About the I Hate Numbers podcast

The I Hate Numbers podcast is a practical, jargon-free podcast for business owners, freelancers, charities, arts organisations, and social enterprises who want to feel more confident with their numbers.

This first episode explains why the podcast exists, who it is for, and why numbers matter so much in business. We talk about profit, tax, cash flow, decision-making, accountability, and the role numbers play in helping a business survive and thrive.

What you’ll learn in this episode

• Why the I Hate Numbers podcast was created.
• How numbers affect business decisions, profit, and control.
• Why many people feel disconnected from their numbers.
• How better financial understanding can reduce anxiety.
• Why numbers tell the story of your business.
• What future episodes will cover.
• How getting closer to your numbers can help your business survive and thrive.

Why I started I Hate Numbers

I started this podcast because I have seen, over many years, how business owners can feel disconnected from their numbers. Many are brilliant at what they do. They create, serve, make, support, lead, and build. However, the financial side can still feel scary, boring, confusing, or pushed aside until tax deadlines arrive.

I am one of nine kids, and growing up in a large family shaped how I thought about control, money, choices, and opportunity. I did not start out planning to become an accountant, but I knew I wanted to do something that gave me more control over my life.

My career has taken me from teaching, into industry, and then into running my own business from a back bedroom. Over the years, I have worked with charities, arts organisations, social enterprises, small businesses, larger organisations, and international clients. Across all of them, one thing has stayed true: no business can get away from its numbers.

The aim of I Hate Numbers is not to turn business owners into accountants. It is to help business owners understand what their numbers mean, use them more confidently, and make better decisions.

Who the podcast is for

The I Hate Numbers podcast is for business owners and organisations who want practical financial support without jargon or nonsense. That includes small businesses, freelancers, private businesses, charities, arts organisations, and social enterprises.

If you want to improve your money mindset, make more profit, save time, understand tax, and feel more in control of your business future, this podcast is built with you in mind.

Each episode is designed to be practical, listener-friendly, and useful. We take real business finance questions and explain them in a way that helps you act, not just listen.

Why numbers matter in business

Numbers are not just pound signs, spreadsheets, or tax return figures. They are the words to your business story. They show what has happened, what is happening now, and what could happen next.

Your numbers help you understand what you are spending, what profit you are making, where cash is going, which clients are worth your time, and whether your plans are working. If profit is one of your key business goals, our episode on What Is Profit? Gross Profit and Net Profit Explained is a useful next step.

Numbers also create accountability. If you want to grow your audience, launch a product, win new clients, or improve your services, your numbers help you measure progress and make better choices.

Why people avoid their numbers

Many people avoid numbers because they have had bad experiences with maths, finance, school, tax, or accounting. Others only look at numbers when they have to file something, pay tax, or deal with compliance.

That is understandable. Recording numbers can feel tedious, and financial language can often make things harder than they need to be.

However, getting closer to your numbers does not have to mean loving spreadsheets or becoming a finance expert. It starts with understanding the story they tell. If financial reports feel confusing, our episode on Understanding Your Financial Statements can help you make sense of the bigger picture.

What to expect from future episodes

Future episodes will cover practical topics that affect business owners every week. We will talk about profit, tax, cash flow, bookkeeping, pricing, planning, financial statements, systems, business decisions, and the questions people often feel unsure about asking.

The aim is to make numbers feel less intimidating and more useful. Numbers should help you make money, keep more of it, save time, improve decisions, and build a business that supports the life and impact you want.

Practical steps for getting closer to your numbers

• Start by looking at your numbers regularly, not only at tax time.
• Focus on what the numbers mean, not just how they look.
• Track profit, cash flow, costs, and client value.
• Use your numbers to make better pricing and planning decisions.
• Look for simple systems that reduce the boring parts of record keeping.
• Ask better questions about your business performance.
• Use numbers as a guide for future decisions, not just a record of the past.

Related episodes

• What Is Profit? Gross Profit and Net Profit Explained
• Understanding Your Financial Statements
• Build Your Cash Flow with a Spreadsheet

Key takeaway

The I Hate Numbers podcast is here to help business owners connect with their numbers in a practical, useful, and confidence-building way. Numbers are not there to scare us. They are there to guide us.

When we understand our numbers, we can make better decisions, improve profit, manage cash flow, reduce anxiety, and build stronger businesses. Whether we run a private business, charity, arts organisation, or social enterprise, numbers are part of the story.

If you are ready to feel more confident with your numbers, start here, keep listening, and visit ihatenumbers.co.uk for more support.

Plan it, Do it, Profit.

“Your numbers are the words to your business story.”

Share this episode: Listen on Apple Podcasts

🎧 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps more business owners understand tax, finance, and their numbers.

