Humanise The Numbers - for ambitious accountants in practice

Paul Miller, founder of Cornish Accounting Solutions

• Doug Aitken and Paul Miller

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As an accountant, do you think of yourself first and foremost as a storyteller? Probably not. And I've not met many who do. 

But in this podcast episode with Paul Miller of Cornish Accounting Solutions, that's exactly what I found. Paul genuinely thinks of himself first and foremost as a storyteller. 

The reasons for that will become apparent during the podcast, and that's why I highly recommend it to you. In a wide-ranging discussion, Paul and I talk through the importance of client selection, as well as how a scare with meningitis affected Paul’s outlook, not just on his firm, but on life in general. 

And you'll certainly want to dive into what's on Paul's ‘sacred cow’ and ‘magic wand’ lists. 

Please have a listen to the podcast. You’ll find it where you usually find your podcasts or at HumaniseTheNumbers.online. 

Scroll down the podcast’s episode page for Paul’s contact information and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in the podcast.

Paul Shrimpling:

Welcome to the Humanize the Numbers podcast series. Leaders, managers, and owners of ambitious accounting firms sharing insights, successes, and issues that'll challenge you and connect you and your firm to the ways and means of transforming your firm's results.

Paul Miller:

What is unique about us is access in my mind. The day I'm too busy to take your phone call to meet with you, I don't have any value. So if I fill my day up with work stuff, whatever you want to call it, I don't have time to talk to you. We talked about a transactional transactional ratio, it becomes more of a transactional ratio than it does a what I call a proper relationship.

Doug Aitken:

How did a serious illness affect an ambitious accountancy firm and their growth plans? In this podcast with Paul Miller of Cornish Accounting Solutions, you'll hear how a nasty brush with meningitis affected Paul's ability to run his firm and forced him to rethink how he managed his business going forward, including a drastic reduction of his client numbers. Let's go to that podcast now.

Paul Miller:

So my name is Paul Miller from Cornish Accounting Solutions in Bobbin in Cornwall. I've been in the accounting profession for 42 years, so I've seen all sorts of transformation transitions. I'm looking forward to sharing some of my experience and stories with the listeners today.

Doug Aitken:

Fab, um, welcome Paul. Great to have you on the podcast. Um we have swapped messages and notes over LinkedIn. Uh, so I thought it was high time to get you on and actually tell your story. Um, tell me a bit about your uh career, Paul. 42 years in accounting is a fairly long time. So uh how's that how's that time been spent?

Paul Miller:

So basically, I'm not the type of person since age of six excelled at maths and always wanted to be an accountant. So when I was doing my A levels, my dad said to me, What are you gonna do when you've left school? And my dad, God bless him, was a big telegraph reader. So back then, Midland Bank advertising the telegraph for people to the fast-track banking management course, and part of that was to go to university. So I passed the regional heats. I then didn't pass the national heats, but it sounded quite good to me to go to do a degree in banking. So off I went, off I trotted to London in 1979 as an 18-year-old. And my university professor was an advisor to Maggie. Maggie was in number 10, and he was on the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. He's also now in the House of Lords, he's been ennobled, and we used to spend hours enthusiastic about the money supply. And back then we followed the American of consultant chap called Milton Friedman, who was a monetarist, school of economics, and we used to, as I say, talk about the money supply. Well, I was part way through my degree and thought, I don't really know if this is what you would want to do. So you never get anywhere as part way through a degree, so I continued, but like Masterman, I've started, so I finished. So I was quite fortunate when I was at university, I was chairman of a society, the United Nations Society, and in the summer of 82 as a 21-year-old, I had the privilege to be one of 70 students from 50 countries attending a summer school in New York. Now, basically, I bummed around in the States of Ghana. When I came back, all the jobs in the city were taken. I was on the dog for a while, then my dad said to me, What are you going to do next? You thought about creating a currency. So the first week in A Play 83, I applied to KPMG. The second week I had my interview, and the third week I started work. Now, for me, a currency is not easy. The exams are difficult, and there's a reason they're difficult. But there are people who pass their exams easier than I did, but haven't been able to build a business because for me it's all about building relationships. And one of the strengths of our business going forward and also going backwards is the strength of relationships that we've built with our customer base and our wider accounts support community. So mine isn't a traditional journey. Um I'm not a traditional accountant, I don't enjoy sitting in a dark room adding up rows of numbers. I'd rather be out there talking to people and sharing stories and learning from each other and helping people move forward.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, brilliant. Okay, um, that's great, Paul. Lots to unpack in that already. Um I suppose I should start with our normal question, um, which is all about our core purpose, which is humanize the numbers. Um, what does that phrase mean to you, Paul? You've already given me a slight indication, but what does it mean to you?

