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Martin Bown is the founder and managing director of My Management Accountant—an accountancy service that works with small businesses across the UK to help them save time and money. In this episode, Martin shares his professional journey, My Management Accountant's story, and how they operate. Martin and Stuart also discuss his life outside of work, including sports and the joys of living the village life with his family.
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 00:00:06.292 [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. Today, I'm joined by Martin Bown, the founder and managing director of My Management Accountant, an accountancy service that works with small businesses across the UK to help them save time and money. Martin is a seasoned, certified management accountant with a background in industry, which he left in 2009 to start his own business. As an early adopter of cloud accounting, Martin has been a zero cloud partner since 2010. Outside of work, Martin is a husband and dad to three kids, home brewer, musician, and cancer survivor. It is my pleasure to welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast Martin Bown. Martin, welcome to the Accounting Leaders podcast. How are you?
Martin Bown 00:01:01.590 I'm good, thank you, Stuart. Yeah, thank you for having me on.
Stuart McLeod 00:01:04.403 Thank you for taking time out of your very busy day. And I'd love to hear your fascinating story. Because you're an inspiration to many corporate refugees. And you prove that perseverance, resilience, and persistence are keys to success. Particularly, I know, overnight success. Right? [laughter] Why don't you start at the start? Because I think it's just an amazing story. Tell us.
Martin Bown 00:01:40.354 Yeah. So I guess I'd always wanted to have my own business. I always had this idea of being in charge of my own destiny. I didn't really know what that meant. And kind of way back into the mid '90s, I was looking at all sorts of different things, different franchises. So I was an accountant in industry. I'm [inaudible] qualified. And I was working for a small owner-managed business in Leeds.
Stuart McLeod 00:02:04.992 What sort of business was that?
Martin Bown 00:02:06.744 It was a business where it was a manufacturer working in the construction industry. So we were involved in [inaudible], all sorts of different things like that. And it was fairly frenetic day in, day out. I mean, it was a fun place to be, but it was hard work. And as their financial controller FD, I got involved in everything. If the server wasn't working, it was me that fixed it. If we had a client in Norway that was my client because we had to fill lots of forms in, so that was my job to do. So they were my client. We [inaudible] the business over in the Middle East. So there was loads of stuff to do. We had a really fun time. But I was always looking at something else. I remember looking at Subway franchises, Papa John's franchises.
Stuart McLeod 00:02:45.840 Oh, man. Did you practice making sandwiches [crosstalk]?
Martin Bown 00:02:48.867 Well, that was the thing that-- so I remember the Papa John's franchise, they were really interested in me taking on a franchise. And I found a premises. And then they said, "Well, we need you to work in it." And I was like, "Until 3:00 AM, a student of Leeds. That is not going to happen." So that was not finished. And I actually left that business that I was working in and ended up going into a big corporate. So I was a big BPO, big outsourcing business, where I had a team reporting into. It was based over in [inaudible], in Delhi. Really good team to work with. But I'm not a big business person. I was in there for about three years. Loved it. I loved the team. I loved the people that I worked with, I loved the people in the UK that I worked with. But it just wasn't for me. And then I guess the thing that really gave me the nudge was so in 2008-- I've got three children, a daughter and two boys. So my daughter was born in 2008, at the start of the year, January. She was due to come in April, but decided that she wanted to make an appearance 10 weeks early.
Stuart McLeod 00:03:50.929 She was keen to enter the world.
Martin Bown 00:03:52.755 Yeah. Yeah. So that was the first surprise. And then so she was in SCBU. She was in the neonatal unit. And we found out quite early on that, through a routine brain scan that all babies in the neonatal unit get, she had one, we were told that she was most likely to have cerebral palsy. I forget how they phrased it, but effectively the brain scan wasn't normal, for want of a better term. So we found out quite early on that she had cerebral palsy. We didn't know to what extent. There's absolutely no way anybody could tell us at that point. So we were fortunate to find out when she was 10 days old. A lot of families and individuals don't find out until their children are much older, and don't start hitting those key moments. So 2008, I continued working while I was working. We didn't really tell anybody about my daughter. Close family knew. I told my boss at the time, and a couple of other people were told. But not many people really knew. We just really wanted everybody to kind of enjoy that first year of Bella being around and being with us. But I do remember my boss at the time said, "Any appointment that you need, just take it. Go to it. Don't ever ask for permission. I know that you'll make up the time. I know that you'll work around it because that's just the kind of person you are." So we did that, and I did that.
Martin Bown 00:05:11.564 And then towards the end of 2008, I'd gone to India. I'd gone to spend a week with my team in India. We used to bring the team regularly over. They used to come to us in the UK, at least six months at a time, take them away from their family, and they used to come and live in Leeds and spend time with us, working in the team, six months at a time. And I never thought that was really right. And I remember saying to my boss at the time, I said, maybe I should go there for one month. And I'll just help them. I'll go through our month-end routine in India. Which I did. And at the time I was quite a frequent traveler. So I did the great thing, flew over, arrived on the Saturday, I think. Got myself straight onto Indian time. So I was on local time. Got up at 6:00 AM the next morning, on the Monday morning, my first day at work. And then remembered that the taxi was coming for me at 1:00 PM because they worked UK hours. So pretty much every day--
Stuart McLeod 00:06:07.050 That's a long day, isn't it?
Martin Bown 00:06:08.182 Yeah. So every day was pretty much kind of a 7:00 AM, working in the hotel [inaudible]. 2:00 AM I would get back dropped off. So it was a really good week, but I was exhausted by the end. And I got back to the UK, and my boss said at the time there was a divisional [MD?] over there that I had not realized. And he said, They say you. Really impressed. We're going to get you onto the fast track and move you up through the business now. But we'll need more--" I remember him saying, "But we'll need more weeks like that, like the one we just done." And I was thinking, I don't really want more weeks like that one I've just done, and certainly not for the shareholders of this big business that I'm working for. If I'm going to do big weeks like that, then they're going to be for me. And that was kind of November time, 2008. Then I handed my notice in and left just before Christmas, and set off on my own in 2009. My wife did the same thing. She never went back to her employer at the time. She's not an accountant. She worked in the pharmaceutical industry. So she set off and did her thing. She went immediately into work. She was consulting. She didn't want to build a business. She was quite happy doing consultancy work. So she was generating income whilst I was out networking and meeting lots of people, and trying to tell them that I could do accountancy work, and didn't really know what I was doing. And I guess it really-- so in 2009 was when I started on my own. And it grew very slowly. But I just did anything for anybody because you need to feed your family, don't you? So you just, "Yeah. I can do that."
