Viral Accountant: “I Make $100k a Week from Instagram!” Rachel Harris

24:45Rachel Harris:I think like, dude, I'm lazy. Like I wouldn't be able to create content every day if I only did it with makeup on. But also like, come on, like it's 2026. Like we have to be OK with that. And so, yeah, I don't know. I think half of it is my role as a creator to make sure that people see that it's authentic. But also half of it's my role to continue disrupting what it means to maybe as a woman in professional services, be creating content in that way. whether it is just sat on your car and you know my goal is to make everyone feel like we're just on facetime because i think so many people are scared of talking to their accountant that's my goal that's really interesting so your week is what what's a typical week for you it's like monday to friday you work monday to friday how do you spend your time i probably spend two hours a week on the accounting firm which is interesting you know like it's that's always been the business that is like the day one business the only reason i have an instagram account now it was to always grow the business and so that's the business that will always i say pay our mortgage you know like that's the business which is funny now because the personal brand is outperforming it so first thing on a monday morning we do deep dive analysis of the week before so my content lead has done fail time she's looked at what's working on platforms at the moment um even things like this week she would she's even had like dedicated days where she spent the entire day on a friday just working out what audio could or should go over a day in the life video like is it strong enough what do we do so she spent like eight hours just watching day in the life videos working out like what can we do better in the first three seconds to make someone stop scrolling so we'll go through that first thing on a monday i then a huge part of my job is strategy whether that relates to the accounting firm or my personal brand i see this a lot and again you've had incredible people on this podcast who have said the same so few people allocate time in their diary for strategy business as usual can very often take over whether it is in the accounting firm the personal brand um again it's a multi six-figure brand we sell lots of lots of digital products resources content so i spend a day a week filming long form so i create weekly within the podcast and youtube so i have a day of filming a week that's like a block pillar um i do a day a week in the office in the accounting firm working on other projects but my mornings are completely blocked out for strategy i call it like strategy itself so i walk the dog for an hour i go to the gym within that time I will intentionally be listening to something like this podcast or an online course in my ears um while I am at the gym and walking the dog to get me ready to do like a two three four hour block of deep focus work so mornings are dedicated to strategy and self my brain is actually you know a lot of people rely on my brain to make money and keep their jobs and so actually allocating space to do that and that was a reflection that came from the last few years of scaling I think scaling a business you have to scale yourself and like really making sure that your diary and your calendar reflect where you want to be this time next year not just dealing with the growth that happened last year so um for 2026 my mornings are completely blocked out for strategy and self afternoons are prep calls for stuff like this it is calls with the team personal development training with my team my management team we have an incredible management team anything like systems processes playbooks building online courses that we then build and sell into the accounting firm and so um i'd say two dedicated hours a week actually in the accounting firm um but most of my role is strategy yeah and driving leads because the roi is exponential you know like i think so often people underestimate having space to think and i don't know about you but for most times it would either be in the four years before this year running the business it would be if i was on holiday or that break between christmas at new year that's when i was like i'm gonna take over the world i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna listen to that that was really cool i'm writing that down i'm journaling i'm doing all of this stuff and i was like why does it only happen twice a year and it's because i was a little sims character that was just doing what past rachel said i wanted to do or could do and so actually just really segmenting time to be strategic whether that's being on platform understanding all of that stuff and so i guess a secondary part of that is a big part of where i think my content specifically performs well on socials is I have a brain where as a child the only people I could see in like mainstream media that I felt felt like me inside was probably Sheldon Cooper on the Big Bang Theory yeah like I love maths at school I love data analysis that's probably like it just oozes out of me and so actually a huge part of that is understanding how can you build a business that actually works with how your brain works too and so just a challenge to anyone to make sure that your yeah your diary reflects where you want to be in 12 months time think about um the times in your business life where you have had those like creative moments is it spending time with people i'm quite introverted but like there are certain people that are radiators to me that when i'm with i just can't shut up and so like do you have allocated time to do those things because it doesn't matter what it is it's actually the outcome and so just reflecting on what are those moments to you even stuff like this you know like you'll ask questions where on the drive home i'm thinking what is the answer to that because i don't know no i think so much of like business and isn't actually that complicated but it's when you're sucked in the machine that you don't have that kind of like 10 000 feet view most of these things they've all been done before so it's if you just spent your time uh outside of the business kind of yeah not maybe so emotionally involved and um maybe with your ego so involved yeah and you're like actually speaking to people who have just done it before and working out the mechanics and focusing on the mechanics of it like i think i always have that when i have the perspective yeah but yeah if you get sucked in you kind of lose perspective and then you're like um lost to the machine yeah and I always describe it as Mary Berry.

30:38Rachel Harris:If Mary Berry was a business owner and she was just like looking and measuring how many cakes she could bake in a day, she would probably be beating herself up. She'd be on Instagram thinking I'm not doing as much as everyone else. She, if she's so in it, she's just looking at these cakes thinking like, I'm not doing enough. I just need to work harder. I'll work more hours. I'll continue exchanging my time for money and I'll work out how I can bake more cakes. Whereas actually, if she cleared her calendar for two weeks, locked herself in a dark room her team would look at a calendar and think she's not doing anything she's lazy she's not even a person on social she's not doing anything locked herself in a dark room for two weeks she'd come out and say i've written a recipe book yeah and now every single person in the world can bake my cakes yeah wow what a greater return on investment of my time what greater impact i can have on the world but if you looked at her diary i think she wasn't doing anything and so our job as accountants as service-based businesses who get to look under the bonnet and deeply understand it is say to people like, what is the biggest ROI?

