Profit First: Beyond The Book - The Benefits of Profit First Implementation

Welcome to Profit First Beyond the Book, a podcast that takes you beyond the book with Profit First, brought to you by Tim Seymour and the rest of the Profit First Professionals UK and Ireland team. And welcome to Profit First Beyond the Book, and here we go again. And I'm joined once again with the famous and fabulous Deb Halliday and Jason Withers. Welcome along, both of you.

Hi, Tim.

Oh, the best intro I think I've ever done for you both. Um, okay, so today we're going to talk about the benefits of accountants and bookkeepers implementing Profit First into their own business. We often focus on how Profit First can be used for an advisory service, and of course it can, but we sometimes forget to talk about the transition and the transformation that it's caused for our members, for accountants, for bookkeepers, when they implement Profit First properly into their business. And we know firsthand the benefits of that and how it's— what it's done for us and how it's changed things around in our finances for us. So I'll share, you know, when I had my accountancy business before I found Profit First, covering the quarterly VAT bill was quite often an issue for me. It was always a struggle and then that would affect my pay. And the issue being that the money wasn't coming in fast enough from my clients probably, so I was always chasing the work, always chasing more work, then I was chasing to be paid. You know, obviously then I went down the route of going into the monthly recurring revenue, which then smoothed out the cash flow, and that started to help. But there were still bumps in the road. There were still hiccups along the way where the VAT was a difficult situation when the quarter came round. Tax bills I always find particularly hard at the end of the year when you're desperately trying to pay yourself enough money to cover your personal commitments. Sometimes the tax part, the tax savings, is the one that suffers the most. Um, so even though as accountants and bookkeepers we know that tax bills come in, we can still be guilty of burying our head in the sand the same as our clients do. And we can sometimes get to that point and think, right, where am I going to get this money from to pay the tax bill? Back then you could cover your tax with your personal credit cards. And I'm going to hold my hands up and say I did that on numerous occasions, and it certainly didn't help my personal financial situation as well as my business and financial situation. So this is all before Profit First. This is when I was running my business out of one bank account. I might have had a separate savings account that didn't really get much money put into it, and life was a struggle. And, you know, you, you think to yourself, because you're an accountant, because you're a bookkeeper, you convince yourself everything's going to be all right. I know what I'm doing. I'm good with numbers, everything's going to be fine. You know, you can look at your, you can look at your software for your own business accounts and you can kind of see that profit building. You can see that there's an element of profit in the business and you think, yeah, everything's fine, I'm making a profit, we're going to be okay. But there's a very big difference between making a profit on paper and having cash to show for the profit. And it was when I found and read Profit First for the first time that I really found the difference. And I had that, and we've talked about this on numerous occasions, but that light bulb moment wasn't just the thought of, this is what I've been looking for, I can do this for my clients. It was actually, oh my God, Mike's talking about me. I am that business owner that really needs this help, and I need this system right now. Um, and, and that was part of the decision when I decided to join Property Professionals was First and foremost, I knew I needed to sort my own business finances out and I needed help. And implementing Profit First, running the Profit Assessment, being overwhelmed by what I saw, being guided through the process by Liz, and coming out the other side with a blueprint and a plan to move forward with clarity on the business, it, it revolutionized my business. It changed my mindset. It gave me peace of mind. There was still work to be done, don't get me wrong, it didn't happen overnight. You know, I still had the same issues about getting the money in from clients and keeping on top of the work and having to work out how to increase my prices. That came later. But to start off with, I had clarity on what was happening with my money, and I was able to put my pay aside each time money came into the business. I was able to start putting some money aside for profit. Most importantly for me, was the VAT and the tax. I started to get peace of mind that actually next year I might actually be able to pay this without using credit, and that was massive. That was massive for me because that took away a massive weight. You know that burden that's sitting on your shoulders in the background that you can't ever shake off? You don't talk about it, but it's there. It's in the back of your mind all the time. You know it's coming, and so being prepared for that for the future was massive for me as well. And I'm sharing this without any embarrassment whatsoever. Yes, I was an accountant offering accountancy services, doing bookkeeping, but not mastering my own finances at that point. Profit First changed that for me massively, and now I master my own finances and I'm more than comfortable with, with what's happening in the business and my business and my business back then. So I feel it's important to share that because it's easy for us to sit here trying to stand out as the experts saying, you know, we're this and that, but let's be real, let's be honest and say without Profit First I don't know where my business would have ended up, possibly not in a good state and possibly, you know, I don't know what I'd be doing now. I might not be doing this for that well, I would not be doing this if I hadn't come across Profit First. So that's my story, as concise as I can get it for now. Deb, I'm gonna ask you to share what the benefits and how you felt implementing Profit First in your business when you came to join us as well.

