Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside personal growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of inside personal growth. Sitting here in lovely Encinitas, California. And joining us on the other side of the world is Peter Hickey. And Peter and I have known each other for many years and Peter was the prior founder of Ma U S. Software mouse software. He sold that and now he is the president and founder of Institute advisors. And he is joining us from just right outside of Sydney, you kind of have to take a boat across to get to where he is. Good day to you. Good morning to you.

Peter Hickey
Yes, good morning to you, Greg as well. Great to be on the podcast and great to see you again.

Greg Voisen
Likewise, it was always good to see you. And I appreciate you taking this time to really inform our listeners about his new book. We're going to be talking about that. The same time we're going to be talking about the Institute of advisors, which is not a new foundation that he's set up, but it's a program that we're going to discuss and that's Institute advisors.com For any of you that are currently right now, just so anxious that you got to go look, it's Institute advisors.com. The book is called The consultants consulting and advisory Guide to Success. And Peter has been doing this for a very, very long time, from both sides of the aisle, both the software side and now having a certified program for people. So I'm gonna let him know a little about you. He's the president and founder Institute advisors and organization that runs certification courses for business advisors and accountants in 10 countries around the world. Prior to the institute, Peter was the original founder of the global software and education brand mouse, and that he had built a two international consulting and advisory networks across his career. He's a best selling author and creator of a wide range of business tools. And if you actually even go up to Amazon, you'll see some of the other tools there that have been used in over 60,000 businesses around the world. He's a pioneer and SME thought leader, continually innovating and producing simplified management content methodologies and not any more software, but he used to do software as a business owner he founded successfully built his business from a one man business to a multimillion dollar concern and sold it to a multibillion dollar publisher. And he's re acquired the business seven years later and consolidated the methodologies into a SaaS platform. And again, this goes back aways because this is before he so that he's written a number of best selling books and business planning and exit and succession planning. And even in mini MBA program. If you want to look out more about him, you can find him on LinkedIn. We'll have a LinkedIn link for him. So you can find out more about him there. So look, Peter, we're really speaking to an audience today that hopefully it's individuals that are listening to this, that they're interested in furthering their career, or they're looking for something new even maybe this is the thing for them, right. They've always been people who have been involved in business, and they'd like to find some way to new to help people who are in business and help them become much more efficient and effective at running their business. So any of you out there that are listening today this podcast is for you. So let's start with the introduction of book this new book, which is on Amazon that people can get in a Kindle version and they can get in a paperback version. It's called the consulting and advisory Guide to Success. And you mentioned this strong passion for helping others which is why I just said for anybody who wants to help other people. If you're listening, this could be a huge opportunity for you, because we have a certification course you can take which then makes you more qualified to go sit with business owners and advise them how has this passion that you had for so many years, kind of evolved for you? And the outcome being that now the Institute of advisors, can you explain to the audience? Yeah,

Peter Hickey
look, I think there's so many businesses out there, Greg and they're suffering they're struggling there. You've got people that are put their, their, their house on the line, they've got their heart, their energy into a business, and they've, you know, phenomenal, they're brave, they've gone out they've started to build that first part of the business. And then there might be technicians there might just have lost their way and they need help. I need help from someone. And I suppose that passion is being a you know, someone that's gone through that journey myself, someone that's, you know, sort of needed that help and advice and support from someone. There's a whole army of people that we can train to help small to medium sized business. And I think part of what we're trying to do at the institute is we're trying to do a number of things. The first is the existing advisors out in the in the marketplace. We're trying to improve their skill set we're trying to improve their professionalism. The advisory landscape is very much of a cowboy industry. There's no There's no government designated credential or set of standards. And so part of what we're trying to do is to lobby governments to try and build a set of standards. So when we have someone that calls himself, a business advisor, go into a small business that they can, you know, the going through a process, they've got a methodology they've, they're, you know, sort of trained at a level that they can really support and help that small business owner. So the book is all about not so much the the the actual step by step process as you go through, but it's about enabling someone that wants to get into advisory and showing them the sorts of things they could go through. It shows them the sorts of questions they could ask how they can make a difference and how they can win clients and, and really make a positive impact on on those business owners.

