Adam Larson: 00:05

Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And today, we have an extraordinary episode lined up for you. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Brett Kelly, the brilliant founder of Kelly Partners, a global accounting firm. Brett shares his inspiring journey from his early days in Australia to leading a successful business with a global presence.

Adam Larson: 00:25

We delve into how early setbacks, and significant influence has propelled him forward. Brett also offers valuable insights into the power of mission driven work, the importance of aligning your personal values with your career, and the impact of building a supportive team environment. Whether you're in accounting or simply passionate about leadership and success, Brett's story and wisdom are sure to captivate and inspire you. So sit back and enjoy this incredible conversation. Well, Brett, I'm really excited to have you on the count me in podcast.

Adam Larson: 00:59

And I figured just to get started, maybe we could, just hear a little bit about your story and how you've gotten to where you are because you're you run a very successful organization, and I'm sure it just didn't start there. And so I figured we could start just by talking a little bit about your story.

Brett Kelly: 01:12

I don't know a problem. I grew up in Australia, one of 8 boys. I left my father had a business in 1990 in the middle of the the last great recession in Australia. Haven't had one since 1919 91. Interest rates went to 18%, and his internal accountant in his business embezzled a whole bunch of money.

Brett Kelly: 01:34

That caused an enormous problem for the business, and I watched my father fire about 30% of his longtime team members, many of which had been with him more than 20 years. I was gonna go and study more, but instead, I thought, you know, I'll go and study accounting because it been my intention to go into business. So I went to Pricewaterhouse at 18 as an undergraduate cadet. I was a kid who come first in in in everything and captain's sporting team and things, and, and I enjoyed my nearly 5 years there. I joined an investment bank in corporate advisory and lost my job because I didn't fit in with other people.

Brett Kelly: 02:10

And that led me to read 2 books that my dad gave me, think and grow rich and how to win Friends and Influence People. 1, Think and Grow Rich said meet people that have been successful and ask them what they did. And the second said that, you know, it's very important to know how to work well with people. And so I took those lessons, wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And so I wrote to 80 prominent Australians.

Brett Kelly: 02:32

I said, dear mister Hawke, former Australian prime minister, so president for your for your own listeners here in in the US, and, and said, my name's Brett Kelly. I'm 22. I'm unemployed, but I'm keen to learn if you'll spend an hour with me answering my 11 questions on Australia today and in the future, then I will, you know, collate a book and get that book out to other young people. I made 5 and a half 1000 phone calls in 3 months and I got those people, 34 of them, to speak to me. When I'd gone to the publishing companies and asked them whether they would publish the book, they said, you, you know, you won't get the people to talk to you.

Brett Kelly: 03:08

I was 22. I was unemployed with no experience, no expertise, no funding, no idea, to be fair. And, when I went back 3 months later with Aiden, we've touched up in a bunch of labor hospitals and said, okay, I've got the people. What should I do? They said, you're not Ray Mart or Philip Adams.

Brett Kelly: 03:24

So who would listen to your you know, who would wanna read your book? You know, there's 800 new books released a week. This is a very competitive industry. How will your book stand out? And so for your listeners, you know, that Raymond and Philip Adams is sort of Larry King and, you know, Alan Stern, the TV and radio people in Australia.

Brett Kelly: 03:45

And I said, well, you know, if you're 22 and unemployed and write a book rather than go on unemployment benefits, maybe that's a story. They didn't agree. So I started researching people that had been successful self publishing, and I found the gentleman that had published Chicken Soup for the Soul Mhmm. Who were, Mark Victor Hansen, and he had put together a 24 cassette tape series of how to successfully publish a book and a workbook. So I bought it from the US about $1,000, sent it to Australia, and I essentially just followed what the book said to do.

Brett Kelly: 04:16

I raised $21,000 to print 5,000 books. And then, you know, that person, Ray Martin, who they said, I wasn't. I got him into my book. He put the book on TV and within 20 hours, we sold the books, and the books were, you know, the book was the number one bestseller. Off the back of that, I did, you know, about 2,000 professional speaking engagements, was the youngest professional speaker in Australia.

Brett Kelly: 04:36

Mhmm. And then I went back into the accounting industry. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I knew that accountants were really in a privileged position and could make a real difference, but often they didn't. And so I thought, well, instead, maybe I could go into that industry, which, you know, is very certain, like death and taxes. And, you know, in all likelihood, you know, we could make a difference.

