Career coach | AAT journeys
HOW YOU CAN START YOUR OWN ACCOUNTANCY BUSINESS
Top tips from a CEO
AAT is a brilliant route to getting yourself a good job, but it can also set a strong foundation for being your own boss. Here we speak to Lucy Cohen FMAAT the co-founder and CEO of Mazuma Accountants about how journey into starting her own business.
Are you cut out for being your own boss?
Have you always had the desire to work for yourself and start your own business? Are you self-motivated and enjoy decision-making and problem-solving? Are you keen to build your resilience and have a hunger to learn? If the answer is ‘yes’ to all of these, then starting a business might be an itch you need to scratch.
How big is the risk?
Starting a business is always a risk. You stand to lose the capital you put into it and it may take a while to build up a client base so you are earning the amount you want to be. You can reduce that risk by saving money up to start the business and cover your earnings for the first few months, by reducing your (business and personal) outgoings as much as possible and by starting the business while still in employment (if you are allowed). But even if the business fails or you decide to shut it down one day you will have gained an enormous amount of experience.
Do I need a co-founder?
It can be lonely running a business, and you can feel isolated from conversations with friends and family who are employed. If you want to find a co-founder, make sure it’s the right person. You will need to have some different skills that complement each other and then define your roles and stay in your own lanes. Don’t step on each other’s toes. You don’t have to be similar, but crucially, you do need to share the same visions and values.
Lucy's story
Lucy Cohen is the co-founder and CEO of Mazuma Accountants, set up in 2006 as the UK's first-ever accountancy subscription service and now one of the largest firms in the UK. She credits her AAT Diploma as the reason she set up the business; it completely changed her life trajectory.
Accountancy wasn’t the original plan
Lucy fell into accountancy and studying AAT after initially wanting to work in film and TV.
“I blagged a gap year working in film but I hated it so I went to the career advisor to look for other options and AAT was then first thing that came up (maybe they were looking alphabetically!). At the same time, I walked into a nearby hotel and asked if they had any jobs going and they happened to have a purchase ledger vacancy. They asked if I could do it, and I said ‘yes’ and did my AAT apprenticeship in the evenings while I was working.”
Lucy’s inspiration to start an accountancy business
Lucy came from a family full of creatives — actors, artists and musicians — and saw how great they were at what they did but how awful they were at organising themselves and their accounts so she wanted to help with that. Lucy was always a natural problem solver and enjoyed creating new systems and processes.
“My mum owned a shoe shop, and I always looked for better ways to do a stock take. I discovered that I loved numbers. They felt like a cheat code and I loved how they could tell you how a business was doing. Business is a constant series of solving problems.”
The move from employment to being her own boss
Lucy left the hotel to go and work for Cardiff Council in the schools department which she found quite dull but a secondment came up implementing a new procurement system which she applied for and got. Lucy got the bug for working on change management and was promoted four times in 18 months on the secondment but when the project ended, she faced going back to her old job and taking a pay cut which she didn’t want to do.
“It was at this point I decided to start my own business and contacted my school friend, Sophie Hughes, who had also studied AAT, to see if she wanted to co-found it with me. We started Mazuma without any capital, sharing a laptop in my spare bedroom.”
How studying AAT created the foundation for starting a business
Lucy credits AAT as being the foundation for setting up her company saying, “I quite literally wouldn’t have started Mazuma without AAT. I wouldn’t have had the idea, and I wouldn’t have been exposed to the right things — it changed the trajectory of my life. I now run one of the largest firms in the UK.
I really like AAT, we put our staff through it because it’s not just theory-based, it’s very practical too. We tend to find that staff who have done AAT grasp what we do in the firm very quickly. AAT is hands-on and lets you understand the real bones of accounting, which I think is really important.”
You’ve got to have an appetite to learn
Lucy is an absolutely vicarious reader and also listens to podcasts and audiobooks constantly. She says, “having an appetite to learn is huge and you’re going to struggle in business without it. You can’t learn how to run a business purely by reading, you need to do it. Just like you can’t learn how to ride a bike by reading a manual, but you can learn about the different parts of a bike, how to fix it and service it.”
Lucy’s favourite books about how (and how not) to do business
Never Split the Difference By Chris Voss
You Are A Badass By Jen Sincero
The Cult of We: WeWork and the Great Startup Delusion By Eliot Brown
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup By John Carreyrou
Be unconventional
Be open to approaching your career goals in an unconventional way because a lot of the biggest success stories come in unconventional ways.
“When Sophie and I took AAT through an apprenticeship, everyone else was going through university, and they looked at it as a lesser qualification. But we got qualified without student debt and with work experience. Think about the ROI of your degree and qualifications.
AAT is also great for people who might struggle in typical learning environments, they offer all these different routes, and as an employer, but also as part of wider society, I find that really exciting.”
You need a unique selling point (USP)
Spotting a gap in the market is a good way to launch a business and to set yourself apart from the competition, but you don’t necessarily need to do something different, you just need to do it better.
When Mazuma launched, they pre-dated cloud-based software, and Lucy saw a gap for small businesses to access reliable financial information. Lucy doesn’t believe in relying too much on software when one of their accountants' input would be better. Their main message was that you could put all your receipts and everything into one purple envelope, and they would do everything else.
“Think about the ROI of your degree and qualifications.”
“The year-end and compliance work is what costs us the most to complete as it’s done by people higher up on the team, but this work can be done a lot quicker if all the groundwork is done correctly. This is why we do it all ourselves. We packaged it as a subscription (although this term wasn't used in 2006, we had to call it a ‘fixed monthly fee’). Now it’s much easier to explain, but all of this really set us apart from the beginning.”
The importance of a brand
Having an innovative brand will make you memorable and allow growth. Mazuma stood out when they launched in 2006 with their purple envelopes and quirky copy — others in the industry weren’t doing anything like that when they started.
“About ten years ago, I also created a Blue Peter spoof video about how our envelopes worked which went viral. No one had ever tried to sell accountancy like that before. Disruption and innovation are at the heart of what we do.”
When Lucy and Sophie started Mazuma (named after the Yiddish term for money), they knew they wanted it to be something more than two people doing accounts.
“We always knew we wanted to scale. Sitting still is not very me. And if we wanted to scale it, the brand couldn’t be about us as individuals — you can’t scale if every client wants to speak to you personally. Mazuma is more than just us. It can continue in its own right without us.”
Lucy’s biggest tips for starting a business
The Association of Accounting Technicians. 30 Churchill Place, London E14 5RE. Registered charity no.1050724. A company limited by guarantee (No. 1518983).
HOW YOU CAN START YOUR OWN ACCOUNTANCY BUSINESS
Top tips from a CEO