Paul Miller:

So basically, to prepare for this for today, I actually did a bit of research. So I asked Copilot, the AI, the Microsoft AI tool, what does the phrase humanize the numbers mean? And it said it means to make data or statistics more relatable, understandable, and emotionally resonant by connecting them to real human experiences or stories. So the last word in their stories is really important to me because if you ask me what I did, I'm a storyteller because I believe numbers tell a story, and it's our job as accountants, as professionals, to interpret those numbers in a way that the client, the business owner, can understand. One of the favourite quotes I love is the Steve Jobs quote who said, the most important person in the world is a storyteller, for the storyteller sets the agenda, culture, and values for generations yet to come. And I think it's important for us to relate to people, to interact with people and explain things in an easy way. As professionals, as accountants, we are technicians, we are, we know the jargon, etc., but we need to make things more understandable. So if I come back to that definition that we first started with with a co-pilot, it's by connecting them to real human experiences and stories. And that's how I want to go forward, that's how I work with my customer base, that's how I work with my peers, that's how I work with my team. It's actually explained to them stories. Because if we go back, one of the oldest ways that indigenous peoples of the world actually communicated their history and understanding was by telling stories, and stories are more relatable. Remember, facts set facts tell, stories sell. It's more memorable if we actually go through examples and learn from real-life situations to help our customers, to help our clients, and to help our team move forward.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, absolutely. Um it's Fab, the you've made me think I've read a book recently, um, I think it's this one, Belonging by Owen Eastwood, which kind of refers to uh the belonging in a tribe, and and um one of the things it sidebared off to was the importance of a storyteller in the tribe, for exactly the reasons that you've said. It perpetuates the culture, um, and they would tell stories about how they hunted, how they caught fish, how they took down a woolly mammoth, whatever it might be, um, but all these stories perpetuate and carry on um the the culture in an organization, and I think your point about the technicians are really good one, that sometimes we can get too wrapped up in the quality of what we do and forget about the impact that it has on the other side. Um just on that, Paul. I mean, I'm thinking about clients now. How many clients do you find who are genuinely financially illiterate or numbers illiterate?

Paul Miller:

Well, that's a good question because I think as a practitioner with a portfolio of clients, I'm always asked by clients where are they in the portfolio? And I think it doesn't really matter what the economy's doing, and I've been fortunate to survive three recessions. And are we going into a new one? Who knows? But it is likely the signs are showing that. And it's how to actually become more financially shoot, more financially aware to actually understand the figures, what story they're telling us. And I think almost the closer relationship you have with your customer, the more in tune they are with understanding their numbers. Because if we look at the modern accounting profession, there's two types of practitioner, can I say, and two types of customer. Those that are more in interest in a transactional relationship, and those are actually more interested in the relationship itself. Yeah. And I think the trans transactional customer will always, if I'm cheaper than you tomorrow, he'll stay with me. If you're cheaper than me tomorrow, he'll go with you. And actually, what we need to do is we need to build shared experiences, shared stories, shared understanding, and that can only build up over time, that it doesn't happen overnight.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, yeah. Um, I I love that thought. I get transactional versus relational. We talk about it as well within the work that we do with firms, and um, you're right, those that transact are far more likely to leave because they've only got a comparison point of price. Um, whereas those in the relationship side have a far deeper um uh understanding of each other. What else do you do in your current uh firm, Paul, to to add more value in that relationship side? So, how do you avoid being transactional in your firm?

Paul Miller:

So I was having a discussion with someone earlier today about what is advisory, what is the role of an accountant in advisory? And I think a great film for me was The Godfather Marlon Brando. And I think as an accountant, our true role is almost that of a consigliere, the family retainer, the family advisor who's there through thick and thin as a signing board to offer advice. And I think one of the things that we as professionals are slow to do is just check in with people, whether we actually ring people on, so this is to say, How are you today? How are you doing today, Doug? And you would talk to me, is there anything I can do to help you? And over the years, what I've learned is that a currency and tax can be quite technical in certain aspects, and the way that we would um help clients understand that is that, for example, we would have a difficult technical discussion this morning. Typically, what I'd do is I'd ring you up just before five o'clock and say, Doug, we went through a lot of technical stuff this morning, there's a lot of new concepts for you. Um, is there any questions that you have for me that you'd like you'd like to ask me here and now? And I think we're a little bit slow, we're a little bit regimented as accountants in that we almost stick to our lane, but certain times we need to overtake, we need to go in the inside to actually put the client first. Because as you'll learn, I love my quotes, and there's another famous quote, Mayor Angelo quote, that says, People do not remember what you said, people do not remember what you did, but people remember how you make them feel. And actually, we need to make our clients feel important, they are the center of our universe. We need to be on their side so that they can actually understand that we're we're batting for them, come what may. And one of the other tools that we regularly talk about in the business is the Stephen Covey emotional balance sheet, in that when we do something well, we make a deposit. When we do something bad, we make a withdrawal. It's a bit like a normal bank account. If I withdraw and I have no money in the bank, I'm overdrawn, that's when we potentially lose a relationship. If I withdraw, make a withdrawal, and there's money in the bank, that's when we're there through thick and thin. And I think the other thing that I've learned over the years is that none of us are perfect, we're not robots, we're not AI machines, we're humans, we have good and bad days, we do things right, we do things wrong. But I've learned over the years that you've actually got to be one of the first people to put your hand up and say, actually, I've done this wrong, I've made a mistake, let me put it right at no cost to you. And I think we're all as professionals concerned about our PI, our professional indemnity insurance are going to be made claims. But I believe the way that you actually build and improve on that relationship is actually say the clients, look, hands up, I've made a mistake, let me put it right. Because sometimes we don't have times to do it right initially, but we can always find times to put it right. And isn't it better to put it right from the start?

