How Better Questions Build Better Businesses ft. Graeme Tennick

Speaker A: Welcome to the new F Word podcast where we cut the fluff on business finances and lift the lid on the new F word, the fractional finance revolution. It's a game changer for small businesses. I'm your host, Colin Hewitt, co founder of Float Cash Flow Management for Xero on QuickBooks. We believe that really understanding your business finances makes all the difference in the world and having a strategic partner like a fractional CFO is the key to unlocking that. So join us as we dive into personal stories and actionable insights from forward thinking finance leaders and seasoned entrepreneurs to discover why fractional finance leaders have become an irreplaceable part of small business leadership. All right, welcome to the new F Word podcast. It's great today to have Graeme Tennock with me and Graham's been someone I've known for a long time, so I am looking forward to getting into this conversation. Graham, welcome. It's great, great to chat. Why don't you give us a bit of a background into who you are, what you're doing right now and, um, we'll go from there.

Speaker B: Yeah, brilliant. Thanks first of all, Colin, for having me on here and for putting up with me as long as what you have. So we started off our firm, um, tenant accountants, back in 2012, but our journey started long, long before that. It actually started off pretty much from the day I was born because my dad had a forklift truck business and I loved business generally. Forklift had a bit of a passion for, but business generally was where my passion lay when it comes to studying. I thought, I'm going to try and pick something where I've got a career which I can be a little bit more focused on. And I thought, oh, let's do accountancy and I'll put a bit of a warning out there. Uh, I'm not a massive fan of accountancy. It doesn't really float my board. I find it a little bit dull at times. The difference an accountant can make, huge. But when I started studying accountancy, I thought, right, let's train in a small firm. Went to work in a big corporate firm, PwC, worked in the public sector. Then like I say, we set up back in 2012, set up, ah, as your stereotypical firm. We then got on board with regards to software and I'll, I'll share several stories, many of which you know already, Colin, off the back of that. We then went full circle and went back to what I was most passionate about, business side of things and focused on that side of things. And that was where we're able to put back in place what was passionate me when I was first born, but revert uh, that back into something valuable for business owners out there as well, which is what leads us in a very quick way in terms of our full journey. But I'll, I'll share plenty more.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, let's just take that, break that down because there's a lot in there. So you started 10 accountants. When was that? When did, what year was that?

Speaker B: 2012.

Speaker A: 2012. And do you feel like when did this sort of moment was it Covid that kind of got you to a point where you were like, I want to do something different or I need to change what we're doing or what was that moment?

Speaker B: It's funny you should ask that because in terms of that moment of change, do something different. I've went through that stage multiple times. So the first time was I first replicated the firm which I'd been trained in, which was a largely non technological based firm because the cloud was barely even existence at that time. So I was doing a lot of things manually. I was speaking to clients once or twice a year, always looking backwards with regards to numbers, reporting what had been rather than what is or could ultimately be. I then went through a change, having gone to Zero con and got software drunk. I talk about whereby you go and say, I'll have that license, I'll have that license. It was a quick road to success. Didn't do that overly well, being brutally honest, because I bought software, I didn't have the right infrastructure in place to implement it to then correct that. And that was in about 2017, 2018, we started doing that and looking a bit under the bonnet in terms of psychology and everything, terms of structurally, to then say, right, let's use the skills. We're hard put technology in there and then get that right. So back in 2020 we won the um, UK digital account of the Air award and we're starting to get in the advisory space. But back in 2020, Covid hit so we had to reposition again to almost protect our client base and business owners out there, rather than pushing for the growth in the advisory space to then rebuild again on the advisory space, which was start kicking about 2022 again to then reposition ourselves again. But in 2024 we've actually went back to the very start again and said, right, okay, we've got the traditional skill set here. We've got the technology bit right there. We've then got the advisory level up here in terms of the Passion in terms of really helping people achieve the sort of businesses they really want to be operating within, enjoying and getting the results. The other side. But there was something lacking. That something lacking was what? Something which the professionals built upon. And that's the human touch. So we've created a project called the Sense of Belonging, which actually wraps the last 12 years together in a lovely little bundle whereby we're asking clients questions and help them find answers to things that never previously considered. And it's. I'm a little bit excited about it, as you all know already. Colin, when we last had a coffee.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, um, uh, I think that's one of the things that's really unique about you, Graham, is that you. You do sort of have this quest to keep improving, to keep thinking like, this isn't quite right yet, this isn't working. And I think a lot of business owners get into that stage where it's just a grind and you just end up serving the clients, keeping things ticking over and you don't have that moment, those moments of reflection long enough to actually go, what are we actually going to change? And you're kind of always willing to almost like explode it a bit, just to kind of in that search for like, we're not there yet, this isn't right. And, um, it's not going to become right if we don't change something. So, yeah, like that. What sort of. What do you see in yourself that's kind of driven you to keep making those changes? Does it feel like that sort of sense of, it's not, we're not, we haven't made it yet?

