Simon Dell (00:00)
Good start, let's try that. here we go. Yes, we're recording, fantastic. thank God we got there. My name is Simon Dell. I am the CEO of CIMO. We've got a absolutely bumper packed show today with some very special guests, including one poor gentleman who we have likened to being thrown to the lions.

So I'm gonna get everyone to introduce themselves, but the core focus for today was this kind of title that we came up for this episode, which is Our Accountants, Our Enemies. And by our, I mean marketing people. ⁓ So we're gonna try and answer that question. So first of all, we'll do some quick introductions. Firstly, our sacrificial lamb for today, Daniel Hay, who is in Brisbane. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Daniel Hay (00:52)
I suppose, counting for over 20 years now. So, four partner firm, so three office locations in Brisbane. So we look after a range of clients, individuals, super funds to medium to large businesses. So, been in business for about nearly 14 years, so I've sort of had a bit to do with the marketing side of things. We spent a lot of money, lost a lot of money, but I think, you know, sort of not understanding.

I think it's sort of taken us a bit of time to realise what we want and what's required.

Simon Dell (01:24)
Awesome.

Thank you. Now, second appearance, think on the podcast, Kelly Dimkovska. Do want to give us a little bit about, give us a bit of the Kelly story.

Kelly Dimkovska (01:34)
Absolutely, Simon. So I am a fractional CMO and I own the business Tuesday Logic. ⁓ Tuesday Logic really just specialises in the healthcare space. I've had over 15 years of digital marketing experience and 11 of those have been in the healthcare sector.

Simon Dell (01:53)
Awesome. Thank

you. Joshua Cilento or JC as I found out he is known to his friends. Tell us about you.

Joshua Cilento (02:02)
I originally come from rock and roll and then into production and television production, film and TV production. And then that became Agency Land. Outrageous people trying to get me. And yeah, then Agency from creative onto suit side. And then it became consultancy and our fractional with CMO.

Simon Dell (02:24)
Okay, awesome. And last but certainly not least, brand new to the show, Tommy Holt, please introduce yourself.

Tommy Holt (02:31)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Simon, and great to be sitting with such esteemed colleagues. ⁓ So I've been working in marketing, brand and reputation for...

about 20 years, primarily in-house, but more recently have been a hired gun for a number of different organizations. I consider myself a marketer first and foremost and have had the pleasure of using my skills across a number of industries, including healthcare, FMCG, Ecom, and most recently was part of the team over at Woolies where I was there for around seven years. So ⁓ really passionate about the connection between marketing reputation

and corporate affairs and all those things and I've had the pleasure at various times of dealing with the finance teams under those banners as well.

Simon Dell (03:21)
Awesome. Thank you, Tommy. Now look, before we start, I'm going to frame this because this subject matter was something that came out of a conversation with my business partner, Matt Clarkson. We have a client that we've worked with for many, many years. Matt works with them directly, which is unusual in itself because that doesn't normally happen, but we've worked with them for a long time and they're in the travel space. Over the years, they have grown and grown and ⁓ to the point now where...

They are making lots of money. The owners get to go on long holidays without having to worry about too much as what's going on in the business. But that has been ⁓ a consequence of them investing and investing and investing in marketing, largely digital marketing and largely expanding their footprint in the number of products that they sell and things like that. About two months ago, their accountant had had a conversation with the business owner and said, and I'm going to paraphrase this,

you're spending too much money on marketing. Now the challenge for us was that the accountant had never sat in any of the meetings, never been in the marketing meetings, didn't know anything about marketing. We assume he didn't know that much about marketing, but had simply seen a number on a line ⁓ on a P and L and gone that's too much. Now how they got to that conclusion, not entirely sure, but that sort of

brought around this conversation where we were like, everything we've done over the past four or five years in growing this business and growing this business and growing this business was suddenly undone by a accountant going, you're just spending too much money. So that's where this conversation had come from. And I think what we wanted to do was take a deeper dive into that statement ⁓ and try and understand the relationship between.

finance and marketing. Are we gonna fix anything today? Probably not. ⁓ But I think we can perhaps help understand what the challenges are. Now, with that, I've got four sort of key questions. And I'm gonna go to Josh first because he's the, I'm sure Tommy and Kelly could as well, but he's the most likely to be able to talk off the top of his head. ⁓ My first question, I the other questions.

Joshua Cilento (05:41)
I'm standing from rage already.

Simon Dell (05:45)
What do you, the first question is, is we wanted to talk about the philosophical clash between marketers and accountants. Where do you see that happening in businesses?

Joshua Cilento (05:57)
I see it in the in the textbook as the as the adversary. They are they measure what has happened and make sense of what has happened. And we are responsible for creating what is going to happen when you just talked about your guy coming and saying there's been an incredible spend there, you know, $35,000 for a golf membership. OK, one point five of last year came from the guy that I play golf with.

