Maria Lloyd (00:01.422)
Hello and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast which shines a light on the success stories, key learnings and insights from people and businesses based in Reading, Berkshire. I'm your host, Maria Lloyd. I've lived in Reading for 20 years and I've only recently started to appreciate what our wonderful town has to offer. Join me as I explore Reading's opportunities and lessons in more detail. Now, without further ado, let's jump in.

Hello Rachel and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. Thank you for coming on. How are you? Really good. Thank you having me, Maria. no, it's my pleasure. I've really been looking forward to this and the fact that this is the first time we've met as well. Yes. I know. It's hard to believe considering we're both Reading people. I know. Well, for our listeners, could you please tell them a little bit about yourself? Yeah. So I'm an accountant and I run a boutique practice in Reading called Holybrook.

We're based at Curious Lounge in the town centre and I also am a counsellor on Reading Borough Council so I've got two strings to my bow. I mean clearly you are very busy then I think any one of those could be a job in itself never mind both of them. So obviously you've got some quite strong ties to Reading so what do you like about it? Well I think having obviously been a counsellor for

14 years I got a lot of opportunities to see different aspects of our community but also running a business I get to see and meet loads of people and I think what I love about it is there's just a huge number of community groups, little networks, almost little niches you can find yourself in and I know that sometimes it can feel like Reading's quite a big place but somehow it always feels that everyone you meet in Reading knows someone you know or everyone's connected even if they don't know know-how and I think that's fantastic.

When I was the mayor, actually, I used to say that Reading was like a tapestry. You know, was lots and lots of different threads, but it all came together in a beautiful picture. I love that. Instantly, my mind went to Reading Museum and the Bayo, the tapestry and then... You know, I never made that connection. But I did make a connection of like Reading also is a town of bridges. You know, we don't have city walls, we have bridges. And actually, a lot of our residents are bridges either between...

Maria Lloyd (02:15.192)
people in Reading or their bridges to other places in the country or all over the world. And that's what I used to say at citizenship ceremonies, that those people who were becoming British citizens were a bridge between our town and their original country. So again, it's just this wonderful mix of things, Reading. that's amazing. I will have to borrow those at some point. I hope you don't mind. I will credit you. That's fine.

You said obviously that you were and are a councillor on Reading Borough Council and you were also the Mayor. I think that was 2021 to 2023. So that's right. Thank you for your service on that. First of all, what made you want to join the council? I mean, that is not a job I would think, yes, it seems like a bit of thankless job to me. So what made you want to join and then serve as Mayor? What do you think your achievements were? When I stood for the council, a lot of people, I think, you often do these things because someone asks you to do it.

and I was encouraged by a few people to consider it and I thought it would be a really good way of serving the community. At the time I was a school governor and I thought being a councillor was very much a step in the same sort of direction. Yes, it's political and you have to stand for a political party or as an independent, but your primary job as a councillor is to serve everyone who's elected you and then to help try and run the council in a way that benefits the community that you live in.

as much as you can and it's harder at times and I wouldn't say it's all fun and games but actually by and large that is what being a counsellor is so it was a reasonable expectation and that's why I've continued to do it. I've been very lucky that I've been re-elected each time I've stood and so I've had that opportunity to keep serving in different roles and it was back in 2020, right at the beginning of 2020 before it all changed that

I was approached and it was suggested to me I might want to serve as deputy mayor and then after that I had the opportunity to serve as the mayor and it was a whirlwind. I absolutely loved it. I'm not saying I don't miss it because that makes it sound very ungrateful because it was the most amazing experience but it's something you probably want to do for a period and then hand on to the next person because it is an incredible and all-encompassing kind of role. I can imagine. Now

Maria Lloyd (04:36.46)
while you've been on the council, how has it changed would you say over last 15 years? I imagine Reading has grown and changed in its consistency? Yes, yeah absolutely. mean one of the things is when you're looking internally as a councillor at you know ensuring that the council is as effective as it can be, it has been an incredibly challenging time. So I was elected in 2010 and so we've had huge financial challenges as every council has. It's been

There's a lot of things happened internally, but representing Whitley, for example, which is the ward I represent, there's been a huge amount of building work there and actually the boundaries have changed as well. So people I used to represent now are represented by a different ward because the number of houses built just in my own ward has been phenomenal. So we now have Kennet Island, which was just a couple of hundred people when I was first elected and Green Park Village didn't exist at all a few years ago.

The station's opened. There's just been so many changes. What has stayed the same in many ways though is I very much feel, Whitley, has a real sense of community and that hasn't changed. There's people who I've known the whole time. I've been a counsellor, new people coming in as well, but it feels very much like a long-term home for people, which I really love.

