Accounting Redefined: From Transactional to Transformational Accounting with Laurence Fishman

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Key phrases:

“Having to accept a digitalisation of the product that we were selling was a do or die. It basically became a prerequisite rather than a nice to have.”

“The competitive advantage of technology has gone. It’s now become the norm, it’s become the staple.”

“It comes back to culture and the level of client service delivery.”

“If I’m advising some of the fastest growth tech businesses in the UK but I’m not leveraging tech, what does that say about me?”

“Before accountancy was very transactional in the way it ran, but I’m passionate about trying to shift it towards something that’s more intentionally human because you’re dealing with people at the end of the day.”

“People are starting to make buy decisions much more heavily linked to the personality fit and the culture fit of a practice.”

“Clients understand that if you’re not offering any real value other than being able to do things efficiently and quickly, then they want their fee slashed. That’s not our market.”

“Clients, from the minute they walk through our door, they feel what it is to be an NLP client. I think that is where the accountancy profession needs to go.”

“If we can get away from the transactional approach, which is what accountancy has fallen into over the last x number of years, and go back to that, and link up with clients, you become their aid forever more. It becomes a much more personal relationship rather than one that’s just about the compliance side.”

“We’re here for our clients, and that’s how we like to be.”

Transcript:

Laura: Hello and Welcome to the Dynamics Unwrapped podcast. In these sessions, we’re going to hear from industry experts in the accounting and finance industry, as well as hear from experts in accounting software. Joining us today is Laurence Fishman, a partner at the accounting firm Nyman Libson Paul, which has been running since 1933, and they’re industry leaders within the Art, Entertainment and Music industry. Now, Laurence joined the firm back in 2018, but he has over 20 years of experience in the industry, and he currently works predominantly with ambitious early stage businesses, that are predicting fast growth, consulting them financially, strategically and around tax planning opportunities, but some of his biggest achievements include securing partnership, passing his ACCA exams first time, and one of my favorite achievements I think I’ve ever heard is saving a dolphin! So, Laurence, Welcome.

Laurence: Well, firstly, thanks for that introduction. That’s about as warm and introduction as I think I’ve ever had. So, appreciate that one. Yeah, great to be here.

Laura: No, thank you. It’s great to have you on here, and so obviously, before we get stuck into, you know, the nitty gritty and get into the serious part I obviously want to ask you about saving the dolphin because that is not something that you hear every day. So, what happened there, everyone who is the first one to know about that story?

Laurence: It is a funny one, and one that has kind of given me a little bit of a status on LinkedIn of all places. Well, effectively, the story goes like this, and I love telling it, you could hear I’ve done this before. A couple of years ago, I think it was 2021 COVID, my mom’s side of the family are from Gibraltar, Spain. So, we spend a lot of our summers there, and one of my favorite things to do in the whole world is to wake up stupidly early, even on holiday, and walk along the beachfront. Um, I just have that as a lone time thinking time. It’s something I kind of am passionate about. And on one morning, and it’s quite unique, because the cost of their sort of is where we go to spend my day at school, my bear, it’s almost exclusively sunny there. And on this day, I woke up and it was stormy, which is odd for August, I could hardly see my hand in front of my face, it was so dark on the beach, because there was a lot of cloud cover, and as I was walking, I heard a splashing sound. Loud splashing sounds like that. That’s not a sound, I would normally hear it. This time in the morning, I showed my torch, and I could see the silhouette of a fin on the beach. And I initially thought I’d be the first guy in the history of mankind to get eaten by a shark on land. But it turned out it was not it was a dolphin, and to cut a really long story short, I stayed with it and carried it basically tried to maneuver it back into the water because it was no one around that would have helped anyway, there was no one to help manage to maneuver it back into the water and stayed with it until it was strong enough to swim off. I did catch it on camera primarily because all the social media say oh, you only did it for the gram. I did it because I knew my children who also love dolphins would never ever have believed me if I’d come back an hour later and said, guess what, daddy just had to save the dolphin. So, I did manage to record a chunk of it on my phone so they could see it. And that was shared on LinkedIn. And people went wild for it. Which is cool.

