The Pierce Brosnan Problem featuring David Tuck

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:24:10

David Tuck

If anyone's ever watched. Mamma mia, Mia! Pierce Brosnan can't sing you a on a couple of ABBA hits that he absolutely birches and can't see when when How did he get cast in this role? He's like, charming British used to be James Bond, so we can't really say. But you rationalize it based on these like second order factors, and that's the Pierce Brosnan problem with accountants.

00:00:24:14 - 00:00:29:05

Daniëlle Keeven

Before we get into how that applies to accountants, you've got to learn about David Tuck.

00:00:29:10 - 00:00:38:19

David Tuck

My name is David Tuck, co-founder and CEO May Day. Our mission is to enable finance teams to close my and faster.

00:00:38:19 - 00:00:42:12

Daniëlle Keeven

But a lot more has happened to David than Mamma mia and May Day.

00:00:42:19 - 00:00:56:04

David Tuck

My first business was selling pinecones that I collected. He got shut down because health and safety and not having a license. It was Anderson when I applied to it, and by the time I got there, the whole Enron scandal happened.

00:00:56:06 - 00:01:23:17

Daniëlle Keeven

Join us in learning about the vibrant life of David Tuck. My name is Neal Keegan. Let's uncover the hidden stories of finance professionals as they navigate money, investment and growth. Let's look into the person behind the CFO title. Let's go beyond the budget before we get into the episode. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a five star review of the podcast wherever you listen.

00:01:23:21 - 00:01:48:05

Daniëlle Keeven

It helps out the whole panel studio scene tremendously and lets us continue to uncover the hidden stories of CFOs. First up, David talks about his childhood in Gloucestershire and how he set up his bedroom. He even decorated his room to match his favorite Premier League team. Listen onward as he talks about a surprisingly early venture into managing finances.

00:01:49:11 - 00:02:22:03

David Tuck

Shall I say, the first 12 years of my life in south east London, an area called Bromley. And then we moved to Cheltenham in Gloucestershire for the remainder of my of my childhood and then went to university in Warwick, in the Midlands and then have lived in London ever since graduating. So in the best part of 20 years now, my whole childhood bedroom was my hybrid and I have my single bed in that often with an Arsenal duvet and then a sort of fold up head underneath for having friends around for a sleepover.

00:02:22:04 - 00:02:44:16

David Tuck

So there was a bunch of football and cricket stuff. I think I was ever really into Cardiff. I can't picture any music post, so I feel like I should have a better answer to this, But I think my walls will have been quite kind of. Maybe I was an early minimalist. Who knows? I think I was relatively early to kind of get a kind of get my own computer.

00:02:44:16 - 00:03:02:15

David Tuck

I think I would have been sort of 13, 14 and having that for while predominately sort of football. So sort of soccer for our US audience management games. Lots of childhood hours were spent, was spent managing football teams to some success. I like to think on that simulation.

00:03:07:07 - 00:03:18:18

Daniëlle Keeven

When experience managing countless virtual football teams to victory, it's no surprise what David wanted to be when he grew up. But as you'll hear next, this dream evolved into other avenues as he grew older.

00:03:21:05 - 00:03:48:00

David Tuck

I'll be a bit of an oddity in that regard. I mean, other than the natural like childhood dream to be a professional sportsman, which anyone who's seen me play sport will have realized that that wasn't any kind of realistic dream thing from like a really young age. I've always really loved business. And so that dream would of being an entrepreneur and and building in a business that's twofold that I was Scot really, really into history from.

00:03:48:00 - 00:04:08:05

David Tuck

It would have been about age 12 and that was always my strongest subject. I really enjoyed the sort of synthesizing of different ideas and concepts and then trying to what were the events that led up to the American Civil War, for example, you know, synthesizing those factors and trying to kind of organize states. And I see that, you know, into what I do today.

00:04:08:05 - 00:04:28:13

David Tuck

I think I have, you know, of a brain that lends itself well to sort of synthesizing, you know, sort of different ideas to come up with, you know, sort of strategies. For example, you know, in a world where there is no, like empirical solution and you're going to be making that kind of best guess as to what the in historical sense, you know, what was the sort of the most compelling argument.

