Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Adam Pritchard of UK firm, Linford Grey, joins Stuart to share his unique journey from touring the country appearing in on-stage musicals to starting his own accountancy practice. Adam talks about the challenges of helping his clients navigate the global pandemic, moving from one crisis to the next, and how he is building the type of business that he is proud of, enjoys, and provides a platform for his staff to develop and grow.
Join Stuart McLeod as he interviews the world's top accounting leaders to understand their story, how they operate, their goals, mission, and top advice to help you run your accounting firm.
Stuart McLeod: 00:00:05.902 [music] Hi, I'm Stuart McLeod, CEO and co-founder of Karbon. Welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, the show where I go behind the scenes with the world's top accounting leaders. [music] Today I'm joined by Adam Pritchard, the chartered accountant and founder of Linford Grey, a UK advisory and accounting firm servicing clients in the hospitality and e-commerce sectors. Adam has extensive experience in accounting, management, consulting, and client services. He is a keen fight fan. He spent his youth competing around the country. It's my pleasure to welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast Adam Pritchard.
Adam Pritchard: 00:00:47.096 Sorry, I'm late.
Stuart McLeod: 00:00:48.635 No, you're right. You're right. You got a very comfy little setup there this British afternoon sun. The sun is out and the pound is down. [laughter]
Adam Pritchard: 00:00:58.523 Yeah. [inaudible] gives it [inaudible] it takes [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod: 00:01:01.830 That's right. I don't know which one you prefer. I'd probably take the sun, I think. As long as you're not planning on travelling here for a while.
Adam Pritchard: 00:01:11.165 No, I get married at the weekend, and so I'm going to take the sun.
Stuart McLeod: 00:01:16.361 Yeah. No. Well, congratulations.
Adam Pritchard: 00:01:18.917 Thank you.
Stuart McLeod: 00:01:19.121 [inaudible] her name. Tell me all about the process coming up to this weekend.
Adam Pritchard: 00:01:23.833 Coming up to this weekend? Well, her name is Lily.
Stuart McLeod: 00:01:26.385 Lily? Yes.
Adam Pritchard: 00:01:27.435 We've been together for about 10 years.
Stuart McLeod: 00:01:29.307 Oh, yes. There's something about accountants that seem to have a very long maturation period of relationships.
Adam Pritchard: 00:01:39.469 Yeah, for sure.
Stuart McLeod: 00:01:39.566 There was another one that was like 15 years or something, I was talking to.
Adam Pritchard: 00:01:43.144 Yeah. Well, we've got a little girl, she's three.
Stuart McLeod: 00:01:45.363 Oh, lovely.
Adam Pritchard: 00:01:46.477 We got engaged before we had Evangeline, and then Lily wanted to wait until Evangeline could be part of the wedding and understand it.
Stuart McLeod: 00:01:53.255 Oh, how nice.
Adam Pritchard: 00:01:54.120 Yeah. And we sat at the back end of 2021 and I said to her, we'll get married this year, don't worry. She said no way. The pandemic had meant that all of the weddings had been cancelled and all of that.
Stuart McLeod: 00:02:05.757 That's right.
Adam Pritchard: 00:02:06.230 But we saw we found a venue very close to us, sort of outdoor foresty type venue, which was perfect. And so it got booked in and the process up to now has been-- I've been very quiet, very patiently listening to everything that is required of me. And I will turn up on Saturday.
Stuart McLeod: 00:02:25.173 Not shit-faced.
Adam Pritchard: 00:02:26.203 No, and deliver. [laughter]
Stuart McLeod: 00:02:30.431 Don't let your mates take you out and have you home at 4:00 in the morning on a Friday night.
Adam Pritchard: 00:02:37.347 No. Definitely.
Stuart McLeod: 00:02:37.350 That's never looked upon nicely. And you look far too wise and mature to do such a thing anyway.
Adam Pritchard: 00:02:46.071 Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's Thursday. I'm going out on Thursday.
Stuart McLeod: 00:02:49.870 There you go. Good idea. Good idea. That'll be fun. And that's very exciting to have your daughter as part of the wedding. She's probably just as excited as anybody else, right?
Adam Pritchard: 00:03:00.064 Yeah. She gets to live like a princess for a day, and she's the spit of her mum, thank God, so.
Stuart McLeod: 00:03:06.952 Not short hair and a beard.
Adam Pritchard: 00:03:09.792 No, no. [laughter] No. So yeah. It's just--
Stuart McLeod: 00:03:15.191 That'd be spectacular. Well, congratulations. That's very exciting.
Adam Pritchard: 00:03:18.893 I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. Hard earned.
Stuart McLeod: 00:03:21.344 Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially over the last few years. Yeah. I mean, we talked about it a bit on this podcast, but I guess postponing a wedding is unideal, but plenty of others have suffered, like, not being able to graduate and lost loved ones and just--
Adam Pritchard: 00:03:42.532 Yeah. All tonnes of craziness, yeah.
