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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: 00:00:06.252 [music] Hi, I'm Stuart McLeod, cofounder of Karbon. Welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast, the show where I go behind the scenes with the world's top accounting leaders. Colin, Alasdair, welcome to the Accounting Leaders Podcast. Before we talk about sort of some of the great clients and things that you work with, I'd love to hear about-- well, firstly, Alasdair, some insights into cycling and racing, but also starting a business with your son because mixing business, pleasure, and family can be fraught with danger, but I know that you guys have come into a great routine and the accounting firm is going from strength to strength. So perhaps let's start at the start.
Alasdair: 00:01:01.178 Yeah, God, start at the start. So yeah, the bike racing is just a bit of a hobby. And at 53 last year, I decided I'd had enough of that, Stuart, so hung up my wheels and now I play a bit of golf and I'm a leisure cyclist. I can actually enjoy the scenery when I'm out, which for 16 years, it was training. It was work. It was just a different form of work. I guess in terms of the Ashton McGill story, I have an accounting background, trained with EY, or Arthur Young as they were back in the late '80s. Left in '92, '93, out into the world of business. Run a bunch of businesses in the '90s and 2000s, and exited the last one of those in 2013. It was a contractor accounting business. It was the first foray back into accounting since EY, and I had a bit of a restrictive covenant, wasn't allowed back into the industry. So I spent a few years having fun. I was head of entrepreneurship at the local university. That was kind of two days a week. Sat on the board of a few businesses, did some non-exec stuff, and then started to do a bit of consulting. I've also got a background in design and what's called service design which, in the business world, manifests itself as customer experience. So I'd studied that in the 2000s.
Alasdair: 00:02:09.997 So everything, consulting work-- one of the clients that we were doing consulting work around customer experience was Xero, and they brought us in. There was a guy by the name of Mike Day in the UK back then, 2006, and Mike was their head of training, something like that, for accounting partners. And they brought us in to run a customer experience programme for accounting partners because I think Xero had realised that their marketing is pretty slick. They sell a really sexy image of accounting. And then the reality for a lot of business owners like Colin in the UK was that that's not what you got when you rocked up at an accountant. And so they'd asked us to come in and deliver a customer experience programme for, I think, their accounting partners. It was about 4,500 of them at the time. And it was the most frustrating thing I've ever done. The most frustrating thing I've ever done because accountants don't think about their clients as customers, right? And so we're trained to be technicians. We're taught to be technicians. And so we deliver services to people rather than for them, and a classic example of that is deadlines. And so in the UK here, we've just-- we're two weeks out from the 31st of January, which if you look at some of the accountants that you might follow on LinkedIn, they're all talking about what a terrible January they're going to have because it's self-assessment season. Well, it's not. It just so happens that the deadline, the last day you can file your return is the 31st of January. But as accountants, we work to deadlines. But from Colin's point of view as a business owner, he doesn't want an email from you on the 30th of January saying you've got 8 grand to pay tomorrow. He'd much rather have that in August. I mean, he'd much rather not have it at all, but if he's got tax to pay--
Stuart: 00:03:44.704 He can avoid that.
Alasdair: 00:03:45.852 If he's got tax to pay, he'd much rather know several months in advance so he can plan for it. And that's what I mean by delivering things to people rather than for them. And so my son's a designer. He's a graphic designer, marketer, studied advertising and PR. So he's not an accountant. And it was him who really convinced me on the back of that Xero experience. He said, "Look, you're an accountant. I think we can set up and deliver a better experience than folks are having with traditional accountants. What do you think?" And it took me a little while to agree with him but I did. And in the middle of 2017-- the start of 2017, we decided to research this. We took that design expertise, which is really about going out and having conversations with people and listening to them and finding out what their pain points are, and then designing a solution that fits. And that's what we did in 2017. So we launched September 2017 and nearly five and a half months later, we've got 15 of a team. We've got 170 clients or so across the UK and one of whom is Colin who's become a good friend, Colin at Miconex in Perth. So it's just a different proposition. And we happen to be father and son, but that doesn't really come into it in the business. We managed to keep that quite separate. And again, we have another common thing with Colin in that we both have the same board adviser. And actually, I met him through Colin. Colin introduced me to him, but actually, we were at school together, this guy, by the name of Les Bayne and he works with Colin and Colin's board and he works with us on our board. And he's ex-Accenture. He's got a really interesting business background and so he's coming to work with us at Ashton McGill. It's been great because now he coaches my son as well and I get to step one-- I can be one step removed from that. So that's a really potted history of the journey, but yeah, trying to do things just a little bit differently for the benefit of the folks that we're here to serve.