00:04:28:13 - 00:04:48:02

David Tuck

And then the other was from 1718. I really, really enjoyed economics, A-level quite mathematical brain. So I think there's the so the analytical, the sort of written analytical side with history, which to some extent comes over into economics. But then you've also got the kind of, you know, the neighbor element within economics as well.

00:04:49:22 - 00:05:04:14

Daniëlle Keeven

With a foundation set in the world of finance and economics. David was early to the entrepreneur game. His childhood was filled with several harebrained schemes, as you'll hear next. The first business he started Pinecones Let's let him describe that one a bit more.

00:05:06:15 - 00:05:35:00

David Tuck

And my first business was aged six, selling pinecones that I collected, you know, a local cul de sac secondary school. My brother and I had a business sort of selling copies of CDs that we would. So, you know, we go to the this is back in the days where you had physical retailers selling CDs. You know, we go to like an HMV or a Virgin and buy the CD copy and then copy it again and then take it back and get a refund with the kind of, oh, it was a present and we'd already got it.

00:05:35:00 - 00:05:49:03

David Tuck

So it's good high margin business as well, I guess, you know, that's having moved into SAS now, I look back and it's like, well, I had a love of high margin businesses from a young age, the copying the CDs that had a bit in it that was about, you know, the taking it back as it were, already a present.

00:05:49:03 - 00:06:18:07

David Tuck

I remember working as I had a summer job, like working on the scoreboard at a local cricket festival and you know, there were like food concessions that obviously had paid to be able to sell burgers and hot dogs and bacon sandwiches or whatever. We brought in because we were in prime location with the scoreboard. So we brought in our own barbecue and made and sold our own bacon sandwiches for a couple of days before we got understandably shut down because, you know, health and safety and not having a license and what have you.

00:06:18:10 - 00:06:23:23

David Tuck

So yeah, that would have been another one, along with the caveat that the CD duplication, if we call it that business.

00:06:26:20 - 00:06:49:05

Daniëlle Keeven

David decided that it was best to leave the shakey business dealings behind and go forth into the working world. He began his career working for one of the big four accounting firms, along with a fellow paddler chief marketing officer, Andrew DAVIES. But the start of David's career had some uncertain beginnings during an interesting period in the world of business that you might be familiar with.

00:06:51:09 - 00:07:09:09

David Tuck

Because it's the big Four now and it has been the Big Four for the last 20 years. Back in the day when I applied and when Andrew applied, it was the big five, which was Arthur Andersen, and then it just shortened to Andersen. So it was their scholar scheme that was incredibly well regarded and I was thrilled to be accepted onto.

00:07:09:09 - 00:07:35:11

David Tuck

And having had that offer accepted, I don't know, it would have been sort of early 2002 before due to start that autumn, the whole Enron scandal happened and Andersen ceased to exist as a as a firm and in the main was bought up by Deloitte. And then it was a case of Deloitte continuing with the scholarship scheme. You know, under Deloitte tonight it was Andersen when I applied to it, and by the time I got there it was Deloitte position early.

00:07:35:11 - 00:07:54:13

David Tuck

And so, you know, because you think of accounting is this like super stable thing will apply to an accounting gap scheme, the big five and yeah, they'd been industry consolidation, you know, it was a big seven and then there had been a couple of mergers to like bring it down to the big five. But you kind of think, okay, well I suppose accounting firms will be there and then that extent of scandal.

00:07:54:14 - 00:08:16:06

David Tuck

So I guess it's an early, very early career introduction to the fact sort of what I don't take anything for granted, you know, and that that based on obviously, you know, positive and negative applications, that huge positive applications of that as an entrepreneur in terms of look at things with first principles and don't assume the dogma. If just because stuff's been around for ages, it will it will always be that way.

00:08:16:06 - 00:08:22:18

David Tuck

You know, all the new aspects to it today, which means that it could be and should be approached differently, which, which creates opportunity.

00:08:27:06 - 00:08:46:00

Daniëlle Keeven

With a real world experience of nothing being too big to fail. David's career went onward. While David has never held the title of CFO, he has certainly held the responsibilities of one Listen next to him describe his experience at HBO alongside Andrew DAVIES, where David was the interim finance director.

