Sheree Cusack CPA on helping entrepreneurs succeed

Sheree Cusack CPA has set herself an ambitious goal.

By the end of next year, she wants to help 10,000 small business owners double their profit and decrease the time they spend working in their business.

Enter sixty:forty, a business platform connecting entrepreneurs, small business owners, service providers and professionals to help them start, build, manage and grow businesses together.

“We want to be people’s first port of call when they’re thinking of starting a business,” says Cusack.

Cusack’s business takes its name from the ratio of start-up failure to success in the first five years, which is 60:40.

“This ratio actually represents the hopes and dreams of hundreds of thousands of people… and has a direct flow-on effect in communities, which is a big part of the reason that we want to support the change and flip the script, so to speak, and reduce the overall number of business exits,” Cusack says.

In-person events

The platform is part networking opportunity and part coaching and mentoring hub, and offers a blend of digital and in-person business solutions across technology, professional development, collaborative partnerships and industry events. The site platform operates on a subscription model. It offers a free basic product, and tiered pricing thereafter, to access different features.

When users first join the platform, they are asked to do sixty:forty’s four-week Business Bootcamp, which provides them with the basics needed to build a business, start attracting more clients and generating more revenue.

Group coaching

The program also provides them with the foundational knowledge to take part in the group coaching sessions, based on a “3CS” coaching framework, which stands for “clients”, “capacity”, “cash” and “strategy”, with three months of each year focused on each module.

Cusack does the mentoring, supported by her business partners, leadership and risk consultant Mark Lawson and marketing and branding consultant Spencer Toogood.

 

"This ratio actually represents the hopes and dreams of hundreds of thousands of people...and has a direct flow-on effect in communities, which is a big part of the reason that we want to support the change and flip the script, so to speak."

 

Cusack teaches the cash module. She takes businesses through their books to help them understand their cash drivers and costs. She also shows them how to break down the costs of each product or service, to determine if they are pricing them correctly.

She also helps business owners work with their debtors and ensure their cash collection processes are rigorous. The business owners need to make sure their policies are clear and their client paperwork is effective, in case they need to take legal action to recover a debt.

Seeking help

Sixty:forty tells business owners they don’t have to learn how to do everything for themselves, and encourages them to seek services from other business professionals. “We know how to build their team to put them in touch with the right people at the right time,” Cusack says.

In addition to coaching, the business also heavily emphasises the value of networking.

“We’re a platform that’s designed to bring together mostly service professionals and small business owners in a way that makes it easy to do business and to transact, but without all of the high costs a lead generation platform would normally charge,” Cusack says.

The platform aims to help business owners to think outside the box and consider how they can go beyond “straight” cash transactions to explore other opportunities, such as partnerships or joint ventures.

The impetus for sixty:forty came about through Cusack’s other business, Gold Coast-based accounting practice, the Bee Group, of which her current business partner Toogood was a client. After Toogood brought the business idea to Cusack, the pair worked on it together. This involved much discussion, a few personnel changes and several business model iterations.

Testing the appetite

Building the tech platform to underpin the business proved a particular challenge, due to so many external software development teams being fragmented during the pandemic. Despite this, the platform managed a “soft launch” in April 2021.

Since then, Cusack and her partners have been concentrating on getting more professional services onto the platform, as well as encouraging small business owners to sign up, to assess the appetite for coaching.

“We’re getting good traction,” Cusack says. However, COVID-19 lockdowns have meant no live demonstrations or trade shows, and this has slowed progress.

“We found that trying to compete in a digital space was more challenging because of the nature of what we were trying to offer – because it’s obviously not a single point product, and it’s a three-way platform,” Cusack says.

“We want to be able to show people how they can use it, because there’s no comparative product.”

One piece of advice

"My advice for other CPAs thinking of starting a business: Make sure that there is a need for your business...”