Brett Kelly: 04:58

I went through 3 small firms, and those small firms showed me something very interesting. I thought, you know, why do they keep promising me partnership? But, you know, then pulling out and, you know, I I thought they were bad people and maybe they were, but what they really were were partners in a firm, smaller firms that were disorganized like most private business owners. They would make a promise that they then couldn't keep because they really didn't have a finance team or anyone to advise them on how they would do a transition of their equity or succession in their firm. And so they kept making promises they couldn't keep to me and, basically, the rest of the industry.

Brett Kelly: 05:37

And and what I identified was that succession was a huge issue in the industry. That partners in accounting firms, particularly smaller firms, didn't have a system or really any idea how to do that effectively, and that there was an opportunity if you could get the older guys and younger guys to work well together by basically becoming a specialist in in the succession of accounting firms. So in 2006, we started Kelly Partners. You know, we've won small offers, 4 people, 200,000 in billings. Today, we bill about a 120 million a year.

Brett Kelly: 06:07

We we're on track to be about the 16th or 17th largest firm in Australia, and we've got an office, in Hong Kong, 1 in Mumbai, and now 2 here in Los Angeles, where I've been based for the last 16 months. And so our, you know, our ambition is to build Australia's 1st and only global accounting firm for private business owners that that wanna be be global, be and be successful on that basis. And, we're doing that one step at tie at a time. Adam, in 2017, in June, we listed Kelly Partners Group Holdings, which is the holding company of our group on the Australian Stock Exchange. And if you bought a share in June 2007, it would have cost you $1, and today, it'll cost you 7.

Brett Kelly: 06:47

So investors have had a 7.4 times return on their money, which is the best return, you know, that, investors have probably had from a publicly listed accounting group.

Adam Larson: 06:58

That's an amazing story. And to see that growth and that journey, you know, it's not your typical journey. A lot of times people try to go to, like, a big time accounting firm, and then they find their way then eventually go to but the fact that you were able to you know what? I need to move on. I need to do something different.

Adam Larson: 07:12

And you talk to all these successful people and found what it meant to be successful, and then we're actually able to apply it. You know, that's a that's a huge story. Not everybody's able to talk to those people and then actually do something about it. Because sometimes you you might hear somebody say, oh, this is what I did to be successful, but then you don't know how to apply it in your life. And, you know, what what was that catalyst that was able to say, okay.

Adam Larson: 07:31

You talked to all these great people. You you did the book. The book was successful. How are you able to convert all of those great that great advice into actually applying it in your life? Because that's not a 1, 2, 3 step.

Adam Larson: 07:40

It's not a simple task at all.

Brett Kelly: 07:42

Yeah. Adam, I I was asked when I was 22, I'd written this best selling book. I was doing a lot of speaking, and people would ask me, they would say, Brett, typically, when something very bad happens to somebody like you lose your job, that affects people badly psychologically. Why was it that you were able to just sort of pick up and, you know, go again? And I said, well, there was a couple of reasons.

Brett Kelly: 08:04

1, I was very lucky. You know, my dad who's now dead was my number one supporter. You know, I had somebody that loved me, and I do think that in terms of the core character and and belief that people take into their lives, being loved by a parent or, you know, a grandparent or someone is very helpful unconditionally. You know, dad was always like, if you're good to people and you work harder than anyone else, then, you're likely to be able to achieve whatever you wanna achieve. And so, you know, I had as I as I've reflected on it, I knew I had that.

Brett Kelly: 08:37

My mom really believed in education. You know, she was the one that would sit you down, make you read your your reading list, and and learn your spelling. And I came to learn that, you know, if you through this journey, if you read a book a week, you've got a pretty big advantage because, you know, there's this great American speaker, Jim Rome, who says that education will make your living and self education will make your fortune. And most Australians and Americans read one book a year on average, 18 pages of that book. And so you can outperform the cohort by reading, and reading can really take you from wherever you are to where you wanna be.

Brett Kelly: 09:10

Now I didn't have in my life my next door neighbor or guy across the street who was a billionaire or a president or become an Olympian. But through the power of books, I could access any person that I thought I could learn from or I thought that could teach me something, or I thought that maybe I wanted to operate in that area. Now my I was lucky in that I discovered that your mission, you know, your real vocation, what's in your heart, you know, what you were born for, the difference you try to make, that you're really born to make. If you can create some alignment, you know, my friend James King has written a book called accelerating excellence. It's a tremendous book for for people that are listening, and it talks about concordance as sort of the bottom of the pyramid of high performance.

Brett Kelly: 09:55

He has a master's degree in high performance, ex SAS soldier, runs the SAS selection process for the British Army. And he talks about in order to to get mastery at something, you need to be in a concordance place with doing the thing that you were born to do. And that gives you the internal energy, what he calls the psychological firepower, to be able to take the pain that it takes to be become a master at something. Mhmm. So to do 10000 hours or a 100000 hours that something's very painful, Steve Jobs said that, you know, only the the crazy is successful because nobody else would put up with the pain that's required.

