Work It Like A Mum
Work It Like A Mum
Ditching the 9–5: How One Mum Built a Flexible Finance Career
In this episode of Work It Like a Mum, I sit down with Daniella Wainwright, founder of Wainwright Consulting. Daniella shares her journey from working in large corporate finance roles to starting her own business, offering fractional Finance Director (FD) services to growing companies. We discuss why she made the transition, how she built her client base, and why she’s passionate about helping businesses thrive without the overhead of a full-time finance director.
Daniella also discusses the personal motivations behind her career change, including the desire for greater flexibility to spend time with her children. She explains how she overcame the challenges of starting her own business, the unexpected demand for her services, and why she now mentors others looking to follow a similar path.
If you’re a finance professional thinking about making a shift, or a business owner curious about fractional FD support, this episode is packed with valuable insights
What We Cover:
- What fractional Finance Directors (FDs) do and how they support businesses
- Why she left corporate finance to start Wainwright Consulting
- How she quickly built a thriving client base using LinkedIn
- The benefits of flexible work and entrepreneurship
- How mindset work, including hypnotherapy, has supported her journey
- Why she now helps others transition into fractional FD role
Key Takeaways:
✅ Fractional finance is in demand – Businesses want high-level financial expertise without the cost of a full-time hire.
✅ Authenticity attracts clients – Being approachable and relatable has helped Daniela stand out.
✅ LinkedIn is a game-changer – Strategic networking helped her land clients fast.
✅ Flexibility is possible – Entrepreneurship allowed Daniela to balance career and family life.
✅ Mindset matters – Confidence and personal growth are key to success.
Why You Should Listen:
Thinking about leaving corporate life for something more flexible? Curious about fractional finance and how it can benefit businesses? In this episode, Daniella Wainwright shares how she built a thriving consultancy, why authenticity attracts clients, and how mindset work has helped her grow—both personally and professionally. If you’re a finance professional considering a change or a business owner in need of financial strategy, this one’s for you!
Show Links :
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Connect with our host, Elizabeth Willetts Here
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Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life. I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community. In this show, I'm honoured to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business. They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all. Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school. So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, make sure you're cosy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays. This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast. This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women. Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers. Their site can help you find a professional and rewarding job that works for you. They're proud to partner with the UK's most family-friendly employers across a range of professional industries Ready to find your perfect job? Employers across a range of professional industries Ready to find your perfect job? Search their website at investinginwomencouk to find your next part-time or flexible job opportunity. Now back to the show.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Work it Like a Mum podcast. Today I am chatting with one of our clients, daniela Wainwright. Daniela is one of my favourite clients. She is a female founder and she's going to be talking all about her business Wainwright Consulting, why she founded the organisation, where she sees it going, who it helps, what sort of organisations it helps and why she is passionate as well about flexible work. So thank you so much, daniella, for joining me. Really, I'm really thrilled. So thanks for having me. No thanks for coming on. So if someone hasn't heard of brainwright consulting, what do you do and who do you help?
Speaker 2:so we are basically um like a boutique consultancy and all we do is we provide fractional finance directors into growing and ambitious businesses. So we don't do the sort of year-end statutory accounting and tax returns and things like that. What we do is really kind of commercial and strategic financial advice for businesses, typically about 1 million to 10 million turnover. We've got a few kind of outliers for that. But that's our sort of sweet spot where a business normally gets kind of complex enough to need that little bit of extra place level financial guidance and support and insight so they know how to kind of drive their business's performance forward. So we typically work with businesses like a day a week, or we've got some that are a couple of days a week, some that are a couple of days a month, um, depending on the size of the business yeah, so do you work alongside an accountant?
Speaker 1:then you don't replace, we don't replace them.
Speaker 2:No, we're always looking for really excellent accountants who do a you know, a really solid job of all the compliance work that we could potentially you know work with recommend, because we don't do that work. But what we do is this sort of it's almost like being the in-house FD, so almost like a leadership team sort of seat, but on a fractional basis because it's not required all the time, so you don't need a really expensive full-time hire. But yes, it's not always something that accountants kind of seem to want to refer, because I think they think that we'll want to do their work and that's not the case. So we're always looking for kind of um accountancy practices that we can recommend and work alongside. So little shout out there if anyone's absolutely.
Speaker 1:If there's any accounting firms that need you know whose clients might need additional support in more of the advisory, then yeah, yeah, i'llish out.
Speaker 2:We can refer stuff to you, for sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. How did you get into this?
