Paul Shrimpling: 0:05

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

Stuart Clark: 0:22

You know, I think we've got a really great team. I think the culture is really good. I think the purpose and the values and stuff that we've built tie into all that. Attracting the right talent and retaining the right talent, um, I'm sure you know, on any given day there's people got issues and stuff that we do the kind of weekly one-to-ones, and there's always, you know, something that's not quite right but gives us an opportunity to try and correct things and make things better for for going forward. Um, so, yeah, I think the team, uh, is probably the number one thing.

Douglas Aitken: 0:57

How do you articulate how your firm is different from others In a sea of sameness? Stuart Clarke of Russell, Russell Business Advisors has found a way to articulate the difference of how he operates in Glasgow in his firm. Listen on to find out.

Stuart Clark: 1:16

Hi, my name is Stuart Clarke. I'm the Managing Director of Russell Russell Business Advisors. We're a firm of accountants and business advisors in Glasgow, a team of 20 of us. We've been going for almost 50 years. Actually, next year will be our 50th anniversary, but I've only been with the firm since 2012 and completed a management buyout in November 2022. So it's been a couple of years since we've been taking over the ownership of the firm ourselves.

Douglas Aitken: 1:45

Fabulous Welcome to the podcast, stuart. Great to have you on and thanks for that introduction. As you probably know from previous podcasts, we always ask our guests the same question at the start, so our purpose is to humanise the numbers. What pictures does that set in your mind, stuart? What kind of meaning do you get from that?

Stuart Clark: 2:08

I think for me, when we're speaking to our clients, it's, you know, the numbers tell a story of the business, but the business also runs on people and processes. So it's how do we marry the two together and how do we make them understandable? You know, I think numbers quite a lot of business owners maybe get into the business because they're good at what they do, but they're not necessarily, you know, good at the accounting side of things or don't understand the numbers behind it. So it's trying to give them the context and understanding and break down the barriers. You know, I think again don't want to be demeaning to the accounting industry, but in the past it's maybe been oh, we want to be the smartest in the room and we use lots of jargon and you know, if a client's not confused by the end of the session, we've not done our job right and shown how intelligent we are and how impressive we are. But for us it's trying to break down those barriers and make the numbers understandable and, yeah, make them relatable to the business owners yeah, brilliant, brilliant.

Douglas Aitken: 3:02

I noticed in your introduction you led with russell and russell business advisors yes, as opposed to accountants, and that's. That seemed a very deliberate choice of phraseology. What's behind that chip?

Stuart Clark: 3:17

um, I think it's because we're trying to put ourselves, yeah, as a sort of advisor, trusted advisor, to the clients we work with. We're not, I think people say, accountant. Obviously some people just switch off automatically. Do you know? There's that stereotypical accountant that's a sort of from the 1950s and people just not interested in that. So I think it's part of part of the reasons that. I think the other thing is we don't want to be just churning out year-end accounts, one after the other sausage factory, we want to work closely with our clients and give that kind of advisory aspect. So part of that, of what I should have led with this, of course, is making lives better.

Stuart Clark: 3:54

Our purpose, I realized I focused on as soon as I said it and as soon as you went, I was like, oh no, I've said, said how long have you been in business? Said all the stuff that's not actually relevant. But yeah, I think making lives better is actually, you know, is the purpose of what we do, and again, it's trying to stand out from the crowd in this sea of sameness. I think a lot of accountants, we go on their websites and we compare ourselves to competitors. Our old website used to look very similar to theirs and we felt like we were internally different but weren't really expressing that outwardly. I think we've definitely changed that now. I think it's still room for improvement, but we are trying to lead with that, making lives better, and we're trying to make it a part of every meeting that we hold and make it part of the day-to-day within the team as well.

Douglas Aitken: 4:35

Brilliant. I love that. Making lives better. How did you arrive at that? In the end, we look at the functionality of what accountants do, of course, and the products that they provide but how did you arrive at making lives better in the end?

Stuart Clark: 4:58

I think partly it was from discussions with yourself which we were trying to get clarity. You were pushing us on getting clarity on our purpose and we kind of had some things written down but they weren't really nailed and we find it hard to articulate to the team and and so it's trying to distill it into that kind of sentence and we kind of went through what we do so it's like okay, well, you know, we provide them less stress, more time, more money, all these kind of different things that we do. It's like okay, and what? What is that doing? It's like, oh, we're, I guess, at the heart of what we did as well and I think it's something I've always had is, you know, what's the client's goal? What are they trying to achieve?

