You're listening to cubicle to CEO episode 223. This conversation gave me so many revelations about my role as an employer, Rachel Harris, founder of the StriveX umbrella of brands and Accountant_She, has recruiting, hiring and retention down to a science. As a disruptor in the accounting industry, she not only has created a business that is growing by $100,000 in recurring revenue every month, but it's also cultivating a thriving company culture that has people clamoring to sign up for a waitlist to get hired by her while others in her industry are facing a recruitment crisis in the UK, and paying 1000s in recruitment fees. And today's case study you'll hear the content strategy Rachel's use to attract 149 candidates to join her jobs waitlist, the top to bottom hiring process that has allowed her to give out offer letters to future employees six months in advance, and the generous benefits package her employees rave about. Rachel gives us a roadmap for how to attract more superstars to join your team hire before you're desperate for help and build a company culture that boasts a 100% retention rate for employees hired from the waitlist.
Welcome to cubicle to CEO the podcast. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. I quit my job without a backup plan and bootstrapped my first $300 freelance project into $2 million in revenue by age 28. On the show, you'll hear weekly case study interviews with leading entrepreneurs and CEOs who share one specific strategy that successfully grew their business revenue. Skip the expensive and time consuming learning curve of testing everything yourself by borrowing what actually works from the best and brightest mentors. You'll also get a front row seat to my founders journey through transparent income reports and behind the business solo episodes, subscribe now so we can grow together every Monday.
Hey, friends, I am excited to introduce you to Rachel Harris, who's coming to us from across the pond. And I am really looking forward to this case study with Rachel because it's a topic we haven't covered much before on the podcast all about recruitment and attracting top tier talent and how you can really utilize that actually, as not only a way to grow your business, but also to save you money. So I'll get into the details of Rachel's case study in just a moment. But first, Rachel, we want to hear your cubicle the CEO story, what was the catalyst that led you to make that leap into entrepreneurship?
Oh, my gosh, good question. Big question to start with. So hi, everybody. My name is Rachel and I'm a disrupter in the accounting industry. And so I'm disrupting what it means to be an accountant, what it feels like to have an accountant and what being an exceptional employer in the accounting industry looks like as well. I did not go to university. I started my career as an apprentice baby... are apprenticeships called apprenticeships in the States.
I think maybe trade schools might be like our closest term for that, but I'm sure there are some that refer to it as an apprenticeship as well.
Yeah. And so like historically, apprenticeships were always something that vocational careers did. So if you wanted to be a bricklayer or a hairdresser or a beautician, you will do an apprenticeship. And so I was really one of the first wave of apprentices that did sort of professional services as an apprenticeship. And so yeah, I was a young carer I'm, I've always been a carer for my identical twin sister. And so going into university, and sort of like leaving the family home just would never have suited me. And so yeah, started earning three pounds an hour. So in the UK, the apprenticeship, minimum wage is a lot lower than the normal minimum wage because you're getting education at the same time as getting paid. And so yeah, when all of my friends went off to university, I was earning three pounds an hour. And from there, I discovered that I was quite unique as an accountant. I had this really bouncy ball personality, I was raised to always just help people and treat people how I wanted to be treated. And I just have a very, very caring, and sort of nurturing personality.
And so yeah, from there, I started collecting job titles as fast as I could. So went from an apprentice accountant to a junior accountant to an Accounts assistant to an accountant to a senior accountant, all the way up to finance director and then decided to go self employed we were in the middle of a pandemic. I just got my first mortgage with my husband James and decided it was a great time to quit my job because we just both so strongly believed that we could do things differently. And the pandemic highlighted a lot of sort of like financial behaviors and people that really sort of lit the fire in me of helping people providing people with financial education, lowering the barriers to financial education. So even just having a career in professional services changed my life by having access to financial education.
I was a charity shop, thrift shop kid, I got free school meals in the UK, because of the way our family dynamic was. And so actually just having access to financial education changed my life. And so seeing the way that that was sort of impacting people during the pandemic just lit a fire in me and James, we were seeing lots of people become self employed that had never even considered being self employed before maybe they'd been laid off work, or they'd been furloughed from work, which is a scheme in the UK where people were being paid to not work and just stay at home. So we just saw this huge wave of people becoming self employed for the first time and thought, actually, these people aren't searching on LinkedIn or the internet. For accountants, actually, they're searching on social media, how can we be at the forefront and catch this wave of people who are searching for an accountant on social media. And so three years ago @accountant_she was born. And since then, I have built a following of 50,000 people, my personal brand generates me six figures completely on its own, so I say her own completely on her own. So I do lots of like content creation and sponsorship deals, I do lots of webinars, events, networking, all the way through to sponsorship for events.
And then my accountancy practice in the last three years has scaled up to a million pounds. And we've got 17, full time members of staff. And one of the most unique elements that I'm really excited to get stuck into today has been how I've been able to leverage my personal brand, in an industry that has a recruitment crisis. So there is currently a recruitment crisis in the accounting industry. And I have an employee waiting list of 149 people waiting to join my firm.
Wow. And you know, that number has updated even since Yeah, booked you for the show, I was just looking at my notes. I think it was like 112, you know, when we first spoke. So that's incredible that you have a waiting list of 149 people who want to work for your business, especially like you said, during an accounting crisis, I do want to kind of just paint that picture of what that crisis is for our listeners. So we have a little bit more context going into this case study. What do you define as a recruiting crisis? Is this something that is specific to where you live? Is this something that you've noticed globally? Is this a years long issue is this a more current issue, just context or setup you can give us would be super helpful.