Let's go over from your political side to Holybrook Associates, which you founded in 2015. Now that provides accountancy services primarily for not-for-profits organisations, charities. So why did you decide to open your accountancy agency? Yeah, so I qualified as an accountant in my early 20s and like a lot of people worked in a larger business, I was very lucky to work for a big training company, BPP.

still has a big office here in Reading. Fantastic place to work. But after I had my children, things changed a little bit for me and I wanted to actually run my own training. BPP is very focused on training people to become accountants, but I was thinking, actually a lot of these skills would be really useful for small business owners, charity leaders. I should train people how to use financial skills. And what was interesting to me, I guess, was in this first couple of years that

Maria Lloyd (06:58.304)
Yes, there was some people who wanted that and I still offer that training through organizations like Read Involuntary Action, but there was a whole lot of people who'd come on my course and then say, that's great, can you be our accountant? And I would say, no, no, that's not what I do. But I learned actually there's a need for this and it's a skill I can offer. And I work, as you say, with probably more than half of my clients are now not-for-profits, but I also work with some businesses who I would say are businesses that have a heart.

Some of them are larger than others. Some of them have turnover in the millions. Some have turnover below a hundred thousand, but they all have in common is that they're doing something which they absolutely passionately believe in. And being an accountant and working with those people is a real privilege because you get to see the nuts and bolts of a business, how it works, what it really values, not just the kind of PR, what it's really putting its priorities into, and you get to help them achieve those priorities. So it's a great role.

I hadn't thought of that before but yes I suppose the company's finances really say a lot about the company where they're putting the money. I hadn't thought of that before. What financial challenges would you say that small independent businesses face and what services do you provide to help them with those? I think a lot of small businesses, some of them it'll be costs in the same way as an individual person. We've all faced inflation over the last few years.

And some particular costs have gone up particularly high, highly for small businesses that have premises. They've really struggled with the fuel bills because there wasn't the same protections for businesses as there were for individual households. We've also seen insurance costs going up a lot. So often it's costs, but I also see a lot of challenge for small businesses, especially those early days businesses when you're just getting going and trying to understand what your market is. It's actually quite often.

an issue around looking at prices and what should they be charging, how do they get sufficient volume versus getting a sufficient price for each sale they make. And as an accountant, my background is actually a management account. So I do offer all the normal services that you might imagine an accountant does, your VAT return, your payroll, your annual accounts. But as a management accountant, one of the things I can do, and actually I was doing it before we speaking for one of my clients,

Maria Lloyd (09:22.284)
is have a look at how you're performing and if you have a budget, how are you doing compared with budget? What areas are doing well? What areas are struggling? Those kind of decisions are difficult for people to make alone and sometimes you just need either it's expertise or sometimes it's even just having someone who's slightly on the sidelines, not right in the middle of the game, who can see what's going on and help you work that through and being trusted to do that is a real privilege.

That's quite apt actually, because I know one of your talks is on pricing. So for business or small business owners, I'll emphasise that, who are listening, could you please give them a few tips? The first thing I would say is if you're a very small business and let's say you don't even employ anybody, it's you on your own. The biggest problem I see over and over again is undervaluing your costs. So not including all your costs in working out how much to charge and particularly not valuing the time of the owner.

If you imagine what would you be earning in your day job if you had not started your business and gone back into the profession that you had had in a corporate life, you'd have a salary. Business owners often don't really think that their salary is a real cost of the business or that they should consider their salary. And it's sort of crazy because you end up sometimes with the person who's the worst paid in a business is the owner of the business. And so when you're doing your pricing,

Of course, you have to understand that you may take a financial hit when you start a business. We all do. I did. But when you're planning and pricing, you need to take into account that you've got to pay your salary. And then the other thing that I would say, and this might be surprising coming from an accountant who's supposed to all be about numbers and spreadsheets, is that you've got to find a way of taking the emotional side out. And this is where the accountancy bit comes in, because I think it's quite

difficult emotionally to price. So I was sitting down with someone who was starting their business earlier in the week and she was asking me, how do I deal with this pricing? I said, well, what do people in your industry charge and what are your costs? And by talking things through and having a rationale, it takes away the emotion. And I actually advised her to create a price list, even this early point. And sometimes it's hard to create a price list because you think your product is unique or that every client is different.

Maria Lloyd (11:46.348)
And let me tell you, every client of mine is different. have coming up 100 clients, every single one of them has different needs, but I still have a price list and I treat it like Lego. So I can build almost anything for my clients. There's some things I can't build. That's fine. They're not my client. That person has to find someone else. There's lots of different things I can build with my Lego pieces, but I know what each of those pieces is. So if you asked me to quote to you, okay, I want three people on payroll.