Stuart McLeod: 00:03:46.878 All kinds of awful things, right? How's business been through the pandemic for Linford?
Adam Pritchard: 00:03:52.446 It's been good. It's been good. We were always online. We were digital. We were used to working the way that I think the rest of the world had to quickly get used to working, and it meant that we could be there for our clients. It was sort of business as usual for us. And I think a lot of-- well, my impression is that some accountants in this country just sort of packed up shop, furloughed their staff, left a lot of their clients in the cold. And so we actually grew quite significantly over the pandemic.
Stuart McLeod: 00:04:18.704 Yep. Yep. And there wasn't a great-- I mean, you're sitting in a lovely office at the moment, but did you have people sort of more or less sort of hybrid arrangements anyway?
Adam Pritchard: 00:04:32.903 No, we've always been based in the office. We've always been based in the office. And throughout the pandemic, we just managed that process a little bit more cleanly. So rotors and schedules and remote working wherever possible. But also, it's nice to get into the office and see people and communicate face to face. Without that, you lose all of, not just the camaraderie, but the ability to solve problems by just leaning over a desk and going, "This client has just emailed me. Have you got that? Or do you understand where we're picking this up from?" So yeah. Yeah.
Stuart McLeod: 00:05:09.756 Tell me, what's your journey to accounting? Tell me all about that.
Adam Pritchard: 00:05:14.533 Tell you all about my journey to accounting. Well, I actually started my career as a-- I'm not sure whether you would call me an actor or performer, but I used to be in West End and touring shows as a singer, dancer. That's where I met Lily. Lily is an actor.
Stuart McLeod: 00:05:28.799 Oh, lovely.
Adam Pritchard: 00:05:29.728 Yeah. Yeah. She's still successful. I was not that successful. [crosstalk].
Stuart McLeod: 00:05:33.873 You found a safer career.
Adam Pritchard: 00:05:36.676 Yeah, for sure. [crosstalk].
Stuart McLeod: 00:05:38.589 We're going to stick to our strengths, right? We're going to strengths.
Adam Pritchard: 00:05:43.166 Absolutely. So, yeah, I was doing that. I went on tour with South Pacific which was directed by an American guy called Bartlett Sher, who was a Tony award-winning guy. But the boys are on stage for maybe 40 minutes out of a three-and-a-half-hour show. And so I just picked up some distance learning on the ACCA because I had A level and a degree in economics. I had a degree in history. I was always interested. So I thought, I'll just read these books, distance learning. Got in--
Stuart McLeod: 00:06:13.096 While everybody else is working out there, I'll get a degree. That's a good idea.
Adam Pritchard: 00:06:16.493 And that's exactly what I did. And then I did my last job in 2012, which was an arena tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, which is the tour I met Lily on. So I no longer needed to meet girls either. So I [crosstalk] could leave that behind me [crosstalk].
Stuart McLeod: 00:06:31.418 No. That's right. All the motivation had gone.
Adam Pritchard: 00:06:34.851 Yeah. I could leave that behind me. And started working in the city, in London, an independent film company, then a management consultancy. I left there. Lily started to take more TV and film roles, which meant we didn't need to be in town, she didn't need to be in the West End, going to Matinees and all that type of stuff. So we moved back up-- we moved back up to Leicestershire where I'm from. She's from Atherstone, which is just on sort of like 40 minutes away from where I was born and raised. Took an office. We're in a brand new office here that we moved into and we bought last year and moved into it. That was funded by the growth throughout the pandemic, which was really great and was sort of the realisation of the dream. But in 2018 that we moved back up. I started Linford Grey as we know it today, and we hired Sophie, our head of media and marketing. She's been a godsend and a real asset to the business. And we've grown the accountancy team, and now we're in these lovely offices. There's me, there's Sophie, the head of media and marketing. We have a content creator and two other accountants that work in-house with us.
Stuart McLeod: 00:07:39.296 And having a full-time marketer, what does that mean for growth?
Adam Pritchard: 00:07:46.003 Well, I think whenever we talk to people, people are surprised at how fast we've grown over the nearly 4 years that we've been trading. I think there are accountants, perhaps more traditional accountants out there that would do that growth in 10 years rather than in the 4. And it's something that we-- and obviously, it allows us to focus. It's allowed us to build the brand. And I think aside from the sort of lead acquisition and the business development, it makes us more a complete business and a more complete practice than most, the better business and a more consistent business. And I think that's been incredibly valuable on those fronts.
Stuart McLeod: 00:08:29.799 Yeah. So growth has been something that's sort of built-in from the start, right?
Adam Pritchard: 00:08:35.192 Yeah. Absolutely. When I started the business, I couldn't afford to be at the school where it was like, well, if we lose money for the first however many months, no problem. The business had to make money from the beginning, and I was going to work 23 hours a day to make it make money, if that's what it required. And Sophie was our first hire. The time that we hired Sophie, I was still stacked out with work. I was still delivering for clients, running every aspect of their compliance and advisory work. But we brought Sophie on anyway, because we knew without somebody driving the growth of the business, we were always going to be stuck at the back of this barn in one room with me.
