Tim Seymour sits down with entrepreneur and author Carl Reader to explore how fear and failure shape the journey to business success. From his start as a YTS hairdresser to becoming a leading voice in accountancy and business coaching, Carl shares how setbacks fuel growth, why fear of mistakes holds business owners back, and why accountants must evolve beyond compliance to deliver real impact. This conversation sets the stage for Carl’s ProfitConUK 25 keynote, offering practical insights on resilience, adaptability, and embracing simplicity in business.

Key Takeaways:

• Failure is essential to growth - learn from it, don’t fear it.
• Fear of mistakes is one of the biggest barriers to innovation.
• Accountants can unlock more value by going beyond the numbers and focusing on client impact.
• Simplicity drives better decisions and faster progress.
• Lifelong learning and adaptability are critical in today’s business landscape.

Foreign.

Welcome to Profit first beyond the Book, a podcast that takes you beyond the book with Profit first brought to you by Tim Duncan and the rest of the Profit first professionals UK and Ireland.

Foreign and I'm very excited to be joined today by Carl Reader.

Welcome Carl.

Carl is a serial entrepreneur, I think it's fair to say he says it how it is to people, which I think we all need sometimes.

Author of three books, Boss it, the Startup Coach and Franchising Handbook and Carl, I probably haven't captured everything you do within there.

I think there's media stuff you do as well.

So feel free to elaborate and welcome along.

Hey sure.

Thank you Tim.

I listen, I do what I do.

I know most of the audience may have stumbled across me in some way, shape or form.

You know, for those of you who know how these podcast things work, Tim and Tim and I have a little chat beforehand in the green room.

So he told me about the fantastic community.

But yes Tim, I'm a practicing accountant, have been for many, many years.

I actually fell into accountancy completely by accident incident after leaving school at the age of 15, becoming a YTS hairdresser and not knowing what to do with myself.

And since then I've had a bit of a wonderful journey speaking to business owners, getting to know them and then dabbling in it myself.

So started to retire from the business, wrote a couple of books as you mentioned, had the privilege of contributing to the national press, both written and on radio, TV etc and helping small businesses because as you say, one of the things I love to do is to make things simple and in plain English, just say it how it is and try to get rid of all that nonsense, confusion and I guess the, the puff that costs more money as well as that.

I've had a football club, I've invested in businesses, I've exited businesses, I've had some great high times, I've had some many more low times actually.

Lots of bumps and bruises along the way and here I am to hopefully share some of the war wounds.

I love that.

Thank you Carl.

That was so much more concise than what I could have done.

But I think you've picked up on something straight away that you know about war wounds and I think none of us that have been on the journey, we've all failed at some point or things have gone wrong, there's been bumps in the road and it's how you recover from those situations, isn't it?

And find a way for it not to happen again.

So take the learning but then also.

Keep moving forward 100%.

Yeah.

What we have to remember is that unfortunately, failure and these lessons is part of the journey.

It always is.

And particularly when we try to do something new, then actually it's almost certain.

But we're going to learn just as we did when we were toddlers, you know, just as we did when we were learning how to walk.

You don't all of a sudden get up off of the floor and start running a marathon.

You know, you trip over, you trip over, you trip over.

Then you go too far and you're told to.

Yeah.

You're told by your parent, hopefully, in very nice terms, to come back here.

It's not safe to go near the fire.

It might be a little bit more brutal than that, but we learn our lessons as we go.

And I think you've touched on a really important point there.

When it comes to growing a business, which, let's be honest, for accounting practitioners and also professionals of all shapes and sizes, when it comes to growing a business, often, particularly if we're a professional, we're frightened of making mistakes.

Why are we frightened?

Because we've had years and years of study telling us how to do things right and the need for accuracy.

We've got regulatory bodies, so for the accountants here, we've got the icaw, we've got acca, who are breathing down our necks and making sure that we do things correct with the fear of losing our livelihood if we get it wrong.

But actually, to grow a business, you have to get things wrong, because perhaps the biggest mistake, the biggest failure you can make, is not to make any changes at all.

If you stay still and you expect things to be the same today as they were yesterday, and it will be yet again the same tomorrow, you're not going to move forwards, you're not going to stay still, you're actually going to go backwards.

