Unlocking Business Potential: Insights from Deb Halliday's Experience

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Welcome to Profit first beyond the Book, a podcast that takes you beyond the book with Profit first brought to you by Tim Duncan and the rest of the Profit First Professionals UK and Ireland. Hello, welcome to another episode of Profit first beyond the Book. And today we have a very special guest. So we have the person who was our very first member that joined us after we took over the license of Profit First Professionals with us, and that was just over three years ago. So welcome Deb Halliday.

Thank you for that lovely introduction. Tim, that was lovely. Thank you.

And practice that.

I could tell.

So. So Deb, it's great to have you with us. You've been a Profit First Professional for, for about three years, just over three years, I think. And you've seen a lot of changes to your business since you joined us and we've, we've seen you go on, on a really long journey. So we're going to talk about your journey in a minute, but I, what I'd like to do is because you've transitioned from compliance into Profit First Advisory, I just want you to share a success story of one of your clients before we dig into your journey. So if you've got a case study or a success story you could share with us, please.

Yeah, of course. So I must point out that this is the reason that I've transferred from compliance only to advisory, because of the outcomes that we were finding with, with our clients, find them very, very fulfilling and far more beneficial to our clients than just filling out tax returns. So the first one that comes to mind because he had such a grand transformation was a guy called, we'll call him Peter, just for privacy reasons. He came to us in a complete mess. He had an engineering company and he was running about six fans and engineers and he was refrigeration and air conditioning in the uk and he had fairly big contracts or was wanting to win fairly big contracts. And his main contracts were like, for the big supermarkets like Tesco's, going and repairing their flight freezers, their food freezers. So he had about six vans, six engineers. He had a turnover of 450, 000. But he was in a complete mess. He had been doing the typical thing of trying to find the cheapest accountancy in bookkeeping and he had a bookkeeper that he thought he should be getting more value out, but he was only charging, he was only paying a 100 pound a month, so. And of course 100 pound a month for bookkeeping. She wasn't able to give him the time that all the attention to detail that she needed. And she had been doing everything wrong. So she had been. When the invoices came in, she was listing the invoices through Dext, but she was putting the money as money spent. So in effect it was doubling everything else. She wasn't matching anything. And when we realized this, he also didn't know who owed him money. So he didn't know which of his own invoices had been paid or not. And he was in a real stressed and confused state because he knew he had a large corporation tax bill looming, but he didn't have a clue what it was going to be. The accountants that he was using were only doing his end of year, eight months after the year end. So he was living in a, in a state of panic, not knowing if, you know, if anything he's put aside is going to be covering any, any kind of tax bill. So we got to work. We realized it had been on the wrong VAT scheme for four years and his corporation tax bill had been overstated. So we took three months to untangle his bookkeeping and got him to a position where his numbers were accurate and up to date. He, we then put him on profit first. So we did him an instant assessment so he could see the ratios that he was allocating for operating expenses, what he should be putting away for tax, what he could take out of his business. He went from, once we, once we did this and got him a profit plan, he went from 450k turnover when he came to us to 1.1 million in 18 months. Okay. Because he had a really good business. He was just so confused over the, the numbers. So we taught him. We set him up with all the pots. We set up profit first, we allocated all the money patients. We then taught him how to make decisions. Okay, so he would, he had meetings with us twice, twice a month initially to get him on track and get a strategy in place because he wanted to grow and he wanted to grow rapidly because he could see these contracts that he wanted to win. And he was a pretty good salesperson. So he was wanting to expand his operations. He actually got to the stage where he had an engineer come to him for work. So it wasn't planned, he wasn't recruiting particularly, but he was able to take on this senior engineer because he knew that he could finance a van, finance the tools, and with this new engineer, he could run his own team and take on additional contracts. He moved into be the premises, a more reputable area of the district that he was working out of. He took on a marketing lady so that she could help him with the proposals, the contracts and the, and the, and who to market to and network. He took on his own bookkeeper finally because he realized the importance of having upto date daily data so no longer just paying £100amonth. And he bought a cold storage unit for his team to be able to train and run testing etc in, in a cold storage unit. So he was one of our most rapid success stories, if you like. So, and it was from that when we realized that we were, this is the kind of results that we were able to offer because we were charging him a decent amount of money to be able to do this. And he was happy to pay. And going from 100 pound a month that you only wanted to pay a bookkeeper. So paying us, I think it was 2,000 pound a month. Right. So I think something around about 8.50amonth just for the advisory, just for the strategy. That was quite a transformation for him and he was delighted. So that was just one case study. I could go on forever. Maybe we'll discuss some more through the, through the conversation. Tim, is there anything else you'd like to know or do you want me to tell you?