Stuart McLeod: 00:09:17.180 And the horses.
Adam Pritchard: 00:09:18.330 Yeah. Yeah. With me, just desperately trying to bash away work at 16 hours a days. So she was the first hire. And then, I think six to eight months later, we hired [inaudible] and hopefully, we'll just keep filling the funnel and growing the team and taking over the world.
Stuart McLeod: 00:09:37.360 Yeah. Yeah. Keep [inaudible].
Adam Pritchard: 00:09:38.345 With Karbon at the centre.
Stuart McLeod: 00:09:40.893 Oh, well, I'm glad to hear. We'll get to that later. That's all right. Okay. So, acting, singing. Have you got a favourite musical that you were in and performing?
Adam Pritchard: 00:09:51.655 Oh, that I was in?
Stuart McLeod: 00:09:52.675 Mm-hmm.
Adam Pritchard: 00:09:53.194 I have to say, the experience of being on Jesus Christ Superstar was incredible in the arenas. That's something that you sort of live with it. It worked differently to other tours. Most of the tours, you're carting yourself around on trains or driving. You're staying in [inaudible], and you're there for like 12 months, it's a nightmare. But this was like a 3-month gig, and they treated you like it was a rock star tour. It was tour buses. It was tour buses. It was nice hotels. There was catering on site. And I think the O2 holds 20,000 people. And so to open at the O2 and have all of those people there and the lights and the sound, the orchestra and the band, it was incredible. That was really great. But I am also partial to the classics. I was never in it, but I do love Carousel, and it's been given completely new meaning for me as a father.
Stuart McLeod: 00:10:53.161 When we were up there earlier in the year, over there, I guess, so Wicked, which was great. And my wife went to some of the typicals while I was working and [inaudible] and all of that. But Georgia, who's mad into Harry Potter, saw the marathon.
Adam Pritchard: 00:11:12.794 Oh, really?
Stuart McLeod: 00:11:13.321 The Harry Potter play. So it's amazing, really, though, getting back to pre-COVID levels of attendance and all the fantastic musicals in West End.
Adam Pritchard: 00:11:26.791 Yeah. Yeah. They've done well to come back. It was great. Tough year for a lot of people. We've actually got a friend, Tom, plays Ron Weasley in Harry Potter in the West End. And I think during the pandemic-- I think it's-- I can't remember the name. He runs the theatre. I can't remember the name. But that all closed down. Sonia Friedman [inaudible], it all went down. He was sort of left with the mortgage to pay. Self-employed. He couldn't really get any of the government support other than the self-employed scheme, which wasn't the most robust. And I think he ended up looking at to support his family, getting down the supermarket and, no joke, stacking the shells until it came back. So you go from that sort of life where your weekly wage is a cracking one in that kind of a show. But you're living the life that-- you live to your means, don't you?
Stuart McLeod: 00:12:21.141 That's right, of course.
Adam Pritchard: 00:12:21.544 He's living their life and then suddenly, boom, switched off. No support. So, yeah, that was a big wake up call for him. But they've returned and then back to normal. So, yeah, good stuff.
Stuart McLeod: 00:12:32.377 After your musical career, were you working at a larger firm or anything like that? You just thought, "No, I'm going to go in to do this. I know how to do this. This looks easy. I've studied all the books."
Adam Pritchard: 00:12:45.573 Yeah. Pretty much. Pretty much. When you're doing that kind of thing, that can be a couple of months before you go from one job to getting another, and that's if you're lucky. It's rare. The actor that level that goes job, job, job, job, sort of came off Superstar having got [inaudible] of my qualification over the last couple of years and I just emailed everybody. I wanted to work for a film company because I thought it would be glamorous. And I was like, I'll make this move. I can see me working in the finance department of film company. I emailed every film company I could find in London, and I'm looking to get that one guy. But that one guy, David Groundwater at River Film, got back to me and just said, come in, come in tomorrow. You get a very--
Stuart McLeod: 00:13:32.586 Yeah. That sounds like film. Yeah.
Adam Pritchard: 00:13:34.744 Yeah. Yeah. You hit a very serendipitous sort of point. I was just having this conversation, come in tomorrow, and then a week later I was their junior finance manager.
Stuart McLeod: 00:13:44.118 Right. Okay. And how long were you there? How long were you at River Film then?
Adam Pritchard: 00:13:47.831 I was there for, I think, just over a year before I got over-ambitious and moved on to a management consultancy in Piccadilly. Yeah. Yeah. My brother is a super successful corporate guy, and he's and he's younger than me. And, yeah, I think he still works for the Omnicom Group or a subsidiary within that group. But he'd moved his career forward very quickly as a young 20-- in his early 20s. And the part of the way he'd strategise to do that is every sort of year he would go and say to his employer, I've gone out, I've got a new offer on the table, match it or I'm moving on.
Stuart McLeod: 00:14:25.678 Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Employers love that.