Brett Kelly: 10:31

That's my bad, summary of his commentary. But, you know, I keep hearing these sort of little snippets, if you like, of wisdom from people, and I know that it's true that the people that can just do the work because they love what they're doing, and they're in a place where they can really put their gifts, you know, in the serve you know, to the service of other people, that creates a flywheel where every time you make an effort, you get good feedback. It makes you feel good internally. Might might not look good good on Instagram, mind you, because the pain is not not that attractive. Yeah.

Brett Kelly: 11:04

And you do the work and you get good feedback. So you do more work, and that builds up this momentum and that momentum really becomes unstoppable. The core of that is wanting to use your gifts and talents for the benefit of other people. And so to the degree that you're motivated in that in that way Mhmm. You really don't need to do much because your internal you know, what James calls you psychological firepower.

Brett Kelly: 11:28

I never had that term up until about 18 months ago, Adam. I couldn't explain it to him, but I just say, just your vibe. Because people would say, Brett, you got so much energy.

Brett Kelly: 11:35

And I'm like, oh, not really.

Brett Kelly: 11:37

I'm just doing the thing that I feel like I'm meant to be doing, but it's very easy to do that thing even though it's very hard often to do, you know, the hard yards. Yeah. I'm not having to convince myself that it's worthwhile.

Adam Larson: 11:49

Yeah. And I think the key thing there is is sometimes a lot of people are looking for that get rich quick that, like, oh, what what are the 3 steps I can take? But that 3 steps work for that person. You have to you have to glean from what that they learn from that and see how you can apply it to your own life. Because it's so easy to say, oh, I'm gonna follow those steps, and I'll do the same thing.

Adam Larson: 12:06

Well, your journey is not my journey. It's not the next person's journey. No. We all have to find our own way, and I think that's I think that's a great thing to remember as you're as we're all trying to figure out what we're doing with our lives or we're, you know, seeing what the next thing in our journey is.

Brett Kelly: 12:19

Yeah. So school really rewards the person that's balanced. But life really rewards the person that's not balanced. Yeah. So right order is more important than balance.

Brett Kelly: 12:29

And the key to that right order is that you're doing the thing that you feel like in your heart, in your soul is uniquely the thing that you're, you know, meant to do with your life.

Brett Kelly: 12:39

Mhmm.

Brett Kelly: 12:39

And that takes a lot of courage because mostly and I can can tell you for certain that, you know, mostly when you do that, that threatens other people that have been too timid to do the thing that they have really got on their own heart that they should do with their lives. Mhmm. They weren't prepared to commit, won't do the hours, don't wanna cut the pain. And when they see you, you know, it's like the fat guy who's married to a fat woman and fat guy decides to get skinny and the fat woman gets upset or vice versa. You know, when you really decide to do the thing that you're meant to do, you'll get up very early and you will stay up very late and you'll work 6 days a week, and that will threaten a lot of other people that have had a job.

Brett Kelly: 13:20

Most people have a job. That's a thing that they don't like, that somebody gives them some money for doing,

Brett Kelly: 13:25

you know, a vocation, a a mission, if you like, is a thing that, you know, is in your heart that you just cannot die without doing.

Brett Kelly: 13:33

And no one really needs to

Brett Kelly: 13:34

pay you to do that. But when you start doing that, you should understand that you're gonna cop a lot of criticism and, you know, and it will be, firstly, from people that you don't expect, but but it will be from family and friends, and it will be very lonely as you pursue, you know, the genuine path that, Mhmm.

Brett Kelly: 13:51

That that you that you should now the great news is

Brett Kelly: 13:54

that there's a jet stream of, power, if you like, that that that the plane's up in the sky flying, and it's true for you and me that if you can put yourself, your psychology first, your mindset, and then your Mhmm. In a place where you're meant to be operating, there's this unseen power that will just push you along. So it's not self made man business or self made woman. It's, putting yourself in the right place. Interestingly, Adam Arfro wrote my first book, Collected Wisdom, I've written 4 other books, but 4 of them are in a series of books on wisdom.

Brett Kelly: 14:31

2nd book, universal wisdom. 3rd, business owner's wisdom. 4th, investment wisdom. The second one, universal wisdom, looks at 7 people that changed the world and why. And so Warren Buffett and change the investment world and people like Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa Gandhi.