You know, there's a that intangible quantum call between what it is that the spend in the budget is, ⁓ is a constant fight. And they say that it's the same sport, but it's different codes, or you can call it checkers and chess, but it's not checkers and chess, it's checkers and a burning fighter aircraft taking friendly fire at the same time.

Simon Dell (06:46)
Daniel, right of reply there on the other side. How do you see that?

Daniel Hay (06:51)
It's sort of I think as accountants I think unless they've actually dived in it and done it themselves I don't think they truly understand it. again, we've spent a lot of money I reckon 10 years I reckon probably spent maybe two to three hundred thousand on marketing.

That could have range from we actually did a bit of a co thing with some other businesses where we you know, hide a film person we had a writer We're doing YouTube. We did Facebook. We did everything and I think at the end we've got an uber driver out of that span so I think In a true story, so I think but we've learned from that and I think as I said up until recently probably the last 18 months I think it's probably Understanding who we are. What our values are what?

clients we want, because I think we just wanted anyone. Where I think we like tradies, but specifically there's the type of tradies that we like doing. So instead of only now that we've probably really realised who we want and how to get them potentially. So it's taken us a bit of time. ⁓ Traditionally I think accountants think marketing is quite fluffy. ⁓ But yeah, I think unless they actually...

Simon Dell (08:01)
Well, let's, let's

yeah, I mean, let's, let's dive into that a little bit more because that's not the first time I suspect the four of us have heard that that accusation. ⁓ you know, when you look at that and let's put your experience aside because I presume you, you would see this be with other potential clients of yours who are running businesses. ⁓ do you ever look at, do you ever look at that and think,

Daniel Hay (08:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Dell (08:28)
How much are you guys spending here? Are you sort of drilling down to those numbers at all?

Daniel Hay (08:34)
Particularly in a type of businesses like there's one that they do cruises. So they do spend a fair bit of marketing. So but I've seen I follow them on Facebook and whatever Instagram and whatnot, but I can see.

They've gone through quite a few providers, but it's probably only recently where they've sort of got that niche one that sort of understands their needs and they've actually focusing on the clientele that they need for the business to be successful. again, I think it's that misunderstanding or potentially not. ⁓

tracking things properly or understanding the full demographics, what they need to focus on. So I think, again, they've taken a few times, but they've seem to have got the right marketing person now who understands them. And maybe that's the thing, maybe in the marketing world, maybe it's a misunderstanding, I don't know. ⁓ Again, that's sort of what I've seen. But like a lot of clients, you see the marketing, they'll spend a lot on SEO. And again, I think it's that they've been sold, they don't really understand it.

And they're probably, you know, focusing on wrong keywords and things like that. So again, that's a bit of an art. So I guess it's a matter of that understanding what they need.

Simon Dell (09:48)
So

Tommy, ⁓ go on, yeah. ⁓

Joshua Cilento (09:48)
So I would say back to that.

that I would

not do that spend without having an accountant, one that I trusted and I knew. And I guarantee you, you didn't have a fractional CMO when you did that spend as accountants.

Daniel Hay (09:58)
Yeah.

No, well yeah, again, we thought we knew what we were doing, but you it's an experience isn't it?

Simon Dell (10:09)
Well, yes. Do you think,

I'll ask this one of Tommy, do you think there's a challenge between perhaps marketers thinking more long-term and accountants thinking not even just short-term, but post-event? Do you think there's that fundamental philosophical difference between the two?

Tommy Holt (10:32)
Yeah, well, mean, by its very nature, know, marketing is about building future value for the organization. And that necessitates some level of speculation. You know, we always talk about brand building, being an investment in future revenue stream. And there will always be a component of marketing, which is about immediacy and, you know, return on investment. So in organizations I've worked with, you know, we've been as explicit as, you know, ⁓ splitting spend between

brand building initiatives, building trust and engagement with future customers and today's customers in order to try and win a larger share of their future value and driving campaigns that are about driving, you know, delivering immediacy, you know, product and price, you know, what have we got on on sale or what's our service offering of the day and how can we convert that and I see how that becomes an existential challenge for, ⁓ for accountants because

you want to be able to attribute a spend on a return. You know, there is when you look at a capital investment, when you're having conversations about CapEx, there is a facility that you are investing in. on the day that it opens up, you're able to attribute, you know, a component part of your future revenue to that. Whereas marketing is more about a feel good factor, you know, we always talk about the art and science of of marketing and the best relationships I've ever had with

⁓ finance and accounting teams have been the ones who recognize that there is value intrinsic value intrinsic value, often hard to measure value in creating a brand engagement and a brand awareness almost at a fundamental level. ⁓ So I can completely appreciate how ⁓ those people not just in finance, but in many other areas of business, including operations and the like.

find it really hard to attribute a future value to a cost that they are incurring today. I have had those conversations. And as a quick aside, often I've seen organizations fall into the trap of relying on last click attribution as the measure of performance. If you're selling pairs of pants online,

and someone clicks on an ad and goes to their basket or your website adds a product to basket, you think to yourself, well, didn't that advert work really well? It got clicked through. But the reality is that the preference of that consumer, the awareness of your range of products that may not have existed if it weren't for those brand building awareness building ⁓ activities. And again, that's very hard. And there are a range of organizations and agencies and tech

providers that have been trying to unravel that but at the end of the day, very hard to put a price on the value of creating awareness and creating brand affinity with someone well before the point where they decide to buy that pair of jeans. And that's that's a really challenging kind of, you know, that's a really challenging intellectual model to be able to get your head around when you're just like, tell me what got them to click on that ad to buy that pair of jeans.

