Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 31 - How to scale your business and look after yourself even during a recession, Interview with Rachel Martin

podcast Sep 12, 2022

It is so important to take care of ourselves while scaling our business, yet so much of the time looking after yourself goes to the bottom of the pile. It will be easier to do when you reflect on the expectations you put on yourself, set boundaries, and find that work-life rhythm you need in your lives.

In this episode, Rachel Martin talks about the business she has today and her realisations along the process. She also shares great tips on how to look out for yourself whilst scaling your business and how you can cope with the current recession we are all going through right now.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Doing your tax returns yourself is often like walking through airport security; You know you've not done anything wrong, but you still feel a bit sweaty, and you don't want to be picked on.
Boundaries are the only way to put things in place to protect yourself.
You have to find a work-life rhythm rather than a work-life balance.
Push back on these expectations that you're putting on yourself, like reframe it, reword it, is it work-life balance, or is it work-life rhythm?
We are real people outside these businesses, we have a real life.
Be clear on your goals.
Have flexible goals and flexible targets rather than fixed targets
Nobody gets to 100 overnight. It's one every single day.
We are the person we have to spend the most amount of time with and so we are the most important person to put boundaries in place with.
It's very easy to agree to things when they're not happening to you right now.
You have to serve yourself because nobody else is serving you.
We can take everything that we learned from the pandemic and apply it to a recession.
Tax planning is a huge part of every part of the business.
Financial anxiety is caused by uncertainty.
Enjoy the process and do not be afraid to ask for help.

Episode Timeline:

00:04 Intro

01:09 Episode Intro

01:32 About Rachel Martin and what she does

02:39 How Rachel ended up with her current business

05:19 Some bits of Rachel’s business

06:41 How to scale your business while still looking out for yourself

12:41 Putting boundaries

17:40 Rachel’s advice for business owners during this time of recession

20:03 Looking after your mental health during the recession

22:50 The advice Rachel wished she received when she started her business

26:14 How to find more about Rachel

27:15 Outro

Connect with Rachel Martin here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/accountant_she

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/accountantshe

More about Ruth:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and their marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect and know more about Ruth here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free Masterclass: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/the-sold-out-solution-2022

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/

Transcription:

Ruth Gilbey 00:04

Hello and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling for myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time, that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments, as we uncover and kick to the curb. All the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

Ruth Gilbey 01:09

Hi, everyone, welcome back to the inspiring women in business podcast. I'm delighted to have Rachel Martin with me today who is an accountant and also a director of a couple of businesses called StriveX and Accountant She. She's also a TEDx speaker. But Rachel, do you want to introduce yourself properly? Tell everyone who you help and how you help people?

Rachel Martin 01:32

Of course. Yeah, thank you so much, Ruth. I am so excited. I was just telling Ruth before we hit record, that I was actually just having my lunch listening to her podcast. So I am so excited to be here today. So my name is Rachel. And I am, I'm many things I'm a speaker, an author, a business owner. But I guess most importantly for today, I am an accountant. So I run StriveX Accountants, which is absolutely fantastic if I say so myself, female lead accountancy practice. And I also am the founder of accountant she, which is the lovely, wholesome, pink, fluffy, safe place on the internet for business owners to learn all about growing and scaling a business, what they can learn from an accountant, what it's like to have an accountant, and what it's like to be an accountant. So I've had a crazy journey over the last two years. So I've grown and scaled my business from a one-man-band with 50 clients all the way up to a team of 10 with 500 in two years with my life partner and business partner. So we, at the time of recording actually get married in two weeks' time. So my life is a crazy whirlwind. And I'm really, really excited to talk to you today.

Ruth Gilbey 02:29

That's amazing. Well, congratulations on your upcoming nuptials.

Rachel Martin 02:34

Thank you.

Ruth Gilbey 02:35

Amazing. So how did you end up with the business that you've got today?