Stuart Clark: 5:37

I think I quite often use the example no one sets out to turn over 1.233 million and 33 pounds. It's. You know, that's the break-even point if they go. I want to go on holiday once a year and I've got a margin of this, and I want to put money aside for my kids to go to university. I want to put money into a flat, I want to take them to Disneyland for a trip of a lifetime. You know, working out what their personal goals are is allows us to then help understand what the company goals are, and normally small business owners those things are intertwined. Um, so it then became like that personal aspect. It's like, okay, we might be helping the company achieve this, but it's really the individual and it's their lives that we're impacting and trying to make better yeah, fabulous, and I guess it's a case of trying to capture these landmark stories, isn't it that illustrate that purpose coming to life?

Douglas Aitken: 6:31

How have the team adapted to that purpose and to what extent have they feel attached to it, can you tell?

Stuart Clark: 6:40

Yeah, I think we have quarterly Making Lives Better days, so we do things out with the business as well, so going and volunteering, helping local communities and local charities, um, and I think it's you know, because we're able to articulate it a bit better you know, we've got that kind of flag point or that master like right, making life better. What we're trying to do. So for me it's making life better for the people in our team. How do we make improved processes? How can we make sure that their lives are better, that they enjoy working at Russell Russell? If I look after them, they'll look after the team their clients, sorry or look after their own team, who then look after their clients as well and make life better. And if we make lives better for those clients, help grow their businesses, that's going to have a knock-off impact on the local community and things like that as well. So I think we had that kind of central point okay, making lives better.

Stuart Clark: 7:35

We then also again did some work with yourself as to okay, how does that feed into? What does that, that mean? And we came up with the kind of the values and the behaviors that that and again, getting clarity over those just makes it a lot easier to have those conversations with the team if maybe someone isn't living up to the values or isn't doing stuff. But again, every decision we make, if someone makes not necessarily the wrong decision, but a slightly different version of the decision that I might have made if they've done it with making life better at the core and I was trying to make life better and I was trying to be my best self and challenge the client and I was trying to do all these things you can't really be upset with them. They've stuck true to what we've set out to do.

Douglas Aitken: 8:17

Yeah, that's a great point, isn't it? It becomes a disagreement about tactics, but not about strategy. So, and we can live with tactical disagreements, can't we?

Stuart Clark: 8:29

yeah, and I think we've all bought into that. Once we kind of got that legalized better, we've all bought into it and we're like, okay, this is what we're we're trying to achieve. So we're all in the same boat and I said someone might have a slightly different way of getting there, the end result, but we're all aiming for the same thing and we're, all you know, pushing towards it together, so that that helps as well yeah, brilliant, excellent.

Douglas Aitken: 8:50

So just to bring another human angle to um, to what we're talking about today what, what's your own background? And, uh, do you have family? You know, tell us a bit about yourself yeah.

Stuart Clark: 9:02

So I am a qualified physiotherapist who was absolutely terrible at physiotherapy, and so I decided to retrain. I actually went for three job interviews. I studied in glasgow and went for three job interviews. Every time I got the phone call for feedback or for they let me know. I was like all that was going through my head was just please, don't tell me I've got this job. Please don't tell me I've got this job.

Stuart Clark: 9:27

And I, after the third interview, I thought actually something's got to change here, because I'm going to land one of these, whether I want to or not. Someone's going to give me a job just because there's something there, rather than I'm actually good at it. And so I thought I need to change and so went to a graduate fair at the SECC in Glasgow and spoke to ICAS. They said if you've got a two, one or above, you don't have to go back to university. You can actually retrain with a firm and go through your exams. And I think I think it's still the same, but it was if you'd qualified, you'd done four years at university as accountant. You had two lots of exams, but you still need to get your three years practical experience.

Paul Shrimpling: 10:06

I was non-relevant.

Stuart Clark: 10:07

I had one extra set of exams but still needed three years. It was the same length of time and I was earning rather than getting myself into more debt. So I moved to Johnson Carmichael in Edinburgh, worked there for about seven or eight years, had a wee brief kind of I'm not sure what you're trying to do. It went off for a bit because I entered a thing called sporting giants. All right, was the 2012 olympics.

Stuart Clark: 10:36

Steve redgrave had, um, they were looking for tall people, tall, lanky people. I was a bit lankier then I'm putting a bit of beef now but and they were looking for people because london was hosting the olympics, the uk got entry into every single event, whereas in the past you have to be, you know, at a certain level. So there were certain events that we've never qualified for, but we did qualify for this. So they were trying to get tall people to come in and test out for these sports. So I put an application in. I used to play rugby at age group level for Scotland and things like that. So I think because of that I got managed to get through the first set of process. I think 15,000 applications got invited down to Sheffield. They measured my wingspan and my hands and all this kind of stuff and said, right, okay, there's volleyball, rowing and handball I think were the three sports and I got put into the handball selection, got through to the next set of that, which was going down again for a weekend at the Institute of Sport playing with the current British team and kind of having a trial.

