£5M to £35M in 3 Years | Steve Sharp, NUVO | E372

You can't buy success.

He's doing a buy. There's no building going on.

Buying a business is, is kind of the easy bit. Having completed 45 across 17 years, only 10% of the way there the day an acquisition completes. Acquisitions start when they complete.

Is the biggest risk employee churn or client churn? Have you had any that haven't worked? Like, were they fucked up? What shortcuts do you not take anymore?

We try to do without lawyers. We've never made a redundancy in 22 years. So tech won't take over in professional services, but people powered by tech will.

You start with the end in mind.

Really treating it as a job rather than a business. It took us 20 years to grow to £5 million in revenue, and it took us 3 years to grow from £5 to £35 million.

Why did you go to a 4-day week? 'Cause you wanted to play golf on a Friday? You run a pilot in one office, or did you just go, we're all in?

It was around a 10% reduction in working time. For no loss of pay, regrettable attrition at below 3%. So from being the biggest fee earner in the business to the biggest— I'm Steve Sharp. I'm the founder CEO at Nuvo. Nuvo is the fastest growing accountancy and advisory firm in the UK Top 100. We're a modern, people-powered by tech professional services platform with £35 million in revenue and a team of just over 400 people. And we've also made 45 acquisitions over the last 17 years with underlying double-digit organic growth as well.

That, do you know what, that was one of the things as I was prepping for today, I was thinking, I wonder what his organic growth is, because that build and buy thing, that build and buy thing, often, you know, PE firms go, oh, we're doing a build and buy. You're just doing a buy. There's no building going on.

Indeed, indeed. Buying is important, but what you do after you buy it is even more so.

Okay, fab. So we'll dig in, we'll dig into that. Fastest growing in the top 100. Congratulations. And is that revenue or percentage?

That's percentage of revenue. So 149% growth from 2024 to 2025 in the Accountancy Age top 50 plus 50 rankings last year. So yeah, really proud achievement to not only enter the top 100 for the first time, but to be the fastest growing accountancy firm in that top 100.

Fab, fantastic. Well done. Look, and just to give people a sense of who you are, what are some of the things that you believe to be true that other people think are nonsense? Or maybe something you believe that you think the rest of the world don't share your, share your view on? Have you got a few of those?

Yeah, sure. So first one, we start at the end and start with why, build back from there, kind of long-term vision rather than short-term. Secondly, you can't buy success. M&A has been a huge part of what we do, but it's not a given you can just buy, buy your way. to growth. Thirdly, acquisitions start when they complete.

Okay.

And then also tech won't take over in professional services, but people powered by tech will.

Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to dive into the acquisition starts when it completes then. So what do you mean?

Yeah. So I think the normal phrase I'd use is, look, we're only 10% of the way there. The day an acquisition completes, having completed 45 across 17 years, the real work starts as soon as legal completion, the retention, the integration, and then the growth of the businesses that we, that we bring into the group. So a lot of our structure resource effort is, is around, is around that post-completion piece.

And the, what do you see as the biggest risk? Is the biggest risk employee churn or client churn?

They're both closely related. Kind of the strategy is retain the people to retain the clients. I think we're a relationships-based industry, making sure that people are integrated into nouveau and retained is the key to retaining the clients ultimately. So the two are kind of intrinsically linked.

Do you— how much of the leadership team do you retain after post-acquisition?

It depends on, on the circumstances, right? A lot of the 45 have been kind of retirement succession planning solutions. So whether the owner or one of the owners will, will exit the business over a period of time. But typically we look to retain all of the team that want to continue.

And as part of that, we've never made redundancy in the 22-year history of the business.

It's not a model of kind of aggressively buying and then stripping out kind of cost. We want to really retain and build on the teams that come into the group.

Do you retain the name of the businesses you acquire or do you rebrand?

Again, depends on the individual circumstances. Integration is absolutely key for us. We operate a 100% integrated model. We would normally co-brand with most acquisitions. for a period of time, get the people kind of used to the Nuvo name, but retain the existing name. So part of the Nuvo Group is quite common, um, but then with a, with a plan across a 12, 18, 24-month rebrand into Nuvo.