Of course, so two years before I was due to go to university. So two years before my year group went to university, the cost of going to university in the UK tripled. So I went from being 3000 pounds a year to being 9000 pounds a year, which basically meant unless you are willing to take on 30,000 pounds worth of debt, plus living expenses for three years, going to university just wasn't an option. So actually, we saw lots of people who normally would have gone to university if it was, you know, a third of the price actually chose not to go. And what we're seeing now, sort of 10 years after my year group at school went to university is there's a huge shortage of people working in professional services.
Alongside there being actually a boom of there are more self employed people who have demands for accountants, so the demand has gone up, the supply in that pipeline of new accountants has gone down, there is a very, very, very worldwide stereotype of what being an accountant is, which is a huge driving force, in who I am, as a person, my color scheme, my branding, there's such a strong stereotype. And I was actually told by a careers adviser not to become an accountant, because it was really boring. And just my goal, again, knowing that business owners search for accountants on social media, you know, people who are deciding what career to take, are also searching for that on social media. And so I create a lot of content about you know, how to know if you make a good accountant, how to decide what apprenticeship to do what what a traineeship would look like and offer a lot of that sort of extra career support as well.
But we're basically seeing an increase in demand alongside a sort of 10 year grumbling shortage of accountants. And so what that means is, my team have been offered job offers with no interview saying whatever you're getting paid at 20%. And I can get you a job for that. And so recruitment agents are charging as the owner of a firm I could pay 30 to 35% in somebody's annual salary as a placement fee to a recruitment agent in order to place that role. And so we did the numbers in the background and we've Yeah, we've saved over 100,000 pounds in recruitment fees by just investing in personal branding, investing in, like our benefits package is chef's kiss like, I am so passionate about treating the team to an incredibly high standard and doing it in a way that feels good. And so yeah, like doing it in a way that they come before any sort of profit is really important, but also doing it with, I did an MBA after I became an accountant. And I think so often, people who don't provide that level of benefits package.
And I think for me, actually, the reason cubicle to CEO was such an attractive podcast to me was because I think, for me, our business has scaled so rapidly, I still feel very much like I remember so vividly what it was like to be in the cubicle. Now I'm the CEO, like, actually, this is an employee driven firm. And so we pay for your gym membership, we have private medical, we go on an all inclusive all expenses paid holiday to Spain every year, like every single thing, everybody has access to therapy, we have flexible working work from anywhere hybrid working. I think for me, that cubicle to CEO piece is so important, because actually, it feels like yesterday, I was at the cubicle, and suddenly I'm the CEO, and I'm trying to run the business scale the business and fundamentally like breed a culture within the business that is run by the team.
Yeah, and, you know, that's not an easy thing to do, especially, like you said that the hyper growth that you have seen in such a short time period, I would love to know. So you you already referenced that you saved 100,000 pounds, give or take in recruitment fees by basically being an attractive company to work for and not having to go through a recruitment agency in order to recruit and attract talent to your firm. But I'm wondering, you said you did this to get ahead of a scaling issue. What was the scaling issue? In your business? Was it that you had too many clients and not enough staff essentially, to serve and deliver these counting needs to your clients? Was it something different? How did you anticipate going in, that you would need to hire and how early like how would you know that you need to hire? How much further ahead? Are you hiring in anticipation of your needs?
Cool. Okay, so from the point of recording today, I am recruited, as in I have got accountants who have accepted job offers and are waiting to hand their notice in as far ahead as six months. And so I've got two or three people at any given time that have been interviewed, have come into the office have met the team and have accepted job offers, but maybe just have four weeks notice. And so we just stay in open contact, we wait until, because now we're three years in now that we've got such a strong pipeline, it's literally like a tap that I can turn on and off. So we quote on average, 110,000 pounds of new work into the business every single month at the moment. And so I can literally forecast right, I'm going to need a new accountant there a new accountant there. For every two accountants, I need a new administrator. For every five accountants, I need a new manager, I can literally police the roles as far ahead. And then through sort of building great relationships with people having open conversations with people I can, we've actually just pulled one forward because we've made an internal promotion. And so we have that flexibility.
It's like playing chess at all times. But yeah, from the very beginning, once social media took off, and we had this huge volume of inquiries, we very quickly identified that we were either gonna have to open the doors to new clients, close them, hire, train, onboard, and then do the whole thing again, which is very clunky. It's quite stop start from an admin perspective. And I was actually on my honeymoon with James. And I was really like reflecting about my job and my role. And I thought, what if the business stresses me out the most. And it was recruitment, you only ever recruit when you're either over capacity, or in a very stressful situation, because maybe someone's left that you didn't want them to, or there's been a bit of HR drama and someone's left, you're generally only ever recruiting under stress and time pressure. And actually, fundamentally, that can make you make decisions that you wouldn't normally make, it can make you overlook things in candidates that you wouldn't normally do.
And also in 2023, I still believe candidates who are looking for a new job. Nobody talks about how much of a huge life decision changing jobs is. And so to be able to remove time and be very transparent about the role get them to come in and meet the team. We buddy everybody up with somebody who is either doing their role or in a similar sort of life situation to them. So if it's a parent, actually, I would want to have the founders leave the room which me and James do we buddy them up And they get to have a real conversation. Like, okay, I know they say it's flexible working. But what if my child said, can I go? So we brought him up, we leave the room, we let them have like a real open, you know, spill the tea sort of conversation with another member of staff, especially to avoid any, like Instagram versus reality, we have a following we share a lot of content behind the scenes, but actually, is that real? Am I going to turn up and Rachel has a resting bitchface? I don't know, I just want to check that. And so by encouraging all of those open conversations by getting people lined up, actually, we've been able to avoid any sort of like, we've been able to keep that consistency, but also say to members of staff who are thinking about accepting a job offer, when you take time out of it, people just make better decisions.