Stuart: 00:05:40.594 When did you and Colin become accountant and client? And then we'll ask Colin about his journey with Miconex and his businesses.
Alasdair: 00:05:53.276 So I think back to 2018, we were first introduced. I mean, we kind of knew each other. We grew up in the same city. I've been aware of what Colin was doing in his business. Families have known one another for decades, but we'd never really sat down and talked about business. And a mutual acquaintance introduced us. Yeah, that was middle of 2018, I think, Colin, and we started to work together and here we are four and a bit years later.
Colin: 00:06:18.281 Yeah, that's right. Yeah. A good connection to make. Things happen in your life, don't they, and you come back into contact with someone you've either known from school or worked with or somewhere sort of down the line you've come back and the planets align a little bit.
Stuart: 00:06:34.349 And how did your career start, Colin?
Colin: 00:06:36.744 So my career is a little bit more meandering. [inaudible], you went into there, Alasdair, as well. I've always worked in marketing really. Working my way. Didn't really have a great vision for what I wanted to do but I left school. Didn't go to university. Started working, trying to find my way. And that took me to various different marketing roles within Blue Chip really. Pretty unfulfilling. I just enjoyed the role marking, but not been able to measure impact, I guess, immediately and understand what difference you're making was a little bit frustrating for me. I'm quite an impatient character, and I like to know what I'm doing is having an impact of some sort. So yeah, I obviously then retrained as a chef and bought a restaurant. So that's the obvious thing.
Stuart: 00:07:24.377 Yeah, as you do.
Colin: 00:07:26.278 I thought if I'm not enjoying what I'm doing, let's do something I enjoy, was the kind of idea. It was a crazy sort of four-year period of my life that I don't regret, but I'm not going to repeat.
Stuart: 00:07:39.715 Where was the restaurant, to sidetrack into there for a bit?
Colin: 00:07:44.774 Yeah, let's do that. So I retrained in St Andrews and worked in some good kitchens there and went to college. And what I found, I went to college and worked with a bunch of kids that probably didn't know what they wanted to do. At that point, I kind of thought I did know what I wanted to do, so I could help them, but they'd been working in kitchens for the last five years, so they could help me with practical stuff and I could help with the academic side of the course. So that was really great. And then I was working at the same time in kitchens, learning what I didn't know, which was everything about professional cookery. And then asking all the questions back at college the next day to try and catch up as quickly as possible. So then I bought a restaurant up in a place called Cromarty in the Highlands of Scotland, beautiful little fishing village. If you're ever in that part of the world, wherever you are listening, then I'll do my Cromarty marketing piece and go visit. The restaurant's still there, a place called Sutor Creek. And that's when I learned most about business probably is setting up that small business. As we all know, you have to be master of everything all of a sudden. It's not just cooking the meals and keeping people happy. It's everything else that goes on with the business. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Chef-owner is one of the most tiring jobs I think you can probably have. If it's a small restaurant, you're there all the time. But I loved working with the kids that were coming through that village, giving them a first job, hopefully a good experience, getting to know them, getting to know the place. And really successful. And one of the things that I was beginning to understand is the real challenge to market your business. You've got a product. You've got a local business. How do you get the message out to your target audience? So that linked me back to some of the skills that I picked up in my marketing career. So when we sold the restaurant, went travelling for a bit, came back and set up Miconex.
