Episode 16

Accountants Aren't Boring with Ian Morgan

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Transcript
audioChrisJolly:

All right everybody, welcome back to the show.

audioChrisJolly:

I am super excited because today as usual, we have another really amazing guest on.

audioChrisJolly:

His name is Ian Morgan, and he is with MBS Accountants outta the United Kingdom.

audioChrisJolly:

Ian, thanks for joining us today.

audioChrisJolly:

How are you?

audioChrisJolly:

audioIanMorgan53832276467: Yeah, fantastic.

audioChrisJolly:

Thanks Chris, so much for having me on.

audioChrisJolly:

And hello everybody who's listening.

audioChrisJolly:

audioChrisJolly63832276467: Yeah, absolutely.

audioChrisJolly:

My pleasure to have you on.

audioChrisJolly:

I know we're gonna have some great conversation today especially because your

audioChrisJolly:

business deals with a lot of the stuff that we actually talk about on the show.

audioChrisJolly:

So I know you're gonna have some really valuable insights to

audioChrisJolly:

share with me and the audience.

audioChrisJolly:

Super excited.

audioChrisJolly:

And without further ado, why don't you tell everybody who you are and

audioChrisJolly:

what you do and how you got started?

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah based out obviously in the United Kingdom.

audioIanMorgan:

I suppose a little bit about me personally, first of all

audioIanMorgan:

is I'm late thirties, 37.

audioIanMorgan:

I've got four children and I got married pretty young , I was just 19 and.

audioIanMorgan:

getting married and having children pretty young, I think gave me a focus

audioIanMorgan:

to just go the employed world that I was in at the time wasn't gonna

audioIanMorgan:

be fulfilling enough in terms of the life that I wanted to be able to live

audioIanMorgan:

and as we had our first children.

audioIanMorgan:

Wife Sam she set up the company and started doing, some basic bookkeeping

audioIanMorgan:

and, payroll type services from home cause it nicely worked around children.

audioIanMorgan:

And we fast forward a little bit on, and I came in and joined the company having had

audioIanMorgan:

a bit of a background then in accounting.

audioIanMorgan:

And we became a typical accounting type service for a number of years there, where

audioIanMorgan:

we just, we helped file tax returns, help people reduce how much tax they

audioIanMorgan:

pay, and then through, through an element really of creating a business that was

audioIanMorgan:

quite painful to operate and run with a lot of clients and a lot of stress.

audioIanMorgan:

We, we decided one day we'd just take a little bit of a look back and just

audioIanMorgan:

go, What journey are we really on?

audioIanMorgan:

What are we trying to achieve?

audioIanMorgan:

What are, where are we trying to go?

audioIanMorgan:

And we started to question whether people really wanted an

audioIanMorgan:

accountant to fault tax returns.

audioIanMorgan:

And our view was probably not like it's a bonus if that happens.

audioIanMorgan:

But actually the reality is that most people who probably

audioIanMorgan:

want an accountant is because.

audioIanMorgan:

Numbers are maybe scary to them or they don't make sense, or they don't

audioIanMorgan:

know how to even put them in an order so they can make sense of them.

audioIanMorgan:

So we completely flipped our business on our on its head at that point

audioIanMorgan:

and went, okay, how do we stop being a gateway between the business

audioIanMorgan:

owner and the government and start being very much working for that

audioIanMorgan:

business owner to start giving them?

audioIanMorgan:

What they really want.

audioIanMorgan:

And we basically built a three step process that we still follow today.

audioIanMorgan:

And that's, first of all, when somebody comes and join us, we help them achieve

audioIanMorgan:

and gain financial control because most people are just doing enough

audioIanMorgan:

relating to their keeping of their books that makes the government happy.

audioIanMorgan:

Anything that's gonna give them anything that they can rely upon or get data from.

audioIanMorgan:

Doesn't tend to exist.

audioIanMorgan:

And then we do two further steps on from there.

audioIanMorgan:

One is financial clarity or financial education, and it's just

audioIanMorgan:

about us definitely not teaching people to become accountants.

audioIanMorgan:

Don't recommend that maybe for everybody.

audioIanMorgan:

But it was certainly, it's aimed around how do we make sure that business

audioIanMorgan:

owners understand enough about their financial performance to know whether

audioIanMorgan:

they are getting good or bad results.

