Episode Transcript
Malcolm Palmer (00:09.932)
Hi everyone, welcome to the...
Malcolm Palmer (00:33.048)
Hi everyone, welcome to the first recording of a weekly video based on my book, Making Your Business Less Dependent on You. Some of you might have watched the podcast that we did last year before my amazing marketing manager went on maternity leave. They were probably a bit long and I probably broke the rule in my book, really, by making that particular bit of marketing a little bit too dependent on me. Anyway, we thought we'd do some much shorter recordings starting with this one. So welcome to my home office. Now, let me take you back to the first of March 2025.
This was the first day in 30 years where I was no longer the managing button of A4G, the accountancy practice that I've built up since 1995. The change that day was more symbolic than anything else because over the previous three or four years I've been slowly handing over the reins to the amazing team that I've watched grow up and mature for decades in some cases. And I wasn't retiring. I love the work I do and all the people I work with. I just wanted a little bit more me time. But the thing about the first of March,
was that the buck no longer stopped with me. Yeah, we get a few problems and people come to me for advice, but they deal with the problem rather than the problem being mine. The truth is, I could have sold my accountancy practice many times over the past few years. There's a huge amount of private equity money piling into our industry, hoovering up practices like it's going out of fashion. But that would have been a, start again, but that would have been a betrayal to all the people who have followed the path
through from school leaver to qualifying as a chartered or certified accountant, building up a client base, becoming partner and taking on key management responsibilities in the firm. We've been fortunate enough to operate for 30 years without ever having a year in which we didn't grow. Part of that is because growth is built into our DNA roles and systems that you'll find out more about when you read my book or watch these videos. When did it all begin? Well, it all started about two years in.
We were still part of a bigger firm and we're doing pretty well and signing up lots of new clients. But there were too many little things that were going wrong. One particular day, I just apologized to a client who called me about a letter that we sent him. The letter referred to a form which should have been in the envelope, but it wasn't. My reaction was to have a little grumble at the member of the team that was responsible for that. But those things seem to be happening too often. I had a conversation with one of the partners at our head office and he referred to this as growing pains.
Malcolm Palmer (03:03.488)
I stood on this for weeks. It just seemed such a simplistic answer. But the implication was that once we'd grown out of these problems, everything would run smoother. But what if we grew a bit more? Or what if the members of my team that grew into their jobs, up to left and had to be replaced by someone else? I felt that I'd be spending my whole career apologizing to people for forms not being in envelopes. Coincidentally, at that point, I'd stumbled on a fantastic book called The E-Myth Revisited.
by Michael Gerber. The E-Myth is short for Entrepreneurial Myth, which is that people run businesses, whereas in reality they work in a business that they also own. And so the journey began. I did everything in the wrong order from that point, but I got there in the end. What these videos in my book aim to do is to help you get things in the right order. I actually started writing the book in 2012. I'd always wanted to write a business book and I had a passion for this subject of making your business less dependent on you.
So I wrote a story. It was about a fictional family called the Bright family and in particular the guy who ran that business, David Bright. There's a little bit of me in David, but there's also a little bit me in some of his family members and also his accountant Matt Peve. There's a lot of my clients in David as well. When you read the book, you'll get to know these main characters and you'll probably recognise yourself as well. Almost every situation or reaction from characters are things that I've witnessed in my clients.
sometimes over and over again. I have to be honest and say back in 2012 I ran out of steam a little bit. I couldn't quite work out how to finish the book. I put it to one side and promised myself that I would come back to it one day. And then in the autumn of 2024 I had a chat with Emma and Josh who had been slowly taking responsibilities from the A4G and we agreed that in six months time they would take over as managing partners. Six months. How was I going to mark this? I know.
I better write that book about making your business less dependent on you. This time I came at it from a theory point of view. All the technical things, all the tips, everything I could think of that would help somebody make their business less dependent on that.
Malcolm Palmer (05:15.35)
all the technical things, all the tips, everything I could think of that would help somebody make their business less dependent on them. Let's get it all in a book. And then I went back to the store and revisited the Bright family and I realised how much I liked them. I realised how much I'd enjoyed helping clients like them over the years. I realised I enjoyed them help achieve the goals they wanted to achieve, especially if that was to make their business less dependent on them. Fortunately, I found the time to get the book written.
It's got all the theory you will ever need, all sorts of templates and checklists. And it's got the Bright family in their journey. I think you'll like them. Well, most of them anyway. You can buy a hard copy on Amazon or you can download it for free by going to our website. OK, enough about the book. On the next video I'm going to tell you where to begin and, spoiler alert, it's not the same place for everyone
