How Laura Taylor Built a £1M+ Firm That Won The Advisory Game

Speaker A: I think a board meeting is really, I almost think about like a stop sign. So you're running and you're day to day and you've got all these things happening, and then somebody holds up the stop sign and says, okay, tell me what you've done, tell me your results and are you going in the right direction? And let's assess that, change a few things, and then you run again.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the new F Word podcast where we talk finances in business. I'm your host, Colin Hewitt, founder and CEO at Float. We're so glad to be back for season three. And this season we've got some great guests that are going to bring a ton of value. We'll be diving further into how fractional CFOs add value, what financial clarity actually looks like, and what systems and apps are leading the way. New guests, sharper conversations. Let's get into it. Hey, Laura, it's great to have you on the podcast.

Speaker A: Hi, Colin. Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: I've been looking forward to this for a while. It feels like we've been trying to schedule it for.

Speaker A: I know with diaries and things, it's been a bit of a nightmare to try and get it booked in, but. Yeah, glad we could get that coordinated.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I know you've probably got lots of requests, so we're really honored to have you. I think a lot of people will know you. You're a bit of a, uh, LinkedIn legend, especially in this space. You've done a lot in terms of getting out there and showing a lot of people what's possible when you, when you show up on LinkedIn, do you want to give us a little bit of a background into the last 12 months? And is it 12 months since you sold the business?

Speaker A: Sold the business in April 24th. So just over about a year and a half almost. So, yeah, I can give you a bit, a bit of background on that. So I sold my business, which was called Empowered by cloud, back in April 2024, and since then I have been. Took a few months out to begin with just to rest and think about next steps. I was actually going to come out as a fractional fd. That was my initial plan when I sold the business. But then because I was so used to having a team help me deliver that, I changed track and decided actually I want to help accountants and want to help them to grow better, more profitable businesses. So since then I've been working with accountants both one to one. I also have a, uh, virtual Finance department program. And I'm about to launch a new business which is a rhythm based methodology for accountants which really looking forward to launching that next year, but that's about the last 12 months.

Speaker B: Brilliant. I want to hear more about that in a bit, but just to stay on that, what was it, that decision between becoming an FD and having having a team? I think that's, that's, that's really something we hear as we speak to like people, they're kind of in that. Well, somebody said to me last week actually that they found that one of the challenges of the virtual FD is that it's hard to scale it because you do need, you can't do everything and you end up, you know, maybe maxing out at five clients. And it's a different type of model. So what you're allowed to do now, what's different about what you're doing, you're obviously building a training program for accountants that. Do you see the team growing to a certain size or how do you see things sort of evolving?

Speaker A: I don't have any plans to scale a team again. I have Isabella working with me who was my operations manager in the accounting firm which. So it's been brilliant that she's been able to join me again. And we were reunited. Both of us are working in the business and we have some outsourced support, but other than that we don't have any intention to grow, to grow a team. We want to make as much impact as we can through leveraging rather than necessarily growing people. But when I was thinking about doing the fractional FD side of things, you're absolutely right. It's quite difficult to scale and actually you end up getting involved in things that are a much lower level. So when I was working in my firm, I could have between 20 and 25 virtual FD clients that I would have in my portfolio. But I was only going to their board meeting. Everything else already done for me and I was just going and doing that very top slice. And when I thought about going back out to the market, I was like, you know, actually this is going to be quite difficult because I'm used to having all this stuff done and I'm going to be back probably preparing management accounts and I'm going to be back fixing messy things because ultimately to get to a position that you can give advice and you can talk about strategy, you need to be doing that stuff. So that was what played a big part in not going down that route and changing that, uh, makes a lot

Speaker B: of sense Tell us about what gave you the confidence that. Did you do some validation? Did you do some testing in terms of seeing if this was going to be something that was ad legs, if people were interested? Did you know there was an appetite? Yeah.

Speaker A: No, I didn't. I knew that I had obviously grown the business quite quickly from very little and I knew that we did things differently. So it was really just a case of testing the water and working on an advisory basis with accountants, just like I used to do in the construction industry. So what I actually do hasn't changed that much. It's just that it's a different consumer at the other side. Rather than it being a construction director, it's an accountant. And I know the industry so well because I grew a business in that sector.

