海角视频

When Lucy Cohen and Sophie Hughes took their business plan to a bank when they were starting out they were not only refused a loan the bank also would not give them an account.

A business adviser told them straight out he did not think their business would work.

Why were they turned down? Was it because they were both 23 years old? Or was it their gender? Or both?

Thankfully the tenacious two carried on and over the past 15 years have built a pioneering business.

Mazuma was the brainchild of Lucy Cohen.

Lucy comes from a very creative family - 鈥淢y massive rebellion was getting a proper job鈥� - and it was seeing the stress at tax time that helped her come with the idea for a new business.

鈥淐oming from a creative family and seeing the trauma really involved in the annual schlep to the accountants office with a pile of receipts, the fear of the bill and January always been this like really stressful thing,鈥� Lucy explains.

鈥淎nd I put that together with what we had been learning [at the Financial Training Centre in Cardiff] and I was like, why is there not a better way of doing this?鈥�

Lucy and Sophie had been at Howell鈥檚 School in Llandaff together but Lucy went to a different six form, and they lost touch. It was at the Financial Training Centre in Cardiff they reconnected and it was here that Lucy shared her idea with Sophie.

The business was to be a low cost, subscription-based accountancy services, where people would send their information every month in a purple envelope.

The decision on the name Mazuma - an old Yiddish word for money - was a deliberate choice to allow the company to grow as a brand and away from them as individuals.

鈥淲e always had the idea of growth of brand, right from where we were 23,鈥� Lucy said.

This was 2006. There was no cloud accounting software.

鈥淵ou had desktop software that was clunky, took a lot of time and was not really accessible price wise for micro businesses, small businesses, sole traders, basically the businesses that make up 98% of the business in the 海角视频, this stuff wasn鈥檛 really accessible for them,鈥� Lucy explains.

鈥淲e came up with idea putting it in an envelope every month, replacing the idea of the shoe box under the bed. They can put it in an envelope and send it into us. We鈥檒l do the bookkeeping, manage accounts, tax advice, they just pay a subscription.

鈥淲e were the first to market with a subscription model for accountancy in the 海角视频. Others have followed but we are still the only ones who have a true subscription model.

鈥淲e started working on our old, crappy laptops that were really slow. We had one printer that we had to share, swapping the wire when one of us wanted to print, an old filing cabinet in my spare bedroom and about 拢100 between us.鈥�

It was then they got their first knock.

鈥淭he first business adviser we ever saw, told us that it would never work, and that we couldn鈥檛 do it,鈥� Lucy said.

鈥淎nd then we just decided that he was wrong, with all the confidence of a 23 year old. We knew the industry was ready.鈥�

For two women in their early twenties it was tough. And an eye-opener.

鈥淲e definitely got asked several times if we worked for our dad鈥檚 company,鈥� recalls Sophie.

鈥淚t was at the first networking networking event we went to, and we were like, 鈥極h, that鈥檚 happening, that鈥檚 a thing.鈥�

The pair believe that their formative years at Howells had helped them, that they always been around places of empowerment. But they did feel up against it, especially in an industry heavily male-dominated. And as the company has developed and they have moved more into the tech side of the business they have entered another sector that has a gender imbalance.

鈥淚n these industries, you have to be absolutely undeniable,鈥� said Lucy.

鈥淭here鈥檚 no leeway given to you, you鈥檙e criticised more harshly because you鈥檙e a rarity. Any misstep you make, or any mistake you made looks that much worse than your male counterparts.鈥�

When they started the business they initially looked at going down the franchise route, but they quickly reversed that and brought everything back under one roof in Bridgend.

鈥淚t was a bit of a bit of a hair raising time for us because we we took on a big office and recruited a load of staff and didn鈥檛 have the clients to cover the costs,鈥� Sophie said.

鈥淚 think that the pressure makes you makes you work super hard. We went down different avenues of taking on new clients and different routes of taking on new business, and some worked, some didn鈥檛. But we managed to grow and fill the office.鈥�

Lucy adds: 鈥淚 think, when you do something new it鈥檚 always really hard. One of the hardest things we faced was that we were approaching an old industry in a new way.

鈥淭he question we kept getting asked was why isn鈥檛 anyone else doing this and there must be a reason. We would say we literally do not know why no one else is doing like this because this works way better.鈥�

With a new way of working the company had to not only educate new clients on how the business worked but also the sales team. But once they did their new clients would talk, word of mouth led to more clients, and they started picking up awards.

A couple of years back they had a few offers to sell the business, but they turned them down.

鈥淲e did think, you know, maybe it鈥檚 time for us to move on, but then weirdly, having offers on the table we were like if they鈥檙e keen now this could be something more,鈥� Lucy said.

Instead Mazuma decided to go for investment. It was only two years ago but it was the first time they went out looking for funding.

The investment meant they created a new board and set about growing the company. A few months after making that decision the pandemic hit.

However, it has not changed the goals the business. The current client roster is around 2,000 and the plan is to reach 10,000 in the next two years.

Mazuma has invested time and money into new technologies. Sophie is leading this push that will see the company use drafting tools and optical character recognition that will pull data off bits of paper and put it into the system.

Sophie explains: 鈥淚t will increase our efficiency for clients by I think something like 27 minutes per client a month, It means the capacity we can take on and the service levels we can provide to clients going forward is unheard of.鈥�

The change in technology is needed as there is a shift by HMRC.

鈥淢aking Tax Digital is set to increase the number of returns needed to be filed by many businesses from one a year to five times a year, and HMRC are also mandating that all records must be kept electronically,鈥� Lucy explained.

鈥淢ost accountants will ask their clients to input their data into a piece of software for them 鈥� and they鈥檒l pick it up later on. But we know that in real life that means more admin hassle for small businesses, sole traders and freelancers.

鈥淪o our technology lets you snap and send via the app if you want 鈥� or, you can still just send us in an envelope of paperwork and receipts every month and we鈥檒l do the rest.

鈥淥ur high capacity scanning suite digitises the paperwork at an incredible speed. Then the images are uploaded into a secure client portal where our Optical Character Recognition technology reads the paperwork, extracts the data we needs and sends it to the accountants.

鈥淣o matter how techy you are, or aren鈥檛, you can access a high end FinTech service via an envelope full of paperwork. And then know that we鈥檒l handle all the tax stuff without you ever having to worry about it.鈥�

These changes mean the business will expanding, not just with people with accounting skills but the company will see half the staff now with a digital background.

The pandemic and the working from home has also changed the approach to recruitment.

鈥淕eography isn鈥檛 a limiting factor for us anymore,鈥� says Lucy.

鈥淲e can bring in people from outside of the geographic area, we can really go after that talent. And it also in terms of diversity and inclusion a lot of those questions arfe answered, we鈥檙e able to accommodate people far more easily with disabilities, with different lifestyles, with different working arrangements with children or perhaps caring responsibilities.

鈥淯ltimately, for us, as long as the customer service is good, and the client contacts good. It doesn鈥檛 matter to us what time of tax return gets filed. So let鈥檚 make it work around the needs of our team. So that鈥檚 going to be quite an exciting change as well.鈥