Adam Pritchard: 00:14:30.687 I did the same with River Film and I moved into a management consultancy in London. It turned out that that was probably, I don't know, a blessing in disguise, but I think it was like six or eight months later, they made that whole department redundant because it was just one part of a larger gig. And that was the point at which I said, "Well, I know what I'm doing now, I've got my qualifications, and I think I can do it better." I don't like the way that they were doing it. It was boring, it was frustrating, it was slow, and it had very little value. I'm going to try and do this for myself.
Stuart McLeod: 00:15:02.327 Yeah. And thus Linford Grey. But you're Adam Pritchard, so I got to ask, Linford is not Pritchard spelled backwards or anything like that?
Adam Pritchard: 00:15:13.036 No. No. So where we're based, or where we were based before we made this move - we're probably 10 minutes away from it now - it's called Bradgate Park. And Bradgate Park is the ancestral home of Lady Jane Grey, who was queen for a day. And so that's why it's Grey.
Stuart McLeod: 00:15:28.973 Oh, I don't know that story. What's that story?
Adam Pritchard: 00:15:31.860 I've got a history degree, and I could not tell you the full story.
Stuart McLeod: 00:15:36.426 We better cut this bit out.
Adam Pritchard: 00:15:37.653 Yeah. I think Lady Jane--
Stuart McLeod: 00:15:39.762 We'll come back to this, and we'll do five minutes of half-ass internet research, and we'll come up with a story.
Adam Pritchard: 00:15:47.694 It was a holiday with the protestants nurses, the Catholics, I believe. And she was--
Stuart McLeod: 00:15:53.332 Oh, that old chestnut.
Adam Pritchard: 00:15:55.398 Yeah. She became queen, but that was very quickly deposed by Mary, Queen of Scots. I think that's the story. And subsequently executed, I imagine.
Stuart McLeod: 00:16:07.008 Oh, of course. Yeah. Chop their heads off. Oh, okay. All right. Well--
Adam Pritchard: 00:16:09.668 Yeah. So Bradgate Park is a lovely deer park. And so that's where it is.
Stuart McLeod: 00:16:13.750 Here you go. This is in the 1500s, so the 16th century. Nine-days queen.
Adam Pritchard: 00:16:21.168 Nine days. There you go.
Stuart McLeod: 00:16:22.396 Nine days. And she was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, so that must have had something to do with it.
Adam Pritchard: 00:16:30.068 Yeah, absolutely.
Stuart McLeod: 00:16:31.137 And then anyway, there's too much to read now, but we'll come back to that. And we'll find a way to weave it in.
Adam Pritchard: 00:16:37.389 I'm going to get slammed online for not knowing.
Stuart McLeod: 00:16:39.277 That's right. That's right. Okay. So there's the Grey. There was a short-lived queen who probably became headless. Well, let's just assume. She only lived for-- she wasn't very old. She was only like 20 years old when she died or something. So there you go. She didn't write any-- she wasn't around long enough to have a big influence, but she'll be very proud of her name on famous accountants.
Adam Pritchard: 00:17:05.016 Absolutely. Absolutely. If only she knew.
Stuart McLeod: 00:17:08.296 If only she knew. If only she knew. Exactly. All right. So the Grey is sort of a location and [inaudible] history. And the Linford?
Adam Pritchard: 00:17:17.924 It's in the town of Newtown, Linford. So the Linford and the Grey, we just took the last of each.
Stuart McLeod: 00:17:22.891 Very good. So you've added the associates. I mean, it could be a homeware store, if you thought of selling candles or something. Linford Grey could-- there you go.
Adam Pritchard: 00:17:33.122 Yes. You're right. Yankee. I thought about selling lots over the years. A couple of months, I took a quick look at OnlyFans.
Stuart McLeod: 00:17:45.609 Oh, how'd that go for you?
Adam Pritchard: 00:17:47.427 Not very well.
Stuart McLeod: 00:17:48.338 Not very well. Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. Mostly women, some boys, but have done extremely well.
Adam Pritchard: 00:17:59.397 Extremely well.
Stuart McLeod: 00:18:00.585 Good on them.
Adam Pritchard: 00:18:01.358 [inaudible], can you?
Stuart McLeod: 00:18:02.618 No. No. I mean, it depends where you are. If you're down in conservative Texas and/or Florida and you're not blown over-- some mums of kids had a few issues, but apart from that, most people have done-- some people have done very well out of it.
Adam Pritchard: 00:18:21.819 Absolutely. Absolutely.
Stuart McLeod: 00:18:22.979 They don't like seeing them, the mums, naked at drop-off like previous, right? So that's the issue. But we're more liberal up here on the West Coast, so we don't have such issues. Well, no, I love the name. I love the branding.
Adam Pritchard: 00:18:41.478 Thank you.
Stuart McLeod: 00:18:41.828 And the success so far. So tell me about some of your client base. Do you focus on a particular type of client or geographical area close to Leicester? How do you think about that?