Rachel Martin 02:39

Like everybody by accident? If you'd asked me two years ago, what are your plans for the business? So on any accountancy prospective client call, I always say what are your plans for the business? And it's a really fun question to ask but a very hard question to answer. And I think if you'd asked me this two years ago, I would have said, I just want enough money to like have a nice life. And to not have to shop at Asda because I have to do it if I want to, or maybe shop at m&s, if I want to. That's what I would have said was just to get above, get my head above water, really sort of get into grips, and feel comfortable being self-employed, that would have been it. And actually what happened is beyond literally my wildest dreams, I would never have been able to imagine this happening. And it took a lot of hard work like nothing happens overnight. None of it was by accident as well, it was all quite placed strategically, like sustainable growth. And I was actually doing an MBA at the time that I quit my job to become self-employed. And that played a huge part in the sort of like rapid scaling of the business, I was able to take every single part of this master's degree in business and apply it to our practice. And that sort of, I think, a lot of the rocket fuel. So sort of the technical knowledge that I was learning on the MBA, but also combined with real personal stuff, the fluffy stuff, like compassion and kindness and the fact that actually, my job is to teach people who are hugely passionate, the stuff that we don't get taught at school, which is like, what does it mean to be self-employed? What are my responsibilities to have those conversations and like real English in a way that people understand and they don't feel alienated? And we're currently recording the podcast on Tuesday. And so I normally on Tuesday, speak to prospective clients, and this the things that people put in the like pre-meeting notes section already today, I've had I am scared of my accountant. And the other one is, I actually don't know who my accountant is because he never contacts me and I can't get ahold of him. And so I'd say my actual job title is just teaching people the stuff that we should really get taught at school about what it means to be self-employed and how amazing it is because nobody becomes self-employed to get an accountant. People become self-employed to do what they love and an accountant comes later.

Ruth Gilbey 04:42

So true. So true. Yeah, it's interesting because I got an accountant right at the get-go actually being self-employed. I just thought they know what they were doing. I, you know, when it comes to that side of things, so I will always have one but I know so many people that actually tried to as much as possible to do it themselves and to not invest in an accountant, but I was just like, No. And every time I spoke to them, and they, you know, the very beginning, they were just doing my tax return, they'd always find something I would not have found and they're up to date on these things. So yeah, for those listening, it's a no brainer, just get someone right from the start,

Rachel Martin 05:19

I always say to people, doing your tax returns yourself is quite often like walking through airport security, like, you know, you've not done anything wrong, but you still just feel a bit sweaty, and you don't want to be picked on. And so actually, sometimes, just having that peace of mind of somebody, that's like being proactive, and it's holding your hand and actually is encouraging you. So one of the bits of the business that I am, the most proud of is the community. So with 500 clients, and an audience online of 12,000 community is at the heart of everything that we do. And so our role as accountants is split into statutory stuff, which is the stuff that you have to do, and then the fluffy stuff, so connecting people, introducing people, referring people. And again, the best bit about being self-employed is that we get to choose the people that we are around. And like as female business owners, we can surround ourselves with people that we know for sure will mention our name and rooms that we're not in. And so that's the best bit about this job is I'm a Tasmanian devil of networking.

Ruth Gilbey 06:14

Amazing. You are, aren't you? An amazing network. So we're talking today about how to scale a business and look after yourself, which is a topic very, very close to my heart, because my mentor is how, you know, adding income streams to your business without business owner burnout. So I'm all about you know, doing this, but do you think it's possible? Do you think it's possible to scale your business and still look after yourself? And what tips do you have for people doing that?