Stuart: 00:09:43.255 Was running the restaurant and owning the restaurant an inspiration for what came next?
Colin: 00:09:48.685 Yeah, definitely. So the bit that I was always musing over, I guess, kind of was doing my travelling. Even before that, [I remember?] selling the restaurant was businesses want to sell local people who are doing, and local people want to find out what local businesses are doing. So both of those statements were true and still are true to large extent, so how come it's so difficult? We tried to set up a business which was-- this is about 12 years ago. So digital marketing business for cities that helped connect local resident populations with business communities and vice versa. So we set one up in Inverness, which is the kind of city in the Highlands of Scotland. It's a really good testing ground because there's not too much going on around that area. It's not too busy a media kind of landscape to work in. And we learned how to build technology platforms that connected local resident populations with businesses, enabled to find out what's going on. And that kind of took us down the route of finding out more about that market, cities, town management, and we set up similar communication platforms in about 30 different cities in the UK. The social media trends and advancements in technology meant that that wasn't the model. The model we had didn't work. So we went to probably 20 to 25 staff down to 3 staff in six months. So that was a really painful period in the career, letting all these people go to save the business. At the same time, we started working on a different product, which was starting to get traction and delivering value and that's what we're concentrating on now.
Stuart: 00:11:39.643 How does the product connect local businesses with local people?
Colin: 00:11:44.055 Yeah, great question. So what we worked out was that we could develop a local currency product that did that. Actually delivers value. So when you're kind of working in my world, you have to deliver value for the city. So the place manager, the city centre manager, you have to deliver value for the resident and for merchants. And to do that is really difficult. It's a really difficult problem to solve. But payments is a universal thing that runs through any city, spending money. So we create local currencies using the Visa Mastercard networks. So it comes in the form of a gift card programme. So I'm [inaudible] in Perth in Scotland at the moment, so the first programme was a Perth gift card. So it's very similar to a shopping centre, shopping mall gift card, but for the whole city. So it's one card that you can spend in shops, restaurants, leisure, business, entertainment. So it provides a really great opportunity to gift local. So you can give your friends and family a local gift card and employers can also reward their staff with a city gift card for their employees. In terms of rewarding staff is something that they want. Got a lot of research that says that employees would prefer to get a gift card because they can have that for themselves rather than additional little bits of money that gets subsumed into their household budgets or nights out. The gift cards really tick a lot of boxes, and if it also helps to support the local economy, then it's a perfect employee reward or incentive. And that's where the growth of the business has come for, is actually providing a product that has got mass appeal to consumers and to employers. And all of the money can only be spent in local businesses.
Stuart: 00:13:33.450 How has that been received by, say, the local councils or city governments? Is that something that they've been looking for? Is it a problem that they want solved?
Colin: 00:13:44.557 Yeah, exactly. That's exactly our client base, so [inaudible] improvement districts, local authorities. Anyone that's trying to drive local spend to help communities, we can help them to set up these programmes and implement them and lock in that money for the business population. So I would say that every local economy is trying to do the same thing, they just don't all know that this is the right product yet.
Stuart: 00:14:12.117 He's going to solve the problem in the right way.
Colin: 00:14:15.055 We've got now kind of 170 cities that we work with or regions across in the UK, Ireland, and North America. Success breeds success, I guess. Once you've got one city that's working really well, then everyone else wants to kind of know how to replicate that success. And that's the journey that we've been on with Alasdair and Ashton McGill is how do we go from one or two programmes to scaling it up internationally, and also building a team, having the right investment profile, etc.? So that's where that connection and working with Ashton McGill goal has certainly been very beneficial and essential in that story.
Stuart: 00:14:57.974 All right. Well, let's get into that. So Alasdair, did you have any experience local currency and gift cards before meeting Colin?