Speaker B: And obviously you started off working with a small number of individual firms and. And then you built, uh, an online program as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I started off last year so I had a baby in between times. So I had uh, a baby in December. Took a bit of time off there. But before I went off on maternity leave, I had a few clients that I was just working with, really enjoyed working with. And then when I came back from maternity leave in February, I started to take on more clients and do a bit more work. But I got fully booked quite quickly. So there's only so many clients that you can work with one to one to be able to give good service, really know them and know what they're doing and feed into that. So then looked at how can I help more people? So I have set up a virtual finance department program which is essentially for accountants that want to grow a scalable virtual finance department. Instead of just rebranding the bookkeeping, which is what a lot of firms are doing, they're not really offering the service, they're just saying it's a virtual finance department. But actually it's just bookkeeping. So that's a six month programme. I've got 50 firms on it at the moment, which is great. Had really good feedback on the content because it is a little bit different from your typical accounting firm content. Because when I was growing the business there was nobody to get that information from because that model didn't really exist. There was parts of it, but there wasn't a lot of people that had actually made it work and made it work at scale in that sector.

Speaker B: That's always been something that puzzled us because we thought we'd been hearing the message for the last decade that firms need to move to advisory rather than just doing compliance as a way to survive and differentiate themselves. But in reality we felt like it's not happening as much as you would be led to believe. And like you say, sometimes it just becomes people struggle to know how to make that change. So what are the typical things that are stopping firms from doing that?

Speaker A: I think there are two main things that are stopping firms. The first one is that they're too bogged down with compliance work. And what I've certainly found when we started to do compliance work, so we grew the business in a different way. So we didn't do any compliance for the first few years and then we bolted it on later on. And when we did bolt on, the team were a bit bigger, but the business started to change a little bit to be driven by these compliance deadlines and you started to work to AVAT deadlines and work to all these different things. So when I was looking at that, this is a, uh, distraction. But if I think about other firms, they are set up that way. They're set up with this compliance model and they're trying to bolt on this other side. And that's incredibly difficult, Incredibly difficult. And the way we solved it was to actually hire somebody into a role that dealt with the compliance part and almost like ring fenced that away from the finance department so that we could give the advice to people. So most firms, I think that are struggling with it, uh, it's that that's causing them the problem as well as not having enough time to spend on their business, looking at the strategy, looking at what's profitable and looking at what works so that they can double down on that and maybe come away from being so compliance focused because there's so much value that can be added 100%.

Speaker B: And I, uh, suppose one of the challenges then you have is companies coming to you. They're like, we're just looking for an accountant and you're charging more than this other person. Like, how did you deal with those kind of objections? When people are saying, why are we paying more for this versus this other person that's going to offer us a cheaper deal?

Speaker A: I'm going to be honest, I didn't get an awful lot of that. Uh, and the reason I didn't get an awful lot of that was due to positioning on social media and being very, very clear about who our ideal client was, what we did for that ideal client. So, you know, we only worked with trading construction businesses. At one point it was half a million to 10 million. We later on went to 1 to 10 million. So we're very, very clear that that was our target range. And we were also very clear about our minimum fee. So that started again at £500amonth. So any clients that didn't have that to spend wouldn't even come and knock the door later on. That went up to £800amonth. But when you actually add all the comp of a full virtual finance department together, that's actually not a lot of money. Most people can afford to do that rather than hiring some admin resource. So there was a lot of value for clients, but we set that minimum so that we didn't get those objections and then had a very, very clear sort of onboarding process and prospecting process so that it wasn't comparing accountant with an accountant, it was a full virtual finance department with an accountant. And we documented everything that we were going to do for clients and how we ran and how we would onboard them and how we would check in on them and so on.

Speaker B: It's really smart on it. It's the way that things should be done. But it's almost like so many businesses. Before Flo, I used to run an agency and it's so easy, just like you were saying, to fall into the thing of like, this is what we do, we m pitch for work and then we do the job and then it just, you fall into the rhythm. What you've done is you've approached it from a different angle and said, look, we need to go after a niche, we need to position it differently. All those things are kind of like quite strategic. How did you avoid not just falling into the trap? Did you have an epiphany or was it just business savvy?

Speaker A: I would like to say yes. However, the honest answer is I spent a lot of time in retail management before I retrained as an accountant and that was running different types of businesses. So I worked for Sainsbury's as does, and I also ran a lot of shops for Ladbrokes. So those are obviously big scalable businesses. They have process and so on in place. So when I set up the business, I could see from working in accounting firms the challenges of we don't have the profit margins to give good service. We can't do these things because we don't have time. And when you looked, uh, at that model of hundreds and hundreds of taxes, tax returns and all this compliance work, it can be a bit like a factory. And actually if you're looking to try and make an impact, that factory type service doesn't do anything. It just ticks the box to help somebody stay compliant. So when I came out of employment my view was I want to change that and I want to actually grow a business that is done the other way. I'm going to get paid monthly in advance. I'm going to charge fees that allow me to give a fantastic service. And I was told that like most people that start a business that won't work especially if you're, if you're doing something a bit against the grain. And to begin with I did take on other work. I wasn't as strategic about having a niche or didn't quite have the virtual finance department positioning nailed. But you develop that over time and you see what works and you tweak things and then you go again. And over time we just became uh, the go to for construction in the uk. So anytime a construction business of size had a need generally we would, our hat would be in the ring and we would be able to have that conversation which was great.