So I found the book as I was restarting my business, and for me it was going to give me the roadmap of what the, the health score should be, um, for each aspect. So for tax, for, um, owner's pay, for operating expenses, and what I should be setting aside for profit. And it then— when I read the book, I knew that it would work instantly. Um, I implemented it, um, And then I had it, it helped me kind of like keep constraints on my expenses and model it, um, as month on month, just so that I could check, um, that I was heading towards those percentages. However, 6 months after reading the book, I contacted you, Tim Seymour Seymour, and then became Profit First Professional because I knew it would help the clients in, um, my clients in their businesses. And the difference was that I'd been trying to— I'd done the profit assessment and the rollout plan, and I was trying to model it on those taps that I'd done at the beginning, and that wasn't working for me anymore because I'd grown, um, and the business had evolved. Um, and it was only when I qualified as a Profit First Professional and went through the training that I realized it was an evolving, uh, system, and it's not a set and forget, which it seems like a set and forget in the book. Um, so all the strategies and the accountability that I got with, um, being a Profit First Professional was invaluable because it I then went through a process of, um, running a Profit First assessment, a Profit Instant assessment every month, um, because my income and my, um, outgoings were changing that frequently on a month-to-month. So I— because what I was doing was I was taking out from one pot to pay another, and I'm thinking, well, this isn't how the system is meant to work. And I was realizing actually I was short on expenses because I hadn't, um, I maybe increased my Xero subscriptions, or I might have taken on another software, um, you know, in capacity because I was taking on more clients, and the percentages were just being thrown out. And also I needed to start taking out more money from the business, so I I redid it for a series of months, um, and but the one critical point was when I, um, I did the expenses exercise and I, um, I found £750 worth of monthly expenses that I could cut over a period, period. So it wasn't an instant month. If I diarised the, um, when the contracts were up or when my trial, you know, when the periods were over and I could actually maybe to a cheaper alternative or use a feature that I hadn't been using in an existing software that did a similar job. Um, so yeah, so that, that was, that was great. So I remember that that was from January to April. I knew that I was going to be £750 a month better off. And that really radicalized my percentages and then dropped me towards the taps that I was getting quite— what's the word— frustrated that I wasn't hitting. So yeah, but it's all learning through being a Profit First professional because they don't teach you that in the book. It's much more of a set and forget. System. So yeah, so I think, where would my business be if I hadn't implemented it? Confused state, I think. Everything's still in one bank, utter confusion, um, and, and stress because you don't know whether you can, you can afford to pay the subcontractors, or if you— because you haven't got it there in front of you, um, on your bank balance. Have you? You've, you've, you're just kind of like running a spreadsheet or, you know, fingers crossed type of thing. Um, so yeah, so I think clarity and my stress levels came down running Profit First, and the accountability was second to none.