And an unexpected benefit of the waiting list is FOMO. Right? What 149 people waiting to join my firm, what are you missing out on, but also for the team. The team know that there are 149 people waiting to take that seat. And so the sort of like culture, camaraderie, the like, this is us, this is where we're going. You don't get get on a bus if you don't know where it's going. So we have like hugely strong culture, core values, we know the direction that we are taking the business and that really bonds, the team. And again, like as we've grown, nobody teaches you how to recruit, I certainly was not taught how to recruit, we get better with every single hire, we get better. So the day I'm recording this, we actually just had a member of staff who is joining in two weeks time, just come in for lunch, like she's quit her job, she's got a two week break, she just came in to play some board games, we're currently filming a Great British Bake Off Tiktok series. So she baked some cake for us. So awesome. We actually random fact, did this series last year. And we now have an ex winner of bakeoff as a client, because her algorithm brought us up in her Tiktok feed and she was like, I need an accountant.
That is so funny. I love the creativity of your brain. It's so fun for me to sit here and listen to how you think about I don't even want to call them problems, just just the the things that you have to go through as you grow your business. And I really love what you said about removing time from the equation. I think that's a really unique perspective of if time were not a factor, how would that change your decisions that you make as a business owner and on the employee side to like you said, I just kind of want to better understand the timing of things. And so the 149 person waitlist, it seems like recruitment is almost an ongoing practice in your business, right? Because you're removing time from the equation. And it's not like if someone is determined a good fit for your business or has accepted a job offer that they need to immediately transition into your business. So understanding that built in flexibility.
I have two questions first, for the waitlist of 149 people, how do you determine the order of the waitlist? Is it based on like the time that they first like I guess like early bird, right, like first come first serve where they're earliest to the table and you've had a conversation that they are first in line to get the next available job? Or is ordered determined differently? That's my first piece of the question. The second question is, for those who have already been given job offers and have accepted job offers, but have not yet quit their current job. How long do you allow for that transition period? Is there a maximum where it's like within, you know, 90 days, you need to have left your current job to come work here? Or is it kind of unlimited? Like they could take nine months from the time they accept their job offer for you to actually bring them in?
Okay, that's such good questions. So we basically triage people as they join the waiting list. So I get an email notification. Also, just for context, if you're a CEO, listening to this, it is completely free. It's a Google form that I made. I am thrifty. And if there is a way to do it for free, I do it for free. So it's literally just a Google Form. With some questions. People can tick a box to tell me if they are passively or actively looking for a job. Just for context, I'm a bit of a data nerd, obviously, I'm an accountant. But 85% of people that join the waiting list are passively looking for a job. So they're not time sensitive. And I've interviewed multiple people who when I say why are you looking to leave your current employer say I'm not, but I'll leave to come and work for you. And so again, like branding, culture, all of that feeds into it. So the majority of people aren't time sensitive. If they are we will chat to them as fast as possible.
So as soon as people join the waiting list, assuming that it's somebody passive looking for a job, we do blind recruitment so that we're removing any bias so all names, locations, they do have to be within a commutable distance to us. They come into the office one day a week. But we do blind recruitment to just remove any bias. And so we do a quick sort of skills check, we look at exactly where they would sit from a technical perspective, and then we'll reach out to them to let them know, the next role that we've got coming up is in x months time, does that work for you? Would you be open to sort of start a conversation with us on that basis? Or would you rather us reach out closer to the time, and when it's sort of a bit more relevant? Nine times out of 10, people come back and just want to want to chat to you straight away. So we interview them, we do skills tests, we get them to come in meet the team.
And so we actually have like three different stages of interview, then we make the offer, once they've accepted the offer, again, we just tell them that we prioritize open communication, we have a pretty consistent pipeline of new work. But sometimes we can win huge jobs. Sometimes we have to disengage with clients, and that can drop the pipeline. So we prioritize open communication. And it's very much led by us. And then, so the person who came in for lunch today, that was somebody that we actually pulled forward, because she could start sooner. But we made a job offer, just with the start date is to be confirmed. And she was going to start in February. So she was pre dated for February, we made an internal promotion. And so we actually reached out and said, Would you be happy to start sooner? And she said, Yes. And so we drafted up a contract, and then she resigned. So for both of us, a job offer is very much just our intention to provide an offer. And then by the time it gets to where we're sort of saying, Oh, we would actually like for you to start in the next sort of six, seven weeks. What does your notice period look like? Can you resign, that's when we'll send them a contract.
But again, like James and I very like heart led people like I would never make someone a job offer if I had no intention of sort of like honoring it. And so before people are resigning, they get a full contract. But up until that point, we just make them a job offer to just let them know the salary, the benefits package, their job title, what the role is going to look like. But again, we're scaling so rapidly that we can normally look at, by the time I interview someone I can say the next opening in your department is going to be in probably six months time. Does that work for you? And again, I do think there is something recruitment and jobs are so disruptive to our lives. But nobody says like, take your time. Right, like, genuinely think about if this is something that you can do, think about what your priorities are, we are scaling, but we're still quite small. And so that could mean that there is an opportunity for you to develop into a manager in 12 months time. But it could also mean that something changes, and it's a little bit longer. And so I'd say me and James sort of swing to the being brutally pessimistic with people to manage their expectations and say like, this is incredibly exciting. But it's also really hard. And you work out what you put in, and like this is the standard that we work at. And so I hope that answered your questions.
It does. And you know, you're totally rocking my world, Rachel, like I feel after this conversation, it's completely changing the way I think about recruiting in my business, because you're right, so many business owners, including myself, we really look at oh, we're not going to even put out the call to hire unless we have a job position available to fill. But I love the way that you approach it from look, we just want to find the right people. And when the roles come, then we'll match them with the right roles, and then we can decide from there. But it's such a revolutionary way to recruitment, I see why you have such a successful practice with this. To clarify the 149 people on the waitlist, are those people who have all been given a soft job offer or are those people who are have shown interest, right.