Speaker 2:your background finance yeah, I'm a tax accountant and was working in corporate roles as sort of FD level, but very, very big PLCs. I worked in um. So I think that the push for it really was kind of twofold, one on a professional level and one on a personal level. So the professional lens was kind of all about um. I guess the frustrations of working in such a big business where you've got a lot of layers of kind of um approvals to go through to get things done and a bit of a sort of a corporate kind of bureaucracy and red tape felt a lot like we're doing a lot of extra overtime just to kind of get those approvals signed off and then perhaps there'd be a management reshuffle at the top and you go back to the bottom like a game of snakes and ladders. The thought of going back to kind of working with more nimble, smaller sme businesses was really kind of um calling me and obviously you need some level of governance and that's really good to have. But you know if you can get things done with your skill set, that just feels amazing. So you know we can be very quick and nimble and make a fast impact now with clients.
Speaker 2:On the personal side, I've got two daughters who are now 13 and almost 11 and, um, I just really wanted to see them more.
Speaker 2:Like you know, a lot of extra overtime things was needed in the corporate world and, whilst experience was brilliant and really kind of shaped me and gave me what I needed to go and do fractional work, um, you know, I did want to be there more for them, especially as I got to sort of the more tricky not physically demanding but mentally demanding years in their teens. Um, and actually I'd seen a lady that I used to work with in a smaller organization who basically, um, had three teenage daughters and one of them had some sort of um like eating disorder issues going on, and she'd taken a role that was kind of probably a little bit beneath the full extent of her skill set, if I'm honest, but she really wanted to be able to go to work, do a great job, but then be able to kind of be there for her kids. And I thought, do you know what I want to do? Something like that and not say that this role is, is in anywhere beneath me.
Speaker 2:I definitely feel like I'm pushing myself all the time, but I do have that control over my schedule and I'm able to flex things and make sure I'm there for them.
Speaker 1:So so yeah, that was a big driver so what was the transition like then between going from corporate to start in a business? And you know, obviously you now got a team and things, but did you envisage that you would be here now? You know what did you first envisage?
Speaker 2:wayne wright consulting would look like I definitely only envisaged it as replacing my corporate income. At the time, you know, I was hoping that I'd get you thought you'd be more like a freelancer yeah, yeah, which essentially we are.
Speaker 2:But now we're a growing team of those, you know, going on lots and lots of businesses instead of just the three that I can kind of work with myself. So, um, yeah, I never really envisaged taking on people. It just wasn't, it just wasn't part of my kind of future plan. It was all about, you know, replacing can get away from the sort of the ties of the monthly salary landing in your bank account and that was the absolute focus. But I just found very quickly there was a heck of a lot of demand for for these services.
Speaker 2:So I think I've always felt a little bit entrepreneurial, like I yeah, things like when I was was pregnant with my my second baby, second baby, yeah, I turned one of our rooms in the house into like a photography studio and I learned how to do newborn baby photography, um, and that was going to be something that I started. But you know, I very quickly realized it wasn't necessarily going to um, be able to pay the bills in the way that a finance job does. But I've got lots of little stories like that, where there's there's always been a business inside of me, I think. Um, so I found it really frustrating when I got to a point very quickly really, where I was full and I have to turn stuff away yeah, because I mean how many?
Speaker 1:because you've got you obviously started with associates, didn't you? And how quick did you get to that point then?
Speaker 2:um, I think I probably did get quite full quite quickly, um, and I put that down to kind of trying to be a little bit more approachable and kind of a bit more almost like um, casual in the way I kind of talk about finance and a bit more layman's terms and stuff like that, um, and I mean it's obviously something that appeals to my target market and might not appeal to all people looking for a fractional FD, but that being very human and kind of yeah, talking about hobbies and smiling and not always what you get from, from people in finance especially.
Speaker 2:I mean I found you you kind of tend to wear a bit of a corporate um veil that you need to kind of get rid of when you come out, and found that quite quite freeing and it felt very much like um, I was able to be a little bit more articulate and found it easier to be myself because it felt like almost like a filter I've been removed from my mouth. My brain wasn't trying to like double check everything out of my mouth, so I thought I found like just being very authentic brought me those clients very quickly and I would say probably within about three months I was completely full.
Speaker 1:So how did you find your initial clients um? What was your marketing like?
Speaker 2:yeah, I went back to LinkedIn. You know I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. Um, let all my contacts know. You know I've obviously worked in. I'm based in Leeds, so I've worked in Leeds in a finance world for a long time and have quite a lot of connections.