Simon Dell (13:34)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, I'll come to Kelly in a minute to ask about your experience in that with those challenges. But I think Tommy's much more eloquent expression of the challenge there. often call the plumber's van theory. And I say to everybody, say to an accountant, if I said to you, if a plumber came to you and said, I need $5,000 to sign write my van.

and I'm gonna drive around and go to all of my jobs in my van, I don't think there's a single person in any room that would say, hey, that's a bad idea. That's wasting money because we know that the plumber's van is going to drive all through the city and people are gonna see the side of the van and they're gonna see the name and they're gonna see the phone number and they're gonna see the website. But to Tommy's point, the last attribute to actually contacting the plumber would be his website and not the van.

So that's my plumber's van theory is that we all still have to have our vans driving about the city, but we can't assume that the website, the plumber's website was the thing that actually generated the call. And interestingly, this came from an actual plumber who I was working with. He couldn't understand why all of his traffic to his website had dropped.

And I met him for a coffee one day and I said to him, where's your van? He said, I got rid of it. I didn't really need it. And it used to have this bright yellow thing, sort of logos all over it and everything. And he was like, yeah, my traffic to the website's dropped. And I said, Jimmy, you've got rid of your van. And he was like, well, yeah, he said, I just wanted a new van. the other one didn't have anything on it. So to him, he hadn't worked that out. There was a cause and effect there of actually driving his business.

⁓ Kelly, what are your sort challenges being in that space where you've had those maybe knocked some heads with people in finance?

Kelly Dimkovska (15:50)
Yeah, sure. So, actually it was a fairly recent one with a

space and for a year or so the accountant had been telling her that she needed to reduce marketing spend but every time we did that we saw results and therefore all the bookings dropped. It was actually when the accountant went away and started his own firm that he actually came back to her later and said no double down on the marketing spend because he suddenly understood the marketing function.

and how valuable it had been to his new firm in generating business. So that was sort of one of the more recent ones. But in terms of what I like to do, if it's the business owner that's speaking with the accountant directly, I normally like to sit down and really arm them with all the information before they see their accountant. So they're able to clearly articulate,

what we're doing, why we're doing it, and to Tommy's point, exactly what phase in the funnel that's attacking, so to speak, and what the marketing goal out the other end is. Yeah.

Daniel Hay (16:59)
Actually funny story just quickly about the plumber van. Well I have a Ute because I have a race car I usually tow it around so it's got the business all over it and I've actually picked up a heap of clients from Bunnings. They've come in, they've got five years of returns they haven't done. I saw your Ute and I thought I'd come and get my tax returns done by you. So it does work.

Joshua Cilento (17:17)
Ha ha ha.

Simon Dell (17:21)
Yeah, yeah, look, absolutely. if, and I think, think our point is, is if you said, if someone had said that to you right at the start, Dan, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna sign right this, what would you, as a counter, what would your reaction have been?

Daniel Hay (17:36)
I think from, I guess my background, family business, not accounting but Fridrations, I guess I understand that a bit earlier that you know always had sign writing that's, particularly in a smaller town back in the day with you know, refidexes, effectively that was how people got you. So they saw the number on the side of the ute, they gave you calls. I sort of understand that a bit better. Maybe that might be the accounting thing, but they've only just done accounting, that's all they've done. They haven't actually experienced any other

Simon Dell (17:44)
Mm.

Daniel Hay (18:06)
type of being in business before in any other sort of industry. So maybe that's a thing I don't know.

Simon Dell (18:13)
⁓ When we sort of present budgets, ⁓ I wanted to sort of get an understanding of whether there's a right way of presenting it so that the accountants can make more sense of it. Because if we're sitting in front of people asking for a big chunk of money, and whether that's what I've done with small and medium sized businesses, or whether that's potentially Tommy who's sat in front of potentially boards of people asking for lots and lots of cash.

Do you think there's a way that we should be doing that? And I'll ask that for both sides of it. I'll ask that to Josh first and then ask Dan, would it be easier if, to reframe it for you, if all that time ago when you spent all that money, it had been presented to you in a different way? So I'll ask Josh that question first to how he would do that if he was pitching that to a room of non-marketing people.