Episode Timecodes

• 00:00 – Welcome to the first episode of I Hate Numbers
• 01:00 – What the podcast is about
• 01:37 – Mahmood’s background and business journey
• 03:49 – Starting a business from a back bedroom
• 04:16 – Why every business needs to understand numbers
• 05:00 – How numbers help business owners make better decisions
• 06:35 – Why people often dislike or avoid numbers
• 08:20 – Numbers, accountability and business direction
• 09:05 – Future podcast topics and practical support
• 10:01 – Feedback, questions and next steps

About the Podcast

The I Hate Numbers podcast helps business owners understand accounting, tax, finance, profit, cash flow, and business planning in a practical way. We simplify financial topics so you can make better decisions and feel more confident with your numbers.

You can also watch more practical finance and tax support on the I Hate Numbers YouTube channel, or listen and follow on Apple Podcasts.

Further Support

📘 Book

https://www.ihatenumbers.co.uk/i-hate-numbers-book/

🎧 Podcast

https://www.ihatenumbers.co.uk/i-hate-numbers-podcast/

🌐 Website

https://www.ihatenumbers.co.uk

You are listening to the I Hate Numbers Podcast with Mahmood Reza. The I Hate Numbers podcast mission is to help your business survive and thrive by you better understanding and connecting with your numbers. Number love and care is what it's about. Tune in every week. Now, here's your host, Mahmood Reza.

Hello everybody, and welcome to I Hate Numbers. The inaugural episode number one. I'm excited, ready to go. Bit of nerves there. You know those nerves that you get when you do something for the first time. You've got the adrenaline rush going, you're a bit excited, but you want to make sure you're as close to the bathroom as possible.

So, it's my first episode. The first episode of many. Obviously, I'm going to be somebody making mistakes. You know, we all do that when we try something new in our business. The thing is just to get it out there. What I advise all my clients to do, if you've got something, don't over-engineer. Just get it out the way.

Move on and it can get better. Obviously, I'd love to hear any feedback when we get to the end of show. Show notes will show you how to get in contact. Share your feedback. That's going to be a great thing. Now, a natural question you're all going to be asked yourself is, what's the show all about? You know, what is I Hate Numbers?

So, what it is about? It's not about dissing numbers. I come from a world here, and my main aim in this podcast and future podcasts is to connect you, business owners out there, get better acquainted with your numbers. You can understand what those numbers mean, and you can actually use them more powerfully in your business to make more money, keep more of it.

The second pause. Let me tell you a bit more about myself here. A bit of a bio for want of a better term. Now, I'm one of nine kids. I'm perfectly in the middle of that. You might be thinking, what's the relevance of that? So, if I take myself back where, when I was growing up here, as it’s usual with most large families, it's not a great deal of money, but I always had that idea when I was very young that one day I was going to do something for myself.

I run my own business. I had no idea, so I wasn't playing in the playground, doing airplanes, thinking one day I'm going to be an accountant and a mentor, far from it. I just knew that, like with most people, that I wanted to do something to be more in control of my life itself. Originally from London, I moved to the Midlands in Lester, did my first degree there.

Having messed up at school big time, so having known what the pain of disappointment is and getting up and just getting on with things here, did my first degree. I didn't quite know what to do with my career. Took a year out, did various bits and bobs, lots of volunteering, getting plugged in all the time.

Uh, having done some entrepreneurial activities at school, getting embedded into the world of business, getting embedded into the world of numbers. My first paid career, first paid work was in teaching. Now, for those of you who might be in teaching, know anything about it. If you're a teacher, then most people think that you can't do anything practical, anything useful.

So, after a period of three years, I jumped ship, nothing to go to, no job or anything of that nature. Some people might call it reckless. That, it is just something I felt that was necessary at the time. After a period of time, I got a job in industry, worked in industry for about five and a half years.

Great experience. Managed to get qualified as an accountant, and a few other bits of paper along the way, and in all that time, just getting lots of experience at reporting numbers at board level, at the lower end, and getting immersed in the world of business itself. After a period of time thinking, great, I love accountancy.

Nothing wrong with that, but I don't want to stay as that for the rest of my life. What do I do? So, pivot number two. And pivot, in case you may not be aware of it, is where you change direction and you do something completely different. So, I jumped ship again thinking the time is right now to take the plunge and start your own business.

So, 25 years ago, I started running my own business in my back bedroom. I've made quite a number of mistakes now, 25 years. However, having said that, I've also learnt a great deal here, and one of many things that I've managed to do in my career to date is I've worked internationally. I've worked within a number of different sectors, both in terms of charities, multinationals, smaller companies, the arts, manufacturing, retailing.

I've got a very good client base here that crosses that. You know, the one thing that I know there, whether you are a humble market trader or you're a multinational company, you can't get away from those numbers, and what I've found is that a lot of people have that disconnect with those numbers. I've worked in some fantastic places in Africa, I've worked in Russia, worked in Cuba,

but again, it doesn't matter how big your business is, how big your company is, numbers, you can't get away from that. Now, you might be thinking, okay, that's very interesting, Mahmood, but what about the actual show? What's that? Why should we listen each week to your show? What are we going to get from that? Well, fundamentally, there's a few things that you'll get, hopefully as takeaways from the business, from this podcast itself.