Stuart Clark: 11:43

Got through that weekend, went to live in Denmark for a week, got through that, then moved down to Sheffield for two months, three months between Denmark and Sheffield, and it was down to about the final 20 at that point out of 15,000 and then unfortunately got. I didn't get cut at that point but I didn't get to move to Denmark at that point. I was moved to Denmark, go back to Sheffield and live in Sheffield or uh, cut completely and I got the Sheffield option. But at that point I was kind of I'd already put my exams and studies on hold for a couple of uh months, was taking unpaid leave from work and things like this and I thought actually, if I'm not in Denmark playing four or five hours a day, if it's just me and a couple of guys in Sheffield going to the gym and playing the odd game, I'm not going to get any better, so I took the decision just to leave and then went back and finished my accountancy exams.

Douglas Aitken: 12:39

Wow, that was a sliding doors moment, wasn't it?

Stuart Clark: 12:42

Yeah, but it's great fun a sliding doors moment, wasn't it? Yeah, but it's great fun, it's. It's a. Like handball is a. I really enjoy it as a sport. It's very physical, it's very fast paced, lots of goals, but for some and it's just throwing and catching. So everyone can play it. But um, yeah, I don't know why it's never taken off in scotland, do you think? With our weather it'd be perfect, an indoor sport you can play all year round.

Stuart Clark: 13:02

But yeah, and you had no previous experience of it before you went to the trial no, no, wow, never played it and you get this like glue that you put in your hands to make the ball stickier and obviously never, ever done it before. You just put your hand in and just slap on. It was like and I put so much on, just like the ball was stuck honestly couldn't bounce the ball. And then one guy when we were in Denmark because he put on every time, it was brutal and it's just, your hands are sticky all day long. It was horrible, but they, uh, his finger tips came off, like because he put too much glue on, so it pulled the fingertip off. So he then had to start like putting, uh, plasters on. But occasionally you get the ball and it's about the plaster off. You get this bloody plaster spinning across the ball coming towards you. So that's my main memory of handball.

Stuart Clark: 13:47

Um, but at that point it was because they were trying to do that. There's that they had that 10 000 hours idea in their head. It was like you need to get 10 000 hours before 2012. So we're training. We did two sessions a day, morning and afternoon, two-hour sessions each and a gym session on top of that, and I think I found an old diary which kind of had what I ate for the day and it was like 7,000, 8,000 calories or something like that, and I was still losing weight. So it was fairly intense. I don't think I could have kept up for much longer. To be honest, I was probably right. I got cut to the level I was.

Douglas Aitken: 14:28

That's almost some story. Well, it is some story anyway to get down to the last 20 from that, but almost an Olympic athlete.

Stuart Clark: 14:38

Yeah, well, from the 20, I think about 14 of them got into the squad, or quite a few of them did, and actually one of the guys, Bobby, that had never played before he captained the GB team and stuff like that. So there was guys I played with that made it all the way through to that four or five years later. So, yeah, it was a great experience.

Stuart Clark: 15:01

And yeah, being an Olympian was something that I was always like, oh, I'd love to do that, but I'm not fast enough, I'm not strong enough and you know rugby wasn't part of it and things like that at that point. So, uh, it was to get the opportunity was unbelievable. But and yeah, it's a good story still got my wee british olympic passport that I had, that got me into places and things like that. But yeah, kids don't believe it's me because I've got hair and I'm a bit thinner, so uh, superb.

Douglas Aitken: 15:29

Yeah, well, handballs loss was accountancy's gain. Yeah, um, so you said you. Uh, what made the major move from johnson kermichael to russell and russell? How did that come about?

Stuart Clark: 15:42

again. It was just it's actually my wife. I met my wife um, who is a physio and I was actually at university with. But we had the separate, different partners at that point and kind of were friendly. But uh, one of our mutual friends had a fundraising, kayleigh um and so I came through to that to Glasgow, met her. Then we started seeing each other, was commuting back and forward between Edinburgh and Glasgow and after a couple years you're kind of like, right, one of us needs to make the move.

Stuart Clark: 16:12

I was happy in Edinburgh, she was happy in Glasgow. But we thought, right, well, we both liked each other's cities as well. So we thought, well, let's just see who gets the job first and we'll. Whichever one gets one, we'll move. So she was looking for jobs in Embra, I was looking for jobs in Glasgow neither of us were taking that seriously, probably in hindsight. And then she got an opportunity for a job in Glasgow in cardiac rehab, which was where she'd always wanted to work and she really loved it and the job had only come out. I think it was the first time a job had come up in the eight years in the NHS for that role. So she thought I'm going to apply for this and just see what happens. And so she got that. So then it was okay, right, decisions made, I'm moving to Glasgow and so I just started speaking to recruitment agents and stuff like that and got put in front of a couple of places.