Joshua Cilento (19:09)
Yeah, I'm still doing it. ⁓ And it's kind of that it is it's the dark arts. And if you don't understand it, there's also trying to educate in it doesn't give you the win. just creates different ⁓ goal posts.

inside the dark arts that don't they're not they're not related or that they're still not the relationship between what it is you're trying to do what it is that you want to do. And I'm literally seeing that here now. A friend not a client because he doesn't pay me he literally said how's your Black Friday going? tie this in. You're a great guy. I love you. Your business is amazing. They're doing 910.

Simon Dell (19:31)
Mmm.

Joshua Cilento (19:56)
He just said, we're up 41 % because I said, you've got to show that you are the business. He's the only guy. He is the main core person. And it was just one line, authenticity. You quantify that in explaining that in a budget that is required for doing iPhone content to support your business. 41 points in their highest. This is that Black Friday window is they make 70 % of their year.

So I'm still doing it. am still trying to explain and I'm still realizing that there's no point in explaining there is what you do and what works because it's inside the black box. The cable goes in and the cable goes out. Stuff happens inside the black box. We all know what happens inside the black box and what levers to pull, but trying to explain, trying to do, trying to show, it's very little benefit. There's performance.

Simon Dell (20:54)
Yeah. Tommy? Yeah.

Joshua Cilento (20:54)
Then have the account show you what the numbers are.

Tommy Holt (20:58)
Yeah, look, I mean, marketing is, you know, sort of an outcome based discipline, isn't it? ⁓ Just one of the things that I have always found really interesting about marketing is, and maybe it is, you know, it's complement to, you know, others on the call and marketers more broadly, but also, I think an outcome of the discipline itself, it's such an accessible and you know, thing, you can see adverts, you can pick up a magazine, you can click on a link, you've all seen your Instagram feed, you've all and so therefore,

it sort of democratizes the discipline. And, ⁓ you know, I know that I could never go to a finance team or a legal team and say to them, Hey, you know, I read a contract, a contract or two, I signed up for something on, you know, I signed up for a subscription service. So I know, I know contracts. So why don't you leave it to me? I've got quite a strong view on how we should set up this professional partnership, we or you know, motors, you know, any sort of documentation we might have with a with a third party, whereas marketing seems to

attract that perspective. This is probably a little bit dismissive, ⁓ and maybe as a result, a little bit unhelpful. But part of me that has never shown its face in a professional environment feels like saying, would you have a similar conversation with your legal team? Would you go to your legal team and say, actually, guys, you know, I'm going to take over here because, you know, I once saw, ⁓ you know, law and order. And therefore, I'm well abreast of how

Kelly Dimkovska (22:12)
Thank

Tommy Holt (22:25)
know, expertise works. So it's a really funny discipline in that regard in that it is so, so accessible. mean,

Joshua Cilento (22:33)
News.

Simon Dell (22:33)
And it's funny you say that because maybe it's, know, Dan pretty much said that earlier in the conversation where I think, Dan, you said something like, we thought we knew what we were doing. I don't think any of us, Tommy, Josh, Kelly, myself, would go into anything from an accounting perspective or a legal perspective, which is a perfect example, and go, yeah, we did it because we thought we knew what we were doing.

Joshua Cilento (22:59)
Tommy said democratizing, I say Dunning-Kruger. It's the other way. It's exposure to so little information that they become an immediate expert because, again, if you pull one lever, you don't see the other three move in the other direction, but it's, yeah, Dunning-Kruger, not democracy.

Simon Dell (23:15)
Mmm.

Done?

Tommy Holt (23:19)
Yeah, sorry.

Daniel Hay (23:21)
You alright

Tommy? You alright?

Tommy Holt (23:23)
Yogi please, down after you.

Daniel Hay (23:24)
I

guess probably from our experience, it's sort of, like if we, like recently we've actually had a firm actually review our business operations completely. So they've given us a bit of a plan as to, you know, this is what you should do, CRMs, marketing, yada, yada, yada. I've gone to an external marketing firm, they've sort of given us a bit of a...

budget and sort of which way to go. But probably what I've liked in this case, we're not in previous where previously was sort of just being given, you know, this is what you got to do lump sum, where I guess these guys have done a little bit different. They've sort of done short term, medium and long term sort of strategies. And they've sort of actually, you know, you might do medium, a bit of short term now, which will sort of get a bit of, bit of ⁓ sort of movement. And then it's sort of the medium and long term. So I have actually liked how they're

presented at this time where I guess previously we've never had that before. And I think from an accounting point of view, marketing is an expense. see it in the balance sheet straight away. They're sort of like, you know, when am gonna get a return? But I think, yeah, they need to understand it is a long-term strategy. It's not something instant in most cases. ⁓ I guess that's from my experience and what I've generally seen.

Simon Dell (24:39)
Yeah. Look,

we've picked on Daniel a lot. Kelly, I was going to ask you the question. If there's things that accountants and finance people don't understand about marketing, what do you think? And as an honesty as your opinion, what is it that you don't understand potentially about accounting and finance and the money side of things?