So, so yeah, I can, I can remember, um, when you find those savings in your expenses, and I can remember when you got to April, how great you felt when the last one dropped off. You know, £750 a month, that's £9,000 a year. That's, that's a lot of money if you then redistribute it towards paying yourself, towards profits, towards owner's pay, towards tax bills, whatever, whatever is the, the required, um, target for that. But that, that was a massive step change. Um, and also you mentioned as well about Profit First not being a thing that you just set and leave. And that's actually quite appropriate that you say that because I'm seeing a lot of people talking about Monzo pots, Starling Spaces, move money into these. Yeah, great, the Spaces and the pots are absolutely fantastic, but without a framework or structure, how do you know what to put in those pots? What's that actually doing for you? Are you just guessing and chucking in an amount you think your tax bill will be? Whereas when you run a profit assessment on your business and you can see, we can guide you and help you see exactly where you're at from a Profit First perspective, you've got that opportunity then to set your percentages and then constantly review them with us. And that's the clever part, isn't it? It's not something you just leave, otherwise you're never, never going to go forward from that point. You're just going to be stuck at that point then. Whereas Profit First is an onward journey that keeps on moving and keeps on evolving. And you might achieve one thing, then you look to achieve the next thing. Things change in your business, so you have to decide how to manage that through from a Profit First perspective and how you're going to achieve that next thing that you want to get. So Profit First is definitely an ever-involving framework and structure that you follow and you keep moving and keep moving, and accountability is key, I believe, in that situation as well. Thanks for sharing that, Deb. Um, let's go to Jason. So Jason, you implemented Profit First, probably the first out of the three of us, um, into your own business. So can you, can you— so we're going back, um, going back a few years. So can you remember, you know, what happened and where you were at when, when you came across that opportunity?

Yeah, I mean, slightly, slightly different. One of the things that I love about this particular episode we're doing is we have the classic accountant bookkeeper coach setup.

Here.