00:08:48:04 - 00:09:11:18

David Tuck

I think maybe a year before, maybe sort of 2013, 2014, just whilst I was starting Chase. And that was such a great thing, you know, I learned a lot from that, and that's where I met Griff, my co-founder of Mayday, right? He was a CTO at that period in my life. I'm immensely grateful for in so many pronounced ways, and it was a great kind of job to do alongside me, getting kind of chase it going and helped fund the early stages of that.

00:09:11:18 - 00:09:33:20

David Tuck

That was the idea. Just after the raid, they'd raised their first round of kind of institutional funding from nation capture. And so, you know, they'd sort of earnestly done their bookkeeping before that, but didn't have any kind of sort of professional finance function in place. So I came in effectively like Frank took part time CFO A to do the like step if they'd been using freeagent as accounting system or picking Xero in place.

00:09:33:20 - 00:10:00:03

David Tuck

They just opened up a US entity so needed to think about things like drug set pricing and a separate Xero instance without us and in and how they'd managed the different payrolls and just all the like core pillars of running the finance function. But the other big learning that I'd carried from the first startup where I'd been a finance director was where I let myself get too distracted for too long in times of like the backwards looking, you know, what I describe as like financial controls, right?

00:10:00:03 - 00:10:21:01

David Tuck

And like tidying up the accounting system. We still did the ATO, but really early on like day one, I was like, Right, we're going to get a cash flow forecast in place so that we've got the like we've got a handle on we've raised this money. What's that's going to track us for? And I guess, you know, when Drew talks about me as the de facto CFO, it would be that because I was doing it was that element of it.

00:10:21:06 - 00:10:35:16

David Tuck

Okay, this is this is the most important thing that the business has got to go. I have a place to go to have a handle on. We're taking all of these decisions now off the back of raising funding, and I'd seen that before with a startup I worked for that could so easily get away from you. That just needs to be a spreadsheet.

00:10:35:17 - 00:10:57:21

David Tuck

It's just about, you know, it's about tracking cash. Sure, all of the financial controls will come in place, but that was a big learning for me from my first like startup finance role to not wait until the like the financial control side of things in the accounting system, you know, and the normal code structure and all of that great stuff was like was in place before then getting into okay, well, are we spending too much money here?

00:10:57:21 - 00:11:22:20

David Tuck

It was to do the two simultaneously and sure, the ability to do the are we spending too much money forecasting your ability to do that gets incrementally better once you have a kind of a cleaner and more organized kind of financial control side of things. But I think I looked at it as a false dichotomy previously with my first start up finance where I was like, okay, we've got to have a clean system first before we can do that forward looking side of things.

00:11:22:21 - 00:11:39:04

David Tuck

That was incorrect. You can still and it is essential that you do it element of the forward looking kind of projection side of things, cash flow, runway, what are the drivers of the business which sure can increase in sophistication from a kind of an FPGA perspective once you get about on the control side.

00:11:42:15 - 00:11:59:12

Daniëlle Keeven

David's career then took him to founding his first company in Finance Chaser. While doing research for his interview, we found a hilarious photo of an individual sporting a Knights helmet and drinking a custom beer called Better Days. And yes, that's a pun. Listen to David Color and then more.

00:12:01:17 - 00:12:28:10

David Tuck

So this was with Chase. We created the idea of Star Chaser, lot of the kind of invoice chasing knight in shining armor. So if you go back to what would it be? February 2015, there would be a photo of me. I went to the National Theater costume hire ad hired a knight suit and a sword, actually, and then managed to find somewhere some orange tights that I could wear because orange was a brand of chaser.

00:12:28:10 - 00:12:55:22

David Tuck

And yeah, it created the Chase a lot as a character for that two day conference. And then he became a staple of every event that we exhibited. And it really cool people's imagination. It was great, as one does with conferences. It was, What are we going to give away on our stand? And my brother, who now runs his own craft brewery over in Spain, and at that time, so this would have been what, maybe 2018, I think it was he was working for a craft brewery in the Bermondsey mob in London.

00:12:56:00 - 00:13:18:01

David Tuck

So we sort of thought, Well, why don't we do a craft ale to give away on the stand people who love that. So we kind of kicked ideas around for what we would call it, and then eventually landed on the name Debtor Days Days Eddie as a play on on debtor days, the accounting term bottomed. We went and did a guest brew at their brewery and got some photos of that for the provenance story and then gave that away on the stand.