Speaker B: Yes. So two key incidents or two. Two key parts of my life, I think. Explain it. The first part really is, like I said, my dad had a forklift truck business. So I've lived and grown up among business owners long before I studied accountancy and been supporting them. Now, my dad sacrificed meal times and bedtimes with us, a lot of family time to get to where he got to. Now, out of sheer, uh, hard work, bit of good fortune along the way, which we all need, he was able exit his business when he wanted, how he wanted, with what he wanted. But those sacrifices may not appear. And that for me always resonated with me because it was a case of, wow, has every business owner got to make those sacrifices the way my dad did to get things the other side? Because it was always done with the best of intention. It was always done with the family in mind, always trying to build a better business for. Sorry about Our life for us, off the back of the business. But there was a moment for me when I was in the car with my daughter Holly, my eldest, and it was a Sunday afternoon, we're going out for the day. And I was just chatting to Claire, my wife, and I was chatting, um, obviously back off to London there next week. And Holly said, oh, why are you going to London next week, Daddy? And I said, oh, well, I'm going to London because I'm trying to, uh, develop the business, grow the business, to give you my other daughter Scarlet, and your mom a better life. And she said something to me which still resonates with me there now. She goes, but, Daddy, I love the life we've got there now. And it was just one of those moments where combined with what I'd been through from a child's perspective, but here from my own child, it really resonated to really focus my mind to say, we've got to be asking business one of better, uh, questions. Questions such as, are they happy with how many meal times and bedtimes they're missing with loved ones? Are they happy with where their business is today compared with where they wanted to be? If they were to pass away tomorrow, would they be proud of the life they've lived and the life they left behind? So all those things there was culmination point one in terms of really kind of focusing my head, my direction and everything else around that. The second thing which really kind of focused my mind in terms of the passion side of things there was the struggles we faced during COVID now, those struggles in terms of mental health aspect, just struggles generally in business. And all those things there where I was thinking we have a bigger, uh, role as an accounting firm than what we're really kind of exploring at the moment. We need to look in far more detail in far more areas than those previously considered. We need to look at the psychology side of things with regards to how we behave, how we act, how we best serve our clients, the same question for them. We also then need to have a look at asking them better, uh, questions. Again, coaching different things. I've got a coaching qualification, but coaching different things with regards to the business owners we're supporting, because ultimately our business needs to evolve. We need to evolve and the skill sets which come within that are very different compared to what they were. Because an accountant typically is always trained in a way such as we're always expected to know the answers to questions, whereas really, I think the responsibility now is to ask better questions and feel comfortable and not know the answers because the business owner, uh, might know more than us. And that's all right. So those two key life instances as such have really shaped where we are there today.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. I think it's so true, you know, like, it's so. You hear so many stories of business owners that say, I'm doing this for the family. And I think, you know, it's really hard to know. Everybody comes from different backgrounds. So, you know, if you've come from a background of real graft, you know, I can, I can understand why you sort of feel like, you know, I didn't have this growing up and I need to provide this. You know, uh, my dad was a headmaster, so, you know, he was pretty, he worked pretty late nights and was pretty busy. So I've seen that, you know, I've seen that life as well. And um, it's definitely impacted for me thinking I don't want to be working in the evenings. You know, it's not the way. That doesn't feel like the right way for me to balance my time and energy. But yeah, it's. Everybody has a different. Has to work. I think you have to go through that and you have to figure out. But I was reading something recently which actually somebody shared in a group about the impact of, you know, a dad or even. Or a mom being preoccupied, you know, mentally occupied with their, their work outside when they're, when they're at home and how that can. And so for me, the. That's the hardest part is how do you. Even though you're not maybe even answering emails or you're maybe not on your phone, you might still be thinking about work and how do you get present to the family. And I think there's much more awareness and education around that. But it's something that. It's still something that we really have to prioritize. So, yeah, it resonates a lot. One of the things we've been in this world of accountants, accountancy and finance for, you know, over 10 years now. And one of the things we sort of thought was, oh, well, there's been all this talk about advisory. So accountants are going to become the new advisors. So that's the path. And um, we'll just sit back and work with accountants. And actually what we found was so many firms, even if the owner of the firm or the partners of the firm are like, yeah, we want to do this, we want to become advisor trusted advisors, making that happen in the real world is actually really difficult. It's kind of like, remember signing a big deal with a, uh, firm, a partnership, and really excited about it, thinking, right, this is it. Uh, they're paying us a subscription. They've got like 100 licenses and actually they weren't able to get going. And I asked them why later and they said, oh, well, it's not me who deals with the clients, it's like Bob or, you know, Susan. And actually they didn't have the resources to think, how can I, how can I really be helpful? That wasn't their model. Their model was, if I'm asked for something, I'll get it done. So how do you change that? Uh, how are you doing it differently?