Greg Voisen
So Peter, what makes this advisory or this institute of advisors in the certificate different and I know you can explain this then let's say somebody that goes get a Bachelors of Science degree in business management, right? And they come out of college and they go oh, yeah, I can be an advisor but they've really never done it. And you and I both know that it takes sometimes many years of experience to actually get to a point where you're proficient at doing that. How does this expedite that process? And if somebody already has a degree in business or is an accountant, or is a bookkeeper, and they've been doing this, how can this help this group of individuals?

Peter Hickey
Yeah. The I think the very first part is understanding what the role of an advisor is. And when you look at an advisor, an advisor is there to support, nurture and help the business owner grow. But an advisor is also there to hold hands to with the business owner to take them on a journey to be there through the ups and downs to motivate to encourage. These are the sorts of things that you need to really go through and explain to someone that wants to get into an advisory that your role is not just technical competence is not just business experience and imposing that on a business owner. What we have to do is take a holistic approach and we have to sometimes delve into what's going through the mind of you as a business owner, how, how can I like a coach? How can I get the best out of you what what do we need to do? What are your strengths and weaknesses as a business owner, and how can we help you to focus on your strengths? How can we help you to delegate How can we help you to run the business better? And so that comes down to the role of an advisor is more holistic than what most people think?

Greg Voisen
Yeah. Well, what would you say to those coaches that are listening right now that literally are coaching they're called executive coaches, quote, unquote, executive coaches, and there are 1000s of them all across the United States and all across the globe, in many different capacities and they are acting as, again, a determines coach, but there is some psychology to that a big part of it is the psychology that they're utilizing in their practice. I know I've told you this before. I got a master's degree in spiritual psychology, which for me, was the best thing that I ever did when I added this to the consultant write in many listeners right now are going to be saying, well, you know, I'm already a coach. How would this certificate help me? One and two, why should I take the course too? Okay.

Peter Hickey
So the the different types of your coach through a different types of coaching, you talked about executive coaching, so executive coaching is working internally with somebody more on their personal skills, their objectives, helping them to in their capacity in their role to get to the next level. business coaching business advisory is really working on the business through the business owner. So what we're doing is looking more holistically at the organization. We're looking at, probably that first part is what's holding the business back, looking at a strategic sort of planning process, and then looking at some sort of accountability program that can be delegated. So the the certification program we run helps a typical, if you're a coach and coming from that framework, it helps you to be probably a little bit more technical. from the business perspective. If you're a accountant coming into the program, it helps you to focus on non financial metrics and understanding who the business owner is, rather than just financial metrics. So, so the the program that helps and what we talk about is the three steps of advisory, which is that initial engagement, identifying what's holding the business back looking holistically at a roadmap to go forward, and then taking that roadmap segregated into smaller accountability pieces, and then keeping the business owner accountable on an ongoing basis.

Greg Voisen
I think the key is that as a roadmap you're actually providing the people that go through the course or roadmap that they can take to their business clients and follow in a systematic way to actually have a better outcome versus flying off here flying off. They're doing this doing that. Now you also shared seven tips to becoming a great advisor in the book. Could you share those tips with the listeners and what are considered what you call a starting and advisory practice? Right? So as everybody wants to be a great advisor, not everybody is but you have a part in this course that teaches people about becoming a great advisor.

