Helping Accounting Practices Grow Revenue with a Book with Rob Nixon

Rob Kosberg:

Hey, welcome to the Promote, Profit, Publish Podcast with me, Rob Kosberg. Every week, I interview thought leaders and experts who have used a book to grow their income and their impact. So, tune in weekly for these interviews so you can learn how to use your own bestselling book and go from hunting for clients and opportunities to instead being the hunted.

All right. Hey, welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here for the Promote, Profit, Publish Podcast. Got a friend and an amazing human being here with us today, Mr. Rob Nixon. Rob is a coach and a superstar in the accounting business, though he is not an accountant himself. He’s coached over 600 accounting firms, adding over $1 billion in profit to those firms. Trained over 185,000 accountants in 18 different countries. And of course, is a bestselling author of four different books. The most recent one, The Wealthy Accountant. Mr. Rob Nixon, thank you for being on the Publish, Promote, Profit Podcast.

Rob Nixon:

Mr. Kosberg, always a pleasure to see you.

Rob Kosberg:

Great to be with you, man. I love your clubhouse. You know that. Man, very, very exciting. I should have this in Rob’s bio, but Rob has one of the best backyard golf courses in all of the world and certainly all of Australia, where he lives. So, we could probably spend the entire podcast talking about that.

Rob Nixon:

That’s just as exciting. Golf Digest did an article on my backyard golf course and they labeled it world’s best backyard golf course. So, I’m taking it.

Rob Kosberg:

How spectacular. I do have to say, I am a member of the world’s best backyard golf course, though I have not attended yet because of this doggone pandemic they’re putting on. But as soon as that’s done, we’re coming and we’re going to play. So, I look forward to it.

Rob Nixon:

You bet, man. You bet. Weekend of festivities for sure.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it, brother. Hey, let’s dive in. So, the first thing that I think is a little bit unusual and I like to get some history on, how does a guy who is not an accountant and doesn’t have the credentials after your name become a coach and kind of superstar consultant to accounting firms?

Rob Nixon:

Yeah. So, I was 24 years old in regional Australia on the edge of the Outback, place called Dubbo. And I had this idea to run some seminars, customer service and marketing seminars, and I was going broke a million miles an hour, right? I had no idea about the seminar business. The town I was in had a population of 35,000 people. So, the pool of people wasn’t that big. Butts on seat was my business and I was going broke a million miles an hour, right? And anyway, one day an accountant turned up, his name was Ellis Ryan, to the pub with the grand sum of eight people in my pumping seminar.

And he says to me, “This is really awesome. Will you come to my town and do this seminar for my clients?” I said, “Where you from?” And he’s from a little place called Coonamble. And Coonamble is a 3,300-person town, right?

Rob Kosberg:

Wow.

Rob Nixon:

Tiny, incy-wincy town. I said, “How many clients have you got?” He said, “I’ve got 126.” I said, “Alright, let’s put on a seminar.” So, we wrote a letter, a piece of mail, letter, right? Snail mail, lumpy mail. Anyway, 56 people turn up to the servicemen’s club and I charge them a door fee. I made a profit of two and a half thousand dollars and I thought, “Wow, these accountants are amazing. They can fill a room, I can’t.” And it was that day on May 20th, 1994, I didn’t know it at the time, but I decided to target accountants, “Hey, I’ll do the seminar for you. It’s really cool. And you’ll take all the credit, I’ll take the risk and anything leftover.” And as they say, the rest is history. So that’s how it got started.

Rob Kosberg:

That’s amazing. It obviously went a lot deeper than that because what you do for accountants today is pretty amazing. And you have a very, very small select list, right? You only work with 64 firms around the world. Talk a little bit about your model and how you help these accounting firms to really blow up their business.

Rob Nixon:

Yeah. So, after all those years of experience, I’m 51 years old now, sort of worked out the riddle, right? I worked out the riddle of what makes an accounting firm successful. So, I’ve gone through numerous business models over the years, and most recently, last three years, I had a coaching business for 10 years in Australia. But three years ago, I decided, okay, through other circumstances, I want to target a small high value group of 64 clients, eight groups of eight, so I coach in groups of eight in a mastermind environment. Charge them a lot of money and have a good-sized firm, an ambitious firm, a firm that’s really motivated to grow and develop their business, make a lot of money, reduce their time. So, I work with them, I’m an assistant coach as well, quite closely. We charge a lot for what we do, what we’re told at least, but the results are there. We guarantee what we do five times ROI. If they don’t make five times what we charge them, they don’t pay, and extra profit per year, and so far, no refunds.