No, I, I love that. I, I think what it sounds to me like is through bookkeeping and through incorporating profit first and having conversations within. So call that advisory sessions if you want, but that is having conversations within, giving him clear information, clarity on his numbers, understanding what's happening with the cash, seeing where he can go. And as he grows his business, being able to forecast out what that looks like, not only from a management accounts point of view, but from a cash point of view, which is what Profit first helps us with. I think is, is an amazing, it's a, it's an amazing success story for your client. He must absolutely love you, by the way.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know, I think it was important, I wanted to start with that because a lot of people are confused with what advisory is. So I would say that is advisory. The outcome that you achieved for your client is what it wraps advisory up perfectly. You've taken him on that journey.

Yeah, I mean it just, it came from a conversation. It came to us because he was confused and he was frustrated with not being able to use the data and make decisions. And from that conversation we asked, well, what, what decisions does he want to be? What does he want to be making? Where does he want to see his business in the next 12 to 12 months, two years, three years, etc. And once you ask these questions, they open up because what business owner doesn't enjoy talking about their. Their aspirations and, and their business? So. So yeah, we devised a plan from that. And once you realized that we could do what we said we were going to do, which was unpick all his mess. And we had described it like knitting. So if you make a mistake, you have to unpick everything. That's why it's going to take three months, because you've got so many mistakes so far back that we have to rebuild that. And then he could see. And then from that point when we had clarity, he could see his numbers. We did him a profit first assessment and we set him. Set him up for a rollout plan. So, yeah, just through conversations.

Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that, Deb. And so I want to take us back now and focus on your journey and I'm sure I'm going to ask you about some more success stories later. So you joined us three years ago. Tell us briefly, what was the situation before you joined us and then were developed from the moment you joined us onwards after that?

Okay, so like a lot of people, I taken on bookkeeping around the children part time because I'd gone on maternity leave. It's something I could do from home, around the kitchen table, around the children, around family, choose my own hours. But I did everything wrong. So by the time I came to you, Tim, I was super stressed. A lot of things had happened. I mean, I started in 2008 and I came to you in 2022, I believe. So a lot of things I'd done wrong, typically wrong. Like a lot of people, I was undercharging, I was charging hourly. I was trying to do everything myself, taking on all the wrong clients, taking every job that came along, whether it was beneficial to me or not, just because I thought that's what you do. Coming from a sales background, I was chasing the sale, so. And I thought that that was how I would grow, you know, and how I would become successful just chasing that sale or all the time, you know. So I kind of nearly hit burnout. Not quite, but I had a lot of family things going on. I'd moved home, I'd split with my partner. I was single mom. I had elderly parents that I was looking out for. And then I had to homeschool my daughter. So I wound the business down. So it was like a whole life had basically just happened. It's not a poor me, it's a life had happened over those amount of years. But my business Wasn't serving me at all. And I knew that when I decided to start my business back up again, I had a decision to make. Yeah, because the way I was doing it before wasn't going to work anymore. My daughter passed the gcses, went to college to accountancy, Funny enough. But I had a decision to make. Do I go back to a corporate job or do I really make a go of. I was called the accounts lady at the time and I thought, no, I'm probably likely unemployable by now, used to being my own boss. So I decided to build a team. And I'd run teams before in many moons ago. So I knew the model that I was going to choose, which was using subcontractors to have rapid, rapid growth really. So that's what I did. But I realized I had to learn everything again and be. Become up to date. So I started reading every single entrepreneur book going and I came across Profit first, light bulb moment, implemented it in my business. Knew that this was going to be a fantastic USP for me because it had worked so well in my own business. I knew it would help my, my clients. So I jumped on a call with you, Tim, and thankfully you thought I was going to be a good fit. So I passed the test and became certified as Profit first professional and then, yeah, started introducing advisory to the clients.

