Dexterity Talks with Matt Byrne

Earlier this year we met up with Matt Byrne, Director of Day One Advisory (https://dayoneadvisory.com.au/) to discuss the business opportunities and challenges facing start-ups in 2024.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?

I started Day One Advisory in 2021.  We provide end-to-end service for small and medium businesses in Australia.  We cover the basics including tax compliance, bookkeeping, app integrations, etc, but also provide bespoke advisory services.  These include custom board support and coaching around business growth.  For us, it is about helping clients go back to fundamentals so they become more profitable in the services they offer and work more efficiently.  Ultimately, we are geared toward solving problems and want to help owners spend less time working on their business.

What does someone in financial advisory actually do?

We help business owners get a better understanding of their numbers and how they should interpret them. 

We find that a lot of clients do not understand the breadth of services that accountants can offer.  Most people think that accountants are limited to preparing tax returns.  However, that compliance work is only 40% of our revenue.  The other 60% is more value-add financial advisory. 

Most small business, do not need a full-time CFO, but they will benefit from engaging external finance advisors to help them manage their financial affairs. 

Many clients first come to us and have only a surface-level knowledge of how they actually make money.  We will dive into the numbers and breakdown how their business makes money and what it needs to do to trade profitability. We then help pull the numbers out of their systems so they can get better visibility that will help them make better decisions.

Beyond that education piece, there is an important second part.  The majority of entrepreneurs like shiny things.  It is easy for them to get caught up on the next big thing with their business and leave the fundamentals behind so we focus on improving their foundations and keep them accountable to growing their core business.  

The consistency results in improved profitability.  Business owners often get to cross roads with strategic financial decisions and are not sure which way to go.  They need someone to talk to and check if they are on the right path.  It’s a mixture of analysis, reassurance, coaching and accountability.

I can empathise with your clients - I was running Xero for a couple of years because my accountant requested it before I realised its actual capability.

When something is going wrong, it is much harder to identify what that is without accurate financial information.

For you as a service-based business, it’s critical you track your time and do capacity planning. 

When they plan, a lot of service providers calculate that if they charge at $550 x 8 hrs per day, they can hit $1m, but in reality they only make $350K.  The answer usually is that they have budgeted that a job would take them four hours, but in reality it took nine.  The other reason is that they think they’re working 8 hours a day but in reality they are only doing client work for 4 and the general tasks of running and growing a business take up the rest of the time.

If you don’t have that data you cannot see which parts of the business are inefficient or could be improved.  

Good financial management is very much a mindset to pay attention to these things.  Without it you will likely feel no control over your business and that you are getting dragged along.  By having visibility over things you can feel in control.

How is your business progressing in 2024?

It’s been a good year so far, onboarded new staff, our business is growing, and I feel that we are moving to the next phase.  With more clients and staff I am more focussed on getting all the systems and processes out of my head and into a system that works for everybody.  I am trying to consolidate everything and make sure that we can continue to grow sustainably. 

What do you think are the key considerations for accountants, lawyers and other advisors when working with start-ups?

Start-ups are a unique type of business, often run by people who are good technicians but who are new to business.  

I think it is important to take a step back and coach start-ups on their business journey.   More information is better.  Communicating this is how things work, this in when to expect things, how to engage with professionals.  You have to be on the journey with them. 

Established businesses will do much more in house, then engage external lawyers for specific things.  You need to be proactive in managing the relationship with a start-up as they may not appreciate what should be sent out versus kept in house.

One other thing is that entrepreneurs are generally optimists.  Accountants and lawyers can be pessimists.  Our job is often to try to pull back the founders to the core functions of running a successful business and meet somewhere in the middle.

What has been your biggest challenge in business?

Growing a business makes it very difficult to manage your time.  You will have a lot of balls in the air when building something from scratch: doing the work, engaging the clients or customers, marketing, HR, systems, admin, tax etc….

It is hard to trade off those needs against personal life.  You need to consider how to prioritise time, look for new work whilst maintaining quality.  I think you need to remember that there is never enough time to do all things and come to peace with that.

What do you most enjoy about your role?

I love the autonomy and flexibility. I could never go back to being an employee.  In my business I like the impact that we make and the relationships we have with clients. 

I enjoy talking to clients and being involved and helping their business grow. 

I enjoy that I am invested in my own business and get to grow it the way I like.  Most of all, I really like a challenge.

Matt Byrne, thanks for talking to us!

Dexterity Talks is a web series of interviews with founders, investors and advisors in the Australian start-up scene.  This interview was conduct by Pippin Barry (BA, JD), an Australian lawyer and the principal of Dexterity Law.