00:13:18:01 - 00:13:36:23

David Tuck

And it was brilliant and a funny story about that. So kind of classic conference, you know, you're next to a couple of other exhibitors and so we had, I don't know, whatever it would have been 400 bottles of debt, two days to give away, you know, which we got delivered to the venue that our fight. And we were kind of, you know, stacking them up on the stand and they were stands are like right angles to each other.

00:13:36:23 - 00:13:51:07

David Tuck

And so we went around the corner is this property software called Released. And lo and behold, they had branded bottled beer also to give away on their stand. And he think, come on, how has a someone come up with the exact same idea and of all the stands that they could be put on, it's right next to us.

00:13:51:07 - 00:14:05:11

David Tuck

But they just slapped their regular company logo on it. We had debtor days. We had the whole like logo that we designed. We had the story behind it and everyone remembered it and at the end and it was a great product and everyone like remembered it and it became a sort of must have. And that is a story.

00:14:05:11 - 00:14:35:22

David Tuck

Is it today? When can I get my bottle or kind of debtor days? Maybe a few people took the kind of like generic branded lager is a real for kind of with like with the situation outside things have an idea if you really think something could work and could capture the imagination, you might be wrong, but you got like you've got to do a great job of it because otherwise you don't really learn anything If you do a sucky job of it and it doesn't work, you don't learn whether it was because the thing intrinsically wasn't viable or whether it was because if you'd done a better job of it, it might as might have

00:14:35:22 - 00:15:02:13

David Tuck

taken off so that a were learnings. We expect this chase side of things and debtor days as a beverage. We're really lucky with May Day as well because the May the may lends itself to so many patterns, so we we do quarterly product updates, we're just rebranding. Well, I am attempting to successfully get everyone to recognize this as may watch so that we can do that is taking the kind of the Baywatch theme and putting our heads so like deep fake putting our heads on a couple of lifeguard bodies.

00:15:02:13 - 00:15:04:09

David Tuck

Say, we'll see how that one goes.

00:15:08:01 - 00:15:25:15

Daniëlle Keeven

Clearly a crafty marketer, as you heard David, is so focus on creativity and may maybe listen next to him discuss how consulting with the likes of Zero and spend us helping craft his mission to make the complex simple. It was a vision he would carry with him into his next venture with maybe.

00:15:28:05 - 00:15:52:15

David Tuck

Really great question and I because I really stumbled into that consulting work after I left Chaser and I wasn't pretty sure I was going to do, and it just so happened organically after me posting on LinkedIn about being available for consulting work and it all sort of snowballed from there. I think it just well, firstly, there are some great businesses that I worked with, so I in a sense consulting what they were paying me.

00:15:52:15 - 00:16:15:02

David Tuck

But in a sense I got to learn from them in lots of regards as well as them learning from me in terms of the consulting work that they were paying me to do because they were great people and great organizations, you know, to just build up my reference points of what other organizations do well, and, you know, in some cases what other organizations don't do well to then channel into the venture that that became May Day.

00:16:15:02 - 00:16:38:10

David Tuck

I think that's another big element of it, which was, you know, which was really important for me. After moving on from Chase about my first business was like the confidence in what you know and the great organizations were willing and happily so in terms of the feedback I got about the great value they saw from from working with me, that was a great source of confidence to me to carry into into May Day.

00:16:38:10 - 00:17:10:11

David Tuck

The potentially had I not had the opportunity to do that, I wouldn't have had the same wind in my sails that I did. In moving on to venture number two. I really find it fascinating and I'm really fortunate to work with building an incredible team. But Griff, as a co-founder, honestly energized by that and the way that he kind of looks at sort of accounting problems and how they can be, how they can be simplified, I find it energizing up to the point that it becomes intractable and overwhelming in terms of specific complexity and or volume.

00:17:10:11 - 00:17:26:10

David Tuck

That point is about kind of recognizing you know, where your brains are and finding a way to kind of, you know, short circuit that thinking. But in the main, I do. I really find it energizing to think about. And that's one of things I really love about accounting when it comes to tech product, right? You know, generally accepted accounting principles like this.

