048: "The Art of Collaboration: When Two Tribes Stop the War" with Paul Latham

In this episode, I welcome Paul Latham, the co-owner of Elite Resource Team and a pioneering thought leader for accountants. This episode offers a deep dive into how Paul and his partner, Anton Anderson, are bridging the gap between CPAs and financial advisors, fostering a collaborative environment for mutual benefit.

Paul shares insights on his upcoming book, which he and Anton  are working on, titled The Art of Collaboration when Two Tribes Stop the War.

Paul's Journey: From Accountancy to Collaboration Expert

• Transitioning from Traditional Accounting: Trained as a chartered accountant in the 1980s, Paul swiftly recognized the evolving landscape of accounting. Heeding advice on the commoditization of traditional accounting services, he pivoted towards forward-looking accountancy, emphasizing planning and advisory over mere compliance.
• Achievement and Innovation: Under his leadership, his firm transformed into a forward-thinking powerhouse, ultimately selling for a significant sum. Post-sale, he explored various ventures, before  relocating to the US.

The Art of Collaboration: Bringing Two Tribes Together

• Identifying the Gap: Paul explains the distinct roles of CPAs and financial advisors in the US, highlighting the often backward-looking focus of accountants due to the complex tax environment. Elite Resource Team was founded to encourage a forward-looking approach, enhancing the value provided to clients.
• Forming Strategic Partnerships: The collaboration between accountants and financial advisors, facilitated by Elite Resource Team, aims to combine the strengths of both professions. This approach not only enhances service delivery to clients but also broadens the scope of advice and solutions available.

Elite Growth Academy

• A Platform for Growth: The Elite Growth Academy is designed for both advisors and accountants to further their understanding of collaborative practices. It serves as a bridge for members at various stages of their journey, offering coaching, technology, and access to a vast network of experts.

Key Takeaways and Future Directions

• Valuable Lessons: He shares insights on maintaining a partnership rather than a servile relationship with clients, the importance of forward-looking advice, and strategies for being compensated for proactive services.
• Looking Ahead: As we prepare for the publication of The Art of Collaboration when Two Tribes Stop the War, the conversation underscores the enduring importance of collaboration, mutual respect, and continuous learning in the professional growth of both accountants and advisors.

Elite Growth Academy Event is scheduled for June 13th to 14th in San Diego. This is a golden opportunity for financial advisors and accountants to master collaborative practices, network, and propel their professional relationships forward.

About our Guest:

Paul Latham  the co-owner of Elite Resource Team.

You can learn more about his work at:
Website: https://elitert.com/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/paul-latham-85356a42/

About Your Host:  Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.

Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Million Dollar Producer Show. I'm your host, paul G McManus, and today I have a special guest, paul Latham. Paul is the co-owner of Elite Resource Team and an industry thought leader for accountants. We're currently working with both him and his business partner, anton Anderson, on a new book called and I love this title, paul the Art of Collaboration when Two Tribes Stop the War. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Thank you very much for having me. I'm honored to be on and hello to all your listeners.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 1:06

The title, by the way, is a throwback to Frankie Goes to Hollywood when Two Tribes Go to War.

Speaker 1: 1:11

Title by the way, is a throwback to Frankie Goes to Hollywood when Two Tribes Go to War. Essentially, what you and Anton do collaboratively is you bring CPAs and financial advisors together for everyone's good, and there's a lot of reasons why they are two different tribes, but you're doing some amazing things and bringing them together. So let's jump into that. First, I'd love just to get a sense of your background and who you are and where'd you start out and how'd you get to where you are today.

Speaker 2: 1:36

I was trained as a chartered accountant, which is, I would say, not identical to a CPA. There's some clear differences. This was back in the 1980s. I became a partner.