Speaker B: Again I think it's a niching is something that it can be quite nerve wracking. Like when we were in the agency we were always stay quite broad and it was one of the things that I realized too late. I think that we should be going down for a niche and really becoming excellent in some capacity. Even though we thought well I'm sure similar to accountants we can do it doesn't matter to us. We're an agency, we can do creative for any industry. But what did you find that when did you make that? Did you make it? Was there a certain point where you made a shift? Was there uh, were you nervous about it or did you know that no this is the right thing to do? And what did that allow you to do?

Speaker A: So I went on to a program and there's a lady called Amanda C. Watts that's in the accounting industry that I don't know if you know Amanda. I went on to one of her programs and in 2020it was talking about niching and so on. I remember sitting on that call and thinking I'm on here because this lady specializes in accountants. And the penny just dropped. And I thought why are we trying to be all things to all people when actually this people want a specialist. If you have a problem you look for the person that can solve that uh, problem. You don't look for a person that can solve everyone's problem. So in 2020 we decided then that it was going to go all in on construction. Now we were already a bit of the way there anyway. I think at that stage the portfolio was something like 50% was trade, construction and related businesses. So we would deal with um, surveyors, architects and other types of businesses that were related to the construction industry. So we made the decision to change all the marketing, go all in on the website and to begin with we still accepted other clients from other industries. Once that was fully embedded, we turned anyone else away. So if somebody came knocking on the door and said, you know, I've got a hairdressers or I've got this type of business, sorry, we only deal with trading construction businesses, 1 to 10 million turnover, that was it. And that was probably the key thing that I did along the way was changing that and leaning in on it completely and then actually getting involved in the construction industry, partnering with apps in the construction industry and just being that sort of go to that, knew that industry inside out, upside down, back to front, all of their pain points and from a finance uh, department perspective knew how to solve all of them. If you're sitting with a surveyor and you're able to talk to them in depth about how the business operates, how they invoice, how they get paid, the key challenges, the key people in the industry that are late payers, how they should calculate work in progress and then they go down and sit with uh, a generalist accountant that says, okay, so would you like your accounts and your tax done? There wasn't a comparison. So we generated so much work and in a lot of cases we were turning work away and optimizing for profit all the time. So you know, repricing at the bottom end and bringing in at the top so that we were always creating that optimization and because our pipeline was so strong we were able to do that.

Speaker B: No, it's great. And it really resonates that comment that if you're not turning people away, you're not really niching, you'll continue to have a uh, diverse range and it's not really. But when you start turning people away, that's when you know you're kind of committed to that, to building that nation.

Speaker A: We were definitely all in which uh has its pros and cons. There's a lot of positives in that, uh, certainly with profit and demand and so on. One of the challenges we found with it was that sometimes team members would come to us and say, or prospective team members would say, you know, I don't want to be pigeonholed into one industry. My comeback to that was usually, well actually construction is one of the most complicated. So it's the same as others, but with additional things, rather than you being pigeonholed in something that is completely straightforward. So that, that usually got people to still come on board.

Speaker B: So I'm wondering, now that you're out of it and you're kind of looking at the industry as a whole from a slightly different perspective, you. Do you feel that you noticing even more now that people are doing wrong or people could do better, or things that you could have even done better if you were going back into running your own practice? Like, are you seeing it from a different perspective or do you feel like you have.

Speaker A: Definitely, I think the one thing that when you're running your own firm, I think you're always looking at yourself. If you're somebody that wants to grow as a person, as a leader and as a business owner, if you're somebody like that, ah, there is a bit of that imposter syndrome where you're constantly checking in with yourself, being like, how can we do better? We need to be doing better. We need to be pushing things forward. And actually, I didn't realize until I came out into the industry and got a bit more involved, had no idea how much heads and shoulders apart we were in our processes and how we did things. You just assume that everybody else is further on and is doing all this different stuff. So that's definitely what I've seen wider than that. In the industry, a lot of people are scared to commit to anything. So whether that be some marketing, whether that be having a niche, whether that be hiring somebody, there's a lot of fear which keeps people stuck. And I think that you have to be quite bold to grow your business. And from a marketing perspective, it's like, I, uh, think of it as creating a web, and you're just consistently weaving that web. The more you do of it, the stronger the web becomes. So when you start on LinkedIn, you don't get leads, and if you start going on podcasts, you don't get leads. And then it's only when your credibility gets to a certain level that that snowball builds up momentum and then it starts to pay back. But most people won't do that bit at the first instance to get to that position.