Rachel Martin 06:41

Yeah, 100%. A big part of my story is that during the last two years, whilst I've had, you know, quite tangible, visible success, also sort of experienced something really, really difficult in my personal life. So I had an elective surgery last year to improve my hearing which actually resulted in losing all of my hearing. So I'm profoundly deaf, I have no hearing in one ear, and like 15% in the other. And so it was actually like, quite dramatically forced to look after me during that time. And I'm going to use that word, it's boundaries. And boundaries, by far are the only way to sort of put things in place to protect yourself. And I'd really push back on business owners who feel like they first have to do it all. And second, they have to find balance, like balance and work-life balance is something that the framing of that sentence or the word or the question that people are asking you. Do you have a work-life balance, all those make it sound like it's something you can put on your to-do list, tick off, and then just be done. And like I have achieved it, I have achieved the status that no one in my life has ever been able to achieve. And so like push back on these expectations that you're putting on yourself, like reframe it, reword it, is it work-life balance, or is it work-life rhythm, and you know, work-life rhythm means that on some days, if you've brushed your teeth and eaten some food like you've done a great job, because everything else in between, it's absolute chaos. And if you've had like a red traffic light day, the next day, try and make it more amber or give yourself a green, like put things in place to turn it into a rhythm, which is achievable and feels achievable. And like even watching Ruth's body language change, when I said rhythm rather than balance, it's not a seesaw, like it will never balance. It's impossible. Because we are real people outside of these businesses, we have a real life. We juggle 17 million things a day. And as business owners, we go from feeling terrified to confident 17 times a day in rapid succession, like we're on a roller coaster. And so reframe the expectations that you're putting on yourself in terms of balance versus rhythm, and then also be really clear on like goals. So again, on your goals list, take off balance and put rhythm, but also I am an ISTJ personality type, which if you put into like the internet will tell you that the job you should be is an accountant. So I'm a very, like Black, White either reconciles or it doesn't, I've either done it or I haven't sort of mind. And I really, really had to teach almost teach myself how to be kind to myself while scaling because, oh boy scaling is hard. And it's so much harder, I think than anyone will ever tell you. And I'm so lucky to share it with the person I love. And so sometimes I feel like the hard stuff is hard, and the good stuff has doubled. And so I have huge impostor syndrome you know, I'm on a podcast speaking about how to scale your business and look after yourself. And I feel like I've only done half the work you know. So I would really, really encourage you to have a look at the expectations that you're putting on yourself. And one of the things that really hugely changed this for me was flexible goals have flexible targets rather than fixed targets and I'm very much a to-do list, cross it off sort of person. And if I haven't crossed off everything on my to-do list for that day, I have failed and so I will just continue working until 9 pm regardless of like just to make sure I've ticked it off regardless of what I have, like what quick chaos that causes in my personal life like I will get that ticked off. And so what you can do is give yourself flexible goals. And again, this was part of the teaching myself to be kind to me process. And if I just use housework as an example, if I was writing a to-do list and it was very black and white, it would be like complete laundry like I mean fold up yesterday's, yesterday was all last week to laundry, put it away, hang it up, make sure everything's in the right place, pick up current laundry off the floor, sawed it into white sawed it into colors, wash it, hang it up, put it outside and make it not rain, that would be like completing laundry. And like old Rachel would put that on her list. And unless I completed every single thing would consider myself a failure. And again, like sticking with the traffic light system of red days, Green Days, Amber days, if I'm having a Green Day, I could probably complete laundry, like in my lunch break podcast in my years, let's go, I'm gonna complete laundry and tick it off my list. But actually, if I'm having an amber day and laundry is on my list, it's okay not to complete laundry, it's okay to just pick things up off the floor assortment of white whites and colors and take them downstairs because I still way further than I've got before. And it's still way further than I would have got if I just thought I can't complete it. So I'm just not going to do it. Then if I'm having a red day where I'm like, really, you know, just getting up and brushing my teeth was like, I've done well today, actually, just picking up the stuff off the floor and putting it in the basket is enough, every single one of those examples is still done laundry, I might not have completed the entire thing I might not have like completely perfected it and been like the ideal dream housewife whilst scaling a business and still like being a functioning human being. But I've still done it. And I've still every day made progress towards the commitment that I want my laundry to be a part of my life that I'm proud of. And so just because I've not completed it, it doesn't mean that it's not done, and it's not something that I'm proud of. And as an accountant, I'm very, very confident that one time 100 still makes 100 like nobody gets to 100 overnight. It's one every single day. And sometimes you'll be able to get 5% in one day and other days is just 1%. But like flexible targets, it hugely, hugely changed my life. Like I feel like as business owners, there are lots of different personalities. But one thing we all share is just this huge sense of I must do it all specifically within the small business owner community, which is like my safe place. That's who my clients are. It's that's who I am. You have to do everything you are every department, you are HR, you are finance, you are recruitment, you are marketing, like do everything. It's okay not to do it all perfectly all the time, like just doing it and showing up and being a kind, a compassionate human being like is enough. So like flexible goals, flexible targets, and then boundaries as well is huge to like being kind to yourself while scaling.