Stuart Clark: 17:00

But Russell and Russell was the one that kind of just stood apart with what they were trying to do the fact that it was proactive. You know, at that point we had a rule that we only took a client on if we met them four times a year. We kind of have that still to a certain degree, because with all the stuff we do, we probably are, have got more touch points, but we don't have it in quite as a hard line in the sand, because some clients find it difficult going from you know they've only seen their account once a year. If you say you got to meet them four times a year, they're like, oh, hold on a minute, I don't even like going to see my accountant. Why do I want to put myself through that pain four times a year? So but hopefully once they come on board and get working with us they kind of see the value and they start to see us more. But yeah, I just really like the different.

Stuart Clark: 17:46

They had unlimited telephone calls, they had all sorts of different things, which again really enjoyed my time at John Schumacher. But I remember one client coming in one day and we had a year-end accounts meeting and we're talking about they bought, put a company car, a really expensive diesel Land Rover or Porsche or something through the business, and I was sitting down with him and explaining he had an unforeseen 10 grand tax bill because of this benefit in kind charge and I was like why didn't you give us a call? We could have told you how to structure this most efficiently. And he was like, oh, but I knew as soon as I picked up the phone you'd bill me a couple hundred quid for a phone call, and I guess it was. It was like russell, russell had that fixed price element and it was like, okay, we want you to get the phone. We don't want these uh like stopwatch in the background to put you off picking up the phone does. And so I really like that approach and so joined in 2012.

Douglas Aitken: 18:43

And how did you find the change in approach to clients once you were actually in Russell Russell? What was the main difference, do you think?

Stuart Clark: 18:54

I think you know it was a real focus on proactivity. I think John Scarmichael said I don't want to sound like a bad man I really enjoyed my time there and it was very collaborative with clients as well, but it wasn't maybe as structured. It was waiting for a client to phone you and then come to them with some advice and that, although maybe proactive advice, it still felt quite reactive to me that we were waiting for the client, whereas you know, at Russell Russell it was like, okay, we're going to contact you before your company year end, we're going to contact you before your personal tax year end. We're going to try and do a bit more of that advisory stuff. So it's not just here's your accounts, your margins down, looks like you had a shit year. It's okay. Why is your margin down? Is your pricing right, what? How are the ways we can improve this and things like that.

Douglas Aitken: 19:44

And so that, yeah, just felt was a bit more structured proactivity, if that that makes sense yeah, definitely, and it was two brothers that um ran the firm, hence russell, and russell, ken and alistair. Um, yeah, what was it that drove them? Do you think to have have that approach, because it was quite different from others?

Stuart Clark: 20:04

Yeah, so they'd been on the accountants bootcamp with Paul Dunn in 2000, I think, and said yeah, said they kind of felt like they'd been brainwashed by the end when they came out like I've seen, the light came to the office, we've got all these ideas and the team's going hold on a minute, like it was so radically different then in 2000. Um, but yeah, they started to make those changes. I think at that point as well, ken had actually started to firm with his father, and it was his father, bert was, and Ken with the original Russell, russell and then Alistair joined after Burt passed away. Ken and Alistair there was 15 years age difference between them and so they weren't quite, you know, polar opposites with regards to what their goals were, but they were in slightly different life stages and up until 2000, I don't think they'd actually sat down and said what are we trying to achieve? And so it gave them quite a lot of clarity, even from themselves, to go right, what's the end goal for this business, what are we trying to do?

Stuart Clark: 21:05

And and that's when they kind of said we want to be one office based in Glasgow, grow to about 15 people, and that was it and it also, I think helped them focus, go right. Actually, what do we want to do the? What do we want the business to be once we leave? Is it going to die with us or are we going to actually put a proper succession plan in place? And so when I came in 2012, they were quite clear in that as well that they wanted myself and Roslyn to be part of the, the succession plan and it.

Stuart Clark: 21:37

As we kind of grew in numbers and you know, people's roles changed and and ian were part of that as well. Ian was always part of it, but yeah, um, he was already a director at that stage when I joined, so but they very much. They wanted rosalind and myself to to come in and be part of that succession plan, so they'd already started thinking about that, whereas you know, a lot of other sort of firms our size with sort principles of their age, maybe hadn't considered that or just kind of run it until the day they die.

Douglas Aitken: 22:07

Yeah, I was going to say so. You knew from an early stage that you had a real future there, provided it met what you wanted. But you were really clear on what the pathway looked like for you.

Stuart Clark: 22:20

Yeah, well, but you were really clear on what the pathway looked like for you. Yeah, well, it was, it wasn't. It wasn't. I think there was elements like we knew what we wanted to get to. How we got there wasn't maybe laid out step by step, but I think that's because, yeah, obviously when you come in, it's like we've got the opportunity of becoming a director and becoming an owner. How we're going to get there is it's not necessarily laid out in stone, but, um, there's certainly the option and the opportunity to to get that if that's what I wanted. So, yeah, it was. It was great to get that.