Stuart McLeod 00:07:37.415 Do you remember your first client?
Martin Bown 00:07:39.207 I do remember my first client. He was actually a family friend of my dad. And I'm still in touch with him. But he had two businesses at the time. And he had a little side business. It was a bit of a hobby business. He sold two pieces of equipment that you could sell to children. And I remember he phoned me up and he said, "Yeah, you can do my accounts for me." And I remember going home and I was absolutely, I mean, I was just on top of the world, fist pumping the air as I walked in, and said to my wife, "I've won my first--" And she said, "How much is it?"
Stuart McLeod 00:08:13.024 We're rich. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:08:14.069 Yeah. "How much is it?" And I said, I'm charging him £600. And I just remember the look that I got. For £600, it was a decent pay. It was a tiny business. I think if I remember rightly, because it was a hobby business for them, they literally just made £4,000 worth of sales. But he'd asked me, "What do you do?" And I said, "Well, I'm a management accountant." And he said, "My business is too small for management accounts." And I said, "Well, I absolutely agree with you. It really is too small for management accounts. But I'm going to analyze your sales." Because he had two products that he sold, retail and wholesale. And so, basically, four lines that I split down on a spreadsheet, and showed and compared it to the previous year, and said, "That's why you've made more profit this year." And he was like, "That's really interesting." So it kind of grew from there, really. But yeah, I do remember. £600 for my first piece of work. And we do his tax return now. Actually, last year he did it himself. And I was like, "No, I wanted it to do it for you. We'll do it free of charge, but we need to keep it in the business. Because you're our lucky talisman."
Stuart McLeod 00:09:15.530 That's right. You're an important part of their history.
Martin Bown 00:09:19.029 Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, that's where it started from, really.
Stuart McLeod 00:09:23.122 And did you have the name from day one?
Martin Bown 00:09:25.712 No.
Stuart McLeod 00:09:25.954 [Has it?] always being the one?
Martin Bown 00:09:27.651 No, it wasn't, actually. There's a funny story about that. So my wife had come up with the idea-- the registered business names of this, so I've got a business name. What shall I call my business? It seems to be the biggest thing. And then have you got a domain? So I got the domain, My Management Accountant, because my wife said, "It'd be really good if you could hand out your business cards. And then people would talk to their friends and say, 'Who's your accountant?' And they would say, "Well, you need to speak to my accountant.' And then hand over the business code with My Accountant on it." And My Accountant had been taken. And I thought, well, I'm a management accountant anyway. So that's where the name came from. But I didn't register the business name. So I was trading under-- my business was called Management Accounting Services, in brackets, Yorkshire Limited. And about two years into my journey, I was at a presentation. It was a seminar for a CIMA members, a practice seminar. And there was a guy that was doing a presentation. And he was about making yourself unique in the market. And making yourself stand out. And he brought up this page on the company's house website. And it was all the different iterations of Management Accounting Services. So I was in this hall with Management Accounting Services, Yorkshire, in brackets. It was right in the middle of this big screen. And I was out there just kind of head down, [inaudible], keeping quiet. [laughter] But somebody else with a business that was on there was in the audience. And I remember they started arguing with each other. The presenter and this other delegate were having this heated discussion about how his name of the business was really good. And the guy was saying, "Yeah. But it's not unique, is it? Because, look, there's 25 other ones."
Stuart McLeod 00:11:05.640 And that's just on this page.
Martin Bown 00:11:06.500 Yeah. Yeah. So I just let this argument, I let this discussion go. And then afterwards, I was walking kind of down the corridors with the hotel and the presenter was walking towards me. And I said, "Oh, that presentation you did was really good. Thanks very much." And he said, "Oh, yeah, I'm glad you found it useful." I said, "Yeah. My company name was on that page." And he said he said, "Oh, not you. Not you as well." And I said, "No. No." I said, "It's absolutely fine." I said, "My domain is mymanagementaccountant." And I told him the story why. And he said, "Have you registered that business name?" And I said, "No, I haven't." And he said, "That's really interesting." And he walked off really quickly. So I went--
Stuart McLeod 00:11:42.331 And you went and-- you better get your credit card. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:11:46.353 So I walked to my hotel room really quickly, which was thankfully only about four doors away. And about five minutes later, I submitted the application to register my company name. So that was in 2011. So I started in 2009. And then in 2011, registered the name. So which is why there's a little bit of a gap in-between. I'm into my 14th year, but the business is kind of, the age is-- yes. There'll be somebody somewhere thinking, "I wish I'd registered that name."
Stuart McLeod 00:12:12.937 Missed out. Didn't get back to his hotel fast enough. The Wi-Fi was too slow.
Martin Bown 00:12:17.020 Yeah. So that's where it came from. And I was always really keen not to have my name, my surname on a business. Nobody knows how to pronounce my surname. Everybody spells it wrong. Everybody thinks it's Brown. And obviously, it's not. It's Bown, So nobody really knows how to pronounce it, ever. And lots of people, when I do pronounce it to them, will say, "Are you sure you've pronounced it correctly?" Or, "Are you sure you spelled it right?" So I just thought, having that on the name of my business is just going to cause no end of problems. And it just felt very-- it just feels very traditional, isn't it, and old, to have your name on the account? The name--
Stuart McLeod 00:12:50.619 [crosstalk] associates.
Martin Bown 00:12:51.221 Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Stuart McLeod 00:12:52.460 Bown and Associates.
Martin Bown 00:12:53.745 [inaudible], whatever it might be. So I was always quite keen to keep away from that very early on, so.