audioIanMorgan:

And then step three is understanding what does financial freedom look like for that

audioIanMorgan:

particular business owner and what actions and steps are they taking to actually

audioIanMorgan:

achieve that version of financial freedom?

audioIanMorgan:

And that's just been our pathway now is financial control, then the

audioIanMorgan:

financial education and clarity and then through to financial freedom.

audioIanMorgan:

And through focusing on that element we've reduced the

audioIanMorgan:

number of clients we work with.

audioIanMorgan:

But we have much deeper working relationships and we really get probably

audioIanMorgan:

under the skin of the actual business owner, we've got a fine balance between

audioIanMorgan:

are we coaching them as a person or are we coaching them as a business owner?

audioIanMorgan:

And I think it probably goes across both because.

audioIanMorgan:

I've been there myself and I've certainly been in my own way.

audioIanMorgan:

And the clarity to get to like where am I trying to head towards, really

audioIanMorgan:

gave me the clarity to go, ah, okay, these are the steps I need to be taking

audioIanMorgan:

today that give me the future that I want to be able to achieve for myself.

audioIanMorgan:

And in a nutshell, that wraps up yeah, a good sort of 15

audioIanMorgan:

years plus in, in business.

audioChrisJolly:

All right.

audioChrisJolly:

Excellent.

audioChrisJolly:

Yeah.

audioChrisJolly:

Let me ask you, because I know here in the US the sort of financial education

audioChrisJolly:

most people received growing up is non-existent to absolutely terrible.

audioChrisJolly:

Is it any better over there across the pond or it's pretty much the same?

audioIanMorgan:

No it's pretty much the same, the schools

audioIanMorgan:

are more focused on maths and, I dunno, PYS and whatever else.

audioIanMorgan:

Not stuff that's probably gonna be very much useful in the.

audioIanMorgan:

The majority of the real world day to day.

audioIanMorgan:

So yeah, there is a lack of education around real numbers and

audioIanMorgan:

yeah, real tools that can help us.

audioChrisJolly:

Yeah, and that definitely translates over into

audioChrisJolly:

the business world because if you didn't learn to do your personal finance, You

audioChrisJolly:

probably also didn't learn to do business finance, and I know that's something

audioChrisJolly:

a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to.

audioChrisJolly:

That's something I definitely relate to because I started business in my early

audioChrisJolly:

twenties and another one in my early thirties, and I knew how to do the running

audioChrisJolly:

of the actual business, but I didn't know anything about the financials.

audioChrisJolly:

And so I ran into this place where, with without having a good understanding of

audioChrisJolly:

that and what really drives the business forward and keeps money coming in, in

audioChrisJolly:

higher cash flow, you reach a plateau.

audioChrisJolly:

That's as far as you can go.

audioChrisJolly:

And I just look back and think to myself, if somebody had bothered to

audioChrisJolly:

sit me down even for two hours and show me just a little bit of this,

audioChrisJolly:

or even let me know that I need to go learn it myself, those businesses in my

audioChrisJolly:

life would've been totally different.

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah, I think.

audioIanMorgan:

One of the major challenges that we come across, and one of the first areas we

audioIanMorgan:

delve into in financial education is that financial set of accounts that you get

audioIanMorgan:

to see has either a pound sign, dollar sign, euro sign, whatever on it, and

audioIanMorgan:

our brains straightaway go, oh, money.

audioIanMorgan:

But actually, so much of what goes into that set of accounts isn't money.

audioIanMorgan:

It's money that could be potentially earned in the future.

audioIanMorgan:

If you're doing, accruals based accounting or.

audioIanMorgan:

There may be, adjustments for things like amortization and and

audioIanMorgan:

depreciation and things that there is no cash that's ever gone anywhere.

audioIanMorgan:

And the most common question we used to get and probably still

audioIanMorgan:

get elements now, is, yeah, but if that's my profit, where's the money?

audioIanMorgan:

And that starts, usually our financial education series is just

audioIanMorgan:

to go, okay where's my money gone?

audioIanMorgan:

Your money hasn't gone anywhere.

audioIanMorgan:

It's just that, that, just because there is a currency

audioIanMorgan:

symbol doesn't mean that's money.

audioIanMorgan:

It just relates to money.

