Coffee Chat with Tim Seymour (Profit First) and Rebecca - Talking Profit First in the UK

Hello, everyone, and happy Tuesday. I hope you all had a nice bank holiday weekend. And now we're back to it. So today I'm joined with the lovely Tim Seymour. And for anybody who doesn't know Tim, which I'm sure the vast majority of people do at this point, Tim is in the UK running the Profit first. And I'm pretty sure, again, most of my audience have heard of Profit first, because all I ever do is talk about the books that I read and Profit first is very high up on the list. However, I'm going to let Tim introduce himself to you, so I'm going to hand it over to you. Tim, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?

Thanks, Rebecca. It's lovely to be on here today. Yeah. So I'm Tim Seymour and a joint owner of Profit First Professionals in the uk, which means myself and my business partner, Duncan Lloyd, own the license for Profit first in the uk. So we're partners to Mike Michalovich and Ron Sarayahan.

And so I, you know, me and Tim have met a few times now, I think maybe two or three times in person, most recently at Milton Keynes in. I. I want to say it was November or October last year.

October.

October, yeah. Which is interesting. That was my first time at Milton Keynes. I didn't realize how many roundabouts there were.

I'd never been there before either. Don't worry. Yeah, it was an experience, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was a really good day. That was at the Zero hq and there was, you know, Mike was there. Chris was there as well, wasn't he? Chris Ducker. Um, again, I've got his book. Definitely worth another read.

Yeah, we had Amanda Watts there as well and we had a surprise guest, which happened to be Daniel Priestley, turn up as well. Yeah, nobody knew about. So that was really good. We did really well to keep that hidden from everyone.

Yeah. That was the scorecard, wasn't it?

That's right, yeah. Yeah.

I've actually started implementing that in my own business for surveys and also going about another way at year end or, you know, with self assessments. We're now providing checklists through there, or that's the aim. We're not quite there yet, but yeah, it was a really interesting day. So thank you for the invite.

No problem. No, for. Well, there's going to be another one on Monday 9th September, if you want to put that in your diary. So this is. This is going to be. It's called Profit Con Europe. Please don't get put off by the Word con. It actually is short for conference. I don't necessarily like the terminology, but we have to use it. Mike's coming over again and he's going to be coming to us for profit. Profitcon uk, then he's going to profitcon Netherlands, then profitcon Deutschland. So for a week he's over here and he's going to all three European licenses. But worker stop. We're on Monday 9th September, so there's a date for everyone's diary that's watching this if you want to come along and meet some fantastic guests again, there's going to be a few more surprises and we're trying to raise the bar even higher. But we'll see, we'll see. Everything's being planned. So we're looking forward to another great event in September that'll be somewhere in London this time.

Oh, wow, that'd be really nice.

Yeah.

So I think I've asked you this question before, but how. How did you get into profitfairs? Like, what was the. I know previously you'd worked in practice, so what made you sort of navigate towards Profit First? What was it that. That sort of piqued your interest initially?

All the mistakes I'd made in my business up until that point had compounded and I was in a situation where I knew I had to change what I was doing, but I just didn't know what, you know, I was serving the wrong types of clients, I wasn't charging enough, I was doing all the classic things, working long hours, not earning enough money. All the classic things. If you read Profit First, I was that guy that was running the business. Completely wrong. And I'm not ashamed to admit that, because we all have to learn. It's a journey that we're all on when we start up in business, isn't it? Especially for accountants and bookkeepers, because we forget to be a business owner at the beginning. What's great at the moment is everybody gets opportunity to lots of different places now where they can learn stuff before they get into such a hole that perhaps I got myself into. So I. I knew I needed to change, I just didn't know how or what. And a client of mine who I met for a coffee just asked me casually, had I heard of Profit First? It was a book, and I said no. So he said, I reckon you'd like it. So went back to my office, onto Amazon, ordered the book, as you can see, it just behind. I've got more copies, obviously, two chapters in, and kind of the light bulb just went off. In my head, this is what I've been looking for. I don't know why it just triggered with me. I was that business owner that was working long hours and earning not enough money. So yeah, it just triggered with me. And so I literally went online and booked a meeting straight away, paid a deposit. Because when you, when you go through home base and in the us you have to pay a deposit just to get a call, had the call and joined literally there and then. I was so impressed. I mean, you know, I was lucky to get invited to join on the call because that didn't happen all the time. But I was, I was, I was lucky enough to get invited to join. I joined and I never looked back from that moment on. And people sometimes look at me a bit questionably when I say that, but actually it's, it's a few stages on from there and I look back, that was that pivotal moment that, that decision I made at that point in time changed everything for me.

