#awinewith Jamie Scott
MEET Jamie
Jamie is the Co-Founder of Bloom Money.
Find Jamie here:
Bloom Money website or Instagram @bloommoney.
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:08):
Amazing. Jamie, welcome to Spark tv.
Jamie Scott (00:13):
Thank you. Thanks for having
Danielle Lewis (00:14):
Me. I'm so excited that you're here, but B, that you brought a wine. You're already my favorite person. So let's kick off by sharing the Bloom money story. So tell us how you came up with the idea, what it is, what you do, and then I'm super keen to hear about your backstory, so how you actually got there.
Jamie Scott (00:39):
Yeah, so Bloom money, we started it. My sister and I are business partners and we started it together last January. It was kind of a bit of a few events coming together. One, I was on mat leave when we started discussing the idea and just one night at a family dinner, Olivia who's been working for a tax firm for five years was like, do you want to start a business? Half joking. And I was like, yeah, okay, that sounds good. I had just had a little bit of a thing happen. I had an accountant and they did my husband's business' tax return and it sounds like a few errors in there and I just remember the service was so bad and it's only because I knew what they were talking, I was talking about that it was so wrong, so wrong, wanted us to pay $50,000 extra in tax that we didn't owe what?
(01:46):
Only because I kept persisting that I knew. I so knew it was wrong that we fixed it and I ended up just taking it back and I was like, I'm just going to lodge it myself. And that experience with someone who I knew. So I was like, okay, the experience out there is not good. We need to offer this. There's such a demand for this little market of really good accountants and really good service. So we kind of set on our mission to do that and so it's nearly been two years actually since we've been into the Blue Moon journey.
Danielle Lewis (02:23):
That's so cool. And it's so true, right? It's so funny you say that. I know so many people who get confused with their finances, with their tax returns, with their, and the joke is always do creative accounting and get me a good deal and get me tax return, but it's not even that whilst that's the joke, it's like I just don't want to pay for shit that I shouldn't be paying for.
Jamie Scott (02:49):
Totally. Exactly.
Danielle Lewis (02:51):
That's so cool. So what's your background? Is this both of your first business? Have there been other businesses careers? You, your sister was in a tax advisory firm,
Jamie Scott (03:05):
So I guess I've had a few businesses started backing entrepreneurial mind. Every time I'll come home and I'm like at a family dinner, I've got a new business idea and I just roll their eyes at me like, oh, here we go again. It's so good.
Danielle Lewis (03:23):
I love it. I'm like that too. I'm like, I've got another idea to change the world. Listen,
Jamie Scott (03:29):
Totally. There's so many things to do to change the world. So little time. Got to do actually my first one in uni, I started a dog walking business and I started doing that and then, I don't know, I wasn't very good at sales and marketing, so I had two clients, but it was good. It was good money. Nice. And then I kind of launched into a career in accounting, so it was kind of the time of the global recession when I came out of uni looking for a job. Usually accountants go to a tax firm, that's where they start and then you kind of move from there. But because no one was traveling to London and doing that whole tax thing, I couldn't get a job anywhere and I don't know, I kind of bruised through uni, not really studying much, so my marks weren't that good, so no one really wanted me for the few positions that were left. I love
Danielle Lewis (04:30):
The honesty.
Jamie Scott (04:33):
So good. So I started working for Flight Center, so that's in the finance team and so I came in there when the website was coming up and coming, so I would just be bank reconciling all the different websites. So that gave me my first insight into websites in e-commerce and how they all work and the different carriers and stuff. So that was really interesting.
Danielle Lewis (05:05):
That's actually super cool. That would be, I assume you go into a big tax or accounting firm and you kind of get pigeonholed into doing the same thing. Working then for a brand gives you that inside view on how other businesses work. That's cool.
Jamie Scott (05:20):
Yeah, literally my dream, dream job was like, yes, this is amazing. I love this travel and is perfect. So yeah, I love doing that. And then from there it also gave me the insight in actually sitting with the call center. So they really believe in everyone kind of being together and learning off the different departments. So I'd be in, I could hear the calls and I could hear what was happening on the sales side. I could hear what was happening in the marketing people. I'd sit right behind the general managers, I'd just hear all the conversations and it was really interesting to see how that came through in the numbers.
(06:03):
So yeah, I really liked, I feel like it gave me such a different kind of first job experience in understanding the numbers and then part of my job was also working with different business leaders in them, just understanding their profit and losses. So I did that right from the start and just sat with them every month and just showed them their results. So yeah, that's just understanding cost management and losses and then explaining that to people who aren't financially minded as well was a really good skill developed from the start. From there, I was living on the Gold Coast, so I found a job locally working in hotels, so kind of in a similar role doing, I had a portfolio of hotels, which I would do a similar thing for, and then I think I went back to Brisbane and back to the same company in Brisbane as an area accountant and a commercial accountant.