And are, are the businesses that you've acquired, are they— what's the sca— what's the scope and, or the scale, the difference in terms of size? What's the smallest, smallest and biggest thing?

Yeah, it's huge. So kind of out, out of the 45, 30 have been Small kind of single partner businesses that have largely gone into an existing office. And then 15 have been over a million in revenue, and the largest being just under 4 million in revenue, kind of multi-partner, multi-office business. So everything in between.

Okay. And is— have you picked up any specialist practices? Are these sort of general businesses on the high street? Although you might not be on the high street anymore, I guess. But—

Yeah, most of them are general practices, kind of Compliance plus advisory. We have bought in a couple of complementary services along the way. Bought in an HR business, which is about our people offering. And we also brought in on a shared equity basis the recruitment business that we do, did most of our high-level recruitment. Better access to people in the market. People are our biggest asset. So bringing them into the business not only helps on our own people sourcing, but also they can help clients. their people requirements as well.

And how much of that people business comes from your clients and how much of it is One Direct?

50/50.

Okay.

Yeah, they kind of do the internal bit for the business, but then they've also got their own clients and also help other Nuvo clients. So it really is mixed.

That's fab. Because so often people have this sense that, or desire that something like that will save them money. And, you know, it's the opposite of Amazon and Jeff Bezos, where he went, look, AWS needs to— all these things need to be external, otherwise they will just be bloated and inefficient.

And the shared equity model is kind of perfect for that because there is that external relationship, but also this— they understand the business, they understand our culture, and they understand what people are going to fit well with that and they can work within the business. So it's kind of the best of both worlds. And yeah, it's working really well.

So look, go back. You can't buy success. You can't buy success. What does that mean?

I think it's quite common in the M&A world, kind of the focus on acquisitions. But it's really the reality that buying a business, and it's kind of back to the point of it only really starts when it completes, is you've got to buy firstly the right type of business that's going to fit with the existing business, and then really focuses on what you do after you've bought the business. Buying a business is, is kind of the easy bit.

Integrating it, growing it, retaining what you've purchased, really the And what, what are your acquisition criteria and have they changed?

Yeah, they've developed over time. Obviously, kind of over 17 years, the industry and the market has developed significantly. Firstly, it's the kind of— it's the type of services, type of clients have to fit with our existing business. And the personality test of the owner is often how they run the business themselves is often It gives the clues about how their team— because remember that we're bringing people into the business that we're not taking through our normal recruitment process.

Mm-hmm.

So really that kind of culture fit of alignment around how they view tech, how they view pricing, how they view client service, how they've grown the business, their ideal customer. So there's a few different kind of criteria dependent on the different, different scale and size of businesses that we'll work with. But it's the fit. Because we operate a fully integrated model, we need to be confident at an early stage that they're going to be able to integrate within Nuvo and kind of add to what we've already got.

And have you had any that haven't worked, right? Where your white cells in Nuvo have spat them out after you've bought them?

Yeah, no, we've never sold a business after buying it or kind of closed one down. They've all worked, obviously to different Different degrees of success, but all 45 have come into the business and either been integrated or going through. There's none that I'd regret. I think the regrets are around some of the maybe shortcuts we tried in the earlier days that we've learned from and kind of built the system.

Go on, go on. What shortcuts do you not take anymore?

I remember one in the earlier days, a small deal we tried to do without lawyers. did kind of—

Right.

Accountant to accountant, we can deal with this. And yet never again. We now insist on legals on both sides. Yeah, that was a regret. We've kind of tried to integrate too fast. We've tried to integrate too slow. We've allowed partners who come into the business to leave the business too early. We've not been clear with partners about the timescale of how that's going to look after they're brought into the business. And probably also importantly is Kind of, we front-load the integration side of it now. We sign off an integration report that's agreed between us and the vendors before we complete. So there's no issues around how the business is going to be integrated over what timescale. Because again, it's all the earlier ones, it's kind of, we left that until after, and then there's a few surprises and sometimes resistance about, you didn't say you were going to do this or that. Yeah.

