Motivation | Career changer
Banking on expertise and support
Kathryn Frimond began her career in a local branch of Royal Bank of Scotland and worked her way up to associate director before moving to Nationwide. After almost five and a half years there, she founded her own virtual bookkeeping practice, Your Local Bookkeeper
Words Marianne Curphey
AT A GLANCE
1
Retrain
You can retrain with AAT according to your own schedule.
2
Your own business
Running your own business gives you flexibility and family time.
3
Building relationships
Bookkeeping is about building human relationships with clients, not just numbers.
“At school, I was told I would fail my maths GCSE, but I worked incredibly hard and ended up with an A, something I’m still proud of,” Kathryn Frimond explains. “After that, I switched off from maths entirely, studied history at the University of Kent and wanted to work in a museum – something along the lines of Indiana Jones, if I’m honest!”
After graduating, she needed a job and started working at the commercial office of the Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest, dealing with small business lending. Following a promotion, she moved to London and worked as an associate director in the recoveries department, which had a less than glamorous reputation during the 2008 crash. It is something she describes as “a baptism of fire”.
“After five years working for RBS, I moved to a similar role at Nationwide, where I really started to love spreadsheets and got a better understanding of the financial needs of small businesses and how to produce cash flow projections,” she explains. “I was a manager in the property finance department [and] that is where I started to realise that clients needed a lot of help. In the bank, we were asking for management accounts and financial projections but these were not things that general business owners were able to produce.”
After Nationwide made the entire department redundant, Frimond accepted a pay-off and decided to retrain as a bookkeeper with AAT.
“I started by helping with my husband’s business books and helping friends, and it turned out that people are desperate for help,” she adds. “I knew exactly what banks looked for and that’s been a huge advantage.”
Kathryn self-studied AAT Level 2 and passed in 2016. She then took some time off to have her son and passed her AAT Level 3 advanced certificate in bookkeeping in 2020. She founded Your Local Bookkeeper in 2019, with business growing over the past six years. Based in Surrey, she focuses on supporting purpose-led, ethical and sustainable businesses with their finances.
“I knew exactly what banks looked for and that’s been a huge advantage.”
“I studied while my son was at nursery,” she says. “I used to go to the library because it was a nice excuse to get out of the house. I enjoy the structure, the problem solving and the fact that I’m genuinely helping small business owners make sense of their finances. Other bookkeepers will tell you how we enjoy the meticulous matching of documents.”
Her experience in banking has transferred over in other ways, too, and Frimond is good at credit control in her own business because of her experience in the recoveries department.
Skills and mindset to be self-employed
She says the biggest shift from employment to self-employment is discipline and managing your own time effectively.
“In a corporate job, you can blend into the background,” she adds. “But when it’s your business, you’ve got to show up every day, not just for client work, but for your own marketing, admin and growth strategy.”
She says that self-employment has given her the freedom to structure her day around school hours and still earn a good income from a successful business that works for her and her family. Even so, working for yourself can involve long hours, especially in the early years.
“When you’re self-employed, you actually work harder than when you’re employed,” she reveals. “I’m quite often emailing at 10 o’clock at night, but I can pick my son up from school and work in the evening instead.”
Marketing your bookkeeping business
Frimond says many of her clients have either come through LinkedIn or referrals, as well as podcasts and social media.
“I am really specific with the type of client I work with now,” she says. “As the business has grown, I have become more comfortable with letting go of people who don’t align with my values. I now mainly work with ethical and sustainable businesses.”
Her tips for success are:
- start your processes from the beginning. If you’re going to have pricing software, set it up early
- join a group of like-minded bookkeepers or accountants
- work with people who share your values
- don’t be afraid to use AI as a time-saver but make sure you keep the human touch.
She emphasises the importance of human relationships, something that artificial intelligence (AI) will never be able to replace.
“You get insights about the business from human connection,” she explains. “There are things that AI cannot do and it’s those personal conversations. I know my clients inside out – they have been through divorces and medical issues, the financial crash and business worries with me. Many of those issues are unrelated to the business but all of them have had an impact on cash flow and growth, and we’ve had to work through them all together. That is why there is now such a high level of trust.”
Frimond is also passionate about the role small businesses can play in mitigating climate change and making a positive contribution.
“Small businesses make up 99% of the UK economy,” she says. “If each one makes just one change, that’s a massive impact. As bookkeepers and accountants, we hold a lot of power to influence society and hold clients to account.”
TOP TIPS
Kathryn’s tips for career changers
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Think about the type of business you want to build and the clients you want to attract.
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Remember that you will need to work on your own marketing and business strategy.
3
As an adviser to small businesses, you can make a real difference to their business and to the environment.
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