Alasdair: 00:15:06.401 No, I mean, I was aware of Colin and Colin's business because Perth's the nearest town to where I live. And so I was conscious but I had never-- full transparency, I had never used a Perth gift card before then. The fascinating thing is that when we started to work together, as Colin said, there were 3 people in the business, and we had the team day last week, you're back up to the guts of 25 again, and there's no sign of that slowing down. And really one of the drivers beyond just what Colin's doing in terms of selling the programmes has been the pandemic. And I think a real desire within local communities not to just support Jeff Bezos and Amazon, but actually try and keep their money in the local economies.
Stuart: 00:15:46.811 Should we not?
Alasdair: 00:15:47.608 And keep the money in the local economy is because I don't know it's like where you are in the US, Stuart, or where folks are listening to this, but if you're in a provincial town or city in Scotland, then it's not great. And so the work that Colin and his team do give those cities the opportunity to thrive again. From our point of view, it's been about supporting that journey, and what Colin hasn't yet, I guess, said is that there's a huge amount of tech that sits behind this. And so this is a business that is cash hungry because you're investing in technology to keep up and not just keep up, but keep ahead and innovate, and so a lot of the work that Colin and I do is around forecasting and modelling. And we're not just modelling for one territory. We're modelling for the UK, the US, Ireland, Canada, and then doing a bit of what-if analysis on all of those. And this is not a simple business model either. Of all of the businesses we work with, Colin knows this, this is the most complex business model of all.
Stuart: 00:16:49.755 Where we are is probably not that atypical to some of the more provincial Scottish towns that you talk about and that you know so well. We're in a tourist town. There's seven ski resorts within an hour's drive. There's about 7,000 people that live here permanently and about 60,000 the week of July 4th. We've got all the problems of towns like us throughout the world post-COVID. We got inundated. We were just pre-COVID and good luck, not good management, but you know what it's like, people moved out of the Londons, the San Franciscos, the Melbournes, the Sydneys of the world into towns like this during COVID. Some have moved back. And the difficulty is they're supporting the local economies outside of sort of peak season but also, housing prices is driven out or made difficult for those that work more permanently in the area. The restaurants and the local businesses, it's hard. It's really hard. Sort of you want to be able to pay the wages that support the local economies and the local communities, but there's only so much you can do. So my guess, Colin, having listened to the story for 26 minutes is that your type of product plays into towns like us and many towns across the world. And that story resonates.
Colin: 00:18:16.047 Yeah, 100%. And I think that's what we've learned as we've expanded is that obviously there's lots of local differences, but there's more similarities than differences across territories we were working because of the big macro trends that you're talking about. And it's easy to launch campaigns and show about loving local and it's easy for people to click on our Facebook posts and like or comment that they support local, but where they spend their money is the ultimate kind of indication of whether they do or not. Our product gives people an alternative, an easy way to make a change. So instead of buying someone an Amazon gift card or even a gift from Amazon, buy them the local gift card, and then the recipient can go and buy things. And the reason I can state that all of our gift cards are better than Amazon is because you can do things with these as well. You can go for a meal or you can go to the cinema or you can have the experience that your local place offers. So every city in the areas we work in have the opportunity to create a gift card that's better than Amazon because they're going to have the experience and retail together. And that makes a lot of sense to consumers and to employers once you create the opportunity for them to make that change. And there's very little other. We've worked now in place management in this kind of [centre?] for 12 years. There's very little else that works.
Stuart: 00:19:44.345 What's the rollout process? Do you sort of need somebody to go business to business to be able to accept the cards or working with the local improvement authority or the local council, you get that distribution and it's not too bad?
Colin: 00:19:59.893 That's exactly it. Yeah, that's what we learned was if we want to expand quickly and enable this programme to be implemented, then we need to work with partners that are aligned with that objective. We provide the platform, all the support, high-success programmes, campaigns, everything they need to launch and run a successful programme. It's kind of left-- there's two things left for the city. They need to onboard the merchants. So every merchant needs to register to accept the Mastercard or Visa card. That's a one-time swipe. And then they need to help promote the programme locally. It's their programme. We help them create their products. So get the message out there to the local and target audiences. And the rest kind of happens automatically. Once you receive a card, the first thing you have to do is you look to see where you can spend it because you've now got your eyes on the local proposition. You might see a business you've not been to before. You've got someone else's money to spend. That's great. The best kind of money. And you go out there and you walk through the doors for the first time, money to spend, and on average, people spend 65% more than the value they've been given because you don't count the first part. You only count your own money. It's a great way. We always say that all businesses want is people to walk through the door with money to spend and that's what this enables cities to help facilitate.