Peter Hickey
Well, if you want to become a great advisor, I think first of all, it's it's looking at what is the business owner want? Says looking you've got to understand the role of the advice and as we talked about before, it's understanding from a personal perspective, what the business owner is going through. So you need to be able to connect with that business owner. You need to be able to identify what's happening. And you do that through asking open questions, finding out what's holding you back, you know, what are the pain points you're experiencing? Then from there, we want to sort of like delve into that to move that to the next level, to connect with you emotionally to help you to afford and then also connect with you technically on what needs to be done. So a good adviser is somebody that's going to go through and connect with a business owner that have a process. And I think what what happens is that a lot of advisors don't have a process they don't have a methodology. We need to have that process that methodology. We need to be strong, we need to be motivational. And we need to I think what really identifies a good advisor is an ongoing accountability program, as well. Well

Greg Voisen
I think the most important thing is when you sell the contract initially, whatever it might be, you need to have milestones for wins. Right? There needs to be wins in there for the owner, that he feels that the money he's spending that he hired you to do, that he is getting or she is getting their money's worth. And you call him refining and developing your skills. You discuss three critical skill sets that divisor needs to master. Which of these do you believe is the most challenging to develop and why? Because there are many well, there's three critical ones, but there's a lot of others that are maybe not so critical.

Peter Hickey
is personal and sales skills that have got to understand how to create a good impression, how to sell their services. The second is marketing skills. They've got to be able to understand how to market themselves, what promotional material how to build a website, how to position themselves how to stand out from the crowd, what documents are going to go through, what's the price point going to look like? And the third is, you can have all of that but if you don't know your stuff, you got to have technical competency. You've got to have business competent business experience. You've got to understand and have been at the coal frat or understand what a business owner is going through.

Greg Voisen
Those are really good ones. And I think that of the ones that you have outlined in the book, like you said, there's 20 The reality is those three are very critical. Now I mentioned a minute ago about the roadmap and I said benchmarks and you got to use this as a basis for improvement. Things have to be improving. When you start becoming an advisor for the client. How can advisors measure their progress in both the improvement in the business and also their own skill set because as their skills get better, it expedites and it they can do it a lot quicker. Yeah, yep.

Peter Hickey
So for the business itself, the you know, we recommend that some sort of a scorecard is identified in the beginning of the program, and is used in a monthly or quarterly meeting with a client. So what we do is and the most important part that we sort of reach in the course and as we go through it, that scorecard can't be just about financial metrics. It can't be just about sales, gross profit growth or whatever. It's got to involve also the non financial metrics. So things like conversion rates, number of product returns anything that's identifying leads coming into the business website visitors. So it's got to be looking both at what we talked about and for you, if you think about management theory, something like a balanced scorecard, Kaplan and Norton 9090 to develop, which had four quadrants, so we're looking at innovation we're looking at customer, we're looking at financial, and we're looking at internally in the organization. So we want to develop that scorecard. And we want to our monthly meetings or quarterly meetings, or running an accountability program on that scorecard.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and I'd say this part is the, the meat and bones of it, right. It's very critical, critical part of what it is that you're doing, and having this scorecard and measuring your progress and like you said, all these indicators like KPIs, right, key performance indicators, this is the kind of things that would be on those scorecards, correct. Yep. For for that as well. I know you didn't mention it, but I was like, okay, yeah, there's got to be key performance indicators there. So look, why, let's let's kind of go back here a second. In selling ourselves. Yep. We always have to make first good impressions and everybody says you have seven seconds for vital business people to actually connect. And they've already made a judgement about you. I like Peter. I like Greg, I don't, I don't. And what techniques do you recommend for achieving a higher rate of what's called likability, right? One and can you give an example of how a poor first impression might derail a potential client relationship? Because, you know, this happens. Time and time again. I see it. Yeah.

