10 How to love your business finances, Rachel Harris, Accountant She

0:00Day 10 of our 12 days of Christmas. We are nearly there and you will have hopefully learned quite a lot of useful things from our previous guests. But today's guest is someone I was so excited to speak to this year, Rachel Harris, who reframes business finance as something deeply personal. Rachel explains why understanding your relationship with money matters as much as the numbers themselves. This is a really honest conversation about sacrifice, trust, generosity, and why the difference between a good accountant and a great accountant can fundamentally change how a founder experiences their own business.

0:38It's wonderful to have you here on How to Start Up. I would love it if you could just introduce your name, a bit about yourself, a bit about the businesses you started, because there's more than one. So it'd be wonderful to get your introduction. Of course. Hi, everybody. I am so excited that Julia and I are in your ears today, wherever you're listening. If you're on a dog walk, if you are having your morning coffee, we are both super excited to have a bit of a yap in a long form format, get to know each other, and hopefully you can get to know us too. So if we've not met before, hi, my name is Rachel Harris, and I'm a disruptor in the accounting industry.

1:12I'm disrupting what it means to be an accountant, what it feels like to have an accountant, and disrupting the concept that you can't scale a business without losing yourself along the way. And so I own a multi-seven-figure accounting firm. We are a national firm. So I've got a Manchester office and an Oxford office. We have 22 members of staff in the accounting firm. I'm a content creator. So I have a cross-platform following of about 200 ,000 people. And I create completely free, accessible, consumable, long and short-form content that helps people to digest a lot of the stuff that we're not taught at school and a lot of the stuff that we're definitely not taught at business school as an accountant with an MBA.

1:50and then a big chunky part of my life is a lot of live tv press i do a lot of tv work i've just had a bbc tv program commissioned and we've just wrapped on filming on that that will be coming out in september and so yeah i just get to teach people all of the bits that i didn't learn at business school and a really strong theme through all of this is that i was a free school meal kid and a charity shop kid and a lot of my love for financial education comes from coming from a house where a lot of the stuff wasn't discussed at my dining room table in the hopes that other people start talking about it around the dinner table too.

2:24Incredible, amazing and also huge thanks because I followed you for a while and I have learned a lot and I love my accountant dearly but I have now twice messaged him going, what about this thing that this amazing person has taught me on Instagram for free? He's like, oh yeah, no, you could do that. Trivial benefits was one. That was amazing. And honest to God, your content is so rewarding for anyone running a business. And I know our audience focuses on startups and founders, but it's relevant to anyone in any job at any point. So thank you first and foremost. But my second thing is where do you find the time?

3:01Because you're running content and your business. So Strivex is the name of the accounting firm that everyone should go and check out. And I know you have a co-founder, which I believe is your partner as well. But how long have you been doing it for and how do you manage your time? And then we'll get into some other bits around numbers. Of course. Okay. Yeah. So I have been self-employed for four and a half years. We were a COVID baby, dining room table during COVID, just thinking, I'm sick of looking at my boss thinking, why do you not prioritize my well-being? And now four years later, I'm an employer who has an NPS score of 100 within my team and so have just been able to drive all of that into what we do at work and so I'm unemployed in four and a half years.

3:42Yeah, my life and my time is very much split into three sections. So a third of it is driven into the accounting firm. I am responsible for all of our business development and all of our growth within the practice. I am responsible for all of our customer experience and user experience. And so my full-time job is annoying people, asking them for feedback, really deep diving into any five-star Google reviews, asking clients like what can we do to replicate this? What was the best fit about your experience? And so my full-time job is looking at all of the systems and processes and blueprints and playbook.

4:14We use systems and processes and everything. But inside of our business is as franchised as a McDonald's. And so we look at all of that on the inside. That's a third of my job within Stribex. Other third of my job is content creation. And so again, that is merely a full-time job, creating content at the rate that we do. So we are three times a day on TikTok, once a day on Instagram, once a day on LinkedIn, once a week on YouTube. And I host a private paywall weekly podcast, as well as Instagram stories. You're looking at seven to 10 Instagram stories in between there. So I create content. And then the third, third is PR, live TVs that I do the valuations for people before they go on shows like Dragon's Den, get involved in Sky News, BBC News, have regular slots with BBC Radio.