Stuart Clark: 22:53

It was something that, bizarrely enough, I kind of thought when I first started I was like, well, I'm quite happy just being an accountant. I'm not, it's not necessarily something that I'm. Possibly it might be nice, but it's not necessarily. It wasn't something I considered necessarily at Johnson Michael, my goal was never to become one of the partners there. I was just like that sounds like too much stress and too much hassle.

Stuart Clark: 23:20

But I think because we were working closely with businesses and you're doing some of that business strategic advice and stuff like this, and you're like, oh, what if we did that in our business or what we did this, you kind of started to get that ownership, and so maybe it's because it's a smaller team, that kind of opportunity seemed more exciting, whereas I think at Johnson and Michael they're so huge I just thought, well, if I become a partner there, am I actually going to have anything to do with driving the business forward or coming up with ideas, or will they get implemented? Whereas it felt like you know, rosalind and Ian, we've got a real stake in the business. Even before we were directors, we were helping to drive the business forward.

Douglas Aitken: 23:57

So how did you adapt to the type of work that you were doing? Because, if I heard you right, you were saying earlier that there was very much a focus on proactivity and advisory type work. So how did you adapt to that from your time at Johnston and Michael?

Stuart Clark: 24:14

I think I had a really good training and core set of skills, really good training and like core set of skills. Um. So you know, from that point of view, I'd been done my icas. I'd then started my tax exams as well, so I had those kind of core components there. It was, just as I said, that made more structured stuff.

Stuart Clark: 24:34

But some of the business advisory stuff, you know, was kind of new to me. You can, obviously, you learn how to do your profit and loss and stuff that, but you're not necessarily using the things to how to drive the business forward. And so I think I remember Alistair when I first came in. There's things that they were doing within the business, like the four ways to grow the business. They had that model there, but it was very manual and it was kind of like right, can we do this and stuff this? And so because I was coming in then I didn't have a client list and because they had capacity, they were like, right, we want you just to build an excel model that does the four ways to grow a business and stuff like this. So I started building in macros and you press the button that ultimately has one percent to everything and all you'd see a graph which showed you the profit improvement potential and all this kind of stuff. So because I was given getting these tasks and I was building models for the first few months I was in, I think it kind of helped me to go right, okay, this is what they're trying to do.

Stuart Clark: 25:35

And then I'd go out to meetings with Alistair or with Ken and they'd go through it and we'd have those discussions and I think that's. You know, you can read all the books and stuff like that, but it's actually speaking to business owners and seeing Ken and Alistair have those discussions really helped. It was the same. You know, I had an element of it with Andrew Shepard when I was at John Scarmichael, when I'd gone into meetings with him.

Stuart Clark: 26:02

It wasn't about the counts, it was about like here's your counts, let's sign them off, but actually what's your future plans, what are you trying to achieve, and things like that. But he was just. You know, him and Alistair were both quite naturally gifted at that. I'm trying to bring a bit more structure to it and also trying to. You know, I only learn by being in meetings with them. So we're trying to make sure we're taking people into meetings with us so they can learn, because, yeah, the only way you learn is by doing, and it's not always easiest to get access and get the opportunity to learn those skills for yourself.

Douglas Aitken: 26:34

Yeah, definitely, fab. And was there a point where the penny dropped? Or were there particular uh clients that you met and you came away with thinking, oh yeah, this, this is great. This is definitely what I want to do more of, I think you know you're stretching my memory now because it's 12 years ago, but there yeah, there will be.

Stuart Clark: 26:57

I mean, I certainly remember being in some things. I remember one client in particular where Alistair, kind of the first year's new client, took on board, did the business advisory, and he said, right, you're gonna just run the next session, I'm not going to be there. And I was like, oh god, right, what do I do? But, um, it was fine and I think it was like he obviously recognized that I was a couple years into that stage. I've been in a number of meetings. Uh, I just needed that push to go and, you know, sink or swim, and I was like, right, you just need to. Obviously probably prepared more for that meeting than any other meeting in my life, because I wanted to make sure I had everything covered and I had an agenda down to every single minute of what was going to be covered. But yeah, things like that.

Stuart Clark: 27:47

We had Paul Dunn over for an event, a couple of events actually, and that was great. Some of the stuff that he was talking about and then you're able to go and speak to clients about it. The clients get. Everyone came at that event buzzing and people were talking to us and stuff like that. And then on the back of that we started running the wally events. So the wally interview that used to be part of ran one or raz one, and back in the day as well, and it will also list a video. We had it on video. We have to lug a video recorder about. We've now got it on online but a digital version.