Adam Pritchard: 00:18:58.079 Well, we don't focus on a particular type of client, and we don't focus on any particular geographical area. I think the fact that we are completely cloud-based allows us to provide a reliable, scalable service for anybody, regardless of where they are in the country. We've got clients in Northern Ireland. We've got clients in Edinburgh. We've got clients in London. We've got clients from the Midlands, which is where we are at, so we don't particularly focus on that. And in terms of a niche, we've developed a niche in the hospitality sector, but I think that's arrived kind of organically because we've done a good job for a couple of people. We've taken the time to understand what their pain points and bottlenecks are, and they've then sort of repaid their favour by referring in work. So we've developed that kind of a niche. But I think our niche really is taking businesses and using technology to help them streamline their data, building in integrations that sort of cross that border between finance and operations as well so that we can deliver real-time outputs that means something to them. And I'd say that was our niche. If anything, it's the lead that we take with technology and the time and the heartbreak that that saves on the client's end.
Stuart McLeod: 00:20:13.832 Yeah. So they're typically businesses that are looking to sort of progress, perhaps operationalise, perhaps improve their capacity to deliver those kinds of things and looking for a partner to do so?
Adam Pritchard: 00:20:29.421 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fairly accurate. People that want growth don't necessarily know how to achieve it. They want numbers, but don't necessarily know what that looks like, and they want control and transparency over it and they don't want to have to spend the time themselves in bringing that all together. They come to us and we say, "We know the space. We know the tech. We know how to communicate. We're not your traditional accountant. We don't take on ad-hoc work from people that just call us if they want us to do the statutory accounts. We focus on those relationships that we have so we can plug you in and we can start playing and we can deliver whatever you need to do whatever we need to deliver, because we have this tech that we can leverage on your behalf." And that doesn't know-- we're not the cheapest accountants out there, but I would say that we are one of the best small firms in the UK.
Stuart McLeod: 00:21:23.531 Cool. Your reputation certainly confirms. Tell me about some of these hospitality clients, because some of them probably would have had to take drastic action during COVID. Have you got some stories about their journey?
Adam Pritchard: 00:21:39.512 Yeah. Absolutely. I think the key thing that was-- I mean, a lot of those hospitality businesses are up in Scotland, and they had a harder time during the past because Nicola Sturgeon was more reluctant to ease off the restrictions than they were in England. So, yeah, when it all kicked off, it was all hands to the pump. We need a civil's application. And then they introduced the bounce back and, "Can we get that?" "Yeah. You can." "And do we top people up, don't we top people up on the job retention scheme? How do we manage this process?" A lot of them on lease venues, and so the breweries were helping them to a certain extent, but they've got their own pressures to manage. But now that it's-- and then it was all started-- it was all coming back. They didn't have a very good Christmas, New Year because of the restrictions up there, and then they got hit with train strikes and so people weren't coming into the cities anymore. So they've had a difficult time. And I think, regardless of whether you're in-- less so in London, but certainly, as you move into Scotland, a lot of the narrative that we're seeing around that is businesses coming back, but it's not coming back the way it was. It's not quite there the way it was pre-pandemic. And I think they're sort of making small losses, breaking even, making small profit. They're really having to manage the fixed overhead of the business and understand their break evens and really control their margins on the top lines. And I think the question I'm asking them at the minute is we keep talking about a return to normal. What if this is the new normal? How do you make-- how do you make--
Stuart McLeod: 00:23:10.590 Yeah. What if there isn't a normal? Yeah.
Adam Pritchard: 00:23:12.592 Yeah. How do you make this work if it is an £80,000 a month venue as opposed to £120,000 a month venue? You've got to really start considering that because your cash burn rate says you've got six months left, something like that. So we really have to start wondering, is the strategy that we're just pinning our hopes on business returning? What if this is the new normal? So those are the conversations we're having with those venues at the minute, and it seems to be the venues that are sitting in the middle of that-- in the middle of the market, where you go for-- where you would go for nice food, but not expensive food, where you would go for a nice drink, but you're not going out, out [crosstalk] keep finding it.
Stuart McLeod: 00:23:51.081 It's not Michelin star.
Adam Pritchard: 00:23:53.134 Right. But we've got a very we got a fine dining restaurant open in Mayfair that we look after. They've gone great guns at the top end. The wealthy aren't really affected, and they will still go for very expensive dinners. It's the middle classes and the people catering to those that have been most adversely affected is my experience.
Stuart McLeod: 00:24:13.480 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In your client base, what's in-- I mean, I guess some of them have got to ask themselves if-- I don't mean to put it crudely, but if they can be fucked; if you're going to scrape this out, if you're going to just have to constantly grind and grind because it doesn't look like for what it-- like, working from home means that people aren't in the cities on Fridays and Fridays in England, over the 12 weeks of summer had 35 million people on every pub corner, right, and Scotland--
Adam Pritchard: 00:24:50.108 Exactly. Yeah.