Laura: It’s a cool experience. I have to say. Yeah, I mean, it’s an amazing story. I mean, it’s amazing to kind of encounter a dolphin anyway, but to say you’ve saved one is amazing. And it is an interesting story. I mean, I take it that you are a big lover of dolphins.

Laurence: Yeah, I mean, genuinely, this is again, a totally true story. Whilst a lot of my face is going to say a lot about me, I’m afraid or but whilst a lot of my friends had posters of Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer on their walls, I had those you’re way too young to remember. But there was a shop called Athena. And they did post like big posters, it became a very trendy thing to have in the 90s. And my room was covered in Dolphin posters. That makes me sound so sad. But it’s true. I always loved them. So, to, as I said, to be in that experience was just the universe aligning in just the right way at the right moment. It was a right place, right time sort of moment. And yeah, I’ll be telling you, I’ll be dining out on that story forever. I’m telling you that now.

Laura: Yeah, no, it is an amazing story, and they are amazing animals. I absolutely love dolphins as well, and I mean, so you’re obviously a big lover of them. So why did you go into accounting and not you know, maybe pursue something with dolphins?

Laurence: Yeah, so really a fair question. Well, the crux of that is that I knew that to go into marine biology and that is something I was considering. I needed biology and By Issuers, I remember being about 14 or 15 at school and being asked to dissect a sheep’s eyeball, and almost throwing up all over the counter and having to go outside to get fresh air, and I thought, you know what? I don’t think I’m wired for this. So that was the first kick in the guts for me in terms of my career aspirations, and then yeah, and then later, I think you get to an age where you sort of start to think quite seriously about, you know, what am I going to do with my life? What is my career going to be? And the things that I was good at, I was always quite good at math and good with people. And I thought that would be a nice way of combining those two things, and equally, I think there was a little bit of DNA in there as well, because my father is now retired, but he was an accountant, my uncle’s an accountant. It’s in my family. So maybe I was doomed.

Laura: That you finished with D? That is fair enough to be found. You know, I do remember, I think we were doing something with the kidney or something and biology and it’s not and I’m quite squeamish, so it wasn’t for me. So, I think that is fair enough.

Laurence: Not for me, to have people with stronger constitutions than me, but I still have a passion and a love of nature and see life and all that kind of stuff. But it was not destined to be my career.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, you joined me for what you’ve been doing accounting for even in the industry for quite a while now. What made you go to Nyman Libson Paul, why did you start?

Laurence: Probably need to go one step back to kind of give you a fair answer on that one. But I started my career at BDO. LLP was videos to Hayward when I joined, which is a much bigger international firm, and I loved my time, they had an amazing seven years there, did my qualification there and all the rest of it, but I think what I started to realize was that my style and approach was better suited to the mid-tier. I was working with big corporations, where they had, you know, huge finance teams, and it felt at times a little transactional, and as I got older and more experienced, I realized that what I didn’t fulfill didn’t satisfy me enough. That’s not how I’m wired. So I dropped into the mid-tier space, and I’ve been at a couple of firms, but I was looking for the right home for me, and it took nine minutes, and Paul just kind of struck a chord with me because they specialize in advising, you know, creatives, and I am a creative by nature, you know, I grew up around music and art and things that you wouldn’t really associate with accountancy, but those are, again, my passions, and they managed to combine those two things that I kind of like in being good at creatives, and the number advisory side of things, so it felt like an obvious fit, and to give them credit, the people I met there, obviously, as part of the interview process, sold the opportunity really, really well, and the rest is history. I’ve been there, as you said, five years now. And it’s been successful, thankfully.

Laura: Yeah, no, that is great, and it is, you know, the difference in culture between, you know, a big, big corporate and, you know, you sometimes maybe feel like you’re just another number, another kind of cog in the machine, whereas in a smaller company definitely kind of feel more valued, and I think you can see your impacts more, is that something that kind of resonated with you?