Those are the people who've like submitted themselves onto the waiting list.
Got it. Okay, perfect. Perfect.
Yeah, I also as well, that just to come on to your point about constantly recruiting. And I feel like that came from, I don't know, maybe my MBA, maybe my marketing strategy, like you shouldn't be marketing, when you're quiet. If you're marketing, when you're quiet, it's already too late. If you are recruiting when you need someone is always already in that stressful point, like you need to be recruiting when you are fully staffed. And I just I'm really hoping that like by talking about it and sharing, it will actually see a shift in dynamic like I would love to get to the point where someone's on my waiting lists, but they're also on to other people's waiting lists. And actually, like we'll compare offers will take time out of the equation. And fundamentally I will make a decision. That's right for me because that retention rate, so from our employee waiting list, we have a 100% staff retention rate.
Wow. So people who have been hired from that waiting list, to be clear. That's absolutely incredible. I am curious, has there ever been a person who came through the waiting list and you had given a job offer and they had accepted? Sans the contract of course, like because there maybe wasn't a position open at the time, but then when the position came open, and you went back to them to say okay, now we have it ready for you? Are you ready to resign? Let's get the contract out and signed. Has there ever been a scenario Where someone actually ended up not taking the job?
No. And I think when I say we have open conversations with people, me and James always say to people, like if we're making them an offer, that's because I actually want you to start tomorrow. But like, this is what the capacity look like, if something changes for you, come to us. So I've literally had people before, say, you know, didn't quite feel comfortable saying this to an interview, I said that I was sort of very passively looking for a job. But like, actually, things have gone downhill since then. Or actually, I'm, you know, I don't want to say this in an interview, but I really not enjoying my job. We can make room like I would rather the right candidate start a month sooner than I've got the workforce than not start at all. Right?
But again, it just creates that environment that it's safe to come to us with things and like, watch how we respond to you. Because if it's the right person, I do you believe you make it work. And that's where taking time out of the equation for us as employers gives us the headspace to make those decisions. Because that could be a red flag, you know, if there are a couple of red flags in interview, and then they've come to you and said, Oh, by the way, I'm not prepared to wait when I said I was before. But if actually, you've had really good vibes, and they seem like a really good person, and you're not stressed about that person starting, if actually, they come to you and say, I'm actually really not enjoying where I am at the moment, I can make that work.
I love that. I totally agree that it's all about developing the person and finding that right fit. Whereas the like you said the role or the skills are more flexible in terms of where you can place them for the waitlist that you currently have. Is everyone on that waitlist and accountant or do you have people? Okay, I see you shook your head. No, that's great. So what are the other roles that you've seen come through the waitlist right now.
Of course, cool. So when they join the waiting list, they upload a CV, they upload a bio, they tell me if they're passively or actively looking for a job, they tell me where they heard about us. So our existing team can earn 500 pounds in commission, if they refer someone that comes to us, I want to know where they came from. Lots of it is tiktok, Instagram, YouTube, but sometimes it is referrals. And then they also have to tell me which department they want to go into. So we've got everything from administration, to marketing, to auditing, to mortgage advice, all the way through to being an accountant. And then within the accounts team that is split out into bookkeeping, tax accounts. And so they literally select which department they'd like to go into.
That is super helpful, you actually are reading my mind, I was just about to ask you, let's get into the actual, you know, recruitment process the step by step of the forum. So you mentioned some of the questions that are on that form. Once someone signs up for the waitlist? are they receiving any sort of automated, welcome emails or nurture sequences? Do they have any sort of timeline for when they might expect to hear from you with your initial interest or lack of interest? Can you share a little bit more.
So as soon as they hit submit, and again, not sponsored by Google Forms, and like it shouldn't be made sure that people are receiving a customized response. And so we just thank them for their response, we tell them that we will respond to their initial inquiry within seven days. And so that's either a, you've ticked the box that says you are commutable, but I can see from your CV, that you are 10 hours away. Sometimes people do, can you confirm? Like, is your whole life relocating? Or have you just tick this box? All the way through to super interested coming out on teams call? What's your availability, like next week?
If you see someone that you feel isn't a good fit? Do you immediately let them know? Or do you always want to at least have some sort of further interaction beyond the form before you for sure, determined that they would not be a good fit for their team?
Interesting... I would say yeah, if somebody is, so there's a couple of like accountancy specific, so in the accounting world, you have practice and industry. So we are an accountancy practice, if somebody only has industry experience, and they're applying for a very high level job that they just won't be able to do, I would respond and say, actually, on an initial skills check, your ability to come into this tier of job level, but also your salary expectations, because an industry are very experienced, there's huge disalignment here. So if people are very experienced in industry, they're going to be on a certain salary, but they would actually have to come into a junior position in practice. And so we just have very open conversations. Really Interestingly, though, and I think again, this comes down to like really open communication. We've actually received quite a few inquiries from prospective clients who say, that person's name who wasn't successful recommended you to me. And so we sort of like off all these potential members of staff so well, these potential members of staff who wanted to work for us but aren't are telling people you should go to them for your accounts cut. Yeah, like It's wild.