Speaker 2:But I'll be honest, like a lot of people in a job, I use LinkedIn to say, when I had a new job, pretty much as a contact recruiters when I was looking for one, it's very different using it as a as a business owner, um, but yeah, I very much tried to um reconnect with as many people as I could and just kind of tell people what I was hoping to do.
Speaker 2:Really often, you know, you'd have a great conversation with someone and it'd give you the next right step. They'd give you that next person to speak to and, yeah, before you know it, you've got conversations about potential work set up and you know, and then it's just a case of kind of trying to convert those. But that was another thing that surprised me was that I quite enjoyed the sales conversation. Yeah, I think if you really passionately believe in what you can do, in your skill set and you can see from talking to someone in their pain points that you're going to be able to solve them. That's just really exciting to me, because I can kind of describe to them what it will be like with our help, and so I've always found that easier than I thought I would yeah, it's quite a niche.
Speaker 1:You've been really, because obviously there's, you know there'll be like thousands, hundreds of thousands, whatever account accountants, but there's not many people or organizations that do what you do what. What made you sort of think of the idea, I guess, to this particular service?
Speaker 2:I mean a couple of things. I think you know I moved into industry quite quickly so I didn't work in an accountancy practice for long, I did whilst I was qualifying. But then I moved into industry and I've always enjoyed the sort of business partnering aspect and being involved, strategy and the leadership of a business. So I knew that anything I did would, would want need to be kind of that commercial and strategic side of kind of running a business, as opposed to sort of just crunching the numbers and doing like that backwards, looking um, reporting um, and then I suppose, fractional. I mean we called it portfolio in this country for for a long time and that's become a little bit more popular, I think, through COVID, through people kind of reassessing a little bit about wanting that balance. It just seems to have come to the fore a lot more recently and it is a little bit like one of those things like I feel like every man and his dog is a fractional FD at the moment, but it's just the world I'm immersed in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, but yeah, I suppose it's still relatively novel, one of the things I do because I enjoyed that move so much and everything it gave me in terms of that control back around my diary and the type of people that I work with and the cultures that I allowed myself to be in, because I've probably worked in some pretty toxic ones in the past. I just really wanted to help other people do that as well.
Speaker 2:So I I kind of developed a cohort course and it's now a sort of self-paced course to help people set up their own um fractional FD business as well. So it's not you obviously have to have had that commercial and Fd experience in an employed environment first. But if you've got that, this course is not a technical course about how to be an fd. It's about sales, marketing, networking, using linkedin, to be self-sufficient and to generate your own work. So all the things that really work for me really quickly and have helped me kind of build now a team that are helping fds. I basically just tell everybody everything that.
Speaker 1:I've done so you're not worried about like the competition, then you're creating competition for yourself. No, I try not to be.
Speaker 2:I think, um, sometimes other people come at you. You think about that more than I do, but I just believe there is such an abundance of work out there, such an abundance of businesses that could use this help, and I can't imagine that being a problem for a long time. And you know we're doing all right and I just like helping people unlock it because it can be. There's a lot of people that are pretty burnt out in that corporate space. Yes, um, you know it's really nice working with the smaller businesses that really appreciate what you're doing for them and the impact you're having. It's very rewarding work and it also tends to come with that ability to kind of get back to do some of the hobbies, some of the interests that you had that you've had to let go through. You know, often managing a family and a big job, um, so, yeah, I'm just really passionate about seeing if I can help other people make that work for them really, Did you have a coach when you started your business?
Speaker 2:no, so you've been like completely self-taught then in business um you know I've got lots of um contacts who are always very given of their. You know their help and expertise um, but I've not had a coach as such.
Speaker 1:No, I actually I actually have a hypnotherapist.
Speaker 2:Oh, do you? Yeah, and Emerald I don't know if she'll watch this, but she's wonderful and she does a lot of mindset work with me.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:She reprograms me every two weeks.
Speaker 1:I see her she just does something, tweaks something. Do you actually go under and stuff?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's not it's like paul mckenna.
Speaker 1:Was it paul mckenna on the tv?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's not quite that. It's not as theatrical as that. We do it on zoom.