Daniel Hay (24:44)
He

Kelly Dimkovska (25:00)
I think generally it is just how that is broken down. So when a business owner goes to an accountant, it was exactly what we bringing up before. What metrics, what are you actually looking for? If we can show revenue growth, then I suppose the struggle is to understand if we're proving revenue growth, why then marketing is sort of

first off the list to almost go. It's quite an unusual thing to come across.

Daniel Hay (25:36)
I guess to honest

Simon Dell (25:36)
Yeah.

Daniel Hay (25:37)
with accountants I guess we've structured ourselves a little bit differently where we're sort of able to just do more than the usual standard compliance. I think a lot of accountants with all the extra compliance and everything else, they're too bogged down to do anything else. They'll just see a number and they'll tell a client, you're spending too much. And I think they just move on. So I think it's just an observation. It's probably not an understanding or they've got time to actually interpret it more. Where I guess probably we've freed up.

ourselves up a bit where we can do more that with clients. And I think that's generally most cases you'll find accounts are just too busy. They see it as a number and just make a comment on it. So there's probably no measurements at all to be honest with you. Yeah.

Kelly Dimkovska (26:16)
And so second.

Yeah, sure. So yeah, because I was even thinking like with digital marketing, obviously you can scale so you could sort of launch with a Google Ads campaign or whatever it might be and sort of show progression and then as we're proving revenue growth start doubling down on the spend. But are you saying that that wouldn't even sort of generally help get the

Joshua Cilento (26:20)
Thank

Daniel Hay (26:39)
I think generally

with all our clients I guess there's only a few that probably bring us on board with their marketing team. Generally speaking it's probably they've spent the money, we've only seen it when we're doing the account. I guess... ⁓

probably I think there's not that introduction. ⁓ So we probably don't even know what they're doing. So again, I think if there was more interaction with the marketing and things like that, think Journey would probably have more success. There's accountants on board that probably at least can see what the money's been spent on and understand where I guess you guys are coming from.

Simon Dell (27:16)
Yeah. Do you think

that's an interesting point? Do think it would be worth more marketing people asking for accountants and the finance people to sit in the room with them? Okay.

Daniel Hay (27:22)
definitely, I think 100%. Yeah, yeah. Yep, yep.

Tommy Holt (27:26)
Yeah, just a quick

thought from me and observation from what I've seen, you know, you do hear a lot of ⁓ a lot of businesses at various stages of growth, they go to an area of specialization in marketing looking for a solution. So you often find let's use SEO or SEM ⁓ as an example. You know, if I were if I had a problem with my car, and I just went to an auto electrician, the only thing they would look at is the electronics in my car.

and they would try and fix that. ⁓ If I had a medical problem and I only went to an orthopedic surgeon, they would probably only look through one lens at what it was that was making me unwell. Now there's a reason we go to a general practitioner. ⁓ Likewise, there should be a reason why you go to a marketing generalist because we know all the tools that you can leverage. Sometimes you've got a severe brand problem, right? Sometimes you've got a digital problem.

Sometimes it may be that your competitors have a much more active in an offline means. If you go to an SEO expert, you are only ever gonna get an SEO result and you're only ever gonna get an SEO solution. And that can be a challenge. And I think that's why generalists like us can be really important because the level of engagement you can talk about, the level of sophistication of the business, the investment, that sort of thing. But what you are gonna get is...

Joshua Cilento (28:37)
hundreds.

Tommy Holt (28:52)
an outcome which is designed fit for purpose for the organization rather than being channel or execution specific. And I think that can make a big difference ⁓ in that organizations start to get an appreciation of the breadth of marketing tools that are at their disposal, rather than isolating one out and a lot of those other skill sets, then they don't have that strategic capability that sometime is needed to define whether their solution is the right one. If I was an SEO agent,

agency and someone came up to me and said I've got a marketing problem the first thing I'll do is propose an SEO solution you know it's it's as simple as that regardless of whether it's actually the solution that was needed at that moment

Joshua Cilento (29:33)
I agree absolutely, especially with that stretch metaphor of the auto electrician who's going to come in and say, only two of these wheels are working.

It's a motorbike. It's not even a car. It's not that like the relationship you do need that GP to be able to give you a basic diagnosis. And then we all have specialists just down the hallway in our suite that we always go. We go to the SEO guy. We have lunch with them because each of those is ⁓ a tool or a weapon to solve that or cure that disease. But yeah, I agree. If you go to the podiatrist, you're going to get that result.

Simon Dell (30:14)
If let's we I think we've diagnosed or back to the medical metaphors here, but I think we will diagnose the problem here what? If you if you could redesign if you could redesign that relationship if it was a blank piece of paper How would that look Josh?

Kelly Dimkovska (30:21)
you

Daniel Hay (30:21)
It's not

accountants.

Joshua Cilento (30:34)
I would say accountants know that there is a fight going on. They know that it needs to be done. ⁓ But they usually want you to go to that gunfight with a knife made out of unsigned permission slips.