Because it's a changing landscape and change is a necessary part of that.

Oh, absolutely.

I love that.

And, yeah, the fear of making a mistake is.

I think we're probably all aware of that feeling in our mind sometimes, but.

But actually pushing yourself through that ceiling and actually trying something different, isn't it?

It's so.

It's so true, Tim, and sorry for cutting in here, but this fear is probably from what I've seen with small businesses of all shapes and sizes, so not just professional services firms, but from the work I've done with the wider small business community, trying to really understand the, I guess, the psyche behind the individuals.

What is it that motivates them?

What Is it that stops them?

But particularly magnified with professionals, fear is, you know, it's by far the limiting factor in most businesses.

And whilst it might sound a bit American motivational speaker to say that fear is false emotion appearing real and all of those kinds of things, often fear is exaggerated in our minds.

And one of the things that the upcoming profit con, which I'm not going to talk about too much but I going to talk a little bit about towards the end of this episode is to actually talk about a strategy to overcome it and to rationalize the challenges, the concerns that you have in your mind, to be able to help you to decide what is it that truly deserves attention and what is it that actually you could be mindful of.

But let's just crack on anyway.

I love that.

I can't wait.

I can't wait for.

I can't wait for that to listen to you and to learn from you at Profit on, where we'll have a lot of accountants, bookkeepers and financial coaches in the room that are really keen to hear you and learn from you as well.

Yeah, that's going to be really exciting.

I want to go back in time a little bit, Carl, if that's okay.

You mentioned that you started off as a YTS hairdresser, I believe, which was a failure apparently.

And I also know, and I want to bring this in because you're very proud of your Essex working class roots, aren't you as well?

So, so elaborate on us on your journey from, from, from the hairdressing YTS position to, to becoming an accountant and having your own accounts from initially.

Yeah, of course.

Well, actually I'll go a little bit further back than that because there were a few jobs before and it might just add a bit of flavor.

I won't go back as far as the midwife holding me up by my feet because I certainly don't remember that slap on the backside.

But, but you know, as, as you mentioned working class roots and I know everyone likes to attach themselves to that.

It's.

It's actually what I just saw as a normal upbringing and you know, dad was a locksmith, mum was a dinner lady and I used to help out my dad, so I used to go out on jobs with him and then about the age of 12, started helping out the factory.

Probably broke all health and safety rules going, but working the live, wasn't allowed to do welding, did a bit of spraying and helped to build some safes and things like that.

It was a fantastic life experience.

But what I found was that by entering the workplace relatively early, this was only during school holidays and weekends.

I realized that actually the academic system wasn't for me, which was why I left school early, why I fell into the YTS.

So the moment I got my National Insurance number, 15 and 3 quarters I think it is, but I didn't actually record the date, obviously.

The moment I got it, it was like, I've had enough of this.

And I chucked away what I now know with hindsight was perhaps the biggest gift I could have been given, which was a grammar school education.

You know, kids like me wouldn't have.

I didn't know what a private school was.

Yeah, it wasn't in my world until I went to grammar school.

I met all of the other kids who were tutored to get into grammar school so their parents didn't have to pay for private school.

I didn't realize what a privilege it was to have that at that time had no idea.

But I did know that I wanted to go out, earn a few quid and that I didn't enjoy the rigid structure of school, the rigid processes, so on, so forth.

So I, you know, starting the world of work, hairdressing, six weeks, you could say I wasn't cut out for it, Boom, boom.

And then fell into the world of accountancy via a bit of work in a supermarket and a couple of other odds and ends.

And falling into accountancy truly was by accident.

I had no idea what an accountant was.

In fact, I had no real idea of what a business was.

My dad was self employed, but I never saw him as having a business, I just saw him as doing what he did.

I saw him as a locksmith.

I had no idea about the financial needs of a business.

I had no real idea what tax was.

Now that might be a shocking indictment of our education at schools.

And part of the reason I'm involved in young enterprise now, because I was actually doing business studies at gcse.

I should have known this stuff.

Or it might have been a shocking indictment of my lack of application at school.

I don't know which, but had no idea.