I remember I picked up profit first, like years ago, way before I met Deb. Because we're both massive bookworms and that's one of the things that we share in common. We're always exchanging book titles. And I remember I'd read, I think I'd read the paperback back then. And then one weekend, I don't know what I was doing about a year and a half ago, maybe 18 months ago, and it was over a weekend and I thought, oh, I don't know where that book's gone, I'll get it on Audible. And I, I was cleaning up around the house and I'm listening to this book and I remember my partner saying to me, what you listening to? Because the entire time I'm like, yeah. Oh God, that makes so much sense. Oh, you know, why have I not thought about that before? I've gone back to my old ways of not looking at it this way. And I remember actually, and I did this again in Milton Keynes when Mike started talking about his story. So Mike, just to clarify to the audience, is the author of the Prophet first books. And it's a particular scene with his daughter, which I won't spoil. That got me all teary eyed and it got me teary eyed in person. And I was like, don't cry. And I remember sitting down with the Audible book and just, literally just like streaming, thinking like, this is, it's not only is this book relatable, and it's not just relatable for business owners, it's also relatable if you are you know, just running the house, finances as well and like, just so much of it. My, my grandparents always had money aside, you know, for a rainy day and there's little pots for little things. And I used to, I didn't scoff at it, but I thought, you know, that's your generation, that's, that's your thing. Things have changed. It doesn't work anymore. And when I was reading that book the first time, I think I was incredibly humbled by how you can put that into place nowadays and make it work for you and make it work for your business and, yeah, the number of lessons learned, from my perspective, anyway, personally, that I've put into place since reading the book and talking to Deb and all the rest of it is incredible. So then with the Profit first and how is that working in the uk, because obviously, you know, Mike's over overseas and from your perspective, it's. You've got a partner though, haven't you?

Yeah, yeah. Duncan Lloyd. So, yeah, two of us, two of us jointly own the license, so we're, we're joint business partners. The, the great thing from, from our point of view is Duncan still runs his accountancy practice and he's absolutely smashing it with his clients. I'm utilizing Profit first strategies, so it's great. When we're on group calls with our members, I can ask Duncan a question about what he's doing. He can answer and everybody can hear what's working, what's not working. And for myself, I built my business up after I changed it around, after, after, you know, joining Profit First Professionals, I was able to fortunately sell off all of the compliance side of my business and just transition into coaching completely, which suited me now, so, so we've kind of covered both angles. There's, there's the angle of people that are still operating as accountants and bookkeepers. So Duncan is still doing it there. And then there's me that, for people that perhaps want to do what I did and move more into the, the coaching or guiding or mentoring side of things. So we've kind of got both areas covered because not everybody wants the same thing. You know, there's, there's definitely. Everybody says negative things about compliance. It wasn't for me. But without compliance, there isn't a lot of businesses and we need compliance to be done because that's not going to change.

No.

The statutory accounts have to be completed. Everything has to be in place for legal reasons, and rightly so. But adding on the advisory or the coaching guide they mentioned, whatever term you want to use helps you add real value with your clients and you can dig so much deeper into the knowledge of your client's business individually. And it's more fulfilling. I found it more fulfilling to be able to really go deeper in those businesses with people and that's what our members do.

Yeah. And I think, you know, like from my perspective, the way I run my business is very different. So when I was working in practice, it's almost polar opposite, apart from the things that you have to do, you know, compliance wise. But what I always find interesting, talking to the Profit first members, the accountants and the coaches and the business advisors, is that you really care about your clients and you care about getting them from where they are right now, which might not be the best situation. They might be in debt, they might have all of these things going on and not know how to get themselves out of it. Because, let's be honest, somebody could pay, it's now £30 to open a company, but you could open a company tomorrow with no background, no training, no anything, and just head first with this technical view of, well, I know what I'm doing. You know, I'm a carpenter, I'm a plumber, I can do that. But it doesn't mean that you have the skill set to run a successful business price properly, all the rest of it that goes into it. Yeah. So I was, I, I love, I love talking to the community from Profit first because there's always that, I call it the fire, you know.

