Episode 299 · 7 May 2026 · 50:29
“There are 200 people on a waiting list to work here”, with Rachel Harris, StriveX Accountants
Featuring Rachel Harris
“There are 200 people on a waiting list to work here”, with Rachel Harris, StriveX Accountants
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Chapters & timestamps
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Intro: The waiting list problem
Rachel's story: from no university to disruptor
interview#accounting#career#disruption
Kitchen table to 24 employees in 5 years
Systemising the recruitment pipeline
interview#recruitment#systems#process
Why people join StriveX (it's not the salary)
Why traditional hiring is normally a hard sell
interview#hiring#recruitment#marketing
Choosing the right platform
interview#recruitment#platforms#tools
The Employee Generated Content scheme
The 'boob lady' moment: mistakes that backfired
interview#marketing#mistakes#personal-brand
Where to find Rachel and final takeaways
Show notes
“There Are 200 People on a Waiting List to Work Here” — with Rachel Harris, StriveX Accountants
Guest: Rachel Harris — co-founder of StriveX Accountants, a multi-million-pound firm she built from her dining room table in five years.
Most businesses struggle to recruit. They post jobs on Indeed, sponsor LinkedIn ads, and cross their fingers. Rachel Harris does the exact opposite — she's built a waiting list of over 200 people eager to join her team.
Rachel joins Al and Leanne to reveal how she treats recruitment like a 24/7 marketing function, why she never posts "we're hiring" ads, and how her employees have become her most powerful recruitment tool — even when they're calling her a "micromanager" on social media.
They dig into the "always-on" recruitment strategy, how Rachel systemised onboarding so the process runs itself, and why her no-rules Employee Generated Content scheme — where the team earns bonuses for sharing raw, unscripted stories — became the firm's best-performing recruitment content.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Recruit like a marketer. Stop selling the job; start showing the life. Use day-in-the-life stories and team moments to sell the culture before a candidate ever applies.
- Turn your team into trusted voices. Authenticity beats polish. Giving your team the freedom to share their real experiences without an approval process builds massive credibility with future hires.
- Fix the culture first. Rachel's EGC scheme only works because the workplace actually delivers on its promises. If your employees won't vouch for you publicly, focus on the culture before the content.
More From Rachel Harris
- StriveX Accountants: strivex.co.uk
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottMost businesses struggle with recruiting great people. They post jobs on Indeed, they sponsor LinkedIn ads, they cross their fingers. Rachel Harris runs a mid-sized UK accounting firm, and she has the opposite problem. At one point, over 200 people were on a waiting list just to be considered for a job there.
Leanne ElliottRachel didn't get there with a big HR budget or a fancy employer brand agency. She got there by treating recruitment like marketing, running it every single day, Whether she needed people or not.
Al ElliottAnd here's where it gets really interesting. Rachel's employees are now part of the recruitment machine too. One of her team posted this about her.
Rachel HarrisWe implemented something called the Employee Generated Content scheme, which is, yeah, people can be financially rewarded for creating content about what it's like to work here. One of the, one of the prizes for the highest engagement ever, the hook of the post was Rachel Harris as the biggest micromanager ever. And this was the person who reports directly to me. She's our content lead and accountant.
Leanne ElliottThat post wasn't a PR disaster. It was one of the best performing pieces of content the firm has ever produced. Rachel has built a system where her team are financially rewarded for sharing what it's actually like to work there. No guidelines, no script, no approval process.
Al ElliottSo today we're asking, what if your biggest recruitment tool isn't a job ad, it's your own people's social media?
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner, and we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Leanne ElliottOur guest today is Rachel Harris, co-founder of StriveX Accountants, a multi-million pound firm she built with her husband James from her dining room table in 5 years with no outside investment. She's also built cross-platform following of nearly 400,000 people, appears regularly on This Morning and LBC, and has most recently got to put a very direct question to Sir Keir Starmer about small business taxes.
Al ElliottRachel's going to tell us why she recruits 24/7 even if she doesn't have jobs available, how she turned her employees into her best marketing asset, and what most founders get completely wrong about building a team people actually want to join.
