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In this episode of the Cult Products podcast, host Phill Keaney-Bolland and accountant Dave Sellick delve into the often-overlooked world of accounting and finance for startups. They discuss the emotional journey of founders, the creativity involved in accounting, and the importance of having a trustworthy accountant. Dave shares practical advice for early-stage startups, emphasising the need for financial literacy and the value of having an accountant from day one. The conversation highlights the significance of understanding the emotional and practical aspects of running a business, and how the right financial guidance can lead to better decision-making and overall success.
Takeaways:
- Accounting can be exciting and creative.
- Founders often start businesses to solve personal pain points.
- Building a business requires creativity and innovation.
- Trust is essential when choosing an accountant.
- Startups should seek financial advice early on.
- Automating finance processes saves time and improves data quality.
- Understanding financial information is crucial for business success.
- The emotional journey of founders impacts their business decisions.
- Accountants should be collaborative and transparent.
- Financial literacy is important for all business owners.
Creators & Guests
What is Cult Products?
Dive into the essentials of start-up success with Cult Products, hosted by Yaya's co-founders, Adam Yaya-Durrant and Phill Keaney-Bolland. This podcast delivers sharp insights on creating revolutionary products, radical branding, and attracting a loyal following of early adopters. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, each episode is packed with actionable advice and stories from those who've built successful businesses. Join Adam and Phill as they help you transform bold ideas into start-up success.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (00:18)
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Cult Products podcast. My name is Phil Keeney-Bolland. I'm one of the co-founders at Yaya. And today we are going to be talking about a very exciting topic, accounting. Now, I know that may have some connotations. Maybe thinking how exciting can a whole episode on accounting be? Well, actually we're going to cover the whole spectrum of finance stuff.
And the guest that we have today is probably when you picture an accountant in your mind, not the person who I'm going to be talking to. So I'd like to introduce Dave Sellick, who is our accountant. And Dave, us, tell us, you do your own intro, you tell us who you are. You'll explain better than me, I'm sure.
Dave Sellick (01:09)
Okay. Yeah. Hey guys. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, obviously. Hey, I'm Dave and yeah, I'm an accountant. Obviously I run a practice called Siggrove. I used to be London based, but just south of London. I work predominantly with, well, a lot of different types of businesses, but a lot of tech, early stage tech companies found their own businesses. And yeah, I sort of...
provide a slightly different service potentially to the sort of, I guess, normal external accountant in that I have come from industry predominantly and have sort of tried to optimize this kind of portfolio head of finance service. yeah, that's me. I originally trained in PwC back in, started there back in 2008 and then went into industry and eventually into founder owned businesses and then started the practice around five years ago.
So yeah, it's a little intro.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (02:08)
It's a great, it's a great intro, Dave, thanks. you know, I think I actually am very excited about talking about accounting today. So my background, my dad is an accountant. And I grew up thinking that it sounded like the most boring job in the world. And, you know, I think that naturally you're kind of looking at looking at what your parents doing thinking, and do anything, anything but that. Since we
started the business, the numbers have obviously been a big thing that we have to keep an eye on. We have to figure out the best way to get hold of the information that we need so that we feel like we're driving the car without blacking out the windscreen. Since we've worked together, it has actually felt very exciting. We have done a lot of really cool stuff that I can't wait to get into. The other thing is,
When I go out and speak to other founders of tech startups, it's actually usually the first thing people say that they are struggling with is around how to set up finance correctly, how to get the best out of it, how to get clarity on what their business is doing, all of those kinds of things. So I think this is going to be a really interesting conversation. And thanks for coming on, Dave. I think, thank you.
Dave Sellick (03:20)
worries.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (03:22)
think a good place to start. So obviously you are the founder of your business. And I think I'm always quite interested in what is it in your background that you think set you up so that you had this itch that you had to go and scratch and set up your own business.
Dave Sellick (03:38)
Yeah. so obviously in the intro, it was a bit of a sort of brief kind of intro to kind of where I am now, but there are, as you say, there was so many reasons why I got to where I got to. So maybe what I do is I'll just go back to the beginning. I guess to my time at PWC really, and kind of actually why, why I even chose to go into accounting. Cause you're right. Like it still has the perception that it's not the most exciting career and
you know, whatever it was, 2008, so 16 years ago, it was definitely the case that it was not the most exciting career to go into. But honestly, the reason I went into it initially, so I went to university, not to my study geography. And we were just heavily targeted by the big four in honesty, in terms of marketing. And at the time, I don't know if it's still the case, but you know, the times 100 top graduate schemes, PWC, it was the number one.
And it had been for like eight years. so my really honest reason as to why I went into it initially was it's the top grad scheme. I don't know what I want to do. and really probably like a lot of people, I've only kind of feel like I started to understand what I want to do. Like, you know, in my thirties, my late thirties. So, maybe not even now fully. So, you know, at the time it was like, I don't really know what I want to do. Apparently this is great. So I'll go and do that. And,
So I went and did audit in the banking and capital markets department of PWC in London. I joined the day that Lehman Brothers crashed. that was quite interesting, quite a chaotic time because that was, I was in the department who probably still dealing with the administration now, but took on the administration of Lehman Brothers. So we kind of lost 50 % of our resource overnight in terms of, know, we've got to do the same audits, the same work for 50.
of the people. So it was difficult in that respect. And it was also difficult because it was during that period that I realised a little bit more about myself. I guess more specifically that I didn't really enjoy this kind of work. And to cut a long story short, being an audit in banking really clashed with what I've now realised is really like a really creative mind that I have. I'm
I'm a creative and I didn't really necessarily realize to what degree I was. And I found out that in that process driven world, that very sort of cutthroat, dehumanized in honesty, like quite soulless, you know, one dimensional world, it was really, really difficult for me because I didn't have any creativity in my work. There was no creativity in the culture. And yeah, again, long story short, I actually became quite unwell because of it. So I went through some mental difficulties.
And that then led me to question everything about the career that I was in. So I won't make this too long, but I then basically left after I qualified. I then worked briefly in Urban Outfitters as a sales assistant because I just didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I loved fashion and I wanted to be in a fun working environment. And then I thought, well, you look, I don't like this job. I don't think I love accounting.
I'm a creative. want to actually was also a DJ, so I'm a DJ. I've been DJing for over 20 years. At that time, I was actually actively DJing in the London, you know, circuit and I was playing big clubs like Ministry. know, that was sort of also something I was thinking about. Could I go into music production? And I thought, well, I've qualified. I've done the work. You know, I put in all this this effort. I've got the experience I've got effectively at the time, you you come out of Big Four job, qualified your
your starting salary is around 45K or it was at the time 16 years ago, whatever, 10 years ago. That's very different to a starting salary as a music producer. So I just thought I'd just give it a go. And I went and found, basically looked for a company where I thought the culture would be fun, because that's what I got from working in urban outfit is I just thought this is a fun place to work because the people are great and the culture is great. So I went and joined an advertising company or an outdoor advertising company called PrimeSight at the time. It's now a part of global media.
But it was really cool for me, it was like a small business. It was like 250 people. And that for me at the time was like, this is small. So I just come from an organisation of thousands and thousands of people. And I really enjoy the culture, loved it, but I was missing something. I still felt like finance, know, this is a great culture, but there's finance in the corner. And I was always battling against that. And then after a brief period where I again questioned everything and went...
