you found that informative, and you took away a number of insights, specifically, that it really comes down to people, organization, and enabling the people that you basically employ. And with that, as always I'm Jason Pereira. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until next time, take care. 

Producer: This podcast was brought to you by Woodgate Financial. An award-winning financial planning firm catering to high net worth individuals, business owners, and their families. To learn more, go to woodgate.com. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify, or find more episodes at jasonpereira.ca. You can even ask Siri, Alexa, or Google Home to subscribe for you.