As we enter the busiest shopping season of the year, this is your opportunity to be a creator, not just a consumer, the bells will be ringing this glad glad news. The sweet sound of sales notifications popping off in your Shopify store friend, Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to we just hit a million order stage, the flexibility to toggle between an all in one ecommerce platform and an in person POS system ensures that whatever and wherever you're selling, Shopify has got you covered. You know, we believe in making data driven decisions around here and Shopify takes the guesswork out of turning browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. And thanks to Shopify magic, your AI powered all star, you'll sell even more this holiday season with less effort. Sometimes the smallest tweaks really can make the biggest difference. Like that time, we added an extra payment method on a checkout page and sales spiked 50% overnight. Lucky for you, Shopify has already optimized every detail of the sales process for you, pulling from their experience of powering millions of businesses of every size across 175 countries. Plus Shopify is award winning help is there to support your success every step of the way. Because businesses that grow grow with Shopify, sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/ellen. That's ELLEN, all lowercase, go to shopify.com/ellen. Now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in shopify.com/ellen.
Wow, I mean, that really must say a lot about the impression that you left on these people. Do you have any formal way of I suppose incentivizing or thanking them for these referrals? I know you mentioned on the staff side, if a staff member refers a friend that becomes an employee that they then get 500 pounds? Do you have something similar set in place for people who don't make the cut for the team? But like you said, Send you clients or even people who maybe have off boarded from your team, who then still continue to send clients?
Good question. So in the UK, we are a chartered accountancy practice. And in the UK, we're actually not allowed to give or receive incentives to people to recommend clients, because you call interesting biased when you're making professional recommendation. So we're actually not allowed to give kickback to anybody who refers work to us.
Oh, wow. That's fascinating. Yeah, that's so interesting. That's so different than the states because I know, you know, referral incentives are a big thing. And in a lot of service based businesses here. So that's really fascinating to hear. And I also did have one quick clarification, because I'm betting some of our listeners who are not based in the UK or not as familiar with accounting may have this similar thought that I did while you were explaining someone who, on an initial skills check might not be the right fit for a role. What is the difference between when you say someone coming from industry coming into practice? What what is the difference between those two things?
Of course, really good question. So practice, we are an accountancy practice, which is where I'm an accountant, I have 50 clients, and I prepare the statutory accounts to keep the government happy for all the clients. Industry is where you work inside the business inside the finance department of one big company. So industry is your inside the business and practice is you work on that business, but you have multiple, like lots of different clients.
Got it. Okay, so it would be like similar to a corporate lawyer who works for a company like works for Disney and is like a lawyer for Disney versus in a firm that has Disney as one of clients but many others that they manage as well.
Yeah, and I think that's a really good sort of segue into I think one of the things that attracts a lot of staff to us, of their mentioning social media and mentioning creating content, but one of the best bits about working in practice is we have 750 clients who do everything from our local village British beekeeper who makes honey and sells it in his spare time. I love all the way through to people who go on shows like Dragon's Den, which is Shark Tank in the US. People who've just come off Love Island, content creators, tiktokers with millions of followers. And so very often we create content with our clients that are very, very high profile, because I'm not expecting their love either. and friends to see them and think, Wow, that's a cool accountant. What I'm actually doing is showcasing the types of clients that you would get to work with if you worked for us. And so we create a lot of content with clients, not because that's going to become a love Island advert, but actually because either clients want to say my accountant is also the accountant for so and so who just won't bake off or is that in that boyband or off that show, but also, the team members want to say that is my client. And it's so cool. And it works.
That's such a smart recruitment tool, the prestige, I mean, we can't deny that. And ego may not be the best word to describe this. But we can't deny that as social creatures, right as humans, that status or prestige doesn't mean something to people because it does. And so I think that that is such a smart recruitment tool to show the caliber of the clientele that you serve. What other aspects by the way, do you show of your company culture other than, let's say involving your clients in your content, you mentioned that you do a lot of behind the scenes content, can you walk our listeners through some of the best performing types of behind the business content that you've seen work really well as a recruitment attraction tool.
Of course, and I think this is almost segwaying into a personal branding conversation, because, for me, one of the biggest misconceptions around personal branding is, it would be quite easy to consume my content online and think, Oh, she's this little pink blonde woman is just dancing around on the internet. And I guarantee you my promise with personal branding is you have never seen a bit of my content that has not been intentional. And if you can't work out the reason, maybe I've not announced it yet, but there is a reason. And so even really small things like I have a sponsored series, which is sponsored by Intuit QuickBooks, which is in the states to QuickBooks pay me every single week to create a 60 second video, where I go through my bank statement and read out what I spent money on that week. And every single week, there is some element of spend going into staff benefits, whether it's private medical, people having access to therapy, an employee assistance program, US booking a disco party bus for our workstation, booking a Christmas party.
And so even that, like on a subliminal level could because I know people follow us for a long time before they reach out on the waiting list. It's that really, really sort of like money where your mouth is content where I'm going through our bank statement reading this out all of the way through to the much less subtle content, which is our workcation. So we go on an all inclusive all expenses paid week long holiday together every year, the main focus of that obviously outside of having a good time, but for me and my full time digital marketing Exec is, are we creating as much content as possible live are doing trending audios as they're trending on tiktok dances of us in a sunset, all of the way through to b-roll that will be posted and used in content for the rest of the year.
So we see a spike. So this year, during the week that we were on our workcation, 15 people joined the waiting list in that week alone. So that's 10% of the total waiting list happened during that week. So again, it would be really easy to look at that spend and think, wow, it must cost you 1000s to take your team on holiday. And you think well, yeah, but I also got 15 potential members of staff. And so the workstation does a lot we do a lot of Day in the Life content. So for Christmas in 2023, we're doing the 12 days of Christmas, we've got 12 members of staff, all creating a day in their life. I think accounting with all professional services is quite mysterious. And people think it's one thing because I've seen a stereotype. And very often big corporate firms don't let people sort of capture content or talk about what their day to day life is. Whereas as a smaller business, we have so much more flexibility and freedom around what we can record as long as we're protecting client information.