Speaker B: Yeah, you said something really interesting about the mindset of wanting to grow as a person, as a leader, as a business. And I guess maybe there are two different types of business owner. One is kind of just they've given up on that kind of growth ambition. They just want to get it done and maybe grow a little bit, but not too much. And Then there's others that are really wanting to make a seismic shift, uh, to go from to 5 to 10x what they're doing right now. You have to level up as a person as well. How did you find that? What's been your journey in terms of where you've had to personally level up your leadership?

Speaker A: I think a lot of it comes down to the type of mindset that you have. And I've always been somebody that I guess I would class as having a growth mindset. But that didn't mean that I didn't come up against barriers and it didn't mean that at points I didn't think, oh, uh, I can't do this, I need to go and do something else, or whatever that thought process would have been at the time. But every single time you bounce back from it and you become almost like, I like to describe it as like a weeble, you know, the weebles that you push it over and it just bounces up. And the key is getting up quicker each time that you get the setback. And I think the more things that happen. Business is a fantastic resilience builder because as things happen to you, you have to get, just get back up again and go again. And over the years, I surrounded myself with a lot of good people. Coaches, mentors, consultants. It was always, who can help me with this? Uh, so if I had a marketing challenge or I had a people challenge, it's like, well, who is the person that's, that's the go to for this, that can support the business Again, I

Speaker B: think that's something that a lot of people miss. Certainly whenever I was running my agency, I'd never had a coach. It was only, you know, when I started float that I kind of got to the point where I'm like, I'm going to need help. And what's been your experience? And I know you've talked about coaching and you work with different coaches. How has that helped you? What have you, what have you learned or what, how important has it been?

Speaker A: I think you work with different people at different stages of the journey and I think it depends on what you need and how that progresses. So I've worked with people on mindset. I have worked with people on specifics, like for example, marketing. I worked with somebody towards the end that actually came in to just help get the team on the same page because we were, you know, we were going for growth. So it was really important that the team morale was there, so invested in that and those things, they were all good investments. Because of just the impact it has. Whether it was even me assessing myself as a leader and saying, well, I'm reacting in a certain way to something. How can I stop reacting in that type of way to that thing and just trying to continually improve? Because none of us are perfect, and you see these highlight reels on social media. But if you get underneath the surface, we've all got challenges, and there's no perfect human beings out there. So working with people certainly helped me to get better.

Speaker B: I was going to ask you, what are the things that you see most firms doing wrong? But I'm trying to think how to rephrase that, uh, in terms of. Maybe a better question is, where have you seen people you've been able to help change something? Like what have been the things that they've been able to implement that have been significant for them, that maybe they were small changes, but what have been the big wins?

Speaker A: The biggest things are getting people into rhythm in their business, which is where the business model has came from. Most people, in my experience, are overwhelmed because they have lots of things. An accounting business is a hard business to run. It's a difficult business to run. There's in charge of all these people, you've got all these clients, and you've got a lot of imperfect information and things that, if you don't have the right setup, are completely outside of your control. So when I was looking at that, I was looking at how I could help people to solve that. Uh, and in my own business, I had rhythms, and that was how I ran the business. So there were certain things that I would do every day, certain things I would do every week, certain things I would do every month. So, you know, we had a consistent board meeting for the three years, years before I sold the business. So every single month, there was a full board report with an executive summary with all the different key areas of the business, a story of what was happening, all the financials that had been properly adjusted. And most businesses don't have that. So getting into some sort of rhythm, actually, instead of worrying about cash flow all the time, do it on a Wednesday or do it on a Monday, and that becomes. And then you take the decisions at that point and next Monday, do the same thing, rather than, yeah, just having this chaos in your brain all the time. And what happens, I think, when you've got that chaos is you get nothing done. It's much easier to go and do a set of accounts or do a tax return because the other stuff's just so difficult to download so anybody that has put in place rhythms has felt a lot better, got better results, and we've just basically formalized that, uh, in this method, which takes care of all of the pieces of running an accounting firm. Very specific to accounting firms, the things that we need to focus on. But, yeah, that's the biggest game changer.