Speaker B: The first thing is, uh, there's really kind of three ingredients. There's multiple ingredients, but three core parts, which actually stems from several aspects of our business journey. The first one is staffing. And again, it sounds like an absolute basic one, but if you think of the typical traits, I know I briefly mentioned before the typical traits of an accountant, not so many eccentric accountants out there. A lot of us are introverts rather than extroverts. I'm ah, more of an extrovert rather than introvert. Now, from a skill set perspective, doing something which you're comfortable in, which is rigid, structured and almost commoditized, and which you were trained and built in from a young age, where you are, you're not just ticking boxes because you are doing more than that, but where it's a very much set structure, the value is already educated out there is a bit of a safe space to be in once you start changing. From a staffing perspective, like I said, this applied when we chain software because again, it applies, there's a bit of a vulnerability. I say, oh, we're going to start using the software, so. Oh, but where do I fit into this? The same applies with advisory. When you're chatting to the team and all of a sudden you are, uh, seeing the team. Right, okay. Rather than being able to feel comfortable that you're going to get emails and phone calls where you can find the answer or know the answer, you're actually going to have to ask questions where you're going to absolutely clueless to what's actually being said, you're going to be having conversations where people might be in tears, people might be shouting, people might be quiet, people might. And again, this sounds shocking, but I have to say, because we did experience this, people might even feeling suicidal. From a mental health perspective because we lost clients to suicide, to be in such an unsafe space makes Individuals feel uncomfortable. It's a completely different skill set needed from doing one job to the other because it's almost two different industries. So you've got the staff perspective, you've then got the business owner perspective in terms of the accountant, business owner before we come to the business owner. So account business owner, uh, has to think, well I've got this team, what do I do now? Do I need to recruit a new team? Do I need to train this team? Where do I go? We have actually recruited differently. So some of the team we previously had, we've managed out the firm how we recruit people now we look at very specific skill sets. We did Myers Briggs. So we are looking for those skill sets where it's more balanced approach in terms of the people that will bring the blend between the compliance and the non compliance work. So we've actually got a good balance here. Some people are very much just compliant, some people are very much non compliance and some people sit between the two. But we're half recruited differently. But that's a difficult challenge in times when there are already staffing struggles without needing to put a new struggle in place again. But we did that back in 2019 so we've been doing that for quite some time. So you've got the staffing then you've got the business owner side of things but then you've got the business owner as in your end client. The education of them, they are still judging accountant on the basis of their tax bill at the end of the year. Far too frequent that education to them to say look, your bank manager maybe is no longer accessible. We can help you achieve so much more, we can help cover so much more. But ultimately from an accountancy side of things to say at that person, we ain't going to change your world by just producing a set of accounts of tax return. Will you please engage us in a different way for which yes will require different costs and then we can maybe help you out more because the business owner's got two dilemmas at that point there. And again we've learned this through experience. The first one is, well, have I got confidence them doing things they've never asked us about before and I've got to pay them more money for it. Do I feel comfortable with that? The second thing is, is that business owner confident enough in their own ability to go and realize the potential that hadn't yet been fulfilled. So it's not even all about just the the accountancy firm, it's about the business owner themselves. So when you put those Three dynamics in terms of the staff, the accountancy business and the business owner. It's a lot trickier to actually overcome that when you haven't got a tidal wave of a whole profession telling people the same message. So when a lot of firms are still focused on accounts and tax because that's their specialist and that's their comfort zone, and I'm not going to say that's right or wrong because every firm has their own goals and ways of doing things, then you've got a small minority with a different message. It's naturally going to take time before that message is heard. And then with technology coming on, I think that's thrown another curveball in because your business owner is seeing that from one perspective, your staff are seeing from a different perspective and your accountancy business owner seeing for a different perspective again. So you've got. We've never had this amount of change ever. And it's an absolute, no brainer, simple route forward in one person's eyes. But there's multiple messages which we're contending with along the way.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I think, you know, for the way I, and again, I've never run an accountancy firm or anything like it. So it's, it's very different. But I did used to run an agency and I think the, you know, what I realized was, you know, in an agency you have different people doing different roles. Sometimes we had people building websites, other times we, we had project managers and um, you can bring in client managers as well. And I think that's the thing that I was really struck by once when we started engaging with accountants and our lawyers as well. I remember thinking, why is our lawyer the one who's booking a time on the phone, it doesn't make sense for him to be managing a calendar or that's a job that somebody else could be doing. Why do they not have an account manager that's calling us up and asking us what's going on or how we're doing, you know, and like you say, it's different rules. Like some people would hate that and other people love it because there's a people element, um, to it. And then find the problems and then go back and find the people that have the answers. So it does feel like if you're building, when you start taking that approach of what would we build now if we're building from scratch, it's a very different model than maybe some, some firms have that have been going for a long time and have people that are like, I don't want to speak to clients. I don't want to be learning new software. I don't, you know, just, I want to do the, do the job and go home at the end of the day, which again, there's a lot to be said for that like in terms of being present and getting your job done. But it's like it's not, doesn't sound like it's the, it's the, it's the sort of people that you're looking for. You're looking for people who want to, who really want to impact the businesses that you're working with.