I suspect even though you might have been really clear about what you were going to do, people on, you know, on the sell side, people can be a bit deaf to the things that they should be listening for.

Yeah, there's a lot of conversations at the time. So I think unless you get it documented, agreed, and signed off in terms of a process, it's one of their biggest financial transactions of their life, selling their business. Yeah. Everything that's going on, I think that clarity of a documented plan Is key and it's kind of headed off some of those more challenging situations that we would have in the earlier days.

Yeah. And what tech won't take over says that you're not all out of work and I'm not doing my accounting with AI instead of, instead of you.

Yeah. And it follows our kind of people power. Tech is important. Tech is a great enabler already, and that is obviously moving at some pace. Kind of more generally, but specifically in our industry. But ultimately it's a people-by-people, it's a relationships-based business across professional services. Most of our clients, the vast majority of our clients, we'll be having conversations with on a monthly, quarterly basis. It's not just compliance-only annual, which is the area that could be kind of automated, taken on by tech. So, so yeah, strong businesses that will take over are those that use the tech. to empower their people to be more efficient, more proactive with clients rather than the tech itself taking over. And I think the market is backing that up. Grant Thornton just bought CBIZ in the States for, I think it was $5 billion. Goldman Sachs have invested in a UK accountancy platform. Lots of money coming into the market and kind of that is in more traditional accountancy platforms. So the money is saying that there's a future in the industry.

And do you, what proportion of your workforce, how many did you say you had now? 400.

700?

400. What proportion of the 400 are in the, we touch clients every day versus we grind the handles round and round every day?

Yeah. So broadly 350 client-facing.

Okay.

And 50 are in the central team. So they will have some client contact, but the 50 in the central team are the team responsible for running the business.

Yes.

And the 350 are responsible for client service. So that's broadly how it's, how it's split. And that's developed over time. Go back 6 years ago and pretty much everybody in the business was client-facing. We didn't have a business team. And that's really what's unlocked the more recent step up in the scale of the business is really having that platform, that central team expertise, running the business as a business rather than everybody in the business being client-facing.

We'll dive into— I'll come back to that central team in a second. Start with the end in mind. So did you— so when you started, when you started the business, did you start with the end in mind, or was it, was it a different end? It was like, shit, I need a job. Maybe, maybe tell, maybe tell the, tell the evolving end story. Yeah.

And then this kind of follows the journey, both my personal journey and then the business journey, kind of leaving school at 16. Sure, I wanted to be a chartered accountant to then get into business. It was really getting into business rather than accountancy itself that I was keen to do. Qualifying at 20, which was the youngest in the country at the time, setting up Nuvo as it is now at 21. And then really for the next 16 years, really treating it as a job rather than a business.

Okay.

Everybody being client-facing. We grew a good business. I think it took us 20 years to grow to £5 million in revenue, and it took us 3 years to grow from £5 to £35 million.

Okay.

So the evolution of that was really post-COVID, late 2020 into early 2021, when kind of the realization, look, we've got a business here, and if we want to continue to, to grow both organically and especially via further acquisitions and partnerships, then we needed to treat it as a business. We adopted the EOS system, and that was a framework for us to create our first ever vision. which was to become a top 100 UK firm by 2028. So 7 years.

Okay.

We smashed that. We— it took us 4 years rather than the full 7 years, so we beat that 3 years early. But it also unlocked how we wanted to look as a business in 2028, and that included 2 main points that we needed to dramatically improve. One was create a central team that would run the business rather than the partners trying to look, be responsible for client services and doing— running the business part-time.

Which is, which is different to if you look at some of the larger clients, some of your larger competitors who are still running a partner model, I guess.