Stuart McLeod: 00:24:51.284 --obviously. You just can't understand them as much. And the world is a different place, and it affects people in different ways and provides opportunity and provides heartache and pain, and that's a song. I think it was Foreigner or something, wasn't it? Yeah. I mean, those decisions are being made all across the world, aren't they? I mean, San Francisco, which we don't live in anymore, but it's just had enormous turnover of restaurants and things.
Adam Pritchard: 00:25:23.917 Yeah. It's a big question. And if you're not going to do that, what are you going to do? Do you want to eke out? Do you really want to eke it out? Or you're going to have to think again about what we're up to.
Stuart McLeod: 00:25:35.736 Absolutely.
Adam Pritchard: 00:25:36.588 Yeah. It's a big question. It's a big question. I think people are still holding on at the minute. A couple of people have chosen to restructure. A couple of people have chosen to restructure and get out of unprofitable venues that they didn't think were very profitable pre-pandemic.
Stuart McLeod: 00:25:49.435 In the first place. Yeah. Well, that probably makes it a bit easier.
Adam Pritchard: 00:25:52.912 Yeah. There's a narrative behind why you're doing it that can be understood. I think, for the most part, people are still hanging on, saying, "It's going to return. It's going to come back." Time will tell I suppose.
Stuart McLeod: 00:26:05.278 Yeah. Well, I mean, in the UK in particular, and I guess the greater United Kingdom. I mean, it's nearly like lurching from one crisis to the fucking next crisis. It's not COVID. It's brexit. If it's not Brexit, it's the pound. We're nearly at parity to the US dollar, which I don't-- the last time it was even close to that. How's your history?
Adam Pritchard: 00:26:32.568 I'm not sure. I think I saw [inaudible] 1974 or something.
Stuart McLeod: 00:26:35.285 Yeah. Well, yeah, I was 10. Yeah. 1984, 1985 was around sort of that 80, 0.90 cents. It's extraordinary. So that has a dramatic impact. Your imports go up, if that's what the business you're in, and all that kind of thing, right?
Adam Pritchard: 00:26:53.567 I think broadly on consumer confidence as well, I think.
Stuart McLeod: 00:26:55.976 Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Pritchard: 00:26:57.303 There's definitely an uncertainty. We're feeling that with clients. Everybody wants that little bit more attention. They're looking to shore up their resources and make sure that they've got the resources to last a crisis or to take the cost of increased energy or all that type of stuff.
Stuart McLeod: 00:27:14.804 Yeah. Oh, fuck yeah. Oh, yeah. You got to stay [inaudible]. Winter is coming. You got to stay warm. You can't get your guests from Russia anymore.
Adam Pritchard: 00:27:21.653 No. That's exactly [crosstalk].
Stuart McLeod: 00:27:23.766 Boris has done a fucking great job. He's like, "I'm out of here. See you, you pricks. Fucking have at it."
Adam Pritchard: 00:27:31.655 It all went down, didn't it? I sat a few months ago, I was like, "Christ, we just had the pandemic. Now they're at war and there's war in Ukraine. There's an energy crisis. Inflation is through the roof, interest rates are rising."
Stuart McLeod: 00:27:43.052 Yeah. Mortgages have gone skyrocketing--
Adam Pritchard: 00:27:47.203 Yeah. So there is a--
Stuart McLeod: 00:27:48.500 --along with the bombs in [crosstalk]. It's like, "Fucking hell."
Adam Pritchard: 00:27:52.057 It's crazy. It just feels sort of like omageddonish, doesn't it?
Stuart McLeod: 00:27:56.028 Well, that's a good question. Well, it wasn't a question, it was rhetorical. But I agree, it's a bit omageddonish. How does that affect you as a firm owner and as somebody that obviously cares a lot about your clients and their journey. How do you think about that for, not only your firm, but your staff and your own mental health?
Adam Pritchard: 00:28:18.135 Yeah. I mean, I think we're in good place. I would like to think that's the result of hard work and good judgement, but there's bound to be some luck involved in that as well. And we were able to give people pay increases to help them manage the cost of living. And we actually have a little bit of capacity in the business, we could take on more clients and I think that's where it lands on you as the business owner. The fact that we've got some capacity in the business and I am not as operational as I was six months ago allows me to actually focus on my KPIs as the owner of Linford Grey, not just everybody [inaudible]. And so we're doing that sort of analysis now on how much have-- what have we done this, what have we done so far this year? Where are we going this year? Are we meeting the monthly targets? Are we realistic in those monthly targets? What are our practice KPIs which we look at through Karbon? And are we servicing these clients in line with the service levels as we promised? And are we responding in time and making sure that we respond properly and not just with-- I have this conversation-- I have this conversation with the guys today. I said I think everybody needs to-- we just need to take a step back again, take a deep breath, not just think about, "I'm going to get this answered so I can move on," and really ask ourselves the question, what's going to help the client? And so often, that's not a three-paragraph email that explains to them how their payroll tax is calculated. It's a Loom video that shows them how their payroll tax is calculated. So take the time, let's ask the question, how do we help people? Not just how do we process the work.