Fire within, passion, passion coming from within to help people. We see that in our members and, and I think it comes from their journey that they've gone through. What, what's really interesting part of the process when they join Profit first professionals is implementing Profit first in their own business. We've had members actually be overwhelmed with their own business, the of the state of their own business. And I don't mean that in a negative way because the beautiful part of Profit first is, hey, this is where you're at. This is how you've been using your cash up to this point, but we're going to help you with that and we're going to make it better. We're going to help you be more efficient, we're going to help you have clarity on how you're managing the cash moving forward. And it's all about being proactive and looking ahead with them. But yeah, we've even had members, you know, be overwhelmed. We've had emotional conversations with them, but then a month or two later, the conversation is totally different. In that short period of time because they're clear on their direction and they're clear what they're doing. And because they've gone through that process in their own business, they've built a strategy out on how to help their clients. And everybody in our membership has a slightly different take on how to help their clients, which is really interesting. We don't push, you have to do it this way, you have to do it that way. You don't have to achieve the target allocate allocation percentages as per the book, because that might not be appropriate for that particular business. So having us over here, understanding the tax system, it just helps, it just helps make it a lot more deeper and with more knowledge behind us.

And then for those that have never read, I'm sure they will after this. I'm going to put a little description, maybe a link to Amazon in here, but what are the principles? So why does Prophet first differ, let's just say from another self help book of that kind. I don't want to really call it self help book because it's different, a business book. How does it differ?

I think it just changes the way you think about money. So the general concept of profit first is to flip the formula. Because we're statutory, accounts will always be as they are. So we have the sales, we take off the expenses and we're left with profit, often referred to as the bottom line. And because of the way our mind acts, the bottom line is the last thing. So we don't think about that, we think about how we can bring the sales into the business and we focus on that and we forget about the expenses and we don't even think about the profit. It becomes an event at the end of the year with profit first. And of course what happens from that point perspective is that the business owner doesn't reward themselves. They make sure all the bills are paid and everybody else is paid and they're the last person to be paid. And why that is is just because we're nice people, we're trying to look after everybody else. But actually if you want a long term sustainable business, you need to look after yourself so that you can look after everybody else. So when you flip the formula and say sales minus profit equals expenses, suddenly it's a completely different aspect to running a business. So if you're saying these are my sales and I'm going to take this out for profit and actually move the cash out of the bank account into a separate pot for profit, what's left is what you have to run the business on. And because there's less to run the business on, you are more innovative and more creative with your thinking about how you can make the sales come into your business without spending all the money you were spending before. So it kind of pushes you into those decision making conversations and real thought provoking ideas of how you can improve what you doing and being more efficient with what you're offering to your, to your customers, whatever business that may be.

I think the interesting thing is that you can apply this to different businesses of different sizes, in different industries and ultimately get, you know, a very similar outcome. But the other element for me is that when I've dealt with business owners in the past, both when I've been in industry and in practice, you know, you've got the one bank account and you're expected to manage the entire company on that one bank account. So you never know how much you've got aside for the purchase of machinery or repairs or new staff or you're not breaking it down enough. And when you, when you come to the year end and yes, you've got your compliance, your year and set of statutory accounts, so it's happened, it's been, it's gone. So there's no planning forward and taking advantage of, you know, certain tax elements or as you say, taking a dividend before the year end, but taking that correctly because a lot, a lot of companies will just, you know, directors would take money out the company and sometimes that's not the best from a tax point of view. But also you can end up in, in the red with them and the legal dividend and all the rest of it that goes with it. So having that four or almost, I think it's to some regard, creating simplicity in the business and understanding the numbers and understanding therefore what you can do with that. And then as you say, if you've got a goal, a clear goal that you can stick to, that's achievable. Not one of these, you know, just set a five year budget that's taken us three months to pull together that no one really understands except the accounts department. And you know, it's not that it's planning properly and understanding what you need to do to get to where you want to be. And I think that's the difference. So you know, from your own perspective, do you have any, I will put you on the spot here, Tim. Do you have any success stories that you can share with us all?