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, yeah. Um you've made me think about COVID. It was one of the things that we did very well during COVID was to pick up the phone to clients and just ask them, How are you doing? It's tough, isn't it? How how are things? And yet the vast majority of firms stopped doing it after COVID. They got back out of that habit and didn't pick up. And I just thought it was a lovely human thing to do anyway, wasn't it?

Paul Miller:

But also with modern technology, we don't actually need to pick up the phone. What we've actually learned to do is every now and then we'd send a round robin to everybody in the client base that says, I've just been thinking about you, how are you doing?

Doug Aitken:

Yeah. Yeah, lovely.

Paul Miller:

And actually, it doesn't need to be all time consuming, all embracing by picking up the phone to 200 clients. We actually have certain shortcuts. You know, for God's sake, we're in the 21st century. Technology has come a long way. While I'm a great believer in the personal relationships of the phone, actually, we need to use technology for our advantage to our advantage to actually help us move forward. And we send out literally to our 200 clients an email around Robin that said, How are you? Basically, 40 of them probably reached out back to us and said, Oh, thank you for contacting me, Paul. I just like you to do this. I've just been thinking about that. I'm glad you called, I'm glad you contacted us. And invariably, what you'll find is by doing those Ram Robins, by doing those contact check-ins, whatever you want to call them, it'll lead to more work. Yeah, also creates more stickiness. Because coming back to that Mayor Angeli quote is people think, or people understand I'm thinking of them, right? Yeah, it's that feeling, it's that feeling of belonging. We talked about the tribe, it's the tribe mentality. What we're trying to do in our business is promote a bit like the country school mentality. We're a country club. We'd love you to be a member, but being a member means you have certain uh restrictions, certain things you must do. Yeah, and actually, that comes back to one of the things that I've learned from you guys, from your book, is about boundaries, how to reset the boundaries, how to talk to people. Yeah, because over the years, over time, blank boundaries get blurred, things change. We forget sometimes about what we're about, what we actually want to achieve. And like our customers need a reset, so do we as professionals need to reset.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, um a lot of really good stuff in here already, Paul. But I want to go back to um so you joined uh Big Four uh initially, and uh tell how do how did the journey unfold from there? How long were you with the Big Four and what did you learn from them?

Paul Miller:

So uh I learned what I didn't want to do. Yeah, because part of it in life is knowing what you want to do, but also knowing what you don't want to do. So, based in Cornwall, um back when I started, we were Pete Mark Mitchell before it became KPMG. And we used to have one of we used to we used to have one big audit client, and during my training, I used to spend nine months of the year on their work and radio business. And the problem with a big PLC is that you don't re you only understand part of the jigsaw. A set of accounts is a bit like a jigsaw. Most of us, when we do a jigsaw, we do the straight edges around the end and we fill in the middle. And doing an audit, you're almost filling in part in the middle, but you haven't got the edges around the outside, you don't actually understand what the complete picture is. You know, you do a section, you do fixed assets, sales, debtors, bank, whatever it is, but you don't really understand how it all fits together. And I made a realisation there that being in Cornell as I was, with only one real major PLC at the time, my uh future, my career was limited. So I actually jumped shipped to another local Cornish firm. Um, my mate had joined there and he said, You fancy a job? I said, What are we talking about? He said, A 25% pay rise. I said, Yeah, I'll come, 25% pay rise. And then when I was in my middle firm, I realized, and this was back in the early 90s, that technology was changing the way the counseling profession was moving. Technology was driving down the price, the fees on typical compliance services like payroll, VAT, bookkeeping accounts. And I I wanted to go back to another way. I wanted to go back to the way that I believe is important, where we as humans interact with each other. When we did the PLC, when I was at KPMG, the accounts used to be round up to pound thousands. We found an error for £2,000, it doesn't really matter. Of course, the Bloomin' didn't, according to them. But actually, to me, money matters, and it's to the small people that money really matters, and where you can make a significant difference in their lives. We talked about outcomes, and the outcomes about what everybody wants to do. And when I was at my middle firm, I learnt to actually relate to smaller businesses and how to understand how they operated, coming back to the jigsaw analogy, how we actually put the jigsaw set of accounts together, how each moving part in the jigsaw relates to each other, so the fixed assets and the bank and the debtors and the cash and the credits, etc., all were part of the same thing that you couldn't just view them in isolation. I think that's what made me a better accountant to actually understand the complete picture. Because also, I think as a as a partner in a firm, you need to understand the moving parts, you need to understand how it all clicks together, how it all relates to each other. And just doing one part of it doesn't actually achieve anything, doesn't actually give you complete knowledge, doesn't give you complete understanding, and also for me it didn't give me any satisfaction.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, so and and how long were you in that middle firm as you called it?