31:35Rachel Harris:Like don't just focusing on baking more cakes, focusing on writing the recipe so that everyone else can do it too. That's our job. And like so many people have never heard finance be explained so simply. I just wanted to jump in and say, Rachel's frameworks are insanely valuable. And because of that, I'm going to put a free breakdown of all of them in my next newsletter. So they're easy for you to implement. So if you want to get a copy for free check out my newsletter at the link in the description and we'll put all of Rachel's frameworks in there so that you can implement them now let's get back to the episode what do you track each week do you track like any kind of views type metrics average view duration anything like that and into the business what do you track do you track leads do you track inquiries so every single manager within our businesses across the businesses so I have an accounting firm my personal brand and as of this year have a new tech company so every single person who is a manager reports a weekly scorecard so on a Monday morning every seven days I get a scorecard within the accounting firm across the businesses we don't track what I would call vanity metrics we don't track things like follow account again the purpose of socials is to actually drive real life businesses that pay my bills because that's what pays my bills and so we stay away from the vanity metrics and we focus much more on the financial metrics.

32:57Rachel Harris:So for example, I have just done our financial forecast for 26, 27. And so from today, our content lead is reporting a scorecard based on how they are measuring every seven days to those financial goals. So we've just done 26, 27. The personal brand should do seven figures. So every single week she's reporting on every seven days. Are we doing one, 52 of that every seven days? And so from a business development perspective, every seven days I get reported how much work is quoted, Again, that's where I'm seeing 100K a week. I then see how much is being converted. That's 100K a month. I see how many inquiries are coming in.

33:32Rachel Harris:We track ideal versus non-ideal. That's really important for someone whose job it is to make videos perform because I can make videos perform that bring in a parade of red flags into my accounting firm that I do not want. We are a values-based business. Our number one core value is don't be a dick. Like if I create a specific hooky, viral, clickbaity video and it brings in people that just want to get their tax bill as low as possible like obviously is what we do but we do it with values we make sure that everyone's happy so she actually scores red flags versus green flags and like how close that week on socials gave us content wise into clients which i think is really important for people to understand because i think it would be easy for me to focus on going viral increasing my follower count but actually my team come first the client comes first you know becoming a client of ours is becoming more and more aspirational ostentatious like we have these values to uphold for everyone so that's what she reports um really important if you're considering bringing in school cards with your team the numbers aren't enough it's their job to tell you the number and so inquiries were up this week and i can tell you this is why inquiries were down this week and this is why here's what we're doing about it so don't just get people to report numbers to you it should come to you with a full sentence so business development that's what they're reporting socials for example this is again i'll probably do half a million next year in brand deals so it will be this is your monthly target as content lead how close to you are that i also have management and so her weekly job really is kicking my management saying have you got what else have you got in the pipeline like how can we keep growing um and so every seven days she's reporting to me based on my 12 month goals broken down into 52 equal chunks of the year and it's all color coded red amber green so i can see immediately where to pay attention to and the thing that i say on repeat to anyone that delivers scorecards to me is do not give me good news yeah i already know the good news i can see the green like that's not why we're here i need the reds and the ambers what are we doing about it and again that's so helpful for me to have that information on a Monday.

35:37Rachel Harris:I then plan social content. I then do self and strategy. So if we have a churn problem on my podcast, I have a payable podcast. If there's a churn problem, if, you know, top of funnel looks great, but we can see quarterly churn, then the next day in my strategy and self, I will be deep diving content on how to, you know, retain, nurture, convert those people, how to like build funnels in place to make sure I can do that. Like, again, people are running business is blindfolded and so this is what it actually looks like to do it where you've got 2020 vision this is incredible this is absolutely insane oh my god like that's just like an mba yeah um wow which is so funny because i did an mba and that wasn't on it so i know yeah yeah where's what an mba should be yeah and it's you get it in 10 minutes so i'm gonna have to play that back but um yeah that that is insane that is insanely useful in terms of the funnel like how How clear is the funnel?

36:35So you've got multiple businesses. Is it just random that those inquiries make it there or do people go to some kind of lead magnet? Like what's your approach?

36:43Rachel Harris:If my job was to just get leads, I actually think I'd have an easier job than I have now. I work in professional services. We are regulated. I hold a license. And so we are held to very high standards as accountants. I can get my license taken off me for getting a speaking ticket. So, So, you know, like we uphold very strong values. And so as a business, my job is to continue on this tightrope of bringing in leads, but leads that we want. And so we track two really strong numbers within the accounting firm. NPS, net promoter score of a client. That's when you get asked, how likely are you to refer a friend?

37:17Rachel Harris:That's that question. So we're continuously tracking the NPS score of our client base. We're then also continuously tracking the ENPS score of our team, which is employee net promoter score. How likely are you to recommend this as a place to work? And so my job is to actually balance both of those things, because if I just want clients, easy, go viral. Go viral by giving dodgy tax advice. So easy. That's not what I want. I want really high, multi-seven-figure business owners who are values-driven, value their quality of life, aren't afraid to invest in their finance function because they understand the ROI on that finance function is exponential.

37:49Rachel Harris:That's what I want. and so I have to play this tightrope of like understanding the socials well enough to attract them filtering out people that we don't want whilst converting them something that we brought in a few years ago is whenever we quote for a client we include our core values as a firm and the clients have to sign them so actually our biggest self-selector out of becoming a client is actually our values so our core values are shown repeatedly through the booking process how we work is shown repeatedly throughout the booking process. Again, we do language analysis on prospect calls. We know what sets us apart.

38:23Rachel Harris:We are a completely grassroots British business. We are all on payroll, all in house. You would struggle to find an accounting firm at the moment that doesn't outsource because there's a recruitment crisis. So when you book a call with us, you get an email saying, hey, here's five questions you should ask every accountant that you speak to. Number one, do you outsource? Yeah. So we almost leverage, we do language analysis on why we win work. We do language analysis on what makes people book calls and we make sure that we reverse engineer the funnel process to make sure when they do get to us you know if they're speaking to other accountants they know it's the cheaper price yeah i did a call just before christmas um the person that normally does calls wasn't very well and i did one i chatted to this woman and i did the quote and she spent 25 minutes complaining about her current accountant we quote live so i shared the fee and she was like that's that's more than i'm paying now yeah and i said yeah it's so funny you've you just spent 25 minutes telling me what's wrong with your current accountant of course we're more expensive and we just sat in silence for like 15 seconds and then she was like oh yeah no of course yeah i expected it to be more money and you think like it's yeah i don't know it's just so it's so interesting and to me running a business is like playing a board game in real life i think what happens if I do this?