Leanne ElliottSo after this short break, we'll join Al and Rachel with a masterclass on recruiting.
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every Support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Rachel HarrisSo hi, if we've not met before, my name is Rachel Harris and I am a disruptor in the accounting industry. And so I am disrupting what it means to be an accountant, what it feels like to an accountant and disrupting the concept that you can't rapidly scale a business without losing yourself along the way. So I have done that over the last 5 years from my dining room table to now owning a multimillion-pound accounting firm, a 7-figure personal brand, as well as launching new companies along the way. I do that by creating completely free, accessible, consumable, long and short-form content. I am slightly famous for doing lots of TV appearances, very much being A bit of a disruptor in my industry when it comes to press, PR, how to kind of dominate an industry that previously was quite stale, pale, and male. And so, I do regular appearances on shows like This Morning. I commentate weekly on LBC, BBC Radio, and am probably most famous for interrogating and giving Keir Starmer a bit of a shouting at most recently.
Al ElliottDo you wanna just talk us through sort of how you got from where you were, let's say, what, 8, 9 years ago to where you are now?
Rachel HarrisYeah, I started my career by not going to university, which as A millennial, as I was the first generation of kids in my family that even could have had the opportunity to go to university. And so choosing not to was quite a big deal. I was raised as a young carer. So I am an identical twin and my twin sister has learning difficulties. And so have been a young carer for as long as I can, literally as long as I can remember because we were born together. And so yeah, not going to university to me was actually choosing something that was the most accessible for someone who is and has always been a very young carer with caring responsibilities that I didn't feel like I could leave from home. And so, from an accessibility perspective, I was always quite a high performer and high achiever at school, but was very much a free school meal kid and a charity shop clothes kid. And so, took an apprenticeship. I always knew that I loved maths. To me, maths made the whole world make sense. But I really, when I was consuming like wide stream media content. The only people that I could ever really see on TV shows that represented the personality type that I have is probably on shows like The Big Bang Theory. And so, from the word go of choosing to become an accountant, actually just made it my mission to make sure that just because I couldn't see it, that actually everyone that came after me felt like they could be because they could see it. And so, yeah, started my career through not going to university, taking an apprenticeship, just Absolutely thrashed through my exams, tried to just collect job titles as fast as possible. But throughout my career, spotted a few things that, those days where you're sat as an employee at your desk and you think, oh, I would do that differently to you. Just really got to the point with my husband, James, who is also an accountant, where I just felt like we have both always been so values-driven. And I just firmly believed that being an accountant was the best job in the world. And from a career perspective, a big change A big sort of gear shift for me was after I qualified as an accountant, I started doing a master's in business. So, it was very lovely. It was quite full circle. I got to go back and close that loop, and even without an undergraduate degree, got to do a master's degree. And I was competing with people who had gone to university, and I hadn't. And so, yeah, started doing a master's degree, but through the process of doing an MBA, realised that actually I wasn't just an accountant. I was an accountant because I absolutely love maths, but that attention to detail when it comes to data and analytics, can also help me spot things like gaps in the market, which I identified when it came to social media for professional services. And so, yeah, just identified a bit of a gap in the market for somebody leading a professional services firm with a very strong focus on personal brand. That was 5 years ago. We now have a cross-platform following of nearly 400,000 people.
Al ElliottWe want to go into the personal brand in a second, because I believe that's a firm or a big part of your recruitment strategy. But before we do that, let's just talk about StriveX. So, you went from kitchen table, you and James, to, I think, to 24 employees in, what was it, 8 years? How many years was it?
Rachel HarrisOh no, it's only been 5. Yeah, 5 years.
Al Elliott5 years. So, you went kitchen table to 24 employees, 5 years. Talk me through those 5 years.