Yeah. Amazing. Thanks, Dan. It's just, it's important to get the background of what led you to joining us. And obviously there was a lot going on in your life, lots of ups and downs and stuff going on, but, but you managed to keep going forward and then when, when you joined, so. So you read Profit first, you had the light bulb moment. It's really interesting that you saw it straight away as your usp. So can you just share a little bit more about that? Because I think that's important to share that.

Yeah. Again, sort of like going back to my sales background. I work for a management training company, so we also taught sales. And I ran a team of 10 business development managers. And the first rule of sales is know your usp. Know what you, what makes you stand out, out in the crowd. Why should people choose you over anybody else? And you need to know your usp. And compliance for me was where I thought I might be just blending in. And if you blend in, you can't, you can't charge the fees that you warrant because you're, you're, you're, you're just a commodity. You're just exactly the same as anybody else. And nobody likes paying a lot of money for their tax return. So straight away I, I knew that it was, I could see that it was a pain point for my clients. They were all struggling with organizing their cash and saving enough attacks. And this was a real simple because it's not been written for accountants or bookkeepers or tax experts, it's been written for the business owner. And it's a real, really simple system that is a behavioral and it lends itself to instantly showing people with stress and financial struggles the way out, the way to organize and the way, the way out. So we do find that the people that read Profit first come to us and they want to implement it immediately. There's no waiting, there's no waiting for, you know, three to six months because they can see how simple it is. They want it implemented because they want to know where they are. You know, they want clarity on their numbers and then they want to see how quickly they can become profitable and where, where they can start achieving their, their goals. So for me, straight away I could see that it, it had the hook because you can just read the book, address the problem and it was the solution. And if I could be certified in that, and there wasn't very many of us at the time in the uk, then that was going to be me head and shoulders above anybody else's offering. So that's why I jumped to the chance.

Yeah, fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. And so you then joined. So you had the call with me. I accepted you in. Fortunately it was a good decision. As the journey will. We'll elaborate on that as we move forward. What happened once you joined? How did things change for you moving forward?

It gave me a real focus straight away and it gave me back the excitement of a new business, if you like. So I, when I was accepted, I announced to my clients that I was about to begin learning Profit First. I sent them the core chapters of Profit first and I developed a step by step guide of, of what it was. And that was like an introduction to the clients of this is what I'm learning. Okay, so this is going to be really valuable to you. And then once I qualified, I announced that I qualified and then I branded and then I started talking to clients. Obviously I had my three beta clients as we, as we go through, but I started talking to my clients. Some were really excited and some not so, but we, I just drip fed them. So I kind of like said, well, you need to have a pot for your vat. We need to separate your VAT because it's not your money, let's put your VAT away. And then they could see they didn't have to worry about where's the VAT bill coming from because they hadn't consumed it within their cash flow. It had been separated. And then we would have one for maybe corporation tax or owners pay whatever it was that they were struggling with. And I drip fed it to them. So they were the people that were the most resistant ended up running profit first, just not just not knowing they did. So it just gave me a, a huge focus. It gave me something that I could stand out with my marketing, it gave me conversation that I could have with my clients. It gave me like a free marketing that I could send to people because who doesn't like a free gift? So it was, it was just like the initial transition. I mean, just to start with, it was a little bit difficult to know exactly what my offering was going to be and the pricing that, price points that. But that's where you came in, Tim. So you walked me, me through it. Having done it all yourself. You walked me through it and you helped me with that. And it evolves like any, I mean your pricing and your offerings always evolve. So it's evolved into me stepping away from compliance in the last 12, I'd say probably just over 12 months because I took a month out, didn't I, in June to be able to go to Canada. And then I took a couple of months out at the beginning of this year because we had family bereavement, I had to look after family. It's made me actually put me in a position now where I can just do profit first and advisory, which is far more interesting than self assessment tax returns, let's put it that way.