Stuart Clark: 28:21

But running those events, and again I actually ran I think Alistair was running it and then I can't remember if he was ill or something happened, but I ended up. I sat in quite a few and I ended up running with them and then, yeah, that kind of was like, okay, I can do this, I can, can get, can get it, but again, just try to get more systemized. I was trying to put notes in place. So again, the first time I ran it I must have known I was gonna run. Actually, because I ran, yeah, I wrote all these notes out of things I want to make sure we covered off. But now we've got a kind of template and a more kind of, uh, detailed notes, so that again, hopefully other people in the office could run it if they, if they needed to, because there's discussion points and things to make sure we covered before and it was quite a a basic handbook that we had as part of it yeah.

Douglas Aitken: 29:08

So, um, when you, when it came to buying out the, the previous owners of the firm, tell us about that process. How did it, how did that come about and what kind of timescale did it follow, and what were the highs and lows of that?

Stuart Clark: 29:27

I suppose there's different timescales. I think pre-COVID, so August 2019, we were in talks about what Ken and Alistair were wanting to do and they asked me if I wanted to be the managing director, and so it was kind of agreed, from that point on, that would be the the case. I don't think we formally announced it until february 2020, which is obviously perfect timing, just in time for covid, um, and so it kind of got put in the back burner at that point, because covid hit and just totally changed and it was like, right, we just need to survive, just to get through yeah, get through it.

Stuart Clark: 30:08

Um, I think it's all. It changed for them a bit, because they were suddenly at home all day and going what would I do if I'm not working?

Stuart Clark: 30:16

yeah, do you know what does my day look like? I've spent 40 years in the business. Um, do I really want to to leave? So, yeah, when we came out of Covid, we were quite keen to push on. It didn't always I don't know if they were I said, said, having not second thoughts, but just kind of like, actually, when do I want to retire? Um, and then we had a lot of back and forth um throughout.

Stuart Clark: 30:50

I think the start of 2022. I think I kind of internally put a deadline on myself, saying if this isn't wrapped up by our year ends january, uh, this isn't wrapped up by january 23, then I might just have to cut my losses and try something different or set up on itself or do do something else. Um, and it kind of got somewhere and installed and, yeah, just couldn't quite get across. I think it's partly because the day job just took priority and we're just firefighting with client stuff and sometimes, um, partly because I think, as I said, they weren't entirely sure what they they wanted to do.

Stuart Clark: 31:34

But I think there was a budget announced in for November 22 and they they thought there might be there's a risk that capital gains might go up. So it basically got done in a week and that from that point. So it kind of dragged and dragged and dragged and then it was basically it was a day of just signing everything off and going through everything and agreeing what the figures were and what we did, and we just spent a day locked up in a room, the six of us, hammering out everything that we'd been kind of trying to push through for the previous 12, 24 months, 36 months maybe, but we got there in the end.

Douglas Aitken: 32:17

There's nothing like a deadline to focus. The mind isn't there. And how did that feel for you and the other people involved Roslyn and Ian Maybe not so much Ian, and he'll forgive me for saying this, he's slightly older as well but for you, three as younger people suddenly assuming all that responsibility, and it was sudden. Over the space of a week, the deal was done. How did that all feel?

Stuart Clark: 32:46

I think it was. Yeah, it was a mix of emotions. It's something that we've been talking about for so long. It was kind of like relief that we'd finally got across the line and you're like, and you're kind of excited to get going. But then there probably is a bit of nervousness as well once you kind of start to get things.

Stuart Clark: 33:06

Because although we were directors and shareholders, it very much still was Ken and Alistair dealt with the majority of things on a day-to-day basis, or certainly from the kind of ownership point of view and stuff like that. So, um, like I don't think I had access to the bank until the day we bought it, so like we couldn't go in and make bank payments. So it was like suddenly even things like that like okay, bank lines is an absolute, horrific bit of software or interface, so like how do we make payments to the, the team to pay the wages this month and stuff this, all these kind of things that we uh shouldn't have been big deal. But suddenly, yeah, it was just a bit more testing and trying than we thought we'd be. We've all been in the business. I was the most. I mean, I've been in the business for 10 years and I was the person that served the least time out of the four of us directors. Everyone else had been in longer than me. Um, so you should go right. We should know the business inside and out, but there's still things that came out that would work from from that. So I think I'd also.

Stuart Clark: 34:11

I think I bought the business on the Friday and started a house extension on the Monday, which was not maybe the best. It was actually similar. When I became a director, I think, my daughter was born. I then got made director. I then bought a new house and then my wife and I got married, which is probably completely the wrong order. I'm sure my parents would say it was the wrong order, but we were happy with it. But that was quite a stressful year and then, I think, when we bought it, I was like, well, this is similar, and you had Covid in the middle of that as well, just to add to things. So it was quite a all in all. I think going back it was quite a stressful period. But yeah, I think going back it's quite a stressful period, but yeah, I think we got to where we wanted to get to in the end good, good, and so you're now owner of the business alongside the others.