Peter Hickey
I think the first impression, you walk in the door, right? So you've got a client there or prospect and you've just opened the door, you sat down at a desk. The first thing you would do is you've got eye contact. So you got to have eye contact. You got to have a face that looks like you want to be there. Right? Looks like you sort of you've got to have that immediate reaction. You've got to be using this 42 muscles in the face. You got to be using those muscles in the face. As you go through that meeting with the client. You've and then I think it's it's it's the tone of your voice. What you got to understand is that that business owner, that business prospect will not trust you in the beginning. There's this sort of dance that you do. There's got to be a rhythm to the play in those first meetings. And so you start the first impression you have is the smile on your face. It's the I'm pleased to see you it's what you dress the professor's or what you look like. It's the tone of your voice. The tone of your voice is so important. It's not showing and when you're early to advisory, you show fear on your face, your eyebrows go up and you go back and and you just you don't look competent to practicing and what we talk about with advisors is, you know, it's funny when you're talking to sort of 4050 and 60 year olds about or whoever, however old you are about practicing in the mirror before you go into that meeting, about practicing with a partner or an accountability partner, but everything is so important in your face that recognition, you've got to understand that you are the product. You know, you're not selling a product you're selling yourself. And when you sell yourself, this person is going to be paying 2030 50,000 $100,000 to buy you and so they've got to trust you. And then I think the other thing is when you go into that meeting, you've got to have a plan. So when a client says to you, we're so what do you want to talk about? How are we going to do it? You've got to have the right open questions. You got to have the right script. And it's really interesting. The difference in a phrase in that script, the difference in your tone can mean that you either win that client over or you lose that client. And it's like if you ask closed questions, yes or no questions, the conversation is gonna go nowhere. If I ask a question like you called me in, there's obviously a reason that you've got in your mind for why this meeting should take place. Tell me what is it that you're looking for? That's that's an open question. What's holding your business back? If you could compare yourself to your biggest competitor? How would you see how are you stronger? How are you weak? So these are questions that are in fact, defined to delegate do you find you're good at delegating? Do you find you? And so what we want to do is and everything that you say, Greg, I'm gonna have to when you're a rookie advisor, and we talked about going from rookie to experience when you're a rookie advisor, you're going to ask questions you're not going to follow through, you're not going to connect in the conversation as an experience advisor or someone that's getting good at their craft. You're having a conversation like I'm having to in a pub, I'm taking what you're saying, I'm understanding it, I'm feeling it emotionally. And then I'm moving on to the next point and structuring it into a into a structured process. And then if I want to be a clever advisor, if it's going to close that client, I've got to have a funneling process to get down to the point that hits the emotional mark that then sells the return on investment that then sells the assignment.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, I think that you use too good terminology there to kind of like, peel back the onion. You literally have to kind of peel back the layers and layers and layers of this. And that's how you start to make a deeper connection with people. And then after you've asked these questions you need to be able to put the dots together afterwards, which is why I have this next question. You know, the book includes these practical examples and templates for marketing. And you know, where people actually fail quite a bit at this is really in how they market their services. Right. And yes, it's one thing for us to make a good impression but it's another thing to be able to have really good marketing collateral really good language really good way to approach us Can you discuss how advisors can customize uh, you know, you in the book, you've got it. These to fit kind of their unique practice because you have a lot of different template templates.

Peter Hickey
There. So we got we got heat templates in the book. We actually go through which is probably the best reaction we've had to section in the book is the 23 step case study. We do with Fred the adviser. And that sort of goes through exactly that. Fred step setting up a new practice. The first thing he's got to ask himself is who's his target market? Who is he trying to appeal to? I don't think anybody listening to this. The most important tip or fast track for success and a practice is to try and get a distinct target market to try and get someone to focus on. Then there's a lot of things from videos that you can put on your website that we have at the institute when you become a member and do the course there's brochures that are editable that you can automatically, you know, just update with your logo, etc. But you can take them and you can customize them for a target market. So you can be specializing in the dentistry in the industry, in the engineering in production in exporting, but these templates can be crafted. And the I sort of always, always talking about there's three or four words that can increase the effectiveness of any copy. So if I have the 10 step, profit improvement program or five ways to exit your business, I can multiply the effectiveness by 10 by just adding a few words to that, and a few words for the dental industry, for accountants for manufacturers. So by putting your overlaying your specialty onto our templates, you can really build the power of that marketing.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and I think this book is a great place for the listeners right now that are thinking about this to start. And I want to say that, you know, you've made a little bit of an offer from a standpoint of the number of books so I want to let all the lovely listeners know, you can contact me, and I'd be more than happy to get you a book and here's the caveat, if you're interested in actually looking further into the Institute of advisors course. So this book is really a tool and if you're not, we're gonna have a link to Amazon. You can just go to Amazon and buy the book. But if you have further more in depth kind of interest, definitely contact me and I'll get you a book. Now. Let's talk about business owners, all of them. They have more than two sets of goals, but let's just talk about the two. One is aligning business goals with personal values and lifestyle. When a person exit their business, they're frequently going well. What is my relevance anymore? You familiar with that question that answer? They don't believe they're relevant. They've gotten too old. They're putting out the past year the kids are taking the business over. How do you help somebody no matter what stage business they're in, to think about the long term and really be thinking about also the exit strategy because a lot of times people will start a business and you know, they're really ready. They want to exit in like three years, right? They're saying, okay, great. I'm gonna exit out of this business and do something else. It very seldom happens that way. But that is kind of what a lot of people tell you right. So give us some some of your sage advice on that long term planning for a business all the way to succession and alignment of values.