Speaker 2: 1:46

We started growing the firm, but somewhere along the line I think it was actually early 90s there was a report by the Institute of Accountants in the UK and they basically said what you as accountants traditionally do, which is things like tax returns and accounts, which is what that looking backwards is a commodity. It's going to become a price-driven commodity and if you keep on just doing that, future is pretty bleak. You're going to be working harder and faster forever, decreasing amounts of value. Basically sat around a table with my partners and we basically said let's not do that. Let's become forward-looking accountants, let's help people plan, let's help our clients get to where they want to get to, and of course that's a really easy thing to say. But to make it happen requires a ton of process and effort and fast forwarding eight years. We'd done that really by 2001,. We'd grown to be I can never remember the number, but something like top 15 UK firm. We had about 250 to 300 people.

Speaker 2: 2:47

We were 80% forward-looking and we sold the business for a pretty good amount good sum and people always ask sooner or later how come you sold. And there were a couple of reasons, really one. The primary one was they offered way too much money. We had an internal valuation. We knew what we thought it was worth. They offered at least 33% more than we thought it was worth, so that felt like a good reason to sell. But also at the back of behind that really myself and one of the other partners we had another business idea, nothing to do with accounting. We went off and did that. We took the business public. It was very successful. We don't need to go into it. I did that for about five, six, seven years. Running a PLC public company is actually a really good learning experience, but it's really bad for your personal life because your whole life is dictated and dominated by timetables for shareholders and people.

Speaker 2: 3:46

Just out of curiosity. In what way is it a good experience? I think really there's a discipline to be public director, where everything you say is on the record, every phone call is on the record, every utterance is on the record. You learn to be very disciplined.

Speaker 2: 3:59

I found it's a little inhibiting after a while because I don't quite like to speak. My mind always having to say the right thing in the right way became a little wearing. I went into semi-retirement. This was 2007-ish 2008. So I was coming up for 50 and I'd had this thing in my head retire by the time you're 50. I tried it and, to be honest, I didn't much enjoy it. I got a bit bored. This was just after the crash of 2008. One good thing we did we bought a company. I think we bought it for 400,000. We sold it for 50 million 10 years later. So it was a good deal. But the great thing about that was it didn't require me to be there. It was a very sort of virtual business. Somewhere along the way I thought let's have a change, let's maybe live in a different country, and originally it was going to be actually Barcelona, because I can speak a little bit of Spanish, but then I realized I probably can't work very effectively, right right right.

Speaker 2: 4:54

So I thought, well, let's move somewhere where they speak English. That came to the US or that brought me to the US. And then I thought let's move to the East Coast because that way it's easier for me to get back to see my family, and I quite, four seasons up in New England, seemed like a good idea and, yeah, I quite like living by the ocean, so let's move there. So basically, I moved to the US about 2011. And in a way, this was the critical bit, because when I was at Latham's I'd always helped business owners to grow, so it's something I've done for 20 years. And the guy that built my house I thought I'll practice on them in terms of seeing if, basically seeing if it translates. And we held what I call a vision workshop and at the end of it one of the brothers said that was great, loved it. In fact, it was truthfully two days later and he said I'd like you to help us to put the plan into action. Then I really naively said who normally helps you with that sort of thing? I said I assume it's your accountant, because in England it would be the accountant who was at the centre of the client's universe. And he said absolutely not. He said my accountant does my tax. Then he went on to talk about all the different advisors and experts he had in his life. He actually said I'm really good at building houses, but I'm really bad at quarterbacking accountants and all these different experts. He said I need somebody to help me. Would you like to be that person? And so, years later, I still do that and I meet him every month and he's grown his business exponentially. In my head I use him as a sort of look to practice some. Basically that was the germ or the kernel of how what today looks like elite, yeah, was created now. In the beginning I wasn't thinking of how elite looks today. I was in the beginning thinking let's reshape accountants, yeah, be more holistic and more proactive and more forward-looking. And when, when he said that thing, I was intrigued because I'm thinking that's weird.