Stuart McLeod 00:12:59.963 Do you know where the R went in history? Did it disappear one day?
Martin Bown 00:13:04.749 Well, I always thought it was just a spelling mistake. Somebody's misspelled. I mean, you don't misspell Brown to be Bown, do you? It's usually the other way around. But I was once chatting to somebody that was from France and they said, "Have you got any French relatives?" And I said, "No, not that I know of." And she said, "Because your surname is very Norman. It's from Normandy." And actually, if you look at it, it is a Norman name on this website I was reading about. But interestingly, one of my grandmother on my dad's side, she was Brown. Her surname was Brown. And then she married my granddad and became a Bown. So she went from Brown to Bown, and she always said--
Stuart McLeod 00:13:43.346 That must have been complex.
Martin Bown 00:13:44.557 She said it would just have been so much easier for the rest of us if we'd have just done it the opposite way round.
Stuart McLeod 00:13:49.523 Yes, exactly. He should have taken her name. He'd be a social trend setter back then.
Martin Bown 00:13:55.370 Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah. That was where the name came from. And that's why we did what we did.
Stuart McLeod 00:14:00.461 Where's the business up to today? You started 14 years ago by yourself, £600. He's spending most of his sales on your accounting, which is very generous of him. He must have been a good friend of the family. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:14:17.051 Yeah. So we've grown really steadily, it was me until 2013. And then I reached a point where I actually thought, "Well, I now need somebody to come and help me. I don't know what they'll do, but they just need to come and help me. I need help." So we started in 2013, Joanna joined the business, Joanna, and she's still with us, Joanna. So she joined in March 2013. And we've just grown steadily. So today we're at 13 people. We were 14 up to about three weeks ago, and somebody has recently left. But we've, yeah, just grown nicely in terms of who we are. We went into lockdown, I guess, on around about 9 or 10 people. So we've grown quite rapidly through over the last two years because we lost people as well. People chose to leave and move elsewhere. So we've kind of dropped back and onboarded quite a number of people, actually, through the last two years of working remotely. So yeah, we're at 13 people.
Stuart McLeod 00:15:13.996 And everybody remote?
Martin Bown 00:15:15.635 Yeah. We're still remote. Yeah. I mean, we're all fairly local to each other. So I should say we're based up in West Yorkshire. We're based in Huddersfield. We had an office in a shared office space, which we vacated prior to being told that we needed to. And we've just never gone back to it, really. Constantly looking at some solution for us. But I'm absolutely determined that solution is not going to be we all get into our cars every day and drive into an office, and sit in an office at our desks. It's just not going to work, It's just not the way we need to do it anymore. But I think it helps because we're fairly local as well. We're relatively local to each other. So we can meet each other.
Stuart McLeod 00:15:53.203 Yeah. You can do some kind of Friday social or something. I think the English don't mind a Friday pub lunch.
Martin Bown 00:16:01.911 No, we don't do that, actually. We should maybe do that, actually. You're giving me ideas [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:16:07.385 There you go. I wrote my salary today. And so you pretty much focus on just the management. You don't do a lot of bookkeeping or anything at the moment. What about tax and other services?
Martin Bown 00:16:21.271 No, we do. Yeah. No, we do. So I mean, I guess it came from-- when I first started out, I used to go and make businesses and said, "You want some management?" I mean, I couldn't sell. I had no clue what I was doing, really. I said, "You want some management accounts [doing?]?" "What are they?" "Well, you know what they are."
Stuart McLeod 00:16:36.039 Yeah. What does that mean?
Martin Bown 00:16:37.507 Yeah. "You know what they are. Of course you know what that they are. Everybody knows what management accounts are." And of course, nobody knew what management accounts are if you don't have management accounts. Why would you? And so, I quickly learned that what business owners needed was, they just needed their year-end accounts doing, and they just needed common sense conversations with an accountant, not something that was kind of high-level and scared the life out of them, really. Somebody told me very early on-- I was at a seminar and somebody said, "Is there an accountant in the room?" I put my hand up and said, "Yeah, I'm an accountant." I remember she said, "People would rather go see the dentist than come and meet you."
Stuart McLeod 00:17:09.505 Thanks very much.
Martin Bown 00:17:10.360 Yeah. I remember thinking, "That's not really how I want my meetings to be. I don't want people to be absolutely fearful." So I learned quite early on, people just wanted compliance done well. They wanted it just done quickly without faults, and then just a nice chat about what was going on. And then from there, then I was able to get to a business and say, "Actually, what you might benefit from is this because you're a certain size." And so we started growing. So we do do compliance. We do everything you would expect us to do. We do compliance. We do booking. So Receipt Bank, as it was then, was the first partner that we started working with. We were on Xero early on, 2009, 2010. And we didn't add any partners on at all until kind of 2013, '14, and Receipt Bank was the first one. So we now say to clients when they join us, "This is the tool you're using. This is how we use it. You don't need to do anything with it. We do it. But we need you to use it." So we do do bookkeeping. But as you said, we then focus where we can with clients. And there's a growing number of clients now where we say, "Actually, you need these management accounts." And it's not a sales pitch from us. I'm never out there to just try and generate more revenue for us because it's good for us. It's because that business will genuinely benefit from somebody sitting down and saying, "Actually, the last quarter or the last month, this is what happened in your business, and what's going to happen over the next quarter, and the next six months, and the next nine."
Martin Bown 00:18:42.024 So we do management accounts. We're structured like a finance department. So we have a client credit controller. We do white-labeled credit control. Not debt collection. We're not nasty. We're just a credit control company that picks up and form-- and we just say to our clients, "We're just going to form those relationships with your customers so that they know that when they receive an invoice from you, if they don't pay it on time, they're just going to get a friendly call. And they generally don't want that. So even if it is friendly, they'll pay your invoices." And it just helps. So we do credit control. We do payroll, which clients absolutely love. And then we, like I said, do the management accounts forecasting with certain clients. We go and sit at their boards, and be that board representation for them.