Peter Hickey
Yep. I think it starts in the beginning. And I think it's an our friend that just passed away Peter Christmas with the three legs of the stool. I think what we're gonna do is and we've got to talk to a business owner and say, look, what are you planning on doing? Where's his business guy you got in it for a dream that you want to make a difference? That all the one inevitable fact is that all business owners will exit the business one day you need to be carried out in the coffin or you will leave of your own free will. So what is your journey? When do you think that will be and then what we want to talk about is getting yourself ready from from first of all the value of the business, you know, how do we drive the business value? Where are the gaps? What are we planning for and if we can plan that in the beginning Greg, we can set a plan well, look, we want to sell to multinational in this area, we could start pitching the business and changing the business to go in that direction. So it's a lot more valuable in the future. The second area is that there's a lot of things you can do in the beginning the way you set up your tax structures the way you set up your personal financial planning. Your insurance isn't that. So there's a couple of reasons for that, that we want to think about that from beginning one is long term tax planning and, and that and the second reason is in case of some sort of disaster that might happen with some sort of sickness or incapacitation. Or death in the business which happens. So you want to make sure that you prepared from that perspective that the exit comes prematurely, not to your own accord. And the third side is and this is as you mentioned, and I can tell you, Greg that I will talk to business owners about this and I've been taught myself where I build a business up, sold it to a multinational and then you sort of feel a bit lost, you don't feel relevant, you haven't got a purpose. And you know, and I've having helped, like hundreds of business owners go through the same journey. It's very common, but they leave and they they find it difficult to find sorts it's it's rare that somebody finds themselves without proper planning. And and I see too many business owners suffer emotionally and the problem here is, and I'll give you one example where there was a friend of mine that wanted to exit and I kept saying to him, just be prepared what you're gonna do after I'll be right I'll be right I kept saying it to him for sort of 12 months file right before he exited. And like literally within a month, he was a wreck of himself. And it was hard to put the finger on exactly what it was because he got more than enough money for the business. It was just he felt he led his staff down by leaving and he felt he had nothing to do and and all that and everything I'll warn him about so the the the warning signs to business owners weaken as an advisor or as somebody that's helping a business owner. Let's talk about the three legs of a stool. As a business owner, the challenge is for you to take the third leg of the stool seriously enough and understand its impact because it has a huge impact on what happens after you exit.

Greg Voisen
And to add to that, I think it's so important that you start that as early as possible. Yeah, there's no time like the present, right? A lot of people go well, I'm just trying to get by here. And I go well, what you're trying to do is grow this business so that someday you can sell it or transferred to your children or whatever. But what is the plan? What is it that we're really going for? I mean that old cliche that people say that you've heard a zillion times and everybody out there has heard you know, people spend more time planning their vacation than they do planning their life goals or their what they want to do in life, right? And you find this is true even for some very successful business owners. You know, it's like, well, where's the next vacation? Or where's this? I just got a text from one of mine and he goes, Oh, I'm headed to Switzerland for the next week. And he's in the middle of trying to do a succession plan, right? And it's like, Well, are you or is Switzerland more important? Are you done right? So I say that in jest because he's not the only one. There's a lot of people that do that. Right. So the other point