It's of no merit to them. They win when you do less and they win when you do more with less. is a very, very, ⁓ you need to have them engaged. ⁓ again, democratically, not Donnie Krueger in the process and understanding what each of those different elements are that are required to do that. When they do, you've got a chance to win the fight, but otherwise you're just going into a room to get punched.

Simon Dell (30:59)
Yeah.

Dan, knowing what you know now about what you spent in marketing, if a client came to you and said, you're my accountant, you've helped me run the business for all these years, ⁓ am I spending too much on marketing or where should I save some money? Maybe a broader question like that. How would you rebuild that relationship? Would it simply be, cut some costs here? How would you approach that?

Daniel Hay (31:48)
Well think theoretically depending on the type of business industry I think there is some cost savings generally speaking but I think from a marketing point of view I think it is probably introducing them to someone probably who that is I guess for the industry I guess like a lot of clients I see might get SEO but they don't really have a proper landing page or there's no

sort of other, whether it's Facebook or Google, there's no other, they're paying for it but there's no, the traffic isn't going in proper places. guess, trying to get a, I guess there's a bit of a hard one there. I think.

Simon Dell (32:26)
What about Tommy? do

you think? I was going to say, I'll jump to Tommy whilst you have a think about that one. Yeah. What do you, how would you, how would you redesign this from scratch?

Daniel Hay (32:30)
You know you're good, Tommy.

Tommy Holt (32:35)
look, I think that there's a lot to be said for, you know, that that fundamental understanding of the benefit that marketing can provide. ⁓ And and how do you, you know, upskill very different and diverse ⁓ leaders around how how that might happen? You know, likewise, we all have to have a broad understanding of, you know,

contract law when we're putting in place, you know, partnerships, we have to have a broad understanding of HR when you're in large organizations, you know, we have to know how to operate in those spheres. I do think that finance can sometimes be very binary and saying, Hey, I'm finance and, and I don't interpret or understand ⁓ anything in the marketing world. Well, you know, my challenge would be to say, well, you kind of do need to understand that. ⁓ So that's the first bit. ⁓ The second element, I think, is that

frankly, you here we are as a bunch of marketers and Dan, you're our punching bag in a way we're all saying, well, you should do a better job and you should understand it. But there's a lot to be said for how marketers you know what our literacy is like around finance. ⁓ I, you know, take great enjoyment and generate a lot of pleasure by being able to coherently hold a conversation with operational teams with HR teams with finance teams with legal teams and those sorts of things. Now, I'm not an expert, but I can at least

interpret what's being said and hopefully interpret my needs from a marketing perspective into their area of expertise. So, you know, I hate to wheel out words like collaboration and the like, because that's, you know, they sometimes become these buzzwords that lose any meaning. But it is being it is that literacy, right? Like, we need to be able to understand a cable, Dan, what are you trying to achieve? You want increased revenues, you want to be able to zero out every every cost line. Let's find a point somewhere here where we can

come up with, you know, a bilateral agreement around where there is benefit, I've got to validate, you know, my existence and the benefit of what I do. ⁓ But I want to be able to do it in a way where you're feeling comfortable when you do see that line item, you're like, actually, that's a worthwhile investment. I understand now what the return is that that's generating. And maybe it's not just a default case of but how can I reduce that number? Maybe who knows, you'll have a conversation with the finance team one day who are like,

we're seeing the return, what would it look like if we increase it by 10%, 20%, 30 % in terms of that investment because we are feeling the organizational and business benefit. So there's a job for both sides of the conversation to be done. But I do think that, you know, I benefited hugely from doing tertiary education and some postgraduate stuff because I was able to understand more about finance. And I think finance professionals appreciate that because whilst I'm not a

Simon Dell (35:17)
Mm.

Tommy Holt (35:22)
you know, finance specialist, I can converse with them in terms that they can understand and interpret, rather than perhaps falling into this mindset of being a marketer first and foremost. And I hope you can understand what I'm saying, because I'm not going to kind of walk over to your side to try and teach you.

Simon Dell (35:38)
Yeah.

Daniel Hay (35:38)
guess

as accountants, like the only marketing course we do is probably, I did one, it was the first year of my bachelor's degree 25 years ago. So I think there's no...

Again, it's through our experience, our own exposure that we'll probably learn a bit there. So whether there, maybe there is a collaboration with the likings of the IPAs and the CPAs or something like that to sort of better understand marketing and how that can help clients. Like I think maybe that is something that could potentially maybe look at. ⁓

Simon Dell (35:53)
Hmm.

We used to have a relationship

with ⁓ somebody who ran a training organization called Marketing for CEOs. And it did exactly what it said on the tin. It took CEOs in and taught them how marketing worked. Because again, as we would all know for the, you know, for every CFO out there that doesn't understand marketing, there's a CEO that doesn't as well. That's come up through a trade and just simply doesn't quite understand how the company got there. ⁓

But maybe there's an argument that there's marketing for CFOs. Maybe that's teaching them how that sensible investment or even speculative investment can deliver results in the future. Because I think that's where they really struggle. Kelly, the question for you about in terms of rebuilding that, how would you sort of rebuild that approach?