. audioChrisJolly:

And now you work mostly with entrepreneurs,

. audioChrisJolly:

exclusively with entrepreneurs.

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah pretty much exclusively with entrepreneurs.

audioIanMorgan:

We have a few who have been entrepreneurs and now maybe have

audioIanMorgan:

property portfolios and things.

audioIanMorgan:

But yeah, 99% of our clients are entrepreneurs of some description.

audioIanMorgan:

audioChrisJolly63832276467: And where do you find that they

audioIanMorgan:

struggle most with business finance?

audioIanMorgan:

I think there's probably the sense of the reality check.

audioIanMorgan:

Our job is probably to live up to the stigma of accountants and be

audioIanMorgan:

boring, but it's to go business owners, entrepreneurs think that

audioIanMorgan:

everything from their wildest dreams is possible, very rarely is it the case.

audioIanMorgan:

But it's good to have that dream and have that vision of

audioIanMorgan:

where you'd like to be going.

audioIanMorgan:

And I think most of the time our job is, how do we bring that back

audioIanMorgan:

to a sense of reality to go, yeah, okay, you think you're gonna do,

audioIanMorgan:

I dunno, a million pound month.

audioIanMorgan:

You're not even doing a million pound last year, so it's not gonna happen.

audioIanMorgan:

We can get there, but what's the real logical steps?

audioIanMorgan:

How's that really gonna work?

audioIanMorgan:

And actually, if you're gonna go from doing, I dunno, a hundred thousand

audioIanMorgan:

pounds to a, a million pounds in.

audioIanMorgan:

In just a couple of months, the business is gonna break.

audioIanMorgan:

Like most businesses cannot cope with that level of growth.

audioIanMorgan:

So our job is to often say what other people aren't saying.

audioIanMorgan:

We challenge them all the time to every time you have that thought

audioIanMorgan:

and you go, oh, can I say that?

audioIanMorgan:

That's definitely what you should be saying.

audioIanMorgan:

Because for that entrepreneur, most people around them are probably almost in awe of

audioIanMorgan:

what they're doing and not saying those, they're not challenging them on those

audioIanMorgan:

tough decisions and those tough areas.

audioIanMorgan:

So often it's how do we bring them back down to earth and how do we just

audioIanMorgan:

then gently bring them back up again?

audioChrisJolly:

You mentioned that your wife is your

audioChrisJolly:

business partner, but you were telling me a little bit beforehand that you

audioChrisJolly:

guys had different ideas at first of how the business should be run.

audioChrisJolly:

You wanna touch on that a little bit for us?

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah, so it was probably rolling into about

audioIanMorgan:

2015, 2016, and we'd got ourselves to three, I think, members of stuff.

audioIanMorgan:

And it was very, I was very overworked and underpaid at that

audioIanMorgan:

time, and, A great element I suppose, that we have between us.

audioIanMorgan:

I'm probably that more of that typical entrepreneur.

audioIanMorgan:

I've got lots of ideas, think everything's possible, and we can do whatever we want.

audioIanMorgan:

Sam, my wife, she's probably a little bit more than realist.

audioIanMorgan:

She's a lot more organized, a lot more structured, and we were butting

audioIanMorgan:

heads a little bit in terms of, I wanted all these other things.

audioIanMorgan:

Some wanted to bring in all these rules and systems and processes, and what I felt

audioIanMorgan:

was gonna happen off the back of that is we were gonna lose the family touch that

audioIanMorgan:

I thought we had within the business.

audioIanMorgan:

a very easily adjustable business that was all very lighthearted.

audioIanMorgan:

There was still an underlying element of professionalism, but it was all

audioIanMorgan:

very relaxed and I thought, oh, systems, processes, everything being

audioIanMorgan:

organized and documented just sounded.

audioIanMorgan:

Restricting and it actually came to the point where she said, okay, if you wanna

audioIanMorgan:

do things your way you go and do it.

audioIanMorgan:

I'll just step back.

audioIanMorgan:

And I was like yeah, I'll fine.

audioIanMorgan:

I'll go and I'll do it my way.

audioIanMorgan:

It didn't last too long before I was at the point where I'm just going,

audioIanMorgan:

ah, that's it, I need to quit.

audioIanMorgan:

And she was like, hang on then.

audioIanMorgan:

I've let you have your way, you let me have my way for a bit.