Now, for me, it's not just connecting businesses to the numbers for the sake of it, but what it does, it gives you that superpower. It enables you to know what you're spending. So again, a lot of business owners that I meet, fantastic what they do. They've got a great skill, great craft. They're great at creating things.

They're great at giving service to customers. The marketing they've got a handle on, but they're not necessarily aware of what the financial impact on that actually is. And we know, you know, when that money gets tight, then you know business is going to suffer as a result. So, it's about tracking what those numbers are.

It's about knowing, you know, what profits you're likely to be making. Again, fundamentally, if you're not in business to make money, then you've got nothing but an expensive hobby on your hands. Fundamentally, business is there to make money. How you make it, how much you make it, it values. That's a different part of that conversation, but you need to make money to survive and have impact itself.

So, it's about making decisions. It's about knowing how your future's going to pan out. And here's a radical thing to think about. For me, numbers, business numbers aren't just figures. They aren't just pound signs or dollar signs, whatever your currency of choice is, they are the words to your business story.

So, your business path, however that business path develops, you know, has a financial impact. And that impact is measured typically in financial terms. So, the numbers are a part of that story that helps you guide your path. Now, going forward in future shows, we are going to be predominantly answering questions that people have actually submitted to me over the years.

I'm going to share some of those thoughts with you, those stories. We're going to talk to you about how numbers are going to help you have a better impact on your business. Now, before I sort of share more about what the future podcasts are going to be, effectively, one thing I'd like to share is why people, in my opinion, probably hate numbers.

First of all, it's probably not the thing of choice for most people. For a lot of people, who don't actually see the delight it has here, it can be quite a boring, quite a dry subject. If you've had bad experiences at school, you know, whether it's in maths or whatever, you know, that could actually scar you for life here and lots of people quite naturally from those previous experiences

get that very bad phobia, a very bad reaction. A lot of people know and they just look at their numbers when it comes to that wonderful tax-return filing season, when it comes to doing what they call compliance. You know, things that the government might ask of you, things that people ask of you. That's the bit where we drag ourselves off the settee or whatever, and actually get those numbers.

The other part is some aspects of numbers can be quite tedious. So, actually collecting the numbers, recording the numbers, that's not where the joy and the delight is. Some people do get that delight, you know, whether they're doing spreadsheets, whatever, but that's not what the whole story is about. That collecting those numbers,

I'm going to talk to you as the podcasts go on about nice ways to give a bit of energy back in your life and actually take the tedium out of recording those numbers. Coming back to the podcast, what we're going to be doing as time goes on, and I'm not using we in the royal sense of we, bit of nerves kicking now I should say I, and as time goes on, we are going to be talking about how you can actually store the words to your story.

Why you should share these words to your story, so it will give you better visibility? Numbers are great for me. Not only do they bring your business to life, but they give you some degree of accountability. So, if you are going to, for example, develop your audiences, if you are going to launch a new product, if you want to get new clients, you know effectively saying to yourself, okay, this is what my aspirations are, this is what my target is,

overlay that with a number, you've got some degree of accountability. Controlling in terms of when you have no control over what you're planning to do there, you can be like that ruderless ship that goes all over the place. I'm going to share with you in terms of those wonderful things that we know, we have no choice in our life, and tax.

How does that work? This is not a technical podcast. This is not aimed at accountants or finance people, love them to bits, but this is aimed at business owners. This is aimed at charities. This is aimed at anybody who operates in that world of business and just wants to get a bit more acquainted with what their numbers are actually about.

How much profits we're making on a particular client? We've all had that situation where some clients suck up a lot of energy, suck up a lot of time. We might lose the will to live with some of those clients here, and it'd be great to see what the financial impact on those clients actually are. We look at different measures that we can adopt here.

And remember, this is not a podcast that's aimed to actually make you lose the will to live. This is a podcast that's going to be answering real-life questions, and it's going to be very practical. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much for all your time here. I'm going to just draw things. My name is Mahmood. I've enjoyed sharing the airway with you, and thank you very much for lending me your ears today.

If you'd like to hear more, have a look at the podcast notes. If you'd like to share some feedback and reviews, if you want to throw some rotten tomatoes at the radio, the wireless, whatever you're listening to, feel free to. I've operated in the years of feedback and comments and worked on those for the last 40 odd years, so I welcome all your comments and your questions.

I look forward to speaking to you over the airways next week. Take care. We hope you enjoyed this episode and appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show. We hope you got some value. If you did, then we'd love it if you shared the episode. We look forward to you joining us next week for another I Hate Numbers episode.