Ruth Gilbey 12:19

So I've got so many questions about what you've just said, one of the things that have come up for me is when you're talking about this, when we think about boundaries, we think oh my goodness, I'm gonna have to be firm with people to say no to people. I'm going to, people aren't going to be like me for site for doing this. But what you've just talked about is there's a huge amount of work that we can be doing on boundaries, just with ourselves.

Rachel Martin 12:41

Oh my gosh, yes. We are the person we have to spend the most amount of time with and so we are the most important person to put boundaries in place with like, nobody, I sometimes wouldn't, wouldn't ever speak to a friend the way I speak to myself, because I'm awful. I am not like the way I speak to myself is not somebody that I, you know, I will never say those things to somebody else. I'm so hard on myself. And so like we have we spend so much time fighting with ourselves pushing ourselves saying things that aren't kind or aren't true and thinking that just because we thought and they are true. Boundaries with yourself are the most important place to start. Somebody wants to tell me if and again put boundaries in place with other people. It's very difficult. If you told me inside out, I just want to please everybody like that's it's in my blood and who I am. And using boundaries with other people is something I've always struggled with. It's really hard. I feel like if I say no once I'll never get asked again, and there's a couple of things that I've found really, really helped to get clarity on what to say yes and what to say no to and that confidence in what to say yes to and what to say no to the first is very easy to agree to things when they're not happening to you right now. So if I said to Ruth, like, Oh my God, I've really enjoyed this podcast. Do you want to go rock climbing next week, Ruth cannot rock climb. She hates rock climbing. She's got PTSD from a rock climbing event that she had, but it's not happening to her right now. So she might be like, yes, because she doesn't want to say no. So she'll say yes. And actually what Ruth should do is close her eyes and say to herself, if I had to go rock climbing in 10 minutes' time, not next week, would I still say yes. And the answer is no. Yeah. So anytime anybody asks you to do anything, or help them with something or do anything, close your eyes, have a word of yourself, and say if I had to do it in 10 minutes' time, would I still say yes. If the answer is yes, great. Say yes, put it in a diary commit to it and do it. If the answer is no, you probably bail anyway. You're just mismanaging somebody's expectations. You're gonna have to fake COVID to get out of it to just say no, so that's the first thing is if it was in 10 minutes' time, would you still say yes, that was a great one for me because actually it's hugely impacted what I say yes to what I say no to and again, I don't want to say yes to then have to later say no, because then I just feel like a failure. I feel rubbish and feel like a failure. letting somebody down is actually worse than saying yes and then saying no. So it really helps to put boundaries in place. The second thing in terms of like boundaries what to say yes to what to say no to is like good need or North star-like as business owners live, very busy people when you are every department and you're the marketing department, and you've listened to all of the other amazing podcasts that we've done. So you understand like internet strategy, social media strategy, Pinterest strategy, and you've like done every single one of the amazing things, but every guest that Ruth has ever had done and you've implemented them into your business, that means you will be getting asked to go on podcasts, you'll be getting asked to do all of these things. And you can't say yes to all of them. And so the way that you can filter out what you say yes to what you say no to and continue to scale your business, whilst looking after yourself is to have a North Star. It's not where you want your business to be in a month. It's not where you want it to be in a year. It's where you want your business or your personal brand, or whatever it is that you're trying to grow online. Where do you want to be in five years' time that I have that and if I'm if I get these offers that are really lovely, kind amazing offers? But if they don't serve that Northstar, I just say no, because if they don't serve my Northstar, I'm not going to deliver what that person wants me to deliver anyway. And so again, it's like don't say yes, and back out later, just say no like that. That's the kind of better thing to do anyway. And so if you're getting all of these offers, and you're trying to scale your business, and you're trying to look after yourself, having that Northstar, whatever that Northstar is a Pinterest board of what you want, what you want your life to look like where you want your personal brand to be where you want your profit figures to be your turnover figures to be how many members of staff you want like you know, and even when I've said Northstar, like, you'll already be imagining different parts of your life like you know what that is already. But like tangibly, setting out that is huge will change everything in terms of what you say yes to and what you say no to because you can't say yes to everything. And actually, you have to serve yourself because nobody else is serving you. And so putting boundaries in place by saying yes, and saying no, is a huge, huge part of that.