So yeah, it’s a coaching program specifically for select, by invitation only, profiled accounting firms. Many years ago, I had a dumb strategy, which was we need something for all, right? There are all these accounting firms out there, all shapes and sizes and motivations, we need something for all. And that was just crazy. I ended up with a team of 45 people. Profit was low and we were just chasing rabbits all over the place. So, these days, let’s get super laser focused on just a sector that works for us.

Rob Kosberg:

That’s a beautiful takeaway right there, because obviously we want to make application with your success and how you’re helping other people to be successful. And it seems like one of the things that you did, and I of course know some of the backstory of this, but what you did is you really selected your niche carefully. And by doing that, and by focusing on it, you were able to both have the lifestyle that you want and help the clients that maybe were more apt to be helped. Right? I would assume that there’s a level of client in the accounting industry, like any other industry, that as much as you would like for them to grow or change or whatever, they’re never going to do it. Right? What does that look like?

Rob Nixon:

As an example. So, we’re talking books today. My second book was called Remaining Relevant, right? This one here, came out in ’15. Overnight, I received an email from someone who read this book. This is a six-year-old book, right? And there’s lead hooks in every single book, if you want more on this, send me an email, right? And I get this email requesting diagram that he couldn’t really read, and the book is too small. So, I sent it off and I put a question there, say, “Hey,” can’t remember his name, “Steve, how big is your firm? What size is your firm?” And he emails back, I haven’t responded yet. But “Overnight, we’re at $200,000 and we’ve been in business for 25 years.”

Immediately, that is not a client of mine. If you’re only at $200,000 after 25 years, I can’t help you, right? So, my cutoff is a million, as I said. You get yourself to a million in revenue, I’ll show you how to get to a million in profit. So, my target is that, a million or typically, five million in revenue or mainly one to five partners. After five partners, five shareholders, there’s too many in decision makers. So, they’re hard to move, hard to change. So, I discount the small, discount the big, go for the mid.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow. So, some people are going to hear this and they’re immediately going to be scared of doing something like that because it must be just a sliver, right? Do you know what the percentage is of accounting firms that actually fit your qualifications?

Rob Nixon:

About 5%.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow. So, you are disqualifying 95% right out of the gate.

Rob Nixon:

Yep.

Rob Kosberg:

Okay. All right. So, let me put you on the spot for just a minute. I know some of this, but I want to put you on. So, some people are going to hear this, they’re going to think, “You know what? You can’t build a great business that way.” And of course, I know that not to be true because I’ve watched you do it. You have an amazing lifestyle. Talk about what your life looks like, talk about a little bit, if you would, whatever you’re willing to say. But what kind of business have you been able to build by basically deselecting 95% of the market?

Rob Nixon:

Yeah. So, first of all, a small client base as you mentioned, maximum 64 at any one time, work-life, my personal working as in on the tools, either marketing, selling or delivering is no more than 15, maybe 16 hours a week. So, what’s that? Two days a week. And that was set from the get-go that my total utilization was no more than 20% of the year, so 73 days. It’s about that, 73, 80 days give or take, right? That was the initial plan. So that’s good. The time aspect is amazing. That’s one of the reasons my golf handicaps halved this year.

But also, the money aspect. I was always chasing the 95%, Rob. Right? That something for all strategy that I mentioned. And that nearly sent me broke. But really narrowing down, I’ve got seven figure business, well into seven figures, nearly halfway to eight figures with a profit margin, just over 90%. So, there’s a lot to like about that.

Rob Kosberg:

It allows you to keep your golf course green.

Rob Nixon:

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, yeah. But having the time and the money to explore whatever I want to explore. But that’s taken years and years and years and years and years of working out what is the ideal business model for me? And that’s not for all. I was always chasing the built to sell model. Let’s build it and sell the business. And that nearly killed me, travel wise and everything else, raising capital to do that in a tech company. But now I realize I’m not going to sell this business. I’m going to just keep running it because it’s not hard to run. But the impact it makes is amazing on that small group. So, this is a bit contrarian. Most of the business world in the self-achievement, self-wanting to do better businessperson got sucked into the whole start with why movement 10 or 11 years ago. I get it. We need a massive transformational purpose, as Peter Diamandis would say. We need to start with why, as Simon Sinek would say. I get all that. Right? I just don’t want that. I don’t want to change the world; I want to change my world.