It's the traditional partner model. And then you'll have one partner who's the managing partner, one might look after the finances, one might look after tech, one might look after compliance, but you end up being kind of split and doing neither. Well, what our restructure did is allow us to have a board of 6 directors, all of which in equity, none of which are client-facing, and really bring in some expertise around parts of the business that need that experience and expertise without the distraction of being client-facing. It's a huge unlocker for us going through— move away from the traditional partner-led partnership model into a more corporate model.

5 million, you're typically too small for private equity to back a sort of buy and build. They normally want something a bit bigger than that as a platform. So yeah, what are you, are you private equity backed or is it high net worth individuals? What's the—

No, so we were privately funded until late in 2025. Okay, just under a year ago. And then as we achieved our 2028 vision, we took private equity funding Okay, right. Same journey, same, almost exactly the same targets in terms of M&A, same organic growth rate, same focus on people powered by tech. It's just now we've got partners both from a funding and an access to expertise. So that's a more recent development that's just helping to continue the trajectory of kind of doubling in size each year over the last 3 years.

Was— were the other acquisitions then funded by debt?

A mixture of debt and cash.

Right.

Within, within the business, we're fortunate that we had— it was actually one of the acquisitions that we made years ago, and one of the vendors and 2 of his high net worth clients backed us with some private debt funding, which got us to a point. And then obviously private equity has kind of taken that forward since. That's November.

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Yeah, typically this, this, most of our deals will, will include an element of deferred, whether that's 50/25/25 over 2 years, 60/20/20. That deferred is contingent based on the deal. So some are contingent based on maintaining revenue, some are contingent based on maintaining EBITDA. So typically We will work with the, with the vendors over that 2-year period. But more recently, kind of over the last 3 years, we've also been doing some shared equity partnerships.

Okay.

Typically larger, better aligned businesses that aren't at that point where they're looking for an exit, but they can join the group, have access to the central services, and grow a lot faster within the group than they could independently. And obviously that's a different scenario where they're retaining some equity and working with us within the group.

All right, so let's dive into the central services then. What's in there? Some strategic HR, some strategic finance? What?

Yeah, look, every aspect in relation to running the business side. So we've got the central leadership team seeing the vision and the strategy, we've got the people team, which includes everything from the recruitment, management, leadership training, compliance training, HR services. We've got the finance and practice management led by our CFO. They will take on all of the admin and finance from, from the offices as they come on board. We've got the tech team. They manage the tech across the whole of the business and the tech roadmap, and we've been able to invest some really good expertise within that team, and then overlay that with the businesses coming in, makes a huge difference. We've got the integration team, so led by our ex-MD of the business, it's got a team of 7, they're purely focused on the integration of the business. And then we've got our commercial and marketing team, again supporting the whole business. So we've got fairly significant central resource that work across all of the offices.

Does the integration team also do the Acquisitions, or do you do the acquisitions?

No, so I do the kind of front-end founder-to-founder conversations, the origination, the kind of deal-making. And then we've got internal that kind of take it on through the DD process, the legal process, and then the integration team will get involved 6 to 8 weeks before completion, agree that integration plan, and then they will take it through the onboarding phase. Which is the kind of the initial 6 to 12 month period, and then through the full integration phase, which can take up to 2 years.

And what's the, uh, what's the tax on the local businesses for the central services team?

It depends on the model. We don't do group recharges.

Okay.

So look, if we're buying 100% of the business, obviously it just comes, comes, comes straight in. The central costs are all in the central division and we don't kind of recharge back out to offices. Um, if it's on a shared equity basis, then the agreement is, look, we— there will be some cost synergy of joining the group and we will pass on those savings. But yeah, if there's anything we do which adds the cost to your business, then kind of they'll be protected against that. So we can't buy a business and they retain equity and suddenly we're adding cost into their business that they didn't have before. So a bit of a one-sided bet.

I, I— you must— so maybe this is where, where the unlock is, which is you said at the beginning, double-digit organic growth. And so are you acquiring businesses that are flat and re-enabling that growth?

Look, a bit of both. I'd much rather acquire a business that is already growing itself. Okay.