You haven't got, you haven't got to tell me that one. I did the same and I love not having to do tax returns in January these days. But so it's great to hear your journey and it's great the steps you took, I'm interested in. You mentioned about pricing being a thing that changes constantly and it'd be good to share how you set your packages up because we talk about how we price quite a lot. And I think when it comes to advisory, this is an area that people don't quite grasp. How do they charge for advisory? So I'm just interested in how you set your packages up and how you move people through them.

Okay. So originally I did the, the usual that I see a lot of accountants doing where you've got the, the what would it, what Would it be the, the lower one, the standard and the premium?

Yeah, yeah.

And you funnel people to the middle, right? So gold, silver, bronze we called it, I can't remember what the first one was called, but it was standard and premium and we funnel people to the first to the middle. But then I started, as I started to work with clients, I realized that actually they want to be taken from where they are now to whatever level of success they, they have in their mind, their goals. So, and it could be like a turnover, could be profit, could be lifestyle. So I went back to the method that we used when I worked for the management training company. We also had like a software training division and we had proficiency, expert and master. So you weren't allowed to just pick whichever one you were at. It was whatever level you were at, skill wise was the level that you joined at to progress. So I adopted that for my clients and we had two main pathways. We had if you were below the VAT threshold, so under 90,000, you would start on the solo starter package. But we basically stated that you could only be that for 18 months because you needed to be over the VAT threshold to properly implement profit first. Because if we're going to give owners pay at 50%, anything less than 90 turnover is not worth the money for running a business. I mean, you're not going to run a business for 45, 000 forever. So we had to attract the people that wanted growth. Okay, so the idea was start on that if you're under the VAT threshold, but you'll move up to our growing program once you hit the threshold. Okay. And the growing program incorporated lots of different levels of, or lots of different services. So it'd be forecast budgets, obviously first thing is profit first. So it'd be implementing profit first. And so did the, the solo everything in incorporated profit first. Then we knew where we were and the, the business owner could see a system that worked. But we would have budgets, forecast, pricing, scenario planning, break even point. And we would teach them all these different things. It was like a menu system depending on the problems that they were facing. It wasn't a, you had to start at this particular point and then we did it in order. They could pick and choose depending on the problems that they were facing or the skills that they were short on. We would teach them how to make the decisions based on learning how these reports worked. So as they grew, our fees also went up. So it was a tiered system, that's why it's called growing. So, and it went Every hundred thousand that their turnover went up, our fees went up because then they could see that we had an, an interest in making sure that they grew and they could also see that they should reward us because their turnover had grown. Okay, so, so that's the style of packages that we adopted and we found it was very, very successful because it seemed to be what the clients thought was lacking. So they would, they were used to the three packages, gold, silver, bronze, but they were allowed to choose. But I kind of took the thing. Well, we're the experts, are we? If you'll come to us because you want to grow, we know how you should grow. So therefore we tell you which package you should be on and this is the fees. And yeah, it was, it was very, very popular.

Yeah, I love that way of doing it because you're right, we let everybody choose which one they want and quite often they're going to choose a bottom package because it's a cheaper option, you know, if we're not doing it right. So being able to say, and the people that went into the bottom call at the bottom the growth, I think you call it the growth one. They were under the fat threshold, but they had to want to go over the back threshold, didn't they? So if they weren't interested, if they were the type of person it was, I don't want to pay that. I don't want to pay much tax. Not the right client.