So our journeys are slightly different and we're approaching it from slightly different angles. So I was basically running a coaching consulting business, outsourced CFO kind of work, portfolio of clients, fairly standard in that arena at a point in time. And I would say I had a reasonable handle on my numbers, but I was 100% operating out of one bank account, had no overall visibility. I knew generally that I was fine. I would have money from a Corporation Tax bill and that kind of thing. But it was a simple business. It was kind of me doing the online mentoring piece. There really weren't that many moving parts to manage, to be fair. But I think that the real impact for me came when I realised that I'd been making financial decisions based on the fact that there was money sat in a bank account. So, um, I, I went out to Key West to go and do a retreat back into 2016. I did an event out in Miami, I think, in 2017. Because I had money in account, I just paid the money and I went, didn't think twice about it. I joined Profit First in 2018, largely as a result of that retreat in, in 2016, to be fair. But the one thing it immediately made me recognize was I had just been making ad hoc financial decisions. So even as a financial person doing the kind of work that I was doing, I hadn't actually been taught about how money was structured in my own business. The fact that I could pay myself enough every month wasn't making me think hard enough about, could I pay myself more? Am I overpaying myself just because I've got money sat in a bank account? Is there a problem setting up down the line, perhaps? So that was an immediate kind of realization for me that I spent this money going to— going out to the States to go and do these two things, you know, a tidy five figures, five-figure sum between them. And I've done it just because I had the money in a bank account. No, no real feeling about where that left me having done those things other than bank account was a bit lower, but it still looked like there was enough. So I just carried on doing whatever I was doing. So that whole idea about, um, having a framework and having some objectives, targets to meet and move towards and structure things in a different way really did change how I felt about spending money. I mean, traditionally I would class myself as being a saver through history rather than a spender anyway, um, but I think it really changed that piece of conditioning and you kind of get into that sort of that self-competition mode where it's like, oh, I'm now at 40% of my owner's pay, when can I get to 45? What needs to happen for that to be possible? So one of the things that I take away even from those early days was the idea putting profit first into our business makes us better business owners. And I go back to Deb's point about, you know, the £750 a month savings. Those things were there all along, could have done something about it at any point prior to going through that particular exercise. That would have led to a better, more financially healthy business at a moment in time. But I think this idea, when we, when we have a framework to work with and around and understand and see how that in itself can propel us forward, it makes us better business owners. We are more focused on the things that actually create a better financial performing business. It's probably not very good English, but hopefully you get what I mean there. You know, I think it does change the state of how we think about things. It does give us something to move towards. The second thing that I would say about that is being able to do it on your own and implement on your own is one thing, but ultimately that is way harder than actually having support and accountability to get things done and actually create that momentum in a business with a business owner to say, hmm, we are at 40% owner's pay. What do we have to do to get to 45? What do we have to do to get to 50? How does this look? Um, so I think we are— we get ourselves into a mode over time with that accountability piece where the value really, really comes shining through. So yeah, a real kind of change of mental state for me about how I was thinking about managing my own money. From that perspective, for sure. The second big thing that it did for me was it gave me boundaries within the work that I was doing with clients. So we hear a lot, and certainly in the conversations that we go through with our members, scope creep, you know, on the phone, do I charge for this call? Is this within the package? You know, or this, you know, there's too much going on, or I spend all my life chasing for information and so on. My existence in sort of CFO business coaching world was very much about, can I find some clients, chasing the hourly rate, can I get another client on board, can I get a day rate retainer in place, are there more hours that I can think about projects to do with the client, and so on. With integrity for sure, but there was that kind of hamster wheel feel to it. There was no certainty about what came next, what, what was my revenue going to look like 3 months down the track. Profit First gave me a framework to work with and it made it really simple to control those boundaries, set clear objectives, find a starting point with the client, set the objective, start moving towards those objectives. All of a sudden the conversation became framed. I knew where we were going. The client knew exactly where we were going. We were, we were on a pathway to meet those objectives. So that helped me enormously in terms of structuring things from a time perspective in my business. And also being able to demonstrate specific outcomes with clients. You know, I think certainly the feedback I get from the accountants and bookkeepers who've joined us within Profit First is that there is this sort of mouse wheel of, you know, hamster wheel of compliance. Okay, what's next? VAT return. What's next? Corporation tax return. What's next? Year-end accounts. What's next? Oh, VAT return again. It's like we kind of lurch from one compliance trigger to the next. Without actually thinking, oh, what's the result? Well, the client couldn't really care less that you've done a VAT return for them. They just expect you to do the VAT return. You know, there's no kind of glory or sense of good feeling about that. And that, I feel, is a real change that Profit First has made in my business. Having a framework to work with, creating those boundaries, making it really simple to create specific outcomes for clients. They see value in, you know, more than anything else really. It's, it's down to that, I think. So yeah, different to both of you, um, but had some, some very deep, long-lasting effects on me in getting it implemented into my business in the beginning, for sure.