Stuart McLeod 00:19:22.485 And your tech stack, so Receipt Bank, you would have bought from them. When was that? 2013? Maybe they're a decent size by then, but founded by Michael Wood in the UK, and Alexis in Washington. And two great guys to work with back then.
Martin Bown 00:19:43.208 Yeah. It was funny, actually, because I saw our account manager from then, Jose, and I'd lost touch with him completely. And I bumped into at the digital accountancy show about three weeks ago. He was stood facing me. So I said, "It actually must feel really good for you to know that we still insist--" It's not even an insistence. So, "This is not optional. This is what you use when you come to our business. And this is how it works." And actually, of all of the partners, of all the pieces of software that we use, I would say that Dext is still the one that makes people's eyes just widen and the jaws drop. So I've recently just done a conversion with a third sector organization that I was familiar with before. I did the conversion from their software to Xero. But I said to them, "This wall here, behind these cupboards, what's in there?" And they said, "Oh, it's all about purchase ledger invoices and everything." And I said, "Yeah, you won't need them moving forward." And when I tell them this is how Dext works, and that's where the eyes wide and the jaws drop. "So that's amazing." So yes. So we use, like I said, Dext is non-negotiable, pretty much. I still love the fact that it was probably key factor number one why we were on Xero in the first place. But the live bank feed still is just-- when we come across clients and they'll say, "No, our accountants never turned on our live bank feed. They just inform the statements." And it's just like, "No, that's literally the first thing you need to do. Because that's your real time reporting." And again, when you go to a business where they come from more traditional software, and they're doing that monthly or quarterly bank reckon, then we say, "Actually, the first thing you're going to do on the everyday is reconcile your bank account." That's still amazing. So I guess in terms of what we use the Dext, like I said, we're Xero [Global?] Partners. We've used Xero right from the start. And I would say 99.9% of our clients are on Xero.
Martin Bown 00:21:37.853 Other tools that we use? So internally, we use Ignition. And again, I've used that quite probably from around about 2015. And so I used that early on because I would literally, I'd get somebody saying, "Can you send me a proposal?" And I'd smile outwardly and then think, "Oh, no, that means I've got to do like a Word document." And I'm rubbish on Word. And then I've got to convert it to PDF. And then I've got to send it to them. And then more often than not, they'd come back to me and say, "This document you sent me, it's really good, but subtitles don't add up to the individual--"
Stuart McLeod 00:22:06.480 Oh, no. You forgot. Right.
Martin Bown 00:22:07.852 And if you've kind of got three or four people that all are waiting for proposals. I just thought, "There must be something easier for me to use. There has to be a solution." So we were on to Ignition. And it's interesting because when the firms, businesses say to me, what should they use, GoProposal or Ignition, and I said, "It doesn't matter." I don't think it really matters. I don't know GoProposal. I've never used it because I've always been on Ignition. I said, "I don't think it really matters." But just take one of them. Because whatever you're using--
Stuart McLeod 00:22:34.573 It's going to be much better than that.
Martin Bown 00:22:36.244 --will be just struck off by one of them. So go out and use one of them. I mean, Karbon, obviously we use Karbon. And it's great that Ignition now links to Karbon for us. That was a really key feature for us, the fact that it's a direct link to kick off workflows. So actually, a lot of what we use, we then say to our clients, "This would work for you." So I have Ignition out to a couple of our clients where it would particularly help them. GoCardless, Stripe. We roll that out. We roll that out to our clients. We use it ourselves. So I guess we don't have a massive number of applications that we use ourselves. We're quite selective about what we do. But the tools we use, if it works for us and it works for our clients, then we get on board with it.
Stuart McLeod 00:23:19.121 What about reporting? Or where you're doing production accounts? Do you use, what was it called, out of Brisbane? Fathom, or any of those?
Martin Bown 00:23:32.178 We use Futrli. Again, we've used Futrli since it was CrunchBoards. So we've used that for a number of years. And I guess it was a bit--
Stuart McLeod 00:23:40.426 They sold not that long ago. Right?
Martin Bown 00:23:41.842 Yeah, recently. Yeah. Recently became part of the Sage family, didn't they?
Stuart McLeod 00:23:46.020 Oh, okay. There you go. Marriage of James and the girls. Right?
Martin Bown 00:23:51.283 Absolutely. Absolutely. So but yeah, Futrli was interesting to buy. And why I liked it to start with, so I used to have a spreadsheet. I got out of industry. I've been using it since the mid '90s. I've worked for a large contract scaffold and I had this spreadsheet. And I took it with me to every role that I went subsequently. It was a great working-- it wasn't even mine. It was [Mike Fees'?] at the time. He said, "This is--"
Stuart McLeod 00:24:12.173 Yeah. I'd have paid him a bit of [inaudible] each time you used it. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:24:15.826 "This is a spreadsheet I use to forecast." I was like, "That's really good, actually." So I kind of took it, and improved it, and used it in different iterations. And then kind of stopped using it over a number of years. And then was introduced to Futrli and CrunchBoards at the time, started working through it, and quite liked the live board features. That was a really good thing to start off with, but quickly was pushed to one side, we didn't really use them. But the forecasting side is why I liked it. It just worked the way that my old spreadsheet used to work. You pick a sales line, pick the data days, and bang, you've got a cash flow. But it was a slow burn. And then we were, in terms of adoption, of using it. And it only really took off with one of our clients who were software developers. They said, "We want you to-- can you please produce a 12-week cash flow forecast for us? A daily cash flow forecast for us? But not in Excel because we don't want to use Excel." And so I said, "Fine." So we built it in Futrli. We had them a 12-week cash flow forecast. They also had a five-year strategic forecast that was in their annual budget, if you like, all that kind of thing. So all these different scenarios you could build. And it really started working for us. And now what happens when we do management accounts, we do the work that we need to do in Xero. We use some of the reports at Xero, but we will then produce PDF reports from Futrli. And with certain clients, they have access to it, so they know to put their own-- they might get reports from their sales director or their [inaudible] director, whatever, and put them in. And they'll collect their own reports. And they're using the numbers that we produce for them. Or we can produce that board report for them. So yeah, it works really well for us, actually.