Speaker B: But it goes back to the core and that's the foundation. If you look at education generally and again, going back to you saying obviously your dad being a headmaster, education generally, is that educating people to be sociable, to be personable, or is it educating people to focus so much on the technology side of things? And beyond that, let's say, uh, the accountancy bodies, how they are educating people, how is that filtering through? Because all of this side of things here, and I'm, I'm going to say some about accounts that can say this because I am one, so I am one. This has 1% being me. The vast majority of accountants demonstrate the trait of hypocrisy. And again, I'm gonna say it now. Yep, we all, myself included, demonstrate hypocrisy any number of times, but it comes from the absolute best of places. That doesn't make it right. Accountants always put other people ahead of themselves. We are trained to do it. I'm not saying we shouldn't think to, on a case to put people ahead of ourselves, but the traits and advice we give others often isn't the advice we follow ourselves. And like I said, I'll say this for first time experience. I did it, I still do it, I recognize it more and I'm trying to correct that. But we need to change these things, our own businesses before we start expecting other people to do the same.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. And that's it. Like it's, it's a, you know, it's again, an accountancy firm is a business at the end of the day and it's that sort of thing where the businesses that you're helping are probably needing to reevaluate and think and change to get to that point where they get a system that works for everybody. You know, it's the right amount of profit for them. It's the right amount of lifestyle balance versus work. It's the right marketing mix, it's uh, it's investment, it's risk is and so you're, you're trying to take off for your firm as well.

Speaker B: Yeah. All completely and there's two key examples of some which just I think highlight and the second one I think is a great example of frame of listing this and feel free to take away the second tip and go and use it in your own business. But the first one is and this goes back to our software times. How many times as an accountancy owner uh, for those people listening have you went away and committed to a piece of software which you haven't fully used in your own business before you tried selling to somebody else on their own Beginner. I'm going to use Float as an example obviously being on here calling me yourself. You know the first business we used to with Float was our own. Once you do that it just gives a little more credibility and that little bit of a feel. But if you're not doing it even though you might be trained around the outside might have done training course but if you're not actually doing it, can you really speak as if you're kind of the right side of the fence in terms of that? And I think it is really, really crucial. The second thing and I mentioned it there before about to say uh, helping business owners find answers to questions they never thought ask we now and we didn't always do this. We now ask a client how would you consider this relationship a success 12 months from now? Accountant, business owner, very simple question. Every listeners please ask your clients this every single year. How do you consider this relationship a success 12 months from now Straight there you will know how they are assessing your relationship. That might be a case of prompt pick the phone. A prompt response of a name might be a case of growing their business, consolidate their business. That simple question alone should open up the door for far more valuable conversations. And if you document that and you're measuring that in a year's time having committed to saying yeah with your package and with our team, we think we can get you there. It makes it a very, very transparent. I won't say simple because nothing simple in life but it makes a very transparent relationship which ties everything together. And this way. Let's go back the simplicity of things.