Brett Kelly: 14:47

You know, what is it that made them able to do what they did? And what I worked out was that they were sitting in this jet stream of power where they were just doing what was right and so and and, in particular, right for them, what they were meaning to be doing. Mhmm. And

Brett Kelly: 15:02

so so these unstoppable forces, Not because they have this individual personal power, but there's just sitting in that jet stream. If you're like, you know, Gandhi, one guy walking across India, you know, Unstoppable force when he's just this tiny little dude. Right? So if you take those big ideas and you put them into your life and then your career, understanding that, you know, first, you're born, you're a person, then you go into business, then you build wealth, then you die, you're out of control against the money and what they use it for, that that life journey is we really can't start with any great power, and certainly a business can't, without a leader or founder that is that is mission based, not mercenary based. So Mhmm.

Brett Kelly: 15:44

The core of Kelly Partners is we're a mission based organization self seeking to help private business owners, and these are the people that employ 70% of all Americans, all Australians, all people in developed countries, to be what we call better off, healthy, wealthy, and wise. We believe that if we make the business owned family healthier, wealthier, and wise, that they are likely to treat their people, clients and community better. Now, I was raised to believe that, you know, it's a bleeding heart that we should go and help the most junior person in an organisation, and and that's true, we should do all of that, but the reality is that when the boss makes a mistake, he doesn't fire himself, he fires the junior. And so what we should do is make sure the boss doesn't make mistakes so we can employ more juniors and build businesses that provide more and more, you know, dignified employment for more and more people. So that's the mission of the business.

Brett Kelly: 16:39

From a from our team member's point of view, we know that we can create an environment where they can do their best work, where their human dignity can be respected and their full flourishing of their talents can be unleashed. And they're they're all high high ideals, but, you know, you can't achieve a high ideal if you don't have one. Mhmm. So if you get 3 quarters to a high ideal, you're a lot further, better and better off than we got lower ideals, or none at all. And so we knew that if we got the people right and we got our systems and processes right and we knew that we just specialized in one type of client, that we were likely to build an organization that could really make make a positive impact.

Adam Larson: 17:18

I think what really impressed me when I was looking at your website, your values. You know, we want what's best for others, One team, one way, and we do what we say. That's so simple, but yet it understands the value of of us as humans. Because a lot of times in business, the human part of it is very much just a number, or they're just a line item or a capital expense or something like that. But they're not we don't truly value the actual people who we work for.

Adam Larson: 17:42

And I think I really appreciated that in your, in the values that you have as an organization.

Brett Kelly: 17:47

Well, Adam, the reality is that the only thing with unlimited ability to grow, we need more business, is is your people. Mhmm. And so I always say that if you go up to a photocopier, you pick up the manual, it'll say that it can do 30, 40, or 50 pages a minute. And whether you cuddle it or you kick it or you slap it or you shout in it, right, or you or you talk kindly to it, it can't outperform, it's manual. But all of the people in your organisation and certainly your clients in the community, but every person you meet, most of them never met a billionaire, a president, a person that's changed the world, they never met Gandhi.

Brett Kelly: 18:22

They have no idea of the human potential that is within them. Yeah. And so being within a business that has the most leverage is unpacking the full capacity of your people. And so if you've got a clear idea of, you know, what are the highest qualities of a person, So we want people that are other people centred, not self centred.

Adam Larson: 18:44

Because

Brett Kelly: 18:45

all of these relationships, so let's get those people first, people that keep their promises or die, and people that know that it's him can do more than an individual. If you think about who you wanna date, who you wanna be married to, who you wanna work with, who you wanna have as a friend, who you wanna have as part of a community, who you wanna have as your next door neighbor, they are 3 universal ideas that you want in every single person you interact with, and they're very high ideals. But if you can get those types of people around you, end up with people, and you put them in the right environment, those people have the ability to unleash an unbelievable amount of firepower. And so that's, you know, we start with a person, within our organization, but then when we work with clients, we think the same way. Imagine if you thought, right.

Brett Kelly: 19:32

We're gonna select our clients on the basis of people who want the best for others, who keep their promises, and know that we can be part of their team and make a difference. You would again have a very different type of client. Mhmm. And so, you know, life is short and who you spend your time with matters. And so if you get the right people in your team, you get the right clients in your life, and you get the right community members around you, then you build this flywheel of of good fun, frankly, good values, good fun, where you never really feel up at work because what you're in fact doing is prosecuting a mission that has a huge amount of meaning it can make a real difference.