Rachel HarrisOf course. And I think specifically within the landscape, it's really important to mention that we are 100% owned. James and I own 100% of the equity within StriveX. So, we are completely bootstrapped. There's been no external investment. Um, you know, lots of accounting firms have incredibly impressive growth through different funding sources. But it's just me and James with a spreadsheet trying to work out how do we remain profitable? How can we self-scale this? Because we've always wanted to be very grassroots, very on-payroll, in-house British. Most of our competitors are either private equity or angel investment backed. They're also outsourcing the labor costs to other countries where there's no national insurance contributions, there's no tax contributions, there's no None of the day one sick pay, which we're about to encounter in the UK. And so we, yeah, from day one just knew that the marketplace was changing. We were during a pandemic. We knew that we wanted to be personal brand driven. We knew that we, between the two of us, I am an accountant, James is a chartered accountant, I have a master's in business. Between the two of us, we felt like we had the skills. And really, I've always felt like We kind of very much complement each other. And sometimes when I see founders struggling, I think you are missing your James or you are missing your Rachel. And so, we've always just been very yin yang when it comes to being visionaries and implementers and integrators. So yeah, just started marketing like my life depended on it because it did. We had just got a mortgage for the first time. And yeah, just remember saying to James, I'll do whatever it takes. I'll join a BNI networking group. I promise I'll find some clients. And started creating content the very same day that I became self-employed. And Yeah, over the last 5 years, we have scaled incredibly organically. We are now at the point where last quarter we quoted half a million pounds in new fees into the accounting firm through predominantly social media. But again, we're now at the point where most prospects that come into the firm have at least 6 different touchpoints. So, they put social media on the form, but really it's like, oh, I saw you on LBC, and then I followed you on socials, and then Someone also mentioned you to me, and then by the time I inquired, it was 6 different touchpoints.
Al ElliottSo let's talk about this growth, but in terms of your teams, because I'm sure you've spoken publicly many, many times about how you grew the business in terms of the actual business, but you seem to adore the people who work with you. So how did you grow and get the right people on board?
Rachel HarrisIf you've not encountered any of the work that I do before, I describe my job as helping people who run their businesses Very, very confidently with what they do, but they feel like they're running their business blindfolded. And so, the reason we've been able to scale the actual firm so quickly whilst being bootstrapped with a personal brand, without the wheels falling off and the service level being terrible, so we have over 200 5-star Google reviews, the way we've been able to do that is by systemization. So, we have systemized, I kind of describe it as franchising the inside from someone who never plans to franchise and doesn't want to own a franchise. We have franchised everything inside the firm. And one of the first things that we did was franchise the recruitment process. And so, the too long, didn't read is we recruit constantly. One of the biggest lessons I ever learned in business was that marketing and recruitment are the 2 things that you need to be doing all of the time. By the time you think you need to do it, it's probably too late. So, we are recruiting for every single role in the practice 24/7. Even if we are fully recruited in that team, we will always be recruiting actively on the outside. We have an employee waiting list. At one point, that reached over 200 people on an employee waiting list, waiting to join the firm. So, we are consistently interviewing, doing first interviews, second interviews, technical skills tests, then they come in and meet the team. And so, we systemize that recruitment process. I found through working with lots of other accounting firms who also struggled to do the same, lots of people struggle to do technical skills tests in the accounting industry. Some people interview incredibly well, but after 2 weeks, you think, oh gosh, I've made a mistake. And so, we have systemized how to test for the things that we know work very, very well. But at the center of everything that we do, every single system, every single process, is our core values. We interview based on those core values from day one. Every single element that we have within the accounting firm comes back to those core values, whether it's a piece of software, a piece of our CRM, a piece of client data. Everything comes back to those core values. So, we interview based on values at step 1. Once we think they've passed the vibe check of those core values, then we move on to technical skill test, then we move on to onboarding. That onboarding is done completely on demand. So, they do all of their onboarding before they start with us. That means they get to hit the ground running. That means that rather than me and James spending 2 days inducting people one-to-one, we now get to do it completely hands-free, one-to-many, which means that then we can then reinvest that time budget of James and I as founders Where on someone's first day, we just take them out for the afternoon. We just get to spend time with them as people, as humans. Like, I was just chatting to someone who started a few days ago, and she's a really keen crocheter, and I was literally just chatting to her about, like, what she's crocheting. And, like, we just get to build a really personal relationship by reallocating that budget. And so, rather than our competitors, like, outsourcing labor costs or trying to outsource or leverage AI to just do, like, race to the bottom with price, we are what I would describe quite boutique when it comes to our pricing. But actually, we attract a client portfolio base who deeply want to invest their money back into the economy that they are a part of, as fellow grassroots British business owners.