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, yeah. So, okay, so there's a profit first professional member who, since he joined us, he's increased his sales revenue by 100k just because he's a profit first professional. So there's, I can, I can give you that one. And then I don't, I, I personally don't work directly with many businesses any longer but the last one I did work with. So this is me, me coaching now a business was probably about a year ago because my time is all with our members now but so this is a good one as well. When I started working with them they, they paid their last VAT bill out of the overdraft. So their overdraft was suddenly up to the maximum by the time they got to the next quarter. So they worked with me for a full quarter. They paid the VAT account from the VAT pot, they had money building up in the profit pot and they were paying their own salary from the owners compensation part as well. So it just, in three months we had structured that and then their overdraft was starting to reduce. So it's, it's just having that clear plan and the clarity on numbers because like, like you said business owners are very confident in selling what they sell and doing what they do. If it's a carpenter doing the carpentry, yeah, first class. But when it comes to clarity on numbers, if you can move, move the money into different parts, you can see what that money is identified for and what that money is building up for and at the end of the month you can move that money then into the right area for the business.

Yeah.

Whether that be the owner's pay, the salaries, you know, the operating expenses and tax pots building up in the background.

I think for anyone who's watching, who's a business owner, which we do get quite a lot of business owners watching sole traders and a small limited company business owners. The difference, if you were to ask me, and I get this asked a lot, what's the difference between a bookkeeper and accountant? What's the difference between a tax advisor and such a body? So the difference is that a lot of the individuals working within the Profit first network are accountants. The coaches, the business owners themselves and they to some degree they're not all accountants, are they? You know, they've got a vast array of, of knowledge over many years. But the difference is I'd say if you want an accountant for compliance, you'll get an accountant, you'll get a year end accountant who says right, there's your year end, there's your corp tax on your way, I'll see you again next year. Difference is that if you're working with somebody in the profit first network, you're going to get that hand holding through the process. And if you want to make a difference in your business, the difference in the way that your goal setting is, is currently made out now. And also if you want to get simplicity and also know where your business is going and achieve those goals that you want, profit first is why you need to be looking for that.

Absolutely, yeah. If anyone's watching this that hasn't read the book, I would recommend reading the book. Just recently it's been, the price has been reduced on Amazon. I don't know if it still is, but it was 12 pound, 1250 just recently for the hardback book. And of course Audible is even cheaper depending on your preference. I would recommend reading the book. We don't get anything for that by the way, there's no financial implication for us. But read the book, it's the first step. And if you're really serious about moving your business forward and being long term sustainable, working with a profit first professional is highly recommended. Our members, they, they sit the same side of the desk as you, if that makes sense. They don't sit opposite you and say, yeah, well done. Six months after your year end, here's your, here's your accounts. Great, you made a profit. No, the money's gone, there's no cash left. You spent it, you know, and here's your tax bill and you know, off you go is your problem. It's not like that at all. It's okay, we've, we dig deeper into your numbers, we identify areas to support you and we help you, we hold your hand through the process all the way. And if things go wrong, because, you know, inevitably we live in the real world, not the ideal world. When things go wrong and there's an issue and you can't make your allocations that we would want you to make, then we help you overcome that problem, we reset and we get you moving forward again with it. And over the longer term period, taking those small steps of moving the money aside which gradually increases, will take you where you want it to take you. And so we can help you achieve what you wanted to achieve when you set up in business. Because so many people forget why they set up because they get lost and they've end up just creating a job for themselves, don't they? As opposed to a life.

And I think, you know, even in my own experience, you know, I've been running the practice for three years now and honestly I've learned more in three years than I have in 18. Definitely. And it's not perfect. It's still things that we need to work on. But I think having that clarity that we have now has been, I don't know, I can't think what the word is, but just invaluable. Yeah. What we'll say as well is I again, I have a lot of bookkeepers and accountants who watch this, who are looking for a change in their own business and also in a change in the offerings that they're able to provide to their clients. So if there is a bookkeeper accountant watching and they want to be involved in the Profit first network, how can they do that?

Yeah, it's very simple that we've got a website, profitfirstuk.co.uk on there. It gives you information, but there's also a form where you can express interest. That comes through to me directly into my mailbox. I'll reach out to you. We have a chat and it be a very relaxed chat. There's no. We don't try and persuade anyone to join us. We need people to join us at the right time for them, the right time for us, and they have to be the right people. We're looking for people that really want to push their business forward and as you said, have a passion for helping their clients because that is the key part of what. What stands aside, you know, anyone who wants to find out more, just reach out to us. We're happy to have conversations with. We've also got a crosswords and coffee Facebook group for accountants and bookkeepers. It's free. It's free to join. We have monthly online sessions with me and Jason, our Profit first guide. We've got a Profit first book club running at the moment. So if you have read the book or you want to read the book, it's not too late to join. We're only on chapter two this Friday, so again, reach out to us. If you go on Facebook and search crossups and coffee, you'll see it's called Tim Seymour's Crossings and Coffee for accountants and bookkeepers. Just. Just answer three simple questions and join now.