I think everybody's journey is different though. I think that's, that's the, the aspect from here. We've probably all come at it from slightly different angles, all got different reasons why we wanted Profit First in our business and what it's done for us. But what it's done for all three of us is helped us move our business forward with clarity on our numbers and being able to see a route forward and the journey that we can actually achieve, and then a step up again and a step up again and a step up again. Like I said, it's a continual journey. We've— with our work with Profit First Professionals, when people join us, obviously they go through the certification program first, where everybody in this probably heard about this. It's a 3-month program, um, and the first part of the program, once you've watched Mike's fantastic intro videos describing what Profit First is again, um, is to implement Profit First in your own business. It's really important that you are able to live and breathe Profit First in your own business to be able to share Profit First with clients. So we start with implementing in your own business for that very reason, but also because a lot of people join us because actually they need help with their business. So accountants and bookkeepers and coaches do need help, they do need support. There's nothing wrong with that. Um, we've been taught in such a way to look at accounts in a way that it's the classic sales minus expenses equals profit, and profit's last. We accountants even call profit the bottom line. You know, it says it all, doesn't it? It's the afterthought, it's the end of the road, it's what comes last, 6 months after year-end. Oh, did I make a profit? It's too late. Whereas with us, where we flip the formula in the basic concept of profit first— sales minus profit equals expenses— profits front and foremost. Yes, we have to bring the sales income in, of course. No one can do anything if the money is not coming into the business. But if you take your profit first, if you make sure you're paying yourself first, if you put money aside for VAT and tax, you're looking after yourself, you're taking care of things. What's left is to run your business. So if you're overspending in your operating expenses, now you need to see where can I trim that fat, what, what can I do to take that away. Um, so we, we work with our— so Jason, you and me have worked with a lot of accountants and bookkeepers within our work with Profit First Professionals. Now on this podcast, we're just talking about their journey. We're talking about how we're helping people with their own business, and this is relevant to people in the Profit First pathway, which we can come on to later on. But we've had members, you know, we had a call recently with one of our members who joined in January— what year are we? 26. So January '25 he joined, and we had a call with him 12 months after he's joined and said to him, how are you finding profit first? How are you finding the effect on your business? And his words were, implementing Profit First into my business has been nothing short of transformational. And I hear this so many times, yet I get blown away every time I hear it. To hear someone say that to you, it's— it makes you feel so good. It, it just generates that warm, shivery warm feeling of It's inside me now. I can feel it. I'm all like, you know, that feeling you get inside, you're good. Um, it generates that feeling because you think to yourself, wow, you know, we've, we've helped this person move from A to B, you know, in 12 months' time, and he's calling it transformational. You know, that is massive, you know. And this, this is about, um, if I remember right, Jason, I think this was about paying tax bills, and I think even overpaying a tax bill to get ahead of the game because he put too much money aside. It was about being on top of the VAT. Things that we take for granted actually are harder to achieve sometimes without a proper structure and framework in front of us. So have I captured everything from that, Jason? Is there anything you want to add from that conversation? Because I know you were really excited about the conversation as well.