Al ElliottI don't understand. You've franchised everything, you've standardised, you've systematised everything. It's brilliant. But how are you getting the time to even do that? Most business owners don't have the time to actually manage the recruiting pipeline they've got, let alone set it all out so it's on autopilot.
Rachel HarrisThat's probably one of the most common questions I ever get asked, because I'm very aware that, like, the way we scaled our business is not normal. So, During my master's, I became super fascinated with the concept of McDonald's. Again, lots of us choose to go to McDonald's, not because of the outstanding food quality. We go because we know what we're going to expect. We know that the output is the same every time. I know that if I've had a double cheeseburger in one McDonald's on the side of the M40, I can also go into another McDonald's in my town city center, and the cheeseburger's going to be exactly the same. So I understand that the output will be the same. Every single time. And therefore, even though the standard maybe isn't desirable, I know that I'm gonna achieve it. And so, I became really fascinated with like, what if the product was great and it was systemized and it was the same every time? So, what if we took the McDonald's business model, but it actually was incredibly high-quality food? My job would then be writing recipes and then hiring great chefs. And then, every single client that comes to me knows that we deliver a Michelin-star service. And so, I became absolutely hyper focus fixated on this during my master's to really deeply understand, like, yeah, how can we take a business model that works within a race to the bottom industry and actually, does it still work in the same way in a boutique style way? The short answer is yes, it does. My biggest pushback on anyone that asks me this question, if they say like, that wouldn't work in my business or it wouldn't work in my team, is that I believe actually the systems are cultural. Systems are part of your culture as a business. Your team only ever have to see you be able to defend them once because they have followed a process correctly to then make sure everyone else is like, now I understand why we follow that process. It's relatively easy in an accounts perspective because we are very compliance focused. People generally understand that if you follow a process and you get a desired output that is compliant, it's safe, it's secure. You're doing the right thing. You're getting the best possible outcome for that client. But I will always push back on people who say, that wouldn't work in my business. And I actually say, that's not a systems problem then. That's a culture problem. You have to get everybody bought in. And I just mentioned that we onboard everyone on demand. That's a system. We ask people to absolutely roast the onboarding workflow as they're going through it. That's a system. It's cultural. I expect people to turn up on their first day with a list of things that they think I could do to improve. That's a cultural system where people know that they can look the founder of the business dead in the eye and say, I'm absolutely going to roast your onboarding process, but we're going to build a relationship here that's based on deep mutual respect and understanding for each other. And so, most of the stuff that we've done, we are talking about systems, but actually we're talking about culture. And so, that's where core values literally sit at the center of everything. Because a process of me talking about how to hold a client's hand through an insolvency process is one thing. Me having team members that are trained on our values in a way that they can follow that process, but still make the client not feel like they're on a conveyor belt of a McDonald's cheeseburger, and actually really feel like a process is being followed to make sure we're compliant, but the core values are followed to make sure you really receive like care in what you're doing as well.
Al ElliottNow, I've heard in your industry, it's kind of tough to find good people. So, have you systematized your pipeline of getting people into your, your onboarding at the moment, or your recruitment?