Douglas Aitken: 35:10

Tell me about those first few months, because, although you knew it was coming to an extent, you were still thrown in at the deep end. So tell me about these first few months, how?

Stuart Clark: 35:20

were they scary? I think a bit of everything. I it almost seems so long ago like, yeah, it feels like a distant memory, but I think you know we were champing a bit to get get going and to start to put things in place. So we started like we did a website rebrand we changed the name. We not changed the name. We kept Russell Russell because we wanted to keep that. None of us were bothered about having our names on the door and Russell Russell was something that we do have a good reputation in Glasgow and people have heard of us. So we didn't want to lose that and we didn't want to alienate potential clients as well, because some of them had long standing relationships with Ken and Alistair. And so you've got that handover period. You know you don't want to pay X amount on the pound for something and then to leave the door the next day because they think everything's going to change. So some of it was just, you know, we wanted to put these changes in but we didn't want to rock the boat too much as well and sort of. But I think the things we had put in place and you'll start with yourself feeling things like making life better and a purpose in place. You know, I think that could have been the existing clients can be like, oh, hold on a minute, that's not what I signed up for. But I think because we were meeting with clients regularly, we were doing all these things, it just was getting kind of. It wasn't actually a huge change, yeah, in direction. It was just crystallizing what we're already doing and trying to explain to clients what it was, and so I think overall client feedback's been been pretty good. I don't think anyone's kind of said oh, don't agree with that, because, yeah, again, it's quite a positive message. If you don't agree with making lives better, I know what is happening there.

Stuart Clark: 37:18

So, yeah, it's the first couple of years we had a couple of things. We had a telephone contract that we put in place during Covid that just was not fit for purpose and had to try and extract ourselves from that and they tried to take us to court and sue us and charge us all these fees that we didn't think were appropriate. And so there were, you know, we went back to them with a proposal and they said, no, we went to the lawyers back and forth and a lot of stress with that and then eventually the lawyer said oh, you know why about this proposal, and they agreed it, and it was the same thing that I put forward six, eight months earlier, but without incurring all the legal fees on both sides. So there was that. There was a another bit of software that again, we put a new fyn this last year it'll be a year ago fyi in place, and so it meant that the former mail management system, email management system that we had in place, wasn't needed. So we gave them notice and they came back and said, oh, you've got this 89 days notice. It's actually 90 days notice you need to give us. It's a two-year contract, otherwise so you owe us 10 grand. And then we went back, said I don't think that is the case, and then never heard back from them. And then till we got a lawyer's letter saying no, you owe us 10 grand. And then we went back and said I don't think that is the case, and then never heard back from them. And then we got a lawyer's letter saying no, you owe us 10 grand. Then I went back actually went back onto the Wayback Machine, which is like an internet archive, and found the terms and conditions that were on their website from the day that we signed the document, I was like no, you can clearly see here, it's 30 days notice and it's only a year at worst case. And they came back and said, oh yeah, sorry, you're right, you are right, we didn't check it, we just thought it was the new terms, but we never issued to them. You signed up to those ones. So yeah, there isn't anything here. So I've got good reading terms and conditions over the last couple of years.

Stuart Clark: 39:10

So, yeah, there's just a couple of things like that where it just needed to be ironed out, there's issues that need to be resolved, but it takes you away from the day-to-day and takes you away from the things that you're wanting to do to grow the business. So I think, because we're doing things like that, we probably like the sales and marketing side of things we slowed down on when we bought the business. Obviously we didn't have the cash to pay Ken and Alistair upfront, so we're paying them out of the profits that we make going forward. But since then, corporation tax has gone from 19% up to 25% from when we signed the deal. You've got employers NI's just gone up, minimum wage has gone up, all these extra costs. So all these things kind of, yeah, just cause a bit more stress, a bit more tension, which kind of can sometimes pull you away from looking after the team and making life better for them or pull you away from the client work and stuff that.

Stuart Clark: 40:04

So it's been a bit of a juggling act the last couple years but I feel like we're kind of, yeah, getting getting getting through the choppy waters as we're and not it's gonna be plain sailing, but ipy waters as we're in Not that it's going to be plain sailing, but I think we're getting there and we've put a real focus on new sales and marketing and bringing clients in. This year that's starting to pay off, got lots of good leads and lots of clients of the type we want Good and the client base itself. We've got a lot of good clients as well. We kind of go through ranking the clients and being sure that the type of clients that are aligned with our values and they value our services, things like that. And yeah, there's not any clients that we're kind of like, oh the phone, every time the phone rings, your heart drops. There's none of them on our client books which historically, especially especially during COVID, there was maybe some clients that you called that maybe weren't the right fit for us. Just because you weren't sure, maybe you didn't do the gate of acceptance, which may be a little bit easier to get through because you're just like, right, we'll see.