Laurence: Yeah, definitely, I think all our clients and by the way, we, you know, we do punch above our weight, we’ve got some very, very big clients. But importantly, they’re all owner managed, you know, we like dealing with the end entrepreneur, because if you’re doing that, you really start to add very tangible, real value. Whereas as I said earlier, when you’re dealing with huge corporates, you never get to meet the people at the top, you’re dealing with their staff, their finance teams, and in the same way that they’re just doing a nine to five, it starts to feel like you’re just doing a nine to five and that just didn’t fulfill me.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely, and then there’s a different sort of energy isn’t there speaking to an owner-managed business because it’s their passion? It’s their baby. Like it’s, there’s a whole different energy to it.

Laurence: Yes, exactly why it’s their baby, and so they have more than a vested interest in making sure it works. It’s everything they’re doing, and it’s great to almost live vicariously through those clients and make sure that we’re kind of theirs, I guess, a right-hand man lady, depending on who it is, but you know, you’re, you’re, you’re an aid for them beyond just giving. I think you summarized it nicely in your intro. We don’t just look at the financials when you’re dealing with mid-tier type clients. The problems that are raised become much broader, it can be strategic, operational, even, dare I say personal, you know, sometimes we must deal with, you know, husband and wife owning a business, there’s a divorce happening, or a breakup and you must talk about the structuring around that and how that will work. So, it becomes very juicy. I, for one, have a non-technical phrase.

Laura: Yeah, sure, but it becomes a lot more complicated, I guess, as well in that case, ever since but obviously you said you’ve been there, you know, about five years now. So, what you are noticing are some of the kind of greatest challenges facing Nyman Libson Paul at the moment?

Laurence: Well, I think for us on the back of COVID, and I don’t think we’re alone in this, there’s a real focus on, you know, rethinking what the culture of the practice should look like. It’s something I’m, you know, entirely passionate about, because for me, what we are at the end of the day, we sell man hours, so our people are our biggest asset, and I think, you know, COVID presented a whole heap of challenges. There was no rulebook for COVID, there was a whole heap of challenges thrown in our direction, with no rulebook, as I said, and we had to figure it out. Did we do it perfectly? No, it will be a disaster. Also, no, but you know, there are, there were anyway, some legacy issues that come out of a situation like that unprecedented situation like that, that require attention, and so we’ve really invested heavily over the last year to two years on rethinking who we are, how we operate, what who we want to be? and I think from a sort of, again, a broader context, that’s our biggest challenge to get that piece right. So we future proof the business for the next 10-20, 30 however many years, I think, yeah, there are micro challenges as well, but they’re, again, challenges that the whole industry is facing, and they’re things that you’ll be aware of given what you guys do, but yeah, I think, on a macro level, it’s definitely culture that I think is the major challenge. There are issues around, you know, staffing, and making sure that we can get enough manpower in but again, that’s synonymous across the whole industry, and I think some of that was also born out of COVID, where some, some of the accountants that maybe would have stayed in practice. We thought about where their own careers were going and kind of went into industry earlier than they might have done or decided to go in a completely different direction, and so that Fallout had an impact too.

Laura: Sure, yeah, I mean, there’s sort of a lot covered there, and I think the first place where I want to start is that you obviously mentioned a lot about culture, and you happen to focus a lot more on that. What was it before COVID, the culture was whatever it was, but were in COVID, you notice that that needed to change? Was there something specific about the culture of your business that you realized you guys realize and we need to tweak this or not?

Laurence: I mean, not really, I think, again, it’s a human nature thing. The world was locked away from each other for a couple of years, for all intents and purposes, and we were still taking on grants during that period. So, you had a whole heap of people that were joining our business that never really spent any time with us, they were at home, and so that was inevitably going to create challenges, and when we eventually creeped back into life, and came back into the office and started operating on a much more normal pre COVID basis.