Speaker A: Yeah and it's such a simple thing to do in a way it sounds that's not hard to implement especially when you're. It's maybe difficult with your existing clients because you, you know it maybe but actually with your new clients, you know it's just A part of the onboarding process. Like we want an answer to this question, you know. Yeah, I think that's something. Again, like when I move from agency into SaaS into software, I realized we never talked to our clients like that, we never asked them those kind of questions. When we sort of took on somebody at the beginning. And I think it was maybe like insecurity or lack of confidence to sort of almost like, oh, ah, we should know what we're doing and we'll just impress you. And it's professional. But actually in the software world you're constantly asking questions of like, does this work for you? What does success look like for you? Are you happy? What would you rate us? Uh, you know, all that sort of stuff, like what would you need to do to pay more? Like those are sort of almost. That's part and parcel of what it is to be in software. But we never did it in the previous business. And um, I think like you say every, I mean restaurants should do it. I mean some do now, but so many places you go, they're not really, don't really know. Like was it, did you have a positive experience when you walked out of here? What would you do differently? Will you come back? If not, we'd love to know why. You know, think about how much that would save them by being able to fix small things or, you know, and how, uh, you know, so you, have you made that just part of the client onboarding stage? Uh, is that kind of where you do it or do you do it as a separate process?

Speaker B: I was in, it was at the Accountants Bootcamp event with Clarity in Brisbane last year and it was off the back of that, that was talked about the Disney story. So I came back and I was like, right, okay, I'm going to create a project. We've since renamed it the Sense of Belonging project and it's all off the back of that. So is it form part of the onboarding process? Yes, it is, but it's part of the forever process. So there's a few different things. So by way of having that template the start of the year and we're just finishing the rollout of this there now. So again, I'm not satisfied. I've been doing this for years. We're literally just like you say, finish the rollout now, bias those quests at the start of the year. We are going to track those on a monthly basis. We are going to have a sit down conversation or offer clients a sit down conversation opportunity. And month, three and months, nine at once. Nine is see off the back of that we can start looking the year ahead. So we are constantly tracking it. We're tracking with a client, we track it downstairs, we track it on the wall. So then by way of doing that, it then gives us a much better platform to make it not one of these one way Tastic. All right, yeah. He just fill in the survey, please. Then it just kind of sits in a drawer because I did it with a client not that long ago and I picked up the phone, I think they were surprised because I'd sent it out in terms of the forms and the one of the things said, I said, look, our books M makers are always needing time. Always get me on time. It'll be great just to get a discount. So I rang up and said, you know what it is? It wasn't you Colin, but I'll pretend it's you, Colin. I'll say, hi, Colin. Can I just say first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to fill that for you. I really do appreciate it. And can I also say, which I haven't, perhaps haven't before, but I want you to know now how much I appreciate the promptness and the start of the books tonight. Once you come in, I never ever want anything. I just appreciate. So I want to thank you so. Oh, no, no, no problem at all. And I also want to thank you for your suggestion. I said it's a great suggestion, but I thought it was worthwhile highlighting something which I don't speak of but is say, uh, what we've been doing, what you give to us is our actually our standard there now because anybody where they did deliver things late, messy and everything else like that, we've since moved on because you've actually kind of alongside other people made us realize that we can attract better and they say we work in this sort of way. So actually we as uh, much as I offer a discount, we just don't even charge a premium. We just don't work with them if it doesn't work, we just manage them out. So I want to thank you because it's people in businesses like you that have allowed us to set a level for which we're all comfortable with. And the conversation was such a lovely conversation. I was on the floor for 25 minutes. This client, and they're not a huge client or anything like that, ah, they're probably one of our smaller ones, but every person is a person to always treat them the same. And it just really kind of said, you know what he says your Value is exactly mirror mine. And I said, well, this is why I'd always pick up the phone. But I value this and I always take the time out and like that moment there was hugely valuable for me because I appreciate the feedback. Hugely valuable for them. That whole sense of belonging, that sense of purpose, everything which was said there before has to be a forever task. Yes, it forms the onboarding, but it's got to be embedded throughout the whole firm in every single way. So there's other elements of the sense of Belonging project we're implementing or, ah, have implemented, which makes it everywhere. And it's not that we've got Disney pictures all the place, it's not that it's far bigger than that. And like I said, it's a lot of work, a lot of stress and I had a bit more hair at the start of it as well.