Stuart Clark: 41:10

We don't know what's going to happen, but yeah, I think it's got its challenges. But we've got a good team behind us as well, which is obviously freeing us up as well. It's kind of touching it. Before, like before covid, there was 13 of us, which included the four of us and two at ken and alistair, so it's only really 17 members. We're now at 20 team members and only four directors. So even just that shift and you've got two people leaving that are quite senior, trying to replace that and build the team back up and build a bit of resilience in there. It's been a longer process than we probably anticipated. We've had quite a few trainees come in that maybe weren't quite the right fit and stuff like that, but got a really good core team now and, yeah, feel like we're ready for the next step.

Douglas Aitken: 41:58

Great. And what are you most proud of today, stuart, you were thrust into it and you've had to find your feet as a management team and whatnot. So what are you most proud of?

Stuart Clark: 42:10

I think the team that we've built, you know, I think we've got a really great team. I think the culture's really good. I think the purpose and we've built you know, I think we've got a really great team. I think the culture is really good. I think the purpose and the values and stuff that we've built tie into all that attracting the right talent and retaining the right talent, that we do the kind of weekly one-to-ones and there's always, you know, something that's not quite right, but it gives us an opportunity to try and correct things and make things better for for going forward. Um, so yeah, I think the team, uh, is probably the the number one thing and it's not underpinned by the getting those values and and the rebrand as well and getting the purpose and everything up on the website. So it's really identifiable that we do stand for something different and we're not just a I said a sausage piece that churns out year-end accounts.

Douglas Aitken: 43:03

Yeah, yeah. And what does the future hold? What's the vision over the next few years? Yeah, so.

Stuart Clark: 43:12

I'd like to get to about 30 people. I don't really well, again, these things always change. We suit the clients and they hit one goal and then there's another goal after it. But I think 30 feels like it's manageable, that I'd still know everyone's name, still be in first term basis with everyone and, you know, be able to go into the room and have a chat with them and not, uh, yeah, it wouldn't be too, too unwieldy. Uh, we'd also be able to sort of stay in this premises that we've got and you know, manage it from there.

Stuart Clark: 43:42

Um, and it just feels like a kind of nice manageable number but also could be a really great business and, uh, provide really exciting opportunities for the team, good clients to work with and can add lots of value. But yeah, I think it's something we're constantly reviewing and revisiting. I'm sure we've touched on it in the past, like AI and all the things like that, like what's that going to do to industry? So it's always something you're kind of thinking about. But yeah, I think a team of 30 probably still one office in Glasgow, would be where I want to be and kind of get, so that I'm taking myself away from the kind of day-to-day stuff and I'm doing maybe more kind of strategic advisory stuff with businesses and stuff like that and, yeah, letting the team run the business and do the that kind of stuff yeah, fab, excellent.

Douglas Aitken: 44:41

Okay, that's great. Stuart, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a joy talking to you and getting a feel for the journey that you've been on, and it's been a heck of a journey. I think, what stuck with me a lot was that, the kind of resetting after Covid of Ken and Alistair, and that was completely explainable.

Douglas Aitken: 45:03

I think a lot of us went through that reset yeah rethinking a number of things at that point, but I hadn't quite appreciated. The deal was done in a week and in fact in a day of signing, so a heck of a change quickly for you. But, yeah, a brilliant story and I'm sure it'll inspire loads of others as well. So really appreciate the time. Again, stuart, thanks for joining us. Thank you. You've just heard Stuart Clarke talking about the importance of purpose, values and vision and how you articulate your firm differently in a sea of sameness. These are the sort of things that we tackle at the Accountants Growth Academy, which you can find more about on remarkablepracticecom.

Paul Shrimpling: 45:54

You'll find more valuable discussions with the leaders of ambitious accounting firms at humanizethenumbersonline. 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 stefan meyer, author of the employee advantage. If you like what you're hearing and you want more, please go to humanize the numbersonline or go to your favorite podcast platform you know the small teams is a good start, but you actually the culture needs to change as well.

Speaker 4: 46:32

how you know how those innovation and how you create those psychological safety that people are actually willing to to express voices, and obviously they need to empower. You know, if you have no power and there is nothing you can, I mean why would you express anything or put in effort in doing so? And and ING is a really good example I mean they also got hit by competition, you know, by more nimble, for technological reasons somehow as well, and I could imagine that might happen in the accounting industry as well. You know, like suddenly smaller firms with technology together might suddenly be a competition that were not before and now you have to. Ing had to change because they were now competing against those fintech firms who are organized very differently, much smaller, much nimbler, and they needed to completely change their operational model smaller teams, flatter hierarchies and then on top of it, kind of the culture shift, empowering the employees, creating those psychological safety environment to actually get those innovation going.