And I remember vividly Tim going to the library just before my interview and yeah, this was back in the day, before Google.

You know, I don't want to date myself too much, but I feel like I'm very much of a vintage now.

1997, went to the library and had to get out the big careers books and read what an accountant was and then I just regurgitated it all in my first interview.

Funnily enough, I Actually got offered two roles in accountancy.

And funnily enough, I had no idea that exactly what I was trying to escape from at school, I. E. The systemization, the process, the rigid nature of working was exactly what I was going to fall into.

I had no idea, Tim.

I had no idea what an accountant was, had no idea of the stereotype of an accountant.

You know, I saw it as a role that could be brutally honest, but I could go to the nightclubs and impress girls by saying I had a good job.

Actually, I had no idea that they'd expect me to be wearing a gray suit, glasses and be 50 years older.

Had no idea at all.

So, yeah, that was my start in accountancy.

And as you can imagine, I was the world's worst accountant because little did I know at the time, but I, I got diagnosed at 28, I believe it was.

I was actually ADHD, been ADHD all my life.

And ADHD and accountancy, whilst it's a bit of a trend for everyone to say their ADHD at the moment in the nicest possible way, it truly doesn't marry up together.

You know, the way that the ADHD mind is motivated in terms of the dopamine levels needed, etc, the wave that it, particularly in youngsters, as an adult, you turn, you tend to learn how to deal with it.

But in youngsters, and I was a youngster when I started, it's, you know, it's hyperactivity and distractivity.

So it, it's that for a reason.

And accountancy being in a silent office, nobody's speaking to each other, having a.

A free sheet of paper.

Yes.

This is what we used to do before computers.

With 52 weeks analyzing Simplex books, nightmare didn't work for me at all.

However, Tim, there was one thing that I absolutely loved and I was fortunate enough to do this very early on in my career, which was to go out to business owners and train them.

So that was how I kind of realized that this could go from a job that I really didn't like, but I needed to keep hold of because I'd advanced my life well beyond my years by that point.

I was a very early father, etc.

Etc.

I was, you know, moved out of home and so on.

So there was, there was a real need for me to keep that job, but actually it allowed me not not only is there a need, but there's actually something I enjoy doing which is speaking to business owners.

So I was able to go out and ask them why they did what they did.

And luckily, Tim I had the naivety of youth.

I still have the same haircut.

I went, yeah, I was bald by about the age of 17, honestly, but I looked a whole lot younger.

I was able to say, why'd you do this?

Why'd you do that?

I was able to be the annoying child.

And I was fortunate enough that that continued into my role at the DT Group.

Back then it was called Dennis and Turnbull joined as a trainee.

And again, you know, at the interview, I was very open with them.

I'm the world's worst accountant, but I enjoy speaking to business owners.

I've got the gift of a gap.

Give me a chance and see what happens.

And they gave me a chance and handed me a bunch of clients, about 30 martial artists, within probably a year and a half, two years, built back to a portfolio of about 200.

And then from there fell into business format franchising.

So fell into that.

Well, it's over 20 years ago now.

I think this was just through a client franchising took on some decent plans, took on some more brands, some more brands and more brands, and then, yes, the rest is history.

So there, Tim, is the potted history from Midwife to where we are today.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, some of that resonates with me, actually.

Okay.

But I, so the last Friday in June I left school and the first Monday in July, which was basically the weekend in between, I started work at the bank NatWest International in Bristol.

And exactly for the same reasons.

I just wanted to get out there and earn some money.

I wasn't interested in continuing education.

Yes, I did my, well, they were O levels and I did all that.

But my school report came after and it actually said, this boy won't amount to much because he, he is, because of his attitude.

Challenging.

Yeah, Tim, those motivations are so, so powerful.

So I had my business studies teacher who said, when I went back to, I went back to the school, so I left, returned to do my GCSes, left again, and then I went to catch up with all of my old mates and walk around the A level evening just to see what it was like.

And my business studies teacher actually said to me, get out.

Business isn't for people like you.

Wow.

And those words stuck with me, as I'm sure the word stuck with you.

And it's amazing how powerful those motivators can be to help drive you to do what you want to do.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

The attitude of challenge in the norm, I think is probably what makes us, drives us forward as well, isn't it?

