Contributed by: Gilligan Sheppard.
In their latest podcast, Gilligan Sheppard co-founder Bruce Sheppard reflects on the firm’s 40-year journey, exploring how curiosity, community, and collaboration drive innovation and long-term business success. He shares practical insights on building strong relationships, embracing continuous learning, and creating a culture that supports growth, adaptability, and meaningful client outcomes.
Why curiosity matters more than you think
If you aren’t curious, you don’t innovate. You don’t think, you don’t observe, you don’t become aware. In short, risks catch up on you and opportunities fly away from you,” Bruce said. “You should look at everything, think about everything, and work out how to apply it.”
Twenty-five years ago, a team member at Gilligan Sheppard wanted to work from home. This was long before remote work became normal, back when it meant carrying boxes of paperwork back and forth.
Greg, one of the team, got curious. Data was already being transmitted over telephone lines. There had to be a solution. Through that curiosity, they set up a terminal server that allowed someone in Te Atatu to download data and send it back. It was chunky, but it started something.
Once they solved that problem, curiosity led to the next question. Margins were being squeezed. They could hire locally at higher costs, or they could hire in India where labour was cheaper. If data could travel from Queen Street to Te Atatu, why not to New Delhi?
Gilligan Sheppard opened their Indian office 25 years ago. They were the first accounting firm in the industry to do it.
Then someone walked in off the street with an unusual offer: insurance against tax audits. Instead of dismissing it with cynicism, the team stayed curious. How could this work? How could they collaborate to make it happen?
They became the beta site and introduced accountancy insurance to New Zealand for the first time.
Trust underpins everything
Collaboration only works when you understand what you’re good at, what you’re not good at, and you’re prepared to trust others.
“If you’re not prepared to trust, you can’t collaborate because you will always see everyone as a threat,” Bruce explained. “If you’re fearful of others, you will always be defending. If you’re trustful of others, you build an army to attack big problems or big opportunities.”
But collaboration also requires fairness and selflessness. Both sides need to find their way to a middle that works for everyone.
Your competitive advantage isn’t what you think it is
There’s often tension between building community and protecting competitive advantage. The instinct is to guard your systems, your processes, your secret sauce.
Bruce had a different take: “You think you’re really, really, really special? Probably not. The reality is there’s eight or ten billion people out there. There’s got to be another one of you. In fact, there’s probably a few million of them.”
Your real competitive advantage isn’t your systems. It’s how you do things based on your emotional quotient and how you engage with people.
When you bring a group of people together, they’re glued by their purpose and how they choose to behave. That creates a unique way of doing things that others struggle to copy because it isn’t intuitive to them. If they try to copy you, they’ll be fake. If they’re fake, they’ll be unhappy, and eventually they’ll fall off.
“The key competitive advantage you actually have is your own authentic self and how you bring it to collaborating,” Bruce said. “No one else can copy that.”
First mover advantage only works if you can move fast
Being first to market can give you an edge, but only if you have the resources to double down quickly. Otherwise, the close follower with a truckload of cash will beat you every time.
Take BoardPro as an example. They weren’t first to market in board management software. Diligent was, about 20 years ago, and they’re still successful.
BoardPro started ten years later but did things differently. They got curious about why people found governance processes painful, especially small businesses with no experience in this area. They combined content generation, precedents, and simple processes. Instead of making it organisation-centric like Diligent, they made it human-centric. They enabled people to engage by giving them precedents.
It was packaging, really. But they came second and now have more customers than Diligent. They solved more problems at a fraction of the price while making it easier to use across multiple boards.
How to know if collaboration is worth the risk
You don’t. But that’s the nature of risk.
The better question is how do you take risk? When you collaborate, you need to know why you’re collaborating. There’s a rational quotient, an emotional quotient, and a curious quotient.
You might meet someone new and something sparks your curiosity. Then you ask yourself: Do I want to deal with this on my own or with them? Why do I want to do it? Is it playful and fun? Does it solve a problem or create an opportunity?
You rate it and either discard it or embrace it. But you’ll never know what’s out there unless you talk to people.
Vulnerability makes you human
To build an authentic business relationship, you have to be real. That means showing your strengths and your weaknesses.
“If you only play one song sheet, people will look at you and say, is that person made out of concrete?” Bruce said. “You’re human, you’re biological. Of course you’re vulnerable. If you don’t occasionally wear it, you’re not real.”
Who you’re vulnerable with is a judgment call. You’ll be vulnerable to people who matter to you. But vulnerability also serves another purpose: it immediately gives you an idea about who someone is by how they respond.
Most humans care about other humans. They’ll usually empathise or do an exchange, sharing their own vulnerability in return. You work out who people are through these moments.
“If you pretend you’re invincible, you’re a pretender. If you live your life pretending, you will be unhappy. Just be yourself, and part of yourself is all of your foibles, all of your vulnerabilities.”
Building communities takes generations
Post-1960s, business became highly competitive. Everyone focused on self and close family. Competition accentuated. People couldn’t trust anyone because everyone was out for themselves.
Go back a few hundred years and it was quite different. Communities built villages together. One person took care of the bank, another the grocery store.
During the Industrial Revolution, people realised they needed to know who they were dealing with. They built clubs and close communities of compatriots they could trust to trade fairly with.
The pattern still applies. You don’t build a large community until you’ve built smaller ones first. Your first step is building communities of like-minded people who can collaborate and trust that outcomes will be fair.
Those people continue to do things together. They become collectively successful and divide the spoils. It works itself out.
But you’re also breeding naive, vulnerable people who could become prey. The safety for your children and compatriots comes from selecting people carefully, nurturing them in your village, and throwing out those who behave badly.
“It’s not a one-generation game,” Bruce said. “Your village will be the opportunity for future generations to be successful based on the communities you develop alongside them.”
The cult of being yourself
This approach could sound like starting a cult. Bruce joked that maybe that’s exactly what it is.
“The cult’s really quite simple: be yourself. No one’s going to impose on you their view of what you should be. You don’t have to wear arsehole clothes, and you don’t have to do silly handshakes. You just have to be you.”
Gilligan Sheppard’s community celebrates that everyone can be themselves. The inner core of purpose is about making other people great and sharing ideas. If someone takes your idea and runs with it, celebrate it. If they want to acknowledge it, great. If they don’t, that’s on them.
If someone ends up being a perpetual taker rather than a giver, you examine that. You can pull them before the community and have an honest conversation. Maybe they should do their own thing somewhere else. You stop sharing, but you don’t double down on conflict.
Looking back to move forward
As we wrapped up the final episode, Bruce offered some advice for the coming year.
Take some time to reflect on your journey. Write down the things you’ve loved over the last twenty years. Ask yourself why you liked them, why they gave you joy, what made you happy.
“I think you’ve just unlocked the word to figure out your own purpose,” Lisa said.
“And then you’ll accelerate the journey to having a great life instead of mucking around for forty years trying to work it out,” Bruce replied.
Contributed by:
Gilligan Sheppard Public Accountants
PO Box 6310
Wellesley Street
Auckland
NEW ZEALAND
Website: https://gilligansheppard.co.nz/
Email: admin@gilshep.co.nz
Phone: +64 9 309 5191