Kelly Dimkovska (37:05)
So I would love to see fractional CMOs or CMOs in general being invited into those discussions with accountants. What I normally find is sort of your small to medium businesses, they don't normally loop the CMO in until it's too late. So it'd be great to be involved and brought in on that journey, develop the relationship with the accountant and to be able to, I suppose, educate. ⁓

them along the way and then that way you don't need to do additional courses, you're actually working with the CMO and the business. I think it's a really important piece of this puzzle because in the instance where I talked about earlier, cutting marketing budget, it was terrible for their revenue. So I think these are big decisions. ⁓

Simon Dell (37:50)
Hmm. Yeah. But the

challenge is Kelly is that revenue that revenue drop won't appear straight away. It was three or three to six months time. And then the account will be Yeah, and then the owner and the account will be scratching their heads going, well, what happened here? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kelly Dimkovska (37:59)
And that's too late.

Joshua Cilento (38:04)
Yeah, thanks.

Daniel Hay (38:06)
Yeah, the momentum stopped.

Kelly Dimkovska (38:08)
Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, think just being brought along on the journey is really important.

Simon Dell (38:14)
I think simply the fact that I see so many companies working with

a senior finance person, be that a fractional CFO or a full-time CFO or whatever, but so few companies doing the same from a marketing perspective, I think is the big challenge. And one of the last things I wanted to make just to sort of step back a couple of bits, sorry Josh, I'll come to you in a sec. One of the last things I was, one of the challenges with our industry from a marketing perspective is that the barrier to entry is low. I could sit there and say tomorrow, hey, I'm a social media manager.

Kelly Dimkovska (38:30)
Thank

Simon Dell (38:49)
I'm a marketing expert. Yes, there are qualifications we can get, but you can't sit there tomorrow and go, hey, I'm an accountant, give me your books. I mean, you probably could, but you're not gonna last long without being locked. You could get locked up for that. Whereas if you sit there and purport to be a social media expert, ain't no one arresting you for terrible results. So Josh, you were gonna say that?

Joshua Cilento (39:08)
You should.

Just as you were talking about how would we rephrase that, ⁓ every aggressive, sensible, current business has a direct attribution.

which is a known, depending on the industry or the product range or market, a percentage that needs to go into R and D. They have an R and D team depending on where they are and what they're doing. It's anywhere from five to 12%, depending on what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve. I'm working with some of those teams and the understanding of when making this product, but for who, for what? It's not gonna help with the business. So that's why they've been speaking to marketing and it's like, okay, well hang on a second.

Let's do the same thing there. There is an attribution required of the country's GDP that needs to go into this infrastructure development for the country. And that's what happens every year. Then Dan steps in and says, there are cheaper ways to do it. don't need the $20,000 Mr. Plough commercial. We just need the $500 guy. We can still do all of those steps from there. So yeah, physician, heal thyself.

Simon Dell (40:28)
Look, I think I'm gonna ask one last question today, which we'll sort of have as a final, you know, maybe one sentence, two sentence closeout. And I was gonna say that we had two options here that we sort of put together earlier. And I think one of them is really, really poorly poignant given everything we've said here. At the end of the day, who should own revenue growth in a business? Marketing.

or finance or I will give you another that we haven't discussed today. Tommy, you can go first on that one.

Tommy Holt (41:07)
My experience has always been marketing take the platitudes when things go up. And if things go down, ⁓ it's obviously the finance have dropped the ball somewhere. So that's generally been my experience. Perhaps it's because of where I've sat in organizations. But all jokes aside, know, every marketer, every single marketer should be able to in some way, directly or indirectly attribute

Simon Dell (41:14)
Mm-hmm.

Kelly Dimkovska (41:19)
Thanks

Tommy Holt (41:36)
their activities to some level of business benefit. just often that gets lost, you know, I feel really passionately about that you must be able to tie your activities into business upside. That is the language that finance teams and everyone else understands. So I of course, as a marketer, I would say we should be accountable for growth and trajectory of an organization, we want money for long term growth. That's what building brand is about. So we should be held accountable to that.

Simon Dell (41:40)
Okay.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Thanks.

Awesome. Josh?

Joshua Cilento (42:07)
⁓ Look, I agree. If it goes well, then, you know, finance should have given us more money to do it better. ⁓ And that's always been the way that I, yeah, I look, I agree on this. I'm the same. is

Marketing is the future. Accounting is the assessment of what is occurring. I understand the risk mitigation and the requirements that are of that. However, take the word marketing out, call it the business. What is the business? All you're doing is showing that to market. If there's a disconnect there, then we find that internally with finance and marketing and then present the business better.

Simon Dell (42:54)
It's not how does the marketing team find us new customers. It's as you say, how does the business find us new customers? So you don't need to use the word marketing in there. Kelly, you're... Yeah. Yeah.