I think it is a great example of we can talk about things all day long, but we have to actually go ahead and implement and execute on the work. And one of the things that I think was particularly interesting about this member is he came to the call as we were kind of reviewing his first year, saying, "It's been transformation in my business, 'But I haven't really focused on delivering it with clients yet.' He said, 'However, the things that I have learned and the things that I've implemented in the course of the last year have given me more than enough evidence to take it to market.' You know, and I think that kind of— it echoes the point, you know. Yes, part of the process of becoming a PFP is that you can deliver and implement with clients and increase revenue and all those things. Um, but I also know that when he joined he knew that his business was in a little bit of a pickle. You know, it wasn't all plain sailing for him. Money wasn't in the right place, tax bills were a struggle. And this is a reasonable size enterprise we're talking about here as well. You know, it's not like the kind of, oh, you know, I'm struggling with the going from sole trader to having a team of people. We're talking about hundreds of thousands in revenue here, and he had a problem. So I think the other important aspect of it is from the financial perspective, it just goes to show more revenue is generally not the first answer to the question that we think needs answering. You know, actually understanding where we are. I mean, I use this phrase: if we don't know which way we're facing, how could we possibly set off in the right direction? And I think what that particular member's story showed was he was prepared to face up to which way he was facing in his business at a moment in time and was ready to put his hand up and say, do you know what, If I could sort this out on my own, I would have already done it. But it got to a point, despite financial background and all these things, of going, you know what, I need a bit of extra something, get to, you know, to help me along the way here. But the work he has put in this year to implement, move percentages, see what the outcomes look like, make a move, make a different decision, as you say, got him to a point where he ended up overpaying on his corporation tax bill. Because he had used the framework. He had the money sat there, cleared the regular bill out, and then made other decisions about how revenue was being accounted for, how he was thinking about that overall result he was creating in his business that the outside world will see when they go and look at his accounts, and so on and so forth. As part of that process, he's got an owner's pay account, you know, that he's quite frankly not using because he's followed the framework, put the money in there, goes, but I don't need all that to live daily life. Yes, but you've also proved that the business doesn't need it to run either in the course of this 12 months. So why would you not reward yourself and give yourself that opportunity down the line to draw on those funds at a point in time when it suits you to go and do things you want to do as a private individual? You know, it's like enormous, the change in state. VAT was in there for him in the beginning as well. You know, navigating those first quarters and getting that in place. You know, I think about some of our other members. We've just been through a process with someone going through certification at the moment. They did their profit assessment as it related to the last 12 months in their business. But from the conversations we're having, we know that some things have changed in that business in more recent times. So we got him to do a quarterly assessment, completely different set of statistics than the year as a whole. So he's moving forward on a more informed, more current, real-time basis in terms of setting percentages. As it happens, that transition has also taken him into a new real revenue bracket that dictates different target percentages for him. So the viewpoint he now has on his business— I mean, this was literally a call within the last week from, you know, wherever we are now— but I think it's like, oh, there is actually something else. I've actually reached a different level here. My targets have changed. I'm moving to a different point. We've got clients who are going through their client lists, 20-60-20— who are my best, who are my worst, what am I doing about replacing the worst? And they are now seeing the work they're doing with these clients who've been around for ages, thinking, this isn't serving me, something needs to change here. So they're actually interrogating their own business more, more deeply, thinking about Who are the right clients? What's the right work for my team? Do my team like working with these people? And I think this— I bring it back to Profit First makes us better business owners, and that includes people running accounting and bookkeeping practices. The evidence is clear to see as we go through this process with our members. They all have their own take on it. They all have the things which mean a bit more to some people than they do to others, but the process of implementation and executing against the framework is helping those members, and it's helping them to get better results out of their business, better results for them personally, de-stressing tax and all the other things that you talked about, Tim Seymour. And yeah, 100%, we've got people running credit cards, you know, paying tax bills on time to pay, and all sorts of things. The reality of it is we know that when members join, their business is not 100% on fire cooking, everything is working as it should and as is expected to be. But they have got to a point where they recognize they need that extra bit of something. The fact we have a framework, the fact they get the level of support that they do, helps them transition into some of these other, other places, states, phases in their business. Um, there is nothing wrong with not having a perfect business. There's definitely something wrong, in my opinion, in recognizing you don't have a perfect business, denying it, and then not doing anything about it. There is plenty of help available. Structures exist to support people in all sorts of different ways to learn things and get better at certain things in their business. Um, you know, I, I even think about my wife. She's certified as a Profit First professional in her own way. She tends to life coach now, but one of her big wins, because she followed the process upon implementing in her