Ruth Gilbey 16:37

I love that. And it's also I think the people that I work with and speak to they're not short of ideas, they've got too many ideas, and they're too worried about or stretching themselves. So you know, they're stretching themselves too far, or they've got FOMO that they should be doing this or should be doing that. And actually this North Star I really agree with it's it helps with the clarity, it helps with your direction. I always say to people, you know, when you're trying to qualify whether you do something, will it take you further or closer to your goals? It's just a great qualifying question. 100%. Same thing. Yeah, exactly. Same thing that you're saying. Rachel, I've got a question for you. We talked about this, I put in brackets recession question. Because it's coming up a lot. People are worried, you know, people are concerned. And I've lived through some recessions. I'm 48. So I've lived through a few of them. And we, you know, we've got through them. But what advice have you got for people who have their own business and are wondering what on earth is gonna happen? You know, if you've got any, you know, advice for them?

Rachel Martin 17:40

Of course, yeah. So, when you ask me this question, like, the first thing that comes to mind is like, Guys, we've just done a pandemic, like we are probably the best-equipped people to like, actually navigate our businesses through a recession. Like in a recession, people's disposable income goes down, they are uncertain about money, like the macro-economic factors that come into place are big and scary, are they scarier than a global pandemic, where not only do you not know how much money you're going to have, not only do you see a decrease in disposable income, but you are also then worried about your friends, your family, your health like we are literally the best-equipped business owners to navigate this. And we can take everything that we learned from the pandemic and apply it to a recession, we better than anybody else know that actually when people do have limited disposable income, their spending power actually increases, like they spend money in places they care about people shop small more when disposable income goes down because they're way pickier about where if I've only got a little bit of spend, I want to spend it in a place that like serves my purpose, and serves my long term goals. And so it was my North Star in terms of my spending power and where I want that to be. And so yeah, I don't want this to be a half answer. But like, we really are the best-equipped people to navigate a recession. And we're doing it with the hindsight that oh, my gosh, if I went into the pandemic, knowing what I know, now, my business would have tripled again, you know, we're going into a recession. With that in mind, we can take the things that we learned, we can take the things that did well versus not didn't do well. And like maximise on that, and drive that into growing and scaling our business with our Northstar in mind, which might look different now to what it did at the beginning of the pandemic.

Ruth Gilbey 19:11

Yeah, absolutely. And also, the difference between what we're going through now to a pandemic is businesses can run and we can go outside and we have, you know, we can do things that we couldn't do in a pandemic. So yeah, it's interesting that I've seen some people react more to this recession than the pandemic. Why do you think that is? I think this is kind of like a strange reaction to it.

