How an accountant used storytelling to build his Crunch business.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur. My name's Jim James and I'm here to share tools and thoughts with you that might help you to build your brand. I want to share with you today what I've learned from using Crunch software. And it all beds down into the whole idea of storification and how this accounting firm is a great example of how the founder of can display their own story but make the customer into the hero of theirs. So today, just a short piece of insight on what I've discovered by using a new accounting software. And who would have thought that using accounting software could actually teach you something over and above money? So crunch.co.uk is a service provider and the reason I think it's interesting is that they have really been working to separate themselves from the software companies like Xero and Sage and the accounting firms. And we all know who they are. And as a small business owner myself, I've been looking to find an alternative to Xero for many years. And having, you know, labored with having zero accounting partners, forgive the pun there, or accounting partners that use Xero, I should say, and trying to get these third parties to use the Xero software and then to do the accounts, I was about out of patience with that. So I saw actually an online ad for crunch, it's crunch.co.uk and here, if you go to their website, you'll see that they've really got the narrative down. And so I'm sharing this because if you think about your own company and you think about your own journey, how is it that maybe you solve problems for yourself that you've now turned into a business? I know that in 1993, when I was looking to appoint a PR firm in Asia, I went out to Singapore and to Hong Kong and I wasn't impressed by any of the agencies and their consultants that see me. And that was really the genesis of east west public relations. I went to Asia to start the company that I needed. My. And maybe you are doing the same thing. All companies, most companies have started at some stage or other because the founder was solving a problem. If we look at, for example, DBS Santa Salo, which is a large engineering company, it originally started out because David Brown, as one of the founders, was trying to solve engineering problems affecting, for example, the cooling for tanks. And it was using the same fins as they developed for their tractors. HFS Morgan started building three wheelers to get to work over the Malvern Hills when he was working in a bus factory. And people then asked him if they could build them one of the three wheelers. And that started what is now course Morgan Motor Company Come back to Crunch. Chap called Darren Fell started this business in 2007. It says entrepreneur Darren Fell had had enough of the many shortfalls of traditional accountancy firms. And so he grabbed the bull by the horns and created a fairly priced, all inclusive service for freelancers, contractors and small businesses bringing together easy to use online accounting software with in house support when you need it. Now today we're in the lucky position to help tens of thousands of people to do the same. No appointments, no fuss, accounting for the modern era. So there's the journey of the original founder through the problem that he was trying to solve for himself and then articulating on the website as being the business genesis and what it's going to mean for the next generation of people like myself that have been become customers and the tens of thousands of people who have become the same. So on the website they address this issue that I talk about, which is the storification of your business. How do you make the genesis of your business into a story that demonstrates to your customers that you understand their problem? And this is really what Darren Fel is explaining on his Crunch website. And then they say and we've never gotten our mission and we'll never stop innovating. So they say our service is much more than just accountancy. We support you with business insurance, financial planning, self employed mortgages and so much more. So the idea is that they've started with one simple problem to solve and then recognize that those problems are really all to do with money, you know, and that every entrepreneur, every business owner ultimately is dealing with money issues. So what Crunch also does just below that is to use Trustpilot as social proof why business owners love us. So 4.5 is the average score for over 910 reviews on the website. So they're nearly up to a thousand. And the latest ones are, you know, January of this year 2022. And then they have the pricing. So it's free for starting accountancy software. For a sole trader it's free forever. And then you can have the Limited Company Pro 3775 and then you can have a premium at £57 75. Now, having paid £150amonth to an accounting firm, plus the 0 fee of another £35amonth, nearly £200amonth, I've opted for the limited company Pro where I can also have my company registration at my home, but at their registered address. So what we're seeing here then, in Crunch on one website, on one page, is the story of the founder and then a recognition that the business is actually about solving money problems, not just about accounting problems. And then social proof and then articles about how you can solve problems. And it talks about having the crunch chorus, 67,000 members who are, it says, members just like you. So I think this is a really interesting website and I'm enjoying the service already of the responsiveness of the support and the chat online. But the real reason I wanted to raise Crunch is because I've mentioned on more than one occasion the importance of the story for your business and wrestled a little bit with, well, whose story is it? And what we've learned from people like Park Howell is that the business owner, me, for example, you, is really the mentor. It's our role to use our experience to help our customers to solve their problems. And the most authentic and the most appealing story that the customers are going to hear is that we as business owners have lived through that problem ourselves and have solved it. So if you look at your own website and your own public relations and your own social media, I wonder if you can just ask yourself, are you sharing your own story or has it become diluted? I see now how so many companies become more and more corporate. They become more and more distanced from the original founders. Maybe the founders are no longer involved, but they also move further and further away from what was the original vision of the company. Unless maybe there's a statement somewhere. So as we reevaluate our own marketing materials and as we grow the company, there's still a place, as we're seeing from Crunch, there's still a place for the founder's story. And as long as that then transitions into how that story has created a business that is dedicated to solving the customer's problem problem. And it's the customer who is now the hero of the business, not the founder. So working through this idea of storyfication, how you make a story from how you started your business. But then the role that we have as business owners is to facilitate the success of our customers through the journey that we've been through ourselves. When we look at our marketing materials, the question is, are we doing that or not? So just a short piece today, because if I'm on my own, I don't want to bore you with the sound of my voice only. And I've got some great interviews coming up in the next week with some amazing guests from around the world to share with you more about content creation, about social media and all manner of great stuff. But as it's just me on my own, I'm going to keep it short. But I did see what Crunch have written about themselves and I wanted to share because it really identifies a point that I've been talking about and talk about in my book the Unnoticed Entrepreneur, about the need to create a story. But the role of the business owner is to be the mentor. It's the role of the customer who is to be the hero. And our role is to help them to be that, to overcome their own challenges by the services that we can provide. I hope this may be short sought may give you some pause for thought for your own business. If you are enjoying the show, do please share this with other people. And if you can rate it on the little click to link that we've got in the show notes, that'd be fantastic because it all really, really helps me. If we've got more people sharing the show, that's really the number one way the show will grow. So thank you so much for all of your attention today and I wish you a safe journey wherever you're going on to.