audioIanMorgan:

And then what we're seven, eight years down the line and we're

audioIanMorgan:

still doing things her way.

audioIanMorgan:

And it clearly works.

audioIanMorgan:

We are now at 13, 14 members of stuff.

audioIanMorgan:

It doesn't restrict, if anything, it opened my eyes to how much I was getting

audioIanMorgan:

in my own way and having systems and processes meant that, We just needed,

audioIanMorgan:

we needed people who really fitted our culture and we could teach them

audioIanMorgan:

the skills to be able to operate our systems and processes and deliver

audioIanMorgan:

those outcomes off the back of them.

audioIanMorgan:

And it just, it made recruitment easier.

audioIanMorgan:

It made holding people to account easier, made everything easier, to be honest and.

audioIanMorgan:

Everything came off the back of that financial success came off the back of it.

audioIanMorgan:

Less stress, less work, and actually so much that as we speak now in what

audioIanMorgan:

we're in February, 2023, this is my first month now where I'm not client

audioIanMorgan:

facing technician within the business.

audioIanMorgan:

I'm purely strategic development of the business, and I think if I'm

audioIanMorgan:

really being honest, that wouldn't have happened under my way of doing things.

audioIanMorgan:

Seven or eight years ago.

audioIanMorgan:

, audioChrisJolly63832276467: it's really

audioIanMorgan:

tend to think a lot of entrepreneurs that installing the systems and having

audioIanMorgan:

standard operating procedures and all of those things can feel really

audioIanMorgan:

restricting and you just you get into an entrepreneur because you want.

audioIanMorgan:

Freedom.

audioIanMorgan:

And that can seem like not freedom, but actually if you don't put those things

audioIanMorgan:

in, you end up chained to the business.

audioIanMorgan:

Trying to put out a million fires, running around, trying

audioIanMorgan:

to, getting things taken care of.

audioIanMorgan:

And then when you do implement those, that's what actually gives

audioIanMorgan:

you the freedom and frees you up to, step away a little bit.

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah.

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah.

audioIanMorgan:

Couldn't agree.

audioIanMorgan:

Couldn't agree more.

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah, it's easy to say.

audioIanMorgan:

Much more difficult to do.

audioChrisJolly:

As always.

audioChrisJolly:

Now, Ian, let me ask you, you told me that you were going to break the myth of

audioChrisJolly:

accounting being boring, so let's have it.

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah.

audioIanMorgan:

I think ultimately what we try and do is we try and make sure that we're not being

audioIanMorgan:

those typical, boring, stuffy accountants.

audioIanMorgan:

We're a very young team..

audioIanMorgan:

I'm the oldest on our team.

audioIanMorgan:

So mostly, most accountants I know are probably the wrong age of the

audioIanMorgan:

wrong side of retirement age, and we are not standard, sat there

audioIanMorgan:

in suits and everybody, yeah, just being all stuffy and boring.

audioIanMorgan:

We've got some great characters.

audioIanMorgan:

I think our main element that we do to switch accounting from being

audioIanMorgan:

boring is we just make it human.

audioIanMorgan:

First things first, when people come to us and the first things they

audioIanMorgan:

comment on is, yeah, but why are you not interested in my business?

audioIanMorgan:

Why are you asking all about me?

audioIanMorgan:

And usually our reason is because your business is just a tool that helps you

audioIanMorgan:

lead the life that you want to lead.

audioIanMorgan:

And unless I understand you and really know where you are going and

audioIanMorgan:

what you're trying to achieve, how can we possibly help you get there?

audioIanMorgan:

And how can we possibly know if that business is gonna be the

audioIanMorgan:

right tool to help you get there?

audioIanMorgan:

And we end up just so much based on interaction of who are you,

audioIanMorgan:

who's important in your life, what stops you getting to where you

audioIanMorgan:

want to be, where you at right now, and where would you love to be?

audioIanMorgan:

And if we put all of that together and we understand it all, we can then

audioIanMorgan:

really build clear plans that were almost step by step, which numbers

audioIanMorgan:

only form a very small part of it.

audioIanMorgan:

It just becomes human interaction, human relationships, and just go great.

audioIanMorgan:

Most people, it's an element of I only work, wanna work this many hours

audioIanMorgan:

and I'd love to earn this much money.