39:35Rachel Harris:What happens if I do this? But we have so much data and with large language models coming in with AI, it's incredible what we can do. But I say that's the biggest thing is deeply understanding our USP, deeply understanding who we talk to, deeply understanding that becoming a client of ours is something that people aspire to. We have minimum client criteria, which actually involves us confirming their revenue. So if they mention that they're a multi seven figure business owner, a six-figure business owner, we verify that. And so actually now becoming a client of ours is something that people want to shout about because actually it is almost social proof.

40:08So if I, I've like followed you, I've seen quite a lot of videos. How do I then enter your funnel? Is it, I've, is it that I come to your profile and I like make an inquiry there or?

40:21Rachel Harris:Yep. So link in bio, three options. Are you an accountant? Are you a business owner? Do you want the team. Then each one goes to a segmented landing page. You can join an email funnel if you're not ready yet. We just have a nurture sequence running to book a call. Again, as an accounting firm, our biggest problem is actually having the capacity to deal with the volume of inquiries that we receive. Some months we've had over 100 inquiries into an accounting firm. For context, the top 100 that I trained at was a 10 million pound firm. We've probably got two or three new clients a month. It's insane.

40:49Rachel Harris:Yep. You can join a business owner's email marketing waiting list which just sort of nurtures you as you go or you book a call and again and how and if you book a call that like then starts like a qualification process yeah and so actually the tech product that i'm building is i could not find anywhere in the market a client acquisition suite that took that helped me deal with the volume of inquiries that i was dealing with nurture them convert them self-qualify self-select um auto-reject based on values vibes fee turnover you're a hot mess like whatever it is like it self-selects you out if you select in it nurtures you you book your own call you can adjust your own call you have to provide information in advance we cross-reference that against companies house data and then it books then through there it converts you nurtures you then we do proposals then you become a client of the onboarding into the accounting firm but couldn't find it anywhere and so yeah I've just invested a big chunk of money to bring on a developer full-time to build that product for me insane yeah and if I'm not interested that just puts me on what like a weekly email or like a yeah just a nurture sequence and again I think lots of people I am like so happy if people just follow follow me on Instagram like I poll people a lot once a month I'll poll my audience to say like why do you follow me and actually 40 percent of 225 ,000 people have an accountant that they are okay with and actually just use my content to top up their knowledge to then send my reels to their accountant and say can we do this my job as someone that generates revenue and has a business behind the business is to work out how do I monetize you I monetize them by doing brand deals with financial vendors people like QuickBooks Zero you know um and so deeply understanding that audience is really important so I know that 40 % of the people that follow me don't intend to become a client they just want to follow me and I'm constantly at events with other accountants they say god I'm sick of seeing you my clients are sending me your videos every single day like this is so annoying um but again it's and then double down on that how do i monetize the accountants you've got accountants following me because they want the information yeah we weren't taught this when we became accountants and so that's where the podcast exists and so if you named a bit of my business i could tell you how it's monetized like we even have monetization behind overflow leads every day receive inquiries from clients that I don't want or can't service.

43:07Rachel Harris:We don't service sole traders. We only service limited companies with a specific turnover level. And so every single day we get inquiries from them. And so we've monetized selling them to other firms. So we sell them, we have offboarding to other firms where we do pre-qualification and then we sell them to other firms. Quick on, if you're enjoying this episode and getting lots of value and you know someone who it might be helpful for, I'd love it if you could share it with them. So take out your phone right now and send them a link to the episode on WhatsApp or in Slack or however you send messages.

43:37It really helps me grow the show and it helps more people get value from the episodes. So if you're enjoying this one, send it to a friend. I'd really appreciate it. Now let's get back into the episode.

43:48Rachel Harris:Okay. So this is like all of the upside of starting to post online and all these other opportunities so it's like i've got a i've got my own business i need leads for it i want to build brand awareness and conversions to that business we've got that going we're getting the leads in for that but then there are all these other opportunities that spring up even recruitment yeah most people wouldn't even think of recruitment interesting whereas all of the team that we have come from either they come from instagram or they come from being recommended by a friend which is very similar to how we find clients you know 50 socials 50 recommendation that's the dream i always want recommendation to be higher than socials because they convert better they already know like and trust you um again most people complain about their accountant so getting someone who recommends one is gold dust and so that's what we always want same with the team um we have a referral scheme we have bonuses we have an egc scheme so the team can earn money through creating employee generated content um they get paid to create content talking about working for us and then they also get um a 250 pound bonus if we hire anyone that they recommend to us too interesting thing so walk me through these other opportunities so we've got like digital products yep digital products sponsorships hiring or maybe we come on to the sass speaking what where where's the where's the most exciting one to start with okay cool so we've got the accounting firm we park that got the tech product part that if i almost just like run you through my pnl as a personal brand yeah um commission i do affiliate okay yeah i avoided it for a long time i thought i don't want to work with people that aren't willing to put their money where their mouth is and so i use data to work out which ones to accept i have got some youtube videos which have done half a million views they are actually to be honest the most boring to create they are software tutorials yeah and so i just worked out how many people were watching those videos went to the brands got commission i probably make between two and five thousand pounds a month just from people clicking the link on a software tutorial that they're already engaged with but again youtube is a search engine not the conversion on those is insane right because someone's literally trying to set up zero and zero probably pay like if they're doing advertising what do they pay for customer like 100 200 quid i don't know yeah literally um so they just give you like that kind of fee yep yeah straight back and again i've already zero do great special offers and so i literally have how to learn 80 of zero in 30 minutes tutorial then it's by the way you can get 90 off zero for six months if you use this link convert wow and so again then when you've got the affiliate links, you understand the tracking, then you can reverse engineer it where you're actually just creating content with the commission in mind.

