IAM1221 – CEO Helps His Clients by Handling their Back Office Compliance Globally

Scott Smoler is the CEO of weConnect, the world's fastest-growing, privately-owned global expansion and operations company. Scott has helped more than 1,000 multinational companies expand globally with incorporation, accounting, tax, and HR services. Before weConnect, he held senior leadership positions at Tricor. After ten years of working in the accounting and payroll services industry, he set out to transform and innovate the industry. Scott has a passion for people and knows that the success of his business depends on happy clients and happy employees.

• CEO Story: After gaining enough opinion on how to take the industry to the next level, along with his colleagues, decided to start their own company.
• Business Service: They make it as easy as possible to expand their business to any country in the world by handling the back office requirements like accounting, taxes, and HR services so that the client can focus on handling their business.
• Secret Sauce: Fresh start in one company approach. Design the solution from the ground up, everyone joining the company joins the goal of creating a global solution
• CEO Hack: Listening to Elon Musk’s interviews. The idea of first principles thinking – approaching problems by breaking them down into their fundamental principles
• CEO Nugget: The approach to hiring is so critical. When hiring someone, be brutally open and honest about the company, the culture, vision, and the role possible.
• CEO Defined: Setting a strong and inspiring vision for the company, a long-term vision. Making sure everyone is rowing in the same direction. Ensuring alignments.

Website: goweconnect.com

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Transcription

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00:30 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:44 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello. Hello, This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Scott Smaller of We Connect. Scott, it's great to have you on the show.

00:52 – Scott Smoler

I like Wes Gresh. Thanks for having me.

00:53 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Scott so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Scott is the CEO of We Connect, the world's fastest-growing privately owned global expansion and operations company. Scott has helped more than 1000 multinational companies expand globally with incorporation, accounting, tax, and hr services.

Before our connection, he held senior leadership positions at Tricor. After ten years of working in the accounting and payroll service industry, he set out to transform and innovate the industry. Scott has a passion for people and knows the success of his business depends on happy clients and happy employees. Scott, super excited to have you on again. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:35 – Scott Smoler

Yeah, I'm ready. Thanks, Chris. Great introduction.

01:38 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I love everything that you talked about, you know, about happiness, and I think that's one of the keys that we kind of should have individually. But I love how that seems to be, you know, embedded into your company and everything that you're doing. So I guess before we jumped into that, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit here, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:55 – Scott Smoler

Sure, yeah.

01:55 – Gresham Harkless

Thanks.

01:55 – Scott Smoler

So I'm originally from Connecticut, but I've now been living in Japan past 14 years. When I came to Japan, I stumbled into the back-office compliance industry. As you mentioned in the intro, what that meant was at the time, helping companies expand into the Japanese market by taking care of their back office compliance, things like incorporation, accounting, and payroll taxes, so they could focus on growing their business. Over about ten years, my previous company went from entry-level, working my way up through to becoming chief operating officer of the business, overseeing all the service delivery and internal operations.

Along the way, our Japan office was acquired twice by and joined a greater group company. I had also the experience of interacting at the group level with other offices and doing various group initiatives. And along the way, you just start generating some pretty strong opinions about how to take the industry to the next level. And it got to the point where I, along with about 40 of my colleagues, just decided that the best way to do that would be to start our own company. And so about three-plus years ago, we started weconnect, and here we are today. Things have never been better. Business is doing great. Couldn't be happy with the outcome.

03:10 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate that. And I think it speaks to the true entrepreneurial spirit to be able to say, okay, we feel like we can create a better mouse app, so to speak. So why don't we decide to do that? And it sounds like you had a wealth of experience as well too, which the merging of the companies you mentioned kind of working in different positions as well too, that I imagine probably helped you to hit the ground running your team.

03:32 – Scott Smoler

Absolutely. I mean, I'm a big fan. Actually, along the way, I did try to start my app relating to online networking. You know, just had a, had this idea and dabbled with that. And I learned a lot about that concept and reality, there's a big gap between those two. And so I think definitely what worked well for me, and I would recommend anyone, is if you can first generate deep experience in a particular industry, especially one that you like, and learn, like, what works, what doesn't work, you know, really prove your ideas. It's much easier to start a business after that in the same space.

04:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you sharing that part, especially about the app as well, too, because I think so many times we don't see the holistic aspect of success, that entire journey of the wins, and sometimes the less thin wins that we have that we go through. And I think all of that builds up into the experiences that you have. So it's like, it's hard to kind of divorce the two. You want to have them both because it allows you to be set up for success.

04:29 – Scott Smoler

Absolutely. And even with all of these competencies and components for success going into starting, we connect. Once, you know, I was in the driver's seat of my own business, I probably learned more in the past three years than I did in the first ten years. And you're just thinking, wow, like, if you didn't have that wealth of experience before going into this and just start from again that concept. Just incredibly challenging. I know people do it all the time and my hats off to them, but happy that I had that experience going and starting, starting to reconnect.