Laura: Yeah, it was, it was tricky. It was tricky finding the right balance again, but the way I view it is it gave us a gauge society, whether I want to get too deep here, but it gave society an opportunity to have a look again, you know, take a step back and rethink everything, and so actually, it was useful. Whereas I think had COVID not happened, you we would have been I think many people would have been more inclined just to relate broke, don’t fix it. Just keep just keep going, keep drifting ticking along, and sometimes you need a hard break to kind of go,

Laurence: You know what, we’ve had this sort of status quo for X number of years, maybe we do need to just pick I hate the word pivot, but I’m going to use it be doing to pivot a little bit and think about this from a slightly different perspective, to give us competitive advantage. And when we’re in business at the end of the day, right? We’re here to also make money and generate profits, and so doing it the old-fashioned way isn’t necessarily right for 2024. It just isn’t.

Laura: Absolutely, I think one of the key things that it really did shine a light on was that work life balance? Yeah. And, you know, obviously, we now have flexible, you know, remote working. COVID really shone a light on that, and I think that’s one of the probably the biggest changes that came out of all of it, but what is maybe one of the things where your culture has it? What’s changed for you guys? How did you address that change?

Laurence: Well, I think it’s just about smart leadership, in my opinion, and making sure you have the right bums on seats. I think you can create a culture. A lot of people believe culture is something that you prescribed, you put on paper, and you kind of go. Here are five buzzwords that define our culture. That’s not culture that’s putting words on a piece of paper. I think you must live by a certain set of values and standards. If, and if there is an element of trickle down, I think if those at the top are living by those values, then it will trickle down, but equally if you recruit and I’ve always been passionate about recruiting on attitude and personality, I think you know, someone with three A’s from Oxford might be fantastic, but that but that alone is never a bit, it’s never been enough for me, I’m not I don’t get wowed by that stuff. I don’t come from that background at all, and it doesn’t work for me. So for me, it’s about finding people who graft, people who understand what it means to be an ambassador for our firm, people who understand what it means to give clients, you know, at the top, a top tier client service, and if you can find enough of those people, it starts to rub off on the rest of the staff pool. And before long, you’ve got an army of top-notch staff that are in the building. And you know, I think that is a powerful thing.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I think one of the things that I mean, what, you know, Matthew, my boss says to me, and it was one of the first things he said was, you can’t teach hard work, you can teach everything else, but you can’t teach that attitude, it’s something that you do need to have ingrained into you, and if you don’t have that, then maybe you’re not the right fit, you know, you’re definitely not the right fit for creativity, and it’s exactly the same with you guys. But obviously, you know, we spoke about COVID, and how that’s, you know, that 42, maybe, you know, use the word pivot. Obviously, it did then have, you know, that changed the way we use technology, it put emphasis on that. So how has technology changed the way that you work with your clients?

Laurence: Well, immeasurably. I think, again, the whole sector was jolted into having to accept a digitalization of the product that we were selling. It was kind of, you know, do it or die, basically, it became a prerequisite rather than a nice to have, and so over the last probably, again, don’t quote me on the on the number of years, but I’m going to say over the last 10 years, the accountancy profession has definitely veered much more towards leveraging AI and technology to make our service a little bit more, more than a little bit more seamless, and slick, and productive and efficient. My only challenge is back to the world, and I know you’re in that world. So, I don’t want to insult, I promise, the fact that when, you know, as I said, everyone has gone down that track. So, you look at the top 200 300 500 firms across the UK, everyone will be happy, everyone will be leveraging technology and AI in some capacity, and I think therefore the competitive advantage of technology has gone, it’s now become the norm, it’s become the staple, it’s become what everyone just accepts as being well, you’re my counter, of course, you’re leveraging technology. So I think I actually think the next shift, which again, I’m trying to be ahead of the curve on I want us to be ahead of the curve on is going to be it’s almost circular actually, because it goes back to being okay, we’ve got the digitalization piece, right, it will always evolve, we know that there are things that will come out that will enhance it and make it even more efficient, but effectively, it’s now gone back to Being Well, what is our USP? Again, we don’t have a USP, that’s, that’s linked to digital. Our USP is now All right, we’ve got a nice app stack. But what else is it? And for me, that goes back to making sure we’re delivering at a level, you know, from a client service point of view, we’re delivering at a level that our competition maybe isn’t, it’s hard to measure that. I appreciate that. But that’s where it comes back to culture as well, culture and the level of client service delivery.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re right, it is now something that is a given. I mean, technology evolves rapidly all the time. It’s constantly evolving, and this is something that I want to touch upon in a second, but are there any other ways in which you think technology has changed? Maybe not, not from an AI perspective, but maybe in a way that it’s helped you recruit in a different way? Or, you know, it helps, helps in that kind of way? Has it? Have you seen that shift since COVID?