And then like you say, I'm gonna, I'm going to prove a point to you that you wrote that in my report and I'm going to show you.

But that's a great, great way to be.

But there's a lot of entrepreneurs and very famous entrepreneurs out there as well and they would probably say the same about their education and their schooling, that it wasn't really for them, didn't really fit into that traditional way of things.

Do you think that there's a, there's a pattern there, isn't there?

Oh, 100%.

That's what I do for work that I do with young enterprise.

And I won't harp on about it too much, but young enterprises focused on what we call applied learning.

So, you know, it can be phrased as vocational learning, so apprenticeships and so on.

That's not to say that young enterprise endorse apprenticeships over degrees or anything like that.

It's.

Yeah, they absolutely don't.

But it's, it's actually the model of learning where it's hands on and you do something, you try it.

We've got different ways of learning and I know that there's the superficial, you know, auditory, visual, kinesthetic and so on.

And I know that's also been debunked.

I'm no expert in this stuff, so I'm just regurgitating what I've read at some point in my past.

But we all have different ways of learning.

For me, I found that being sat in a classroom was just really boring.

Is it my ADHD or is it because it was boring?

No idea.

I would never know that.

I'm not in somebody else's body to have that same experience and understand how they feel it.

But I certainly found that on one side, my mind was racing ahead.

The teacher would be saying something and I'm already on 10 pages ahead.

But on the other hand, there was trigonometry and so on.

And I was thinking, when am I ever going to use this?

When, when is this ever going to help me do what I need to do, which is ultimately go out there, do a good day's work, go home, cook some dinner, get to sleep and make sure everyone's happy.

And I didn't see the connection between, you know, my RV lessons or, you know, science and advanced chemistry.

I didn't see the correlation between what I was learning and what I practically needed to Go forwards in life.

Yeah.

Practical skills are really important for us to learn, aren't they?

Especially our children these days.

So.

So I love this that I could talk about this school things and all that forever with you probably, but.

But let's try and try and move on.

So.

So your accountancy business, you know, you're built up.

One thing that, That I talk about quite a lot with our members and in general with people is that accountants in particular, we get qualified.

And you.

You kind of touched on this about the regulations we have to follow.

So we have to produce a statutory account, we have to provide tax returns, corporation taxes, et cetera, et cetera.

And we have to do that in certain formats.

And we're trained to do that.

But what we're not trained as accountants is how to run a business.

So even though it may seem the most obvious thing for a business owner to go to an accountant and ask them for advice, not necessarily trained how to run a business.

So sometimes we're not the right person to ask.

However, we try and work out a way to answer the questions and find a solution for them because we're also people pleasers.

So how did you overcome that about learning how to run the business in itself as well?

Oh, that's Joe.

Tim.

That's a really good question.

It's an angle.

I didn't expect you to take it on, but I observed.

No, I'm really glad you have, because the.

How you learn is far more valuable to anybody listening to this than me just agreeing with you and adding a bit of fluff to it.

So I noticed it at first.

Yeah.

I think it's important to mention the point that I noticed was actually when I moved to the firm in Swindon, so I joined as a staffer before the buyout and that was when I was about 21.

Joined the firm.

And the basis of joining, as I mentioned, how the interview was, they knew that I wasn't really going to be an accountant.

They knew that that wasn't really my bag.

But also one of the guys there wasn't really an accountant.

But I noticed that while she was giving some fantastic business advice, he would go into every meeting with an analysis pad and a calculator.

So there was clearly, deep down, whilst he had this amazing breadth of knowledge and experience and commercial acumen as well, you know, he could speak to a business owner and he could gauge what was wrong in that business very quickly, he could see this stuff, but he still framed himself as an accountant and the framing is really important because whilst you say that it's obvious for business owners to go to their accountant, actually I'd contend for a lot of business owners now, particularly with the encroachment of the cloud accounting software and so on, see the accountant as a bit of a relic and not necessarily providing the advice that perhaps a business owner 20 years ago would have perceived, perhaps a business owner 10 years ago, five years ago would have perceived.

I think now the accountant is very much pigeonholed into a box and not necessarily seen as the broad commercial business advisor.