04:55 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love how that has kind of built a strong foundation for everything that you all are doing now. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more about weconnect. Could you take us through how you serve your clients and how you're making that impact in that thing in the universe?

05:07 – Scott Smoler

Yeah, absolutely. So at weconnect, we make it as easy as possible for companies to expand their business into any country in the world by handling all of that back office compliance. So let's say, for example, Gareth, your business is booming in the US. You're seeing some opportunities in some global markets. You're looking at Japan, you're looking at Germany, maybe have some opportunities here and there to expand those markets and maybe hire some staff or engage in some local contracts.

You're going to need some combination of incorporation, payroll, accounting, and tax services. And I imagine for you, if I told you, hey, you have to expand into Japan tomorrow, that can sound a little scary, a little daunting. And so what we do is you would come to weconnect, we'd understand your situation. We advise you on exactly the kind of compliance solution you need in each of those countries, and we'd handle that for you so that you can then go and just focus on growing your business.

06:00 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I think each of those aspects is, of course, important. But I imagine that advisement in having those conversations because I think Einstein said you could see so much further by standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think so many times we forget that not only is it those aspects, but it also sounds like the experience and the breadth of knowledge that you all have, too, that I imagine are integral to being successful.

06:25 – Scott Smoler

It's so critical. And you know, what everyone's situation is, even if its just the slightest bit difference, that does change the compliance solution that you need in a particular country. And every country has different regulations. And it's just, it is complicated. It's very challenging. So delivering this kind of solution is hard. And that's where one of the big things that I felt very strongly about is if you are going to provide a consistent global solution that needs to be built from the ground up and designed for global compliance, whereas a lot of the existing solutions are really more independent, local firms kind of brought together and they're really more focusing on the local, on the local markets and they kind of do global stuff as a secondary focus. But that would give you a very fragmented solution if you were to engage with that kind of provider.

07:13 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, and a fragmented experience it sounds like as well, too. And I can imagine, especially when you have clients that potentially want to kind of branch out into multiple markets, I imagine that it probably makes it a lot easier, a lot quicker to some degree, because you don't have to kind of start from zero each time that you're having those experiences, if you would, a more fragmented experience.

07:33 – Scott Smoler

With us, we have what we call our six points of one, which is one team, one point of contact, one system, one platform, one process, and one experience to just try and make that multi-country, especially multi-country solution as seamless as possible.

07:48  – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And I think so many times as, you know, providers or service providers or even, you know, if we have a platform or product, we sometimes forget on excellence is a lot of times making it simple for the end user, for the client. So I love that six points because it sounds like that's simplicity, which allows at the end of the day, a lot of the clients to kind of work in their zone of genius, work on what they're doing so that they know that they're in good hands.

08:12 – Scott Smoler

That's right.

08:12 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? It could be for the organization or the business or a combination of both. But do you think that six points is what kind of sets you apart?

08:22 – Scott Smoler

And makes you unique, that is, and then going back into it's like, well, why couldn't you have done this at your previous company or another company? But really, the strong belief that you need to build this design, this solution from the ground up as one company or everyone who joins the company is joining with the goal of creating this global solution, everyone rolling in the same direction, all the processes designed around that, versus that being a secondary thing you're trying to build on some separate existing infrastructure.

And so that's, I would say, our secret sauce and everything that goes into that fresh start and one company approach. And it's very hard to replicate because you can't rewind. The only way to do that is to start over, and most companies aren't going to do that. And especially you have more and more private equity-backed companies and they're just trying to grow as quickly as a possible exit. And that's always going to involve acquisition, acquisition, acquisition that's just not how you ultimately get the most consistent global solution.

09:20 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And, you know, one of the habits of highly effective people is, you know, kind of beginning with the end of mind. So to understand, you know, that you have that global first, it sounds like a kind of philosophy of the way that you try to build everything. It allows you to really, you know, start to drill down from there, where, like you said if you start to build it from more of a. I don't know if the right word is local, but not as global maybe is a better way to say it. You have that opportunity to kind of adapt and grow a lot more because you have that as a strong pillar at the very beginning.

09:46 – Scott Smoler

That's right.

09:46 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:58 – Scott Smoler

There's a particular app or book, but I am a great admirer of Elon Musk, so I would definitely recommend listening to any of his interviews. But I think maybe a really important habit that comes from him. I also employ the idea of first principles thinking, which basically means approaching problems by breaking them down to their fundamental principles and solving them from there, versus relying on preconceived assumptions or ways of things. The way things are supposed to be. And so one example would be a Japanese accountant.