It's tough to turn them around if they're already a bit flat.

I mean, yeah, I mean, if they're flat or, or reducing, you've got to look at what is the underlying reason for that. It could be capacity and they're turning away work, or it could be something bit more inherent within the business. So really understanding why they are wherever they are on their growth journey. But yeah, it can vary. We kind of bring some really fast growth businesses into the group and help to maintain that growth. Some of the others are a bit more flat and then we'll work with them. Firstly, on retention, Dom, it's always around protecting what we've acquired first, retain the team, retain the clients, then as quickly as possible into that growth phase.

Do you, in your— have you got any interesting things in your integration playbook that, you know, are things that you know along the way, that you've learned along the way, that have an impact on either customers or employees?

Yes, we try and limit the client-facing sort Okay. As much as possible. Things like what we've already mentioned, the kind of the co-brand, to retain the existing brand whilst introducing the Nuvo brand. The team, there is change that impacts the team, especially around the tech stack, but we will move to, onto the kind of the Nuvo way and the Nuvo tech stack. And obviously having done that multiple times, we've got the team and the training all kind of systemized to be able to do that as seamlessly as possible. But ultimately, it's a change management piece. So linked back to the conversation around the integration plan, we know from day one when we go and meet the team and present to the team, we can be very clear with them what's been agreed with the vendors. This is going to change on this date. This is the support that's going to be given. But one benefit we've got, so we work a 4-day working week across the business.

Ah, okay.

Have done for 4 years. Once the integration, the initial onboarding integration phase is done, then those teams move on to the 4-day working week as well. So at least there's a bit of a carrot at the end of the change management piece.

Do you say, go back to the beginning, why did you go to a 4-day week?

Yeah. So it was at the same time—

Is that because you wanted to play golf on a Friday and you thought, it's a bit mean if I— it's just a bit mean if only I do that?

Yeah, it was kind of back in that period. 2020, going into 2021, when we invested in restructuring the business, built the central services, really recognized we needed to concentrate on that platform. The other key kind of aspect we realized is the future success of the business was largely dependent on the quality of the people we could bring in and retain within the business, especially as we stepped away from client-facing roles.

Yeah.

So we set about a project of, look, how can we really improve improve our offering to our team, attract better quality, retain those superstars that are kind of growing through the business. And there was, there was a huge number of things that we did around culture and the core values, not just being on the wall, but being lived and breathed throughout the whole business. Communication, social engagement, office investment. We moved to a 4-day working week as part of that programme. It was about 100% We had 100 full-time equivalents in the business at the time, so it was quite a big project to go through, but it's been a huge success. We noticed no difference in the output of the team, and we try and judge them based on output rather than input.

Uh-huh.

The work just got done the 4 days. There was a reduction from 37.5 hours to 34 hours, so around a 10% reduction in working time for no loss of pay, a 50% increase in non-working days. So the balance was Worked really well. What we did notice is the ability to be able to recruit key people with the 4-day working week amongst the other initiatives was vastly improved. Our retention, we've got regrettable attrition at below 3%, so we're retaining those people within the business. So it's been, it was a real significant kind of headline as part of a much bigger package of how we enhanced the way that we dealt with our people. and really became a people-first business.

What can I, can I work 5 days a week and just work 5 short days, or do I have to take a day off? And how do you, how do you schedule the days so that the client, the client rings up and goes, oh, hang on, Sandra's not there, why is she not in today?

Yeah, so we're a 5-day-a-week business, right, for that continuity of, for the client service. Everybody has a set non-working day which they, which they choose, so it's a bit easier in terms of planning for resource and knowing who's where.

Do you have a day where everybody has to be in for meetings and training or?

No, I mean, it's fairly evenly split across Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So Tuesday typically is a key meeting day, although we have a culture of not having too many meetings for meeting's sake. So Tuesday tends to be a more popular meeting day, but it was all around giving the team the freedom. So our first core value is balance freedom with focus. It's around that contract we have with the whole team that we want to give you the freedom as long as you give us the focus So when you say about kind of, do people work 5 days? Yes. Do people swap their non-working day? Yes. But there's also the needs of the business that come in. So, so it is that flexibility both ways that's key to making it work.