(07:11):
So I looked after the state and some shops and I would assist retail stores and do some internal auditing and helping them build efficiencies and work with the store managers on their results and help 'em understand their results and how they could make budget. So I'd set the budgets with them and then every month check in and see if results weren't hitting budget, why not, how we can fix that, what's happening in the store. I would sit in the store all day kind of just watching how the actions in the store translated to the numbers and vice versa.
(07:54):
Then I got married and went to London. Cool. The London stint for 12 months where I worked for a pharmaceutical startup, which is really interesting as well because I'd had that experience and what a finance team looks like. I was basically from nothing putting in a whole finance structure and system so that they could scale throughout Europe. So that was a really interesting job working with different doctors and commercial managers on how to do that. Then I came back to Australia. I was kind of in between contracting and consulting jobs while I have three kids now. Oh wow. Yeah, so kind of just doing that on and off until, yeah, bloom, oh my
Speaker 3 (08:53):
God, what an adventure I
Danielle Lewis (08:54):
Love so much. That's such a cool story in terms of you studied a particular discipline, but you've kind of learned how to apply it in so many different ways. I feel like when we start businesses, we kind of usually start them around our skillset, but we have to learn so many different things. I kind of feel like you got to do that in a bunch of different roles before you dove in and then went, well actually I know how to do this for businesses. So we actually set up to really help the businesses that we do and run the accounting services for.
Jamie Scott (09:31):
Yes, totally. I think we say that somewhere on our website. We totally understand what it's starting and running a small business over here doing the exact same things really.
Danielle Lewis (09:43):
Yeah, that's so good. And now I'm a stalker on Instagram. Do you do courses as well?
Jamie Scott (09:50):
Yes, we do. We just have the one at the moment. It's pretty new, but yeah, we do just on that real first, if you first are starting up your business or if you are, I say it's to people that have just been winging it as well because you just learn the basics of what you need to think about when it comes to tax and how do you pay yourself just the real what structure's best for you, rather than scrolling the internet and trying to find the answers yourself. I've just got it all there ready to go and yeah,
Danielle Lewis (10:26):
That's so good. I feel like as business owners a lot of times as well, we're super creative types where we come from a particular industry, it's typically finance isn't our strong suit. I know so many founders who are like, no, I don't want to look at numbers all day. I hate spreadsheets. So I love that there's that support there. And I do love too that you're learn the basics. I think it is really important for business owners to not pull the wool over their eyes and to really understand what is going on inside their business.
Jamie Scott (11:01):
Yeah, for sure. It's really tricky when people come to us for help after the fact and that's usually when you want to engage an accountant when
Danielle Lewis (11:13):
You're like, oh crap, everything's falling apart,
Jamie Scott (11:16):
The ATO is calling me, can you help me? I'm like, probably could have helped you better before, but yeah,
Danielle Lewis (11:23):
I mean that's a really interesting point. What do you think business owners typically get wrong when they're kind of setting everything up?
Jamie Scott (11:34):
I think firstly, I think what I do with my clients first off is just get what their intention for the business is straight.
(11:43):
If you don't know what you want, then it's really hard to get there. So if people were like, I want to have a flexible lifestyle where I can live in Bali and just work three hours a week, which is great, then you probably shouldn't be going and renting an office for three years and then employing people in Australia and then otherwise you're just trying to do everything like, oh, this will equal success when it actually might not get the intent. And then you kind of build your budget I guess around that. And yeah, that's probably one thing I think
Danielle Lewis (12:23):
That's so awesome because a lot of people I talk to on this podcast have a similar view in the sense that it's so easy as business owners when we kind of dunno what we're doing to read headlines or compare ourselves to other businesses and think that we have to do things a particular way think we have to have the fancy office, we have to have all the employees and that is what a successful business looks like. But you're totally right. That's not always success for different people depending what you actually want. So I actually love that. It's so funny. I think about it from a sales and marketing point of view. You start with the plan, you start with the strategy, and then you think about Instagram or influencers or whatever, you don't start with, oh, I just paid this influencer $10,000, now I'm going to think about whatever. I love that. It's like do the same from a finance point of view, really understand where you want the business to go and that's going to dictate how you set it up and what decisions to make.
Jamie Scott (13:22):
Yeah, definitely.
Danielle Lewis (13:24):
That's so cool. So what's it been like for you going from employee to business owner? What's that transition been like?