Having a lot of fun upstairs in sales, maybe I'll go and do that. I joined sales briefly and realized I didn't have a love for advertising and basically looked to go back into accounting and sort of reassess things again and got a random call from a recruiter about a company called Wasteland Ski, which was a founder-owned business that did ski trips for students. And I just, and they were working with Ibiza Rocks at the time on a festival called Rise Festival, which is still going in the Alps.
And I just thought this sounds like a lot of fun. And that really is the start of kind of then really what shaped my career. And where I am now working with founder owned businesses in small companies, where people have real passion, you know, yeah, just working directly with founders. And, and also that came in combination with me joining that business came in sort of combination with this sort of evolution in accountants in the accountancy world of cloud accounting. We've seen it across all industries, but cloud accounting was a thing that really enabled me to.
be more creative with the way I approached it, to be more optimized with the way I did accounting, which enabled me to essentially sort of focus more on the connection, more on the, I guess, typically more exciting parts of accountancy. And so I went through a period there of working with a number of different founder-owned businesses through that time and startups, done tech startups. And through that time, I think I fired every accountancy firm that I worked with. So there's...
That would, kind of took me, it was that, that, that sort of experience of, of not having a good experience with external firms and meeting a lot of founders who wanted to work with me, but couldn't afford to take me on full time. That led me to start my own practice where I thought, what if I could do this role by using the right technology, but do it for not just one company, but for 2030. you know, and I felt very passionate that I wanted to provide support to the even earlier stage businesses that just.
didn't really have an offering. And so yeah, that was a reason for starting up Sigrove effectively. It was also because I wanted to have full creative reign. You know, I'd had a lot of ownership and creativity through my time as a head of finance of startups, which is a very, very different thing to working in a big organization. I would say that that was, that transition was the hardest thing I ever did. Initially, I thought it would be kind of easy coming from the big four, you know, you're, this is the cram to the cram. This is the hardest thing you'll ever do. actually,
way, way, way harder to, to, to, do accounting in a small business where things require you to effectively build them yourself and to be creative and to kind of take chaos and turn into something organized and do it in a really lean way, in really accountable way, because you can't hide. So yeah, that's really a bit of the background. then since then, starting up SIGGROVE, initial vision was to provide that service. And I've had to do a lot of huge amount of work with, technology.
And the way that I approach, you know, the way I do things in order to take that service and to actually do it at scale, because there's a reason why there are most accounts firms that I come across really struggled to deliver services at scale. It's extremely hard to do that and to maintain the trust, the empathy, the feeling like, you know, companies have a head of finance and that you're part of their business. So yeah, that's been a big part of the journey. And then also separately, I've taken up another mission to, to really endorse this idea that
Accounting should be fun, should be enjoyable. And when you actually find a way to create that sense of enjoyment for accountants, it's really closely correlated with doing exceptional work. So I'm on this separate mission to encourage accountants to find more love in what they do. And I speak at various conferences and work a lot with software companies and in the space and work with other accountancy firms to help them to do this. I'm just about to launch a...
platform to make that more accessible. But in terms of small businesses listening to this, really been my view that if accountants can find more joy in their work and you're working with an accountant who loves what they do, they're probably going to do great work. And so that's been my most, I guess, most fundamental belief. the sort of submission of that is I really also want small businesses to have better services from their accountant. And, you know, I haven't seen that and that's been a kind of quite relentless.
sort of journey for me over last five years to try and provide that and then to share how I've done that at scale across the industry.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (12:33)
I really love, by the way, how committed you are to that mission, because you do talk about it very, very consistently and very passionately as well. And I think, you it's been interesting to see, because I think you've kind of you've been making progress on that mission, at the same time of making the mission of our finances more easy to understand and better. And it's been great to the progress that you've made on that. There was a couple of things in what you said that I thought, firstly,
You're absolutely right in that, and we see this a lot, there's a perception that if you work for a big company and then you get fed up with it and say, now I'm ready to go and work for a smaller company, take my foot off the gas a little bit, it'll be a different type of experience, it'll be less stressful. is, just to help a load of people out, save a bunch of time and stress, that is never the case. It's just a different.
It's some of the same stress and it is definitely not a step down or step into something that is a little bit less full on.
Dave Sellick (13:40)
It requires a whole different skill set, to be honest.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (13:45)
Hmm, it skillset mindset everything. And I was curious as well, Dave.
Dave Sellick (13:46)
in my opinion.
and certainly from the accounting perspective. Sorry, go on.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (13:53)
I was curious as well because there was another couple of things that you said that I think I felt and that I see in a lot of the founders that we work with. The first really, and I don't, you know, don't know, maybe we don't want to go too deeply into this, but is that the emotion that a lot of founders feel when they start a business is frustration and unhappiness, either with their own
working situation, but more generally just with a sense that the way that they've been working, way that they've been doing things could be better. And then the second thing that you said was you described yourself as a creative. And I always think the most creative thing you can do is, or at least that I've experienced, is start a business because you are creating every element of that and you're building something that
you is complicated and requires a lot of innovation and ingenuity, all of those things. You know, do you think there was ever a world where you wouldn't have started a business that could you have lived the rest of your life just kind of ticking along? Or do you think this was, there's an element of destiny to it?
Dave Sellick (14:50)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, obviously I work with a lot of startups, so do you guys, probably you'll have your own sort of opinion and experience as to why you think certain people are driven to start businesses. For me, it was always, it was never, there was never a thought about starting a business per se. That wasn't what I was passionate about or what drove me. that doesn't mean that it doesn't. It just means that wasn't the, that wasn't the way I got into it. For me, it was, there's a problem.
that I feel really compelled to solve. And, you I might not have articulated it perfectly in my intro and what I, my sort of, story that I told, because there were so many facets to it, starting with the very formative experience around basically just hating my job more than you can imagine. And I guess an inbuilt kind of desire to want to create change for myself, but also other people who might be feeling the same way, because I know that's going on. for me, it was driven from a pain point. And I think...
That's why I'm probably so passionate about founders or feel like I resonate most with the founders that I really feel they have a personal resonance to a pain point that they're wanting to solve. the business or creating the business is effectively the mechanism to do that. But yeah, undoubtedly when you're building a business and I think, well, my opinion to caveat what you're saying is that building a business is creative. Let's take accounting for example, building an accounting business.
isn't necessarily creative if you just take the boilerplate for every other accountancy business or firm. By the way, this is also why a lot of the accountancy services are homogenous in the market because that's what most accounts do. Because by the way, most accountants aren't risk takers, they aren't creative. And as we could go into it, but there's a whole presentations around why this is the case. I did a presentation called the Humanization of Accounting where it tapped into
the reasons why this is the case. So yeah, a lot of firms don't do it in a creative way. They will go, metaphorically, or actually to conferences to go or to go and see those that they feel are doing a good job and they try and copy it. And that there's creativity on a level, but not hugely, but yeah, a hundred percent with what I've done and with the businesses that really impressed me that are doing something truly unique. Yeah, it's inherently creative, isn't it? It's kind of, you're doing something that hasn't been done before and creating value in a...