4:55And that is how I try and split my team. The too long didn't read on how to do that is employ people far more intelligent than you to do the bits that you can trust to delegate and then try and work out which are the bits of the business where pound for pound, minute by minute, I can get the biggest return on investment by spending my time really intentionally. I feel like you have mastered what so many retiring founders get to at 60, 70, and you've done it in an incredibly short space of time so massive respect for that and I'm a good year or two older than you I've been working in as a grown-up I'd say for 25 years but I've only done this business for five years but it's all of those lessons you learn by doing that you have conquered and mastered and now sharing through your content which is so helpful but it's then feeding back into the business isn't it because people get to know you they trust you they rely on you and then they come to you as a client which I'm sure pays dividends no pun intended so you've been running your business for four and a half years you've done a huge amount of content what for you was the gap in accounting or business services industry that you wanted to really solve when you went into being self-employed fun passion energy there's such a strong image, stereotype.

6:16Every day I get told that I don't look like an accountant and that's very much how I always felt. People would describe me as bubbly and cheerful and full of enthusiasm and I was just born in a good mood. That's very much how I would describe myself. And my ability to love numbers and love maths and love business led me to become an accountant. And suddenly I was parked in this industry that was very stale and pale and male and just didn't really understand like where all the passion it seems to get left at the door and I yeah I don't know like every day through all of my training feel like I have the best juiciest job in the world in that I get to see the bits of business that nobody else gets to see and it's no coincidence that I get to see that stuff whilst also you telling me like oh you figured it all out and I'm like obviously I have because I have access to this incredible black book of clients I can work out what's working well, what's not working well, what personality types do well in certain industries versus what doesn't, where they're spending their money, how they're investing.

7:11I get that. So they're all A-B testing for you. Literally doing all of this for me and I get to do all of it. And so I get access to the business equivalent of the inside of their knicker drawer. That's the stuff that I am able to get access to. That's how personal business finance is. Lots of people, their partners don't know how much money the business is making. But also some founders aren't comfortable with their numbers. The number of people I've interviewed who said, get smart with your numbers, get on top of them, know them inside out. If you don't have your numbers sorted, you don't have a business.

7:42And every single guest, I think we're up to about 135 episodes now, but every single guest says, be okay with responsibility, be okay with a roller coaster. I'm like, I'm not okay with it, accept it, but get a good accountant. And now I'm realizing everyone has a different definition of what good is. And that is fascinating as well because people are like oh well you know and it's like no there are massive legalities around this and for me to outsource budget to anybody where I can't do it myself I struggle with and actually the best money I've ever spent is on an accountant and he is not a right hand but as good as it's going to get to one because he will always be the technical expert in accountancy storytelling on the other hand and I did do a TEDx talk for my sins last year about this is, I believe, always better done in-house and I will always be my own best storyteller for my business.

8:33But for finances and accounting, that person or accountant will be the technical expert. So for you, when a founder or somebody who's on the fence about starting a business is thinking about finding an accountant, what should they look for? Oh, good question. It's a big one. Yeah, I would definitely get them to think long and hard about the bits of the business that they want to do, the bits of the business that they feel confident doing. And it's really interesting in different areas of our life, people do not struggle at all with delegating things that they can't do. Like I have never thought, why do I not MOT and service my own car?

9:10I'm like, absolutely not. I can't be arsed. I don't know what you do. I don't want to get dirty. Like I just don't know how to do it. Whereas when we become self-employed, we're like, we must be able to do everything on our own. And so it's really important to think about what your deal breakers are, what you want, what sort of personality type you want to work with. If you want someone who feels like they're in your business, or if you want someone that's maybe a bit more hands-off and you speak to them less frequently. So work out your deal breakers. Lots of us carry financial trauma. Lots of us were maybe taught by teachers that we weren't good at maths.

9:41Lots of people have been in relationships that make them feel a certain way about money. Lots of people lean one way or another with regards to lots of people felt in control by doing as much of it as possible themselves. Other people are more in control by passing it to somebody else and meeting once a month. And so working out where your comfort zone sits, but also tying into that is the long-term goals of the business. So if you said, I want to scale my business to 5 million pounds, really scale it, rapidly scale and outsource as much as I can, that would look like one accounting firm. If it was, I would really love for this to be a one-hand band operation for quite a long time.

10:19I'd love to maybe get up to about 150k turnover, really high profit margin. But other than that, don't have crazy plans. That would look very different. And it's really important to understand your long-term goals combined with your comfort level, because the difference between a good accountant and a great one is significant. A good accountant will mean that anyone can search for your company's house. They won't see any red things and will see that you're up to date on everything as a good accountant. Most business owners who are scaling or starting up don't need a good accountant, they need a great one.