Joshua Cilento (43:02)
Yeah.

They're already looking at the businesses, why choose us?

Because it looks like this, because we show the business as that.

Simon Dell (43:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. Kelly, your thoughts?

Kelly Dimkovska (43:15)
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head for me right at the end. For me, it's about making sure that different departments actually aren't working in silos. I think everybody needs to be talking to each other, marketing, sales, the finance team. I think it's actually a joint effort that all does actually contribute to business or commercial outcomes at the end of the day. I don't like the siloed approach.

Simon Dell (43:42)
And it's you get the final right of reply here after we've told you that we control, think unequivocally we've all stayed, we control business growth here. We should be rewarded. But I just wanna frame that last question a little bit different for you. You've called somebody new in to help you with the business, right? And you're saying it's a different approach this time. Let's say your business grows by 20 % in 2026.

Joshua Cilento (43:45)
Hahaha.

Daniel Hay (43:49)
control the destiny.

Simon Dell (44:13)
Do you go back and thank the marketing team? And I know you might turn around and say, yes I do, but honestly, do you sit there and give them a call and say this is all thanks to you? Or.

Daniel Hay (44:24)
Well, I think like

from, I suppose from marketing, I guess it is an investment. think making both sides accountable, I think. ⁓

can drive it, but it is long-term. think that's where accountants get a bit, they're sort of looking for the short-term returns, but it is a long-term strategy really at the of the day. So, particularly in this case, we're actually making each other accountable. So we're doing weekly check-ins, going through what's each process and everything else. Funny enough, one of our growth strategies, we're actually buying a marketing firm. So, we're not good at sales. Accountants aren't traditionally good at sales. So, I think from what we've been through,

Simon Dell (44:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Daniel Hay (45:03)
we see the benefit. So I think it's just how we get that out to other accountants. Because that's another story. ⁓

Simon Dell (45:10)
So not,

I was gonna say not to put any words in your mouth, but any account that's listening to this, they should definitely call up a fractional CMO and get them in their business. That's definitely what you're saying here,

Daniel Hay (45:19)
I think so. Yep, yep, that's right.

How much you pay mouth was...

Simon Dell (45:26)
I quit.

Joshua Cilento (45:26)
I want say the whole argument

is about Daniel gets the last word. We've all spoken and then in the accounts.

Simon Dell (45:29)
Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, I okay.

Daniel Hay (45:30)
Go, go, J.C.

Simon Dell (45:36)
Look, I just want to thank you all. I'm sure we could have had this discussion could have gone on for a lot longer. I think there's some really good insights there. I have written down some timestamps when I think there were some really good snapshots out of everything that people said. So.

I really want to appreciate that. I really want to say sorry really appreciate that and say thank you to all Tommy, Josh, Kelly, ⁓ And yeah, look, if there's maybe maybe we will give Dan the last the last thing but the last word but maybe just maybe one sentence one sentence for everybody out there Josh that you can that you can frame the challenge here for everyone that we've spoken about today.

Joshua Cilento (46:20)
⁓ They're not evil. just...

Simon Dell (46:24)
No, that's alright, stop there. That's good, they're not evil. I like that one. ⁓ Tommy, what about yourself?

Daniel Hay (46:26)
You

Tommy Holt (46:29)
it's got to be win-win for everyone right? ⁓ Everyone is there at the behest of the business that means that ⁓ finance, marketing and all the other disciplines have a role to play in success so let's operate like that rather than being adversaries inside an organization seemingly ⁓ looking at different outcomes.

Simon Dell (46:49)
Kelly, what about you? What's your final word for today?

Kelly Dimkovska (46:52)
think it's important that we all speak the same language.

Simon Dell (46:56)
Excellent and I'm

going to add into that. I pretty much paraphrase what you guys have said. I think we all need to learn about the other functions within the business. I think that is super important that we can all take some time to sit down and learn what those functions do. So Dan, I'm going to press the stop button right after this so that we're not going to talk over you afterwards and let you as the poor sole accountant here have the final word. So go for it.

Daniel Hay (47:23)
I guess from our

experience, branding is undervalued. So it's taken us a while to get our branding. So I think a lot of accountants or any business in general, think it's understanding your branding, what targets you want. And I think at the end of the day, marketing is about spending a bit of money in the hope that you do get returns. But it is a long-term strategy. It's not something you're gonna get instant. So I think, yeah, give it a go.

Simon Dell (47:49)
Now I can't let you have the last word, that's alright. It's not in my nature, Dan. I just want to say thank you to everyone. It's much appreciated for you to be on. So have a good rest of your Wednesday, guys.

Joshua Cilento (47:51)
Yes, it's treasure.

Daniel Hay (48:01)
Thanks, sir. Take care.

Kelly Dimkovska (48:01)
Thanks, Simon. Bye.

Joshua Cilento (48:02)
Yeah, great.

Tommy Holt (48:02)
Thanks everyone. See

you.