Rachel Martin 19:36

100% I think it almost I feel like the pandemic was very like health-focused, whereas a recession is very much like focused inside our homes. I know that sounds really weird, but like recessions are impacting your benefit for most people, their goals are buying a house or buying their next house, and like when you can't imagine what that looks like or what that feels like, that's when people get really, really scared.

Ruth Gilbey 19:56

Yeah, so any advice for her to sort of cope with that and look after your sort of mental well-being during a recession.

Rachel Martin 20:03

Yeah, of course. So there are different parts of this, right? There's like, how do you cope in a recession as a business owner? And then how do you go into recession as a person outside of the business as well. And so as a business owner gotta say, speak to your accountant, get a great accountant. Tax Planning is a huge part of every part of the business. And financial anxiety for anxiety is basically caused by uncertainty. We see it all the time. But actually, you can take control of that. And like as business owners, we basically see people on a couple of different spectrums when it comes to tax planning. There are either people who put everything away because they're too terrified and don't understand how much they actually have to put. So they actually live quite miserably in their personal life, because they're just too scared to spend anything all the way through to the people who bury their heads in the sand, spend everything because they don't know how much to save. They don't save anything. And so it's our job to really, really help you navigate that give you practical, practical, actionable tools that you can take into business to plan and save for tax understand cashflow, understand who you owe money to who owes you money, and what you can do what's still within your control, even when a recession isn't. And so yeah, just encouraging people, business owners to educate themselves, take control of their business look at like, do a SWOT analysis like, what are the strengths of my business? What are the weaknesses? What are the opportunities, and what are the threats, like what's inside my business that could cause me a problem and what's outside of my business that could cause me a problem? Those are the only things within your control and some of them you be able to take off the list straight away. Because pandemics and recessions, we can't do everything else we can. And so really try and empower yourself and take control of the stuff that you can do drive forward with the things that you can do, and like continue doing what it is that you love. And then from a personal perspective, again, very, very similar things come into play. So like taking control of the bits that you can, whether that be looking at when your mortgage is about to expire and contacting either a mortgage broker or your bank to say, Can I renew early before interest rates increase? Again, that is an option. It's not an option that a lot of people know about. But take control of the stuff that you can take control of yeah, look at every single bit of money that's going out and look at where there are cost savings or like bits and bobs that you can do to take control of it. And mortgages in a recession are probably one of the biggest things that have the biggest impact that people feel like it's outside of control. But there are so many different things that you can do to like, bring that back and you can renew your product early, you can speak to mortgage brokers early, you can change you can shop you can go for longer or shorter, depending on the interest rates and what the plan is for that. And actually like financial advisors, mortgage advisors, accountants like these are the people that you can lean on and rely on for advice and knowledge. And like actually, most importantly, a friend over a cup of tea to say like, it's okay, I've got you. I've got you. We're all in it together. We're all small business owners, but like, this is what I'm here for. Like, let me carry that for you.

Ruth Gilbey 22:37

Well, gold advice. Thank you so much, Rachel, I've got two last questions for you. So last bit of advice for listeners, what's the advice you wish you'd been given when you started your business? Can you share it with everyone today?