Peter Hickey
you raised a Greg is it. You've got this? Yeah. Whether or not you're a manager in a business and you want to transition to retirement. You know, you're you're starting to go into that retirement or you're a business owner, it's retained that there's an army of people out there. There's an army of people out there that has got fantastic business experience. And some of those who have been told Geez, you got a great caring nature about you, you'd be great as an advisor. And so there's an army of people out there that could help small to medium sized business could help others to go through the journey that they've been through in their in that past business experience. And that's the army of people that that we wanted to sort of motivate and we want to train up to so that if they decide they want to help small to medium sized business, they can give us a great support platform.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and look, when people build their boards, they bring on people of different calendars. And skill sets and your adviser meaning the business advisor is one and I know I've been on many boards. Even as the business advisors, there is no conflict of interest. You're there to help the business grow. You're there to help the business owner. And I think the more boards actually you can sit on, the better off it can be. Because then, you know you've built up the trust, right? Sometimes that's the ultimate when you're actually asked to be on the board because they know the advice you're giving is of high value, right? Whether they're paying you a board of advisors fee or not. The reality is, it's it's a nice accolade to have. So now look, we've covered a lot of ground here in the last 45 minutes. If you were to leave our listeners with three main points to take away from the book. And by the way, folks, this is a new book, this book just came out last month. What would they be and how would you recommend using these these bits of advice for them to succeed?

Peter Hickey
But I think the first is that understand the role of the advisor so just think about why people would engage in advisor and then reverse engineer that into the skills that you would need to have. Right? So thinking about confidence, credibility, building rapport. The other thing is to have a plan to understand if you're going to set up an advisory practice. How much are you going to charge? What are you going to do? What questions are going to ask what's your process going to look like? You know, how do you move into a monthly engagement? How do you build a profitable business so to have a business plan or or some sort of solid step by step program that you're going to go through? I think the last thing is that you've got to really connect with people. You've got to love talking and helping people and talk to as many business owners as you can, you know, and just connect with them ask questions have a natural curiosity and a sense of care for them. And, and, you know, if you practice, practice, practice, you're going to be a better advisor. So I would take on board you know, those sort of three areas is as key to start off with, and then you asked, how can they help or how can we help in that process? I think the course that we've got will take them through that entire process. It will give them the questions to ask. It will give them sample proposals. It will give them sample client discovery, MIDI samples, strategic templates, it'll give them ready made, brochures and marketing gives them a set of standards. It gives them sort of a step by step sort of flow through from start to finish. And and we would love to talk to anybody on the call about becoming certified. There's a whole information pack there. There's guides we've got if you are just on how to be a good advisor that we put out there to educate the market, and we'd be more than happy to share those resources with you Greg through your community.

Greg Voisen
Well, Peter, one thing I can say and this is wholeheartedly you know, we've known each other a long time and for my listeners, I do bring guests on that I believe have something of tremendous value here. And one of the things I want to say is Peter has published methodologies and assessments in exit succession planning, business planning that has been used by over 10,000 advisors, including advisors from the largest banks in the US and he's one that Ernst and Young NSA N SW Entrepreneur of the Year award. And that was a while ago, but the point is, is that he has aggregated the content which an advisor would need to be able to actually be a successful advisors. This is my little bit of a commercial for this at this point. But the reality is, is that you have to know go check it out. Institute advisors.com. There you can learn more. You'll also be able to get in touch with me because we're gonna have information for you to reach out to me as well. Peter, I want to thank you for being on inside personal growth, because this is a journey that not only the advisor takes, but the advisor takes with the business person themselves. And when you start to get all the interpersonal skills that are required, and all the skill sets that are needed. To be a good advisor, you really realize that this is a very small investment number one and two. All the tools that he's developed, are all there. It's all available for you. It's like somebody's already done it for you. And let's face it, we're all trying to find a quicker, more efficient, better way to do this. Thanks for being on inside personal growth and thanks for taking the time to address our listeners and advisors with more knowledge and information. Big

Peter Hickey
Greg and thank you very much for having me on.