Speaker 2:Believe it or not, you can absolutely do that really and it works on zoom, yeah, yeah, but it's not like you're in a trance and you'd react to the word chicken or whatever it's. Um, it's like being in a I'd say like a first level of dream state, so you can hear her voice and but your brain will go off and do whatever it wants. Your conscious brain talking to your subconscious brain, um, and making it feel not at you know, not threatened in any way, because your subconscious brain is all about protecting you and keeping you safe. Um, and so can kind of have a bit of a freak out when you try and set up your own business. Um, absolutely, yeah, it's all about kind of keeping that sometimes called the chimp brain, isn't it in that in the in the monkey paradox book? Um, keeping it calm, relaxed, letting it know that nothing bad's happening. Yes, we're growing and expanding, but we're safe it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Before we hit record, you were showing me some of the books you read. You're reading business books and I'm a big fan of business books and there was one business book and I cannot remember which business book it was. Um, which I'm you know. It would be brilliant now to say which one it was. But it was saying that the most successful business owners are those that meditate. Oh, really, every morning. Yeah, and I suppose hypnotherapy is a bit like the meditation.
Speaker 2:Yeah and it's like visualization. Yeah, I think it comes into all the stuff around kind of affirmations, doesn't it? And yeah, what's the words I'm looking for? Sort of, uh, manifesting things. You know a lot of that stuff about having your absolute focus on it, um, but yeah, I've, um, I've had a good dabble in all those kind of things as well. I'm very woo these days.
Speaker 1:I got more woo. You know, I got more woo because I went and did this manifestation thing. We're recording this out in November 2024 because I don't know 100% if it will be released in the new year, but what January 2024, I did this manifestation day With this manifestation coach and I got so into it and then I bought her book and I was like, yeah, I can 100% see this. And then it's all about like planning isn't it your dream life? And then writing it out.
Speaker 2:And your dream life, and then writing it out, and then, yeah, I just think it's all about having a destination, isn't it? If you've got that firmly in your mind, then every little thing you do is going to be trying to move you that little bit closer yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:When you first launched. Did you have a bit of imposter syndrome when you first launched your business?
Speaker 2:um, um, yes, a little. It's never something that's plagued me too badly. Um, and I do know a lot of um female business owners around me that do find that very difficult. Um, you may have come across my lovely friend, claire Ackers, whose main mission in life is to basically um beat the living crap out of everyone's impossibility. I didn't know you're friends with Claire, but yeah, I know who, claire is oh no, claire's my absolute bestie, so I've got Claire like on hand. We go for walks a lot.
Speaker 1:We go for wilds, so you've got that as your coach, isn't it? You get the free coaching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get a little bit of freebies, but it's never really been a huge thing for me. I think it's always good to keep it in check. But I think it's always good to keep it in check, but I also think that I don't know, I've always had a bit of an inner confidence, I think, um, like a bedrock of of kind of believing that most things I can do, I can find a way to do. You know, I often talk to clients and if there's something we we haven't done before, try and reassure them that there's been lots of other things I've not done before and we've absolutely found out how to do that. You know, yeah, yeah, just really had that belief that.
Speaker 1:I suppose that honesty has probably helped as well. Yeah, have you got. Is it two daughters you've got? Two daughters yeah, um, I'm just interested to know, as a like, as a mum and I've got two daughters and I'm always trying to sort of you know, especially now doing getting more. We're learning about this subconscious brain, thinking about how I can like program their brains as well, so they're confident. Is there any sort of things you've been doing with your daughters?
Speaker 2:yeah, all the time, um. So, on the course, I was telling you about our power up course, which is for people taking that leap into the fractional world, and there's quite a big section that's all about, um, mindset, and that's one of the things that I believe is absolutely key to the success and to keeping the faith while you're looking for work and things. And, um, I think it was when I was in one of my corporate jobs, I actually sort of wrote a training session for our sort of 400 strong finance team and it was all really about mindset. And there's a really good book I'm going to do again another book I don't know if I've got it behind me, but it's called Mindset by Carol Dweck.
Speaker 1:I think I've downloaded that as. I've got this like library in my kindle I need to read.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is a really excellent book and you know it gives you tools for if you're employed, um, and and using great mindset techniques at work, um, but if you're starting a business or you know, even with your family and friends. And really what it's about is growth mindset and how you can be in a growth mindset as much as possible and how you can get some tools and techniques in your tool belt that you're always wearing to flip you back into growth mindset if you ever start to be in a fixed mindset so what's the difference if someone doesn't know this between growth and fixed mindsets?
Speaker 2:so this is obviously a very layman's explanation. I want to do a lot better job but, um, in a fixed mindset you, you basically believe that you're kind of born with a fixed level of kind of competence and intelligence in different things okay with a growth mindset, you understand and are bought into the reality that your brain is classic and can grow and change and mold and learn new things by repeatedly practicing things.