Paul Miller:

Uh I was in the middle firm for four years. The last two years I was what I call Tailane Charlie, I was junior partner, and back in 94 when I started my firm, I gave up £35,000 a year as my share of profit, and in 94, 34,000 uh £35,000 a year was a lot of money. Yeah, my first year as a sole practitioner, I made £9,000 and um I was paying my secretary 10,500 at the time, and I thought, cool, it's got to be a different way, there's got to be a better way. So then the next watershed moment for me, I think, if I look at my career, was £2,000. Uh December 2000, I actually contracted meningitis. I had the bad one, meningitisemia. I was in the hospital for two weeks, and I then came back and had a month, six weeks off at home working from home. And the result of that, what the doctors told me is I was doing 70, 80 hours a week, my body was run down, my immune system couldn't cope with the meningitis bacteria, the virus, so I reduced my client base by 25%.

Doug Aitken:

Right?

Paul Miller:

Well I actually made it, and it was a difficult decision. Yeah. But it was the right decision because the following year my fees went up, my profits went up, and I was able to do it with one less team member. And at that time, I'd actually let go of someone who came to my wedding, which was a difficult decision to make, but it was the right decision because typically the script that we used at the time was the old girlfriend-boyfriend situation. It's not you who's changed, it's me who's changed. We both want different things out of life. Unfortunately, I can't provide you with the services that you require at the price you're willing to pay. And one of the reasons why my fee income went up as a result of getting rid of 25% was because my better clients would pay me more money if I had more time available to spend with them.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah.

Paul Miller:

It's not rocket science, it's just thinking about things in a slightly different way.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah.

Paul Miller:

Um, and and and that that was a difficult time for me to actually let go of people because as you can gather, I'm all about relationships, all about talking to people, all about communities, all that type of stuff. But providing you do it in the right way, and what we always attempted to do very successfully was signpost them. We said, actually, we can't help you, but I know a man who can. Let me introduce you to X, Y, and Z, he'll be able to look after you. So you're not actually letting people down, you're actually being honest and being true to yourself.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, and it's still being helpful. Um you're putting off a difficult decision um uh if you don't address it. So by by anticipating that, and it it's back to the belonging, isn't it? Look, we're not the right tribe for you, but we'll help you find the right tribe. That's fine. It's still helpful. Um so I guess that was a a real watershed moment for you, the the meningist. Do you think and hindsight will only be the um the the teller of the story, I guess, Paul, but do you think you would have made the necessary changes in your firm without the catalyst of the serious illness, or you know, what do you definitely not?

Paul Miller:

No, and and and the reason why I'm pretty confident that it would be a no, because in the first few years out of my men in jargon is also you you become more mindful of the circumstances, but basically, the brain is quite a good uh computer. So I I refer to the brain as it's it's a nectop, it's not a laptop, it's a necktop. It's the best computer you'll ever have, and the the brain actually filters out some of the bad times that you've had and just concentrates on the good things. As time went on, I found myself drifting back, so that was probably after about four or five years. So we then started to build the business again, and then you start to forget the lessons that you learnt that you should have been more aware of, and then you have to go back to that again. So typically, we at the moment will only take on one and then every ten people that knock on our door. Fab. Yeah, and the reason why I'm I'm quite um focused on that is because what what is unique about us is access in my mind. The day I'm too busy to take a phone call to meet with you, I don't have any value. Yeah, so if I fill my day up with work stuff, whatever you want to call it, I don't have time to talk to you. You don't you don't value our relationship. We become, we talked about a transactional transactional relationship, becomes more of a transactional relationship than it does a what I call a proper relationship.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah.

Paul Miller:

Um and then part of our journey was that we were uh lucky to adopt Xero in the early days, so um, we've been on the Xero journey since 2011. So we were probably in the first couple hundred Zero users in the UK, yeah, and we became the first gold partner in Cornwall in 2014, and I made the decision in 2014. We closed the office for a week, and I took my team to a XeroCon in Sydney for a week, as you do, and we all think we're indispensable, we all think we're indispensable, and actually, clients, if we're shut down the office for a week, we'll never cope, we'll lose work. But what we did was we sent out an email to everybody and said we're going away for a week, we're going training in Xericon, and they go, Oh, yeah, it's a bit of a jolly, isn't it? Well, it might be. And in that we would say in the subject line, if there's anything urgent you need us to deal with, you need to put it in the subject line, and we dealt with three matters while we're away for a week. Wow. So it shows that actually, with the right education, with the right communication, people will bear with you, people will wait. And as a result of becoming the first XeroGo partner in 2014, and as a result of going to XeroCon in August 2014 in Sydney, um, Xero ordered as partner of the year for the South of England in 2015. And what I would say to people is, which I've said to many people, is that if you stay focused to what you believe and what you want to achieve, you can do it. It's a question of mind. How do we as a little old firm in Cornwall, town I'm in, its population, probably now 18,000, there's probably eight accountants, how did we become the first zero award winners? Because we were true to what we wanted to achieve and what we wanted to do, and a bit like train runs on tracks, those were our tracks, and okay, we deviated, but we actually came back to it again.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah.

Paul Miller:

And in the early days when we were zero, there were no, there were probably about four or five, six employees with zero in the UK. There were no manuals, no how-tos, no training. We made God knows how many mistakes to begin with. So all we did was that we did replicated what we did on Sage on Zero. And actually, we know zero is much more than that. But uh, you actually have to learn your own lessons, you have to fight your own battles. Yeah, the best lessons that we all learn are the ones that cost us money, and in the early days, my it cost us some money because we made some wrong decisions, because we didn't verify the data that went into zero. The data in Sage was rubbish, so the data in zero that we imported was rubbish, and we're trying to make decisions on faulty information.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Um how do your team? I'm thinking about the client selection part of it, Paul. I'm going back to what you said about one in ten prospects actually comes on, which to me points to a really, really strict client selection policy, which is great. I'm a huge advocate of it. How do your team react to that? You know, how did they how do they feel about only taking on one out of ten prospects?