unique way, then you ultimately have to create something new by default. And that could be bringing different components together that weren't originally intended that way, or it could be having a vision and actually building with brand new tools, something that has never been seen before. And for me, it's very interesting because as you said, doesn't tend to get the accounting, doesn't tend to get the reputation to be exciting or creative, but
I stopped creating music when I started my firm because I'm able to sort that or resolve that craving for creativity every day through my work. So I guess the phrase is like, go figure. Like it can be creative. It's just the reason that it's not, it's not because it can't be or that it doesn't benefit from someone being creative because it does. It's just the nature of the kind of history of accounting and
those that are controlling the narrative in our industry, again, probably another conversation, are telling people that it's not, and are not showing the right things to inspire people to realise that it can be and that it is. And actually, in my opinion, that now in 2024, the best accountants are creatives that lead with empathy. yeah, building the best firms, I think, yeah, is creative.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (18:47)
Well, I-
I totally agree and I really do relate to what you're saying about, you know, it scratches that itch creativity, you know, not by the way, a very bad guitar player, there are, you know, there was a, there was a time in my life when I played guitar every day because I needed to get something creative out of my system. And now I get that from, it could, it could be, you know, why framing a product. could be, you know, thinking about actually
working on the business and how we market ourselves and those kinds of things. It's the same kind of energy I think that you create. I wanted to give you, so we talk a lot about what you've just said around, you if you're going to start a business and you're going to create a product, if it's not different from what everyone else is doing, then you end up competing on these sort of weird factors. And within accounting,
that would probably be who do you like? You you meet a few accountants, who do you have a strike up a good relationship with? Who seems trustworthy? Who has the, you know, the best roster of past clients and all of those kinds of things? To give you my perspective, when, so first of all, I felt that we had a problem with the way we were doing finance.
And the problem wasn't that our accountant wasn't nice, or wasn't trustworthy, or that he wasn't doing a good job. It was that when I looked at our finance as a business, as a function within our business, it felt like it was operating in a totally different way to the rest of the business. And what I specifically mean by that is we were trying to automate a lot of our operational processes.
a lot of things we had done. We were really on a drive to reduce the amount of high effort, but low value work that we were all doing individually. And we were trying to be much more data led. We were trying to just have things in real time and to be able to make smarter decisions based off having the right information at the right times and all those kinds of things.
The way I felt was everything was taking a long time to produce and to get information always felt difficult and more difficult than it should be. It felt like the data wasn't particularly joined up. And some of the things that I just couldn't get my head around was, why is there a manual process where...
One business sends another business an email with an attachment on it, which says how much money you have to pay them. And then you have to go into your bank account and you have to put their details in. You have to say this is how much we want to pay them. And then you have to push the button to do that in such a intricate and just, you know, like I say, high effort manual way. Because me looking at every other part of the business went, why is that the bit of the business that feels alien from everything else? And I'd like to get,
your reaction to this in a minute. But what it meant when we met you, and you are a nice bloke, and we do like you, we do have a good working relationship, we have all of those same kind of things that we would have with any accountant, was that you could offer me something that nobody else could. And that meant that we didn't compare you to anyone else. didn't think, well, we've got five options that are going to get us more or less the same result. We were able to say,
with you, the result that we can get to really hits the problem that I'm having. And it's totally different. It's an answer that I can't seem to get from anyone else. So you basically have done what we say to all of our clients you need to do, which is really, really understand the problem that your customer has, and then offer a solution that nobody else can and be able to communicate that really, really clearly. So
You talked about your articulation of the problem that you solve. There's mine. What do you think?
Dave Sellick (22:56)
Yeah, I hear you. And I know why it's happening in the market. I know why it's such a hard problem to solve. You know, I came with a bit of frustration into starting my own practice towards practices. I would say I was pissed off, to say the least. You know, I'd seen some really bad things, not just bad accounting, but some bad stuff, you know.
in terms of values and integrity and all of that across the firms I'd worked with. and it may be a sense of a little bit of sense of complacency because like you, and actually I think this is where I would sort of empathise with, know, business owners or founders that are listening to this. Like I thought the same thing when I was in industry and I was seeing the services that were being provided, I just thought, what the hell? Like how can they not be in tune with these businesses?
particularly practices where I feel you're in such a privileged position where you get to work with so many different businesses in a sector. They're like, you're able to see all these different scenarios and all these different things. You should be in a great position to be able to provide advice and also to see what works, what doesn't work and to, you know, and also develop a methodology that you can roll out many, many times. So there's value in developing it. So I came into the practice world just thinking, why is this so hard?
thinking, you know, I'll just use the technology that I use. you know, I a bit of code. actually went on the law wagon. didn't tell this part of the story, but you know, I've been on the wagon coding bootcamp. I have a good basis in understanding sort of code, I guess enough to be dangerous. And, I guess, yeah, probably an expert, an Excel expert, GC expert, just because I find them really creative tools. And I just have really just got stuck into them over the years.
and being curious about these. And then another technology that I found, we may come onto this called the Elgato Stream Deck, which is basically used by streamers, but maybe more recently has the awareness has opened up in terms of this kind of technology being used for workflow. So it's basically like a keyboard with translucent buttons that has a screen behind it you can press it and it activates workflows a bit like a set of DJ decks in a way. But yeah, I thought with all this technology,
And knowledge I'd come in and within a few months I'll be able to build an ecosystem whereby I'll just be able to roll out across many, many companies. I spent a whole year in a WeWork earning more money from DJing than I did from my practice. Basically just building. I spent from eight in the morning till last train at night in the WeWork, sometimes missing the last train, you know, almost seven days a week building. And so I guess in answer to your question, how do I see it?
There is at the moment, this big disconnect between what is possible in accounting and where the prevailing service is at the moment. a lot of that's to do with, the same way, again, I'm going to use a different example, in the same way, us as humans in terms of evolutionarily, like that's not a word is it, but you know, like in terms of us as humans, our bodies aren't necessarily equipped for the environment around us because we haven't caught up quick enough.
I feel like the accounting industry hasn't caught up quick enough to what's happening with technology around them. And again, there are many aspects to that. And a big part of it for accountants is that they're just not the kind of demographic like with you Phil and the rest of the business who are creatives, who are hands-on, who are a bit more agile minded. Like accountants, generally speaking, aren't like that. And the previous way accounting has been done, to be vague,
has been much more process driven, technical based, hasn't revolved around having a creative mindset, an expansive mindset. And so they're not well suited to people who are able to adopt these technologies. And so that's why particularly in the practice world, you're looking at these technologies, you're seeing the world around you and you're going, what the hell is going on? Why aren't they using this technology? Well, that's why. It's just, they don't have the mindset. They're not necessarily the most optimized demographic.
I would say that industry accountants probably are more suited for it. tend to find that, and when I say industry, I mean people who work within businesses on payroll. So you're internal head of finance, you know, working side by side with the, you know, marketing team, the sales team, the ops team, and, know, they have a naturally more strategic mindset because they're just exposed to it. But also the kind of personalities that thrive off that tend to be more empathetic. so they are, but you know,
Phill Keaney-Bolland (27:27)
Yeah.