46:26Rachel Harris:And so we built sort of an ecosystem around commission and referrals. And again, I'm really picky with who I do deals with. I don't do deals with anyone that I have not already paid for their product as a very happy paying customer. Again, just from a values perspective, I'm in the trust game as an accountant. And so it has to be there. So only do deals with brands that I've paid for and been a happy paying customer for we literally run the entire accounting firm on zero and so have done commission with zero even creating videos of like how to choose an accounting software in 2026 yeah there's just this playbook of videos that i can make every single year on youtube that just get better and better and better with better brand deals better alignment if i know i make them every year i can go to zero and say hey as well as that commission will you pay me to make it put a dedicated video literally spent yesterday filming six youtube videos that are all dedicated and integrated brand deals because I started with an affiliate link, had data to see who was converting, then took that data back to YouTube and then took that data back to zero and said, look how many people I'm converting, sponsor the video.

47:24Rachel Harris:And then we've got like brand deals laid on top of brand deals. Yeah. I do speaking, uh, speaking again, I do much less nowadays in terms of like corporate paid speaking gigs. I just kind of keep doubling the fee until I think, yeah that's a good use of my time uh so like it would be about 10 grand to put me for a speaking gig as a minimum that's like pre-prepared because it just wipes a day out of my diary a day out of my diary costs minimum 10 grand so speaking gigs um again if i do stuff like this i will never ask to be paid my job is to just be such a good guest people will like take my money so like that's the job with stuff like this um brand deals brand deals again as a finance creator brand deals is probably the most insane bit of being a creator that I never realized.

48:13Rachel Harris:I ran a content series last year, which was just how much money I make as a creator. And it just got the highest engagement of any series I've ever done because people just would not believe how much money you can make with brand deals as a finance creator. And again, obviously to make money like that, I mentioned for the next 12 months, we'll do half a million in brand deals. That's insane. But that's compensating to me for the four years that I did it for free. and so like it's you have to have the business behind the content to bankroll the content yeah and so like it has to um we said before we hit record like i'm making hay while the sun is shining my job is to use that money to build a tech product to turn into a sas business to like work out what does the portfolio look like as a whole and what does that ecosystem look like so we've got content creation and then digital downloads digital downloads changed my life i when I became self-employed I run the accounting firm with my husband we would love a family one day and so from day one was like how can I build the business to be fueled by me but not rely on me so I can take maternity leave because as an accountant my entire career I've seen men and women have to wind down or close down businesses to take parental leave because if the business is you and you are the business like it doesn't exist when you're not there and so really started paying attention to the creators that were generating exponential amounts of money in comparison to their follower counts.

49:38Rachel Harris:And it's never the creators with the most followers. The creator that changed my life was actually a micro creator on TikTok who was a mum who during lockdown started baking cakes for other people's friends and family. She needed an accountant, came to us, we taught her the playbooks and tools that we use to teach her how to take the blindfold hold off and she started building cost cards so for every single cake whether it was a two-layer victoria sponge she knew how much she had to charge to cover her time to cover the quality of life that she wanted for example she said i want to be able to shop at m &s next year it's most people's relatable life goal like not everyone wants to drive a Porsche or like pay their mortgage off like most people were like can i improve my quality of life just two percent by having this business so in order to be able to shop at m &s every single week this is how much profit I need.

50:24Rachel Harris:In order to get that much profit, I need to make sure that every cake I make sits within that profit margin. I know how much it costs me. Therefore, I know how to price and it accounts for my time. So we taught her how to do this. She built these cost cards and then she started creating content as a micro creator on TikTok, talking to other mums who were also baking cake, starting businesses. I don't know about you, but loads of people who make cakes, they do it really cheap. It's just for friends and family. They don't make any money when you think like this is probably taking you like six hours to make a cake and you've charged me 20 quid.

50:53Rachel Harris:Like this is not minimum wage. So she was just teaching people how to do it. Wow. And this was in the early days of the business where I was still very much on the tools. And I knew what she did. Like I did her prospect call. We chatted. She was great. Signed her up. And I was covering for someone. Someone was on holiday and I had to do her VAT return. And it was in the early days. And I don't know why, but I had to connect her emails to mine in order to like pull a VAT report. Her emails broke my laptop. I connected her emails to my computer. My computer crashed. Because she was receiving, I literally, when I rebooted my laptop, she was getting emails every second from people buying digital products on TikTok.

51:31Rachel Harris:And it was 99p TikTok shop. Here's a cost card for a Victoria sponge. Here's a recipe for a Victoria sponge with a cost card built in. Every single second she was selling digital products that were worth 99p. She probably at that time had 12 ,000 followers on TikTok. and so as someone that has worked with some of the biggest creators in the world and some of the micro creators of the world like actually the micro creators are the ones that can leverage the monetization per follower it's here so i was like okay what if we take this model but scale it and so that's what i've done in the bit of the business that i always struggled to monetize which was for other accountants so many other accountants again were like us started the business to have more flexibility couldn't remove themselves again also felt handcuffed, blindfolded, like they felt like they started out to run a business, but now the business runs them.