Speaker A: No, I think you're absolutely right. It's just that sense of, you know, a lot of clients, like when I started my first business, I didn't know what was like, I used to have my receipts in a plastic bag. I didn't know what I should be doing. You know, it's just like, I don't even know why you need this, you know, I just did doing it to be legal. And I think that education piece is like, yeah, this is what we're expecting. If you want to work with us and we're one of the best, then this is what you've got to do. And it's like, all right, let's do that. And then that allows you to do timely reporting and give us more information. And, um, I think, yeah, I can see you shouldn't have to put up with bad clients in that way. And clients should want that, the outcome of what that delivers for them, which is faster, fostering, better reporting.

Speaker B: And I think there's a way of bridging things as well from the back of the peer at work and the compliance bit. And again, like I say, I'm still learning all the time. So I'm not saying this is always going to work, but obviously once you've got that template there in terms of how the assessment success, you can see where things are ultimately going. But then what we try to do, to bridge from just talk about tax and accounts to something more, we'll then say, look, the main issue with tax is one of two things. One, understanding it to a certain extent and be anticipating it. If we can give you both of those things, can we take you a little bit further on down the journey and I know you and I've chat there before about 10 profit first in terms of that, just a little bit of money management which goes back to our grandparents, our great grandparents, can quite quickly elevate people beyond the tax and accounts conversations to conversations which really matter to conversations where you make impact and change people lives, change people's lives. And that is where the passion should really come from. And it certainly does me.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And um, just to, just to kind of come into the tech for a bit, you know, it's interesting. Like, you know, a lot of people we speak to will say, yeah, cash is. Cash is the first thing we want to sort out. And obviously that's nice to hear, but I'd love to get your views on what you know. I spoke to the CFO the other day and he said, well, I couldn't use your product because we would need a uh, P and L, a balance sheet. You know, you can't just look at cash. But you've obviously been using products like float and other reporting solutions. Like what's your view on how they fit together and how people should think about using them.

Speaker B: Yeah. So one of the most common issues and misunderstanding misunderstands, it's uh, is the difference between profit and cash for any business owner. And you know what is, I actually get it because when you're living your life out of a bank account, but then you're looking at just a bit of pit which never feels real, of course you can totally appreciate a misunderstanding in terms of think what the heck's actually going on. But it comes back to going outside the profession, back to a basic question or business owner saying, right, okay, let's have a look at your business. But twofold, all right? On the base of your business, what profit could you potentially realize in the next 12 months? Right, okay. It's that. Right, okay. Off the back of that and based on historical trends, so when you receive your money from your customers, pay your customers to your suppliers, what cash impact is that going to make? Bearing in mind your profit, your cash are going to be different, but ultimately they're feeding through to one another. So alongside float, we use clarity. So by way of doing that they can see, right, okay, see me profit's gonna be that me cash is that then at that point there straight opens up a good conversation. Well, why is it different? You say, well it's different because. Let's have a look at it. Your customers maybe give 30 days credit, your suppliers might give you 12, 0. So all of a sudden there the timing is not the same for your suppliers and customers. Right, Okay, I get it. So your profitability. We've got to talk. I. Can we just accept that? Yes. Right, okay. But ultimately you're going to be assessing what's in the bank, but not just your business bank account, your personal bank account, is that correct? Yes. Right. Okay, great. So we've got profit and loss, we've got your, your cash position there. Let's break down your cash position. But let's break down your cash position for forget a cash flow statement, because even accountants can understand cash flow statements and they're, uh, not even the easiest thing to understand with several years of experience behind it. So let's break down your cash in the absolute basic sections, which are universally understood. So let's start off with just your main bank account to cover operations. You know what fixed costs you've got every month, you know what variable costs you've got every single month. So let's work on the base of having, let's say, three months worth of cost in your bank account. If you can't do three, let's start with one. If you can't do one, let's do one week. But again, you're in trouble then. But let's start with the basics of that. So that's just trading expense. I consider it that. Right. Let's consider taxes, let's consider pay as you earn, company tax, vat. Let's consider the taxes and have separate bank accounts for each of those. Okay. Then outside of that, let's consider personal tax and let's consider your personal account. So you can have multiple accounts. So maybe if you use Install, and you might have spaces or pots if it's Monzo, but all of a sudden there you've got pot, says you know what you need for your main trading account, what's going all the taxes. And I can help guide you for where our expectations should be month to month. I can calculate that for you, not a problem. That's my job to do that. Then you can assess whether there's enough or too little every month, and I can help you do that. But once you've got all these bits here, you've got your personal tax account as well, and you've got your personal account there as well in terms of what you're physically drawing out. So at that point there, again, it sounds good, but it's still structured very much from an accountancy perspective, but at least it's relatable. Now let's start putting some context into the bits at the Bottom, which is the personal bit, I'll say, right, why do you want 50,000 pound out here? Right, okay, well, I want to go to Fraud, I want to do this, that, and that's. Well, let's just calculate that a little bit. Say, oh, that's not gonna be enough. Well, that's gonna be too much. Or that's gonna have an impact for your personal tax fear, which then could mean you need more profits to sell the business and you can start moving around. So I'd say, what is it? Right, Well, I want trip to Lapland, trip to Florida, and I need me mortgage renewal, which means my income needs to be at this level. Right. Okay. Three things. Let's stick with those three things. Is, are, uh, you happy to assess our success and tell myself off the bat, those three things, yeah, go to Lapland, Florida and renew my mortgage. Amazing, right? Let us focus on reverse engineering. It will track the bank accounts, see how close you are cash wise to that. And the P and L and balance sheet is almost like something at the back. Unless there's anything alarming, we're just going to focus on this because this is what matters most to you. I then put the account, the business owner at the forefront, the accountant at the back. Blow me. It's just kind of filtering through quite nicely. But what they see in the bank account, they're seeing, they're feeling, they're realizing and they're living. And that's the bit where, like I say, generations. I think we need to bring generations together now because the likes of float and clarity allow us to do this. Our technical skills allow us to keep things right for submitting things. But let's go back to grandparents and great grandparents tell, these guys have the money in the bank account, so actually go and spend it. Then at the end of the year, send me a picture of you in Florida, send me a picture of a Lapland, I'll renew the mortgage and then I'll get one of these filled in. Says two more, go up there and I'll put you on our impact wall to say, look, this is somebody that's going to take action and we've helped them get there.