Paul Miller:

So back in we talked about 2014. So in 2014, we used to uh we had a an ideal client definition which had 10 10 factors, and one would be you know, um, entrepreneurial, willing to listen, um, we want to do the management counts, we want to do the budgets, the forecasting, all that type of stuff. Um, and we used to actually have clients that self-select themselves away. So we would say you need to meet eight of the ten. If you don't meet eight of the ten, unfortunately, you're not for us. And back in 2014, one of those conditions was you either had to be on zero or willing to move to zero, but it actually sends a strong message to the team that we don't want to deal with any any old rubbish, you know. In the early days, God forbid, if you had a wallet and a pulse, we almost took you on, you know what I mean? And the other thing that we do is that when we meet with prospects, I also say, Well, you're assessing me whether you want me to act for you, I'm also assessing you. And I open with them, I say, invariably I will come back to two two main criteria about whether I want to work with you. A, whether I like you because life's too short to deal with people with a pain in the ass. We've all got the client always brings up. We think, oh, well, what's he want today? I don't we want to speak to him. And B, whether I can add value to you. Because if I can add value to you, you won't see my fees expensive. So we would we would stick to what we know and love, we would stick to what we're good at, and we would stick to what we can improve and make better, you know. So lifestyle businesses, people who just want to earn a shilling and spend all the time on the beach or surfing, whatever it is, those aren't the type of people we want. We want people who are maybe ambitious, willing to consider growing, and that we potentially would have the tools to actually help them. And for certain people, they will come to a stage where they will have they will decide to move on from us because we've helped them so far as far as we can. They don't want to make that next stage, or they feel that what we're up to you offering isn't right for them at that stage, and actually we would part company on a good on good terms. Yeah, because I always say to them it's a business decision that you've made, you know, rightly or wrongly. If things change, the grass isn't always greener. If you want to come back, my door's always open, and invariably what will what will happen is maybe two out of the three that have moved on will come back.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love the clarity and I did ask the question about how the team felt about client selection because and I was hoping that you would say what you did, that they love it. And it I I guess it'll feel to them as though you've got your back their their backs, that you're not just going to take on any old rubbish and that you can also forecast how the client's gonna behave. Is that a fair assessment? Please forgive this interruption to the podcast. You've heard Paul Miller of Cornish Accounting Solutions talking about the importance of a client selection policy. You'll find a link in the show notes to a business breakthrough that will tell you more about that same subject. Let's get back to the podcast.

Paul Miller:

So, so we have to we have two major lists in the business. One I call my sacred cow list. So basically, a sacred cow for me is someone who started with me um 30 years ago of the 70 that joined me. I will never get rid of them because I believe loyalty is a double-edged sword. They were loyal to me when I set up on my own, therefore I must be loyal to them. So if they chose to move on, that's fine, that's their decision, that's not my decision. Then also we have what I call the magic wand list. So basically basically the magic wand list is if the clients that the team member feels that we shouldn't be working for, you put them on the list, when the opportunity arises, we will have that decision, we'll have that discussion. So I will say to them, you give me the bullets, when the time is right, I'll fire the gun. Yeah, and typically there will come a moment during the during the attack or whatever where it will be good to fire that gun. Yeah but like everything in life, you've got to choose your moments.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love that. Um sacred cow list, magic wand list. I'll definitely remember that. Good stuff. Um so uh I'm going back to the storytelling part, Paul. Um at what point did you recognize the power of stories and and what or as as a fellow author, what on earth possessed you to write a book to tell your own story, and especially in the third person, um that that blew my mind completely that you were able to tell your story but via the eyes of someone else.

Paul Miller:

So one of the things I feel passionate and really strong about is that as a mature experienced accounts owner, for me it's important to give back. And one of the reasons that that is really Critical to me is because I remember when I first started in 94, there were certain people that actually gave things to me. So one of my clients said, You're going to need some tables and chairs. If you look in my restaurant, the spare ones, you have whatever you want. Another one said, Um, you're gonna need an office furniture, uh, reception furniture. If you look in my garage, there's my old ones, if that's any use to you, you have it. The other one said to me, and remember this was 94, he said to me, cash flow is gonna be important to you. So here's a check for this month, next month, the following after for 500 pounds each month. Uh-huh. And I think you can't underestimate the power of that. Someone's got faith in you, someone's got belief in you. Yeah, and I think it's important for us to give back. And part of the story is in 40 odd years in a currency, I've had so many amazingly great times, and I've had some amazingly rubbish times. And what I want to do as part of the story was to share with other people some of the tools, some of the lessons I've learned, so that invariably we all make mistakes. What I'd love them to do is make different mistakes to the one I made. And the power of the story was that I wanted it to make it relatable so it's memorable. So in the book, we talk about the story the third generation gets parachuted in because his dad, the second generation, has cancer, and how he actually overcomes the immediate problems of profit and cash. And then he realizes once he's solved the immediate problems, he's actually got to put the business on an even keel so he can take it forward. And at the end of the story, you'll see that actually there is a future to the business. So, what I wanted to do is I wanted to give back a lot to the community that has actually given me a lot.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, yeah. Fab, uh, how did you find the writing process?