Dave Sellick (27:33)
They do better at this in terms of adopting new technology, but they're not necessarily in the mindset of how do I scale this? Because they work for one company. And so where I come in and I'm able to do it differently, that is 100 % predicated on the fact that I'm a creative in an industry where I don't really belong in a way. Because historically, for creatives to exist in accounting, honestly, it would make you ill. And it did. It made me ill.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (27:51)
you
Dave Sellick (27:59)
And I think we're seeing now a transition in the industry from an industry that is naturally one that, you know, pushes the creatives away because it's just not well suited to them in terms of process and structure and, you know, for pest to process and all these kinds of things. To one now that really is just calling out for creatives. And I think we're just in this transitional period. And it's profiles like myself who are effectively now I'm going out to the market and I'm
As I said, spent, you know, and I'm still working on this, but I've spent hours and hours and hours and years of complete dedication to building an entirely new blueprint that's evolving for accounting. And the answer is it doesn't exist at scale in the market. And that's why my mission is currently to go and share it at scale. It's why I talk a lot and it's, yeah, you're right. There is no service at the moment that exists like what I, what I do, but I'm trying to change that. But there are some services that are similar.
And so, you know, if someone was to reach out to me and ask, what can we do? Then there are options, but yeah, the other, guess, disappointing answer, but also hopeful answer is that it will, it will change. I really hope that the way that I work with clients will be the more prevailing way to work, but it's an industry in transition, like many industries.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (29:14)
And I'm curious, you talked about things that were making you unhappy, you about missing the last train, talked about sitting in a we work for a year, earning less money than you could have been. Why? Why are you doing this to yourself? And how did you keep going through all of that?
Dave Sellick (29:26)
Didn't, yeah.
Yeah, but you said they were making me unhappy. I loved it because I loved it because it was my passion. was because it was what, you know, I've not, I mean, you know, I'm not, again, it's a deeper story. Probably a longer story, but I, the money doesn't drive me or material things or, you know, perceive public success. was, you know, through that period, my
I still didn't know fully about kind of what was driving me, but all I knew was I had this relentless desire to create something new that would drastically improve the way we deliver accountancy at scale. And I was, I feel like at the time, like looking back, I maybe was a bit deluded to think that I could build this thing, that I could scale across my clients and then go and attempt to scale across an industry in some way, but...
Looking back, a lot of that dedication to that partly was creativity. It was about, want to create something new and that was exciting. You know, I'd wake up and go, I'm to build something new. We could change the way we do like financial modeling, could change the way we do management accounts, change the way we do your work with clients. So I didn't need anything more than that. I wasn't thinking about how many hours, you know, it's easy for people to say, I did all these hours and people to then think.
that sounds horrible. I don't want to go through that, but when you're doing something you love, it's like saying to someone, it's going to be really annoying for you. You're to have to play games all day on Saturday. And you're like, what do mean? You know, for someone who loves playing games, that sounds great. You know, but for someone else, might not seem so good. But for me, the work was something that I loved. It was my passion. So, that wasn't really tough. yeah, in hindsight, I realised that
A lot of the relentlessness of what I've been through over the last five years and the sacrifices that I've had. Firstly, I wouldn't encourage anyone to do it. it was, you know, it was personal to me. and it had, there have been a lot of sacrifices. You know, I was not in a relationship for 10 years and I, I, that wasn't necessarily because I didn't want to be in one, but it was because I had to resolve things in myself. And there was also this journey that just felt so important to me. You know, I wasn't living the, you know, my ex PWC colleagues living.
a certain lifestyle and starting families. And, you know, there's me sort of making more money from DJing and, you know, just living a very unglamorous life because I cared about what I was doing, but I couldn't see any other way. But again, for me, but for me, in terms of the really fundamental thing, was the experience I had at PwC. I went through a tough time. I went through depression and that was highly, highly formative to me, even though I didn't realize it at the time that it was about closure. And it has been about closure for me about
making some dent on the industry to show how this work can be done in a more enjoyable way. It just so happens to be that that is correlated to doing great work. And then it creates this sort of virtuous circle of, well, I love my job more because I do great work, having found ways to enjoy it more. So that's why the group I'm starting is called The Circle, The Virtuous Circle.
Yeah, the answer to question is it was instinctive. There was nothing conscious about it. There was nothing, God, I've got to put all these hours in because I've got to build this thing. It was just like, we've got to change this. I'm excited to build something new. And I just took every day as it came. And then all of a sudden it was like, geez, the year's just gone. You know, but I've got all these things I really want to build and I'm excited to build. And I just kept going. And, you know, now, yeah, it's a nice position to be in now where I'm able to...
Phill Keaney-Bolland (33:00)
Yeah.
Dave Sellick (33:12)
earn a more reflective wage. And to be in position now where I have a platform, I'm really lucky to know a lot of the media owners and to have a relationship with them and the events guys and a lot of the influential people in the industry, particularly the small business sort of accounting industry. And I have a platform where I'm able to share what I've created and that was always the dream.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (33:35)
I wonder as well, you know, thank you for being so open as well about this kind of stuff. You know, I have had my own struggles with mental health and depression and things as a lot of people have. And I wonder if there's something in that that gives you a lower tolerance for being unhappy. And, you know, when you've really felt unhappy and unwell, whether you're like, actually, I just, I'm not prepared to
to keep going with things that I know aren't making me happy. And there is a level of, know, you have to be sort of regimented with keeping up good behaviors and all that exercising, whatever it is for you that kind of keeps you on an even keel. Whether some of that makes it, you know, gives you that sort of resilience and drive to kind of push through with, with stuff. Particularly, I think when working on your own business actually does give you fulfillment and make you.
make you quite happy. I'm very much not qualified to speculate beyond my own experiences there. But I do wonder really, whether the thing that I'm actually good at is just being resilient. How much of a kicking can you take and keep going? how much of that just comes from personality and those experiences.
Dave Sellick (34:51)
It's so interesting, isn't it? Yeah, it's so interesting and again, all this does correlate back to having a good accountant and all this kind of stuff. think fundamentally, if people do have the right mindset or you find say an accountant or team members that have that kind of mindset where, yeah, they're resilient, where they have, I guess, a level of...
Phill Keaney-Bolland (34:54)
What's your view on that?
Dave Sellick (35:17)
consciousness beyond instinct and they're able to sort of tap into more empathy and compassion. really helps. But yeah, a hundred percent. the experience I had changed everything. I genuinely, you know, when I started at PWC, that was, I felt like I had my whole life. Matt, I had a girlfriend at the time who I loved and I was living in, you know, I was living next to fabric nightclub and in Faringdon and in near expert market. It was a great little flat. Like I had a good lifestyle. Like, you know, you, do you know what mean? I just felt like.
I'm working on the top graduate scheme in the country. And I could foreseeably, if I'd been happy in that job or I'd just been able to get by and not be, my body just go like, you physically can't walk in here anymore. Like you physically can't do this. Then I think I would have kept going and I would have just continued down that road and never really gone on this journey to find out what is it that I actually care about.