Speaker A: Brilliant. And, um, I suppose, like, that all sounds good in theory. So what happens? I, uh, have two questions for you on that. One is, like, it sounds like a lot of work that you're having to put in, like a lot of thought. And is it, can you do that profitably for your own firm? Like, do you have to charge a lot for that? And the second one is what happens when it starts going wrong. You know, they've got this dream and then they've had a couple of bad months. You know, how do you emotionally deal with that? They're not going to get to go to Disneyland with their kids or, you know, they're stressed out and they're feeling like they're having to work because they're not like, how does that affect you? You know, it's, you know, it's quite a, you're taking on quite like a lot of responsibility, uh, with the client at that point.

Speaker B: Yeah. And both very, very fair questions. So the first question in terms of the cost and as say the actual investment, a lot of it comes down to asking better questions. So the sad start is most people spend more time planning the holidays and what they do with their business. So if you just helped a business owner and just built a plan with them at the start there, which might take half a day, you could do it in an hour, two hours. Subject the size of business, if you just help build that plan with them, then they just go off and do that plan. You might just charge a one off fee for the plan. And then in a year's time did you get there. But only the responsibility fell on the client. If instead you were going to say, okay, well, let's help you build a plan, but let's help you realize the plan and again, subject to the client and submit your skill set, that would vary in terms of what level of involvement that was. So, right, okay, we're going to build a plan, but then we'll hold it to account every single month. Now, there's a couple of things at the very start which I'm very clear about. So when we're building a plan with somebody, the first question I ask is, do you think you can do it? If they sit me well, Graham, do you think I can do it? I'll say that's the wrong question. I'll tell you if I don't think you can do it because again, some people have these pie in the sky kind of ideas. I'll tell you if I don't think you can do it. But it's not for me to say this is doable. It's for me to say if it's definitely not doable, you have to feel comfortable with it. So they say, right, yes, I can do it. I'll say, right. How would that make you feel? Say, oh, yeah, I'd feel good. Good isn't good enough. Good doesn't kind of get you out of Bed in the morning. It needs to be better than that. So we'll go back the figures, redo it. Right. Can you do it? Yes. Can you do. How would you feel? Amazing. Say, right, what would it enable you to do? There's got to be something at the other end in terms of that. So then by way of doing that they're going to say, kind of say, yep, that feels real, I can understand that. And it's all of a sudden, I'm going to do this or plug in there, I'm going to do this. And then, yep, we'll go ahead. I'll say, right, okay, brilliant. So off the back of that we then take a look at and say, right, what level of commitments needed from our end going forward? Often it might just be a one hour check in on a monthly basis, might be two hours, but you can easily commit one or two hours and put together an affordable package for something of meaning. Now we tend to look at uh, the financial impact we make and then we'll take a stab off the back of that. What can the client afford? What can we feel as if comfortable in terms of some people charge a percentage, some people will charge a flat fee. I tend to look at a percentage basis with a minimum charge out of a flat rate fee, subject to our involvement because it doesn't always need me and that's how I do it. But time wise it's not as big an investment as people make it out to be because it's not for you to go and do it, it's for you to hold them to uh, account to do it. But I'll even ask in that early stage if you can go off and do this yourself and don't need us. Absolutely fine, we'll stop with the plan. It's up to you to go and do it. And some do choose to do that and in the years time, hopefully they've achieved it. This isn't just about me, it's about us, the relationship. If they haven't done, I'll say, well, maybe we could help. So, so that's part one, the second part in terms of question, when things don't go according to plan, it really depends. How do I feel? I do take it personally if I'm honest because if I didn't, I think I kind of lose the, the genuineness of how we operate and the team are the same. So yeah, it does hit us hard, but that feeling is largely dictated by the reasons behind it. So one of the key things I always say, and I went at this attune I first set up the business. What's the cost of getting this wrong? So we have, when we went down this route, we have disengaged from the add on package with certain clients that look, we don't feel as if this is the right time, might be a case of they're not fully committing to it or there's other things going on. So we're just going to stop now because your goal we don't think you're going to get, then it'd be unfair to lead you on. So we're just going to stop now and then we're just going to take a step back. So we'll do that quite early stages and quite willingly. And people say, oh, you lose the fee. This isn't just about the fee. This is a relationship. We're allowing them to assess us and be assessed. We need to stop this relatively quickly if this ain't going according to plan. Because as I said there's multiple reasons why that might happen. We've got a responsibility here so. But yeah, we do take it personally but we manage it along the way to try and guide them to mitigate any risks. But it has to be their plan at the start and they have to commit. So like uh, say when we're doing these sorts of things, commitments are made, the package on a monthly or quarterly basis from all parties which fit in with their timescales, our timescales and the package if they're not committing to those or we're not committing them, we're creating our own problems.