00:17:26:10 - 00:17:55:07

David Tuck

It's such a rich terrain for great automation because it's like, okay, this is what the answer should be. And it's a how can we find a better way of delivering the answer? So I think as that really like, as a really satisfying element to it that provides the peace of mind that there will be a way. And if we haven't found it yet, we need to keep on going because there is that kind of North star to to enter, you know, whereas there are other areas where you could spend a lot of time working on it and it just you might find there's not a way of delivering the answer on this accounting.

00:17:55:07 - 00:17:58:07

David Tuck

It has lots of challenges, but that is not one of it.

00:18:00:20 - 00:18:15:06

Daniëlle Keeven

David learned a lot while working with accounting firms, but perhaps his biggest lesson came from the hit film Mamma mia. Confused, We were to listen next to David Breakdown the Pierce Brosnan problem for context.

00:18:15:06 - 00:18:35:13

David Tuck

That consulting work I did between Jason May Day was all around accounting firms say is not qualified accountants who work in a finite state bear counted who work in accounting firms delivering services to clients. How best to work with that And as a channel to market. You know, at some point, whenever it would have been, I forget, you know, maybe last year or the year before.

00:18:35:13 - 00:18:52:12

David Tuck

But I pulled together just because I found I was having the I'm always very keen to like, share my insights and advice for people. And I found I was having the same conversation lots of times with different people. So I thought, okay, I'll, I'll write this down as a, as a link to an article. And it was like, Well, how can I make these concepts as is engaging as possible?

00:18:52:12 - 00:19:07:22

David Tuck

So I came up with the idea of the Pierce Brosnan problem for the fact that, well, let me explain the Pierce Brosnan website. If anyone's ever watched Mamma mia as a film, which if you haven't watched it, what are you doing? Watch. Mamma mia. You kind of Pierce Brosnan can't sing a couple of like ABBA hits that he absolutely purchased.

00:19:08:05 - 00:19:27:19

David Tuck

How did he get cast in this role? Like it was a musical fail, But how can someone who just can't really sing like lots of other talents but can't really sing, get cast in a film that that is a musical one? When you kind of step back from it, you realize, well, that is someone who kind of fell in love with the idea of him for the part is like charming British used to be James Bond, so we can't really sing.

00:19:27:19 - 00:19:50:15

David Tuck

But you rationalize it based on these like second order factors where someone would come at it first. We're like, okay, this is a musical film. Someone has to be able to sing first, and then we'll look at the other like second order intangibles He too never got a look at. And that's the Pierce Brosnan problem with accountants is that people rationalize, Well, they've got all of these clients, you know, they close to them, they're respected when it comes to finance.

00:19:50:19 - 00:20:28:10

David Tuck

And then they overlook the fact they're just not salespeople and they have no interest in like selling bolt on products, you know, like an easyJet or Ryan asset to their clients. I say. So that's the that's the idea of the Pierce Brosnan problem. The people rationalize based on second order factors. But forget the fact that in the first instance, they've got to be predisposed and capable of initiating that conversation with that client, which unless there is a like a tangible benefit to the account in terms of the services they could provide, which they have to be able to sell because otherwise they wouldn't have a business So much blood and energy, not literal blood, but

00:20:28:10 - 00:20:50:23

David Tuck

you know, like monetary blood has been spent on trying to because it's really persuasive. Right? It's that multiplier of, oh, well, they've got 300 clients, all of whom could benefit from this. Therefore we'll just get them to sell it. But that's just not their modus operandi. That's not how they look at their clients in the client relationship. And therefore that kind of that strategy is doomed to failure.

00:20:51:00 - 00:21:16:04

David Tuck

The Pierce Brosnan was my medium for communicating that concept. They don't see themselves as salespeople with customers. They see themselves as accountants with clients and a duty of care to that, which sure has to be commercially viable and fruitful. But it's, you know, so it's not a kind of it's not a pure benevolent Hippocratic oath just kind of saved the life.

00:21:16:04 - 00:21:30:21

David Tuck

It's got a it's got to pay the bills. But equally, it's not an Amazon either. It's somewhere in the middle. And people really miss that distinction. And you can tell, you know, they just slip in and out of customer. So much of my consulting work, it was just like, no, no, no. Accountants will never call. They'll always call it a firm.

00:21:30:21 - 00:21:40:22

David Tuck

They never call it a company. And they will never, ever refer to their customers. They will only refer to their clients. Honestly, the amount of time I just spent trying to like, drill that into people's heads.