audioIanMorgan:

Okay, great.

audioIanMorgan:

You can't, the money can't go up and the hours can't go down.

audioIanMorgan:

At the same time, how are we gonna strategically think to

audioIanMorgan:

go, which is the most important that needs to change right now?

audioIanMorgan:

and how do we bring things together?

audioIanMorgan:

And I think it just, it goes away from, oh yeah, but that's, that's a couple

audioIanMorgan:

of dollars out or that's a couple of pounds out and that's not important.

audioIanMorgan:

The important things are what is that business helping you

audioIanMorgan:

achieve in, in terms of your life.

audioIanMorgan:

audioChrisJolly63832276467: Yeah, absolutely.

audioIanMorgan:

If your business is not a vehicle for you getting to financial and time freedom,

audioIanMorgan:

then you're probably doing it wrong.

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah.

audioChrisJolly:

All right.

audioChrisJolly:

Now let me ask you, as somebody who deals with business finances all day

audioChrisJolly:

long, what is the biggest financial challenge for you and your business?

audioIanMorgan:

I think that the biggest financial challenge

audioIanMorgan:

for us in our business is actually trying to map out and manage growth

audioIanMorgan:

with ensuring the quality levels are there that we want to deliver.

audioIanMorgan:

So most people who come and work with us are.

audioIanMorgan:

They've had some kind of financial challenge or

audioIanMorgan:

difficulty within their business.

audioIanMorgan:

Maybe they've been let down by an accountant.

audioIanMorgan:

Maybe they're partly responsible as well, and they haven't kept their finger

audioIanMorgan:

on the post and in our experience, the training that probably goes on within

audioIanMorgan:

the accounting industry is too much focused on what we used to be, which

audioIanMorgan:

is how do you complete a tax return?

audioIanMorgan:

How do you keep the government from knocking on your door?

audioIanMorgan:

And therefore for us to bring in the right quality stuff to be able to teach

audioIanMorgan:

to the way, our way of thinking and get them to that level, we have to balance

audioIanMorgan:

how many clients are we bringing in and how quickly versus how many clients

audioIanMorgan:

is somebody capable of managing.

audioIanMorgan:

And therefore we can't just literally go out today and go let's hire

audioIanMorgan:

three new accountants and let's train them and get them all set up.

audioIanMorgan:

Because realistically from our experience, it's three to six months before we've

audioIanMorgan:

got them to a level where they can start earning money back into the business.

audioIanMorgan:

And then we can't easily go the other way and go, can we just

audioIanMorgan:

bring in loads of new clients?

audioIanMorgan:

Because actually we are about, we're not a transaction based business.

audioIanMorgan:

We're very much that relationship element and lots of new clients just

audioIanMorgan:

starts hitting on the relationships of other people, existing clients,

audioIanMorgan:

really within the business.

audioIanMorgan:

So that's our financial challenge really, is balancing that just to go.

audioIanMorgan:

We've got growth available.

audioIanMorgan:

We regularly run a waiting list.

audioIanMorgan:

It can take up to six months to join us, and that's because of the

audioIanMorgan:

quality that we strive to achieve.

audioIanMorgan:

So the big challenge is,

audioIanMorgan:

if we could fix onboarding, in terms of how we do that and how we grow new people.

audioIanMorgan:

Into our team, and we could fix that.

audioIanMorgan:

We could substantially scale our business, but the business model

audioIanMorgan:

itself probably isn't a scalable one in that level because of the high

audioIanMorgan:

level human relationship that we have.

audioChrisJolly:

Yeah and I bet too when you made that switch from

audioChrisJolly:

going to just being like tax returns to actually helping people figure

audioChrisJolly:

out what they wanna do with their money and why the client retention

audioChrisJolly:

probably went up a bunch, didn't it?