Brett Kelly: 20:13

Yeah. So, again, you know, they're very it's a philosophical first approach and then you come to the accounting industry and you know that at the heart of government, in order to be the government, you have to be able to pay the army. You can't pay the army to get out of the tax system. So you know that taxes will last forever and that the tax system's critically important, it's not going away, and that people need to make sure that they have the right representation so that they could pay the right amount of tax but not, you know, not more tax than they are due to pay. And so you know that there's a real place there where you can make a difference.

Brett Kelly: 20:49

And importantly, most accounting firms, they haven't haven't got a sense of mission. They don't have a clear set of values. They don't have a clear vision as to how they can change the industry. In terms of strategy, they're not clear on the type of client that they can most serve. Mhmm.

Brett Kelly: 21:04

They kinda haven't take a fee from anyone for anything. And then, finally, the way we structure our firms, they're 51, 49 partnerships with people that have agreed to hang around for a minimum term of 10 years. And so we've got long term oriented people with the right type of structure. Now if you get all of that right, you can really go at the operational aspects of, of the business in quite a different way. We have a central services team of 35 people that work across people, process, clients, financial, brand, digital, operations, risk, succession.

Brett Kelly: 21:37

And that means that the partners have a team of people that can execute on the things that they know should be happening within these firms. So it's a very different model that we brought to the market, but it's been very successful. We've grown 30% year on average every year for 18 years in a row. Since those are twice as profitable as the industry, and they use 1 third of the working capital, and our system returns about 25% of partner time to the partners. So when you think about, you know, what we've done, 80 plus transactions to date where we built partnerships across 36 locations, across 4 different countries.

Brett Kelly: 22:12

We're on our way to becoming Australia's global accounting firm, but we still know that, there's a lot of work ahead of us. You know, it's a as Jim Collins would say, it's a long march and, you know, we've got a 25 year big area audacious goal as to install what we think we can achieve together and the difference that it can make.

Adam Larson: 22:29

Yeah. I I what I appreciate about your perspective is is you your your goal is to make a difference. And I think that not a lot of accounting firms, even accounting and finance teams, that's not really their goal. It's like, let's make sure the numbers look right. Let's make sure we're doing, like, we talk about data visualization.

Adam Larson: 22:44

We talk about a lot of the to do things, but our overarching goal should be to make a difference in the world. And what what advice would you give to people who are in accounting and finance firms or in the industry, and they're like, I like what you're saying, but how can I make a difference when I'm just, you know, maybe doing some of these taxes or I'm, you know, I'm I'm in the, you know, FP and A realm or I'm, you know, just doing data visualization? How can I make a difference in that in that role?

Brett Kelly: 23:05

Yeah. So interestingly, Adam, you could think of it in a few ways. You'll experience life with a mentality that you bring to it. You typically get what you give. My dad used to always say, you get what you give me.

Brett Kelly: 23:15

If you smile at someone, you'll smile back It helps you kind of somebody, and I'll be calling back. So if you put energy into something, you'll lift the energy of the people around you. So firstly, be a leader in the position that you find yourself. And then secondly, you can look me up on the Internet or Twitter and send me a message and we'll see what we can do for you. Because, fundamentally, what I learned in my first book is that you become the person you spend the most time with.

Brett Kelly: 23:37

Right? So if you've got, you you know, if you write a list across the page of the 7 people that you spend the most time with, and then you write healthy, wealthy, and wise there, and you give each of those people a score for health, wealth, and wisdom, you make yourself a little grid, You'll end up the average of those 7 people. So if you're in an organisation where you spend 50, 60 hours a week, you know, and most of your your waking hours, and you look around and you say, these are not people that have the, a sense of mission, values, or vision that resonates with me. And frankly, if, I grow up to be like them, that'll be a waste of my life. Then you need to find other people that share your values.

Brett Kelly: 24:16

And so, you can always drop me a note on Twitter or or find my email, and I'd be happy to help. But in all seriousness, your life is dramatically impoverished if you spend your time with people that don't inspire you, that don't ask you to be better, that don't encourage you to be the best that you can be. I rarely get one life, as I love to say, you know, my favorite quote, Adam, is time is limited and death is certain. So I'm very serious about how I use that limited time that I have, you know, while I take the mission seriously. You know, we don't take ourselves too seriously.

Brett Kelly: 24:49

Mhmm.

Adam Larson: 24:50

Well, Brett, I really appreciate you spending some of your limited time with us today on this podcast, and I appreciate the insights you brought to our audience. And I just, really excited that we got to chat today.

Brett Kelly: 25:00

Adam, I really appreciate your interest, and I'm always happy to make time for for a for a good chat. And I hope it's been helpful for you, and and I hope it'll be helpful for you as well.

Announcer: 25:12

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website atwww.ima net.org.