And so we do a lot of Day in the Life content, a lot of behind the scenes content, come to a meeting with me, which is not only telling potential clients what services I offer, but it's showing other accountants these are the clients that we work with. This is the services that you offer, you could come to this meeting with me next time. And so just really like selling the experience of being a team member from you know, if we're going to invest in getting everybody matching T shirts when we go on the workcation, you bet I'm getting my money's worth. And we're getting a picture from social media and like, again, I think a lot of what we do, we don't do wildly different.
I think I'm just a bit of a marketing machine and trying to maximize every single opportunity of this is an incredibly wholesome I'm incredibly high culture, workplace. So we measure the Net Promoter Score of our team, which is a very like benchmarked measure, our NPS is 50 points above the industry average and accounting. So 25 is that is the average in the accounting industry, we have 75 enps, which is incredibly high, even regardless of the industry. And so people can see the substance behind it. But then again, that like storytelling piece of this is who we are, and you could be one of us, too, is huge. And so 1/3 of all of the content I put out, so one content pillar is literally potential members of staff. So 1/3 of all of the content I create is to attract new team members.
So intentional, you're totally giving, like Taylor Swift mastermind level. Oh, yeah, there's, like, literally, that song is you that that is so so cool to hear how, again, how your brain works. And I love that you're applying a marketing lens on so much of even like you said, even on the workcation, which when you were describing it, to me, it really feels like even more so than employee benefit or or team development, it does feel kind of like a great use of advertising dollars. Like it's no different than running a campaign for, like you said, recruiting new team members, but it's just while your current team also gets to benefit from that. So really, really interesting to hear the different ways that you are showcasing, like you said, the holistic experience of being a team member on on your team
I think as well, because I've had other business owners say to me, like how do you get your team involved in making the content? You know, do you struggle to get people involved in stuff, and I think for me, it's almost become this huge ecosystem of so I literally have out of the 17 team members that we have two of the team members that we have decided to become an accountant, because they found me online, wide, they were searching for careers advice, and one of them reached out and said, can I come and do work experience with you. And she was incredible, incredible, we hired her and the other watched a YouTube video, which is how to get a job in accountancy with no experience, went and got her first job and then came to us as her second job. And so, so many of our team now that we've got the waiting list now that they've decided to even start their career, because of my content, have been so impacted. And like they know in their gut what an impact our content had on them, they now see it as this incredible responsibility and privilege to do the same, and pass it on to other people.
So I've just actually promoted a member of staff internally, which was amazing, we have a fully transparent pay matrix, which is one of the other reasons that people love working for us, because in professional services, it can be quite smoke and mirrors. So she just got promoted, it resulted in a 17,500 pound pay rise for her. And she has been so open and excited about talking about it online, talking about, you know, earning a salary in my 20s that I never thought I'd earn getting management responsibilities in my 20s that I never thought I'd had. And so there's such this, like, really strong sense of consuming this content had an impact on my career, like whose career can I impact by sharing my story, some need more coercing than others? And even things like people's culture?
So we have Muslim team members who are actually, you know, will say, I'm trying to teach my children to actually not consume a lot of social media content, is it okay if I don't take part. And so there are people who engage somewhat some not at all. But for the most part, there is this huge, strong belief that it's doing good, and it is educating people, and it's closing down barriers. And I feel, especially as young women, we feel like we can only be what we can see. And so as a very diverse workforce, we've we're very sort of female led. Actually, we've got everybody from people who used to be hairdressers and converted into being accountants, people who were air hostesses that became accountants, like, actually, there are stories to be told, and everybody needs to, like hear them. And so it creates this really cool ecosystem where they find us on social media, they apply for a job through social media, they get hired, and then they want to participate in the same thing, and again, like you say, we are quite, I guess, a little bit vain in 2023, I have a good following. And so even for them as Gen Z is it's cool to even create content with someone whose content creation is their full time job. And so it creates this really lovely sort of workflow of people wanting to take part in the content.
And I was gonna say, just kudos to you. I feel like your content marketing game is stronger than some even content marketing firms, right where that's their entire business model. So again, very, very impressive. I think I'm really intrigued by even though your business is scaling so quickly, and and you have a very Very successful practice, like you said at the beginning, and the grand scheme of company sizes, you're still a small business, right? And what I find really appealing about what you're doing is most of the time, small businesses don't really distinguish between their employee facing brand and a client facing brands. Like it's almost entirely centered on the client facing brand and, you're probably the first and only small business owner I've ever interviewed, Small Business CEO that has really, really focused on building that employee facing brand. Do you anticipate in the next one to three years that you would hire any full time staff to work full time on just building the employee facing the internal brand, and that would be their entire job not even related to the accountancy or or working with clients?
That is such a good question. I have like four full time team members that support my role. One of them is digital marketing. So I guess a third of her time is spent creating and sort of editing that content. But I absolutely so at the rate that we are scaling and recruiting, we are actually recruiting faster than firms that are 20 times as big as we are. So that's how fast we are recruiting. I am the HR department. I am the recruitment department. Like I definitely, definitely see that sort of like incoming recruitment, definitely see that as part of somebody's role in the future. Yeah, 100%.
And I think it's so interesting, like the people only marketing to potential customers versus not marketing to future staff. And I would say as well, like accounting, is quite cutthroat, like AI is coming in people are like lowering costs wherever they can. There are lots of like self service platforms that you can go to never speak to a person, upload your data, get your tax return filed. And actually, we sit on the other end of that spectrum. So we are sort of a boutique agency that will you know, we're very grassroots everybody's employed in house in the UK, they're all on payroll, there's no freelancers like you are supporting our economy by working with us.