Speaker 2: 6:55

The accountants here don't do what they do in the UK, because in the UK the accountant is your go-to advisor. In the US it's ludicrously complicated. It's insanely complicated comparative to the UK. Then that's exacerbated by having 50 states with their own little tax codes. So of course the iterations there are ludicrous and very complicated and that's been a strength and a weakness for accountants in the US. The strength, of course, is anyone who needs to have their tax done of any sort of consequence needs an accountant, so that's good. The weakness is they've relied on it massively and compliance is their thing. Looking backwards and telling you what happened last year is their thing and we're in the middle of one at the moment. It's the date of recording this. We're coming up towards the end of March, the middle of what they call tax season.

Speaker 2: 7:46

They go into this silo for months just doing this thing and pretty much I've talked to hundreds of accountants in the US, hundreds and no one disputes. That's their life and you only have to look at their revenue. If you look at what's compliance like accounts, tax returns it's a very rare accountant that's not more than 80% backward looking. They know because, of course, the US society of CPAs, in the same way that we were preached to in 93, they've been preaching to the CPAs for 10 years. You need to get more forward looking and they don't know how. They know they need to. Some of them there's a combination of need and want. They know they need to. Some of them don't want to, usually the older ones like me. I don't want to change my spots now, but on the whole, they know they need to. Some of them don't want to, usually the older ones, like me. I don't want to change my spots now, but on the whole, they know they need to. The biggest problem is they don't know how.

Speaker 2: 8:39

And then I'm going to quickly do the last bit. Let you get back in the conversation. So in the beginning, when I formed this Hayden Rock in 2014, it was aimed at positioning the accountant as being at the center of the universe, because sort of that's what I knew. Then along the way I forget exactly when, but 17, 18 maybe and that's anton, of course, who was about the same concept, but more from the advisor's perspective and what we realized.

Speaker 2: 9:06

And we didn't go to this in one step. We went through joint ventures and things, but basically, to coin a phrase from the book, when two tribes stop the war. So let's not try and just do this from the accountant's perspective, let's not just try and do this from the advisor's perspective. Let's come together and collaborate and you need just on the art of collaboration, we will provide a better service. So, rather than being stuck in a silo, those two form a very good partnership, because they have contrasting skills and talents, quite often brings a better day-to-day service to the client. But then behind that we add to that what we call the virtual family office. So they have 50, 60, 70, 80 experts behind them, which makes them look big.

Speaker 1: 9:53

A couple of follow-up questions I wanted to ask is so how did you and Anton Anderson meet in the first place? What brought the two of you together?

Speaker 2: 10:01

I think truthfully, I can't remember. I've got a feeling it was one of my colleagues who's still working at Elite called Ian Wellam, who I've known for 40 years. I think Ian knew Anton. I think that's how the connection came about. From my reflection, elite are doing an event this June, so they do them every year. So I think around about 2017 or 2018, I was invited to come speak to the audience of Elite at that time mainly about accountants, and somewhere along the line we hit it off and in fact, you remember I talked about practicing on clients and the laboratory. So one of the things we actually did, I did a business strategy day with Elite, with Anton and one of his other partners, ken, and we did a business together which, in a way, was the beginning, because I think it opened their eyes as to what they might do and it opened my eyes to, oh, the two tribes could come together. And then what we did after that was we formed a little sort of joint venture business.

Speaker 1: 11:02

I understand elite resource team and the model to a degree. As you said, it was focused on advisors and part of that is to help advisors build relationships with CPAs. From your perspective, what's your specific role? You're a thought leader for accountants. Are you primarily educating the accountant or are you primarily educating the advisor, or both? Vis-a-vis your role inside of the league.

Speaker 2: 11:29

Actually, it's one of those things where you have to work it through and we worked it through. Without doubt, my primary role is to make accountants feel comfortable, because I've already explained they are. I mean, I cannot think of many who are less than 80 backward looking. In other words, they do more compliance than anything else. Yeah, they don't do much forward looking, so that's the reality of it. That's why I say accountants in the us are 20 years behind. That's the reason we exist to be.