Did you, did you, did you run a pilot in one office or did you just go, we're all in?

No, big, big bang. It was done for a 3-month trial period.

Okay.

Initially. But I think in reality, once you've committed to kind of announcing and going into that, there was, there was Really no looking back. But we were kind of pleasantly, I wouldn't say surprised, but through the kind of the initial stats that were coming out, that productivity was broadly the same, shorter working week. What did change? Non-chargeable time reduced, sickness reduced. So there were some kind of more tangible benefits, as well as the big one in terms of the ability to bring people in and retain them. retain people in the business.

And is your measure of productivity their client billings or?

Yeah, it's our output. So yeah, client billings. We don't typically charge by the hour, it's fixed fee pricing across the vast majority of the business. So it's output of work being done. We also obviously measure client satisfaction and that practicality of, as you mentioned, somebody not being in, Clients are kind of used to that, where there's relationships, they'll know that somebody's non-working day is a Monday, but there's plenty of other people in the team to be able to step in and help out if needed. Yeah, exactly. Kind of main systems are all web-based, accessible from everywhere. So obviously various people working from home or working remotely. So, so yeah, it's kind of set up to be able to be as flexible as possible.

If you can't say no, and we'll edit the podcast, so.

Yes, please. Yeah. So. I can balance freedom with focus, as we've already mentioned, which is absolutely key of that engagement of how we deal with the clients. Show kindness through candour, and it was all around kind of making sure that we're not being nice and having those conversations. Champion the Nuvo spirit, so this is all around embracing change. Obviously, as a fast-growth business, it's really important that everybody embraces that challenge as we grow. Stay above the line. Um, this is one with— so we did this with James Ashford when he first got involved in the business, and it was, it was a cool one that he brought from, uh, from his previous, uh, experience, which has been really, really useful.

And explain, explain, explain, explain that one then.

Yes, stay above the line. So it's, it's kind of encouraging the responsibility, not hiding Leaving behind blame, and really kind of looking at a solution-based culture rather than a blame-based culture.

Yep. Okay.

And then, prove that you care. Again, kind of saying that you care isn't enough. We've really got to prove that we care. And that's probably the one that we kind of use to hold the team to account the most.

Okay.

Just a conversation of, Either kind of recognizing that somebody has gone above and beyond and proved that they've cared in a positive solution, or on the occasions where there are issues, look, does this— do you feel that you've proved that you've cared in this scenario? It's just a bit more tangible than kind of—

Well, it works. Yeah, it works internally, works with clients, works with the community. Yeah, it helps all of those things. And so on your— in your— what other What are the things in your, I guess, the way in which you line up your people part of the business? What else is different? 4-day week, have you got anything else that you do which is different?

Yeah, so the 4-day working week is all part of the flexibility and that balance that we have with the team. Most of our team are qualified accountants or professionals, so really that more grown-up relationship with them is More recently, as part of the investment in the business, we've set up a 5% all-staff EBT. That's to bring the whole of the team into equity ownership as we, as we move forward as a business. We've got a 2030 vision now since completing our previous 2028 vision. That's to be £100 million in turnover by 2030 whilst maintaining a Net Promoter Score of 50 with our team and 50 with our clients. It's been shared with the whole of the team, and the EBT is a good way of sharing in the value creation along this journey.

Very good. Very good. And what do you— what's the equity event at 2030, do you think?

Yeah, so we're working kind of since the investment last year with the vision to 2030 to continue to scale broadly with kind of the current rate across the last 3 years. So that's nothing kind of different to what we're already doing, but then to be in a position in 2030 to then make a decision of kind of the next phase of the journey from there. The market kind of is very interesting at the moment. There's a lot of different platforms. We feel a bit different because we've been doing this for 17 years, so we kind of grew a lot more organically via M&A over a long period of time. Rather than kind of being designed in a London boardroom and kind of going out to try and find specific targets. But ultimately, look, the industry is evolving. I think there's a huge succession issue still in the industry at the smaller end of the market. There's not many people wanting to take over small businesses as there used to be, so that then creates lots of opportunities for us to continue to bring those The leadership team of 6 people, how many of those were—

I think you said, well, your former MD is now running your integration business. Of the other leaders, how many of those are external and how many of those were sort of homegrown?