Stuart: 00:21:29.061 As you've increased the distribution, as you've sort of expanded internationally, tell us a little bit about the business model and the tech and then let's get on to how good your accountant is, of course, while he's in the room.
Colin: 00:21:44.162 Great, yeah. No, thanks. So it's a very simple product. And as usual, you want everyone to think that or you're not doing your job. So it has to appear very simple product. But behind the scenes, we need to concentrate on four main areas when we're working with clients. So we concentrate on proposition. Ultimately, there's a consumer product, so where can I spend it? Our Glasgow programme in Scotland then goes from, "Where can I spend it?" to, "Oh my God, there's 1200 places to spend it." So then another problem, which is how do I communicate all of the different things that this card can be used for? So then you present different consumer propositions to different target audiences. So you need to invest in user interfaces that help consumers to see that it's the right product for them at that time for the use case they've got in mind. So there's a bit of proposition there we're always working on to improve that. So our website will allow you to kind of filter for different business types and with different landing pages for different occasions and different use cases. And then sales channels. So availability is the second thing that we work with. So how do I get this product? That's great. I'm a business. I want to buy 500 for my staff. How do I do that? How do I get that product securely to me? How do we look after money laundering, regulations, etc.? Transaction, essentially, we're selling money, so we have to be watertight on all of our technology and processes from that perspective. You might want to buy the product locally in a local shop, so how do we enable that? You might want to buy it from a kiosk and a shopping centre. So we have a whole infrastructure of sales channels that we've built over time to help make this product available.
Colin: 00:23:36.503 The third bit is more awareness and promotion, so what can we do to help make stakeholders in the place aware of the product? And how do we help the clients to promote it at the right times of [inaudible] the biggest opportunities are? So yeah, so within that, you've got a whole array of different systems that we need to build and make available. And I guess from a business perspective, we've been trying to also recruit the people that we need to do that. Every other business, the most important thing is the people that are within it. And that's probably the most success we've had that was the last year when we were recruiting a fantastic team. I think Alasdair will testify to that. When we had our staff day on the 25th Jan there, what brilliant, a bunch of people, and they're all motivated, they're all smart. They're just super aligned with the business objectives. They want to help succeed for the clients. They want to deliver local spends. So everyone's aligned there and we've got a great senior management team in place now. We've got great partners. We've got a good board. I think we've got the opportunity and the ingredients in there and the next couple of years is about skill and helping to deliver that local spend.
Stuart: 00:24:55.926 And then your journey with Alasdair and the firm, after you met, sort of, how did you go about educating them around the business model and what have they done to help so far?
Colin: 00:25:10.059 Yeah, I mean, the great thing, from a business owner's perspective, ambitious one that we're trying to build something significant, is that most of our conversations with Alasdair don't have a lot to do with technical accounts. Alasdair and everyone in the company at Ashton McGill are really good at listening to what we're trying to do, what we're trying to achieve. They then input across the business, really, wherever they can to help us achieve that. Obviously, accountancy is the backbone of that, making sure that everything gets done at the right time, etc., we're fully compliant and we're ahead of the curve, as Alasdair was talking about. And I think, Alasdair, when you're talking about us and educating Ashton McGill and what we do, we always learn from Ashton McGill about how they do things. So they use technology very well. Integrated technology, really efficient processes. We try to do the same. So we can always learn from how Ashton McGill go about doing that for clients and we've got a lot of clients. We should be doing things in the same sort of way. So I think there's a cultural fit there about being increasingly efficient and smart in our use of technology. And over time, I think is the best way to learn our business. I don't think it's-- I think that's the way Alasdair works as well, speaking for him, is that just work on delivering value, get the basics done right, learn what the business was trying to do, and then see how they can input along the journey.