10:48And the difference between the two is one makes sure that you are compliant. The other, this is where our firm comes in, a great accountant means that you have the ability as the founder to understand by looking at your calendar that week, if you have a spare 60 minutes of time, where you should invest that time to get the biggest return on investment financially within your business. And so that's the difference between a good accountant and a great one. And you can tell that the return on investment is infinite. Yeah. And I mean, you could liken it i've just moved house recently and i'm entering the foray of interior architect designer garden all this stuff i need to learn and someone said oh you just get a designer they make their feedback within the first trade deal that they've done on supply and that you invest in your business i think a lot of founders start and go i can't spend any money i can't spend any money i haven't got any money to spend and then i've seen a lot of actually my background in pr you know a lot of journalists and they're like i don't want to talk about it i'm much safer if i I don't talk about it.

11:44I don't think about it. I was like, no, you don't understand. You're being tax inefficient. And they're like, and they panic. So for people who have blind spots and maybe numerically dyslexic or fear money, what could they do to then feel more comfortable with it, given it's mandatory that they do this? Yeah, of course. And this is where it comes back to things like preferences, communication preferences. So one of the questions, we asked some really juicy questions the first time we meet with people. There's a few that are my favorite. The first is, how would you score your current account out of 10?

12:14That's my favorite question. And then the second is, in order for us to sit here in a year's time and for you to score us a 12 out of 10 in a room that we are not in, what do we need to know? And so we actually write down their answer to that question and we keep it at the top of our CRM. And so every single time we picked up your file, we would know. So I have one client who says, my goal in life is to own more corgis than the queen. Every time you speak to me, please can you check in and ask how close I am to that. Other people say, please don't use jargon and remind me of my deadlines at every touchpoint.

12:43Other people say, please ask me every single time you speak to me how much money I've spent this month on online courses that I'm never going to take. And they just like that accountability built in. And so they answer that question. We keep it on file. They can update it. But it's them saying every time you speak to me, please ask me this question. The other thing that we ask is communication preferences. So I'm hard of hearing. I'm profoundly deaf. And I really struggle to find suppliers that can speak to me in a way that I want to be spoken to, which is basically anything other than on the phone.

13:12My laptop is brilliant. I have subtitles built in. I don't struggle to communicate at all other than on a mobile phone. And so when we built the practice, we built it with communication preferences in mind. We deal with lots of people who have financial anxiety or are neuro-spicy in some way, or actually just have a preference because you don't have to have a disability or a neurospiciness to have a preference. And so some people say, if you email me, that is never getting done. It's a black hole. Just call me. Other people are the opposite. They say, my phone's on DND the entire day. If you email me, that's my Bible.

13:45That's my inbox. And so making sure that you are working with people that feel like they are a really great, valuable addition to your business, rather than this really awkward bit that you have to change your preferences and your financial infrastructure to like bolt into it is really important to make sure that they are adding value to your business and not anything else and then again i would really encourage people to do some research go on company's house from 2027 onwards actually profit and losses are going to become public i am very excited about this because i will be encouraging all of our prospective clients to compare our profit and loss to our competitors and it's a really important part if you are going to invest in the financial function of your business, it's really important that you do that in a firm that is mirroring your long-term goals.

14:31For a lot of people, they want to be profitable, they want to be systems driven, they want to remove themselves from the day-to-day run of the business. I've done that and I've maintained fantastic profit margins over time, as well as a fully UK-based team, no outsourcing, which is unheard of, as well as a really happy workforce. And so do research on the business model, the infrastructure, the core values, the way that they treat the team, if the team are happy, what the team turnover is. Look at Google reviews, look at company's house, look at profit and losses because an accountant isn't just a compliance function.

15:02This is an opportunity for you to feel like you actually have a peer in business for probably one of the first times ever. Becoming self-employed is incredibly lonely and actually it's very rare to find people who get it. And so an accountant, for some people, is the only thing they actually outsource. Lots of people do everything in-house as to outsource it purely for compliance reasons. And so don't see it as just an accountant. See it as if I'm going to have to spend this money, I want to spend it in a way that reflects my values, my personal values, and the direction that my business is going in.

15:33It's fascinating to hear you say this because every time you're giving an accounting example, I liken it to PR. So when you're pitching to a journalist, know their audience, know their reader, why are they pitching, what's in it for the reader to feature you, and then do your due diligence, do your research. Because as you said, if you're investing in something and outsourcing budget, they need to be the right person. And there's nothing worse than feeling like you've wasted time because time is so precious. So yeah, set up for success at the beginning. You are so beautifully passionate about financial wellbeing and you put a lot of time and energy into your content.