business, she was asked at the drop of a hat with a week's notice to go and support somebody leading a retreat out in Bali, to give energetic mindset style support to someone running a week-long retreat. All she had to do, find the money for a flight. £1,700 in her profit account, no-brainer decision in real time. Yes, I can go and do that. That's the difference it makes when you execute against the plan. It gives you the ability to take these decisions in real time, knowing what your boundaries are. I go back to my own story of spending that money to go to the States. No boundaries. I did it just because I had the money. No structure, no thought process that goes with it. So I think this, this gets translated in lots of different ways with the members, um, as we go through this, you know, the outputs, the outcomes, tangible, you know, I see it every Monday in different ways, shapes and forms as we go through the member calls on a Monday, um, group or individual certification, post-certification people win every week.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I, I, I don't know why, but I, I've been— while you were talking, I was reflecting back on before we, we started this podcast, I did a series of Meet the PFP videos where I interviewed some of our members. Um, I'm sure both of you are probably on it. Um, and without doubt, I know you would have been. Um, and John Norton popped into my head, um, and he said He said, "Profit First is life-changing." And he paused like that. He just kind of went, "Profit First is..." And then there was a pause while he thought, and he went, "Life-changing." And you just think, isn't that amazing to hear someone saying that? I say it all the time. It's, Profit First has changed my life without a shadow of a doubt. And I say it because it's true. But to hear other people saying it when you've supported them, it's just tremendous to hear it. And imagine how Mike feels, you know. Mike, um, Mike was on our podcast going back in the summer, and I can remember he, he was saying— his phrase was, there's an absurd amount of accountants and bookkeepers that haven't mastered their own finances. And he wasn't being critical, he was just saying they're in this situation the same as all the other business owners and entrepreneurs in the world, where they think they're doing everything right, they think the thing to do is keep bringing the money in, keep bringing the income in, but absolutely they're not in charge and in control of the finances of the business. It's not a criticism, it's the reality of life. We're taught how to produce accounts, we're taught how to keep in control of the bookkeeping, how to put reports out, let's send our clients management accounts, etc., etc. We're not taught how to master money. We're not taught how to look after the cash in our business. But Profit First teaches you that, and it, and it, it gives you a life skill that you can take out of the business and put into personal life as well. And I think that's the key part to it all. We've had members that have— the majority of our members say Profit First, implementing it in our business, is a game changer. It's life-changing. We've got members who have cleared debt down, they're covering VAT they couldn't cover before, they're paying tax without using credit facilities, they're rewarding themselves from their profit pots on a quarterly basis, which means some of them are going on holiday, some of them are going for a meal with their partner because they're at the early part of their journey. We celebrate that, that's fantastic in itself. Who doesn't want to go for a meal with their partner, you know, or take their children somewhere because they want to spend time with them and buy them a meal or take them to the cinema, take them to a show? Whatever it is you want to do, your profit wall can help you with that. And as you go through the process, the profit walls generally increase and increase and increase. Hetty is— it's no secret— Hetty Verney, one of our Profit Professionals, By implementing Profit First in her own business, going back a few years ago, she was able to travel to the East Coast of America and go on a trip that took her all the way down the East Coast of America, which she'd wanted to do for a long, a long time with her partner. And then a few years later, she was able to take her, her daughter off to New Zealand to go and visit her son who lives in New Zealand, who she hadn't seen for, for a certain amount of time. When she tells us the, the emotion coming out of her, the fact that she was going— I think she told us at ProfitCon 24, and she was going that January or that, that winter, and she was emotional telling us. And she said, that would not have happened had I not have implemented proper first-line of my business, because I would have probably spent the money on stupid things from Amazon and places like that where it's so easy to just pop on and suddenly the money's gone. Um, I've gone off on a bit of a bit there, but I just want to share this information. I think it's really important. Um, Deb, we're going to be doing stuff in the, in the Profit First Pathway, aren't we? So we often talk about what Profit First Professionals is. Um, Profit First Pathway is about helping accountants and bookkeepers with their business. Um, and, and are you looking forward to that, and what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think it's going to be great. Um, I was thinking actually, um, while you were, while you were talking, a few things you reminded me of. And I'm thinking accountants, like any business owner, they leave things till— that they're confident in doing— till last. So a builder, for instance, is the standard term, you know, analogy. He's always got half-finished extension or things around his house that need fixing because he doesn't want to come home and do them. Accountants are no different, as in they'll leave their accounts till last. A lot of the time they'll leave their VAT return till the last because they're focusing on delivery. But I was thinking, it's not because they are— they can't do proper work. That's not that's not what I'm trying to say. I don't think they, they look at their numbers because they're not fearful of numbers, obviously, but they're fearful of what the numbers will show them. And they'll show them the areas that they're not concentrating on, the, the ones that are going to run away with them, the ones that causing them stress. So, because like any, any business owner, if they, if they're not looking at the numbers, they're they're, they're hiding from them.