52:21Rachel Harris:How do they get away from it? And so started building digital products, online courses that teach other accountants how to run a technically sound firm. So if they are investigated, if they get an anti-money laundering inspection, which is what keeps accountants awake at night, how can you know that you've scaled well enough to withstand that scrutiny whilst also make really, really, really good profit? So all of these really simple digital tools that my team use every day in the firm people can buy and just plug into their business as a blueprint and so started building these digital products and then was like part of the funnel is missing and then launched the practice owners podcast last year um decided to be community led I knew at that point even as a standing start with no active subscribers I could probably take it to a brand and get a good ish deal like for the first season I probably could have got 20 grand but just thought like actually as a consumer of content I'm sick of being sold to um as an accountant it's really hard to find impartial advice that's not brand-led or someone through a brand what if we did it differently I'm very lucky to have some of the biggest creators in the world on our books and so I'm bringing people like Chris Andrews who's building Stephen Bartlett's podcast and I'm saying like have you ever seen anyone else do this and so yeah built a community-led podcast that's where people pay to receive the podcast it's 25 pounds a month it's weekly coaching in your pocket broken down into about its bite-sized chunks we're now at the point where we've been running for 12 months it brings in 70 000 pounds a year in terms of revenue but it means that we are community-led also it's its top of funnel so i get people into the podcast they listen to the podcast they think bloody hell this is 25 pounds a month she's changed my firm like I've embed KPIs I know how much money I make I've got profitability per job like all of the stuff that's been taught on the podcast then they think well this is 25 pounds a month what's next then they start buying the digital products digital products upsell and funnel into digital products and I have actually just hired a head of product and growth for my personal brand which is a qualified accountant she actually had her own YouTube channel for a really long time so she's coming in to help me scale the digital product side of the business but that is the bit of the business the podcast and the digital product combined that's the thing that will buy my forever home that part of the business 100 % wow yeah it's the classic Daniel Priestley ascension model so we've got the gift the free I've never had an original thought in my life I just consume lots of content yeah then the cheap like yeah like cheap product that delivers value earns trust and then once we've built that trust we can start to sell things that require um more trust which are just higher ticket really interesting and then we have a coaching program yeah this is at the bottom which is a 10-person boardroom runs for six months a year um yeah absolute highest price point that you can get but again it what are the yeah what are the price points for these different products so yeah so again 25 pound for the 25 pounds on the podcast so if i'm an accountant wanting to consume content i can just sit on the free version of the podcast um you maybe get like one or two episodes a month that sometimes I will take sponsorship for so it'll be this episode has been made free by a brand um so only free subscribers get that there's like 2 000 accountants that sit on that mailing list and it's good to say numbers because I think some people I'm an accountant so I'm like I'll like ask people how much money they make and they're offended and I'm like oh sorry that's actually not a normal question to to ask should be a normal question there's 2 000 people that sit on the free version um of the podcast that as of today is 200 people that sit on the paid for version.

55:52Rachel Harris:Again, it's very community led. So people can actually earn free months. If they recommend the podcast to friends, they can get free months. They can gift subscriptions. They can ask for a subscription as a birthday present or Christmas present. I wouldn't recommend doing that because they can actually put it through their business as an allowable expense if they choose not to. So it's very, very community driven there. Then we convert people into the other products. Again, the other products range from£25 toolkits, which is just me explaining how to have board meetings as a business owner if it's just one person all of the way through to our highest performing course to date which has made over a hundred thousand pounds is a course that teaches other accountants how to feel confident delivering limited company accounts and corporation interesting yeah well so very deep very technical um not just marketing or just personal branding like it is we cover a lot of stuff in our exams as accountants but i describe being an accountant as if you qualified as a doctor, you go to medical school, you understand the human body.

56:48Rachel Harris:Every spring and every autumn, the British government change where the organs are in the body based on the autumn statement. And then from the next day, you are expected to answer people's questions about how you're going to put them back together again. And so we did these exams, but actually there's a long way from doing those exams and actually being a great accountant, as well as some people train at really large firms where they have a really niche job, like personal tax, and then they get a license. They can't do accounts, as well as people who take breaks in work to become parents or carers they just want a confidence boost and so we built this course it's like a 1500 pound price point it is completely on demand but we do run it as a hybrid course as well and so yeah each launch of that will generate me about 60 000 pounds and so i've just hired a head of product and growth to make sure that we're just sort of always on and always launching that and that's what i mean about that will buy my forever home not anything else all of the way down to um i'm currently in the first iteration of my boardroom which is the coaching program so it has 10 seats and people pay a thousand pounds a month to be in that so 10k a month for three hours of my time and what what would you roughly make on the sponsorships so if we're going to do half a million this year i would probably do that would be made up of three reels a month on short form two youtube deals and maybe one set of instagram stories a month i could do half a million and do you think it's better to like just work with a set amount of a set a few sponsors and like get them on like annual deals or is it more just kind of what comes into the inbox?

58:16Rachel Harris:I'd say my I will always choose recurring work over non-recurring work again as a business owner my brain is wired that way I think as an accounting firm the business model is so straightforward do a good job they will be your clients next year it's recurring revenue as long as you do a good job yeah and so understanding the peace of mind actually that comes with running that business over being a creator because every month I think where's the money coming from and the money always comes but like the difference between that I will always choose recurring revenue over non-recurring revenue and like scalability and so I've worked very hard to build incredible relationships with all of the brands that we work with so that we they will then say let's do six-month retainer together let's again I say make hay while the sun is shining like I've just done a really big deal with zero ahead of making tax digital for income tax I've built this audience of people who trust me I very often on social speak to limited companies and every day get questions from people saying make content for sole traders make content for sole traders.

59:09Rachel Harris:So I took all that data to Xero and said, you have a problem. At the moment, you and all of your competitors are fighting for the sole trader market ahead of making tax digital. Let me do it for you. Let's do a deal. And so even I have this spoof series of like HMRC headquarters of Karen and Darren, the characters that I made up and like Karen and Darren got their own brand deal because I pitched to Xero. And so even pitching to brands, I'd say 50 % of the deals I've got have because I've gone to a brand and said, let's do this deal. People sit and wait for it to come into their own books but as someone who has a business model that is based on recurring revenue and then i'm also a creator that's not i always prioritize recurring revenue over non-recurring revenue like i still have a team obviously the profit margins are so much better as a creator but i do still have a team that rely on me and so if i can just get enough recurring deals that make sure payroll's covered every month it means that i know that if i want maternity leave one day or i want to be a parent i want to reduce my working hours i know that the business doesn't just disappear without me too which is important it's super important and yeah I mean, that's why I love the service businesses as well.

1:00:07And they're like monthly retainer. It's actually not that hard a business. If you keep your clients, you literally, you could just do marketing for a month. Yeah. Add another couple of clients, then take the rest of the time off if you're in the marketing department. Just in terms of like super important things that you've learned doing this, what would they be? Is there like quite common is like, should you just focus on one platform? Are there any things or mistakes that you think people will make if they're listening to you and they're like, oh, okay, I need to start making content. and then all of a sudden all these magical things will happen?

1:00:37Like are there a couple of kind of trip wires or things they should absolutely make sure they're doing or not doing?