And so yeah, being sort of forced into position where I couldn't do that job and had to be forced into position where I had to sort of think about what do I enjoy, really woke me up. I mean, there are other aspects to it as well. I mean, I took up yoga and I then went on, you know, did that for a long time. then qualified eventually as an instructor. So that's been a big part of my progress, I guess, probably in mindset. And again, along with the DJing and everything like these are very formative.
experiences and sort of learnings that helped me to do my job better as an accountant. And again, these are things that I share with, with other accountants in terms of what I think is important, which again is an ironic thing, right? Based on the fact that you go, well, I want my accountant to do the numbers, but yeah, fine. But really the best accountants are the ones that, you've built trust and where they think creatively and you know, they get you and you, you can have really like open conversations and they're there for you, genuinely there for you.
That's a bit, you know, that comes from a certain type of mindset, in my opinion. So, but yeah, I think it was hugely impactful in terms of where I am now. I wouldn't like to think where I would be had I not gone through it. And I would say that, I would say that those experiences, you know, mental health, like in mental health problems, I think if you, if you can find a way to come through the other side, the, on the other side of it is, is definitely a whole different view on the world for me.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (37:14)
Mm.
Dave Sellick (37:37)
Again, I'm just going to be honest. Like, I felt like it was a new, kind of a new life after that. So I, you know, I remember sitting in the, when I had therapy at the time that, know, they said to me, he just sat there and said, your job's the problem. You know, I'm expecting this person to sort of give me a drug or to say, you've got this problem.
or, you know, whatever it is. And he just said, your, job's the problem. And I was just sitting there just thinking, what are you talking about? But these symptoms are so physical. They're like so real. Like I can't breathe properly. I'm, you know, I've completely spaced out. Like, I can't sleep. I'm emotionally flat. Like nothing excites me. How can that be, you know, my digestion isn't good, whatever my, why, how can that be my job? And
ultimately, yeah, that's why that's, that is the moment when I started to realise how impactful the thing you do for however long every week, of your life pretty impactful on the way you feel inside your body.
And now I would say the most significant thing for my recovery in terms of mental health was starting my own accounting practice because of the, because it allowed me to have this sort of creativity that my mindset, my true personality, when you take away the...
I'm doing this for everyone else. I'm doing this because I want to post on social media. I'm doing this because it's the top graduate scheme. whatever it is. When you take away all those things, my true self was I want to create and I want to help people. Okay. Well, where can I do that in the most effective way possible in the context of my domain experience as an accountant? Start my own firm and create a crazy studio, like where I just play around with technology every day and...
Phill Keaney-Bolland (39:08)
Hmm.
Dave Sellick (39:22)
in a way that aligns with helping people. you know, so yeah, long answer to your question, but I mean, it's, it was everything actually for me in terms of putting me on this route. I, that's another reason why I don't think a lot of people are doing what I'm doing because I do genuinely believe unfortunately, and it's something I'd like to change that most accountants to get to the other side of the process driven, the monotonous, the kind of slightly dehumanized environments that
you tend to qualify in or tend to be drawn to as an inverted commas intelligent person in the current world, to get to the other side of that and to survive again inverted commas and to then go and, you know, embrace your creativity and realize that's what's important to you. think it's, there are many people who manage to do that because it's, because of all the reasons why people have the stereotype they do for accounting.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (40:10)
Do know what you said there, being forced to confront the things that you really care about, I think is really important. And if you can do that before you start a business, I think that's great. I mean, it could be money, and I'm sure for lots of people it is, but it feels like it's rarely that you actually care about doing. Or that when we talk to founders who've been successful and have built great businesses.
it's not generally because they want to increase their bank balance, it's because they genuinely feel there's a problem that they want to solve and they get satisfaction of actually helping other people to solve that. So I think that's, that is really powerful. We've gone, we've gone very, very deep and you know, again, appreciate, you opening up. I'm sure, I'm sure there are ways to, to figure out what you care about that, you know, don't require quite so much.
pain and everything. the reality is, from my own experience as well, it's probably an effective way of getting to that answer. Albeit it's not something I'd particularly recommend.
Dave Sellick (41:13)
I think what I would say is I think it's important for me to explain it, although it is an extreme example. It's why now I do stuff like this, it's why I speak out in industry, it's why I work with other firms, it's why I'm starting a movement to take the services I do and to...
Phill Keaney-Bolland (41:19)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Sellick (41:29)
to scale them to other people who haven't been through what I've been through. A big part of that is because I don't want people to go through that. It doesn't mean I don't think people should have to work hard to get the experience and the expertise that I have, but I do think that they should be able to fast track that. Because what I've been through, don't think, as much as it's putting me in the position that I am, I don't want anyone to go through that necessarily.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (41:37)
Yeah.
Dave Sellick (41:57)
I definitely wouldn't want people to go through that. And then just tapping into the thing you said about people finding out what's important to them. Yeah, I mean, the founders that I've felt have probably been the most successful and that I've been most aligned to are those that have been able to identify.
The things that we sort of instinctively get drawn into, unfortunately in 2024, whether it's, you know, the image or the social media thing or money, these are all biologically wired into humans to be desirable. But what is the thing beyond those instinctive, desirable things for a human being from an evolutionary point of view versus who is your true character? I think those have been able to work that out. I know it's deep, but you know, that's what makes businesses and missions successful.
You know, it might be seem like it's a, an abstract thing for an accountant to talk about, for me, the best accountants, and we're talking about startups, talking about early businesses buy into, need to buy into that founder and need to connect with them. And it's an emotional rollercoaster. lot of the conversations I have with founders are quite emotionally driven as well as just about the numbers. So I think it's a really important skillset. My yoga or my experience of yoga and mindfulness and
That side of my experience is just as important as my expertise in accounting, to help smaller businesses. yes, I think it is an important trait for an accountant to be open about and to think, and actually anyone who's working in early stage businesses, because it's a tough, tough old ride.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (43:28)
Do you still think of yourself as an accountant? Where do you draw the line? Do you think of yourself more as a founder than an accountant?
Dave Sellick (43:37)
I don't know necessarily how I want to be defined or how I want to define what I'm doing. So I just won't. And I've been very careful not to put the word accountant or accountancy by Sid Grove or my brand or me. It doesn't mean I don't define myself as an accountant.
But it just means I don't lead with that. So I guess in answer to question, I don't lead with it to lead with
What do you stand for and what are your values and who do you, what is the value proposition that you're bringing? By the way, I happen to be a really good accountant. So for me, it's, you know, yeah, for me, it's, you know, I'm, I'm an empathy led, I'm an empathy led accountant, but ultimately I don't like to define myself as, I prefer to define myself as the person that I am. And that's someone who cares about people who have passionate missions. And by the way, I'm an accountant and I'm very good at that.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (44:09)
wait.
Mm.
I was at my dentist yesterday and as I was lying in the chair, I was thinking the life of a dentist, and my dentist is the owner of the practice, it's just a little sort of shop around the corner from me, every day must just be the same.
Dave Sellick (44:24)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (44:43)
You you come in in the morning, you put your white coat on, put classic FM on, and a bunch of people come in, lie in the chair, you get your little metal stick out and you say some numbers and some words that don't make a lot of sense. And you do that for eight hours and then you go home and you come back the next day and you do the same thing over and over and over again for 40 years until you retire. And it's like, I don't really...
I mean, that person is the founder of a business, but they are a dentist, not a founder, realistically. There's very little variation in what they do, very little innovation. mean, you know, the metal stick, probably there's a new version comes out every couple of years. don't know. And I guess that things are probably spiced up a bit by, you know, people coming in with horrible teeth.