Speaker 1: 12:04

Be truthful. My perspective being neither an advisor or an accountant, but just working with many advisors is that advisors look at accountants as the pretty girl at the bar, to use an analogy right.

Speaker 1: 12:17

How can I pick her up and be a little bit glib here. But how can I pick her up? Because they see the value of building those relationships, whereas for the most part the accountant doesn't see the value. They see the advisor as being I don't want to say take advantage, but they're looking to. It's an unequal relationship in terms of the benefits, or at least that's the perception of it.

Speaker 2: 12:36

We end up making both realize that they both need each other. And you see, the way it works is the advisor tends to come to us first. Accountants can come to us first, and that's great they do, and then we can still do the same thing, almost in reverse. But generally speaking, it's the advisor that comes to us. Why do they come to us? They come to us because they want to grow their business. Yeah, there are only three ways to grow a business. They either win new clients or they do more things with the clients they've already got. Those are two obvious ones, and this is a subset of winning new clients. They can do what John actually calls fishing with a big net. As you see, if you go to a CPA or an accountant, they have hundreds of clients. If you're winning a new client direct, it's like fishing with a rod. Or you've already got them. I'll only do one thing a year with them. If I do two things a year, I've just doubled my business. Or you find a cph who's got a load of clients, and that's fishing with a big net. So that's why the advisor comes to us. They want to grow and we help them do those three things. I would say I'm probably being conservative here, but at least 70% of those advisors want to form relationships with CPA and I said at the beginning of our story it's very easy to say you're going to be forward-looking, but it takes a bit of doing.

Speaker 2: 13:58

What we do at Elite is we bring three things. The advisor is effectively joining us as a member to get three things, and those three things are coaching. We teach them to change habits. We give them technology, all those processes I've just been talking about. Do you have a website? We can fit it in a week. Do you have a proactive planning platform? You can have it in a day, and so on. So we completely shortcut the sort of eight years that I have to go through we can do that in a day. So we completely shortcut the sort of eight years that I have to go we can do that in a week. So we bring them coaching, we bring them tools and technology and we bring them all these experts. Those are the three things that we bring. They become the gift of the advisor to the accountant. Basically, we teach the advisor to talk to the accountants and say look, we each bring something to the party. Now, you, you bring clients you don't know what to do with them. To be more full, we bring tools and technology, coaching and experts. We can come together and, apart from anything else, you'll have a better life, because part of this is concentrating on your better clients, your higher value clients, where you want to spend more time. Because part of this is concentrating on your better clients, your higher value clients, where you want to spend more time because it's more fun.

Speaker 2: 15:11

You asked me a few minutes about what my role was. Part one is me focusing on the accountants. So I've done 20 or 30 hours of coaching on video. Some of that is a story. There's two hours of what we did at lathams. Then there's another couple of hours of yeah, but, but it's different today and this is so. It's obviously starts there. But then you ask me, is it for the advisors as well? Yes, because the advisors need to understand the mind of the accountant. Not that I especially do that direct, but the advisors get the benefits also of that accountant coaching which we always say to them watch it before you talk to an accountant, lead them through the process. And so what we're doing is this iteration of coaching, account and advisors to come together.

Speaker 1: 16:00

I think, for an advisor, what the obstacles are and what the solutions can be. And, at the end of the day, to what? What you said earlier is that there's really three ways to grow a business, and I'm going to just probably butcher it, but I'll paraphrase it. It's you can go out and sell more to existing people, you can get new people, or you can essentially cast a net and pull in a lot of people at the same time. So I think that's obvious to everybody, and they just want to know how to do it better. So talk to us a little bit about the upcoming Elite Growth Academy. What is it? Who's it for? And just, I would imagine, probably for an advisor watching this. Why should they consider attending that if they're not already?