Yeah.

So yeah, so I think it's going to be a fantastic opportunity for us to, to help the accountants and bookkeepers to be accountable and actually take a look at what's on in your business. Is that actually the type of business that you want to run? Are you proud or of your staff and your percentages in that. Do you feel as if you should be giving financial advice when you look at your own percentages? Because this is an opportunity to do it in confidence with like-minded people, all people in the same profession, in the same situation. As you mentioned before, a lot of us have got debt maybe putting the VAT on a credit card, taking out personal loans for their personal tax. It all happens, but at some point you need to address it, and Profit First is the opportunity to not only address it and see what you're doing, but actually have a long-term kind of recovery plan. So we could call it recovery plan, really, couldn't we? But yeah, so I'm really excited for that because I can see what we've got coming up and what we're planning is going to be so valuable, um, for our fellow colleagues, really. Yeah, we all like to help our fellow colleagues and our friends, um, and people are, you know, like-minded. So So yeah, so I'm really excited for it. I think we've got, we've got some really exciting months ahead.

And, and what, what people can do right now is there's a, a Profit First assessment you can take. It takes 2 minutes. There's, there's 20 questions. They're mainly yes or no questions. They're in 5 categories. Now if you've read Profit First, you're going to understand what these categories are. But they're in categories in respect of profit, owners' pay, tax, operating expenses, and real revenue. So it's a pure profit-first perspective of your business. Like I said, it's 20 questions, they're mainly yes or no. Most people complete the quiz within 2 minutes, so you're not giving up much of your time. All you need to do is head to profit-first-assessment.scoreapp.com. Um, and you will be able to take this quiz. It will give you a report on where you're at right now from a Profit First perspective, and you can gauge that. You get that for nothing. You can gauge where you're at, and you can choose what you're reading, whether you can take action on that. And it might tell you to open a profit account, start put some money in. It might tell you to— that you need to pay yourself more and what the steps you can take to do that. So I urge you to take that quiz. It's free. It's our gift to you. I'll read it out again for those listening on the podcast: profit-first-assessment.scoreapp.com. So I urge you to take that because it's a no-brainer. You get that for nothing. You can just do that without having to commit to anything. So, so take the quiz. It'd be great, great for you to be able to look at your results and see where you're at from a Profit First perspective. And then following that, we would love you to come and join us in the Profit First pathway. The group is in Facebook, um, so just hit, hit, open up Facebook, hit the Profit First Pathway, um, type in the Profit First Pathway. You'll see our three faces looking at you with a green and blue graphic. Um, hit the link, answer three very simple questions, agree to the rules, which I'm sure everybody does. Never had any issues with anybody inside the group, so it's a no-brainer. Um, come and join us, um, have a look and see what we're doing. We post in there regularly. And we keep you up to date with what's going on in our world of Profit First. And our objectives are that we generally want to help you with your business. We've been in positions that have been painful, maybe me more than others, perhaps, you know, when I share my story, I do think my word, what situation I was in, and you don't realize how bad it was until you come out the other side. I don't want anyone to get into that same position. I want you to have profitable, lucrative, long-term sustainable businesses that serve you, serve your families, and serve the people that you choose to work with you as well. Um, because that's what our main objective is, is that everybody has a wealthy, healthy lifestyle. So we urge you to come and join us. Um, so before we follow— before we close down, Jason, if you've got anything you'd like to, to finish off with?

Yeah, I think for anyone listening, um, If you are even slightly unhappy about the financial performance of your accounting or bookkeeping practice, take action. Do something about it. Come and join us in the Profit First Pathway as your first step. There's plenty more that can follow on from there, but take action. Recognize not everybody has 100% perfect business, um, and I think the three of us on, on here at the moment would say we don't think we've got perfect businesses now. It is always a move towards mastery in this respect. You know, we're never, we're never finished here. Um, it's fine. We've helped plenty of people. We are good at what we do. Come and actually join us. Take the step. Engage, implement, execute, and make 2026 a different proposition for your accounting and bookkeeping practice.

Thank you very much, Jason. Deb, thanks for joining us. If you've got any last words you want to add in before we close.

Just to say, if you don't do it now, what position will you be in this time next year? Yeah, we want you to look back at 2026 and think, thank goodness I did that in January.

Fantastic. Thank you very much, both of you. Another great episode. Thank you for joining us on our podcast today. Profit First Beyond the Book was brought to you by the Profit First Professionals UK and Ireland team. If you'd like to find out more about Profit First or becoming a Profit First Professional, head to our website profitfirstuk.co.uk.