Yeah, so one external, which was our CFO hire that we brought in kind of after the kind of vision was set. And then more recently, we've brought in a 7th of kind of senior board members as a group who has had that experience of going through the same journey that we're on now, twice in professional services businesses. Okay. So it's been important as we've grown the team, and one of my key responsibilities as CEO is to make sure we continue to surround that core team with the relevant experience and expertise from outside the business. So we've got that balance of people who know the business So 5 of the 6, 5 of the now 7 board have got extensive Nuvo experience, but then the 2 hires we've brought into the exec team, plus then 3 non-execs, which have all got extensive external experience of the journey that we're going on, gives us that balance of kind of internal, the external experience and expertise.

Did you lose any of the leadership team on the journey that you've already been on? been on to this point? And, and what, what lessons have you picked up from that, maybe? Yeah.

So kind of, if you go back to 2020, when, when this phase of the journey kind of really started, so the business was owned equally by 3 partners, and 2 of us were very aligned on where we wanted the business to go, to a more corporate structure and further growth to target top 100. The other, which was the co-founder of the business, wasn't aligned with that. So we agreed very early on, a really good. If we're not aligned at where we want the business to go, then the sensible thing is for him to do what he wants to do, and the business can do what we wanted it to do. So we went from the 3 to 2, and then that's when we brought in the other 4, 1 external hire with the CFO, and 3 from internal, to then really kind of build the team from there. So, so that core team has then been together kind of 5 or 6 years ago.

Very good.

And I think the learning, Dom, is really Cool. Is to not just rely on that team who are kind of very experienced and knowledgeable in terms of our business, but is then, is to realise that we all need that external help as well. So our group chair that's kind of done a management buy and build to a huge scale before, his experience is vital. Bringing in James Ashford into the business, couple of years ago. His experience, especially around the sale and, and accountancy experience, and kind of generally he's been through that journey of building a business and exiting. And then we brought in Damon Anderson, who was the COO of Xero for 5 years, part of the iPlacet setup. His experience in especially the accountancy software, which is a huge opportunity as that market develops, and paper as well as the kind of the go-to-market experience. So, it's around having that core team, but then also bringing in the right people at the right time to enable us to grow as individuals. Because, look, running a £35 million turnover business is very different to running a £5 million business, and will be different again to running a £100 million business. So, it's important we all grow with those people around us as the business grows as well.

Okay. And what books have you read along the way that you found useful or helpful or inspiring?

Yeah. And so I'm not a massive reader. I tend to read in kind of in chunks when I'm away and I've got the mindset and headspace to be able to take in what I read and actually do some action from it rather than being a serial reader. Now, in 2020, obviously post-COVID, really the start of this journey and the unlocker was I was going away for a couple of weeks and I specifically wanted to find some material that would help for that setting, that journey. So that were kind of 3 books. The first, 4-Day Workweek, which was around personally how I could be more efficient and better myself. The second one was Traction by Gino Wickman, which was— we then later adopted EOS, which was really good for that early part of our journey, give us the framework. And then thirdly was James Ashford's first book, Selling to Serve, which was more of an accountancy-specific book. And it was strange, that was one of the 3 books that kind of unlocked us to look at myself personally, look at the business, and look at the specifics of how we engage with clients. And then obviously later managed to convince James to be part of our journey.

But his— I thought his book was really good, particularly around You know, how do you— the whole concept of making the sales process, the service process, you know, bringing your service process into the sales process. It's certainly been one of those things where I read it and I went completely by one of the things I've done in the past. But missing so often, you know, if only your local doctor surgery would read a book like that, and the receptionist would treat you like you might if you had a choice, then it would be— life would be very different. Exactly.