Maybe that's something you look forward to as a dentist. And I sort of thought, as I was thinking about that, that is basically my worst nightmare, not just because you have to touch people's horrible teeth, but because it just, the level of consistency and repetitiveness, the lack of change, all of those kinds of things, I wouldn't get the energy from that that I'd need to. It would make me really unhappy.
And then at the same time, I thought for lots of people, that is literally the dream. That level of predictability, know, there's always, it's going to be hard for AI to do dental work, I suspect, for a while. You you know, you've got, you've got a good income, you know, you've got a good business, you know, you know, what you're doing every day, things don't change, all that kind of stuff. I think, you know, the more and more we've spoken this morning.
Dave Sellick (46:04)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (46:31)
The more I just think there are at least two types of people in the world. There are people who like can and should be the founder of a startup. And then there are people who like, if that's not how you get your energy, don't do it. Like live the easier life, because it is much easier. You don't have to necessarily have the late nights and the missing the train and earning less money and all of those kinds of things.
that's totally fine. think everything we've spoken about, figuring out what matters to you, figuring out what your personality is, do you feel frustrated enough about a problem to make the sacrifices that you're have to make? Those are all big questions that are worth asking before you jump into doing this.
Dave Sellick (47:12)
One hun-
Yeah
100%. I mean, this is the thing that I will tend to want to understand before I say anything to a business owner that I meet. You know, I'm not going, I don't, maybe sometimes, but not necessarily on, I don't think most of the time I would lead this way, but sometimes I might ask about their accountancy and what they're doing right now. But I would want to understand their business first, just to know that I'm aligned with them. But also the first question I ask when anyone is running a business or
Particularly when they come to me and they're thinking about starting a business, it's why? And why is that important to you? And that really often gears whether I, and I look, it's my opinion, but it's how I gear my perception of whether I think that's a business. Because right now, honestly, the clients I work with, it's an investment for me because they are people that I really, really develop good friendships and care about their businesses, but they are ultimately also part of a...
effectively a prototype of where I see the industry going. But yeah, is the key thing that I will look for, that I will ask is why are they doing what they're doing?
Phill Keaney-Bolland (48:20)
I think that's a great way to think about things and a good way to make sure that your values are aligned and all of that good stuff. Before we wrap up, I wanted to just bring this back to actually talking about accounting and potentially talking about how if you are founding a startup, what some of the things that you should really be thinking about are.
Dave Sellick (48:21)
So, yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (48:47)
you know, within the context of what you do and the way that you do it and specifically how you're different to other accountants that, you people might be might be thinking about working with. What would your advice be to somebody in the early days of startup for how they should think about structuring their finance, how they can avoid the common pitfalls that exist out there?
and also what the sort of nirvana state that they could be aiming for actually looks like.
Dave Sellick (49:23)
I'm just going to apologize firstly if you hear someone literally cutting down a tree in the back. don't know why, but someone's just decided to start getting a chainsaw out by the office. yeah, I mean, it's tough, isn't it? So where do you start? Who do you go to? What kind of accountant do you look for? How long do you wait, almost actually, until you do go into accounting? So for me, I'll give some sort of very, I guess in a way for me, quite basic...
Phill Keaney-Bolland (49:30)
That's okay.
Dave Sellick (49:52)
basic advice. think one of the things that I see a lot of, even with, you know, with early stage businesses is that they all maybe put off getting an accountant. I would say that's not necessarily a good thing. I think you want to try and do that from as early stage as possible, but you want to find someone who's, who's, who's going to be flexible and empathetic to the fact you are very early and can kind of flex the way they work with you and their fees in the early stage. So that's the first thing. Do, do try and find someone.
Of course, if you can't find the right fit, then maybe you have to make it work. But outside of those things, you know, there are the basics in terms of, they are basis, but I'm to give some advice. You know, obviously people know to get a business bank account, but I'm going to say, try and look for a neo bank, like a styling or a Revolut for a business account, just because they're going to be easier for you to work with. And then look to particularly if you've got multiple people in the business.
Combine that, if you do get a Starling with something that works really well with multiple users, so, and FX. So you could, for example, have a stack where you have styling, for example, or even if you did go for another traditional banks like a Barclays or, you know, an HSBC, stack it with Revolutewise or if you're doing a lot of FX, Airwollix. So those are just some fundamentals, but they're important. Definitely get an accounting software in place as well early on. Even if it's really early stage, it's going to help whoever comes in to look at your account.
to have that in place. So I only work with Xero. I think it's the best product on the market. Personally, that's the one that I would advise. So look for maybe an accountant who works with that. And then other software, just to note from the early stages that you might want to consider. We use a product called Apron. We have Yaya and a lot of my clients, which is a payments platform, but also deals with extracting sort of digitalizing receipts. So get a software that helps you to basically digitalize all the receipts that you capture in the early stage.
So that could be Dext or Datamalino or something like Apron. And then also have a process by which you can manage expenses when you sort of start to evolve as a business. So PLEO is good one to mention. So there's just a few of the kind of basic tools just to kind of think about and consider at the early stage outside of even hiring an accountant. And when it comes to an accountant, again, it's just, we've talked about it a lot on this conversation, but there's gonna be this sort of optimum blend of
Yeah, you want to look for someone who's using ideally the right technology, know, has potentially, you know, is a well-versed in zero and kind of the more progressive technology in the industry. You, but you also want to be thinking about the trust side of things and whether it's someone you get on with or does someone you trust, whether it's someone who's being empathetic, particularly the early stage to your situation as not just landing you and tying you in with a year contract from day one when you don't really know what's going to happen. So.
I would say that it's a blend of the two. And in a way I would probably skew more towards the trust side. If you think you can trust someone, but they may not be as progressive as another accountancy firm, that's where I would land more personally, because I think that's more important that you can trust someone and that they, you you feel like they've got your back more. And on that note, just a bit of advice, I would say, obviously there is a lot of, in lots of industries, but you'll see a lot of it in the accounting world, a lot of...
you know, big marketing budgets and fancy looking sites and they'll promise the world. But just whenever you do take on an accountant that hasn't been recommended, referred, just keep an eye on it. Just make sure you don't just assume like they're a trusted accountant, they're going to do a great job. Just let them get on with it. Try and involve yourself as much as possible. And that sort of takes me on to the next point. Try and find an accountant that is going to allow you to be collaborative with them. So firstly, that they are
transparent with you about what they're doing, how they're doing it, where they store things, just so you have that culture of being in the loop with what's going on. And try and find those that perhaps are really encouraging or open to working in a collaborative way with you. So for example, all of my clients I work with on Slack, so it feels like I'm there 24-7, literally. And of course, I give them resources and put things in place to make sure they don't necessarily need to contact me all the time, but it's very collaborative.
whether it's Zoom or some prefer more async like you guys on Loom videos and Slack messages. But then all the way through to payroll, we use a tool that's collaborative on the payroll side. use PayCircle, but there are tools like Pento and PayFit that are similar. So you're involved in the process. You don't feel detached from it. And then apron, I mentioned before, is a collaborative way to manage bank payments. So transparency, collaboration, being progressive for technology, someone you can trust.