Stuart McLeod 00:25:52.500 And your capacity to tell the story about the numbers improves. Right? It's a very important part of your role, is your outsource finance department?
Martin Bown 00:26:03.212 I guess in terms of who we are, because we've got a strong background in industry across our team, so when we talk to our clients, I'm always really interested to know what goes on in their business. Like, "What's your key stat? I don't want to know what your sales are or anything else because we can tell you that." I'm a really big believer in that. "If you do everything that you want to do in the right way, then the numbers that we give you, they drop out early. This is the end result of everything you've done." A lot of times we have that conversation. We've had it in the past where we say, people in our team who've done these accounts, this is what it looks like. And we say to them, "We're producing the accounts. We're not done yet. That's not the business. The business is what it is and we're telling you the story of it." So we set up the business-- so our clients, it's really interesting when you start talking to business owners and finding out what it is that really makes a business tick. Whether it's calls answered, whether it's units sold, or whatever it might be. In a lot of cases, people don't really know that until they've had that conversation. It's almost so blindedly obvious that, until they've had that conversation with somebody, then they suddenly get it.
Stuart McLeod 00:27:04.012 Sure. Are most of your businesses sort of local? Or what kind of industries do you serve, typically?
Martin Bown 00:27:09.889 We don't niche, really, work. It's really interesting. Because my background in industry was construction. So I set off thinking, "This is great." I should say, I set off at the end-- so I sort of left industry at the end of 2008, start of 2009, so right in the middle of one of the worst crashes in history, thinking, "This is great. I'm going to go find loads of construction industry businesses, because that's who I am."
Stuart McLeod 00:27:34.348 Except there's only two left. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:27:35.583 [crosstalk] essentially nothing left. And I do remember my boss at the time saying, "Do you think now is the right time to leave industry?" I remember thinking like, yeah, I was on quite a nice salary. "Do you think now is the right time to leave?" And I was like, "Chris, I actually think now is exactly the right time to leave. Because now is the time that businesses want to sit down and speak to somebody about what's going on." Because it just didn't happen like that. But I did have this kind of idea that I would just literally work with construction and manufacturing companies. We don't at all. We work with all sorts of businesses. So construction, manufacturing, software developers, wholesale, retail, we cover all the bases. But the thing that we do, and the conversations that we have with those business owners, they're all so similar, aren't they? We're counselors as much as we are accountants. And so [crosstalk]--
Stuart McLeod 00:28:24.420 Especially over the last few years.
Martin Bown 00:28:25.466 Well, exactly. But even, I mean, just the conversations that you have with somebody. And they might be running a care company, they might be running a wholesaler, you have very similar conversations. And I've always been struck by how businesses from different industries go through the same cycles. So we might have a conversation one day with somebody saying, "I'm looking for funding," and the next day somebody from a completely different sector says, "I'm looking for some funding." And then it might be a question about credit controller, but whatever it is, it's always the same thing. So we don't specialize in a particular industry. We do love manufacturing. I personally love to see things, tangibly, that I can see. So if somebody's giving me a piece of metal and it's being converted into something, I get it. We've got a client that drills holes.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:07.278 Big ones? Little ones? All kinds?
Martin Bown 00:29:09.904 Quite big ones, ground engineers. But I can get that because I can see it. So I personally love that. We've got other people in the team that absolutely love software development and that kind of thing. So we don't specialize in any industry. Our clients, we do have a strong base, locally, to us, regionally. But we're nationwide. Our largest client is a [inaudible] organization based in London. Clients in Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire. So yeah, just a widespread, really.
Stuart McLeod 00:29:37.813 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of talk over the last couple of years about operating a vertical or a niche in my home country, or adopted country, I should say, a niche here in the UK. Well, that's enough about work. You have three kids, and two boys and a girl. And you mentioned Isabella's sort of difficult history from birth, and if you'd like to talk about that, we can. But we were talking about your boys playing cricket the other day. And reminded me of growing up in Melbourne, going down the nets with your dad and mates and all that, and just coming home with bruises left, right and center, your mates are trying to knock your head off at any opportunity. I mean, girls are very good at playing cricket these days, but I haven't been able to convince them that that's a good idea. The main Aussie thing that's left in them, I think, is Vegemite. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:30:43.178 [It's hard?] to spot the Australian.
Stuart McLeod 00:30:46.213 Yeah. That's it. She's tried to take it to school a few times, and her class--
Martin Bown 00:30:50.366 Yeah. I imagine Americans probably just look at it like she's completely [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:30:55.305 No. [Fuck off?]. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:30:57.769 My wife's American. And she just said, "Well, [inaudible], I have Oxo or Bovril in the winter." That's a nice drink. Because it actually reminds me of going to the football with my dad when I was a kid.
Stuart McLeod 00:31:06.831 There you go. Yeah.
Martin Bown 00:31:07.220 That was the half-time drink because you had to have it to keep warm. Otherwise you'd freeze your tail.
Stuart McLeod 00:31:11.447 Yeah. Otherwise you'd [inaudible]. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:31:13.204 But my American wife just looks at me. She's like, "Why are you drinking beef extract as a cup, instead of a cup of tea?" So I imagine Vegemite, if you've never heard, it's probably--
Stuart McLeod 00:31:25.029 Not that common.
Martin Bown 00:31:25.644 --slightly unique.
Stuart McLeod 00:31:27.334 But yeah. Your boys are into football. And I apologize for the translation, but it's an Aussie thing to do, of course. But soccer and cricket. Or actually, coming in last Saturday, we were on the west runways to Heathrow, which brings you over London. And it was about sort of 10 o'clock in the morning, and you could see all the cricketers, flying over the ovals, preparing, rolling the wickets, pulling off the mats, all of that. Cricket would be a pretty big-- cricket and football would be pretty big in where you are up north. Yeah?
Martin Bown 00:32:09.871 Yeah. Yeah. Cricket is massive, actually.
Stuart McLeod 00:32:11.647 Is it?