I'm not that registered, I need my annual accounts and I want to have a quarterly check-in to talk about how the business is doing, I could build that for you even though I can't actually think of a client I have who has that exact structure of service. And I would hugely emphasise that that will save you time, it will increase your profit and I think almost the most important part of it is it will reduce your stress levels. I love this idea of Lego pricing, I think that's a great tip.

I know you mean about the emotion, because I suppose ideally someone is starting a business, a small independent business, because they have a passion for it. They love it. That's what they want to do and they want to help and serve people. they don't really want to have a cost for themselves. They think, well, I'm doing it because I enjoy it and I don't want to be charged in too much. So yeah, I can imagine that that mental block is a big one that they've got to get around initially. How do you actually, I mean, you said you've got a hundred clients there.

How do you manage to find them? How do you promote your services and find the right clients, I'll say, to work with you? So I have struggled with this at times just because particularly as you mentioned some of the time I've had quite a lot of demands on my time particularly around politics or indeed my family life as well. We know we're all human beings with rounded lives and these days most of my clients, I think almost all my new clients come from referrals.

so their existing clients or people who I know who either see me talk or who know what I do and trust me enough to say, you need an accountant, why don't you contact Rachel? And that's particularly happens in the charity sector, but it also happens a lot with small businesses as well. People ask each other, don't they? And that trust really helps. The other thing I've started doing is when a client says something particularly nice to me, I'll often say, look, would you mind giving me a Google review?

Maria Lloyd (14:08.876)
because again, that will help spread that trust. But I think a lot of it does come down to that network. Something I'm going to be thinking about for next year actually is how do I go further? How do I grow? I'm looking to add another member to my team in the next six, seven months. And obviously I can only do that if I have more clients. So it's a sort chicken and egg situation that. Exciting times ahead for you then, but yes, I appreciate that must be difficult. If you want to...

And I think lots of people have that blocked out there. They want to grow, but in order to do that, need more clients. You don't get more clients until you grow. I know you mentioned this slightly before. What financial advice would you give to anyone who is just starting out their small independent business? Yeah. So I think the first thing I'd say is thinking about it early is absolutely the right thing. So if you're someone who's thinking, I need to think about this, you've already jumped the first hurdle.

I've mentioned some of my tips about pricing, but I think there's also some very basic bread and butter things to think about. just understanding what the rules are, for example, should you be a sole trader or a limited company? I think it's quite a good idea to make that decision. It's not that you can't go back on that decision, but to make that decision consciously and early on. Thinking about how you deal with remuneration, that's just paying yourself. So if you're running a limited company, are you going to set up payroll?

Are you going to use dividends? What are the ways you're going to pay yourself to make sure that you're staying on the right side of things? And understanding the rules that might come in quicker than you expect. So for example, when I talk to someone setting up a business and say to them, well, when your turnover gets to £90,000, you're going to need to register for VAT. That's the current rate. It might change, of course, in the coming weeks. But if you have that as your awareness, you might think, well, £90,000 is a lot of money. That's a long time away.

It's surprising how quickly a business will get to that level of turnover because that's turnover, not profit. So if you're a two person business, almost guaranteed, you're probably going to start getting to that point. So all of those things just need to be something you're aware of. And then very practically, I would make sure that you log your income and your expenditure from day one. In fact, almost from before day one, because you might have set up costs before you start actually trading. And that will make your life so much easier.

Maria Lloyd (16:28.48)
It will save you money with your accountant. It will possibly mean you pay less tax because you're recording things correctly. So it's easier to do your tax return properly. So overall, I tend to recommend to people that they do use accounting software and there's a lot of really good stuff out there. But even if they just use a spreadsheet and log it that way, just make sure you keep on top of it because what you don't want is a year and a bit into running your business. You've got a whole year of transactions. You've no idea.

what your profitability is. You've no idea what your tax bill is going to be and you've also got probably two or three days work which you probably don't want to be spending doing your accounts or you could pay someone to do it which again you probably don't want to be doing. Probably not in the very early stages. You may not want to commit in this but for someone who's just starting out do you have a couple of suggestions for the accountancy software that you just mentioned? Yes, so I'm not on commission I promise but I generally promote zero that's spelt with an

X, so it's XERO. They do special offers all the time where you can have a trial and see how you get on, but it integrates with almost every bank account that you're likely to be using, so you can import transactions. And the idea of XERO is that it's supposed to be something that you can either use with an accountant's help or you can self-serve or a combination. So I have clients who have a monthly little bit of check-in service from us, but they're doing

80-90 % of the bookkeeping themselves, which is very cost effective. And I'm not sure they could do that with every kind of software. There are others. And the other thing I would say is if somebody has experience of using another piece of software that they like and they know how to use from a previous role, they may well want to go with that one. So I have quite a few clients on QuickBooks who really like QuickBooks because they know it and they're familiar with it and they like that. But if you've never used accountancy software before, I would say zero is the one.

