Liam's LinkedIn profile

Growing up, my dad was running a business and it was doing well but the accountant did not give him sufficient information and he lost the business. It was a very difficult time and my dad worked very long days to keep a roof over our heads. Despite that, I’d always loved business and accountancy was a route into that, and now I’m really focussed on making sure that none of my clients go through what my dad went through – that they get the advice they need throughout their journey.

I started my career with an AAT accountancy apprenticeship in a small practice - I loved the structure and earning some money whilst learning. I moved to another practice to do my ACCA qualification, and then to Azets to manage their North Wales team. Managing a team of 13 remotely was tough but we did very well and improved our efficiency by £250,000. I was headhunted into Haines Watts Northwest to do a partner acceleration programme but after several delays, I decided to leave and set up Elevate Accountancy.

I felt there was a gap in accountancy and that good customer service was rare. It’s understandable – accountants haven’t been valued in the past and have devalued their services pushing fees down. When fees are that low, you can’t give the customer service levels that clients might expect so I saw a gap in the market to offer good customer service with higher fees. I wanted to work with fewer clients but more frequently with each one. We do customer surveys, feedback sessions, Google reviews – we have a real focus on customer satisfaction, and we’ve been achieving 100% so far but if we do get some negative feedback then it will give us something to work on. We’re transparent so when we get the survey results in each month, we then send them out to all our clients. If there was to be a negative comment, then we would explain what we’re doing to fix it. All practices go through difficult periods but if you’re transparent with your customer base then if you are going through any issues, then they’ll understand. 

My goal was to cover my salary in my first year and hit £50,000 turnover – which many people told me was ambitious – but Elevate has just had its first birthday and we’ve achieved £350,000 gross recurring revenue in our first year.

Having a niche is great for marketing but makes for a higher risk profile so I have several niches within my practice. Franchising is our biggest niche but the care sector is also a niche – domiciliary care, supported living care, care homes and children-supported living care. There is a tight margin in certain types of care so it’s very focussed on numbers - seeing the improvements you can make is very rewarding. It is a specialised field but once you have an understanding of the sector, you can give tailored business advice.

Setting up and growing Elevate has been a good learning experience. I teamed up with some local independent sole practitioners – all people that I used to work with -and we’re all in a WhatsApp group together where we share advice. We meet up over food to discuss any issues in our practices – it’s usually the same issues that we’re all facing. It’s good to have people to lean on as it does sometimes get lonely running a practice.

I’m increasingly seeing younger accountants setting up their own practices. I think that’s because private equity has come into the accountancy world and taken away the customer-centric approach and it has become more corporate. I think people are wanting to escape that and go back to traditional customer relationship focussed accountancy so they’re making the jump into starting their own practices.

I know that recruitment is a national issue, but I feel that the North West and North Wales really struggle for good young talent. I’m happy to go across the country to find the right talent but so far, the people I’ve recruited are people I’ve worked with in the past. We have fully flexible working arrangements for the team so there are no core hours, and they can work whenever they want provided they hit their individual KPIs. We have some team members whose partners work shifts, so they’ll work the same hours as their partners and then the family can spend more time together. We all work remotely but we meet together once a month. 

There was a real focus on automation and systems processes from the outset before we launched. Everything is automated, and we are a fully digital practice. We’ve started using AI and want to use it more. I’m hoping that it can do the analytical work and produce reports on the data to save us time to be able to give more strategic advice. I know some people are worried about the advent of AI but with all tech, you use it to your own advantage. You have to have the knowledge to know that it’s working so it won’t replace accountants, it will help offer better service.

I love travelling the world – it’s much harder to do that now I’m running a practice but I love exploring and learning other people’s cultures, and meeting people from different countries. Eventually I’ll develop the team so that they manage the day-to-day whilst I’m more focussed on strategy.