Speaker B: That's brilliant. I think having a board is something again, like, in the agency, we didn't have that so cadence. Whereas at Flow, we do have a board and we generally meet monthly. And it does really change even how I'm thinking about it. Like, I have to explain what we've done differently from month to month. And do you find there's a lot of resistance? Because I've spoken to other people, friends who run businesses, and I'm saying, you know, like, let's have a get a board. And for whatever reason, I feel that there's a resistance to that. Like, maybe they don't want people to take half the tail, or people are nervous around having accountability or somebody who's going to challenge.

Speaker A: I think there is a bit about that. Uh, and there's also the bit about, oh, I don't want to be corporate, I don't want to be. But actually having that habit, getting an external person. So we had. There's a guy, David Glenn, who used to be retired, he used to be head of tax at PwC, and he came into our board meetings every month. And the reason we had him to do that was because his diary. You couldn't change things. Right. Uh, it wasn't a case of, oh, let's just move it to tomorrow, or let's just, you know, shuffle it into next week. We had a commitment and we had something that we had to deliver. We agreed on the board report format and it had to happen every single month. And then we had to explain ourselves. It's not just a case of you're just making decisions to yourself, you're actually having to say them out loud. And I think once you grasp the benefit of that, ah, and you see that by having that structure, accountability, and telling yourself the story, the value in that is immense. And once you do it and you have it embedded, you would never, ever not do it. So for me, a lot of the time when I'm speaking to accounting firms and they don't do this, it's selling that into them. Because in the first instance, there's a bit of work to get there. You know, it's a bit of work to actually prepare proper management accounts for the firm, get the Marketing department to send in a, ah, marketing report, get the people department to send in report on the team and so on. And actually getting mechanisms to track the metrics, agreeing on the KPIs and just having that. I always talk about getting into the helicopter. It gives you that opportunity to get into the helicopter, get it to go above your business. You look down and then you plan your moves. Because the last thing anybody wants is to be going in the wrong direction or continuing to do the same thing that's not right over and over again.

Speaker B: Makes so much sense from a business who's trying to move into that. We find, take cash flow as an example. People would often say, oh, uh, well, we don't really know how to offer it as a service or we don't know how to, we don't know how to charge for it or we don't know how to approach it's going to cost existing clients more. What do you say when people come back with things like, oh yeah, we're just doing, how do we move from the compliance to the more advisory side? What's your approach to that?

Speaker A: M. My approach is always to come at it from the human aspect rather than the sales aspect. Talk to people about their goals, their aspirations, their fears, and sell it into them in that respect about how much you can help them and insight and information you can give them. Most clients that I would work with would start off with an annual budget. So that would be the roadmap for their business. Then I would be looking at, well, so to understand, if you're hitting where you need to be each month, then we need to have management accounts and we'll work out if you're on the right track and you've got all these levers and once you get this information, you can twist the levers to optimize the business to get what you want from it. Uh, the next stage on from that would be, okay, so you're worried about cash. Let's get weekly, monthly, whatever that frequency of cash flow forecasting was into the business. As you obviously know. You know, we used float extensively, um, right across our client base. And it wasn't difficult for us to sell it into our clients at all. Because of the conversations. No, again, why would you want to spend your entire month lying in bed at night wondering if you're going to be able to pay the wages at the end of the month wondering what's going to be happening when you could have the insight? And even if that insight doesn't tell you what you want, it to say, at least, you know, and you're better off than you would be if it comes. You know, you wake up on a Friday morning and you don't have the money. So our clients saw the value in it. And I always find it incredible when accountants tell me that their clients won't see the value in it because it's just such a no brainer for businesses.

Speaker B: We didn't pay very much when we were running the agency. We had an accountant who did our year end and I remember thinking when we started float like we're going to need more. And our previous accountant had never offered us. It never said, you know, what else can we provide? Or what do you want to see? Or what can we do? Because we probably would have paid much more. It was just never a conversation. And we didn't know as a business what there was more to be had. And I think a lot of businesses that I speak are in that position. And that's kind of why I think the rational CFO role has grown. Because people are, they're using that fractional CFO or virtual FD as a way of filling the gap between the service that they're getting and what else can be offered. And I do think some clients get annoyed for saying, you know, you need a, an accountant on a virtual FD or a fractional cfo. And some people are pushed back saying, no, we do everything. But the reality is, I think most firms that we come across, they're still not doing that. What's your sort of feeling?

Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that certainly my firm was no compliance up until the point where we did bring that in. And like I say, we learned quite quickly we needed to ring fence that off and have a separate department for compliance. We were the opposite from most firms where it's 95% compliance with this little bolt on of advisory. We were 95% advisory with this 5% compliance that one person dealt with and made sure was okay. We did that because actually people wanted to have everything in one place. So if we ran their finance department, they didn't then want to have to have another conversation when they were talking to us month on month. So it made sense to bolt it on. But I think the firms that will do well out of having the advisory piece have to ring fence it and not allow, uh, those departments to bleed into each other because if they do, compliance will generally take over. And it takes over because you're always going to prioritise a statutory deadline where someone's going to get a Fine over maybe preparing a set of management accounts. It's just nature to do that.

Speaker B: Even I won't name even our existing accountant. You know, we've got, they've never asked us like, what more could we be doing for you? You know, it's very much uh, if you need something, let us know arrangement. And we've worked, we've had to work quite hard to also be, if we ask a question, we need to know if it's going to be chargeable or not. You know, it's, we don't want to sort of rock up with a bell three months later for a conversation that we had, which we weren't, we thought was just a friendly chat.

Speaker A: I think it's uh, that piece where a lot of accountants will uh, quote, for example for year end accounts and tax. That becomes the package that they give the client. And then the client asks for things like can I have a meeting about this? And the accountant gets quite upset about that. Uh, like, well, they're asking for a meeting, they're not paid for that. But for me that's quite bizarre because we should want them to ask us for meetings for things. And if we positioned it at the outset, so for example, in a uh, prospect meeting, actually having the conversation and saying, right, we're going to do your year end accounts and tax, we're going to run your finance department. How often would you like to speak to us? Should we book in a monthly call? Do you want us to attend your board meeting? Should we book in a tax planning call once a year? Do you want us to look at your remuneration planning? Do you want us to do this? Do you want us to do that? And then it was up to them to tell us no, they didn't want it, uh, which then positioned that it was an additional chargeable service. So we would say, well that's okay, we can take that off. Just now we've pulled together the proposal based on what you want and if later on any of that changes, just get in touch with us and we can add these things on. And then we would have quarterly service reviews to check in again and just make sure is the scope still okay? Is there anything else you want added back onto that? Maybe you decided you didn't want management accounts when you joined us. Has that changed? And having that proactive conversation meant I never ever had the problem selling services to businesses. And I find it there's such a fantastic opportunity in the UK for accountants to really, really help businesses. But it's uh, it's Going to take a change in mindset?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So what if you were advising a business coming out from another point of view, say I came to you and said, I'm starting a business, I need an accountant, what advice would you give me? Would you also say, or maybe say, um, I'm running a business, I'm doing a million turnover and the finances are a mess. Would you say, go and find an accountant with a virtual FD service or would you sort of be more modular about it and say, do you have a bookkeeper, do you need an account, do you need a virtual fd? You know, go out and find those things independently?

Speaker A: I think it comes down to the firm that they would use. So there are some fantastic businesses out there that can offer the finance department the advice and the compliance. If they were looking to go to a much more compliance focused firm, I would probably say to them, yeah, you maybe need to look at getting a fractional CFO or somebody in to help you with the strategic side about what you need that finance department to look like as you grow. Because if you're running a substantial business and you've got a lot of risk tied up in that, uh, the last thing you want is your only focus on finance to be a set of year end accounts to satisfy companies House. That doesn't serve the purpose for a business owner at all. But like I say, it comes down to the firm that's in front of them. Um, if we had been working with a client, we would be more than happy to actually set up the board meetings every month, facilitate those, you know, prepare the board reports, get information from the various areas of their business, attend commercial meetings and so on. The traditional accounting firm model doesn't really allow for that. If you think about, you know, all of these accounts in a, in a queue, right, and then, you know, they're going through production and it's a case of, okay, next one is now the set of accounts that's in front of me. Where is the space and time to actually prioritize, given the advice?

Speaker B: Well, tell us a bit about Ritmos. I know we've already touched on it briefly, but is that your big focus now? Is that launching that system, is there going to be a book or.