Speaker 2:So for example, say, if we both played netball together and you had a fixed mindset and I said to you you know, I'm not sure that you know in a nice way, you might need to do some shooting practice because you're missing a few few goals, you would take that as a quite a personal attack because you believe there's nothing you can do about that. That's just your ability set. Whereas if you've got a growth mindset, you would think amazing, what brilliant feedback I can get on with this. I can do loads of practicing and then I'm going to be just an even better player and that's the really interesting. I think a lot of people have that.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, because I give you know as someone that gives interview feedback generally. A lot of people have that, you know, yeah, because I give you know as someone that gives interview feedback generally. A lot of the time. If it's negative, they take it very personal and get defensive and can sort of argue with that feedback? Obviously it depends what it is, but actually you're saying it's actually a gift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, feedback is a gift and I've worked in environments where they say that and then brutally kind of yeah, it might be, the feedback might have been brutal, but it's you know.
Speaker 1:A lot of the time it's yeah, you know it feels more rare where this someone says thank you, that's really helpful, it's more, oh no. I didn't feel like that. The interviewer, you know, was this, that the other and yeah.
Speaker 2:So that is really down to a mindset um point of view, and the one of the things that can quickly help you flip back into a growth mindset you can use really well with kids is to say it's called the power of yet, so it's adding yet on. So you know, I can't do long division yet. It's so different to saying I can't do long division and it's just about kind of trying to keep them open to the fact that everything is kind of you know, I'm fine, I'm never going to be a miz in a shooting hoot, but most things are learnable and you can develop and change.
Speaker 1:That's true. I like that. I'm going to start using that. It's definitely the yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's loads of little tips like that that are great with kids, um, but it's a brilliant book.
Speaker 1:I'd really recommend it, oh okay, I think I have got my. I have got a book about mindset in my library. I'll have to check by Carol. What's her name? Okay, I will check, so talk us through. So you obviously started the business. It was just you. What was the juggle like initially with?
Speaker 2:oh, initially it was a dream because, um, I've gone from working kind of 60 hours as a base in in a corporate job to, um, I actually got made redundant, um, and that was, it was something I was looking at. But you know now you think, well, actually, would I have made that leap without a bit of a push? Yeah, um, I always talk to people wanting to embark on this to think about if they can build up a buffer as well, because it's so important to have a little bit of that pressure taken off you yeah, and that is the benefit.
Speaker 1:Obviously not for everyone, depends on you've worked somewhere, but you do get a little bit of yeah, a lot of cases, some financial, a bit of money behind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so that was super helpful and it was actually the middle of the covid time, so it was about june 2020 and, um, without going into too much detail, I worked in a place that was more busy than ever during that period, so actually leaving a business without handover responsibilities or anything like that was actually a real, quite freeing lifesaver at the time. Yeah, we had the kids at home schooling, so actually it was.
Speaker 1:It wasn't a juggle at that point, it was a much needed relief yes, I can imagine and obviously you've got your clients on LinkedIn and you got to a certain level were you nervous then starting to take on associates?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, it felt like a step. It felt like the right step to allow me to, because ultimately I'm all about trying to help more business owners especially the ones that are kind of doing good things in the world, share our values and things, to push on and be as successful as they can be. And obviously, with more people, um, we can just help more clients in that way and I can also help those fds to kind of unlock this fractional work and this fractional lifestyle where they've got that control and they're working in great kind of cultures and things like that.
Speaker 2:So it felt like the right next move, but obviously was a little bit, you know, nervy in terms of well contracts really, how do we do this, yeah, and how we get the right people, and it's only really now that we're starting to bring in fds that I don't know somehow. So I definitely started off with people I'd worked with before or associated yeah absolutely, because at the end of the day, I'm putting the reputation of the business I'm growing into their hands as well yeah, it's your name in it above the door.
Speaker 2:Yeah so the things we really need are, you know, they need to have had that FD experience at the highest level. They need to have done what we call business life cycle events, so something like acquisitions, disposals. They know the way around the legal agreements for those which are usually called SPA agreements and things like that. So they're proper grown-ups with loads of good experience. And also the really important thing to couple with that for me is how they work with clients, so being really approachable and jargon free and, you know, quite human, just just being a normal person that succeeds and fails and has hobbies and interests outside of work. And my absolute bugbear is a finance person who might sort of tut a question or roll their eyes and we you just close people down. They will never ask you again.