Paul Miller:

So basically, I when I started it, I sort of came to a bit of a bit of a a stalling, a bit of a pause. And someone introduced me to a publisher, and I said to the publisher, I I wanted to get the book published on the 1st of March 2024, which will be my 30th anniversary. So I spoke to the publisher in November, and they said with respectful, you haven't even finished the book yet. How do you hope to get it published by the first of March? So she said to me, Do you mind me sharing with you, Paul, what I do? And this lady had published four books, so I thought, well, let's listen because we can all learn things. And what she said to me is that what you need to do is you need to set aside a time every day, 9 or 10, 10 to 11, 12 to 1, 3 to 4, whatever it is, that basically you sit down and you write your book. And what you've actually done is you've outlined a framework, a skeleton with bullet points about what topics you want to cover under each chapter, and that's how you write your book. And I said to her, Do you mind me asking how many words you type in an hour? And she said, 800. I said, Whoof, if you saw my typing, I'm gonna go for 300. And it was just having the routine, having the process, because if we come back to account, if we come back to the world, a lot of what we do on a daily basis all routines. That forms part of your routine, you'll stick to it. If it doesn't, you won't, and also it's not a priority for you. So I really wanted to get on with it. And um, as I say, I outlined skeleton of what I wanted to write, the topic for each chapter, and then the bullet points. So the basic of the book, I was told, is most books have sort of 10 chapters, minimum 2,000 words each, and that was what I was aiming for. And what I was quite fortunate is that I set myself a goal that by Christmas of that year, which would be 22, 23, I would have written the book. And then over between Christmas and the year, I read through my manuscript so that I gave my completed manuscript to the publisher on January 24, and I've committed to giving my publisher the manuscript of my new book in January 26th. I haven't even started yet, but I know what I want to do, and I will stick to the process and follow the process, and it will work.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, fab. Yeah, good stuff. How how do you actually use the book now, Paul? Do you use it with with prospects, for example, or uh clients, or uh just for marketing? How do you actually use it?

Paul Miller:

So, what we started to do was to we've we've written a companion workbook to it, and what we've actually done is we've done courses on on the book and using the workbook. We will also use it to target prospects, and we will also um we do a number of events, live events each year, and we hand out copies of the book. Um, I don't it'd be lovely to be an Amazon bestseller, but in my darkest dreams that won't actually happen. The book is the book is a lost leader, it's a it's an intro. The fact that I'm a published author, albeit that I haven't really sent sold thousands of copies, means that as far as the clients are concerned, I'm an expert. Yeah, whether I'm an expert or not, that needs to be proved by results, needs to be proved by interaction. But by actually having published the book and having been a published author, it raises the perception. So for me, it was a marketing tool rather than an income generating thing. And because we self-published, um the book cost less than three quid each to me for each copy. So actually, for me to send out a hundred copies is not really that expensive, yeah. It's a way to actually cut through, cut through the noise. Because if we look at most business owners, they're inundated by emails, they're inundated by um impacts on their time, things that they want to do. So we find by using snail mark, by digging something in the post, actually cuts through the chatter.

Doug Aitken:

Yep, yeah, I like that. And and what's the second book, without giving too much away, what's the second book going to be about? What's the focus of that one?

Paul Miller:

So, Michael Gerber. What a star, and I've actually had the privilege, I've met Michael in person. Oh, right, okay. And um Michael was the one who I guess was the the lead in in in coining the phrase working on not in the business.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah.

Paul Miller:

And basically what the book is about is that um what does it mean, what does it do, and how do we free up the time to actually spend time on it?

Doug Aitken:

Yeah. Fab. Yeah. So when's your first um writing time diarised for?

Paul Miller:

So if I'm honest, I I I cheated a little bit, Doug. As long as we keep that between us, that's okay. I won't tell anyone else. So basically, I did an event two, three weeks ago on working on that in the business, and I've actually got it videoed, and I'm waiting for the transcription because the transcription will form the basis of the book, and all I'll do is add to it or detract. So, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to use what I would call evergreen assets. Look at what we're actually doing. Is there another way to repurpose it, repackage it to use for another purpose? So, part of the reason of videoing it was to do to cut excerpts out for our social media. We also did testimonials from people attending, and then the other part of it was that I want it transcribed, yeah, which it will be. So I'm waiting for the transcription. Once I get the transcription, I'm probably 40-50% of the way there because um the event that we did was three hours, so I've got most of the things I want to talk about. I just need to maybe elaborate on certain things, put certain of the tools that are in there. Um, on all the events we do, we do workbooks that we hand out. So there's some tools in the workbook that I would want to include in the final book as well.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, fab. You talked about advisory earlier, um, Paul, and you got me thinking about I always have a challenge in firms around this transactional relational thing that you said before, relationship or transactional. And those ac those clients who the accountant perceives as transactional, um, I have a bit of a hobby horse that suggests that maybe they don't know what they don't know. So until we actually help them to understand their figures, um then maybe they're transactional because they don't know any better. So what I'm saying is maybe there are some transactional clients who just need to be shown some value, shown additional figures, have a proactive conversation linked to personal goals and what they want to achieve for them to see the light. Does that make sense? And do you have a view on that at all?