Jamie Scott (13:34):
Gosh,
(13:38):
I think I feel like I scaled down, I full employee and then I went to London just as a contractor, so that kind of felt like wasn't really, I didn't have to commit myself fully. And then I traveled again and then I was contractor again and then I had a baby and then I went back to work for a little bit and then I had another baby and then I started the business and then it just, I don't know, some days at the start I think we made a couple of mistakes and went a little bit too hard into a contracting environment and felt like we were just an employee and accountable to this one particular client and just was on demand for them. It just felt like we were employees and then it's only really been, I guess this year it's been a bit different.
Danielle Lewis (14:34):
It is interesting. It's so funny. I think even if you do have the best of intentions, you always kind of do fumble a little bit at the start. You're kind of testing things out and you kind of jump on opportunities. They seem like the thing and then you're like, oh, I don't want this. Totally. I guess the good thing about having a business is you get to change your mind, which is nice.
Jamie Scott (14:59):
Exactly. And you not have to go and be in the office by 9:00 AM or something.
Danielle Lewis (15:07):
Yeah. Oh my god, totally. I
Jamie Scott (15:09):
Dunno if I could go back to that.
Danielle Lewis (15:11):
I know. And I dunno if I could not work in my slippers anymore. I've always got slippers on at home and I absolutely love it. You just couldn't do that in a corporate office, could you? No,
Jamie Scott (15:23):
Unfortunately not.
Danielle Lewis (15:25):
I love it. Okay, so then I'm thinking about the businesses you work with and look after. So kind of small businesses, startups, those types of people. And obviously we said understanding the intention behind your business is kind of first things first so that you do actually set it up correctly. What about for people that have been DIYing their finances, if they are looking to work with somebody, what do you think? I mean, I think about different accountants I've worked with over the years and some of them do different things. Some people have been bookkeepers, some people have been accountants. I've worked with people that specialize in r and d and worked with small accountants and your top tier, big four, whatever they call them. How do you even navigate that whole area as a small business owner who's been DIYing on a spreadsheet or maybe in zero and they're like, oh god, I need help. Where do you even suggest people start?
Jamie Scott (16:27):
Yeah, I think one thing I get a lot is people are like, oh, my accountant just doesn't help me. They're just looking at, and they've probably just been engaged to do a tax return, which is literally just an annual once off engagement. I don't know, they might not even have, that's why your zero question goes unanswered for three months or something crazy. I hear people say. So I think understanding, I think accountants are obviously not very good with words and communication sometimes, so it's hard to actually know what you are actually looking for and different kinds of accountants, just like there's different marketers, different types of marketing, there's different types of accounting.
Danielle Lewis (17:18):
So
Jamie Scott (17:19):
I think and think virtual CFO is what you are looking for if you're looking for someone, something more than a compliance side of accounting. So if you're looking something more return or a bad statement, if you were kind of at a point in your business where you're like, I can see the cash going in, I can see the cash going out, but I don't really know what my profit and loss is, but seems to be going okay, what we do is we kind of start with a one-on-one session and we just kind of pull up the zero file. I would just go through the two main reports, the profit and loss and the balance sheet line by line, and we'll kind of work out what should be if everything's in the right place, if anything's. And then after we know that, then we can translate that into a budget or forecast out for the next few months. Or they might come to me and even say, bye, I'm not paying myself at all, or I'm not paying myself an even minimum wage. So we'll then work out, we can review the different expenses that's going on and then actually work out what the sales would actually look like for the business to break even when you're paying yourself what you want to pay yourself and
(18:43):
Go from there. And you could maybe think, well, I'm spending look at different things like I'm spending 80% of my sales on marketing or something. And look how we can think about, well maybe we can, if we have a budget of this much, what could we do with that instead that will generate better just those financial strategy around. And then you could go to that, whoever you use for that service and then go, alright, well I need this or yeah, just that kind of stuff.
Danielle Lewis (19:18):
Yeah, that makes so much sense. I love how you likened it to the marketing example because you're so right. I think a lot of people go, my account should just do everything and they should just be coming up with cool ideas on how I can make more money and do things more efficiently. And you kind of think a marketer would do that, right? They would be like, what's the marketing strategy? We've got all these different channels, it's our job to optimize blah blah, blah. But you're right. If you've just engaged an accountant to do your tax return every year or your BS or your payroll or whatever, not as a virtual CFO or whatever, the expectation isn't that they're going to actually review all of your numbers and talk to you. And you're right, if they are just doing a tax return, then they're probably not sitting down with you and understanding what your goals are for the business. They probably don't even know that you want to pay yourself something or even more or whatever it is. I love that. That's such a good tip. You kind of need to know what you want out of the relationship and have that conversation with them to see if they are that right person. And if they're not, then go out to find somebody that will tick those boxes.