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah.

audioIanMorgan:

It did for the right fit clients.

audioIanMorgan:

Overall, it massively nose dived because actually there were, we had a number

audioIanMorgan:

of, I don't even think we can call them entrepreneurs, hobby business owners maybe

audioIanMorgan:

who suddenly when we up the ante and start going, what are you trying to achieve?

audioIanMorgan:

Where are you trying to go?

audioIanMorgan:

They're like, Ah, I don't want all this rubbish.

audioIanMorgan:

Like just file my tax return.

audioIanMorgan:

And we were just like, no that's not what we're about anymore.

audioIanMorgan:

We can see a bigger picture.

audioIanMorgan:

So we went, today we sit probably at 150 ish businesses that we work with

audioIanMorgan:

at our peak in about 20 15, 20 16.

audioIanMorgan:

That was about 600.

audioChrisJolly:

Okay.

audioIanMorgan:

So there was a period of time where the retention

audioIanMorgan:

overall would've looked absolutely awful.

audioIanMorgan:

But the retention on the right type of clients, yeah that's constantly going up.

audioIanMorgan:

And I wanna say on average at the moment, it's about seven and a half years, I

audioIanMorgan:

think is our lifetime value of a clan.

audioIanMorgan:

audioChrisJolly63832276467: That's amazing.

audioIanMorgan:

Now let me ask you about your own journey to financial freedom.

audioIanMorgan:

Where are you on that journey right now, and what does being

audioIanMorgan:

financially free mean to you?

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah.

audioIanMorgan:

2015, we made our shift to what we wanted to be by.

audioIanMorgan:

Late 2018, we bought the property we currently live in, which we

audioIanMorgan:

considered to be our, forever home.

audioIanMorgan:

And there were a few things that we needed to sort with it.

audioIanMorgan:

It was definitely a stretch in order to afford it, but we could see a

audioIanMorgan:

pathway that we were on and how that could become significantly better.

audioIanMorgan:

The level of work that the properties required has been substantially

audioIanMorgan:

more than we anticipated.

audioChrisJolly:

As

audioIanMorgan:

I would say a couple of things that

audioIanMorgan:

we've had to do to finish off.

audioIanMorgan:

Basically we built a large extension and post swimming pool in over the summer

audioIanMorgan:

last year, and they ended up costing more and we had to take some various forms

audioIanMorgan:

of short term finance to make that work.

audioIanMorgan:

Which is what causes me to go, oh, am I financially free?

audioIanMorgan:

No.

audioIanMorgan:

Cause I don't like that short term finance that we have.

audioIanMorgan:

But as we roll into the new financial year so that for us is rolling into April,

audioIanMorgan:

may time, we'll be able to refinance that to something a lot more suitable.

audioIanMorgan:

And then we're probably at the point then when we go, actually

audioIanMorgan:

no, we are pretty financially free.

audioIanMorgan:

We're very comfortable.

audioIanMorgan:

There's nothing that we would.

audioIanMorgan:

Majorly want for that we can't achieve and can't have.

audioIanMorgan:

And I think, yeah, just thinking back, when we first set out on our

audioIanMorgan:

journey back in the sort of 2005 three to about 2012, there were

audioIanMorgan:

periods of that time where we were.

audioIanMorgan:

Multi five figures in debt.

audioIanMorgan:

And not owning a property or anything like that, like literally

audioIanMorgan:

negative personal equity position.

audioIanMorgan:

And that debt was spiraling.

audioIanMorgan:

Earnings weren't particularly great and the survival mode that we probably

audioIanMorgan:

learned to be in at that time still Ring Street with us today, Yeah, I'm st

audioIanMorgan:

I'm, we're very tight with our money.

audioIanMorgan:

I don't spend it unnecessarily.

audioIanMorgan:

We think about things considerably.

audioIanMorgan:

There are some things that maybe some people would look at and go, oh that's

audioIanMorgan:

a lot to spend on that particular thing.

audioIanMorgan:

But we're very careful about keeping our money for the things

audioIanMorgan:

that we particularly value.

audioIanMorgan:

in terms of where we're at, I think.

audioIanMorgan:

Financially very stable and secure.

audioIanMorgan:

Time freedom, not quite there yet.

audioIanMorgan:

I've made that shift obviously this month into not being client facing.

audioIanMorgan:

I've got about a six or eight week project now in terms of improving our

audioIanMorgan:

onboarding processes and department.

audioIanMorgan:

over that period of time, I probably work more than I would want to, but as

audioIanMorgan:

we roll into sort of April may time, it'll be, it'll become I want it to be

audioIanMorgan:

that I choose to work, not that I have to work, and I don't see any reason

audioIanMorgan:

currently why that can't be the case.

audioChrisJolly:

All right.

audioChrisJolly:

And then what is your biggest initiative for the business for 2023?