And then combining it with all those different apps is really important. those again are really fundamentals. I haven't talked about specifics like getting a set of management accounts in place each month, know, looking at your financial models, your forecasts. The reality is if you find these people and you put these things in place, they will start to fall into place because they'll advise you to obviously, know, they're sort of based on your context that advise when the right time for you to start doing management accounts are is...
how to create those, what they look like, when we should be doing sort of forecasting and modeling. So, yeah, that would be my basics without going into real detail around a particular context. And it'd be as amazing how many startups don't have any of those things in place or obviously pick up finance maybe after, for example, they get investment and then they're backtracking and under actually quite a lot of pressure. Because if you leave it to after your say pre-seed or sometimes even seed round,
Phill Keaney-Bolland (55:19)
Hmm.
Dave Sellick (55:26)
You know, the mindset can be, well, we'll just get it over the line and then we'll sort it all out. But that's fine. But, you know, firstly, you could be undervaluing your investment because you've not worked with someone who really knows what they're doing to present those numbers in the right way or to help you articulate the valuation side or the number side of it. And by the way, don't think that, you know, the way that you manage those finances and present the data room doesn't influence how people view, you know, your ability to, and what they're going to get from you and how you run the business.
But it's also that pressure you get afterwards. know, once you've got the money in the bank, you've got no time to lose. You've got to start either building the product that's ready to then hit the series A and roll out at scale or, you know, or otherwise, you know, just be in the business. The last thing you really want is a huge amount of pressure on you because you're reporting and your finances are nowhere near where they will be because that's what you'll fail straight after a round usually and invariably.
you have investors straight onto your back wanting all sorts of financial data from you and reporting. yeah. Sort of myriad of different bits of information, but hopefully some of it helpful.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (56:25)
Yeah.
I Dave, I think that is some of the most valuable advice anyone's ever given on this podcast, to be honest, I think, I think, you know, the there's, there's, there's one thing actually, that you didn't mention that, you know, you've, you've, you've brought that is really important. And that is, you know, just having, having the data consistently, and quickly, as well. I think that that's really important. So firstly, you know, 100 % agree.
Having an accountant from day one was massive for us. There's a lot of stuff that accountants can do in the early days of setting up a business that is high value, but it's quite one-off and it's kind of not worth really the time spent learning about how to register a company or a lot of the stuff that our accountant just took care of in those early days for the sake of doing something once, something they do all the time, they can do it really quickly.
having someone that you trust. We came into this business as designers and as experts in the things that we deliver for clients, not in accounting. And it's not a great use of time to upskill in that area. That's not to say that, know, literacy around your financials isn't worth upskilling in, but I specifically delivering the accounting. We were very fortunate. We had, there's a level. There's definitely like...
Dave Sellick (57:50)
There's a level.
Thank you.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (57:55)
zero isn't acceptable, but you don't need to be at a level of million.
Dave Sellick (57:57)
No, I'm going to throw out there and-
No, would say that because one of the there is still a level and I think it's just it's just realizing that it's important. And like I I got a bit frustrated when I I heard a little snippet from Stephen Bartlett a while back when he was talking about the fact that
Phill Keaney-Bolland (58:07)
Mm-hmm.
I get very frustrated whenever I hear anything from Stephen Bartlett. don't worry about that.
Dave Sellick (58:18)
Okay. Yeah. Well, so here was a little snippet from him and the problem I have with it is because obviously he's very influential to business owners, right? So he mentioned that he doesn't want, and he says it quite a lot actually about finance. He'll always pick on it. And he will say, finance, don't care about finance. not interested in. And then I don't know whether he's changed recently, but there was a particular podcast and snippet where he was very, very assertive in his opinion about the fact that don't care about the operational side, not interested and
I think for a CEO to be not interested, don't care, to throw that kind of terminology or those kind of phrases around about something so unbelievably fundamental to the success of a business is a little bit misplaced when you're a CEO and you're trying to influence other CEOs. Because for me, the point is not that you're not interested in those things, that you need to...
You still need to be involved in them. And if I hear that, I, if I'd heard that and I'm see it, Steven Bartlett's CFO, I'm pissed off and I'm disengaged period. Because I'm, that makes me feel like he doesn't care about what I do. He's obviously said it the wrong way, potentially, or maybe didn't be misinterpreted. But I, for me, get it straight. Like it's not about not being interested in those things. not about not caring about those things. It's not about pushing it to the side and going, I don't want anything to do with that. It's about.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (59:21)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Dave Sellick (59:43)
giving ownership to someone who knows they're talking about to take care of it. But you still got to have an interest in finance. If you're a CEO, go and be the seat, you know, the commercial officer or the creative, but don't be a CEO and then sit there and say, cause that's the, that's the first way you can, that's the big first and most obvious way you can disengage your finance team and set bad culture financially in your businesses by having that kind of rhetoric. So yeah, I think on a level you need to have an interest if you're running the business.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (59:47)
Exactly.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Dave Sellick (1:00:12)
But again, it comes down to, and I would say the key thing here as well is I didn't mention it, but if your accountant is saying, what do you want me to do? What service would you like versus this is what I think your business needs from me right now. And let's reassess that in a few months time. There's a very, very key difference between the two. And the first one's not good, which is of course I you don't know what services you want. That's, that's part of the role of your accountant to tell you this would be, because I,
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:00:31)
Mm-hmm
Yeah.
Dave Sellick (1:00:42)
You'll often see it, okay, service one, know, bronze, silver, gold. In my opinion, I think that's a potentially a red flag. They might be illustrative if you see those things on an accountancy site, but your accountant's job is not ideally a good accountant is not just to tell you or to be able to do those things, but it's also to be able to on an ongoing basis, tell you what you need, what they think the price point should be. That's fair in terms of the value to you and the right set of services for you.
So I would say, hopefully you don't feel this, like if your accountant is someone you go, God, that's not good value, then by default, they're not a good accountant really, because their job is not just to advise you on your account, or I should say your finance also includes the fee of your accountant. That's also hitting your P &L. So if your accountant to be someone who you look at and go, that's not value, is a bit ironic, isn't it?
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:01:37)
I'm going to talk about value in a second. I would say, I think in my opinion, it's a massive false economy to save money on an accountant in the early days of the business. And you're absolutely right. You do need to be across the financial information in your business and you need to be interested in that stuff.
that all of that stuff is really important. But there are things that you can get an accountant to do in the early days of your business that will set you up for success that I don't think it's worth you doing yourself. And that for me is a very different thing to managing the business in a responsible way. And we got a lot of value just out of having somebody in the initial few months who...
One could set things up, but also was there for the million questions that we had as new business founders who hadn't done any of this stuff before. We had somebody we could trust and go to and they were really, really great. you know, they gave us the value that they gave us was trust and confidence and surety around the things that we're doing, which is also the value that you give us Dave, but.
Dave Sellick (1:02:24)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:02:42)
You give us two other additional things that I think are quite quantifiable. The first is, I think you've probably saved us on average two days of a person per week doing administrative tasks around finance that have now been automated. And you spoke about some of the different products that we were using.