Rachel Martin 22:50

Oh, my goodness. I think like enjoy the process. I think it's so easy to like, say I've got to do this. I've got to record a podcast with Ruth from 12 to one I get to how many days was I employed as an accountant in industry really bored. And I would have been like, oh my gosh, recording a podcast, a huge celebrity, wow, I don't have to do this stuff. I get to do it. It's a huge privilege. You do these things you do them. Like I remember the first time I ever went and did a podcast, I had an absolute breakdown before I thought I couldn't do it. All of these things are huge milestones, benchmarks, and achievements within your business. And it's so easy to like, let the small stuff take away from it. And like, don't let you just like have a moment for yourself and be like, No, this is cool. This is like this is why I became self-employed. I'm like making a difference. I'm going in the right direction. I'm going towards my note, Northstar, and every email that I send every touchpoint I have with a client, every new client I take on every conversation I have I move towards that Northstar. So like yeah, just taking a sec to reflect on where you are. And like it's so easy day by day to just you know, your milestones change your boundaries change, you know, you go from dancing around the kitchen every time you take on a client to like not doing that anymore. And why by I still dance every time I get a client I've got 500 boomers, a lot of dancing. And yeah, just really taking a step to like be kind to yourself or like cheer yourself on in the way that you would treat your friend on because it's something that we just stopped doing. The second and is probably the most important and this applies to every aspect of your life if asked for help. We as British women are terrified of asking for help. And we're stubborn, and we want to do it all and we can't we cannot do it all and whether asking for help is getting an accountant or asking your friend to change their plans because you just can't do it. Ask for help. Ask everybody for help because people say yes. Like people say yes, a lot. And even little things like saying to clients like what can I do to help you such a big question. Take me one second to ask that question that could change a client's life if I introduce them to their next biggest client or to somebody who can help them build their website or do their SEO like ask Help it firstly, we get so caught up in our own head that somebody's going to say no, that we forget that it's really cool to be asked for help. Like when you're asked for help you find it really flattering like it's such a huge like confidence boost that somebody would come to you and ask for help. But we're all terrified of asking, asking for help from everybody, specifically, people who in the real world, middle-aged white men would call your competitors. Ask them for help. slide into the DMS and say, do you have 15 minutes in your diary for a cup of tea this week, just talk to them, befriend them. I have a WhatsApp group of other accountancy practice owners, there is not 1% of the competition in there. We all keep each other sanity, talk about our problems, ask each other for help ask each other for advice. And it motivates me on the days all my red days when I feel like I can't do it. And I can just put my socks in the laundry. It keeps me going. Because I'm surrounding myself with people who have the same problems as me, but they also have the same winds as me. And yeah, asking for help is my by far the best tip I could give you and it's something that I wish I had, like, turned that part of my brain on faster.

Ruth Gilbey 25:55

I totally agree. I did take, I've talked about it on the podcast, it took flipping cancer for me to stop speaking. And people were so flattered to be asked

Rachel Martin 26:06

100% Yeah, and you forget that.

Ruth Gilbey 26:10

Amazing. And last question, how can people find out more about you Rachel?

Rachel Martin 26:14

If you want to see an accountant dance around on the internet teaching you debits and credits and how to plan and save tax. I would absolutely love to hear from you. So I am on the internet everywhere as accountant_she. Slide into my DMs asked me for help ask me a question asked me a question that we didn't have time for today. I would absolutely love to hear from you. Instagram is one of my main platforms. And my second main platform is YouTube where I create more long-form answers to questions that you have. So I know Ruth's audience is the small business owner community in the scaling business owner community you are my community too. And so whatever questions you've got, whether it's what's the difference between a sole trader or a limited company how to plan say for tax or how to pay yourself as a business owner is stuff we're not taught at school and it's that's my place is to be the sort of like a big sister on the internet teaching you the stuff that we weren't taught at school. So accountant_she is where you can find me.

Ruth Gilbey 27:02

Amazing. Thank you so much. I was planning on releasing this later in the year, but I think I'm gonna get it out soon. I will need to hear this. It's full of gold. Thank you so much, Rachel.

Rachel Martin 27:12

Thank you so much for having me.

Ruth Gilbey 27:15

Thanks for listening and subscribing to the inspiring women in business podcast. Please do take a few moments to leave me a review. I love getting reviews they absolutely make my day. Also, go and check out my business-building hub. In there, you're going to find lots of great resources, free resources for business owners who are launching, running, or growing their businesses and I have a brand new masterclass for you. It's called the sold-out solution and in that, I share my exact roadmap to help you get your first online clients in 30 days. And guess what? It's only a 29-minute masterclass as well. So and I get straight into the value. Lots and lots of great advice for you in there. And also, for those of you who watch the masterclass a freebie for you within the masterclass as well go and check it out.