But I’m going to say I was going down that path of wanting to change the world through accounting firms. I had this goal of 10,000 accounting firms as clients, 100 clients each from them. We’ll influence the accounting firm, they’ll influence the client, we’ll have a million small businesses positively affected. Right? That was the chase. And that didn’t work out so well.

That’s hard work. So now I look at, okay, I’m the number one here. I need to look after me and my family first, get my lifestyle, my wealth creation sorted. And the 64 firms I work with, we will massively change their world. There’s a client of mine in Maryland, in the US. We got him to a million dollars profit by year two, sole owner. And I interviewed him last October, November, and Kevin said, “I’ve sorted the lifestyle piece out. Now I’m going to build generational wealth through my accounting firm.” And I’m going, “That’s awesome.” That’s what it’s about. Sort lifestyle out then build some wealth through the work that we helped him do. It’s pretty cool.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Rob, I love it. And I appreciate the honesty and I appreciate the focus because I think there are lots of people that hide behind the idea of wanting to change the world. And the reality is they’re not even doing what they need to do to take care of their own family and their own situation. And truth be told, is you are changing the world for a lot of people. The people that you’re able to focus your time and energy and attention on, not the least of which is your wife and your kids and of course your clients. So, love it, man. Love it.

Rob Nixon:

Yeah. And so, my leveraged work, Rob, is through the books, right? That’s my contribution to the firm, that small film I mentioned before. I can’t help him, don’t want to help him, as far as personally. But he picks up a book, picks up some ideas out of that, then awesome. That’s my contribution to not be so selfish about the whole thing. So, I can get leverage through my writing without a doubt, if someone picks that up.

Rob Kosberg:

I love it. That’s a great segue because I do want to talk about your books. You’ve written a number of books. Your books are best sellers internationally, not just in Australia and the US. And you’ve spoken in Brazil and all over the world because of what you do and who you help. Talk to me about how your books have helped to grow your authority, get people that you’ve never heard of and they’ve never heard of you, but interested in you for the first time.

Rob Nixon:

Well, let’s use that Brazil example as a classic example, right? I was at a software conference in 2016, 16 it was, yep, in San Francisco in February. And this random person comes up to me and says, “Rob, Rob, I’ve read your book.” And he read this one here, Remaining Relevant. And I said, “Okay,” sort of in your face a bit. He said, “I’m the CEO of a software company in Brazil. I want you to come. I want to talk to you about coming to Brazil to speak at our conference next year.” So, I did, and we did, right? But it started with the book, Remaining Relevant. And that was 2017. And then I got invited back again in ’19, and we got three and a half thousand accountants in the room in Brazil with Portuguese interpreters, interpreting my English, if you can call it that, into Portuguese. Now that’s an example of just writing a book and seeing who picks up around the world randomly get contacted and then a couple of paid speaking engagements, right? So that’s an example.

I’ve used books to launch businesses, products. I was reflecting on the first three books I wrote. So, the first one was called Accounting Practices Don’t Add Up!, the second one, Remaining Relevant. The third one, The Perfect Firm. And as you said, the most recent one, The Wealthy Accountant. On the first three, I did a book seminar tour, not a book launch tour, but book is launched, let’s do a seminar tour. Not to sell books, but to sell tickets and then sell coaching on the back of that.

So, on all three of the first three, we did that. Of course, The Wealthy Accountant was released April ’20, so we can’t do a seminar tour on that. But I’ve done numerous, I’ve got one tomorrow actually, numerous virtual events on the back of the topic of the book. So, the book is the gold standard for credibility. People don’t read the whole book. If they do, fantastic. But the book lends itself to other revenue generating opportunities, products, services. I shaped a company on the back of one of the books, right? An entire company was shaped. New content leads for whatever it is you’ve got to sell. Typically, it’s going to be training, coaching type or speaking. So, I’ve used books for all those purposes, Rob.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it. I love the idea of the book to seminar. I’ve done that with some of my stuff as well. I’ve seen just a few clients do that. It sounds like you did a lot of that. Any ideas on the amount of revenue those types of seminars would generally produce?

Rob Nixon:

The first two tours on the back of the books were in Australia only. The third one was a global tour. We might get 1,500 to 2,000 paying people to the event at probably 300 bucks average. So, call it 300,000 grand tickets sales per tour, could be more. But it’s the backend that’s the key.

So, the backend is millions and millions of dollars of various products and services. We’ve sold software from seminar, we’ve sold coaching from seminar, additional seminars from seminars, product in a box from seminar. But it’s the book that’s the lead. Hard to say everyone, but a lot, a lot.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Well, it sounds like seven figures and maybe even to the eight figures.

