How putting my ego aside changed my world & my business for the better.

On April Fools Day, two incredibly well-known accountants fooled many people in our industry with an announcement that they were merging (yes, yes - I was one of them). While fake, the announcement made me sit back and reflect on my own journey from startup and partnership to most recently joining businessDEPOT.

On 1 August 2019 Aptus Accounting & Advisory, which I co-founded, announced it would be joining businessDEPOT. To some, this came as a shock as we had experienced good growth on our own, won some awards and respect within the industry, and already had a great reputation. However, as with many business owners, I was both at capacity and wearing far too many hats – so something had to give.

The idea of working closely with businessDEPOT had already been flagged quite some time before so I had been working with the businessDEPOT team on some projects and was developing a good relationship with MD and Founder John Knight, as well as some of the wider team. This meant we had a good feel for their drivers, their values and their culture. Through some very honest conversations with John, I was able to see how businessDEPOT could in fact help provide the support that I needed to keep growing and move closer towards my own personal and business goals. 

businessDEPOT was a far larger organisation than we were and had already gone through the growing pains I was having to contend with at the time. It had already invested in and implemented the internal systems and processes [including marketing and human resources] that I was struggling with, and businessDEPOT also came with a suite of extra services to provide my clients [a multi-disciplinary offering that was also part of my vision].

All of the great advantages aside, it is still a big thing to walk away from your own brand and become part of something much larger than yourself. To even begin this journey, I had to do one very important thing – get over myself. I had to realise that I absolutely was not the best person for everything, that I needed extra support and there is no shame in leveraging off what someone else has already done. Critical too was an alignment of values, beliefs and vision, but I had already eliminated that concern from my mind through getting to know each other better working on various projects together.

Here I am, nearly two years on and I can honestly say it was the right decision. And a lot of that has to do with the group I chose and the people I now get to work with every day. The relationship is about more than just delegating out the things I don’t want to do; it is about collaboration with other like-minded individuals – others who want to deliver the same value to their customers and their team.

It was never solely about what I got out of the arrangement – the team at businessDEPOT valued, heroed and welcomed the skills, experience and expertise my team and I brought to the wider group. They are never too proud to say they are not the gurus at everything and always encourage my input and opinion.

To be successful, this transition has meant working together with the national director and manager group to determine the best way forward for the whole brand, not just my little part of it in Sydney. And whilst we are still autonomous [yes, that’s right, we have not legally ‘merged’ as such], true synergy doesn’t work without some compromise and discussion, like any type of partnership.

Truthfully, I don’t know how I would have made it through 2020 without being a part of this group, and if I’m being really honest, I have worried about others that were out on their own with little or no trusted community around them to care for and support them during some pretty tough times. The leverage I was able to achieve and the traction I was able to get during one of the toughest years of my professional career meant I was not fighting a battle on my own but could continue to grow. Don’t get me wrong, everything is not just handed to me on a silver platter - I contribute, I participate and I drive where I can too – it is not a one-way street. It’s a collaboration where, when we work together with a common purpose, really cool things happen.

Yes, I gave up a brand that I owned and was respected in the market, but what I gained was the ability to keep growing and not ‘cap out’ like I see many in the industry do at the 7-10 year mark after going it alone. I often feel I have the best of both worlds - our agreement is structured so I have a level of autonomy and trust to make my own decisions, but I also have access to the perks of being part of a larger group.

I now can just focus on what I do best and have freed up time to be able to pursue interesting projects when they come up.

Getting over myself has enabled me to learn more about myself and be truer to myself than ever before.