Do you consider yourself resilient and what does that mean to you? In this podcast, Resilient Entrepreneurs with Two Four One, we chat with business owners about what resilience means to them as they share their inspiring stories and life lessons.
What we've learned running our own business, is you're never alone even when it feels like it. So tune in anytime to this podcast. We're always here for you celebrating resilient entrepreneurs just like you. We're Laura and Vicki from Two Four One - a marketing company for early stage business owners who want to launch, grow and be resilient.
Hello, Giles Belfrage!
Giles is an accountant and paraeducator, he has a very interesting story of how he's come to help many young people, and small business owners alike. Giles is a valued member of our Marketing and Entrepreneurship membership, called the Level-Up League. We've had some really fun conversations with Giles and I have no doubt this is going to be yet another fun, and interesting conversation for all of our listeners who want to know a little bit more about accounting and why it's important to your business, particularly as an early stage business. And also just to find out more about Giles’ personal story and how he has come to become a resilient entrepreneur. Giles, we're delighted to share our platform with you. Thank you, and welcome.
Thank you, it's nice to share the platform with you.
We usually start off with a question about what your first job was.
Yes, my first job was egg collecting and hen house sweeping. I was 16 years old and it was the Great British Indian Summer of 1976. And I had to get on my pedal cycle and cycle three miles to Hascombe and get there on time and then do this gruelling schedule from 8am in the morning till 6pm at night.
I'm terrified of chickens. So all hats off to you.
Yeah, and there were plenty of them, too and I was taking their eggs.
So they'd be angry chickens.
Yes they sounded angry.
And what was your first foray into entrepreneurship?
Probably 2019, it was a rather strange time of life, really, when I went to work with Bermuda College, and it wasn't conventional like I saw this advertised in the paper, they sort of came and got me. And I was up there for five years and I was teaching and working with students, and helping them get in the mindset to pass exams. So when I left Bermuda College in 2019, I started my own business, which was originally tutoring.
Now you've spoken to us before about how you're a paraeducator, and what is it about tutoring that you love the most?
Well, everybody's different, everybody learns differently, everybody has their own set of hurdles. Maybe they'll lack self confidence, or maybe in one little boy's case that he had some kind of condition where he disrupted the class on purpose and then didn't sort of realise what he was doing but he managed to get everybody upset. So he ended up with no friends, yet he was supposed to enjoy school and learn and be happy. So that was an extreme example but you know, we get other people too who aren’t that good at learning and one boy who used to read his accounting book and never attempted any of the problems, so he’d just sit in the library for the whole term and read his book. And you can't do that you have to be able to attempt the problems and then sit the exam and get 50%. So as far as I know, he's still doing that.
Yeah, taking the easy way, or not so easy way, I guess. So what is it about, that is a bit of a passion for you because you know, as an accountant, it's easy to sit behind a desk and just do people's figures for them, but you actually go and help other people become accountants and study to be accountants or whatever they need in that sort of field, where they need the maths and you've also worked with very young kids as a paraeducator as well. So what is it about that that draws you to that?
I think we get to a point in our lives where we ask ourselves how we're doing and try and get people to succeed us because in 20 years time, I'm not going to be doing this anymore, I don't want to. I want all these people to come to the nursing home and visit me and say Do you remember me? You got me through the exams, and I’ll say great, go off and do your accounting. Accounting is creating order out of chaos, but ultimately there's no order, I mean, you just keep going and try and get everything as neat as possible, and explain it as well as possible.
I love that, “Accounting is creating order out of chaos” and I know, we have talked to and worked with so many entrepreneurs and while marketing is a challenge for a lot of them, so is accounting, and a lot of us, we stay in our creative zone of genius and we want to do what we do and have passion for, and accounting is generally the last thing on the list, and it's very challenging for entrepreneurs. So do you have any advice for entrepreneurs out there on how to help get their accounting, less chaotic and into more order?
Yeah, appreciate you got it on the last thing on the list but also in the back of your mind, you probably don't want to have it on the last thing on your list. You'd rather know how you're doing and one of my clients got quite forceful with me, she said, she's tired of zoom meetings, she wants me to go down there to her office and ever since we had that conversation, I see her every two weeks, and we make sure we get everything up to date. Her accounts are in pretty great shape.
Explain why it's important for a founding business, an early stage business to get ahead of their numbers to understand what their business is doing from a financial standpoint.
Well, if you've got a business you probably do different areas, different revenue streams. For example, somebody I was talking to today, he does classes and he does one-on-one and he does all the services for you where he just goes and puts all his things in place. And you can do your profitability according to your product or you can do it according to your customer, or you can do both and it's very important to figure out what's profitable and what's not profitable and to charge the right price. And some of these businesses are complicated so that's even more important why they need to get started early.
Yeah, because I think as a business owner, if you're starting up from a passion, it's easy to just put yourself out there, it's not easy but we put ourselves out there, we decide what the service is, we put it into the market, we get clients, and then we get busy and so we must be doing well. Is that necessarily true?
No. There's one formula that I have devised since I started the business, the more modest the client is, they say “I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong. I'm so worried.”, they're the people who are doing a good job and the cocky ones say “I don't need to be told what to do”, are the ones who are making a mess of it.