Laurence: Um, well, I’m not, I wouldn’t say it tangibly, to be honest with you, but I think we’d struggle to recruit people if we weren’t using the right technology. I think, you know, a lot of our 20 Somethings, I’m 44. Right, but so I’m effectively an old guy now, but some of our 20 Somethings that join the business will be you know, they care about these things. They want to make sure that we are market leading in terms of our approach and that it’s digital and forward-thinking and modern. Our clients do the same thing. Most of the clients I’m bringing in now. Luckily, I’ve got a very fast growth portfolio, but most of the clients we’re bringing in Why 2030 Somethings, and they also want to make sure that they are joining an accountancy firm who understand what that means, again, some of the sectors I specialize in personally, are digital media and technology. So, if I’m advising some of the fastest growing tech businesses in the UK, but I’m not leveraging tech, what does that say about me? So, you know, I think, it’s had an impact. And if you go kind of one stage further than that, you know, I usually don’t quite have a lot as a platform. And I know that’s not technology as such, but even that in a way is, is leveraging a platform or portal or whatever, that you wouldn’t normally have associated with accountancy or accountants. And from a recruitment perspective, and from a client acquisition perspective, and from a marketing perspective, I’ve managed to sort of carve out my own personal brand that has really, really helped me grow my own mini practice within a practice. So that’s been useful as well.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely, I think it is, I think it’s all come a very long way, and I think LinkedIn, like you said, if you can leverage LinkedIn, in a go, I think you’re actually a very good example of someone that’s done this, it, like you said, almost creating your own brand new because it, it makes you become a lot more closer with your clients, you see the human side, you can see the fun side, whereas, you know, it’s not just suits and you know, like, chat that maybe becomes very serious it is, you can see that human element, you can see that you’re you are just a human at the end of the day. And do you see what I mean? It’s yeah, I think using it in that way, and like I said, I think you’re a very good example of this is something that you wouldn’t have been able to do before, and I think that really shifts the way people interact in business now, they actually wouldn’t have been a lottery, it would have been accepted as openly, pre COVID. But I roll out this phrase a lot. And it’s I’ve sort of coined it as my No, even though it’s not, but I think, as I said earlier, before accountancy was very transactional in the way it ran, but I am passionate about trying to shift it towards something that’s more intentionally human, because you’re dealing with people at the end of the day, right? Clients are people, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got 100 million pounds worth of business in front of them, they’re still human beings behind that business, and I think people are starting to make buying decisions, much more heavily linked to the personality fit, and the cultural fit of a practice.

Laurence: Certainly, I’m seeing that from my own perspective, but some people won’t get me and that’s okay. Right, but if they do, this is how I work, right? I’m just very human about it, we’d give good advice, and the advice is the same. It’s still high quality, but we can chat about it over a coffee very comfortably. It doesn’t have to be overly formal. Again, it works well, with creatives, it may not work well with, you know, an investment banking type or something like that. But for our business, it works really well, just having that very, you know, human approach to giving, giving the advisory support.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that kind of brings me almost back a little bit, because we did touch on it earlier about AI, and it is something that, you know, a lot of people now use, but I feel, and it’s interesting, it’d be interesting to get your perspective on this, I feel that now, you’re starting to see because like you said, everyone’s using it, you can sometimes see an email or a piece of marketing, and just immediately, you know, that chat GPT has written it, it just screams AI to you, and you know, actually one of my videos coming out in the next few weeks is highlighting this, but you know, how, you know, obviously, is this something that you have noticed? and you know, do you see that kind of clinical emotionless interaction happening? and then how important do you think that balance is between AI and human involvement?