Paul Miller:

Yeah, so I have a view. So we have about 200 clients in the practice. So basically, I will see every client personally. And the reason why is we act as their agent, we're putting together their numbers, but if they're going to be of use to them other than satisfying the tax manual company's house, they need to understand them. And also it's the opportunity to have open-ended questions. I think one of the one of the things that concerns me quite a lot is sometimes the younger generation haven't been brought up with the conversational communication skills that you and I have. They're too busy texting things on abbreviations or sending emails, when actually just by talking to people opens up that relationship, opens up that that situation, and actually asking open-ended questions when we there is no right or wrong answer by just having conversations, you'll uncover the goals, you'll uncover what I call ADHD, which is our ambitions, dreams, hopes, and desires of the of the business owner. Yeah, and it's our part as the accountant to actually help them achieve those journeys. And I think I mentioned to you in 2000 I reduced the client base by 25%. So one of the questions that we actually asked people was we're actually looking at adding additional services, that means you're going to need to pay us increase our fees. Um, is that something you actually want us to do, or you're happy to you're happy for us to be part of, or do you just want us to stick to us preparing the accounts once a year? And by having that that question with them, about 10 to 20 percent of those clients actually want us to do more work for them, but we'd never asked that question before. Yeah, I I think one of the greatest questions in the English language is why? Yeah, why are we doing it? If the reason is because that's the way we've always done that, that isn't the answer. We need to almost start with a blank sheet of paper and understand what we want to put on that sheet of paper or what the customer wants to put on that sheet of paper. We can't actually put our own writing on that because that's our own interpretation, that's our own impression, but isn't necessarily what the business owner wants. Okay. Only when you want to actually understand what the business owner wants can you actually help them achieve it, and can you actually see whether you're right to actually play a part in that?

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Please forgive this brief interruption. You secure the future profitability and future growth of your firm when your clients become more loyal, buy more from you, are happy to pay more and also recommend you more. These four important outcomes depend entirely on the behaviour and mindset of one group of people, your client managers. When your client managers improve their skills and mindset, your firm results naturally improve too. If you think that you could do more to build your client manager's capabilities, please click the Remarkable Client Manager link in the show notes. When you do, you'll be able to complete the client manager diagnostic. It won't cost you anything, and you'll discover the six elements that can help your managers unlock greater success in your firm. It's funny, um, our business partner and I were talking about uh a client example um where the accountant was telling his side of the story. So the accountant was saying, yeah, I just met with the client, I just met with them more often, maybe every quarter, talked through their figures, um, linked it to their personal goals, um, you know, it it it it just went a wee bit better. So the a very functional description. When you listen to the same story from the client side, the client started by saying, That accountant changed my life. Wow, well, how did they do that? Because they because they educated me on my numbers, they linked it with what I wanted to achieve in life. No one's ever asked me that before. So they actually asked what my personal goals were, they linked my uh what my business was achieving to that, and they helped me achieve it. They changed my life, and it's so interesting, isn't it? Those chain those shifts in perception from seeing it through the client's eyes and seeing it through the accountant's eyes. Do do we underplay ourselves as a profession? We definitely do.

Paul Miller:

So, one of the questions that we love to ask of new clients and team members is how will you judge in six months' time whether the decision to work with us is the right one for you?

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, nice, good question. Yep.

Paul Miller:

And what you actually find is that we we put our own spin on it, our own version of it. We use our own eyes to see that, but actually, different people want different things, and different people actually, if we don't actually ask that question, invariably we're trying to help them do something they don't really want to do, that we think they want us to um get their accounts done within three months, that might not be an issue for them, providing we meet the finding line, provide they know the tax, whatever it is, doesn't really matter. Whereas what they actually want is they want prompt responses. Yeah, they actually want you, if they if they ring me today, they want me to get back to them today. If they email me today, they want a response. So, one of the other questions that we've learned to ask over the years is when someone says it's urgent, well, what does urgent mean to you? So we used to have a client that that that would say it was urgent. Well, we need accounts for the bank, but when you meet in the bank, well, next month, well, really that in urgent to me at the moment, yeah. That that's your urgent, that's your definition of urgent. But if I know that you've got a meeting in three, four weeks' time, I'm focused on that deadline, I'm not focused on dropping everything, do everything today. And I think one of the things that I've noticed a lot of people don't necessarily have conversations with clients, don't really actually talk to people. Maybe they talk at them, they don't talk with them, and you know, I think one of the failings of us as a profession as individuals is we listen to answer, we don't listen to understand. What do we miss? Which is why I come back to the personal meetings, the in-person meetings that I love is because you get more of the body language. I mean, I went out to see a farmer on Bob and Moore two weeks ago, that we had to go and see them. We could have done it in 10 minutes, but we're there for 45 minutes because we had a cup of tea, we talked about the kids watching, watched on telly last night, and have you seen so and so and all the rest of it? And that's what's about building a relationship. I think the danger we're in at the moment with um the desire to earn income is that we potentially rush things that we should spend time with. We should spend time thinking over.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, you've made me think of the trust equation. I don't know if um you and I have talked about this before, maybe via LinkedIn, but it's a piece of um genius IP I found by a chap called Charles Green. And the trust basically is his theory is you can measure trust. And it's uh an equation called uh credibility plus reliability plus intimacy divided by self-orientation. Now, as you know, but with numbers, people the the number on the bottom of the fraction is the one that influences it most, the denominator and self-orientation. So you made me think of that. How many accountants go into a client meeting with all of the list of things that they want to say instead of asking the client at the top of the meeting, look, this is your meeting, what would you like to get out of it? Or what would a good meeting look like for you? Any thoughts on that?