I think it's really easy to put your head in the sand when it comes to your accounts and like Vicki said, it's like, Oh, I've got clients, I'm making some money, the income is coming in, I'm doing okay, what do I have to worry about? And then tax time comes around, and then you're struggling to figure out your taxes because you don't have your reconciliations done and there's all these little things that I think knowing accounting or having an accountant can really help. So is there any other advice to help other entrepreneurs be more resilient in their business? Not give up? What would you advise someone else to, to maybe do to help their business to be more resilient when it comes to their finances especially?
Well, you could have a free complimentary meeting with me on Zoom or in person and we'd actually talk about the four obligations to the government, there's not one, there's four of them. It can get complicated and I've farmed four of my clients to somebody else for the payroll tax filing because she can save them money. So yeah, I've used her on a few occasions and then there’s Social Insurance which really mounts up if you turn your back on it, suddenly you got a bill for several thousand dollars. But you must also consider that if you're working a full time job during the day and your employer's paying for it, you don't have to pay for it as well. And there’s some complicated rule for the pension where you don't have to contribute to a pension fund straight away, they give you some time. And then as soon as I think you make $24,000, then you have to put into the pension and how are you going to know if you've made $24,000 when you think going to see Giles Belfrage is like going to the dentist?
And that's it, exactly. We go to the dentist, we don't want to go to the dentist, it hurts. Tooth-hurty, that's the time you go to the dentist when it's 2.30, heard that? Lame joke. Sorry couldn't resist. And, yeah, accounting a lot of people think of it the same way but there you go, a tip for all you new entrepreneurs out there, don't put off accounting it’s really, really important.
So Giles, we talk about resilience on this podcast. What does that mean to you?
Not giving up. So I might wake up one morning feeling depressed and I’ll say no you don't have to be depressed, you're doing well, you're doing everything right, and helping all these people and just move on.
So for you Giles as an entrepreneur, what would you say is your failure mindset? You say resilience to you is never giving up, but failure comes along with doing business so what is your mindset around failure?
Failure might be having a client that we don't see eye to eye and we have, we just don't get on. And then I realised that early in the morning between 6am and 8am is my downtime when I get up, but I'm just being quiet, she kept calling me up at 7am, I couldn't work with that.
Boundaries, yes. We need boundaries in business, just like in other relationships. So how do you divorce a client? How do you tell them it's not you, it's me?
I told her I didn't think I could help her, and that was it.
It's an important note to self is when you're recruiting clients, when you're onboarding clients, when you're having that discovery call, it's very much about whether you're a fit for them and whether they're a fit for you. And as entrepreneurs, even though we may not feel like we have a choice of who we work with in the early stages, it's quite key to be selective, and to not just work with anybody who comes along because you're not giving them great value if they're not a good fit as well. So thanks for that reminder.
Yeah, I think that's exactly where knowing your niche helps, having a general idea of the types of people or other businesses or clients or customers that work well with you and how you work. And when you start doing that first discovery call, or like you said Giles, you have a free call that people can come and give that first chance opportunity to talk to you and see if you will work well together, you have that opportunity to say, “Yeah, this is a good fit” or “No, I have someone I can recommend you to.”, which is just a nice way of saying we're not a good fit.
And so on the flip side Giles, what do you think is one of the most important concepts for success?
Stick at the task and take an interest in it, know your own strengths and weaknesses. So if you as a client don't want to do something, and the accountant can do it, it frees you up for some more time. One client I know hates bank reconciliations but is quite good at booking the entries. And you might think that because she books all the entries, she does 100% correctly but she does it about 90% correctly so I can come and pick up the other 10% because over a period of time 90% right, is a lot less than 90% right at the end of the year. That's just an example.
Could you explain the difference between bookkeeping and accounting?
Bookkeeping is more record keeping where you record the actual entries in the accounting system and accounting is more analytical. An accountant can do a bookkeeping role, but a bookkeeper can't do an accounting role.
Okay, so Giles, we also like to ask this question on the podcast. If you could jump back in a time capsule and go back 20 years, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self?
Probably tell myself that I was on my way to getting things done and encourage myself, because when you're younger, sometimes you lack confidence.
You have to have to do the things that you're scared of and experiment around and don't be afraid to change your goals if you don't like something. I mean, if I can go and get an accounting qualification, and then get an educational qualification 20 years later, all things are possible.
I like that. All things are possible. That's a good thing to remind the younger people in our lives like you have a teenage daughter, so she needs a lot of that reminding right now, I'm sure. So Giles, one last question, what is the thing you like most about being an entrepreneur?
Oh, that's difficult because I spend a lot of time complaining about it. I say there's a lot of tough stuff to work through. Meeting new people and seeing how people tick. And dare I say it, being appreciated is just as important as money.
Yeah, it goes a long way doesn't it? That little bit of extra appreciation?
Yeah, a heck of a long way.
I love that. Well, thank you so much Giles for jumping in the hot seat tonight. We appreciate you and your advice on accounting all the time in the Level-Up League especially, the group of entrepreneurs we get together once a week to talk about all these kinds of topics and so many more, and of course sprinkle in a good bit of marketing in there as well. So thank you Giles, we really appreciate you joining us and we'll talk to you again very soon.
Yes, thank you.
Thanks for joining us on Resilient Entrepreneurs, we're Laura and Vicki from Two Four One. We love supporting entrepreneurs, especially with mindset, marketing and motivation which is why we’ve built an incredible community of business founders who meet weekly in the Level-Up League. If you'd like to know more about it, look us up at www.twofouronebranding.com