Speaker 2: 16:39

The advisors. We've got advisors and we have accountants, and they're all types of members. Basically, let's just say, do it from the advisor's perspective here. So an advisor has chosen to be a member, he's gone through this training or going through this training, and I said he, but it could be a she. Obviously they're going through the training when they become a member.

Speaker 2: 16:58

We actually have categories of members. Say, you were what we call the mastermind level. Then you have included in your package is a ticket for the event, but also for guest tickets. Although we talk about we can train somebody in two months, after a year, they're pretty proficient. We have five levels of performance and so you can always be learning new things.

Speaker 2: 17:20

I'm 65, I learn new things.

Speaker 2: 17:23

It's a mindset of learning new things. So the people that come to the event are either starting to date and bringing the person who they want to have a relationship come to this, we can do this stuff or, equally, loads and loads of them advisors who've been working with an accountant for years, and either way, they get something out of it. The first group are probably more learning about the model and the benefits of the model and of course, they have the opportunity to talk to other people who've done it, and it helps them make their decision. And then you've also got expert speaking. So the second group that have been with us for ages. What do they learn? Well, they get to meet new experts and develop more tools and techniques, and I happen to have given you two extremes there, but of course there's people in the middle, and so basically, the reason people come together, it's either to introduce them to the model and the benefits of it, or it's to just keep on building in their terms of high performance so they get better and better, and we do this.

Speaker 2: 18:24

It's not like we only ever come together once, we have weekly meetings on Zoom better and better, and we do this. It's not like we only ever come together once, we have weekly meetings on zoom, but. But the event is just this crescendo where we all come together basically have a few drinks, have a few tacos and get to shake hands, and it just happens to be the 10th year anniversary this year for elite yeah, as it's the 10 year anniversary of what I started in 2014. So, happenstance, myself and Anton both started doing this exactly 10 years ago. We didn't know each other for three or four years together, so this particular one is a special one. It's going to be a bit different, but basically, the essence is the same.

Speaker 1: 19:01

This has been a fantastic conversation. As we begin to wrap up, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think would be important for our conversation today?

Speaker 2: 19:10

I'm going to try and answer really briefly. Certainly, in my lay them sometimes there were two or three things, which was one don't be a servant. Form partnerships and collaborate. Don't be a servant to your clients. Two, the importance of looking forward and not backwards much more value in looking forwards than backwards. And three is all about how to get paid to be proactive. It took me at least 12 months to learn how to be paid for proactivity. I'm not going to try and answer those here. It's all in our coaching and I think those if you're an accountant, this thing. Those are the three key messages Don't be a servant, be forward-looking and add value and basically learn how to get paid for it so that you make more money.

Speaker 1: 19:53

If you wouldn't mind, I'd love just to have you expand a little bit on the don't be a servant. Can you add some context to that? What does that mean?

Speaker 2: 20:00

Okay, I think it's. I learned this in May to be the day of a very big soccer game in England, which is the only reason I know the date. My biggest client at the time was a guy called Ron. I was a relatively young partner. He was my biggest client. Ron treated me like a servant in the sense of he was buying me and he thought nothing of telling me what to do. I used to dutifully touch my forelock or salute yes, ron, no, Ron, three bags full Ron. And Ron, of course, liked me and of course I was young and naive and I did what he said. There was one night and it was this night of May 99, where he phoned me up at some ridiculous time like 11 o'clock at night. It was whatever time it was and he wanted some mundane matter. I think it was payroll or something that would have definitely waited. This was the day before the soccer game.

Speaker 2: 20:49

Actually, I got stressed because he was my biggest client and the next day I've never had a migraine headache. I was stressed, I think. Oh my gosh, running around after Ron and somewhere that evening I just thought do you know what I'm really good at, what I do? And my mum taught me just do your best. No one can ever ask more of you than your best. So as long as you do your best, that'll do. I thought with Ron, I'm doing my best. I know I'm a really good accountant, by the way. I know in my firm there's no one better than me. I don't know why I'm worrying here, because you know I'm doing my best and I'm pretty good at what I do. I can only do that. Stop stressing out.