And that's the last one I read, is James's kind of newest one. And I think that really summed up the structure, especially kind of build the platform, the foundations, and then how you kind of navigate the canyon in terms of bringing clients into the business. I thought it was kind of perfect for that experience and kind of put it together very—

What were the bits of EOS that you— did you find some of it easy, some of it hard? What did you do at all? Did you leave some of it behind?

So we did EOS for a couple of years. We had a really good facilitator that kind of helped us, held us to account to actually implement it. And look, I think why I quite liked it at the time is it was nothing particularly out there. It was very basic, but it gave us the framework to be able to kind of view, firstly starting at the end and the why, where did we want to get to, and then build it back into a, into a 3-year plan and then a 1-year plan. And then this 90-day cadence, which we still do now. So we don't run on kind of full EOS now, but we've kind of adopted the parts that work best for the business as we've continued to scale. It was that framework that it helped us to introduce that really worked at the time because it was new to us at the time. We didn't do board meetings. We didn't have exec team. It was putting in those foundations and just the structure that EOS really helped with.

Fab. And what did you take out of The 4-Hour Workweek? What did you change personally on the back of reading Tim's book?

Quite a lot, to be honest. I think it kind of—

You have a side hustle in new— you have a side hustle in vitamins.

Yeah, it was really unlocking personally to kind of More, take yourself more seriously, kind of have a, have a coach, and really to focus on the prioritization and the focus of what I was spending time on.

Gotcha.

Especially coming away from being client-facing, which is, is all about servicing the clients, into a role that was then more business-focused and making sure very structured in terms of allocation of time and focus into the most important That was really, really useful.

That's often a real challenge for people is that you are generating revenue. And now you're not going to be generating revenue, and you're going to be doing something else. Yeah, that's— I mean, I remember one of our clients, I remember the first day I spoke to him, and he said, he spoke to me one day, and he said, I haven't got any project. I'm not billable this week.

Yeah.

And he just, he didn't know what to do. Because there's, you know, that, you know, you've got a loss of revenue, you've got the self-worth, self-esteem, esteem when you stop being billable and this thing that you're going to do that, you know, what happened for you around, around that? How did you, how did you solve those problems?

Yeah, it was a really interesting journey from being the biggest fee earner in the business to the biggest overhead in the business, effectively. Yeah, and managing—

luckily you're the boss.

Managing those client relations that, that I've built up over kind of previous 15, 17 years Yeah. But for me, the mindset was always in, I love the business side of it. The reason why I left school at 16, did an apprenticeship to start with, was to be an accountant because I knew that accountants was a really good kind of footway into the business world. So that kind of business side of it really excited me and I really wanted to kind of spend more of my time and focus on, on the business rather than in the business. So for me, because I had that passion for that, the conversion was relatively easy in terms of kind of gradually passing those clients on to others and then unlocking my time to spend more time on the business rather than in it.

Did school— school wasn't for you? Why wasn't school for you?

Yeah, interesting question. I just wanted to get on and work. I felt ready I needed to do something. I was frustrated at school. I was always good at exams but felt like, yeah, I didn't want to spend another 2 years kind of doing A-levels and then potentially on to university. I'd be like, I'm in my mid-20s by then. Yeah, I just wanted to get on with it. Fortunately, there's that pathway in accountancy that you can kind of be qualified in kind of 5 or 6 years, kind of straight from school. So I was fortunate that the ball started rolling. Vocational route to be able to get qualified that there isn't always in other industries. But I was very certain from kind of a young age what I wanted to do. So if you— that's it, get on and get on and do it as early as possible. Then I was certain I wanted to set up a business on my own, so we kind of got on and did that. I just wish it didn't take 17 years to kind of treat the business as a proper business and make those investments in the people and the platform side of it. But yeah, you live and learn.

Steve, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today.

Thanks for coming on. Pleasure.

Thank you.