And there's a combination of reasons for that.

I think that the, the increase in celebrity amongst, you know, Dragon's Den Apprentice, etc.

Etc.

I think that's part of it.

I think the fact that anybody can pay probably 500 quid nowadays and become a coach, all of these things mean that there's a number of pressures on accountants in relation to the perceived credibility and ability of accountants to provide business advice.

So that's one issue.

But that's only indicative of the underlying problem which you, which you've alluded to with your question, which is, well, how do you do it?

How do you learn how to give business advice?

And I can talk about my journey and how I've done it, but I think that there's a number of different ways of doing it.

It's just about doing it in some way, shape or form.

So first things first, we have to set the ground rules.

Tim, there is no way that you're going to learn this stuff from a academic textbook and a set of exams.

You're not going to learn this from your ICAW case study or whatever you need to do, or your ACCA 3.1 or whatever, I've no idea.

I'm far too out of date, these qualifications.

But you're not going to learn it from this.

You might learn theoretical business models which you can then segue back into your commercial act, commercial acumen and think, ah, that's why I feel this.

But actually knowing these models and knowing the high level stuff isn't going to help you to be able to go into a business and pinpoint exactly what the problem is.

So what will help you and what has helped me, you know, how did I develop these to get there?

First things first is expanding the conversation, taking the conversation, business owners beyond numbers.

Now this might seem like alien territory because, oh my word, I can't charge for this, but actually asking the questions about the business, having that genuine insatiable curiosity as to how the business works what is it that makes this business tick?

And doing it over and over and over and over and over again.

Yes, that's right.

You need to become a student of those who think that they are your students.

You need to eat a massive slice of humble pie and actually begin to learn from your clients rather than your clients learning from you.

Now, Tim, I'm going to be honest, a lot of professionals are probably switching off in disgust right now.

How on earth can this jumped up Essex boy tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about?

Frankly, you don't.

You need to learn from your clients because otherwise you wouldn't be seeking advice to grow your business.

So you've got a fantastic pool of businesses around you.

Learn from them.

Secondly, I think that it's vital to undertake the education that we tell our clients to undertake.

The amount of accountants that hand out books because they're fashionable but don't necessarily read them themselves.

Or more importantly, implement E myth revisited.

Perfect example.

You go to an accountant, certainly 10 years ago, 20 years ago, not so much now, but you go to an accountant, you'll be given a copy of the emif.

How many of them are actually applying the EMIF principles into their business?

I can tell you it was the square root of bug rule.

There was hardly anybody actually walking the walk insofar as what their 10 clients do.

If they were walking the walk, they wouldn't have had that meeting, they'd have had a team member having that meeting.

But actually they knew it was a great concept.

They just didn't have something within them to make that change.

So we've got, first of all, learning from your crowd, the informal mentors who you don't tell them they're your mentors.

Secondly, we have the education next up, I think something that really helped me and, and this is rather bespoke.

I was involved in starting a coaching organization and as part of that I learned about coaching, I learned about effective questioning.

I then realized very quickly that I wouldn't be a good coach.

But what it did was it allowed me to reflect on my own processes of how I advise a client to understand what were the effective questions to then help me to try and systemize it for the team that I was expecting to, to be able to do it.

Because one of the challenges as we scale an accounting firm or any professional services firm is scaling that experience.

I guess the, yeah, the je ne sais quoi, the commercial acumen, scaling that side of things is much harder than scaling knocking out a tax return and that was certainly a challenge that we faced.

So learning about the effective questioning really helped.

And then finally I think that it was all just underpinned by constantly remembering that I didn't know it all.

And I would continually read books, I would continually speak to business owners.

I have, I've had informal masterminds throughout my life of other business owners outside of the profession who I can bounce things off of.

I tend to bring people together who have got experience in certain areas.

So somebody who's great at multi location, somebody who's great with people, somebody's great at marketing and we all just know that we can go out for lunch or whatever and just collaborate.

I, I don't tend to focus too much on learning from other accountants and I know you might have the daggers at me right now, but I ask when I need to ask.

But actually I like to seek my inspiration from outside where I can.

So I try to keep it as rounded as possible.

