When I was growing up, my dad was running a company and it was doing well, but his accountant did not give him sufficient information and he lost the business. It was a difficult time and my dad worked long days to keep a roof over our heads. I’m really focused on making sure that none of my clients go through what my dad went through – that they get the advice they need throughout their journey.
After I qualified with ACCA I went to Azets to manage its north Wales team. Managing a team of 13 remotely was tough, but we did well and improved our efficiency by £250,000. I was headhunted into Haines Watts Northwest to do a partner acceleration programme but decided to leave and set up Elevate Accountancy. We have just had our first birthday and achieved £350,000 gross recurring revenue in our first year.
I saw a gap in the market to offer good customer service with higher fees
I saw a gap in the market to offer good customer service with higher fees. Accountants have been undervalued in the past, which has kept fees low. This means you can’t give the levels of customer service that clients might expect. I wanted to work with fewer clients but more frequently with each. We have a real focus on customer satisfaction. We do surveys, feedback sessions and Google reviews, and have been achieving 100% so far.
Having a niche is great for marketing but can be risky, so we have several. Franchising is our biggest, followed by the care sector. There are tight margins in certain types of care, so seeing the improvements you can make is very rewarding.
When setting up the practice, I teamed up with local independent sole practitioners whom I used to work with. We’re in a WhatsApp group where we share advice and we meet up over food to discuss any issues. It’s good to have people to lean on, as it can get lonely running a practice.
I’m increasingly seeing younger accountants setting up their own practices. I think that’s because private equity has come along and taken away the customer-centric approach. Some practitioners want to escape that and go back to traditional, customer relationship-focused accountancy.
I don’t see AI replacing accountants; it will help offer better service
The north west and north Wales really struggle for good young talent. I’m happy to go across the country to find the right people, but so far those I’ve recruited are people I’ve worked with in the past. We all work remotely but we meet together once a month. We also have fully flexible working arrangements; people can work whenever they want provided they hit their individual KPIs.
We are a fully digital practice and have started using AI – and want to use it more. I’m hoping that it can do the analytical work and produce reports on the data to give us time to be able to give more strategic advice. I don’t see it replacing accountants; it will help offer better service.
I love travelling the world. I’s much harder to do that now I’m running a practice, but I love exploring and learning about other people’s cultures, and meeting people from different countries. Eventually I’ll develop the team so that they manage the day-to-day while I’m more focused on strategy.
