Episode 14

Entrepreneurial Career Insights for Accounting Professionals

Caroline Plumb

Caroline Plumb OBE is Founder and CEO of Fluidly, a venture-backed startup using data and machine learning to deliver automated cashflow forecasting and management for SMEs.

Caroline previously co-founded and led FreshMinds, a market research consultancy, and FreshMinds Talent, a recruiting business. Her businesses have won a number of industry awards and listed in the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Small Companies to Work For.

Caroline is one of the Prime Minister’s Business Ambassadors, representing the Professional & Business Services sector. She has a First Class degree in Engineering, Economics and Management from Oxford University, is on the industrial advisory board of the Engineering department and was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours List in 2016. She has three very noisy small children.

In just 22 minutes, you’ll hear all of these great career insights for accounting professionals:

  • How Fluidly was born and why cashflow is the number one stressor of small business owners
  • 60% of business owners have lost sleep over cashflow and the management of cash
  • Accountants are the very best business advisors to business owners
  • Owners of very small businesses can hold a lot of critical business information in their heads, but once they start growing, they need help with cashflow forecasting
  • The ONE FOCUS the great accounting firms have that the rest don’t
  • The accounting profession is always changing, and always will be
  • The challenges large accounting firms face in a world where products and services are moving to subscription models
  • Project based work and value added services for large accounting firms are hard to land, hard to price and hard to deliver, but worth it
  • The impact of technology and automation on the changing accounting profession
  • How can you use a rich ‘real time’data set to see what’s coming up and see round corners – the icebergs before you hit them and see what your competitors can’t
  • Accountants can add the most value by applying their expertise to drive their clients forward with insight and recommendations that are more future based than historical
  • What predictive analytics offers accountants to predict what’s coming next based on the data they’ve seen
  • When it comes to advisor, it’s never one size fits all s- to drive revenue, segmentation looks at the business and the person behind it
  • Good accountants are brilliant with the mechanics of a product or services – to make sure it’s a good fit for client needs
  • The go to market process of understanding customers and markets and tailoring products and services to create a more consistent brand proposition
  • What a ‘T shaped accountant’ looks like – people in senior roles have breadth of knowledge across the firm with depth of expertise in key areas
  • Can small accounting firms learn anything from the larger ones or is it the other way round?
  • What entrepreneurial accounting firms like Baldwins are doing, and the extent of their ambition and vision
  • The power of relentless curiosity to uncover new possibilities, particularly in innovation and creating new categories
  • Why it’s hard to be different and why you have to deeply understand unarticulated wants and needs of clients and what is causing them pain
  • Great advice – ‘know what you don’t know, and then find someone that does.’

To contact Caroline: 0207 611 1001

Twitter: @cplumb

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Fluidly website

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About the Podcast

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Accounting Voices Podcast
Accounting Voices helps people in the accounting world stay relevant visible and vocal. Host Rob Brown interprets trends reshaping the profession and gives listeners insight to build authority influence and a stronger voice in firms and markets.

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About your host

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Rob Brown

Rob Brown is the founder and host of the Accounting Voices Podcast, the flagship solo show of the Accounting Voices Network. Each episode offers sharp analysis and commentary on the trends, ideas and people shaping the global accounting profession.

Through this Accounting Voices Podcast, Rob helps accounting firm leaders, decision makers and professionals stay relevant and make sense of disruption in areas like AI, automation, M&A, private equity and soft skills beyond the tech. His perspective blends clarity, insight and curiosity, making complex issues relevant and practical for professionals and decision makers across accounting and finance.

He also leads two monthly panel shows, Accounting M&A and Accounting AI, which bring together senior voices to explore consolidation, strategy and the impact of technology on firms and people.

Rob is the author of the bestselling book Build Your Reputation (Wiley) and a TEDx speaker whose talk The Personal Brand of You has more than 400,000 views. Over his career he has hosted and moderated more than 1,000 conversations with accounting and fintech leaders worldwide.

Based in Nottingham UK, Rob is a stroke survivor living with epilepsy, a black belt in kickboxing, a decent chess player and an average player of four musical instruments.