1:00:42Rachel Harris:So if you're listening to this because you want to be a creator, the biggest hurdle you have to go over is embarrassment. We were in the office the other day and my content lead said to another member of staff, personal branding is only embarrassing until you're Rachel. Yeah. Like posting on Instagram is embarrassing until you have followers, but then suddenly it's not embarrassing anymore. And so if you are currently not creating content, the only thing you will have to go over is yourself to make content. I always say to my husband, I was actually making a video in our car outside our house the other day.

1:01:10Rachel Harris:And this is a champagne problem. The guy that services our hot tub was coming around the side gate. And my first thing is like, oh, this is embarrassing. Yeah, pretend you're doing something else. You're filming in public and I have this massive ring light on my face. Like it was so obvious that I was filming a video. I said to James, like, he doesn't know I'm not Molly Mae. Yeah. He doesn't know who Molly Mae is. Like I could be Molly Mae on the drive of my car and he just walked past me. like that's not embarrassing for me it's embarrassing he doesn't know who I am and so again the only thing you have to go over is yourself again I said before I'm a girl that took further maths at school so I can deal with embarrassment like that's not a currency that I engage with in life and so as a girl who loved maths I am not scared of being embarrassed and so if you're not a creator yet the only thing you have to get over is yourself like it's only cringy until it's not cringy anymore and I used to feel that fear so much like there was this group chat of like all of the girls that didn't like me at school that I used to think they would just like talk about my videos and since then since the platform's grown and I get to do like vision board podcast appearances or like do stuff on tv and work on shows like this morning or with BBC suddenly those girls dm you saying like it's so amazing to see what you've done since school and so I'd say it's only cringe until it's not cringe anymore if you haven't started yet if you have started scalability over everything else I think very often people um we've had clients come into the firm maybe after they've just come off a show like love island they've grown an audience on a platform overnight actually what we would be doing then is almost portfolio building so like how can we make this firstly as scalable as possible require as little of you as physically possible would also work out like if we go with the make hay while the sun is shining mantra like how what's the longevity of this for you as a career if we think it's quite short um And coming off a show like Love Island is a perfect example.

1:02:59Rachel Harris:Most people, unless they are incredibly entrepreneurial, probably have three to four years of being a creator post Love Island of being relevant. If that nowadays, I'd say with multiple seasons a year, like it actually moves faster. And so we'd be looking at how can you leverage this with integrity, with values to get the deals in that monetize the brand. but then rather than do what lots of people do in that situation which is buy a Porsche actually we're going to take that and work out some really tax efficient investments that you can make whether that's through SEIS or EIS which are tax investment schemes within the UK or look at different investments where we can turn this into a portfolio of businesses that run without you so how can we leverage those things as well so scalability is the number one thing like do never exchange your time for money as a creator.

1:03:45Rachel Harris:I think it's really easy. You'll be the same as a service-based business owner. Like you could spend your life on calls exchanging your time for money. But again, if we go back to Mary Berry, there's only so many cakes that you can make in a day. So like, what is your recipe book? Like what's that hack? For me, that was writing a recipe book for my entire team to follow, to make sure clients see me on socials, come into the firm and think, oh, it feels the same. It's a different person, but it feels the same. So my only job now I've in the recipes is to hire Michelin star chefs. They follow the same recipe that feels like me, but they can put their own sprinkles on top, their own flair.

1:04:17Rachel Harris:They build great relationships with clients. It's all based on value. So it all comes together perfectly. And then within the content and like personal brand business, it's building products that are incredibly scalable. So the only way that you can work with me that even has me live on a call is six grand in that sort of boardroom mastermind. And so it's just making sure that's as scalable and as profitable. as possible. And so yes, scalability above everything else. And so like even looking at pounds per day is something that I look at within the personal brand all the time. Like how many pounds have we made per day?

1:04:50Rachel Harris:Like sometimes me and James will just be having dinner over my phone and be like, oh, someone's just bought like four grand's worth of courses. And yes, it's crazy. It's stuff that was on the vision board one day. I hope you're enjoying this episode and wanted you to know that it's actually produced by my own podcast agency, 7x Content. We create incredible shows for a lot of the world's biggest podcasters. And so if you'd like to take your existing podcast to the next level or start one in 2026, then you can check us out at 7xcontent.com. We'd love to hear from you. In terms of your clients, they are business owners, celebrities, influencers.

1:05:26From kind of looking across all of those, like what are the key insights? Like what are the models that you see that are just insane, like insanely profitable? Or are there any other kind of insights like that that you get? The best lesson in business I have ever been taught

1:05:42Rachel Harris:came from a guy that owns a swingers club. Okay, interesting. And the mantra that me and my husband say to ourselves all the time is, how do we make sure everyone gets laid? Again, I'm going to count that with an MBA. So like, I've done a lot of personal development in my life, like learned a lot about business. And yeah, this guy runs a swingers club. He was, is one of the most profitable businesses I have ever seen in my life. This is the type of business that I'm on the phone to our governing body saying, can we act for a swing? Like, is this legal? Are you, are they selling sex? Or is this a, like, how does this work?

1:06:14Rachel Harris:It is legal, just in case anyone's interested. It is legal. We could act for them. And this was in like the day, he was literally, I think, in our first cohort of like 20 clients. So he's a day one client. This is five years ago. And so he used to come to our house to do the records. yeah we were like um and again even to me like i don't i thought something was like imaginary i didn't think it was a real thing and so he comes to the house we're chatting to him and we used to have him over and he'd have we we'd have lunch together and we were talking to him about the business again it was the most profitable business like any business that we look at i'm going straight to their pnl working out their profit margin it was insane costs are super low margins are super high like people pay for trust authenticity like they pay a lot of money to have access to this stuff and he was on his phone i said david what are you doing and he was like swiping left and swiping right like he was on tinder i said david what are you doing and he was like oh i built this um like algorithm within the business so that people have to apply to join the club he said you have to make sure everyone gets laid what are you on about what do you mean and like obviously it is obvious but it's not yeah you have to make sure everyone gets laid and i was What do you mean?

