Scott's LinkedIn profile

I grew up in a small business background – my parents run an ice-cream van business, so I had a colourful childhood growing up. I was already working in the family business in primary school – I’d do a shift in the ice-cream van after school sometimes. I loved it and the entrepreneurial side of me never left – I was selling sweets in school and always trying to find a way to be in business. 

I grew up in a pretty deprived area of South Wales where there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on education, but I came across an AAT course and was introduced to accounting. I did an apprenticeship in industry, and it all came naturally to me. I wanted to improve my technical skills so moved to a larger company but ultimately, I knew I wanted to work with business owners like my parents, so I took a pay decrease to move into practice and joined Green & Co. I joined as a trainee, did my ACCA qualification, progressed quickly and then was offered partnership 7 years later, just before I turned 30.

Green & Co is mostly a general practice, but we do have an agricultural specialism. Our practice started as an agricultural accountancy practice – our founder is still an active farmer and did accountancy alongside his farming. I’m on the corporate client side where the practice has really taken off. We’re doing more and more audits because of that growth, and our client retention is strong - nearly a third of our clients are those we’ve retained since we first started over 30 years ago. We’ve grown organically and staff numbers have increased from 20 to nearly 50 in the 11 years that I’ve been here. It’s a reflection of our shift from very small businesses to more mid-sized businesses that are above the audit threshold and require more high-level tax planning and strategic FD-style support. We’re very hands on with clients and of course we do the compliance work for them, but we work with that compliance to add value to the consultative and advisory side of what we do and that has helped us differentiate ourselves in the marketplace.

My problems and stresses in practice are shared amongst all practitioners I imagine – staff are always a key concern. It isn’t on the acquisition and retention side – we work hard on our culture and we really listen to and value our staff giving them market-led salaries, flexible working, hybrid working, 31 days’ leave plus statutory holidays and so on. It’s a nice place to work – it isn’t pressurised. The area we potentially have a problem with is succession and people wanting to take the next step up to becoming a partner. The transition from employee to partner can be bumpy – not least because people you once reported to now report to you and the dynamic shifts. With the growth in the practice, the organisation structure has had to change, and we’ve introduced mid-level managers as part of a restructure to manage the growth. We’ve put smaller rungs in place so that it isn’t such a leap to partnership and put in place a partner development programme to develop people like me - to nurture them from the bottom all the way to the top if they want to. We already have people on the programme so we have potential partners in the pipeline that will allow us to maintain the staff levels to successively continue in the future when any partners retire.

Remaining independent whilst growing is another challenge – there aren’t many mid-sized independents in the area now. We have been approached repeatedly for silly payouts but we really don’t want to do that. That’s why we’re doing all this work – we want to keep this family feel, we want to keep control over the culture that we’ve worked extremely hard to create, and we want to ensure that there’s an environment for accountants to come into, to grow and enjoy the work they do and have a long life doing that. It’s nice to set an example that you can run a successful practice of a certain size and make it an environment that people really want to work in. We’ve actually grown as a result of the widespread consolidation that is taking place in the accountancy profession – we’ve gained both staff and clients unhappy with the corporate culture and different service level that consolidation often brings. 

The future for Green & Co is inspiring. We’re continuing to grow, supporting more clients, exploring new technologies and offering more opportunities for staff to develop. It’s a genuine pleasure to be part of the journey.

I try and play golf - I’m part of a society with some friends and we play at least once a month and that regularity forces me to get out which is good. Generally my downtime is peaceful – the tranquillity of not doing anything is positive and productive for me, given how busy it is being a partner in a mid-sized practice. Just walking the dog or relaxing on the settee doing nothing is sometimes a good way for me to recharge.