An Update & Two New Projects

It’s been over 3 months since I left Chaser. It’s time for an update, and to share two exciting new projects.

What I’m Up To

I’ve been advising a number of early-stage entrepreneurs on an informal basis over recent months. One is Andrew Jordon, who I’ve gotten to know well over the last two years from his work building the Fathom team in the UK. For the last 9 months, Andrew has been building Connect4 to help accountants hold personal, productive and professional online client meetings. I’ve become an avid user of Connect4. I’ve been hugely impressed by the product, the team and Andrew’s judgment and rate of learning as an entrepreneur. I’m excited to share that I have formally joined Connect4 on an ongoing basis as a consultant, working with the team to develop the product and grow the business. Stay tuned for more from me next week on why I’m so excited about Connect4 (and why you should be too!).

I’m consulting with a number of software providers on an ongoing as well as an ad hoc project basis, with a particular focus on those looking to work with accountants to reach their clients. I’m excited to be working with the MadeSimplr team. They have a great product to help accountants prepare R&D tax credit claims for their clients. It’s really exciting to see more and more firms take advantage of the opportunity R&D presents, both for themselves and their clients.

I’m volunteering with a number of causes I’m passionate about. I’m excited to tutor with The Access Project, which helps bright students from disadvantaged backgrounds access top universities. I’m also qualifying as a Mental Health First Aider with MHFA England, a great initiative I’d highly recommend exploring. Finally, I’m loving mentoring a Young Enterprise team from Brunel University, who are launching a business as part of their course.

My wife, Jess, and I are expecting our third child, a daughter (our twin sons were four on Sunday), in December. We’ve decided there is only room for one new baby in the house at a time. So the next startup baby will need to wait until the second half of 2021! My plan is to continue consulting until then. I’ve found the freemium approach to consulting works well. I’m always happy to spend a couple of hours for free to offer my insights and perspective. So if you think I could help you, please do get in touch. Details of how to contact me are on my LinkedIn profile.

Partnering With Accountants

Which brings us to the first new project. I’ve had many conversations over the past 3 months with software providers looking to work with accountants to reach their clients. I’ve also had many conversations with accountants. There is a huge opportunity for software providers to partner with accounting firms more effectively.

I am writing “Partnering With Accountants”: the definitive content for software providers seeking to reach small business customers through their accountants. For the series, I draw on my experience as an accountant, my 7 years as Founder & CEO at Chaser and the insights of accounting firms themselves. It will contain a rich assortment of conceptual and practical insights to help equip software providers with the knowledge to partner more fruitfully with accountants and reach their small business clients.

I will be posting the series on LinkedIn in the coming weeks. To ensure you don’t miss any of the posts, you can sign up to receive them here. 

Lunch And Learn

I’m also taking advantage of this time to learn. I learn best by reading. And have set myself a goal of reading a book a week. To learn is to understand. And the best way to understand is to teach. I am combining this principle with one of my favourite things we did in the early days of Chaser as a partially remote team: Lunch and Learn. Each week, one of the team would present over lunch on something they’d learnt. It was a great way to learn about a new area and get that team member’s unique perspective on it.

I will be launching my own Lunch and Learn - holding weekly live lunchtime video calls. They will last 30 minutes with me presenting my key learnings from the non-fiction book I’ve read that week. You will get the key learnings in a fraction of the time that it would take you to read the book yourself. There will then be time for questions at the end. To give you a flavour, the current pipeline includes: The War of Art, Traction, High Output Management and Influence. I’m trying to only read books that I believe can help me succeed in life and work. There will be the opportunity for you to influence what I read and when.

For the avoidance of doubt, there is no charge for joining a Lunch and Learn. I will get as much (if not more) from them as you and they will be the forcing factor to make sure I maintain my reading target.

More information on Lunch and Learn is coming soon. If you’re interested in hearing more please let me know here. (Recordings of each session will also be available.)