But not only are you supporting our economy, prospective clients are seeing the content that we're pushing to prospective employees. And they're seeing how we treat our team. They're seeing where their fee income is going. They're seeing that our team are well and happy and safe and looked after and paid really well. And I think once you move out of the like, low cost high volume agency, actually, as a small business owner, where you spend your money is an opportunity for you to drive your values up and down your supply chain. And we see clients choose to work with us we do sort of once we've on boarded a client, we asked for feedback on their experience so far. And a lot of people cite how well we treat the team as the reason they chose to work with us over a competitor. And so people think that it's just marketing to employees, but it's not like it's still your opportunity to get your values across. And people are listening to it.
Yeah, seems like it's a flywheel that just like each part impacts, there's no part that's left untouched, right, based on this kind of cohesive strategy of like you said, walking the talk and showing experiences or showing with stories, how you're actually living out your values. I think this is so so inspiring. I just have to ask for clarification all of this content that you're putting out there for people to consume whether it is potential clients or potential employees, is this all done through your personal brand of accountant_she? Or are you also creating this content under the StriveX like the actual clients firm?
Of course really good question. So all content gets created under @accountant_she. So @accountant_she is my online personal brand and then StriveX is the accountancy practice that does all of the professional services from consulting up to audit. So all of the content gets created under my personal brand which is accountant she and then they they inquire that pipeline takes them to Strive. The minute someone inquires to be an employee or a client, they go straight to StriveX.
From a strategic perspective, why did you choose to house all of the content under your personal brand? Did you feel that having perhaps people having a personal connection to one individual might be easier than building like a brand personality? Or also I guess has it weighed on you at all if in the future, let's say and I don't know if this is something that you intend to do but if you were to ever consider selling the practice, do you feel that that would at all be a liability if you were removed from the accountancy brand and now you had to sell StriveX and have it stand on its own essentially.
Okay, deep dive so the reason I didn't ever want it to be my name is because it was always bigger than me. I wanted accountant she to be this collective of incredible accountants creating content For buy it and about accountancy. And so I was also engaged when I started the brand, and I actually knew my name was going to change. And so it just did not make sense for me to build press articles PR, like I wrote a book, it did not make sense for me to do any of that under one name to build all of that SEO and then change it. So it was actually almost like the changing of my surname was the overriding factor in quite a lot of it.
So the first thing was, I knew my name was going to change. The second thing was actually accountant_she is a play on words, it sounds like accountancy, but it's female. It's pink, it's fluffy. It was my opportunity to convey who I am as a person, which is I do a very serious job, but I don't take myself too seriously. And then finally, potentially, most importantly, SEO. If you're typing accountant, you've typed in two thirds of my instagram handle. And so I'm going to come up as number one on your search engine.
That makes so much sense because you're right, and someone's looking for an accountant or an accountancy practice, they're not going to necessarily be searching StriveX if they if they're not already familiar with the brand. So I see the strategic play behind that. That's so smart.
So to wrap up our case study, then I would love to get more into the benefits package. I know you've already alluded to some of the incredible perks that your team members get when working with you. I would love to know like, how did you develop this, right? Because I think for some of our listeners, they can hear your case study and it may be aspirational to them, like maybe they would love to take their entire team on an all expenses paid trip once a year, but it may not be within reach for them. Yeah, or some of the other things you mentioned. So it would help to kind of understand what was the package that you started with a very first team members baseline. And then over time, how did you choose what you were adding?
Amazing. And again, I've just I feel like it ties back in so nicely to the cubicle to CEO because what I started with one of my top frustrations in employment. And so we've always paid 10% above the market rate for any role as standard. Again, that's just an investment. You know, even if it's 10%, that's been buying your future retention for 10 longer than you'd have anywhere else. We then also do monthly personal development sessions. So I host monthly personal development sessions with every single team member in the firm, where we've talked about things inside of work outside of work. So I've helped team members get debt free within that six months. Again, I'm their employer, so I know how much they earn. So we can have really open financial conversations, all of the way through to the manager that we've just promoted six months ago said I would love to have a management position. But these are my worries, there are skills that I would like to develop. And so I can bring that into work, and provide those experiences in a really safe controlled environment.
So 10% above market rate, personal development sessions, which are free other than your time as a business owner, but a really, really great added extra, we do monthly brain explode emoji sessions, which are where we bring in external speakers to help their studies come to life. So most accountants are studying for a really long time. And so we really help a lot of the things that they study in the black and white come to life through color. So venture capitalists, intellectual property experts, financial advisors, mortgage advisors, again, lots of people will come and talk to you to have access to your client base or your team. And so again, that doesn't have to cost a lot. We have a completely transparent pay matrix, which came from my employment trauma of just being a young person that was really driven, very successful, didn't go to university. So it was three years ahead in my exams than anybody else. I never got paid the same as my peers, whether they had a degree or because they were older than me and never got paid the same. And so our pay is completely transparent. So our own internal payroll team process payroll,
Can I ask a question about that the pay matrix? When you say it's transparent, does that mean that technically anybody on your staff, so all 17 people could at any point know what any one of their other peers is making? Or is it more so a matrix like, for this type of role, everybody is going to start at this pay? And if you get promoted, this is the exact amount you would make? Like, can you can you detail that a little bit more?
Yeah, so accounting is very exam LED. And one of my frustrations as someone who didn't have a degree was there were people who maybe had a degree in geography that were paid more than me because they had a degree, when even though to our job, it made no difference because the degree was in geography. Right. And so we wanted to have a pay matrix that reflected a couple of different things. The first was loyalty to the firm. So once you've been with the firm for a year, the base salary goes up by 5000 pounds. That's the first thing. The second thing is with every single exam, they pass their pay will go up by 500 pounds, bearing in mind that most people are setting an exam every three months, so they're completely in control of like how fast their income goes up. And so I literally have a pay matrix with every single exam you can possibly take as you go up and up and up and up and up with ranging from, you know, 25,000, all the way through to 55,000, in 500 pounds increments. So you could literally say, what exactly are you doing next? Okay, cool. I know how much they're on. And then beneath that, once you get qualified, we've got managers, rates, managers, plus team members, managers, plus X number of team members. And so you could literally work out exactly how much anybody in the firm is.
