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Founder@ Interview
Interview with Gary Green
“Good advice can save you time and money and make you money through knowing where to find finance or tax schemes or other insights. Don’t expect to make millions and millions overnight but a steady, incremental improvement in your turnover, number of clients, gross profit and net profit by lowering your overall costs..” – Gary Green
Today we feature Gary Green, the founder at Key Business Consultants LLP. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.
Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
I am currently a 40-year-old chartered accountant at my own practice www.keybusinessconsultants.co.uk with 12 staff and over 300 clients. I am also a digital marketing director at www.keybusinessmarketing.co.uk. I have four children and live in North West London.
A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?
I had qualified as a chartered accountant in 2008 at 27 years old at the start of the financial crisis at that time. I tried to make partner at a few smaller accounting practices but found that they only wanted me to bring clients in but did not really want to reward me with actual partnership. So I set up my own practice in 2013.
Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?
Key Business Consultants LLP is a general practice chartered accountancy firm with an office in Kilburn, London. We specialist in SEIS and EIS tax reliefs for investors to get income tax credits for investing in shares in new or early stage companies.
We provide VAT, payroll, incorporation, company secretarial, management accounts, company accounts and tax returns, personal sole trader accounts and tax returns, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, probate, stamp duty (for land and shares) and property taxes, and research and development tax credits with other creative tax reliefs, and trusts compliance and consultancy.
What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?
I always was very active and quick with whatever I did from a young age. Unfortunately, I dislocated my neck as a 12 year old falling off a quad bike driving too fast. I landed on the ground upside down with a bang and heard a pop in my neck and it felt like my head was screwed on wrong!
Despite this there wasn’t any pain as such and we tried to just see if it would settle down being that I was young. But over the next few years I slowly began to notice a atrophy of the right shoulder and the right hand side of the body generally.
As my trapezius disappeared, I started to get a fold from the shoulder across the peck as my shoulder dropped.
Over the next 10 year, I los most of the right hand side of my body: neck, shoulder, arm, latissimus, latissimus dorsi, peck, hip, leg strength etc.
At the age of 21, I was having complication with my heart speeding up and slowing down randomly, hot and cold flushes, extreme anxiety, numbness, dizziness, extreme migraines and I suddenly had an idea to see a chiropractor to deal with the headaches.
After about three months of sessions at 3 times a week, I was walking home and felt a flick on my neck which felt like a rubber band had hit my neck. Immediately I felt sensation returning to my arm even seeing muscles start to reinflate and orange and red colours sparkling in my eye as I did not realise that I was practically blind in my right eye, and I thought that I finally might have a chance of recovery.
My school grades had gone from 70%+ results as I was a scholar at school down to 40% at the start of uni.
By the end of uni I got a BA 2:2 and an MA Merit and then I qualified as a chartered accountant three years later.
Before the chiropractor, I thought I would not make it past 25 years of age.
This is my motivation.
Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?
In business, I was let go by a very unscrupulous accounting practice just after the birth of my first child.
It was 2010 and the economy was barely better due to the crisis so I had to go out and earn some money. I am not work shy so I went and did bookkeeping or whatever someone needed for quite cheap rates.
I was happy if I got £20 or £50 per day because I knew that this was covering basic household costs. The mortgage company agreed to a small holiday payment period too.
Fortunately, due to the advances in technology like Skype, Dropbox, Laptops, online bookkeeping systems like Xero etc an also HMRC moving most of their systems online, I was able to travel around to businesses and provide on the spot help and set them up for what they needed for payroll or VAT etc.
So within 3-6 months I was earning enough to not need to consider another employment. I guess that I was lucky because a lot of freelancer websites popped up and this allowed instant contact with people looking for work to be done and this allowed me to get an income and some really good clients.
I think that I have been quite nimble in adjusting to everything that came my way. Whatever was needed I did. One asset that I possess is the ability to estimate the time involved in completing a task and this allowed me to spend sufficient time when the business was growing over the weekends and evenings but also spending time with the growing family.
Looking back, it is difficult to understand how so much was achieved.
If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
I would suggest to be a little less assertive as a younger person and to consider risks more closely when making my decisions. Being bold is good when done in a considered way!
I tell my staff and others that if they asked the numerous people that I had worked for and with over the first few years of my career and they would likely say that I was not a good accountant or that I didn’t have capabilities to make me successful. Bosses who wanted to dominate me and managers who didn’t want to really progress their charges etc.
Plus I was still recovering from my injury and I still had major issues with my sight and eyes which weren’t aligned or being controlled by the nerves, and periods of disorientation or anxiety, or simply being unable to keep pace with the topics of conversation as I wasn’t processing the information quickly enough.
It was a very difficult time and I just had to take the fall out on the chin and just focus on my recovery.
But within one or two years of my own business and I was earning more than the partners of these Top50 accountancy firms except perhaps the highest earning partners.
That pattern has continued since the first year and I now have 12 staff and a consistent income with a mature business and well paid staff in a supporting, team environment.
This is a tax video really
We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?
Our business, like all others, relies on staff. Most of our staff have been with the business for three years on average. So this gives us a consistency and growing internal asset.
The three main softwares that we use are Office365 (and suite products like Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams, etc), Xero as a bookkeeping package and WorkflowMax (Xero’s practice manager software) and the other mainstay since I started my business is Dropbox which allowed me to be mobile while storing my data securely with a backup in my server and laptop at the same time.
What do you know now that you wished you had known before?
I think that I have been quite nimble in adjusting to everything that came my way.
Whatever was needed I did. One asset that I possess is the ability to estimate the time involved in completing a task and this allowed me to spend sufficient time when the business was growing over the weekends and evenings but also spending time with the growing family.
Looking back, it is difficult to understand how so much was achieved.
What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?
I had started my business and had four staff working from my home in a converted garage. When I first saw enough profit in the business to take on a lease in 2017, this was a proud moment because it was a big commitment. But my the end of the year, I had doubled the number of staff and the office was big enough for that increase. So it was worth it.
I am also proud that I am able to support my staff through their training and career progression and through their personal life developments.
What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?
I would like to increase my turnover which is an income and profit increase strategy (not to stay still) but also to see how far up the accountancy league ranked by turnover I can go and compete with the bigger practices, some of which I had worked for!
To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?
I would say to just do it. If you start then you will see quite clearly if it will work or not. Sometimes research can reveal when something will not work and you should just consider that it was ‘a good idea’ but not one that will make money or sometimes you need to spend a bit of money to find out that the idea doesn’t work.
Just make sure that the costs involved are low and affordable to you at the time in case the idea doesn’t work.
Always have a good advisor and someone who has been successful themselves but with some technical skills behind their success. Good advice can save you time and money and make you money through knowing where to find finance or tax schemes or other insights.
Don’t expect to make millions and millions overnight but a steady, incremental improvement in your turnover, number of clients, gross profit and net profit by lowering your overall costs.
Keep track of your financials with a good bookkeeping system and manage your own bookkeeping when you start out.
This knowledge is invaluable as you grow and will allow you to pour through your own financial data without needing someone else, and the costs, to tell you what has happened. Financial literacy.
“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Key Business Consultants LLP”
To learn more about Key Business Consultants LLP Visit www.KeyBusinessConsultants.co.uk
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