Martin Bown 00:32:12.003 Yeah, it is. I mean, every village has a team. And when I say a team, I mean every village has a senior team. But every village seems to have junior set up as well, pretty much. Yeah. It's pretty full on at the moment, actually. I never played cricket as a kid.
Stuart McLeod 00:32:27.741 Didn't you?
Martin Bown 00:32:28.180 I grew up in the Midlands. And it wasn't as popular where I was. I don't remember anybody-- I remember doing it at school a couple of times. I remember going to the nets with a lad in the village that I lived in. I remember getting a ball straight into the lip, and coming back home and [inaudible] as a kid. But I'd have loved to have played it. But I didn't. But here, it's everywhere. So you just expect to play. So yeah. My two boys both-- well, my middle one plays. My youngest one is at the very start of it. He's just been doing what they call All Stars, a kind of an England Cricket Board sponsored thing.
Stuart McLeod 00:33:01.975 Yeah. Trying to find the next Broad, or.
Martin Bown 00:33:05.228 Yeah. Yeah. So the difficulty we have is that my youngest one, so he's seven, there's a five-year gap between him and our middle one, who's 12. So our seven-year-old, when he was born, we thought, "Oh, we've got this nice baby again. We've got a nice baby experience coming along." And what Matthew, basically, kind of got out of his car seat and that was it. It's like, "I'm the same age as that kid over there," looking at his big brother. And then it was just straight into it. So yeah. So he doesn't play cricket, but really wants to, and doesn't understand why he can't play hardball cricket at the age of seven. But yeah, my middle one, Josh, he's great. And I said to them this week-- so they have this rule. So he plays under-13s. That's his age group. He's represented the under-15s. That's where he took the ball to the chest earlier this week, so he's got a nice red mark at the moment.
Stuart McLeod 00:33:49.726 He's been shopping for a chest guard, has he? [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:33:52.532 He played under-17s as well. He's only played once so far. Because he also plays in a band. So he plays electric guitar. And the [inaudible] clashes with under-17s. But I said to him, "So under 13s, I think when you reach 25, when you're batting and you reach 25, you then retire, not out." And he did it on Sunday morning.
Stuart McLeod 00:34:11.116 It's come down over the years. [inaudible] it was 35 or 50 when I was a kid.
Martin Bown 00:34:14.029 Yeah. It's 25. And I think it goes to 30 under-15s, and 35, I think [inaudible]. So whenevers I go to see him, he's generally out first or second ball. But we've worked out-- so we went on Sunday. My wife was away. She was on a scout leader training weekend. So myself, my daughter and my youngest son went to see Josh play. And he reached 25. He was on 25 or 26, and it was just phenomenal to watch him. And I said to him afterwards, I said, "When you were looking around, were you actually looking for the spaces?" And he said, "Yeah." And I said, "And did you hit them?" He was like, "Well, sometimes I did. And sometimes I didn't. But sometimes I did." But he came off. He was retired, not out. And he was pumping the air. Honestly, he was fist up in the air--
Stuart McLeod 00:34:52.247 Oh, good on him.
Martin Bown 00:34:52.326 And he came over straightaway afterwards, and he said to Bella-- because he's been retired twice now this season. I missed the first one. I was away running. So Bella had gone to the other game. And he said, "I've been retired twice now. And you were there for both of them. So can you come next Sunday?" Which immediately just causes, then, stress because Bella doesn't really want to be there. She's not [inaudible].
Stuart McLeod 00:35:14.425 [inaudible]. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:35:15.753 She's like, "I might come next Sunday, but I'm not coming tomorrow night. I'm not coming on Monday night." So it was really nice. It was really good of him. He kind of new straightaway, "This is why I've got it. Because my sister is here watching me." He didn't realize she wasn't watching him at all. She was just on her phone texting her friends, or whatever.
Stuart McLeod 00:35:31.451 Of course. Yeah.
Martin Bown 00:35:32.058 So yeah. And I said to him afterwards, I said, "You know what? It really makes you proud when you're a parent and you see your children just do things. Whatever it might be, draw, read, whatever. It makes you really proud to do something. Proud of them." But I then said, "When you then see your children do something that you can't do." I mean, I can't draw. But I used to say, "When you see your children do something that you actually can't do, and you really wish you could." So batting, playing cricket and batting or bowling well, or watching him play electric guitar. Or like my daughter goes, she's just riding for the disabled. Well, I've literally never rid. I'm petrified of horses. And yet she gets onto this horse every week and rides around a field. "When you see your children doing something like that, it's a level of pride that I can't really describe." They all sat around the table looking at me like, "Yeah. Whatever, Dad, whatever." [laughter] So yeah. With three children, just busy weeks.
Stuart McLeod 00:36:27.858 I bet.
Martin Bown 00:36:29.156 Football, cricket, riding for the disabled, karate, Scouts, Beavers, wheelchair football. We have one night off a week, I think, pretty much, that's a Thursday. We can try and keep that free. But there's activities that are beginning to creeping into it.
Stuart McLeod 00:36:43.269 It's just go, go, go. And then, there's a lot of appeal to village life and that sort of community.
Martin Bown 00:36:50.895 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So where we live, we live five miles south of [Futersfield?]. We live in a village called Curbar. And we absolutely love it round here. I mean, I go out running, and within 5, 10, minutes, I'm way out into the countryside. And I was kind of chatting about it. To my wife, she's American, Tina's American, so her previous office was in Times Square. Prior to relocating to the UK, she was in Times Square. And she hated it. She hated the daily battle with the tourists. I can't imagine what it must have been like going into Times Square for work every day. But her office, literally--
Stuart McLeod 00:37:30.167 Pushing past [Spiderman?]. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:37:32.471 Oh, absolutely. Right? I mean, she's [starting off with?] that completely. So she went from Times Square to them working in a small bedroom in a house in Wakefield, which is where we lived when she first moved over. And then we moved to the village. To start off with, I used to get daily emails from her saying, "There's cows in the field across the way." Or. "The sheep are in the field."
Stuart McLeod 00:37:51.240 Completely different to Times Square.