Speaker A: We're launching a membership. I'm, um, writing a book as well. Writing a book as we speak. It's launching on the first of, ah, February and it's a membership for accounting firms to essentially get support to implement these rhythms. So there are five rhythms, there's 20 beats and three levels, so it suits from a, uh, sole practitioner. So there are the nine beats for a sole practitioner. It then goes up as firms get bigger because obviously a sole practitioner doesn't really need to be looking at the leadership side of stuff at that stage. So it progresses as time goes on. The closest thing that I could describe it as would be EOs. So if you read Traction, the entrepreneurial operating system, it doesn't have any of the same components. It's its own unique system. But it's that type of methodology where it's giving people a framework and saying if you do these things, you will keep all the plates spinning. Because a lot of firms are. They'll maybe have a marketing focus for a month and then something pops off somewhere else and then it's, oh, sugar, I need to go and have start one to ones with the team because there's a problem with the team and then the marketing drops. So it's like you've constantly got all of these things that aren't in rhythm and you need to. Well, you know, from a business perspective, you need to keep them all going all of the time to have a successful business and checking in on them m at a frequency that allows that thing to be successful. So as a membership, uh, people will be able to come along to workshops to get expert help, to get access to the framework, tutorials, tools, templates and accountability. And we will also be doing live events every quarter to help people with their strategic planning.

Speaker B: Brilliant. I love it. That's really exciting. And, um, it's only for accounting firms. You know, anybody else can.

Speaker A: It's only for accounting firms because it is. I obviously learned first time round the benefits of having a niche. I think if we took it out further than that, it would dilute what we're trying to do with it. Will you be selective in terms of,

Speaker B: like, who can join, Are you vetting people or is it open to any accounting firm?

Speaker A: So it's open to anyone to join the membership. However, to be certified, firms will need to go through an audit. So that's one of the options of the membership, is to go through an audit to basically evidence that they are doing all of these things, so they're doing the right things for the business. And then our plan is to set up a directory of Ritmos certified accountants so that, um, clients or prospective clients can actually find a Ritmos certified firm and know that that is a firm that's powered by Ritmos, that is running effectively, is focused on client service people, client delivery, all of These things. That's the next level of it.

Speaker B: I'm really looking forward to your launch event in Edinburgh, I think, in, uh, this month, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah, on the 27th. So, yeah, really looking forward to that. And lots of good people coming along to it.

Speaker B: Brilliant. Well, the only thing you obviously been. I'd love to just. Just go circling like, full circle. What have you learned in the last, like, year and a half? You know, stepping out, having a bit more capacity, but more time. Like, what have been. The things that you've noticed, you've learned that you. Maybe you'd give advice to your earlier self, um, knowing what you know now.

Speaker A: I think it would be really looking and realizing how great a job we were doing. I don't think I ever stopped to realise how great a job we were doing from even looking at our growth, profit, maintaining cash, everything like that, uh, our client service, retention, the whole lot. I was consistently beating myself up, consistently saying, what can you be doing better? This shouldn't have happened. And just looking at it from the. Get better focused. So I think I would go back and give myself a bit of pat on the back and say, actually, you were doing all right.

Speaker B: I wonder how you could have gotten that perspective, you know, like, would it have been peer networking? Like maybe being in a community like Ritmoss, where you can look around and see what other people are doing and compare yourself a bit more?

Speaker A: I think, uh, I always knew that there were certain small firms and things that weren't doing, they weren't growing and so on. So I think I had that perspective. I think it probably comes down to actually having people that work with other accountants intimately and really know them that would have been able to give that perspective. Because most people, they'll still see the good parts of what's going on. But when I'm talking to my clients now, and, uh, actually, if people are growing quickly, I'm saying that's not typical. Just so that, you know, the position that you're in just now is not a typical position. And that's because of what you're doing and having that perspective and seeing it from that angle. They're like, I never stopped to think that actually I'm doing a great job.

Speaker B: The classic problem for so many entrepreneurs, I think, is just that sense of you're just running and running and running as hard as you can and you don't always get to appreciate it.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think it's that, uh, bit because you are running and you haven't stopped at any point. You get to the end point and you think, wow, that's a long way I've came.

Speaker B: The other thing I think having gotten yourself an exit and having a bit more financial security, do you think you have a different perspective, uh, on sort of like you don't have to do this, you're choosing to do it now

Speaker A: or there is certainly a bit around that, that I want to make an impact. I'm not doing it because if I don't do it tomorrow, I can't pay my bills. There's definitely a difference between that. Uh, you're being driven by purpose and driven by trying to make an impact. So my biggest driver now is to make an impact on the accounting profession because I can see, and I think I can see it so much because I came from a different background. So it's so obvious to me in terms of the shift that needs to happen, that's not going to be an overnight thing, there's a huge ship to turn.

Speaker B: How do you think your background shapes what you see differently?