Speaker 2:So we're all about you know we know, questions a silly question exactly and we will coach you through all those understandings as part of our ongoing relationship and being a part, an extended part, of your team.
Speaker 1:Essentially, so what type of people come and work with you then as associates? What's that typical background?
Speaker 2:yeah, um. So the most typical background would be somebody who's qualified, maybe in practice, originally working in an accountancy firm, so they understand kind of all the requirements, um, in terms of what you have to file and your tax situation and everything. And then I've gone and worked for a long time in like um commercial environments, so it doesn't have have to be in a huge business. A lot of people have worked in really big, complex businesses, but some have worked always in that sort of what we call SME small and medium business environment. It's really about making sure you've had exposure to all those facets of you know pricing, making sure you've had exposure to all those facets of you know pricing. And what do these numbers tell us this month that can help us determine what our future strategy should be and those sorts of things. So you know, negotiating with suppliers, getting best prices, doing the sort of stuff that you might not expect someone in finance to do.
Speaker 2:In terms of the type of people, it is often people who are looking for more balance yeah might have got to a place where you know they've worked hard in corporates for a long time, they've probably earned a lot of money. Of that time they might be getting to a point where they're like paying off the mortgage or you know there's something that means they can. They can afford to kind of take a punt on doing something different. Now that was certainly sort of where I was. It felt like this was the most dearest time to do it, if you like, plus from the client perspective, you've got all the experience that they're looking for. Now. You know you've kind of got to a level where you know we've sort of got the T-shirt.
Speaker 1:We've had a few, you know we've been of. Maybe we've got 20 years experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah got the t-shirt. We've. We've had a few, you know we've been burned by a few you've had a few knocks, but you've got back up again.
Speaker 2:You've learned a lot on the way and we always say we kind of we are kind of generalist so we'll have seen everything. So we know enough to kind of point out risks and opportunities to business owners. But when you get to something particularly niche it might be like, say, you wanted to do an employer ownership, um trust or something like that. We know what they are, we know the accounting rules for that and everything. But we we wouldn't do the legal work around that. You might have to get an expert in. But we know enough breadth of things to kind of make sure we keep you away from the risks and get you stuck into the opportunities wow, and so the business.
Speaker 1:I know we touched about the businesses, but what sort of? You know? Why would they come to you, maybe than having somebody full-time?
Speaker 2:you know they're coming to you because they're going through something exciting happening within their organization so it can be lots of different reasons why they think actually now's the time, I think, to take that point around full-time first. There's a lot of businesses in that range of sort of one to ten million turnover or before that. There's no way on earth you'd keep somebody like us busy for five days a week, you know you don't need us on that sort of commercial and strategic finance all the time.
Speaker 2:So that's why fractional can work so well, because obviously it's much more affordable and it means that you can kind of probably access that level of skill more quickly in a business which can hopefully kind of supercharge the sort of growth and profitability of the business. Um, in terms of um why they might come to you, there can be all sorts of reasons. Um, often we find it's because a business has kind of um kind of plateaued a little bit so they might have had some really good early years and now they just seem to be able to push through kind of a performance level yeah, they've hit a certain threshold, and that's yeah, and it's often to do with um kind of a lack of insight and financial reporting and things to kind of understand performance.
Speaker 2:So, for example, if you haven't got a lot of kind of management information monthly management accounts versus a budget stuff kind of to help you understand customer profitability or product profitability and things like that you can't really see where you're making money and where you might be losing money. That's often one of the first things we do is understand like you know what clients you're over servicing and making no money on. Where are your really good marquee clients who buy lots of different services off you and let's redirect the time from those ones over there who are making us no money into these marquee accounts and push those on. And there's often a lot of insight you can get from the numbers that inform the best way to take your business forward from a strategic perspective. So that's often a reason why people come to us.
Speaker 2:We get a lot of referrals from things like business um mentors and coaches and private equity firms and basically other advisors who want to go in and do a really good job with their client but they find they don't actually have a handle on the numbers so they it's hard for them to know where to start working with that business, so they'll often think, oh, do you know what they could do with a? They could do with a danny or someone from danny's team. Yeah, help them unpick that. And private equity often will insist on somebody like us being involved with the business and contracted to work with the business before they'll invest, because they know that, um, having an fd on board will mean that there's great financial stewardship and them, you know basically more likely to get a return.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we often say to businesses like you know, this is what private equity insists on. They insist on a board meeting and a review of the numbers every month versus a budget. And they insist on us. And the reason why they do that is that not because they like us, it's because they know they'll get their best return on their investment. So you don't have to have an investment, you can just do all those good things anyway, because that'll really sort of push you on oh, that sounds really good.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking, you know, once I get big enough, I'll definitely give you a call. So then talk me through, because obviously you came to us recently because you decided to bring some people in house and hired a marketing person and then an assistant. What was the thought process, you know? Were you nervous about bringing on permanent employees? And why did you decide to do that? For your business?