Oh, fascinating. And do you feel like that has made it easier for you to have conversations with people when they like does? Does anyone ever I guess, try to come to you outside of that matrix and say, I really feel like I put in a lot of work here or added this value to the team. And I would like to ask for a raise outside of the pay matrix, like, do you use the matrix as a way to be like, this is just how we pay people. And there's not a whole lot of wiggle room outside of that? Or is there still kind of one off circumstances where you might, you know, consider a different situation.
So if ever there's been a one off circumstance, that's normally a trigger to me that I need to revise the matrix because something's wrong. So with 10%, above the market rate going up with every single exam, no one and we do pay reviews every six months. So all of the data in that matrix that I working out what 10% is, but as above, by live data every single six months from recruitment agents, jobs, adverts job sites. And so actually, if that has happened before, somebody's said, like, can I talk to you about pay in between the six months, and I've actually taken that data and fed it back into the pay matrix? Because Because really, if you're 10%, above, that shouldn't happen, right? Especially when I have those expectations. I expect everybody to work hard. I expect everybody to deliver a 10 out of 10 wow experience for our clients. I shouldn't get somebody saying I deliverable Wow, experience, can I have a pay rise? Actually. We all do that. That's, you know,
That's, that's a standard. Right? Right. Okay, super helpful.
They also get completely free sessions with financial advisors and mortgage advisors. So we've helped two members of staff get by their first homes, which has been amazing. We offer a reduced working week. So the industry average is 40 hours a week and our team work 35. We go on a holiday every year, which is completely optional. So if you don't go on the holiday, you can receive a cash alternative so you can get the money if they want to. We got Flexi time flexible working arrangements. We do a lot of fun, random, weird, wacky activities, from escape rooms all the way through to like sports events, networking events, and entertainment. We've got private medical insurance, we pay for everybody's gym membership. And then we also have access to private therapy, as well.
Wow, that's incredible. I just love hearing all of the unique and holistic ways that you support your employees. Again, it's this entire case study has been so inspiring. Thank you for sharing so transparently, and especially from like a data driven perspective, like that really speaks to my heart, it speaks to my listeners. Rachel, is there anything else that we didn't cover today, where you feel like, this is a solid piece of gold that really has helped us with retention or recruitment that you want to share with our listeners? Or did we cover our bases?
Two things. The first is, recruitment is sales. You're selling, you're selling your business, you're selling the experience, it is marketing. So if you're making a job offer, don't just tell them the salary. So we send an offer letter, which literally has a salary, and then we send a benefits package PDF, which is every single thing that you can expect, which tells them this is the market rate for your role, but this is what we're paying you it sets the expectation of this is a fantastic place to work, but I'm getting my money's worth out of it, because I'm gonna keep telling you that this is a fantastic place to work. And so everything is sales.
I also wanted to go through that benefits package so that listeners know that this isn't unachievable, and that I'm not investing hundreds of 1000s of pounds into taking people on these trips. So much of that benefits package doesn't cost you anything but your time. And a lot of you if you are heart driven and culture driven businesses are probably doing a lot of that informally anyway, you're probably personally developing your team, you'll probably match any salary that they bring to you. You're probably having open conversations about pay, you probably would help them chat to a financial advisor or mortgage advisor, formalize it because then it gives you something to market.
And then the second thing is if as I've been talking about like culture and values, if you're about to employ someone for the first time, or you've employed a couple of people, don't panic when I say culture and values or North Star, all of that already exists within your business. This, you might just not have put names and words to it yet. And so a fantastic book to read if you're interested in creating core values for your firm, your clients and your employees, is a book called 'Traction, Getting a Grip of Your Business' by a man called Gino Wickman. So we definitely recommend you read that book, if any part of the culture piece has made you feel a little bit like I don't have that yet. You do. It already exists. You just haven't put words to it yet.
You know, I've heard Traction mentioned so many times, but I feel like yours is the one I will take to heart and actually order Rachel.
I honestly it is one of those books that you could read cover to cover, flip it over start again, like I've read it five times.
You're always going to get new takeaways, I think, when you reread a book, because each time you read it, you become a different person, right? Like you've already lived a little bit more than you did when you first started the book so I can totally see that being a reality. Rachel, again, thank you so much for just absolutely pouring out so much wisdom and inspiration for our listeners. Where can they further connect with you?
Oh my goodness, I would love to see you everywhere that you consume content. So I create content on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn and I am at the handle @accountant_she
Amazing. We're going to drop all those links in the show notes. So please do yourself a favor. Take a lesson from the master of this craft and follow Rachael on all of those accounts so you can observe what it really looks like to create top tier content that attracts the best talent and clients. Rachel thank you again for being on our show today.
If you are enjoying two doses of cubicle to CEO and your podcast feed every week, will you help support our efforts and continuing to bring you more quality free content by going to ratethispodcast.com/cubicletoCEO that spelled CUBICLE TO CEO and sharing a review for our podcast. If you go to ratethispodcast.com/cubicletoCEO, it will allow you to choose which podcast player you want to leave us a review or rating on it's super easy. It takes less than 30 seconds. You can even leave just a rating without having to write a review. So it's literally as simple as one click but it goes so far and helping us continue to pour into these resources for you. So thank you so much if you choose to do that to support our show. Again, the link is ratethispodcast.com/cubicletoCEO. We'll also link it below in the show notes.