Brilliant. And for anyone, like I said, who is just starting out, where would you recommend they find out the answers to all these questions like that are suitable for them? Because I know in theory we can Google anything, we can find anything, but very quickly I think it becomes very overwhelming. So is there somewhere they can go for advice or just to find this information to help work through? Yeah. So I actually think the government website has got some good stuff on it around the kind of nuts and bolts stuff.

Maria Lloyd (18:50.606)
If you decide to register as a sole trader or you decide to register as a limited company, there is a webpage which will just take you through step by step what do you need to do to make sure you're on the right side of the law. In terms of business advice and support, there's a bit of a patchwork of support but I would definitely recommend if you're local to Reading getting involved in something like the Reading Business Network which is run by the CIC that supports Readings Economic.

group. There's a lot of very supportive people in that network group. I don't get to go as often as I want, but it's a lovely group of people. And just finding your niche, you you'll often find that people in your own industry can actually be really supportive. So you might think all their competitors, but what I found is that a lot of my best contacts are other accountants. I get referred work by other accountants or I might refer work that's not appropriate for me, but it's a good potential client for someone else to someone else in my network.

So do kind of try and find out who your industry group is, either formal or informal. And then if anyone wants to sign up to my monthly newsletter, they're really welcome to. I primarily aim it at existing clients, so it's not really selling services. You'll be pleased to know, but anyone's welcome to sign up to it. It's no skin off my nose if people want to read it. It's a mix of, for example, this coming one will be focused on the budget and what does it mean if you're a small business. I have one for small businesses and one for charities.

have slightly different needs but it will be just updates, things that I've spotted that I think will be useful to know, either national news like budget or sometimes it's local things like I was encouraging my clients to look at hosting a Reading University intern last month. Fascinating. Thank you for that. think that was really useful advice. You've already mentioned that next year you're planning or hoping to get another member of your team. Do you have any other plans for the future?

I'm really hoping to build Holybrook into kind of the most trusted accountancy practice that's focused on what I call businesses with a heart and not-for-profits in the Berkshire area. And that's a sort of long-term goal, maybe a five, 10-year goal. But in the next sort of year or so, I'm hoping to continue to grow. Our turnover's grown quite a lot this year. I'm hoping to continue to grow that and also develop the services. So I'm always looking at how can I improve

Maria Lloyd (21:14.22)
my systems and my services for my existing clients so that I'm more effective. And as I say, I'm looking to recruit another member of the team. We're a small team at the moment and I'd like to get another person in partially because I think it will help with our resilience for our existing client base. So if I'm on holiday, there's enough people around to cover for me, for example. I think that's very wise advice. I mean, clearly with...

council work and family as well. There is a lot going on so to have someone there to cover you, think that's really beneficial. Do you have any takeaways or highlights that you'd like to leave our listeners with? I guess what I'd say is that it's okay to fail in business sometimes. I haven't mentioned that, but when I look at what I've done over the last, say, 15 years, I've failed at a lot of things and that sounds strange to say and maybe people don't like always to admit that, but I'm old enough now that I can shrug it off.

And you might think, well, it's a strange thing to say that you've failed when you've got to be the mayor of the most amazing town in the country and you run a business and you employ people, you never won awards and just become fellow of my institute and that kind of thing. But actually that's all the stuff that people put out on the kind of shiny social media behind the scenes. There's a lot of failure and it can be a big failure. Like I ran for parliament and didn't get elected and that's kind of public. Or it can be a private failure that you didn't serve a client.

where you'd have liked to or you didn't understand some system properly and you wasted a whole load of time trying to do something that would turn out not to be a good thing. So there's lots of failures that you can have in life and it's okay because actually we wouldn't be human if we didn't have failures and in the end it all comes back to that tapestry idea of it all weaves together and you end up hopefully with a really good picture. So I think it's just take a risk a little bit with plans.

course, because I'm an accountant, have a spreadsheet, but take the risk as well. That would be my tip. That really speaks to me, Rachel, because obviously when everything you said from having a business with a heart to your competitors are actually, they can be really useful for you. You don't need to see them as the enemy and what you've just said there, I think there's a lot of that. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate your time. And yeah, hopefully there'll be a lot of people coming to you now for lots of advice.

Maria Lloyd (23:36.526)
Well not all at once.