00:21:45:19 - 00:22:05:23

Daniëlle Keeven

What a brilliant metaphor to understand an important concept. But David's expertise as a leader doesn't end. There. He also understands the importance of mental health and how he incorporates specific values within May Day, including one that often goes overlooked. Then he discusses the two elements he focuses on to help him during his own struggles.

00:22:09:12 - 00:22:29:06

David Tuck

I really enjoyed that. The mental Health first aid course I did again after leaving Chaser and before starting my day. I think there's a bunch of stuff at the more like sophisticated end about getting into the kind of indicators so that you could, you know, be aware and and listening, you know so give advice where people are struggling.

00:22:29:06 - 00:22:47:17

David Tuck

I think mayday right now we got five values, delight, ownership, curiosity, boldness. And I know I get to detail of what we mean by all the days, but I'm sure you'd find those as values in a bunch of other startups. Our fifth value, which is effectively a wrap around all the others, is balanced, which is, I think, a more unusual value to have.

00:22:47:17 - 00:23:04:13

David Tuck

And that's borne out of Griffin. Neither Griff nor I talked to a start up spring chicken. I think this applies to kind of financiers and finance teams in general is just that recognizing the paramount importance of balance. And yes, sometimes you are going to need to kind of go up into the red zone is outside the Green zone, orange zone and red.

00:23:04:13 - 00:23:17:17

David Tuck

So there are going to be times in life where you have to go, you have to take into the red zone. And that's just the nature and unpredictability of life, you know, and that there are going to be times potentially, you know, sustained periods where you're going to need to be in the orange zone because of what the situation requires.

00:23:17:17 - 00:23:41:12

David Tuck

But defining that concept and recognizing that all of our individually and then collectively our optimal situation is to be at the very, very p of Green Zone. That's the sweet spot where we ought to operate. And that's something that it was really important to us to kind of define, because unless you do defined, it is just so easy to slip into kind of orange or even red being the kind of the expectation and the default.

00:23:41:12 - 00:24:03:12

David Tuck

And that's how that's where burnout and mental ill health, the kind of situational like that's like brought like that's kind of rich turf for mental ill health, right where you just, you know, able to look after yourself effectively. So that idea of balance, I think just kind of cuts across everything and kind of defining what were optimal and what I expected is and should look like.

00:24:03:15 - 00:24:20:02

David Tuck

Well, there's two elements to this, right? I write a build in public blog for May Day, and that's great for normalizing things. I find it great holding myself accountable. I really notice how it almost provides shock absorbers to prevent me from getting into Iraq because it's like I'm going to be accountable for this. I don't want to write.

00:24:20:03 - 00:24:40:04

David Tuck

I write biweekly progress from this plan space. I don't want to write a post where I've been in a rut for a couple of weeks. So it's like, you know, there's going to be those things that kind of knock down, but that acts as a kind of an enforced springboard for knowing that, okay, I'm going to be writing in at some point in the next two weeks and therefore I need to kind of bounce back, bounce back faster.

00:24:40:04 - 00:24:55:21

David Tuck

That's one element of it. And then but then, you know, when those kind of crucible was to come, I found writing the most amazing, you know, So there's not the public writing and the accountability that provides in the sort of shock absorbers point that I just made. But then something is kind of happening internally. It's like, wow, that was a big hit.

00:24:55:22 - 00:25:20:06

David Tuck

We all go there right where it kind of throw. It shakes up the mental side globe. I found the single best way, and this is just for me to get out of that snow globe shaking moment and get onto the ramp The fastest is by like writing it out, clarifying my thoughts, almost like calibrating air, reconciling it in my long term memory so that my kind of, you know, my prefrontal cortex, my kind of deliberate brain can get going.

00:25:23:22 - 00:25:47:19

Daniëlle Keeven

Special thanks to David. Talk for being on the show. You can find him on LinkedIn and Twitter. If you'd like to see things yourself. Know anyone who would be great for the show? Send an email to our senior show producer Ben that Hillman and PALKOT. Also, please leave a five star review if you enjoyed the podcast. We'll see you next time on Beyond the Budget, a podcast from panel studios dedicated to helping you build Butter SAS.