Rob Nixon:

Could be, yep. Yep.

Rob Kosberg:

I’d love to hear; can you map out a little bit of what the strategy looked like? How was the book the front end and what did that look like? Was the book offered as a free giveaway? Walk me through what book to seminar looks like for Rob and what you did.

Rob Nixon:

Yeah. So just back it up a little bit before that, so one important thing I’ve always done with every single book is put lead hooks in there, like that lead, potential lead, I got overnight, which is talking about a concept, put a diagram in there. But if you’d like a full-sized version, email me, robnixon.com and I’ll send it to you. Right? I get emails, literally daily about that.

So that’s just ticking away in the background with all of the, how many tens of thousands of books I’ve got, no idea right? But that’s ticking away in the background because if you sell a book through Amazon or other sellers, you don’t get the name. So, I want to get their name out of there and their name in here. So, I do that through lead hooks within the book itself. So that’s been a big success. But when it comes to tours, or seminar tours, we would simply brand the seminar the name of the book. Right? So, it’s the Perfect Firm Tour, it’s the Remaining Relevant Tour. And then we’d take concepts out of the book. We’d give away the book for free. Unless you sell 100,000 or a million books, you’re not going to get rich off books.

Rob Nixon:

But you get rich on the back end of the book if you play it well. So typically, we would promote book is out, come to the seminar. Charge for the seminar, never a free seminar. I always charge for the seminar. Go through the concepts of the book as a seminar workshop environment, bring your team members along. And then it’d always be a pitch, it’d always be a sell, “Okay, this is where you’ve got so far, this is what happens next.” And designed that way. And typically, I’ll do a full day seminar with that. I’ve done, on the back of books, I’ve done seminars in Australia, New Zealand, UK, England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, and also through the US. And with the same content.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah, yeah. Incredible. Love it. Some people are going to hear this and they’re going to think, “Boy, I love that idea of the book as speaking tour.” Of course, you don’t do that anymore because you’ve basically self-selected this very, very small niche within the clientele. Is there anything that you’re doing in particular with your book right now? I know they’re always working for you; you’re getting daily leads. I love the lead hooks idea. Anything else that you’re doing, maybe with The Wealthy Accountant? I know I saw a Facebook post that you made not long ago, that you got a client, a $90,000 client, from your book. I don’t remember the specifics about that, but anything a little bit different there because you’re not doing the speaking thing as much?

Rob Nixon:

Yeah. So, one of the things we’re doing constantly is on LinkedIn. I’ve got a LinkedIn VA. So, he sits in the Philippines, Clem, as me all day, every day using my account. All legit. And anyway, Clem is giving away free books on LinkedIn. So, we’ll put a post-up, “PM us below if you’d like a free copy,” and with the view of getting them out of the LinkedIn environment into our database. So, once they get the free copy, digital copy that is, then they go into a nurture sequence, a series of emails after that, to engage them, to become potentially a lead for the coaching. So, we’ve moved thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of books like that in a manual, automated-manual sequence. That’s been hugely successful for us.

Just give it away for free, download it here. Download it off our site of course because once they go to our site, they’ve got to put in their details and then all of a sudden, then nurture sequence. That’s been super amazing, Rob.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. I love that. We just started our organic slash inorganic LinkedIn stuff as well, similar with a virtual assistant. And on four months now, we’ve just hit about a quarter of a dollars. And our process is the same. We’re giving away my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Publish. Promote. Profit. So, love it, fantastic. I know that time is of the essence. I know scheduling. I think we’ve covered a ton. Where can people find more information about you if they want to get in touch with you? They know what the parameters are, so if they want to become your client, they need to meet those parameters. Where can they get their books? Give us a couple of links.

Rob Nixon:

Yeah. So, most of the people listening won’t be accounting firms. But you’ve all got an accounting firm. Right? Every single business owner has got an accounting firm. So, here’s the criteria. If you want your accounting firm to serve you well, to be super successful, to be super proactive with you, get your accountant, or you can send him the link if you want, to go to my website, robnixon.com, robnixon.com. And on there, there’ll be a sign up for the book, you can do a diagnostic. But get him or her or them to get engaged. But for them to be involved with me, as I said, they need to be more than a million dollars in revenue, no more than five partners and super ambitious as well. I’ll help them get to a million dollars profit per partner while they’re working less than 500 hours. Robnixon.com is the answer to that.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it. Brother, thank you. Thanks for taking time to be with us. Love talking to you and appreciate all the wisdom.

Rob Nixon:

All the best, man.