My big question for. For that is. Is that on replay?

Well, we don't. The monthly online session, we tend to just run live. We don't tend to record it. We're trying to encourage people to come along. I know it clashes with other things, which is difficult, but, you know, we have to pick a time that suits. And it's just how it works, isn't it? When we have guests in. We do record those, so we have a lot of guest speakers in. In fact, Rebecca, you're. You're on our list to, to come and join us.

In my own practice, I tend to. On a Friday, I shut the practice down and we work on the practice. So we, you know, we look at fees, we look at software and integrations, what we've done right, what we've done wrong, where we can improve all the rest of it. But thinking Friday's not working out for us because there's so many things on a Friday that we want to join, like the live podcast. There's about three or four of them on a Friday that I keep thinking I'd love to join. But, you know, obviously we're trying to do this here, so I think I need to shift up the days a bit, but.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Great to see you on our course.

What, so what then, you know, if you don't mind me asking, what. What does the next six months to 12 months look like for profit first? Because everywhere I go now, you know, account tax and the digital accounts, the show and just recently the fab, all I ever see now or hear of is profit first. So it seems to be on the tip of everybody's tongue.

To my ears, by the way. But, yeah, now that's fantastic. I mean, we're. So. We're at the digital accounting show. We've got a stand, we're on stand E13, so anyone watching, please come and say hi. You know, again, there's no hard sell. We just want to meet you, get to know you, you go away with some value. We've got Ashley leads on there on the Tuesday with us all day long, so you can help you with your LinkedIn profile anyway, so you'll walk away with value. So we're there for two days. We're really looking forward to that. It's going to be five of us on the stand, so we can't wait. And we're going to get to meet everybody that we know and partner with as well, like yourselves and lots of other people. So we're looking forward to that later on the year. We've got profitcon uk, as I mentioned earlier. And then what's happening then is we're taking new members on in cohorts. So on the 1st of June is our next intake of cohorts, then the 1st of October. And we're doing that because we've got a structured way of moving people through the certification process to get them certified first and foremost. Then we can take them Through. Okay, now I'm certified. Now what? And that's the bit where people all need help with. So we're really focusing on that area to support people.

Oh, wow. So lots and lots in the pipework.

Busy. It's busy. It's a busy time. Yeah. And bam. We're just, we're trying to spread the word because profit first is. It is successful if you, if you really, if you really commit to it, you will be successful. It works. So, yeah, like we said, read the book, get the book, read the book. See how you get on something. We always say when we're a guest on anything, and Mike always says this, so we kind of follow in his lead, is if you haven't done anything, if you do one thing from this call, open up a profit account, a savings account, call it profit. Every time you get money coming in from your customers, put 1% into that profit pot and then watch the money grow over a period of time and you'll see what profit first is all about. That's only the first step, by the way. There's lots more of the pots to open, but if you, if you're watching and you do nothing else, please do that. Prove yourself. Proves to yourself it works.

Absolutely. Okay, well, I'm going to end it there because as always, I've gone over time, which is just what always happens because I get talking to a good friend. Friend and then that's it.

It's always the same.

So if, again, if anyone wants to contact you, they can find you on profit first. Uk.co.uk that's it. Also, you're on LinkedIn.

I'm on LinkedIn, yep. Tim J. Seymour on LinkedIn, you'll be able to see me. It says quite clearly that I guide accounts as bookkeepers with profit first. So you won't be able to miss me if you search me. Yeah, I'm always on LinkedIn. So yeah, DM me through LinkedIn as well if you want to. I'm more comfortable with that. Perfect. 13 stand E13 at the DAS show. We'd love to see as many of you come up and say hi to us as possible.

Yeah, okay, perfect. Well, I'll end it there, but enjoy the rest of your day, Tim, and thank you so much for joining us on here. And I'll pop some links in the description after this to make sure that everybody can get hold of you. But yeah, enjoy the rest of your day and again, appreciate it.

Thanks very much.