But also I guess the final piece of this as to how do you build the skills is a constant reminder of the fact that growing a business really isn't complicated.

Now we are part of a problem as finance professionals in making it seem complicated so that we can sell the solution.

We are part of a problem.

But actually business is really simple.

You get clients, you keep them, you buy something for a fiver, you sell it for a tenner.

They are the fundamentals of business is really not too complicated.

And one of the ways that I've remind myself how simple this is, it sounds silly, is playing computer games.

Now I don't know Tim, if you're vintage when games like SimCity and so on came out.

But these computer games, for those of you that don't know, are basically at their core they're resource management games.

You get a bit of money and you've got a few varying needs.

You need to balance up the needs, you need to juggle the cash, you need to think about how you want to grow.

At their very core they're like running a business, but with no consequence.

But the simplicity of it is something that an 8 year old can play.

Okay, we've all seen Minecraft and things like that.

I imagine they're very similar.

I don't, I don't haven't played Minecraft, so please don't quote me on that.

But any resource management game where you've got this kind of thing is basically what we're doing when we're running a business.

And reminding ourselves of that simplicity helps us to first of all run Our own businesses, but more importantly, to make the difference in our clients lives, to help them understand that they don't need to over complicate these things.

You know, when somebody comes up with a massive business issue, it's really simple.

You work out where they want to get to you work out where they are, work out what the gap is.

Normally it's a limiting factor, Sort out the limiting factor, check through a few things, job done, then you chuck in some accountability.

They can see it happening, it works, it.

The whole process is not difficult.

Perhaps the biggest difficulty, Tim, going back to what he said at the start, is for fear.

The fear of accepting it simple.

The fear of stepping up and giving this advice, the fear of stepping up and taking this advice ourselves.

To go from practicing ourselves, doing the accounts and tax returns ourselves, to scaling a business that delivers for our clients.

That is such a great answer to my question, by the way.

You put so much in there.

I cannot miss the opportunity to bring up profit first at this moment.

Because what you've said there about accountants giving their clients the book E myth to read, but they haven't implemented it themselves, is really interesting because part of the training as a profit first professional is you have to implement profit first in your own business.

So the accountants and bookkeepers within our membership have to implement profit first correctly in their business.

And we guide them through the process, obviously.

And they also have to keep that journey moving forward, you know, and we do catch up and make sure everything's going okay for them and they're getting success with it within their business.

That allows them to learn the effect, the positive impact it has on their business, but also the points of resistance that they hit that we help them overcome.

Because then when they then go out to their clients to start to talk about profit first, implement with them, they understand the resistance they're getting back because they remember.

Yeah, I was a bit like that when I first implemented, but this is why I did this, so.

So it just creates that wonderful learning and experience.

If you're breathing it, it's walking the walk.

And something.

Something I missed off from my last answer, Tim, which was how did I do it?

It was actually walking the walk, was actually trying my own businesses, starting things.

Some of them never went beyond an idea.

Yeah, some of them were amazing.

I had the idea of a premises that would take stuff that you need to put on ebay and would put it on ebay and give you a commission.

Yeah, I could do with it.

Right now I've got a pile of stuff in My office just over there that needs to go onto ebay.

I've got no interest of listing it myself.

This idea was an idea until I saw it on the 40 year old virgin film about probably about three, four years later I thought yeah, damn, that was an idea.

And there's a few others like that.

There's a few that started but didn't really go anywhere and then there's a few that actually started and they became businesses.

But going through it yourself with something that you don't feel emotionally attached to, the quality of output.

And again it's going back to Emif, it's going back to seven her pie shop and not being emotional about the pies and if she swapped with the mechanic it would probably be a better business.

I think that was the story that was used.

By having that detachment it helps you understand the reality of running a business.

And that's not to, that's not to disregard the experience of running a business.

But all practitioners have if they're self employed.

But actually a really powerful thing to do is to go back to Robert Kiyosaki.

I'm sure many will know of Robert Kiyosaki.

Some would have read the books Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

I'm actually specifically referring to the cash flow quadrant and the difference between the self employed individual and the business owner.

The core difference in mentality, opportunity, risk, etc and the challenges of running a self employed business are very different to the challenges of running a business business.