Martin Bown 00:37:52.504 Yeah. Absolutely. But we absolutely love it round here, really. It's just once you start with families, and then once you start meeting other families that have got kids that are doing your activities, or folks in schools and all the rest of it. So yeah, it's a good community. We know a lot of people. Like I said, my wife is involved in the Scouts. I'm involved in the local football team. We get to know a lot of people.
Stuart McLeod 00:38:14.255 How's your left foot?
Martin Bown 00:38:15.145 My left foot?
Stuart McLeod 00:38:15.791 Yeah.
Martin Bown 00:38:16.277 It's actually not too bad, to be honest with you.
Stuart McLeod 00:38:17.804 Oh, there you go.
Martin Bown 00:38:18.424 It was funny. So I gave up playing football. I used to play football, and I gave up in 2005. I got married in 2006. And my final game, I remember, I had an absolutely brilliant game of football.
Stuart McLeod 00:38:31.274 There you go. Go out on a high.
Martin Bown 00:38:32.029 Really played well. And I remember the manager said after, "That was a really good game of football. Well done, Martin." And I said, "Yeah, I retire." And he said, You what?" And I said, "No." I said, "I'm retired now." Because I was getting married about three months later. And I'd never had a serious injury. I mean, I used to come off every week with an injury. I had sore ankles, sore Achilles, bad knees, whatever it was. But I've never had a serious injury. I thought, "I really just don't want to be hobbling down the aisle with a [inaudible]." So I stopped. So I've really not played football since. I kept a pair of boots in the garage. It's like, a number of times, "Do you want to throw those boots out?" I said, "No, no. I'll keep them. You never know when you might need it." And I wore them recently, about two months ago, I put them on for one of my junior football training sessions. And one of the kids passed the ball to me and I had a shot. I put the ball into the top corner. It was absolutely amazing. I mean--
Stuart McLeod 00:39:19.530 There you go. [inaudible].
Martin Bown 00:39:21.409 "I can't believe I've just done that."
Stuart McLeod 00:39:22.664 Retire again.
Martin Bown 00:39:23.400 These kids were looking at me like, "That was amazing." And then I looked at these boots, these boots that I've kept for 15 years, the sole had just completely fallen off it. So I'm retired. I'm completely done.
Stuart McLeod 00:39:33.788 One and done. So you mentioned running. You've completed not only marathons, you do some ultras, don't you?
Martin Bown 00:39:42.535 Yeah. I've done a couple of ultras. Yeah, I've done about three or four. I think. My first one was a 40-mile that I did with a group of friends over the Peaks, over the Peak District up here. I've kind of done a couple of 30-milers, another one over the Peak District. I did one last Christmas. I did once. I was 50 at Christmas, just after Christmas, and I decided, "What are you going to do?" And my wife said, "What do you want to do for your 50th birthday?" And I was like, "Well, actually, I just want to go out for a really long run. No. That's really antisocial. And I tell you what I'll do. I'll go out for a really long run the day before my birthday. Then I can have a drink on my birthday with everybody and be sociable." So I found an event in Shrewsbury. And it was a lapped event around a cycling course. It wasn't a velodrome. It was kind of a-- it was like a road, a mocked up road, I guess, for road races, a one kilometer course. So I did 50 laps of that. So you could do as much as you wanted. It was a sunrise to sunset challenge. My birthday is end of December, sunrise to sunset--
Stuart McLeod 00:40:39.543 Was it a bit chilly?
Martin Bown 00:40:40.275 It was actually all right. It was not a bad day. But I set off and I said, "That's it. I'm doing 50 laps. 50k." So 31 miles.
Stuart McLeod 00:40:47.133 That's a good hit up.
Martin Bown 00:40:48.594 Yeah. And I would say it was probably my best run I've ever done, pound for pound, I didn't stop. I didn't get cramped. It was really good. So yeah, I've done a few ultras. And I guess, altogether with marathons, I'm on 24. I would have done 25, but I dropped out of one about three weeks ago. I got to about 16 miles and just, "I'm not enjoying this." And I saw a sign--
Stuart McLeod 00:41:08.203 It's not my day.
Martin Bown 00:41:09.005 Yeah. I just saw a sign for the finish and I thought, "You know what?" [inaudible] passed me and he said, "Are you all right?" And I said, "No, you carry on running. I'm just going to go through this gate." And I unpinned my number, stopped my watch, and it was the simplest decision I've ever taken, I think.
Stuart McLeod 00:41:21.785 Yeah. Some days it just doesn't work.
Martin Bown 00:41:23.181 Yeah. No, absolutely. But yeah, I love running. One time it was about going out and getting faster times. And now it's just meditation for me. It's just clearing my head, really.
Stuart McLeod 00:41:34.368 No, I get it. I get it. What's next for you, Martin? You're happy with where the business is sitting today? You look very at peace and organized and quite comfortable in your own skin. I think it's amazing what you've been able to achieve over the last 12, 15 years. I mean, you would have seen some real hard times, I'm sure. So what the fuck am I doing? [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:41:59.554 Yeah. Yeah. There were some long nights, I guess, working through the nights, just what you're doing. Questions being asked, "When are you going to get a proper job?" That kind of thing. So I guess where we're at now, I mean, somebody asked me, "If you could sum up 2020 in one word, what would it be?" And politely. And I said, "Validation." I think, validation for our business model and the way we work. And certainly lots of people going, "I get it now. I get why we're doing what we're doing. And why you do it the way you do it." So I guess for us, yeah, I'm happy with where we've got to, but there's always more to be done. We're still on the journey. So I want us to reach out to more businesses to do what we're doing, and let them get the benefit of how we're working with some of our other clients.
Stuart McLeod 00:42:48.637 Yep. Would you consider a sale if somebody came with a decent check?
Martin Bown 00:42:52.081 That's always a really tough question, I think, isn't it? When I've been on mentoring boards, and you talk to people about their businesses, and it doesn't matter what sector they're in, it's a really tough ask, I think. I don't know. Because at the moment, I've kind of got this idea in my head that how long I want to work for, doing what I'm doing. It involves kind of the age of the children. And they're still quite young. So I guess it depends on the size of the check, doesn't it, really?