Alasdair: 00:26:50.371 Took me a little while to grasp the depth of the business model because it's not straightforward. But I think now, three and a bit years into our journey of working together, then I've got a pretty good understanding of how Miconex connects works with its different revenue streams. And they're not consistent to each country either, Stuart, so that's part of the challenge. So the UK model is different to the US model that's different to the Canadian model. And I guess at some point I need to fully document every single thing about that in case I fall under a bus because a lot of that is still in my head or on spreadsheets. But yeah, for me, it's been a real pleasure, first of all, to see Colin's business grow and flourish because they're just good people within the business and also what Miconex does helps local communities, and so it's great to see that and the impact that these guys have on the places where they work. And I think as Colin and I have got to know one another and worked together, it's become more of a strategic relationship now. I mean, my team and our team at Ashton McGill take care of the day-to-day stuff, the payroll, the VAT, and management. David and I working the management accounts this afternoon. There's a board meeting next week where we're just trying to get the pack together, finish that off. But a lot of the conversations, as Colin said, that we have now is very much strategic. How are we going to do this? Maybe it's investment. Maybe we're looking at different ways to fund a particular piece of work. But the fact we've been on that journey together over three or four years, we've got to know each other and I think that's something we try to build in with every client that we work with, Stuart. If someone is looking for a transactional relationship, we're not your guys. If they're looking for someone-- to use one of Les's terms of looking for someone to ride shotgun with them on the journey, yeah, that's us. We're up for that. It's fun as well if you work that way.
Stuart: 00:28:41.876 Across your client base, I imagine this business model is probably relatively unique. But what about the international aspect? The UK businesses, are they exporting a lot in your client base or this is sort of one of not many?
Alasdair: 00:28:57.118 This is probably one of about, I would say, maybe about 10 to 15% of our clients that trade internationally. And part of that-- we had more than that before 2019 when the dreaded Brexit happened, and that, it really messed things up for people. We've got one client where we had to set up a company in Spain for them to be able to trade in the EU, and that's been an absolute headache. Everything's in Spanish, funnily enough. But one of our team here is from--
Stuart: 00:29:26.422 Yes, I suppose it would be, wouldn't it?
Alasdair: 00:29:28.291 Yeah. I mean, just getting registered for VAT or sales tax, as some folks will know, in Spain is not straightforward. You've got to wait for one of the government people to come and visit your premises. They won't tell you when they're going to come because they don't want you to just go and rent a room somewhere one day on the day that they're going to visit. So that took about three months for our clients to get registered for VAT, and they couldn't start selling until that happened. And so all of these things have become barriers to trading internationally. And one of our other large clients is a brewery business here in the city of Dundee, and they've managed to navigate that. So they export a lot of beer to Scandinavia, shipped some stuff to Australia recently, actually. Not the US yet.
Stuart: 00:30:08.845 Australians buying beer, I can't imagine.
Alasdair: 00:30:11.608 Australians buying Scottish beer though, which is pretty impressive.
Stuart: 00:30:14.233 Yeah, there you go. They'll buy beer from anywhere.
Alasdair: 00:30:16.393 Yeah, so for us, it's an important part of our business and being able to support our clients. I have another client, funnily enough, ironically, in the same city as Colin, where we're working with-- I don't know if you've had Andrew Van De Beek from Illumin8 or if you know Andrew, Stuart. Yeah, so Andrew is helping us with that client, setting them up in Australia, and then Seamus, who's a mutual connection again of Colin and I is helping us set up an Irish company because this same business needs to trade in the EU. So it's not our core business, helping people trade internationally, but when someone says, "Can you help with that?" The answer is generally yes. And also being part of that Xero network is helpful to us and with Miconex, with Colin's business, we've been able to introduce accounting partners in the US and Canada. We've got a great relationship with the guys in Canada. They're really, really well-aligned. I think we do things in quite a similar fashion. And so when those things happen, we can tap into the networks. Even if we don't know somebody, then there's generally someone that will be able to help.