Laurence: Massively. It’s everything, I believe, Chat GPT has I used it, I’ve played around with it, just to see what it was all about. I’m not a massive fan. Because now, it doesn’t write like a human would write it writes very clinical cold. Content, as you say, and I could spot a church up at LinkedIn posts, for example, from 100 miles away, it’s so obvious, and it just doesn’t feel authentic or human, and I think most people now have wised up to that and they can also spot it and they will see that as detrimental to a decision rather than beneficial they will go no that doesn’t feel authentic to me that feels like generic AI generated content that I’m not I’m not I’m not aligning myself with so I completely concur. I can see advantages to it, although I think there’s huge challenges with chat GPT as well. I think I heard it right the other day that some lawyer represented someone in court and had used chat GPT for some of the research, and it literally cited cases that didn’t exist, they were made up, it somehow found on the neck somewhere, and he just assumed it was a legitimate genuine case, and it wasn’t. So, you know, it has challenges, I think, where I can see it, maybe working is in that sort of early stage of drafting something, I think that we haven’t really used it, but I know some lawyers are starting to use it for generating letters or reports or whatever. But I think you have no human element; it just doesn’t work. It’s far too dangerous, and far too risky. I think you can use it to give you a skeleton of a report, and then you have to critique it, and you know, make sure that the factual content is accurate. So you know, it might cut 20-30% of the man hours required down, which is obviously a benefit. But I don’t think we’re quite at the point where AI is going to take over our job. I can’t see that. I can’t see it. I could be wrong, but I can’t see it.

Laura: No, absolutely. I agree with you. I completely agree with the human element. I think that is irreplaceable. But I think the problem with AI is like you said, it’s so easy to use now with you know, the natural language models, and it does save a lot of time. So, for, you know, possibly leadership level, how, how important is it? And, you know, is it possible for them to almost police it within their organization to make sure that, you know, you’re not putting out things people aren’t sending out emails that sound clinical and emotional, because that’s not good luck for a company. But how can leadership make sure that that’s not happening when it is so easy to access?

Laurence: Really, hard challenge. It’s hard to police these things. I don’t like micromanaging anywhere. It’s never been my style. So, I wouldn’t ever want to breathe down the neck of the staff. Again, I would like to think that the trust we give our staff is founded and is a basis for it. And we don’t have to worry about these things. But it’s an interesting question. I don’t have the answer to I don’t I don’t think our staff are using it for anything that could go hand in heart saying they’re not I don’t know, for free things like emails and stuff. And obviously, it’s not going to generate certain accounts for us. Right. But in terms of communication and advice, Milica, a lot of our advice is partner lead anyway, I would say. So, whilst we have some fantastic senior staff in the building and junior staff in the building should not exclude them. A lot of the way we work is partner lead. So, the advisory piece, the face-to-face piece, the kind of solution finding piece is done by people at my level. And it’s usually done face to face in a boardroom chatting through things openly, like an open forum chat. I’m not going to sit there chatting with GPT open AI, so I guess, you know, it does, it does cut some corners. I think again, I think it does have challenges. It does need to evolve a bit for it to be a legitimate option, but it’s amazing. At the same time, I don’t want to knock it because again, I love tech. I think tech is everything, everything in my life runs by tech, and so I’m certainly not here to knock check GPT when it first launched, and I played around with it, I was mind blown. But when you then start taking a few steps back and looking at it objectively, you kind of go okay, it’s clever. It’s smart. It’s very quick. It’s something I’ve not seen before, but I think it’s riddled with complex, nuanced issues, and that’s and that’s my position for now. If it evolves further if it becomes more sophisticated, who knows? but yeah.