Speaker A: Graham, like there's so much more I think we could dig into on this but I'm kind of, I know we're, we're, we're, we're massively over uh, the sort of half hour mark that we sort of wanted to aim for. But like what do you see a future for yourself maybe Last question. Where if this works for you, you might sort of go into helping other firms or practices and sort of bring. Because it feels like you've got a lot of passion for this thing. Is, is your sort of thing like I want to make this work first and prove that it works or do you want to build a bigger firm and just keep going or what do you see your future being in that, in that regard? Have you thought about that?

Speaker B: Um, yeah. So my generic goal. Now I've said this, I said generic. It's not really generic. Well I suppose it is for a certain extent but I say to the kids, I want to leave this world in A better place than how I found it. And I want to make a, uh, lasting impact for all those people we interact with. I personally see that first done as improving the concept within our own firm. But I probably. I've got a lot of friends in the profession. I love the profession. I help people informally. I personally think where I would make the greatest difference outside our own firm is directly with educating business owners. Not directly in terms of us taking on all the work, but I think that's where if the business owner need was there, that would automatically help the profession. I think it. The profession is say we've got a lot of responsibility and that goes back to schooling to professional exams to get that bit right. But that's where I think I will be more so that way once we've grown things our own firm. Because I have got big plans, which I fully anticipate realizing because what I say, what I do, I do firsthand with our own firm. Any of our staff will confess to that. But that's where I see me going. I'll always try and help other accountants, but it's the business education side of things there that is where I think the greatest need comes and that will force the profession a lot faster than what it will be the profession going to the business owner. But that's not to say I haven't got some exciting plans in the pipeline around the employee side of things. So. But that's maybe for another call and a bit more work and I'll share those with you which again I think will fix the start of the funnel. But yeah, that's the plans at the moment, shall we say?

Speaker A: Ah, well, look, I think we should do a part two. We'll come back in six months and find out how it's going. But look, brilliant to chat really. I think leaving the world in a better place is amazing, uh, way to live your life and it's inspiring and really wish you guys all the best for what you're working on. Atanic and yeah, great to be connected and thanks for coming on.

Speaker B: Well, thank you for your help, your support along the way for which is say you're going to be alongside us on the journey. So thank you and again, thank you for having us on today.

Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the new F Word. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, expert financial advice shouldn't be limited to those with just big budgets. You can access the same level of advice for a fraction of the cost thanks to this fractional revolution. I believe that every growing business needs to know how much a game changer this can be. So if you love the episode, please consider subscribing to the show. It'll help us keep doing what we're passionate about. And feel free to share this episode with others who might find it useful. Finally, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn. See you in the next one.