Paul Miller:

Yeah, I have, and and I and I give an example from my own experience. So if we go back pre-accounting software, we used to type accounts. So back then we had two clients, let's call them Smith. Smith with a with a Y was a butcher, Smith with an I was a horse breeder. So I said to my secretary at the time, can you type the horse breeders' accounts? Booked it in the diary, and I go downstairs in my reception, and there's the other Smith there. Hadn't got anything ready. So you you ended up, you have to think on your feet. So we talked about the spray, we talked about a goals for the future. He said to me afterwards, that's one of the best meetings we ever had, Paul. Wow, and that's because there was no preconceived ideas about what to talk about, there was nothing on the agenda. Yeah, we actually listened to what he actually wanted to achieve, what he wanted to do. We let him talk. And I think sometimes as professionals, we're we talk too much. I mean, another story I always tell is that we had a client, the husband and wife team, she was South African, he was English, had a business, they wish you to come in and she used to dominate everything. So I said to both of them were in, I said, Have you ever wondered why God gave you two ears and one mouth? And she said to me, Oh, I do talk a lot, don't I my my dear? So basically, she let her husband talk, let him have reign on what he actually wanted to achieve. I think sometimes as professionals, we're almost afraid to say things that might upset. But I think providing it comes from a position of love, provision of passion, of improvement, etc., I think clients will accept everything.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, Paul, I I'm mindful of time. This this uh our time is absolutely zipped by. Um, I just want to ask you one question in closing, which is uh one of these no right no wrong answers questions, and I'm just interested in your views on what does the future hold for the profession? Because a lot of people are now panicking about AI or worried about the influence of technology and various other things. What what's going to happen in your view to the profession over the next five, ten years or so?

Paul Miller:

I think for the people that have the appropriate and good and great soft skills, communication skills, they will thrive. I think for the people that are trying to do it at the lowest price possible, unfortunately, in my opinion, they're on the way out. You have to build relationships, you have to be able to talk to people, you have to be able to understand, ask the right questions. I think one of the things that that you're at a remarkable practice are good at is helping us identify the right questions, help us train on those soft skills that we weren't actually taught. If we go back to Michael Gerber, which you spoke about earlier, when you pass your accounting exams, you definitely become a technician. You then move through a manager stage, and if we're lucky, we actually become to the pinnacle of the entrepreneur. And I think we almost need to talk to our customers as equals, as having built a business, having understood what it's all about. Yeah. And you can't teach that from books, you can't teach that at college. That's real life experience. Because the beauty about meeting people and being in different situations is that you'll be able to relate to things when you meet that situation again. You'll think, oh yeah, I remember that. We oh yeah, we talked about that. And I think that's my frustration at the moment about exams, etc., is that we're teaching people to pass exams. We aren't necessarily teaching them to be good accountants and good practitioners and good all-rounders, whether that's you know GCSEs or whatever it is, whether that's degrees. We yeah we just teach people how to pass exams. And the art of a true profession is how do you apply that, how do you use that knowledge to move forward.

Doug Aitken:

Yeah. Brilliant. Um, Paul, I've really enjoyed our chat. Uh, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Um, I do wish you every success with not only the first book, but also the second one when it comes to writing it. And I look forward to uh hearing how that went early next year. Um, in the meantime, wish you every success going forward as well. Thanks for being our guest today.

Paul Miller:

I've really enjoyed myself and thank you very much, Doug.

Doug Aitken:

You've just heard Paul Miller of Cornish Accounting Solutions talk about the importance of knowing your ideal client and having a client list of which you're proud and that you know you can add value to. These are subjects taught in the Accountants Growth Academy. To find out more, go to remarkablepractice.com or follow the link in the show notes.

Paul Shrimpling:

You'll find more valuable discussions with the leaders of ambitious accounting firms at humanize the numbers.online. You can also sign up to be notified each time a new podcast is made available. You're about to hear a short excerpt from a podcast discussion with Jonathan Gaunt from FD Works and Socket. If you like what you're hearing and you want to go to the full podcast, go to your favourite platform or go to humanishetumbers.online.

Speaker 1:

As a business owner, you're the pub landlord. We've all we've all worked in shit places, and what can you do? You can try and influence it, but ultimately you've always got that option of going somewhere else. Whereas being the landlord, your name is above the door, and so you have to kind of stick around, and it's the how do I create the environment that I want to be part of, and I think then that's sometimes where you have to have some of those tougher conversations because if you don't, it's going to impact you longer term.

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