16:05Would you advise, say, every founder to do this or is this something that just works particularly for your business? Oh, everyone. Yeah, I would encourage every business. I found my therapist on Instagram because I really struggled to connect with a therapist for a long time. Kissed a few frogs, went and chatted to a few different therapists. And I kept hitting a brick wall. I knew that I wanted a long-term relationship with someone that I really connected with. And I thought, how do our ideal clients find us? Social media. Why do they connect with us in that way? And it's because they can try before they buy.

16:35Most people, you've got to get on a half an hour call with someone before you think, oh gosh, gosh, she's too enthusiastic and pink for me. I don't like it. It's not for me. Actually, I get to show people what to expect. I get to show people the standards, the service levels, the enthusiasm, the way that we treat the team, all of these things. I get to show them before they engage. And so I thought about this and I started searching my Instagram for a therapist and therapists create content. It really helped me to get a feel for people before I engage with them. Depending on why you want a therapist, it could be important that you get somebody of a specific demographic age.

17:09I wanted someone my own age. I didn't want someone who was my parents' age. And so I was able to find someone that felt like me. And so I would encourage everybody to get onto social media. And again, with our client base, we don't have a specialism. We don't have a niche. The only niche we have is our values. And actually through making content, it means that we are pre-qualifying all of the leads that we get. On Instagram in a month, we'll reach about 10 million people and actually not that many become clients. That's our way of filtering them out. That's our way of setting the tone in terms of like budget, investment, time investment, the way that we treat our team.

17:44I've built the team as an accountant that worked in practice for other accountants who work in practice. And so our team have the ability to red flag clients if they don't adhere to our core values. Clients have to sign our core values when they become clients. And so actually, if you don't engage with our core values and our number one core all that news, don't be a dick. Actually, you're probably not going to engage in our firm. And so I use content as a way to save everybody time by letting them know what to expect. It's actually a really efficient way of filtering. And I think a lot of people forget this in the service-based sector, that it's a dialogue, it's a partnership.

18:17You can't set and forget anyone that you're contracting to help support your business. It's back and forth. It's not that you've outsourced and it's gone. It's coming back to you with questions, but you need to trust your supplier or your partner and they need to trust you too. There's nothing. I love that you say that your values don't be a dick because I remember my dad, he was a carpenter and he would add what we would call the fuck it tax on top of, or the dick it tax, excuse our French, to quotes because he was like, I don't really want to work with this person, but if they pay this much more then I could suck it up and just deal with it.

18:50But actually we became a B Corp two years ago and it's a point where we say no to the wrong clients because they're going to drain resources, this drain energy. And we're going to work that hard. We want to like the people. But that partnership, that equal footing, it sets the tone of we're in it with you, but you have to respect us back. We're taking a quick 30 second break from this episode to ask, are you thinking of starting your own podcast? If so, this is great news because we run a course that will train you how to produce your own podcast yourself. This course is for people who do not want to outsource and pay someone else to do it.

19:25You want to learn how to do it yourself. We teach you everything that you need to get up and running with your own podcast show and so much more. Just DM us at hello at Fallowfield Mason to book your spot. 100%. And again, we specifically operate in the ecosystem of UK businesses. And even things like when somebody books a prospective client call with us, they get a checklist straight back that says if you are chatting to other accountants, here are six questions that you should be asking everyone. First one is, do you outsource? You will struggle to find an accounting firm with employees that does not outsource part of your data and your work to another country or another firm.

20:05And actually, we've now started to really attract this beautiful cohort of clients who invest. We're not cheap, and we're not cheap because we don't outsource. Invest their money because of those values and because of the fact that we don't outsource and because of the fact that we've created 23 British jobs in the UK through no outsourcing. And all the trust, the trust is there that you're being transparent. And so many calls people have an accountant where they don't mention it. They don't mention outsourcing at all. That's your data, that's your work, that's your income, that's your fees going to another country.

20:36And so actually the reason we go straight back is that's basically us saying this is our values proposition. But he said six questions that you should ask every single accountant. Well, and that specialism, same thing. We get lots of people saying, oh, can we have a quick chat? Well, that's technically consulting and an hourly rate. But if you'd like to book a call, here is how we work. Here are our decks. Here are our prices. And here is a Q &A we'd love you to fill in before the call so we can sense check how committed they are to the call and if they're just going to try and mine us for free information.