Speaker 2:I was actually nervous about that. Um. I've been running my business up until that point, um, sort of with the mantra of it being a company of one and not wanting to take on employees because our associates, they are um contractors to us essentially. You know the client will work with them all the time but they are subcontractors, which means that actually it's it's easier for us to take them on and bring them in to do work, because if we had to bring those people in employed, um, and the kind of money they earn, you know that would be quite a scary um, yeah, but for us, in that, if there's ever any downtime, you know that would be it for us, yeah, so that was always going to be the setup with, with our associates, um, and I think in terms of bringing people in, I've kind of read this book called the company of one and how much you can actually do without employing, and I was really kind of quite keen on that.
Speaker 2:But then, on the things I needed help with so ops, really all our systems and processes we're trying to get in place now that we've got, you know, sort of seven FDs and, let's say, 25 clients, ish. You know we have processes at month end around timesheets and invoicing and um, all of that stuff was kind of growing to the point where, you know, I was probably working a lot more than I wanted to. So, seven days, it was not the plan when I started.
Speaker 2:This was supposed to be about balance yeah because my time now is split between three and a half days that I do that a client facing so I've got my own fd clients where I am there cfo for three and a half days that I do that a client facing. So I've got my own clients where I am there CFO for three and a half days a week and then the rest of my time is spent on marketing, networking and admin, I guess. And admin, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I really wanted somebody to help on the marketing side and somebody to help on the op side side and somebody to help on the op side and on the marketing side. I had tried freelancers in different guises a few times, with varying levels of success, um, but the most recent person I'd had was through like a VA agency and, um, how do I say this diplomatically?
Speaker 2:it wasn't probably getting paid as much as she wanted to, because of the VA agency taking a cut and and kind of was a bit of a had a bit of a chip on the shoulder around that, whereas I was paying kind of a normal rate but the the agency was deducting a lot and so that wasn't going to work and I thought, you know, I just want somebody who's actually really bought in to this business, yeah, to your mission, yeah. And so that was the kind of turning point in my, in my mindset around hiring really, and I guess we'd got to a point where I had the confidence that we were going to keep bringing in new work.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a one-off that we'd had yeah it wasn't a fluke, yeah, you know it was probably going to be sustainable as long as we didn't change anything significant that we were doing, and so that gave me the confidence to go ahead really yeah, and how's it?
Speaker 1:how's your life changed and business changed since bringing on permanent people?
Speaker 2:oh, it's been brilliant to hand things off, you know, um, and see the confidence in those people grow as they master those things as well, um, I'm quite a stickler for accuracy and things like that, and so I was nervous about handing some of that stuff off, you know, and you know there's been a few mistakes, but now we're at a place where they've been done very, very diligently, very accurately, and that means I can just relax about it and know that it'll be done really, really well, so that's brilliant. There's still a bit more of that stuff to kind of pass on. They've only been with us kind of two and a half, three months, um, but it's all moving in the right direction and I'm very, very um enthused about what 2025 might bring oh, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1:What is your plans then for 2025?
Speaker 2:um, well, in a lot of ways just more of the same. You know we want to continue growing, but we want to continue doing that relatively gently because I'm very keen on making sure we bring the right client businesses in but also the right um you know FDs to work with them in as well. So we're never going to be kind of trying to grow exponentially or incredibly quickly, because it's a bit of a balancing act on getting the right number of FDs for the right number of clients coming in. But it's good and we're refining our processes all the time to kind of win the right kind of work and bring in the right kind of FDs. So that's really good.
Speaker 2:I think I had lost the balance that I kind of went into this for. So I'm excited about getting that back and it's already improved. But I think going into next year setting a few ground rules and a few diary rules and stuff like that, so I'm excited about what that might feel like next year with that support fully kind of embedded yeah now we're looking at all sorts of things so I haven't really touched on it that much in this chat.