1:07:24Rachel Harris:He said, I could have two clubs that are exactly the same. Exactly the same in like vibe, how they are, lighting. Say literally copy and paste, same club. If I have one club that's really highly curated and I only let, I would say this is solely based on his personal opinion. If I only let attractive people in, but everyone gets laid, they will tell their friends, they will tell everyone in their network, that was the best swingers club they've ever been to, and that everyone got laid. if I let everyone into the other one I might make more money on that night but everyone would tell everyone it was a rubbish club because they didn't get laid so it is nothing to do with the club it's to do with who you let in how highly curated your customers are and whether or not your service is matching their expectations interesting groundbreaking wasn't taught that on my MBA and this is what I mean about like if you're marketing have a great product like everything comes back to the product.

1:08:18Rachel Harris:It doesn't matter if it's a swingers club or a service-based business. Is everyone getting laid? Is everyone that's coming into your club getting what they thought they were paying for? Are they being fully satisfied so much so that they will then go and tell their friends that that was the best club they've ever been to? And so he was explaining this concept and obviously it's highly flawed based purely on his only personal opinion of who he thought was attractive, but it worked. And he was able to scale this business. Two weeks later, I do a lot of work behind the scenes with shows like Dragon's Den.

1:08:46Rachel Harris:I do the valuations, the numbers behind the numbers. And I was working on a job that was an angel investment platform, which was matchmaking people that wanted investment to angels. I found myself two weeks later saying to them, we need to make sure everyone gets laid. How can we make sure that we are curating angels with investors before they get on the platform? So that when they're on the platform, they're like, I've got investment. Then they'll tell everyone. There's this platform where everyone that gets laid in gets investment. and then you get investment and then it becomes exponential and it grows and it does well and so I'd say that's probably the best lesson in business I've ever had came from a guy that runs a swingers club and like it's been so fascinating to me because we don't niche we're generalists we work with everyone core values don't be a dick is our only filtering process as well as like minimum turnover levels and so you know we've got everyone from bake-off winners to our local village beekeeper and the reason I have been able to scale and monetize my personal brand is because I have access to the P &Ls of people who you couldn't pay enough money to get access to their P &L.

1:09:45Rachel Harris:I get to see it. And so I've been able to build and model my business on the inside. But yeah, if you ever see me release a book called How to Get Laid, that's why. Brilliant. What does your team look like on the content side? Do you literally edit the videos? No, no. So I have an editor. His name's Kai. He's incredible. He works with some of the biggest YouTubers in the world. His name's Kai. I then have a full-time content lead. So she's full-time. I have a PA who is part-time. And then as of this year, we've got a full-time head of product and growth coming into the business. But super lean.

1:10:17Rachel Harris:Yeah. For a long time, it was actually just me and Tamsin who is my content lead. Just the two of us posting on Instagram, like high-fiving when we hit 10K on Instagram three years ago. Interesting. And do they, do you post, are you like actually on Instagram or does she post? so I post yeah I post and again actually the only bit of editing that I do do is short form reels as long as it's not a brand deal like I don't need the headspace of like cross-checking a brand deal to the contract to check that everything's been done like content lead does that I do the ideation descripting and then the filming so anything like pre-planned like a brand deal or bits of content that are specifically designed to like win work into the accounting firm anything pre-planned I I don't get super involved in that other than my face.

1:11:00Rachel Harris:But actually the daily content posting, I actually think it makes me a better creator for editing because I understand what hits, I understand what doesn't, I understand tone of voice, like even smiling or not. Like if you're talking about something like tax, actually does it perform better if you smile in the opening hook or not? And like I will literally test that, whereas if I was removed from it and just filmed, it wouldn't be within my control. I would also say that editing platforms make it so easy to edit so quickly now. What are you using? Like CapCut? Edits. yeah mainly because it performs better yeah on instagram yeah um but yeah when you're using native platforms it would actually take me longer to we transfer the footage to someone than it would be to just post it and so he would like kai would just do your long form type stuff yeah for sure interesting one question that i had from my audience on instagram was if your icp is like a seven figure or eight figure business owner or actually it's like vp marketing at nike how do you how do you know that those people are on like instagram tiktok youtube i had a friend actually who made like leadership content who always had the same question was like how do i know who i'm talking to when they're following me on their personal account like it's really hard to do that and so i guess going one step further than that like actually having a bit of an avatar of who you are talking to and who you're not is really important but second again i feel like a lot of these conversations are, it's not groundbreaking.

1:12:26Rachel Harris:It's obvious. Ask them. When I was trying to scale my personal brand to do more PR, more TV, more public speaking, I knew that journalists would be following me, but they wouldn't have the Instagram handle like Rachel the Journalist. They've just got an Instagram handle and I don't know their name. And so I would ask them one of those sticker taps on Instagram. Can you tap this if you're a journalist that follows me? I've got something coming up that I think you'd be really interested in. I then have a list of journalists that follow me um but i think so often people scare to ask yeah again i don't know if it's like embarrassment or it's too obvious to ask people polls and surveys yeah quite a good way yeah so we poll poll everyone once a month we say like who are you why do you follow me and it's really segmented so if it's like who are you it would be business owner accountant student and they all have all wannabe next to them so like business owner or wannabe accountant or wannabe or accounting student or wannabe poll then every one past that is segmented so if you are a business are you a sole trader or are you a limited company?

1:13:22Rachel Harris:If you're a sole trader, why do you follow me? Because I don't make any content for you. If you're a limited company, are you already a client? Do you want to be a client one day or you have no intention of being a client? If you have no intention of being a client, why do you follow me? So like all of this is every single month. I know lots of people won't engage with them. But again, I have a superpower that my target customer is a business owner. And so most business owners are like, damn, I need to do this. Like, this is so good. Also, when you tap it, you get to see the results. People are nosy, right?