That isn't just a time-saving thing. It's also a data quality thing, which means that we can be much more confident that we can rely on the information that is being produced. So that's one thing. And if you are running a business, if I said to you that you can basically save the amount of time that you're spending on stuff that is just admin, that's obviously going to be really attractive.
The other thing that you've done, and we were talking before, I think we're only really just scratching the surface of this is again, linked to data is we can make much better decisions about how we're running the business because of the work that you've done. Because I can say to you, well, firstly, the end of the month comes around and the reports are done. I don't know if you want to say how quickly you can turn those things around.
but rapidly and significantly faster and with less manual effort than we were doing before. But also if I have a question, if I'm running a business and I say, Dave, I've got a scenario for you. I'd like to invest more in this area. Can you tell me what the implication of that will be? You are able to answer that question much more confidently than we could have done before. It's much less speculative, much more
Dave Sellick (1:04:18)
Hmm.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:04:28)
quickly and we're therefore able to test more different scenarios out and to be able to, as I say, make ultimately better decisions with a better understanding of the implication of those decisions than we've ever been able to before. And I think that that is pretty priceless.
In some respects, the real value of what you do, is actually being able to sleep a little bit more soundly at night and just feel like... I would describe it as the difference between getting into a car, getting onto the motorway and trying to drive with your hands over your eyes versus actually being able to see where you're going. And that's been absolutely huge for us.
Dave Sellick (1:04:57)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's good to hear. And I think ultimately for people to kind of resonate kind of with what you're saying and kind of what is the service that we're actually talking about, you am I not just an external accountant? Well, I did mention at the beginning that effectively what my vision was and what I do is more of a portfolio head of finance service and to which you might say, that's not an external accountant then. Well, no, no, I do all of the external accountancy bits as well. We do all of the compliance, the year ends of VAT submissions, the...
corporation tax, all of that stuff is done by me.
But yeah, the service that I'm providing effectively is a hybrid service between your typical external accountant and if you were to employ someone internally.
So it's a huge cost saving. It's a huge time saving because although the methods saved costs,
That's because they're saving time, which also means things are done quicker. So it sounds almost too good to be true. The reality is obviously hopefully by, you know, me explaining how I got here, people will realise that there's a reason why I've been able to develop what I've done and it's not come through and come without a massive, massive amount of work. but yeah, that's what that's obviously what you're experiencing and kind of what I'm able to do through
using the right technology in the right way and combining it with huge amounts of experience working with startups and working on the frontline in accounting.
Like for me, all small businesses and startups that are growing, particularly at the early stage for tech companies, let's call that pre-seed through to at least series A, maybe beyond that. Shouldn't have strategic CFOs in there unless they're centered around just around literally the fundraise and you know, they're employed very, very much on a consultancy basis because of their contacts and their domain experience in that particular area or tech sector, for example.
Because you would need everyone to be building stuff. At that point, you need an accountant who can build things for you. You you can have all the talk in the world, but like if someone can't present you numbers that are accurate because they don't know how to build a report that does that in an optimized way, And I had this problem when I was going into head of finance jobs, when I was in that, you know, one job after another as a head of finance.
hearing from recruiters that these early stay startups had a CFO in there for a year. And I would ask them, well, okay, what's the job spec for me? They go, well, they need you to build the finance infrastructure. I'm said, well, why hasn't the CFO done that? because they'd be managing the relationship with the investors, by the way, at a cost of around 140K a year. And I'm like, but with what information? And like, exactly, that's what you're coming in to build.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:07:50)
Hmm.
Dave Sellick (1:07:53)
But they've been there for a year. OK, this isn't for me. That CFO is going to annoy me. And it's another tangent. that's just another sort of example of some of little things that happening in our industry. And the reason, by the way, that you get these people that step back after a certain number of years of post-qualified experience.
But there is so much value for experienced people to be doing things like bookkeeping, et cetera. Most people will say to me, disagree because they're low value tasks. They're low value tasks if you do them in a way that's super manual.
But if you're doing them in a way that optimizes with technology, the ability and speed at which someone who's experienced can leverage technology to do those things is in alignment and more than the cost per hour of them to an equivalent junior accountant, and I can prove it.
And what you're seeing a systemic problem within startups is all these CFOs and CFO type services dressing up this data, making it look good.
And then they realized that underneath it's it's like baking a cake. It looks perfect. Take it out of the oven, cut into it. And it's like, it's not cooked inside. It's just full of yolk. You know, it's, that's how a lot of these dashboard solutions are. And these reports that you see at startups and, ultimately the quality needs to be good. you know, that, that's what I'm able to do,
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:09:23)
A good lesson for almost every function within a startup, think, trying to avoid people who are just pure strategy while you need people to be building. David does sound too good to be true, but as somebody who works with you, I can definitely vouch for you. And if you're listening to this and you're not convinced, then just let me know and I will give Dave a good reference.
Dave Sellick (1:09:21)
with not a lot of value in my opinion.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:09:47)
Where can people find you? can they follow you? What would you like to plug?
Dave Sellick (1:09:52)
but LinkedIn is the place to find me. but yeah, just have a search me up on LinkedIn. If you're interested in kind of what I'm doing and you'll see.
some of the bits that I've been doing historically on there I posted So that's the best place to find me. I am launching a new platform called the Circle, which is going to be aimed at accountants. But I think there's a lot of value in there for startup founders as well, or founder-owned businesses.
And so a dual kind of purpose of what I will be doing with the platform is, hopefully enabling a lot more accountants to do some of the things that I do. And I will also be learning from them a little bit as to how to scale. Because know, accountants actually, lot of the practices are good at scaling, just not good at scaling anything particularly good. So, yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:10:40)
Savage.
Dave Sellick (1:10:41)
It is a bit savage, I mean, you know, tell me I'm wrong. If you think I'm wrong, actually, yeah. If you're listening, you think I'm wrong, tell me, because I'd like to, you I have a lot of friends in the accounting industry and I say that kind of, I say that hopefully based on fact and relatively objectively. And it's really, most of that is targeted towards, you know, when I'm talking about small businesses and startups and the more kind of, I guess, what we call advisory or strategic side of accounting. know, accountants can scale compliance.
They're just, it's this whole new world that people listening to their startups want, which is, don't just want a compliance. want you to support me. want you to be there to answer. I want you to give me advice. And that's not what, when I'm referring to them, not scaling things well, that's what I'm talking about. And I think most accounting firms would be honest about that. And so, you know, and I get, again, I have a really good relationship with a lot of firms and I want to help them to do that. So yeah, the circle has a dual purpose to help them do that, but also to raise awareness,
And so, yeah, take a look at the content, stay curious and also reach out if you have anything that you want to need help with or you need any advice on, I'm always happy to talk.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:11:49)
Thank you, Dave. We're always happy to talk to you. Maybe we can get you on when you get closer to launching the Circle and talk about what your actual experience of getting that out and getting people onto it looks like. Thanks so much this morning and thank you everybody for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please just like and subscribe. And if you are in any WhatsApp groups, Slack groups, anything like that with other tech founders and you think they might enjoy it, please.
Feel free to share because it really does help us to boost our audience as well. So that's it. That's all we've got time for. We will see you again next week for another episode of the Cult Products Podcast. Thanks everyone for listening and take care.
Dave Sellick (1:12:31)
Thanks.