Speaker 2:But I um had I wouldn't say I had a um a breakdown as such, but I was very close to burnout um in that corporate role for a while um, and I suffered some health issues through that and I had like constant pain for a number of years um and had to be on some really strong sort of pain tablets okay um.
Speaker 2:So I have been on a mission to kind of get my well-being and my health back and that's why I'm into like cold water swimming and you look fantastic on it thank you, and I don't do it half as much as I'd like to, but, um, a lot of those things, including like not stopping drinking I have a very, very occasional glass of fizz or something, but very, very occasional, um, because alcohol can aggravate your nerves and it was nerve pain I was suffering with and it just made such a huge difference I was like, right, it's got to go because it's not serving well at all.
Speaker 2:Um, so I've done all these well-being things and I'm just really passionate about that and kind of trying to help our clients work in a smart way. That means that they, um, you know, working smart and not hard at the old adage but don't have to kind of burn out and let the well-being go and put weight on. You know you don't have to sacrifice everything to run a business. Um, so we kind of come at business with that hat on as well, and I'm wanting to do a lot of um events next year, some of which will be like networking done in a different way. So, um, I'm thinking it will be things like networking on paddle boards or informal, but natural maybe like obviously, since, since I've stopped drinking, I still do some networking.
Speaker 2:that's kind of in bars where it's really loud and you kind of realize that at least a third of a hangover is just from shouting at people, because I still get that bit. So, yeah, I just want to offer something different and I think that kind of networking, especially, if you like, because I'm quite naturally introverted, I think I come away from that sort of stuff like networking and things feeling really energized, whereas when I go to that bar environment, oh god, I just want to. I like it when I'm there and I have brilliant conversations, but then when I get home, I just want to kind of sit in a dark room and be left alone and process it yeah, it's a lot for me.
Speaker 2:I think I do read, try and read people um, I'm not a natural social, well, I don't think. So yeah, kind of try that and also try things like obviously the reason why I wanted to grow my business was to help more businesses, so to be able to keep in touch more with the businesses that I'm not actually the fd for one of our associate team is by having things like round table discussions and events and dinners and things and almost like I do really enjoy the connection part of what I do, like if, if I go, if I work with um one client as their fd and I see something working really well in that industry, being able to kind of translate into that could work really well in this business, even though it's really different industry and connecting people and joining the dots and so being able to do more of that would be really good. And obviously having this team on board now from an opposite marketing perspective mean that I've got help to kind of establish those things and do you think you'd ever become a business coach as well?
Speaker 1:on the side I could, yeah, because obviously you've got a really unique perspective, because you've coached probably a lot of businesses as well going through change and you've seen what's worked, what's not worked. Yeah, probably a whole host of organizations. Yeah, possibly. I mean it's it's.
Speaker 2:There's an element of that to what we do with businesses, but obviously we're getting really deeply into the numbers as well.
Speaker 2:Um, I haven't really thought about that I have thought about maybe doing like in the future, um, non-executive director work, so doing a bit less.
Speaker 2:Because what we do now is quite hands-on still because, although we can kind of operate at that strategic board level, most of the businesses we work with they haven't. Still. Because, although we can kind of operate at that strategic board level, most of the businesses we work with they haven't really got people. We can just kind of go in to the board meeting, scattergun out loads of awesome ideas and then just walk off again. We've got to actually make that happen because there isn't enough of an internal team otherwise to make it happen. So we're very we're a mixture of being kind of up here at the strategic level but also helping to implement some of that and maybe then handing it off to the team to run on an ongoing basis. Um, and one day I might move more to just kind of trying to do the advice at the sort of non-exec level possibly. But um, I think right at the moment I'm just focused on seeing where I can get away my consulting to really yeah, well, you're doing an amazing job.
Speaker 1:you, you're a real inspiration. I've loved our chat, so where can people find you, connect with you and remind people what your website is?
Speaker 2:So the website is just waynwrightconsultingcouk Not the most imaginative name and I'm on LinkedIn a lot. My handle is just slash Daniela Wayne Wright, and yeah, it'd be brilliant to connect with anyone. And if anyone's looking for, you know, a route into fractional work especially if it's finance, because that's kind of my area of expertise then you know we've got help and resources for you and possibly even a course. But yeah, I'd really recommend it. It's a lovely way of working.
Speaker 1:Oh, brilliant.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so, so much for your time today. Oh, thank you for yours. Yeah, it's been brilliant to use your business's services. You did an excellent job for us and lovely to talk today.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Thank you for listening to another episode of the work. It like a mum podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend. If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode. You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram. Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.