1:13:48Rachel Harris:And so like, they do that too and so yeah I did the same when I was trying to get PR like I knew that I had to again very Daniel Priestley like I had to increase my like authority within the industry I am a young female I wasn't taken seriously for a long time I I know why like lots of people pop in and out of industries but like I wasn't taken seriously and so had to work out how do I do things I've never seen anyone else do before I've never seen any accountant interview Keir Starmer and ask him really uncomfortable questions the day after the budget like how do I get those interviews how do I present on this morning how do I we create a show with the BBC teaching deaf children about financial education last year like how do I become that person ask ask for help I did ladies who launched the podcast with Rochelle Humes recently and I'm they're sending her a voice note saying can you introduce me to Emma Greed I want to go on her podcast like I think everyone's very scared to ask what are some of those best opportunities that have come from it because I saw you I saw you interviewed the prime minister yeah that was that was pretty wild yeah very wild um and again in every interview that I've done with him, I've thought like, how do I make sure if this is the last one?

1:14:52Rachel Harris:I'm proud of it. Cause I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Every time I think they're not going to ask me back because I just absolutely interrogated him on questions that I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to ask. So, um, yeah, just how do you make the most? It's so refreshing though, because like, I mean, what the hell are they doing? Like they don't actually ask business owners. No, no. And that's where I have the superpower is I am here as an accountant. I'm qualified enough to ask you but also like dude i'm a business owner and you just increased dividend taxes so like we just watched a manifesto where you said that you wouldn't do this and do not consider us to be working people and yeah so i think again that superpower is i am multifaceted in that i am an accountant but i am also someone who's trying to scale a really profitable business every day i'm asked by my clients should i move to dubai yeah so when i'm standing in front of the prime minister obviously the question i ask him is what's the incentive to stay and so it is that multifaceted approach where like you're not just an accountant that's there to ask the accounting questions like you're also a business owner but then again that becomes more relatable when you're also a creator so like how do you leverage that I can do my job from anywhere what is the incentive to remain in the UK so yeah it becomes multifaceted but again lots of the opportunities you know Rochelle was the presenter on this morning when I did this morning so we connected she'd launched ladies who launch I'm I asked to go on the show and she was like yeah obviously I wouldn't ever have anyone else but I think you know it's probably really not down to her she's probably got a production team that curates the guests I might not have been the guest if I hadn't asked then once I've you know turned up done a great job I'm nice to everyone I think I don't know I imagine it's a bit it's a funny industry sometimes and so just making sure that you are being really helpful kind on time you know friendly to everyone whether it's like the sound guy checking in January that they've done their tax return all of the way through to the makeup artist if they need help deciding how much to charge people like you just be the best person you'd be the most professional and then you ask for help you be so helpful they feel like they owe you a favor and then you ask and so yeah I said to Rochelle like I this part of my job the ROI is infinite like it it's so good and I can do this job really really well but like how can you help me this is the end goal my end goal is to be a dragon on dragon's den and so like yeah just constantly saying to people like Rochelle like who can you introduce me to that would help how do I make sure I'm the next person because I can my job is to make sure I've got the pile of cash that sits around me but i need help in making sure i am that person so like what can i do and so yeah just saying to rachel like you had em agreed on the podcast a few months ago like she's got a great podcast can you introduce me to her so just asking for help again before we hit record i said who do you want on the podcast how can i help and then i'm sure when we start recording i'll say how can you help me so interesting we should talk about that i heard i've heard some rumors about that that show and looking looking looking looking for potential dragons so we should talk about that And most people, again, in the creator economy are saying, why would you go on TV, create your own show, you know, do your own dragon's den.

1:17:41Rachel Harris:Like, you're not a dragon, be an angel, you know, do something different. So, yes, fascinating. Yeah. But the reaching the credibility of that show is amazing. And it's an iconic show. So, well, let's make it happen. I guess last question from my, which has come from my Instagram, is just around like what's working right now. And like, I guess your favorite kind of topics. um yeah and any any thoughts there long form value value value value value like every youtube video i consider like this is a ted talk this is this has to be a 15 to 20 minute almost like university style lecture on everything that i've learned through becoming an accountant having an mba scaling a business like what is that topic in 20 minutes that i can deliver um again thumbnail first concept second you've got to get the people to retain them so how do we get them thumbnail so have playbooks written that work incredibly well but a big part of my job is continuously developing it's listening to podcasts like yours to work out like what's everyone else doing how can I double down on it so long form is value first short form is hook first how do I attract the attention of people and the best way to do that is to spark an emotion I sometimes think it's quite easy to be a finance creator because finance is very emotional inherently I just again have to be on that tight rope of making sure people aren't don't get emotional at me and they get emotional at the man or hmrc or kia starma and so i have to go emotion first stop the scroll but very often again that i help people who feel like they're running the business blindfolded like that's the bit that stops people most of the time because most people do feel like that um and very often they'll invest three to five percent of their turnover into an accountant that doesn't help them um doesn't suggest things you know and i then people will listen to me on a dog walk on a podcast and they'll stop walking thinking like why has my accountant never told me that no one's ever explained it to me like that and so that's actually why long form is value short form is short form is stopping the scroll sparking emotion um the emotion that i tried to get is like anger but by the end of the video their shoulders have dropped like that's how i would describe it and then just making sure that you've got a funnel because again social is nothing like if someone unplugged it tomorrow what do you have do you have a mailing list do you have a product do you have a business and so um again if I look at the data of how long it took me to really really really feel traction on socials if that was my only business I would have been unemployed way before I ever earned a penny on socials and so having the business with actual clients is the only way I was able to do both to now get it to the point where it's the tortoise and the hare now the personal brand is outperforming the accounting firm so like just making sure you've got the infrastructure behind you to do it long enough to like outlast the competition because i am no better a content creator than other accountants who create i'm just more stubborn and i've carried on longer and maybe started a bit sooner like it's the only difference insane rachel it's been so good thank you so much for having me if people want to find you like where can they find you of course yeah i'd love to see you um everywhere you consume content at the handle at accountant underscore Gorshi.

1:20:47Unbelievable. We're definitely going to have you back on for round two. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for doing this.

1:20:51Rachel Harris:Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, drop me a comment with your favourite bit and who you'd like to hear from next. And I think you're going to love my podcast episode with Daniel Priestley on personal brand. It takes a lot of what Rachel says and builds it up to the next level. He is the master of personal brand and it's one of my all-time favourites. So make sure you're subscribed to the channel and queue that up to listen next. Hope you have a great day and a great week. Thank you.