21:04But it is, again, that partnership and that dialogue back and forth and filtering process. But I love that you use content because from outside looking in, it is a ton of work. You are doing a ton of work around content and it will take time and time is precious. But if it's working really hard for you, that's really interesting. But just as a sidebar, I love the fact that you invest in therapists as well, because when you're running a business, you're at the coalface. You're doing something you've never done before. You're probably doing something that no one's ever done before in a different way.

21:32There is no playbook. you need support and you need an accountant. And I do think everyone needs either a mentor, a counselor or a therapist or some sort of mental support. And we've done a lot of episodes around health and wellness in this show. And our most downloaded episode ever was the imposter syndrome one, which is actually an experience. You can't be diagnosed with imposter syndrome. It's just a feeling. It's okay. People listen to Hamish Mackay Lewis and everything will be well. But it is that mental health aspect. For you, is that something that you'll just continue on And it's just a mandatory expense now for you.

22:07Yeah, 100%. So I've seen a therapist weekly. We have a weekly relationship for about three years. Some weeks I feel like I have nothing to talk about. Other weeks I think, have you got three hours, not one? Because my life is keeping you in business. And yeah, 100 % non-negotiable. I've had the same experience that lots of people do when they become self-employed, which is at the beginning I thought, oh my gosh, I'm in control of my own income. This is terrifying. to a year later being like, oh my gosh, I'm in control of my own income. This is amazing. And I feel like once your hierarchy of needs grows with you and grows with your income and every single year we do this and all of our clients get access to an online course which teaches them how to do it too, which is a quality of life audit.

22:46And it really prompts you and guides you through auditing your quality of life and making sure that when you are doing financial goal setting, you're not starting with the numbers, but the numbers are mirroring your personal quality of life goals. lots of people would start a financial broadcast and think what if my income increased by 20 % this year whereas really you should be starting with a wheel of life scoring the areas of your life and actually a more likely outcome from this audit is that rather than increasing your income by 20 % you think could my income stay the same but I buy back 20 % quality of life in my personal life by working 20 % less and so we teach everyone to do those things but for me I'm at the point in the business.

23:29We have playbook systems, processes, an incredibly efficient team, as well as we leverage lots of AI. I'm now at the point where my job is thinking, solving problems, being strategic, being innovative, and driving the business forward. And rapidly scaling a business means rapidly scaling yourself. And you sometimes go through eras where you feel like you're good and the business is bad. Sometimes you feel like the business is great and you're bad. And somehow your personal life has this beautiful way of being awful when the business is great and great when the business is awful and so yeah therapist 100 is not negotiable yeah this is it because a lot of people like oh you work for yourself you have endless annual leave and you can do whatever you like it's like i am at the coalface of every second of every day and that weight of responsibility is real and you need support and you need that external person that you can go and dump all your shit on and be like help or they know you so well that they think do you think this might match something else that happened in your personal life they as an old flatmate described it is that you take all of your mental dirty laundry and it comes out kind of white company ready after an hour and you're just like oh thanks and you get that respite and that breathing space so interesting talking to you there's a billion billion angles I want to take for this but I know how important your team are to you and I've interacted with them and they are all professional upbeat wonderful they sing your praises annual values but how given you've only been doing this four and a half years which is a short period of time but it found a life that's sort of dog years as well it's probably it's 40 years not four but how have you approached building your team and finding those right people because I find people the hardest the best and the worst part of the business oh ditto same yeah it's fascinating I feel in some weeks on Monday I'll think I was born to be an employer this is so good and then by the tuesday i'm like why does anyone do this this is so bad um and so it's really important that i talk about being an employer with the context of it is so hard it is so hard and i feel very grateful every day i won't call myself lucky because there's a strong correlation between how hard i work and how lucky there is no luck this just grunt work like yeah the luck thing really pisses me off from people saying oh you're so lucky to have such great jobs right what what part of luck and random fortune is anywhere near my cv so yes i hear you on that yes we embed lots of culture into all of our recruitment process and so we score based on core values we have a three-step interview process the first is a vibe check values check core values testing the second is a technical skills test so we are checking the technical competency of every single team before they join so you do that second second And yeah, again, our firm is, I can teach you technical competencies.

26:20I cannot teach you. I have this theory that any one of our clients could pick an employee of mine out of a lineup of more than 20 accountants. And like, I'm really confident that is true. And so we start with soft skills. We start with values. Again, I'll ask them about their values at their current firm. They'll tell me and then I'll say, have you ever watched anyone be fired as a result of not adhering to the values? And then obviously all of them say no, and I say they don't have values. That's something that they painted on the wall for PR. I'm actually not a value. And so this is a workplace where you've measured weekly based on the values, your ability to uphold them, client experience, all of these things.