Jamie Scott (20:30):
To be honest, a lot of tax accountants don't even have that skillset. They don't don't. At uni, it's kind of like the subject is called management accounting, and then there's tax accounting and finance accounting. Most accountants hate management accounting, hate it. That exactly kind of where this is breaking down the costs and the cost of sale and looking at those kind of things, they not interested, like Olivia loves the compliance side does not the budgeting forecasting side at all.
Danielle Lewis (21:05):
So is that the role you take? Do you do more of
Jamie Scott (21:07):
That kind of
Danielle Lewis (21:08):
Relationship driven
Jamie Scott (21:09):
Stuff? Yes. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (21:11):
Oh, that's so good. So cool though that you've got both sides so you can kind of bounce off each other.
Jamie Scott (21:17):
Yeah, for
Danielle Lewis (21:18):
Sure. How do you find working with your sister?
Jamie Scott (21:21):
It's actually been really good. She's on the Gold Coast and I'm in Brisbane, so most of the time we aren't physically together, so I'm not sure what it'd be like if we were together all day every day. So I think it works really well.
Danielle Lewis (21:40):
That's so good. Yeah, it's interesting. Co-founder kind of relationships. It's really good when you do have kind of separate interests and separate skillset sets, I think you step on each other's toes a little bit less.
Jamie Scott (21:55):
Yeah, for sure. Except I'm always like, let's film her real. And she's like, no, I love it. You have to.
Danielle Lewis (22:05):
I know, but that's why I like following you guys because you actually make money. Interesting.
Jamie Scott (22:10):
Thank you. Well,
Danielle Lewis (22:12):
Yeah, I mean it's funny to say that obviously in business we need to make money or we don't have businesses
Jamie Scott (22:20):
Exactly,
Danielle Lewis (22:21):
But I think that the numbers side can be a little bit overwhelming and boring for some people. They just want to go out there and big dream work with clients, be creative, do all those things. So it's really cool that you guys actually translate a potentially dry subject into something more interesting because at the end of the day, if we can get founders more interested in their financial literacy, we're going to have better founders and better businesses.
Jamie Scott (22:50):
Yes, definitely. And businesses that last forever, as long as you want them to.
Danielle Lewis (22:57):
Totally, totally. And that's a really interesting thing too. And I just come back to your, what's the intention for the business? Yeah. Is it that you want to have this business forever or is it that you want to sell it or whatever? Again, the decisions you make from a finance and strategic point of view are going to be totally different depending on what outcome you want.
Jamie Scott (23:20):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Danielle Lewis (23:22):
That's so good. So what's next for you guys? What do you have coming up?
Jamie Scott (23:27):
Oh my gosh, I have so many ideas. I love it. I'm trying to work out what would best serve more people. I'm currently trying to understand what everyone wants. I'm trying work on a group, kind of another course around, but more one-on-one mentoring kindness sessions on four meetings a year to discuss financial strategy and budgeting and come back to that. That's cool. That's my big goal for the new year. Yeah, new
Danielle Lewis (24:04):
Year. I love it. That's awesome. Alright, so let's leave our fabulous Spark community with one tip. So what would be, I guess, putting your business owner hat and maybe your finance hat on. So if you could give new founders, new female founders a piece of advice as they're starting up their business, what would that be?
Jamie Scott (24:33):
Just, oh my goodness.
Danielle Lewis (24:37):
There's too many pieces of advice to give, isn't it?
Jamie Scott (24:41):
I would just start with the end in mind. That's a quote from book, but I would, that's my favorite thing I like to talk about actually when I start my sessions.
Danielle Lewis (24:58):
Well, I love it so much because it circles back literally to where we started this podcast session, which is that, and I love it. It's so funny. You always talk to people who say the things that you need to hear, and I literally just came out of a coaching session and wrote down on my piece of paper, like this business that I'm working on, I was like, oh, you need to set it up so that it's ready to sell and it's not something that I'd thought about before. So I'm like, I literally have goosebumps that we're now sitting here going start with the end in mind and set it up correctly. So I think that is absolutely incredible advice, and even if you are a startup listening in and you haven't done that, just take some time to actually think about where it's going and the outcome you want so that you can start taking those steps.
Jamie Scott (25:45):
Yes,
Danielle Lewis (25:46):
I love it. You are the best. Jamie, thank you so much for spending your time. Cheers for coming on Spark tv.
Jamie Scott (25:54):
I
Danielle Lewis (25:54):
Really appreciate sharing your wisdom and your story with the Spark community.
Jamie Scott (26:00):
No worries. Thank you.