Stuart: 00:31:22.522 And how have you found, Colin, the sort of the internet? I assume that sort of once you gained a bit of traction and got a few improvement district councils up and going, that sort of North America, Canada, US was a natural state. Was that a difficult transition for you?
Colin: 00:31:39.325 Yes. I would say, as a short answer. So again, we talked about a lot of time the pandemic. Obviously, it either makes or breaks you probably. We were very lucky that what it meant was that instead of me flying a short flight to Bristol or somewhere in the UK to have a meeting and then flying home again, I can have 10, 12 meetings in a day talking to different cities around the world. And we got an opportunity with the payments partner we worked with to explore the North American market. They were really happy with the success that we were having in Europe. So they kind of said, "Do you want to do the same thing over here?" It was that time just when lockdown was happening. And it's funny that our client base, you would have thought, well, like everyone else, you don't know what's going to happen at that time. You remember either that's going to be the death of business or it's going to do okay, but actually we started lots of vendor inquiries because city centre management, local economies, they couldn't really do anything else, but they could get ready for reopening. So a lot of planning was done then, pipeline building. We could at the same time work really quickly with Ashton McGill's help again and various other advisers to sell subsidiary companies and bank accounts and everything you need to trade in the different country we wanted to at the same time as securing our first clients and hopefully that happens in the right order. Not necessarily happen in the right order, but anyway, that's what you have to do, I think. You just have to go for it sometimes. Seize the opportunity. But it was very intense. I remember doing that from my house. Alasdair would be in his house because you weren't allowed to be anywhere else. Just remember that being an intense sort of four months, five months, as we set up to those trading businesses and get the first clients up and running. But yeah, I think that then opened up the opportunity for the company. So it was worth all the hard work. Yeah, definitely just learning different banking systems and legislation, etc., for our products was very intense.
Stuart: 00:33:53.450 Canada's probably pretty straightforward with-- or more straightforward with the Commonwealth connections, but the US I imagine was a pain in the arse.
Alasdair: 00:33:59.862 [crosstalk]. We've got two clients I'll talk about actually. Our first two clients were really interesting. So we had one in Alaska, a city called Cordova. And they had a million bucks from Mr Trump to give out to local residents, but they wanted to keep that money in the local community. So we set up a local currency so they could load their cards and so the money could only be spent in Cordova. So they were really forward-thinking. And that was our first US client. And our first Canadian client was Prince Edward Island, so the province, and they saw that they needed to get ready for-- it's such a tourism-heavy economy that they wanted to make sure that as soon as they opened up, they had something that could attract people to the islands. So they set up the Canada's Food Island Gift Card programme. I love it. It makes me want to go there definitely because when I look at the card, there's a lot of great restaurants on that island, I tell you. And what they did, they worked with accommodation providers so that they could buy the Canada's Food Island Gift Cards at a discount and put them into welcome bags. So as soon as they opened up, if you came to Canada's-- sorry, Prince Edward Island, you got a gift card on arrival that you could spend and look at the economy. And they loaded something like $6.8 million worth of gift cards in the first two months when they opened up. They were completely full. So they've continued to use that programme to drive accommodation, tourism, and shoulder seasons, quieter seasons of the calendar year. And they're talking about partnerships with airlines, etc., so when you buy a flight to Prince Edward Island, you get a gift card on arrival.
Colin: 00:35:45.092 So it's amazing all these different use cases that we never thought about for our product have been opened up once you've got the programmes in existence and we've got another programme in Scotland that we worked with the Scottish government to put 32 different regional programmes into the whole of the country so that every business in Scotland can benefit from being part of their own programme and then again, on the back of that and some sort of test cases, the local authorities here have started to use that to get money to people that are in need of additional support that helps them obviously immediately to get money that they can spend in our variety of local businesses. It helps the businesses, and it's all done with dignity because the people that receive the cards, no one knows how they got them. They could have been gifted. So it's kind of dispersement with dignity and it's kind of a core part. And that gives everyone a lot of satisfaction being involved in programmes like that.
