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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous Add to CART guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout features Natalie McDermott from Kelly Partners Accountants, an ASX listed company with branches in Australia and expanding globally. Nat is a partner at the Northern Beaches branch in Sydney working with around 50 e commerce brands with turnover ranging from $50,000 to $50,000,000. She joined us on the podcast to help us make sense of the financial numbers behind an E commerce business. Nat, welcome to the Checkout. We had a great conversation in our main episode where you gave us so many tips for business owners around accounting and making business decisions business based on real numbers. So thank you very much for that. But we're here to learn a little bit more about you. So I've got five quick questions.
Natalie McDermott: Amazing. Let's go number one.
[Ad]: What's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Natalie McDermott: I buy so much online. None of it's weird because I buy resourcefully. But I do have a funny story. One it wasn't so this wasn't something that I bought. It was obviously something that someone else had bought that had landed on my front porch. I was working from home. It was the middle of COVID and I could hear something vibrating and I was like and the postman had come like maybe like 10, 15 minutes prior. And so yeah, after a while I started hearing this vibrating and I've gone out to see what it is and there's literally a vibrating package on My porch. And it was someone that I know that I knew that that had purposely sent it to my house to be discreet. Cause it was a present for their other half. And like I messaged that person and said, hey, like your vibrating package has rocked up on my house. And like, what, like what's going on? Like, do you want me to like open it and turn it off? And they were like, no, please don't open it. So I had to like shove it under a mattress so that I didn't have to listen to it for the rest of my life. So yeah, that's great. Yeah.
[Ad]: And then it'll be out of battery by the time it gets to them pretty much.
Natalie McDermott: But that's on them. That is on them.
[Ad]: All right, number two, which retailer has most inspired you recently?
Natalie McDermott: This one's. It's a one of my clients. Two girls who I love. They run a. Well, they did run a sunglasses brand which I also was like a long term customer of Love the brand and was so happy when they became clients of mine. They fit that kind of brief, that criteria that I mentioned before, like super responsive, super on the ball, like just really wanting to do well, really wanting to build this amazing brand and you know, build some wealth and like do great things basically. And they were so good and they didn't know it and that's I think like that's what makes them even more special. And you know, they weren't even looking to sell but they got approached by a buyer and it was only a three or four year old brand that only really worked in it full time for a couple of years and you know, sold it for more than most brands will sell their E commerce business for. Just because they've done so well from a branding perspective and yet they really did inspire me and they've actually inspired so many other business owners around the beaches because they are northern beaches based. So they've kind of like set the tone and I respect them for that.
[Ad]: That's very cool. Was it a hard decision for them to sell?
Natalie McDermott: No, not for the price that they got for it.
[Ad]: Well done to everyone involved. How good is that? All right, number three, name a piece of tech that you or your e commerce business or the E commerce businesses that you help, couldn't live without a 2x.
Natalie McDermott: So this is coming from like an accounting, getting your accounting data right point of view. So slightly biased there. I'm sure. There's so many. I mean I know that there's so many other amazing tech softwares and things out there, but from like trying to get your accounting data as correct as possible. Highly recommend a 2x and does a 2x?
[Ad]: I don't know anything about it. Does it sit on top of other accounting systems or is it the accounting system by itself?
Natalie McDermott: No, it's just an add on.
[Ad]: Just an add on. Okay.
Natalie McDermott: It's an add on. Yeah. Basically what it does is it will make sure that your sales are broken down by channel. So you just, you do a bit of a setup. Maybe takes like a, an hour or so to do the setup, but once you've done the setup stuff, it basically will profile all your sales in the right categories. It'll make sure that your GST has been accounted for correctly. It'll just do things quite automatically. So we love automation, especially when it comes to cleaning up our accounting data.
[Ad]: That's a brilliant tip. Thank you. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Natalie McDermott: Yes. I am a massive Stephen Bartlett fan so I recently went to see see him. I listen to his podcast religiously and I read his book. I think his book is amazing. I think you can see it on the shelf behind me. The second book in. Yeah. Yeah. It's like I just, I love all the, the stories and the examples that he uses, like the real life examples of that support his ideas of what he's trying to kind of communicate. So I actually really, I thought there was a lot of lessons in that that are useful in both business and life.
[Ad]: Spot on. And I know he's a listener of the show, so shout out.
Natalie McDermott: Maybe this one. Never know.
[Ad]: I'll Tag him on LinkedIn. I'm sure you'll check. All right, number five, what is your biggest challenge today for us as a business?
Natalie McDermott: So Kelly Partners as a business, we're obviously a people's business. So probably our biggest challenge would be finding the right people that think like us and that are up for, you know, being challenged. And I'm sure that's the same for most businesses. People, they're really hard to find. So that's probably our biggest challenge. Yeah.
[Ad]: Beautiful. Nat, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. Loved hearing all about your journey with Kelly Partners and how you guys are doing things a little bit differently for E Commerce owners.
Natalie McDermott: Thank you for having us. So much fun.
[Ad]: To Hear more from Nat, jump back into episode 426 where Nat shares what an E Commerce business baseline gross profit margin should be and why it is the most important metric you will track. She also shares the non financial KPIs you need to be paying attention to and how much you should be spending on marketing as a percentage of your total revenue. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