Not the right client. No, no. I mean, we would get to people that wanted to grow and then it would get to tax time. Or we were telling them how much to put away for tax and they could see that pot growing and they might start thinking, well, I don't want to be paying that amount in tax. But it's a mindset thing. So we would have like a, like a call where we would explain that it's, it's the price of success in the Western society. So it shows the more tax that you pay, the more successful your business is because it's only based on profit. So. And it's your opportunity to contribute to society for the opportunities for others. So it was, and that was sometimes difficult to get them over that hurdle. But when you explain to them, you don't really want to be asking what you have to spend because why would you spend needlessly just to save that 20 or 25%?

It's, doesn't make sense, that question, shall I buy a van because it will save me tax? They're like, yeah, you go and spend 10,000 pound to save 2,000, you've just spent 8,000 pound. You didn't need to spend. Unless you read Desperately needed the band. You know, I used to love that question.

Yeah. But we would have already gone through the expenses, exercise, expense versus investment and you know, make your expenses as lean as possible. So hopefully they would have started understanding the idea is to make a profit. And if you make a profit, then you have to pay tax.

Yeah. And. And tax payment of tax is only paying for when you haven't got the money, isn't it?

Yes.

So if you've ran profit first in your business, which all your clients were having an element of profit first, weren't they? Then the tax pot is being built up enough and because we forecast ahead, we can see what it's going to be. The money's there, there's your tax bill, it's there, ready to pay, you know, pay it when you're ready, you know, before the deadline, obviously, but it's there. Okay, brilliant. Thanks. Thanks, Deb. And so, so being a Profit first professional is taking your business into direction, possibly you didn't see happening. If, if you hadn't have joined Profit First Professionals, where do you think your business would be now?

I don't think it would be existing now to be fair, because. It's. I, I can't see how I would have different. Differentiated.

Yeah.

And having done compliance since 2008, even though I had a team of subcontractors doing the compliance, it's a race to the bottom for me. I mean, we tried a bot, we had a bot for over 12 months and we called a Brenda and she was great and she did the bank reconciliation and we trialled AI bookkeeping, but that wasn't quite right for us because it wanted to have a standard chart of accounts for every single client. And, and the way we work with Profit first, it, we need the chart of accounts to be able to give us the data that we need for running Profit First. So I could see that tech was taking over and it was going to take over the compliance. So where would that leave me? Would that leave me with a bookkeeping business that was run on tech for probably the lower price and race to the bottom? I don't, I don't know. I. As it's, I don't know because I didn't even think about it. I think as soon as I read the book, I knew that this was the way.

Yeah.

I knew that if I was going to succeed, remember I was at that point, do I go and get a corporate job And I didn't think I'd be employable or do I make a go of it. And then when I read the book within the next six months I was like, yeah, this is the decision. Yeah, yeah. I, I can't see that there would be another way other than advisory. I still can't see it. You know, I could have offshored, could have outsourced, but it wasn't this type of business I wanted, I didn't want hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients just churning out tax returns. That's. Yeah, yeah. Bookkeeping software is going to be doing that soon enough. Yeah, it will all be self, self doing.

It will be. And I, I agree and thank, thanks for, for answering that is a bit of a difficult question to suddenly throw at you. So three years down the line, been a proper first professional for three years. Everything's changed in your business. So where are you at now and what does the future hold?

Okay, where am I now? Yeah, completely different and different direction really. Even in the last six months. I said that earlier that I'd taken two months off at the beginning of the year and within that the business ran without me. It did the previous June anyway as well when I was in Canada. So I haven't really been hands on in the business but I've been in the background building programs. So going back to my management training days before bookkeeping, I started to build online programs that our subcontractors could follow. So Profit First Advisory, those, the, the growth program if you like, but being a step by step program online that could be followed that way if a subcontract dropped out, then we could see exactly where that client was in the process and somebody else could hop on. Okay. So I'd started building that in the background, starting always with Profit first. And I decided to actually maybe I'll do it direct to the clients rather than in the language of the bookkeepers and accountants. So I had to redo it a bit. I had a second version of doing in the language that clients would understand and then I started to realize actually this brain dump, the way I'm explaining things is a book actually. So I've written a book. So my program is now a book called how to build a Financially Healthy Business and it's a 12 module program. So I did that over Christmas and then I had two months off from the Accounts Ladies, my bookkeeping company for the family bereavement. And in the background I started doing, it's a ebook and a audiobook and building out the program so that's where I am now. I sold the compliance side of the business to my subcontractors so it was least disruption to the clients. Nothing changes for the clients other than the contractors now directly with the subcontractors. So I've made the transition. Like you, Tim, no longer have an accountancy practice. I am compliant, advisory. They've left compliance behind so. And that's. It's a bit like a new business again, although it's not a new business but it's exciting like a new business. I can devote all my attention to building this online program, having it so others can follow or a self paced for business owners. Yeah, so that's, that's what I'm concentrating my efforts on now.