Adam Pritchard: 00:29:55.413 But yeah, and I think in terms of our clients, it becomes about support and giving them access to what they need access to. And so one of the things that we've done for a lot of our clients is on the futurely boards that we build for them. We've built break-even analysis on everybody's board. And so for things like a hospitality venue, we had to strip out salaries and add them back into the top lines so that we could get a fixed overhead and understand the real gross margin of running that venue. So then we could say to each and everyone of those venues, so you need about X amount of money to break even if you average that out--
Stuart McLeod: 00:30:30.295 Yeah. Just to open the doors, right?
Adam Pritchard: 00:30:32.893 Yeah. And I think funding is going to become more important. We're working very closely with Swoop and Capitalise to make sure that we're abreast of all the products that are available and just being on the lookout. And the fact that we deliver that regularly scheduled MI just means that when people-- it means that people do get that input from us. They are across their numbers. They do understand their performance. We had a case earlier this year where it was like, "Well, guys, you're three months into the year, and you've lost 100 grand. What's going on? This is going to be a problem for you. What's the reason? Are we going to trade out? Do we need money to manage these deficits? Let's have this conversation quickly." And you jump on that call, you provide that information and that is the perfect reason why you invest in those relationships from both sides, from both sides.
Stuart McLeod: 00:31:24.582 And what happened to them?
Adam Pritchard: 00:31:26.192 They had very good reasons as to why they'd taken that loss in the first quarter of the year, and they believed they could trade out. And so it becomes about the time, isn't it? It becomes about how long to trade out. If it's is going to be an 18-month process, there's going to be deficits. And so we are in the process of building that forecast, identifying the deficits, at which point we will go out with Swoot or Capitalise and try and access funding.
Stuart McLeod: 00:31:49.603 Yeah. Across your portfolio, is there a customer or client that you're most proud of that stands out to you? Is one that you're very proud of being on the journey for?
Adam Pritchard: 00:32:00.433 Yeah. I think the fine dining restaurant that we spoke about is one that we're really proud of. He came to us as a husband and wife couple. They came to us having run a different business, and he'd done very well in crypto over the years. So he had a chunk of money he was ready to invest, and we put the whole thing together for them. We understood the model, so we modelled it out. We gave them their metrics. We put the pack together for the lenders and for the banks. So we were really critical in securing that funding. Obviously, we carried on as their accountant and won that piece of business to be their accountant. And the way that we've delivered MI for them over the last five to six months and the input that we've had has really helped them grow that business and make decisions. And they are absolutely tracking to where they need to track to. And I think, strangely, I'm proud, not just because we did it, because their offer is so great as well. I've been to that restaurant, I came out and I felt like I'd been to a spar. It was phenomenal. So it's nice to see that we got involved with something from the very beginning as it was just-- it was an idea. They knew it. They knew a chef, and they were like, "What would it take?" And then you see that finished product, and you're like, "This is incredible. They've had rave reviews." And they've continued to do well. So I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud of that. Mostly I'm proud of my own business.
Stuart McLeod: 00:33:28.900 As you should be. Which aspects in particular?
Adam Pritchard: 00:33:33.252 I'm very proud of the way that we've delivered for people. I'm very proud of the way that we deliver-- looking at there's always that sort of self-doubt, certainly in me, where you're like, "Is this good? Is this the way it should--"
Stuart McLeod: 00:33:44.729 I'm I even fucking good at this?
Adam Pritchard: 00:33:46.029 Yeah. Is this the way it should be? Could I be doing better? Is it really acceptable? But over the last couple of years, I really understood, how do I manage this? How do I manage these workflows? How do I do it to a level that I'm proud of? And how do we deliver for people consistently and reliably? And I look now at what we're doing for people and I'm like, "This is really fucking good." It's really good. I look at people's numbers and I'm like, "This is organised, it makes sense, it tracks to the forecast, there's no holes in this. I can put my finger on every number that I'm looking at. This is great." And we're not just doing it for one guy because we like him, we're doing it for all of our clients. And it happens as a matter of course. I'm not having to make a special effort to deliver it. It happens as a matter of course. So I'm really proud of-- I'm really proud of that--
Stuart McLeod: 00:34:40.608 So you should be.
Adam Pritchard: 00:34:41.640 --and everything that goes-- and everything that goes around it. We've built a great team. My youngest junior accountant walked into the office today and said, "Adam, I put an offer in on that house over the weekend."
Stuart McLeod: 00:34:51.194 Oh, cool.
Adam Pritchard: 00:34:52.515 And it's like, great. That's her achievement, but it's also our achievement. You came to us with no skills, having worked for 12 and a half grand a year for the last three years. We gave you a proper job and a proper way. You invested in your education and now, just a few short months later, you're buying your first-ever house. How wonderful is that? So, yeah, I'm really proud of that.
Stuart McLeod: 00:35:17.244 She's enjoying her role and she's enjoying working with you and learning from you. And the implication with your story, then, is kind of a no dickheads policy, right? You're working with clients that you enjoy, that you can see yourselves going on the journey with.
Adam Pritchard: 00:35:34.165 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are a couple of dickheads. You get them everywhere.