Laura: Yeah, Absolutely, and I mean, with everything it has its pros and cons, but I think it is just something that people need to start kind of educating themselves on becoming aware of and just, you know, knowing what those negatives are, and how they can be managed within an organization, but obviously, you did touch upon, you know, how your company is changing. It’s always been, you know, full circle moment with, you know, the whole digitalization piece, but then you need to come back and think, Well where’s our USP now? So where do you see the future of accounting going in, you know, what’s the future phenomenon of simple?

Accountancy will go the way it was always going to go, which is that the lower end at the sort of more transactional end of the market bookkeepers and sort of small, small company accountants will have to continue to digitize their product, their product.

Laurence: The issue with that is that that’s a race to the bottom in terms of fee because clients are not stupid clients understand that if you’re not offering any real value other than being able to do this efficiently and quickly, then I want my fees slashed, okay, and that’s not our Assman. Our market, our markets at the other end, we’re sort of upper mid-tier if you like, and what we like to look for in our clients or clients that accept the fact there’s an element of compliance that maybe isn’t sexy or exciting, but there’s also a whole piece above that the advisory piece that is value added, and links back to, as I said earlier, the overall experiential offering that we put forward when a client joins us, and by that I know this is going to sound a bit over the top, and by the way, we do not have this right, I’ll be very open about that we do not have this right at the moment, but it’s something I want to get right that clients from the minute they walk in through our front door, they feel what it is to be an NLP client. I think that as utopian as it sounds, it’s a bit marketing, marketing II. Sorry, I understand that, but I think that’s where the accountancy profession needs to go, I think it’s full circle in the 80s, when my dad was practicing, that’s what an accountant was, you join your accountant, you’d never leave them, like you’d find someone with the right bedside manner, like you would a doctor, you’d never leave them, and I think if we can get away from the transactional approach, which is what accountancy has fallen into over the last X number of years, and go back towards that, you link up with clients, and they and you become their aid forevermore, you know, it becomes a much more personal relationship, rather than just one that’s about the compliance side. So that’s where I think it’s going, I rolled the dice, and I’m all in on it, but we’ll see if I’m right, in the future.

Laura: I think I know; I agree, I think it is certainly a nicer way of doing business, and, you know, and it’s, it’s very similar for creative, really, you know, we are a Microsoft partner at the end of the day. So, we set our business Central as not ours, and there are other partners that do that. So, what makes us stand out is yeah, of course, we have apps and things, but it’s, it’s more, you know, the, the client experience, how do we position ourselves? What is it that when they come through the door, what is that value add that we can give to them on a human level, which, you know, is really what you’re saying as well. You can have accountants, and you can do that transactional piece, but actually what you can bring is the knowledge that you can bring the advice that you can give, that is the bit that will make you stand out from the crowd?

Laurence: I think so. As I said, I believe it wholeheartedly, and so far, the evidence of the growth in my own portfolio seems to suggest I’m right, but who knows, I you know, I might be proven wrong, at some point, but at the moment, the clients I’m bringing in appreciate the fact that they’re getting something that they haven’t been used to with their previous accountants, they’re being introduced to an ecosystem of actual humans that they can pick up the phone to, they can WhatsApp, even they can, you know, interact with in multiple different ways, and it feels very authentic because it is but it feels very authentic. We care. We care about the deliverable, and it’s not a once a year, you know, see you in a year’s time there’s my bill and you know, we’ll give you a shout when we next need you. We’re here for our clients and that’s how we like to be.

Laura: Absolutely, I think it’s the right way forward and it’s certainly a you know, whoever I want to work with, I like to do it that way as well because it makes it more enjoyable for them for me as well for me and for you as well, you know, you don’t want to be just having a transactional relationship you’d much rather get to know think, you know, I think we’re both quite personable, you know, quite extroverted people, we like human Interaction, so I absolutely agree and I think it is the way forward. But I think that’s about all we’ve got time for. It’s been great to have you on. You’ve been so insightful, and I absolutely love the dolphin story, and I will go and watch that video.

Laurence: Enjoy it. Enjoy. It was a pleasure. I really enjoyed it as well. Thank you.

Laura: Thank you so much, Lauren. Bye

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