Yeah, yeah, couldn't agree more, couldn't agree more.

It's a massive step change, isn't it?

And what I like to say to people is that I congratulate them on what they've done and what they've achieved up to this point but then we can help them get so much better and provide so much more of an impact to their clients and to their customers along the way.

Like you say by learning.

And your key message is definitely coming across about overcoming fear.

This is what I believe you're going to be talking about at Profitcon which will be in London on Monday 22nd September.

So it's only just a few days away and we can't wait for that to, to come around.

So.

So Carl, is there anything else you can share with us that will encourage people to, to if they have, if they're 50, 50 on the fence of getting that ticket, they'll think no, I've got to come to this now.

Okay, so I'm not going to share too much because when I first spoke to Duncan in the early days where, you know, he was sounding me out as to whether I would come on stage and, you know, in these negotiations, I'm going to be honest, everyone plays hard to get.

However, Duncan had an absolute non negotiable which I was delighted with, which is this must be brand new content that's not been heard before.

That was a non negotiable and for me, fantastic, because none of my keynotes are off the shelf, rolled out, you know, I just don't do that.

So it's going to be a brand new keynote.

However, what I can share is that this is going to be focused on the mindset, the decision making, the actions that you need to take as a business owner.

It's going to be more akin to the kind of keynotes that I've been engaged to deliver to audiences all around the world, rather than the accounting keynotes that I deliver.

Deliver.

I will sprinkle a bit of reference back to the DT group because I think that just helps reinforce some of the messages which I wouldn't normally do to wider businesses.

But actually what I'm going to be talking about is the mindsets that you need as a business owner to really make sure that you are fit and fighting as a business owner and then in turn you can make your business fit and fighting.

I'm going to be talking about the common challenges that I see business owners facing today, rather than the theoretical challenges and where I see things going, it's going to be about the stuff that makes me want to shake people and slap them around the head and say, do it this way.

Ultimately, I'm going to try and help you to leave the conference, actually take some action and hopefully, whilst I might not transform your paradigms, transform some of your thinking and decision making to be a little bit more commercial and a little bit more in line with where emotionally you want the business to go, but also emotionally you don't want the business to go.

By removing that internal conflict, then that journey is going to be a whole lot more easy for you.

I love that.

I can't wait.

Carl, I'm really looking forward to this.

We can't wait to have you join us on stage.

I know that our members are so excited that you're coming and alongside you we're going to have obviously the Wonderful Mike Michalovich, Mr. Profit First Himself, Ron Baker, who builds the subscription business model.

Now after, after originally taking this into value pricing, which I used, it helped me massively with my accountsy business before I sold, and Richard McCann who again has got a fantastic personal life story to share with us as well as helping us with our presentation skills.

So, Carl, can't wait, can't wait for you to join us in London.

I'm really looking forward to it.

I can't wait either, Tim.

And just as I guess a final one and I, I promise you I'm not on commission for this but I'm very enthusiastic about it.

Ron, for those that don't know, because I'm mindful, Tim, that for a UK audience that are, you know, certainly in contact with or aligned to the Profit first methodology, they will know, know or know of Mike Richard McCann.

I know you know, I'd actually recommended him into one of the conferences.

He, he speaks all over the uk.

I speak over the uk.

Ron hasn't been in the UK so much and isn't a name that would necessarily jump out to practitioners unless they've read the books in the past and so on.

Ron is a legend of a game.

So I was, I was keynoting and then he was on stage after me and his session at the time was fantastic.

I'm not going to share the details but, because I don't know if it's going to be the same one or different.

But it was a phenomenal session and guys, you're in for a treat with this one.

Do you know there are half a dozen Profit first professionals flying over from America to join us in London because Ron's speaking and they want.

I could imagine, I can imagine.

That says all you need to.

All you need to say, doesn't it?

I would say.

Fantastic.

Carl, thank you very much for joining me today.

I've really enjoyed our conversation.

I could continue talking with you for hours and hours on this, on the topics we've been talking about.

It's fascinating to hear your insight to say that.

Thank you so much.

No worries.

Thank you, Tim, thank you so much.

Thank you for joining us on our podcast today.

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