Stuart: 00:36:45.712 You must be very proud of Colin's journey, Alasdair.
Alasdair: 00:36:47.874 Oh, it's great. It's so inspiring. And to meet the team-- because I've met some of the management team and the board before and a few of the folks from within the company, but when we met back on the 25th of January on Burns night, Burns day, and the Canadian team had come over to Scotland as well, it's just so good to meet the folks that are actually at the coalface and doing this day to day. So yeah, I mean, one of the most inspiring businesses we get to work with, Stuart.
Stuart: 00:37:18.883 Out of all the reasons that you're doing what you do, Alasdair, what gives you the energy to build a great firm?
Alasdair: 00:37:28.108 Yeah, I mean, I guess at this stage, now I'm 53, 54 in a couple of weeks' time, so one of the things I wanted to do when we set Ashton McGill up was do good work for good people. And so in our discovery process, when we bring on new clients, we're not interested in just doing business with anyone. We want to make a-- we want to make a difference. We want to work with people like Colin that are changing the world. And that's maybe a grandiose statement, but it just makes it fun. And actually, see from a recruitment point of view, Stuart, you know what it's like recruiting in the accounting industry. It's tough. And you'll hear that from everyone you speak to in our industry. But the story that we've got to tell about the work that we do and who we do it with and who we do it for, that helps us attract talent and it sets us apart from the competition. And I think it's really important for us that we've got case studies, if you want for one of a better word, of businesses like Miconex, of businesses like 71Brewing here in Dundee, where you're going to get to work with a really innovative business that's doing things differently, that's making a difference. And for a lot of young folks coming into the industry, they're looking for that. They're looking for something that's going to be more meaningful. It's a very different world to the world I worked-- my 1986 version of Arthur Young. The world's changed a hell of a lot since then.
Stuart: 00:38:46.997 And Colin, as we wind up here, what's next for Miconex and your journey with Alasdair?
Colin: 00:38:55.458 For Miconex, two things simply. For each of our existing clients, we've invested an awful lot in client success, people, systems to help them grow their programmes. All of our clients have the potential. I think they're probably-- we're 10% of the way there of what could be achieved with the programme that we've already got. So they've already got huge potential, so we want to help our clients maximise that. And we want more clients. So it's pretty simple. And I think it's all based around success for us. It's very clear that the more success we can drive for our existing clients, the more people will want to emulate that success. So that enables us to have a very simple strategy for the company and know where to focus. I think for the exciting bit is we've got a lot of great clients and a lot of great people in the company to help achieve that. So that's probably the difference a year on from where we were before. We had a lot of great clients but didn't have enough people who didn't quite know where to invest. I think we've got that now. So that's really exciting for me is that it's all ahead of us to help achieve and in terms of working with Ashton McGill, I think that relationship gets stronger and stronger and closer and closer the more we work. Can see that continuing, to be honest. Alasdair's a really key part of the team, and I think there's more that we can do together in terms of sharing how the companies work and learning together as both companies grow. I think that's the exciting bit.
Stuart: 00:40:38.423 Well, Alasdair, Colin, it's been fantastic to hear about your journey. Congratulations on all the success that you've had so far. If I can introduce you to the local general manager of Incline Village General Improvement District, I'd be more than happy to. Indra is his name and I'm sure towns like us can benefit enormously from your business. And as I said, look, just thrilled to see firms and clients working closely together and if there's anything that Karbon can do, Alasdair, just never hesitate to reach out. We're always here for you guys.
Alasdair: 00:41:16.371 Yeah, no, it's great, Stuart. Thanks for all your support as well.
Colin: 00:41:19.384 Yeah, appreciate it.
Stuart: 00:41:20.296 Cheers, boys. [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 a thousand 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 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.