Stuart McLeod: 00:35:38.372 Yeah. Well, you just got to sack them.
Adam Pritchard: 00:35:40.627 Yeah. I think that's part of the process. We've got [inaudible] upfront with people as well. We sat at the client meeting, we said, "This guy is sending rude emails. They're passive-aggressive. They're not really fair." And you give that guy a call and you say, "Is this turning sour? What's happening? Because we're here to help. I'm not getting the impression that you're very happy. So what needs to happen to bridge this gap?" And we had that conversation, but, yeah, it is. And certainly, in terms of the team, I think the message here is, "You will create the life of yourself that you want to create, and that will not always-- and if you want extraordinary things in life, you will have to make extraordinary effort and even some sacrifices. And for as long as we can serve your interest as an organisation, we will serve your interest as an organisation. If you outgrow us and move on, wonderful. Our aim is to send you into-- if that happens, we want to send you into the world thinking about Linford Grey as the place that you learn your trade, as a wonderful place and as a reputable practice that you think fondly of and would recommend and trust."
Adam Pritchard: 00:36:49.611 And so everybody takes a large amount of personal responsibility, everybody communicates, everybody's involved in the meetings and the blue skies and where we're going, and we don't hide any of the conversations or queries from anybody. And I think that's part of being a small team as well, is that you get-- Emma Lee, the junior account has probably been exposed to conversations that she wouldn't have had been exposed to in a larger organisation. And that's great. I think that's great. I think that's great.
Stuart McLeod: 00:37:15.562 That's a good thing. That's a good thing. I do, too. I don't mean to formalise this, but the greatest problems that nearly every firm that we speak to have attraction and retention of talent is kind of way up there. And how do you think about that in the context of a conversation just now around building these people into great accountants, into great leaders, into great employees?
Adam Pritchard: 00:37:45.263 I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how they see me. It's difficult because I think about how I want to be seen. I build an infrastructure that means I don't have to badger people. I don't need to be on your back asking if you've done this. I know it's processed, and I will see it. I will approach you with respect, I will tell you the truth. I'm honest with myself and I hold myself accountable and I lead. So I don't expect you to do anything I haven't done or wouldn't do. And I'm not holding myself to a different standard than I'm holding you to. If you want more money, more responsibility, those things are fine within the parameters of what we can do for you. And that's exactly sort of where I'm where I went before. And as long as we can serve your self-interest and or pursue the collective goals of the organisation, we will do that. If you outgrow us, you can move on and we'll be happy to have been part of your career in your life. But in terms of-- I mean, we hired within the last six months and it was hard. The pandemic is, I think-- rightly or wrongly, it's not for me, but I don't-- I worked from home for a while in between working for the partnership and starting Linford Grey, and I found it incredibly lonely. I like to be around people. I want to build a culture, an organisation. But a lot of people we are seeing wanted to work completely remotely and that's fine for them, but it's just not for us. So we held out and we took somebody on that we believed would adhere to our cultural values. We can teach people-- that's probably a popular saying, but we can teach people accounting. We can't teach them how to be confident, how to communicate, how to be positive, what it means to put your best foot forward. We can't teach them that. And I think I've learned over the years that sometimes you can be-- I can lead by example, but that person has to be willing to pick up that example and run with it themselves. And so we try and hire self-starters that are interested in maximising their potential, that want to learn, that want to develop, that want to grow.
Stuart McLeod: 00:40:06.031 I admire you for sort of just really sticking to what makes you happy, right? If you don't want to build a firm that's four days remote and half a day in the office and two hours in a car, don't do it, right? I miss the social interaction, but we're a software company. I think we probably have similar values to you guys, but we're pretty global now. Employees in six countries or something. It's just a different way of doing things. We chose to live here to raise kids, right? It's hard to build a big office in Incline Village, Nevada. I wouldn't call it a sacrifice. It's a bit white and harsh, isn't it? But what I'm trying to say here is I agree with you, right? Be who you are and be proud of it and shout it. Don't bait and switch. "We're three days remote," and then everybody's got to be in the office five days a week. I think that's where people run into trouble and find it difficult to build a consistent and enjoyable culture. This has been an absolute pleasure. You should be so proud of what you've been able to achieve so far with Linford Grey. And I know the team enjoys working with you and your staff, and if there's ever anything that we can do to help you and your success, we'd be more than happy to do so. Adam Pritchard, thank you for being on the Accounting Leaders podcast. [music]
Stuart McLeod: 00:41:45.058 Thanks for listening to this episode. If you found this discussion interesting, fun, you'll find lots more to help you run a successful accounting firm at Karbon magazine. There are more than a thousand free resources there, including guides, articles, templates, webinars, and more. Just head to karbonhq.com/resources. [music] I'd also love it if you could leave us a five-star review wherever you listen to this podcast. Let us know you like this session. We'll be able to keep bringing you more guests for you to learn from and get inspired by. Thanks for joining and see you on the next episode of the Accounting Leaders podcast.