Stuart McLeod 00:43:12.590 [inaudible]. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:43:14.561 At the end of the day, I guess it depends on the size of that check, really. But no, I'm really happy with where I am. I'm really happy with the business. I'm really happy with how it lets me get on with everything else that I do. I guess, really, the time that--
Stuart McLeod 00:43:24.896 A very busy, busy life.
Martin Bown 00:43:25.994 We do need a lot of time, and a lot of headspace, to help navigate things that Bella needs. And maybe that's what being in charge of my own destiny was all about. It's not financial. Our headline value on our website, our headline [coach?], it's more than just the bottom line for me. And it's a really strange thing to hear an accountant say, but money is not the driver for what we do, I guess. It's everything that brings around it. We talk a lot about being there when life happens. And life has happened to my family more than once over the last 10 years. And it's happened to people in our business. It happens to our clients. And it's about building a business that allows us to work, and do what we do, and do it well, and do it professionally. We'll take an account. And when life happens, we can step up and we can help each other out. And my team do that all the time to each other and for me, and I like to think I do that to them as well.
Stuart McLeod 00:44:20.913 Yeah. I mean, navigating the needs of Isabella has obviously been a significant effort over her lifetime so far. But from what you were saying, she's doing really well. But it always comes with complications and difficulties.
Martin Bown 00:44:36.036 Yeah. This challenges. I mean, this causes challenges. Funnily enough today, we've just booked, so there's a summer camp coming up that we book her onto. She loves it. But we have to make sure that [the carers?] can come and help her do it. So we have to balance up that demand from her saying, "Have you booked me onto that summer camp yet?" "Well, no, Bella, we haven't. Because we need to find--" We didn't realize that the two people that helped her last year kind of work where she's at, they work support workers, but they're free over the summer. So yesterday she came and she said, "I've spoken to them. They can help me."
Stuart McLeod 00:45:06.082 [inaudible]. [laughter]
Martin Bown 00:45:07.983 Yeah. Okay. And lo and behold, my wife had received an email from both of them today to say, "No, we've spoken to Bella. So that's fine." So that's booked on. There are challenges. We love to travel. My wife and I, we love to travel. We'd love to take our kids abroad and to get Italy, Spain, wherever it is, getting to see where the locals are. Or even go to the States to visit the grandparents at the most basic level. But the challenge is we're getting onto an airplane with the wheelchair that Bella has, and how we do that. I know it can be done because people do it all the time. But we haven't done it for a few years. So how do we do that? We can't ever book a last minute flight. Because we have to book a flight and then speak to them directly and say, "This is what we need." So it's that kind of thing, really.
Stuart McLeod 00:45:51.300 Yeah. It's just the things that we take for granted require a lot more effort and energy and time and, as you said, head space. But it sounds like your balance of work, and family, and the kids, and Bella's needs are always competing, yet at this point in time, in a really great place.
Martin Bown 00:46:18.061 Yeah. No, I think it's good. And we like to keep ourselves busy. We've always been people to keep busy. And so having the businesses, it's one arm of our week, really. I don't have time to work weekends, if I'm honest. But I've never been a big one to say, "Right, I need to work this weekend." That's me. Like, "You need to go and do something with the kids because I'm working"? I've just never been-- it's never felt right to me. Never felt right to me. Before we had children, I didn't want to work. I work hard enough during the week. So we get to a certain point-- and now, that's the great thing about being remote, is that I can be up and working before people wake up in the morning. And I can take a break for the morning routine. I can do the school runs. I can collect my youngest from school if he wants me to. Or if he don't want me to, sometimes it's like, "I don't want you today. I want Mom." And whatever it might be. But that's the great thing about it, isn't it? Whereas even just going back to when we were in the office thinking, "Oh, no, it's my pickup today." And then having to pack up quickly, leave the office, drive home, drop him off at home, go back to the office to finish off. We don't have that. I don't need it. Nobody needs it. I don't want any of my team to have it. So yeah. And we've interviewed people the last couple of years, and they've said, "What can I do about school assemblies, and this and that?" It's like, "You don't need to ask about a school assembly. If your child's in a school assembly, you go to the school assembly. You don't need to ask." It seems absolute common sense to me. But having been in a corporate world, I know that it's not common sense. "I'm at school assembly--"
Stuart McLeod 00:47:40.839 That's the problem with common sense.
Martin Bown 00:47:43.450 Yeah. Exactly. "I'm off to the school sports day tomorrow." "Oh, yeah? Have you booked the afternoon off?" "Do I need to? Really? Honestly." So I think we're in a good place.
Stuart McLeod 00:47:53.894 Well, which brings us to time. Martin. Hey, look, I've really enjoyed getting to know you the last couple of days. And you should be so proud of what you've been able to achieve for you and your family. And we at Karbon are thrilled to be just a little part of that journey. And people like you are the reason that we do what we do. And it goes without saying, but if there's anything that we can do to help, we'd be more than happy to do so. And always reach out if you need anything.
Martin Bown 00:48:28.136 Yeah. No, that's great. Thank you. Stuart. I'm really pleased that Karbon is going to be a large part of My Management Accountandt, and it's very quickly become a large part of who we are. So any successes that we see from now on will in a large part be down to me no longer having a to-do list in my head and people saying, "Did you promise somebody that we'd do that?" "Oh, yeah, I did, actually." So no, it's there. So it's really good. And Karbon and My Management Accountant is a really good fit for us.
Stuart McLeod 00:48:54.407 Yeah. We love working with you guys. And we really appreciate the support.
Martin Bown 00:48:58.547 Yeah. Thank you for having me on. I've really enjoyed it.
Stuart McLeod 00:49:01.432 Likewise, Martin. Have a great afternoon.
Martin Bown 00:49:02.974 Same to you. Same to you.
Stuart McLeod 00:49:10.168 [music] 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 1,000 free resources there, including guides, articles, templates, webinars and more. Just head to karbonhq.com/resources. I'd also love it if you could leave us a five-star review wherever you listen to this podcast. Let us know you liked 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.