Speaker 2: 21:32

I decided I was not going to let Ron push me around anymore. Now, of course, very English, very respectful usually and I, in the nicest possible way, started pushing back a bit. Everything we did at Latham's was like what we do today. And so, in the same way with Ron, I had a financial advisor in my business. He was called Simon and me and Simon used to go to meetings together as a team to run and we used to refer to it as the mirror, mirror on the wall conversation, in that whatever it is mirror on the wall, and he, ron, would basically say who's the richest of them all? He expected me to say you're the richest of them all. And then one day I decided I wouldn't. It wasn't, of course, about that, but metaphorically I said. I said, yeah, you're pretty good, ron, but your baby's ugly, it could be better. In other words, I was pushing back a bit, yeah, and the more.

Speaker 2: 22:23

And interestingly, what I noticed was that the more I push back, that doesn't mean not being respectful. It just means pushing back a little and forming a partnership rather than a master-servant relationship Partnership, hence the word collaboration. The more I did that, the more Ron respected me and respected my advice. It's the same reason why the home building company I've been working for 10 years is still paying me quite a lot of money for the month and I spend about an hour with him every month because he respects my advice. Now he would not respect me if every time he said, mirror on the wall, who's the richest of them all, I said you are. That's not what you do. When you're advising people, you give them proper advice if you are. You cannot do that by being a servant. You have to form a partnership. I will literally not work with anyone who I don't want to work with. If they're mean, rude to me, I won't work with them.

Speaker 1: 23:21

That learning.

Speaker 2: 23:22

May 1989, was fundamental to my life.

Speaker 1: 23:28

That's a fantastic story. I'd love to ask, just as an extension of that, so, based on that lesson and that learning, and tying it into the upcoming book that both you and Anton are working on that story is going to be in the book, by the way Awesome, so the art of collaboration when two tribes stopped the war. From that story to the book, what are any key messages or themes that you want both advisors and accountants to take away?

Speaker 2: 23:55

Yeah, and there's really two aspects to it. The accountant is a master and the advisor could think of themselves as the servant. And, if you want, we look at it all the time and we see advisors who are being too servile in terms of their relationship. So, step one, they need to get equal. It's not one is more important than the other. They both bring something to this party. Very simplistically, the accountant brings clients, the advisor brings all the other stuff I mentioned tools, and so that's step one. And then, having learned to do that between themselves, it's not a big jump to bring that to your relationship with your clients, because it's the same thing, just two different types of people. So when the proactive planning team is formed, it's the same relationship of the more you. And this is not about being disrespectful to anybody, rude or anything. It's about advising. I cannot advise you if I just tell you what you want to hear.

Speaker 1: 24:54

And the final question if an advisor is listening to this podcast, where should they go to learn more about elite resource team? And then I guess the other question I have is for an accountant if they're watching this podcast, what would be the next step for them? Where should they go to learn more?

Speaker 2: 25:10

The great thing is it's the same answer. Imagine a dance hall where everyone's dancing together. It just happens they come in through two different doors into the advisor door or the accountant door but they end up on the dance floor together dancing and consummating, hopefully, their relationship eventually, basically, the answer is go to our website. It's EliteRTcom.

Speaker 1: 25:33

We'll add the website to the show notes. It's EliteRTcom. And then also just to throw it out there for the event in June, which is June 13th through June 14th in San Diego, california. It is EliteGrowthAcademycom, where you'll be speaking at your event, and then I'll be speaking as well on the topic of how to write a book. We're looking forward to having you. Yeah, I'm looking forward to meeting you in person. I'm looking forward to it too. Thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate it and this has been fascinating and interesting, and I'm really looking forward to working with both you and Anton on the book and having it ready for just in time for the event.

Speaker 2: 26:17

So thank you for your time today Very good Thanks and enjoyed it, and thanks again to all the listeners.