audioChrisJolly:

audioIanMorgan53832276467: Our biggest initiative for

audioChrisJolly:

2023 is a platform for growth.

audioChrisJolly:

So we did some quite heavy growth during 2022 between 60 and 70%, it was quite

audioChrisJolly:

a lot to manage that level of growth.

audioChrisJolly:

We actually stopped then taking new clients in about October, of 2022.

audioChrisJolly:

we did that strategically because we could start to see some of the

audioChrisJolly:

cracks and the creeks appearing.

audioChrisJolly:

So 2023 became, okay, how do we make some very tactical and strategic hires?

audioChrisJolly:

That mean that we move people into quality control, into having time to

audioChrisJolly:

do a lot more training, a lot more improvements, and looking over things.

audioChrisJolly:

So one hire has already happened relating to that.

audioChrisJolly:

One is currently actively happening and the other one's planned for June.

audioChrisJolly:

With all of those hires then in place, we will have built a nice platform that as

audioChrisJolly:

we roll into 2024, We should be able to grow by about 40 to 50% in that year and

audioChrisJolly:

do that without really any major problems.

audioChrisJolly:

Sounds like a great trajectory you're on.

audioChrisJolly:

All right.

audioChrisJolly:

Now my last question for you today is who does the books for your business?

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah.

audioIanMorgan:

So we actually do this as a bit of a mix and split.

audioIanMorgan:

Sam, my wife, does the books day to day.

audioIanMorgan:

To keep her head in the numbers and knowing what's going on.

audioIanMorgan:

My job then is effectively as like an FD to report to her.

audioIanMorgan:

So I will take her work, do reviews and checks, not because I'm necessarily

audioIanMorgan:

checking her just because it makes sense to have that review process

audioIanMorgan:

on there, and then effectively my job's to then report to her and say,

audioIanMorgan:

this is our financial performance.

audioIanMorgan:

This is how we perform versus our budget.

audioIanMorgan:

This is how our cash flow's gone versus our cash flow forecast.

audioIanMorgan:

And then she's almost holding me accountable for reporting

audioIanMorgan:

that information back to her.

audioIanMorgan:

So we very much create accountability between us both

audioIanMorgan:

in order to make that happen.

audioChrisJolly:

Excellent.

audioChrisJolly:

Ian this has been an absolutely amazing interview.

audioChrisJolly:

I know that a lot of the things you said are gonna really resonate with

audioChrisJolly:

our audience, and there's a lot of good tidbits in there for them.

audioChrisJolly:

So I want to thank you for taking the time and jumping on the show today.

audioChrisJolly:

It's been such a pleasure to have you here.

audioIanMorgan:

Yeah.

audioIanMorgan:

Thank you so much for having me on.

audioIanMorgan:

It's, yeah, it's been great and yeah, it's been nice to share the story.

audioChrisJolly:

Now the last thing before we go, if people

audioChrisJolly:

wanna find out more about what you do or to get in touch with you,

audioChrisJolly:

what's the best place to do that at?

audioIanMorgan:

Yep.

audioIanMorgan:

So you can find out more about what we do and who we particularly help on our

audioIanMorgan:

website, which is mbs accountants.co uk.

audioIanMorgan:

And if you wanna connect with me, the best place to find me is on LinkedIn.

audioIanMorgan:

I'm sure we can probably drop a link in the show notes.

audioIanMorgan:

audioChrisJolly63832276467: Yep, we can definitely do that.

audioIanMorgan:

All right, Ian, it's been awesome.

audioIanMorgan:

Thanks so much for coming on today, and if you are listening out there and you

audioIanMorgan:

enjoyed the show, please go ahead and subscribe and leave a five star review.

audioIanMorgan:

And if you're a six figure online entrepreneur and you want to come

audioIanMorgan:

on like Ian did today to share your valuable insights with our

audioIanMorgan:

listeners, we'd love to have you on,

audioChrisJolly:

You can go to p y f podcast.com . That's the

audioChrisJolly:

letters P Y F podcast.com, and apply.

audioChrisJolly:

audioChrisJolly63832276467: All right, thanks again, Ian.

audioChrisJolly:

audioIanMorgan53832276467: Cheers everybody.

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Pay Yourself First
A Podcast for Entrepreneurs

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Christopher Jolly