Ep. 6: Richard Starkey - The Importance of Accounting in Entrepreneurship

Contact Richard Starkey:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardstarkeyyves/

CronosNow: http://cronosnow.com/our-why/

Richard Starkey's suggested reading list:

• Tim Goodenough: https://timgoodenough.com/
• Tim Ferriss: https://tim.blog/.
• Ray Dalio: https://www.principles.com/
• Adam Grant: https://www.adamgrant.net/
• Carol Dwek: https://mindsetonline.com/abouttheauthor/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Music: (00:00)

Adam: (00:03)

Welcome back to Count Me In and thanks for joining the conversation about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm Adam Larson and I'm joined by my cohost, Mitch Roshong and today we have a very interesting episode to share with you for this week's conversation. Mitch, you had the opportunity to speak with the managing partner of CronosNow Richard Starkey. 

Mitch: (00:21)

Yes, I did. Richard Starkey is what he refers to as a serial entrepreneur since his teenage years. His passion for business and education came across very clearly and we were able to talk about how important accounting and finance skills are to starting and running a business. He is also a great proponent for lifelong learning and share some valuable insight into how professionals can learn and develop through their careers. I enjoyed the conversation and learned a great deal from Richard and I hope you do too.

Mitch: (00:54)

So Richard, please tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up as the managing partner at Kronos Now. 

Richard: (01:01)

I started being an entrepreneur quite early in life. In my late teens, I started up a small kind of publication and I was actually riding horses for as a professional show jumper and realized I needed to make some money. So you know, started a couple of small businesses, nothing too sophisticated. And as I kind of got on in in my career I realized I needed a strong kind of finance background. So I studied accounting part time while working and running some small businesses and I did my accounting degree. And during that process I wandered off and became an operations manager for a large logistics firm, got into corporate finance and then really felt the shortfall of my technical finance knowledge. So then continued with the rest of my accountancy qualification or part time in my late twenties, actually. And once I kind of finished the qualification, I went back and did my internship and articles in my late twenties. I landed up in academics teaching financial reporting as my, you know, as my real teaching subject. And from that I grew into this quite a bit of an expert in financial reporting and later in corporate finance and a deal structuring for mergers and acquisitions, not a deal maker, more a, you know, a technical accounting and tax structuring kind of guy. And through that period I really just ran with academics, you know, sometimes more academics, less consulting, sometimes more consulting and less academics. But through that process a couple of years ago we did an education corporate finance deal where we brought and structured a couple of education businesses around the world. And by accident, you know, one of those deals didn't go so well and I landed up kind of holding the reins, temporary CEO for what was supposed to be for, for an interim period and landed at actually loving it and moved from technical accounting finance guy into CEO of an education business for good three and a half, four years and had to learn all the skills around strategy, building a larger systems and marketing. And in that process I had some wins, some losses, but I really fell in love with the idea of automating and developing processes from the front end marketing all the way to the back end accounting and last year off to some, you know, personal health issues in our family. We sold the business to take some time out and during the end of last year I realized I enjoyed the entrepreneurial space, not as as an entrepreneur but in helping entrepreneurs and that's where Kronos Now was born. And Kronos Now services and looks after my own entrepreneurial and my wife entrepreneurial activities from a systems accounting and finance perspective. But also we act as an accounting firm that we like to do, say there's more than accounting. And it's been a good, you know, first year and we're learning and helping small to medium entrepreneurs are doing initially their accounting in the most automated and efficient way possible, but then building that out into the rest of their systems and, and processes. 

Mitch: (04:28)

Well, that's great. Thank you for sharing that story. For someone who, you know, doesn't come from a necessarily traditional accounting background but you certainly put in the time with your studies and they chartered accountant. How do you believe that piece of your background has helped you in these executive roles that you assumed and then started. 

Richard: (04:50)

Such a good question. The reality is my accounting finance and specifically the auditing side has helped me understand the, the rules of the business games specifically around business process and risk. It has been a challenge getting out of just the process and a risk mindset when you start moving into the CEO and entrepreneurial state that understanding how businesses can build off of a good process is everything. That's the foundation, right? And quite honestly the auditing training has been exempt, just exceptional in supply me that skill sets. 

Mitch: (05:31)

Well, as you came from academia, right? And you kind of combined all of this accounting background and learned kind of on the go. How would you recommend, or how do you kind of see the needs of accounting, education and accounting preparation changing based on, you know, where today's business world is, as you previously mentioned, automation. 

Richard: (05:54)

Oh, accounting and systems or computers and AI. I think, you know, the level of understanding of computer systems and even programming for accountants is going to need to increase drastically over the next five to 10 years. And that's the one skillset I miss all the time. I've always got to rely on a program that even to do basic integrations and, and system checking. 

Mitch: (06:18)

Now my next question is kind of what's next, right? I mean, you are in academia, you talk about educating students, educating entrepreneurs, assisting accountants today. You know, once you have that education, you have your qualifications. how do you progress through your career? What are the next steps? 

Richard: (06:39)

I've mentored quite a few of my students as well as my previous financial managers, et cetera, on this kind of journey. And I see two broad forks in the road at some point, you know, I went through both of them so they don't have to be, you know, one choice forever. It can actually be, you make one choice now and five or 10 years locked on the line, you make a ...