Fantastic. It's amazing to have someone who was the first person to join us when we took over the license and then to follow the steps that I took. It really is, it's a success story for us as a membership organization that you've taken those steps and you're not alone. Other members have taken the steps as well. But we're on the call. You were our first member and you've just followed everything and, and you've added things in from your own, you know, education and stuff that you've bought to your business and it's worked and everything's changed for you. So can't wait for the future for you. It's really exciting. Deb. People can contact you. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna share your website on the screen. If people want to reach out to you, you know.

Yeah, they can contact me if they go to debhalliday.co.uk everything about me is there. So it's got. If you want to have a look at my book, if you want to have a look at my. I've got a different company called the Accounts Office which is brought to you by the accounts ladies. It's more the training platform but it's got all my socials on there so more than willing to. I'm more than happy. I love chatting about profit first and my experiences. So if anyone wants to jump on a call or wants to reach out, they can contact me through there. It's got my LinkedIn, my Facebook, everything on there and yeah, more than happy to chat to people about it and.

I've already shared this but do you want to just talk about your book one more time?

Yeah, sure. So it's called. It's a bit of a mouthful but I thought I'm gonna say. Make it say that. What it does on the tin, if you like, how to build a financially healthy business.uk so, yeah, you can find the resources, all the resources to do with that and profit first and on that website. But you can also get to that website via de.co.uk if you can't be bothered to. I don't know how many letters are in that, Tim.

Thanks, Deb. And so, Deb, I'm going to ask you now, if you're. If someone's watching this, that's an accountant or a bookkeeper, what would you say to them?

I would say if you're thinking about doing advisory and even if you're not thinking about doing advisory, I would look it up as a something to research because as I found with tech hot on our heels and AI now, it's been life changing for me, so. And it's been life changing for so many of our colleagues, so. And as you mentioned before, Tim, following what you've done, I would never have been in this position if I hadn't met you. Well, read the book, jumped on a call and then followed your advice and your step by step process and had you as a mentor every month for the last three years. So, yeah, I would never be where I am now, which is much more of a freedom business and I've got some great clients and doing the things I love. If I hadn't have taken that step, I would definitely say go and do that quiz. What's your quiz, Tim? Profit first challenge. Yeah. Have you got what it takes? Yeah. Bit of a fun quiz there, but it gives you a bit of an insight as to what it will take. But yeah, definitely reach out, have a look at the quiz, Enter the quiz. Reach out to Tim or myself if you want more information on my experience. But yeah, definitely do it.

Brilliant. Thank you very much, Deb. I've enjoyed every moment of working with you over the past three years, I can honestly say, and it's great to be a part of your journey and where it's taken you in your business. We would love to take more people on this journey. Our members are doing these things right now. You can't see them because they're not on the podcast, but they will be. We will have more of our members on to share their stories. So keep watching the podcast. Come and come and watch what's happening with the members and take action. Do the quiz. 60 seconds of your time to answer eight simple questions and see what you score. Just for a bit of fun, just see where you're at and then you can get the links to take action from there. So thank you for joining us once again on our podcast. Thank you, Deb, so much for joining us. You got any last words you want to share with everyone? With everyone.

Been an absolute pleasure, Tim, all the members, the whole community, but especially you, Tim. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thanks, Deb. Thank you for joining us on our podcast today. Profit first beyond the book was brought to you by 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.