Speaker A: I think it is just down to having that running businesses experience rather than most accountants go through. They go to school, go to university, do the professional exams in a firm, that's what they can see. Whereas if you have been in business and you're having to make decisions quickly in fast paced environments and you've got process and structure and all this sort of stuff around you that becomes the norm. So for example, in the supermarkets when I worked there, we used to be told how to tell people to walk around the store to get to the warehouse. And that was because if you walked a different way, they'd done calculations that the amount of time that was wasted by walking this different way around the store ran into thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds. So we had maps on and we would, as part of people's training, you know, you do it this way and this is how you do things. But if you think about those models, they are low margin, high volume and they have to be so efficient they can't afford to be, you know, just floating about the place. So when you have that mindset and you actually bring that into an accounting firm and you think, well, how can we run this like a scalable business that is run the same way all the time? That's a completely different view to how the profession trains. It's I talk about, I've got a bit of a tagline that's, you know, stop practicing, start businessing. Because most people are trained as a, uh, practitioner, you go along to your accountant and you sit and tell them your problems and they will help you with that. Uh, the business then just falls through the gaps. And I'm generalizing here. There are some accounting firm owners that are much more forward thinking than that and are putting things in place for their team and for their clients and so on. But there is a huge part of it, uh, that people are just practicing. They're just going in, working on their workload and then getting other people to work on their workloads. And if you assess how they do things, it'll be three or four different ways. It won't be a consistent process.

Speaker B: I think it makes so much sense. It's only sometimes when you take a step back that you actually to think about working on your business that you really get that perspective on it. It's just so easy to be in IT and servicing the customer and actually not thinking, have we got the right business model that's working for our team as well as our customers?

Speaker A: And that's why I think a board meetings are really, I almost think about it like a stop sign. So you're running and you're day to day and you've got all these things happening and then somebody holds up the stop sign and says, okay, tell me what you've done, tell me your results and are you going in the right direction? And let's assess that, change a few things and then you run again.

Speaker B: Makes a lot of sense. I find the thing about having a board is that even during a random week of the month I could be thinking how do I explain what we're doing? How am I going to explain at the end of the month why we made that decision? It changes your psychology. Another one is this idea of thinking from a goal. So here's where we're going to get to, here's where we want to be at, uh, and you know, sharing that with somebody else externally and saying, you know, we're going to be X million by this time. And then you think back to the well, what does that mean we have to do? And how do we, you know, you're actually accountable to that in a way that it's just easy just to sort of previous business we were just taking along, trying to do a bit better but there was nothing. No accountability and no real drivers.

Speaker A: A goal is such a, ah, powerful driver once you think it and then you write it down and then you work out how you can achieve that and then you reverse engineer it and then you break it down into all the steps and then it's okay, this month we need to do this. And if we do this this month, we've ticked that off and now we're on to the next one. What's the goal here? I've always worked with that sort of method of planning for the future. Reverse engineering back and then just going for it. Even if on paper it looks a bit ambitious to begin with.

Speaker B: Laura, it's so good. And the last thing just to cover, I think what you sort of hinted at was that sense of purpose. Has that come to you more recently since you sold and, um, you've had a bit of time to reflect. Like you say you want to make an impact in the accounting profession. A lot of people can articulate what their purpose is. You know, it sounds a bit grandiose or lofty or spiritual, whatever. Have you taken the time to think about that?

Speaker A: I think it has happened gradually. So when I first set out, uh, I wanted to work with five firms. I wasn't going to do anything else, but I've got that entrepreneurial spirit. That's never going to happen. Um, if I did do that, I would then be like, how to satisfy my mind and keep myself going. I don't know what I would do. So I like to have something and business is my hobby. I don't do the work that I do because I have to do the work that I do. I do it because I really enjoy it. So just over time, I think it's just became more and more clear what that purpose was. And some of it comes from frustration, actually, because you see the problems and you think, oh, if people could just do this, then the results would be completely different. So now it's the, well, if it's easier for people to do this thing, then actually, let's make this thing and make it accessible and make it easy for people so that they can just run with it.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, look, I will let you go because I know we've spent. It's been quite a while and it's just been really great. I think what you're doing an amazing job. I think your inspiration, and I think it's exciting to see what the impact's going to be as well, through Retmos.

Speaker A: I appreciate that. Um, thank you. And, uh, float was a huge part of our journey and it still will be because one of Beats is the Cash Beat. So it's going to be looking at making sure that businesses have money.

Speaker B: I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Speaker A: No problem. And I will speak to you soon.

Speaker B: 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 costs 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.