If you need accounting in Japan, you might think you need to hire a Japanese accountant. But with Japanese accountants, there's a labor shortage. They don't speak English very well. They're more tax-minded, not really processed in operations-minded for monthly accounting and stuff like that. So there's a lot of challenges. But if you break it down to, okay, what are the tasks that need to get done? You might find that only 10% of those tasks actually involve a unique Japanese component.

And so, for example, things we've done at We Connect is, okay, well, if we can take that 90% and do that in Malaysia with a team that has deep excellence in global finance solutions from Intel's global financial Service center and CPAs, great English, great international mindset, and then integrate them with maybe a support individual in Japan that can help with some of the language challenges or some of the local tax points. That's just a more effective way of structuring things.

But to do that, you have to first remove the assumption that I need a Japanese accountant. That's just one example of think people will find in their day-to-day life they're actually unconsciously making a lot of assumptions about the way things are supposed to be. And that's something that if you can break away from that can be very powerful.

11:41- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You get that opportunity to kind of rewrite, you know, the script. Whether we're talking about like you mentioned something on a day-to-day standpoint, you know, hiring a counter, even your internally within our business as well too, we have so many assumptions that we're not realizing. But I think if you can go through those exercises, it sounds like that's where that innovation comes from. So you start to realize that this isn't the way it always has to be, whether it's internally or in the industry or wherever you get to start to really trailblaze and make that huge innovation.

12:08 – Scott Smoler

That's exactly right. Yeah.

12:10 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. I love that. And so I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you would tell your younger business self or you might even tell your favorite client.

12:22 – Scott Smoler

Yeah. So definitely. Especially coming from a people business. But I think this applies to any business hiring. The approach to hiring is so critical. And I think that typically people go into hiring where maybe they urgently need to fill a role. And it's easy to project onto people what you want them to be or kind of oversell them on the role just to get them in the door. When you're hiring someone you need to be as brutally open and honest about the company, the culture, the vision, and the role as possible.

And your main thing you're looking for first is the person that after you lay that all on the table, the person says, oh my God, that's exactly what I want. And then that's really the first major checkbox. And one actually great example is, and it kind of applies also to first principles, but we were looking to hire this Japan support role for the accounting that I mentioned. This is a real situation. And we're thinking that we need a Japanese accountant or someone with that kind of background to be in that support role.

We just need one maybe to support like 20 people. And we're doing all these interviews for Japanese accountants and we explained the support role and they're all like, no, I'm not really that interested. I want to do the work myself. I'm not interested in being in a support role and going through like ten people and they're all just like laying it all out and it's like, they're like, no, no. Another company may have, like, tried to just sell someone on the role just to get them in the door, because I just need this.

Then we think about, we're like, well, do we really need an accountant? This is, you know, this isn't really working. And do we really need an account? Maybe this is really more of a communication role. So let's find someone that just is really good at bilingual communication, maybe has some finance background, but doesn't have to be an accountant. And then the next interview we did, we laid the exact same thing out, and that person's like, oh, my God, that's my job. And they joined, and it's been fantastic. So it's just having that patience to do the hiring that way, I think, is critical.

14:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I appreciate you so much and sharing that. I love how it kind of ties into the hack. And what we talked about as well, too, is because I think a lot of times we have to rewire sometimes even how we communicate things that we're looking for and really understand, like, what are we hiring for? What is the solution we're trying to provide? And I think once you start to look at things differently, not only does it help you to kind of get, you know, that solution or that person or whatever that might, you know.

That might look like it, but it also helps to create a really impactful person in that position because they get that right fit, they understand exactly what they're able to do, and it hits the ground running, it sounds like, all within the organization. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEO's on the show. So, Scott, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:46 – Scott Smoler

Yeah, I think that, let's say, at a smaller business, definitely setting a strong and inspiring vision for the company that people can get behind it. Having the goal of the business to grow and profit 10% year on year is not motivating or interesting. You want to have a vision that's also more long term, something that's going to be working towards for a long time, which probably has some many milestones along the way, and then really just making sure that everyone's rowing in the same direction, being that glue to the business, making sure that all the key stakeholders, employees, customers, and shareholders are happy. Happy, yeah. Just really ensuring alignment.

15:26 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that alignment piece. And just understanding how all the parts kind of fit in. Truly appreciate that. Of course. Appreciate your time even more, creating some wins for us. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and team are working on.

15:44 – Scott Smoler

There are two quick things. I guess one is an inspirational takeaway, maybe is just I don't think there is. There's no blueprint that someone can follow to success. I think that the key is everyone. If they just do in every moment what they think is right and constantly self-reflect, you'll ultimately get to some level of success and everyone's story is different than on a personal plug. Obviously, if anyone's looking to expand overseas their business and needs compliance support, Weconnect Co. Is our website and we're happy to support anybody.

16:12- Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day. Right?

16:18- Scott Smoler

Thanks a lot, garage. Appreciate it.

16:21 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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