Rachel HarrisYes, absolutely. So, again, it looks like a systems, but actually it's a much wider business process where, again, I said at the beginning, I help people who feel like they're running their business blindfolded. Most people don't have the wrong data, they're just not looking at the right data in the frequency that they should be doing. For example, if I'm scaling a company that is quoting half a million pounds worth of fee values every quarter, Recruitment has to be my top priority because there is no point doing the marketing, no point winning the work if I cannot deliver. We are a service-based business, not a SaaS business. I need team in order to be able to deliver. I'm selling the dream of us being a grassroots British business. And so us being able to fall back on outsourcing, fall back on freelancers is not an option. And so my job really is to curate a dashboard of information that I look at every 7 days. And this is not under the bonnet. This is not deep dive financial planning. This is just a dashboard. This is, what can I see out of my windscreen? What's in my rearview mirror? What's my temperature gauge? What's my fuel gauge? Do I have enough to get where I need to go? And so, every 7 days, I get data on how many applicants we have in the pipeline for which jobs. I can drill into them if I need to. I can see how much marketing workflow we've got coming in, in terms of marketing, and then again in sales. I can see exactly what's in the pipeline, the likelihood of it being converted. I get all of this information every 7 days. So, if I know last week was an incredible sales and proposal signing week, but I also know that recruitment was a little bit slow, here I am straight on my Instagram stories posting a very intuitive, very casual set of Instagram stories that's me saying, hey guys, it's just been January and you are all accountants and you are all stressed. In my team, we've actually hired someone to put on a black wig and pretend to be Claudia Winkleman, and we're out here playing traitors. If you wanna be here for the next game of traitors, comment the word team and I'll DM you a link to apply to become a team member within our team. And so it is hard to do recruitment and to do sales in sprints where you're constantly pushing for one thing, stopping, pushing for the next. If I have a spare 5 minutes in my day, I know exactly what to post on what platform, with what purpose in order to get the desired outcome that will make my business 1% better tomorrow? I believe that all marketing can serve more than one purpose. For example, if I'm creating content with the primary purpose of being to get clients into my accounting firm, which most of the time it is, that's always on, it's always working. However, in the way that I deliver that, in the engagement style that I deliver that, in the way that I look, in the way that I deliver that, I can be attracting team members at the same time. So the first thing is to remember that you don't have to. You've probably, if you followed me for 2 years, probably never on my actual grid, never seen me create content with the primary focus of attracting a team. It's always the secondary focus, but it's always there. And so really deeply understanding the primary purpose and secondary purpose of any of the work that you're doing. I think so few people actually treat recruitment as part of marketing. Most people treat recruitment as a separate business function. For me, recruitment is absolutely part of marketing. We are trying to attract a generation of accountants, and I say generation of accountants, it doesn't matter what age they are, but in 2026, 2027, and beyond, we are trying to attract employees who know what they want. They know what they prioritize. They know what their values are, and they are trying to find an employer that matches them. And so, I know by even mentioning values on my stories, there will be people who work at firms who think, Oh my gosh, my firm has words painted on the wall, but that's as far as that conversation's ever gone. And I've just seen you in 2 Instagram stories display your commitment to your values in a way that I've never seen be done before. And so, I mentioned earlier that we kind of have always-on approach to marketing. I consider that every single day when I'm creating content, when I'm looking at that data. I, for every single week, will be trying to work out Do we want more clients? Yes or no? If we do, who do we want? Do we need more team? Yes or no? I try and do things like objection handling. I try and make sure that we're receiving the right applications, not the wrong applications. Doesn't matter how many times you tell people that you are hybrid, but it is one day in the office. You'll get people with a 3-hour commute telling you that they'll do it, and you know that their wellbeing will say no after about 3 weeks, and that just becomes very expensive for everyone. And so, we try and do lots of objection handling. along the way as well. But I'd say a champagne problem that we have now is that I get that problem, which is that people live way too far away, but are like, I want to work for you. And so, in that case, we then just have secondary waiting lists, which is, you are not commutable now, but where could our third office be? And so, we just try and track data in that way as well. So, they're all data points. We just have to collect them and interpret them possibly in the right way, which— When I said Sheldon Cooper, I wasn't joking.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not gonna say which. Phil. Host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. Uh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Rachel HarrisSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. I think there are some people listening who would scoff a little bit at your idea of recruiting from social media because they might think, well, those people who are scrolling Instagram stories, they're the people who are just sat at home on their asses, or they're at work and they can't be bothered. Doesn't sound like that's the case at all.
Rachel HarrisOh, absolutely not. No, I'd say, yeah, you know, specifically if I was recruiting a trainee accountant, for example, the likelihood is, unless I had a career changer or return to work, I actually am probably going to be recruiting Gen Z. Gen Z get a really bad rep. And as someone that owns an accounting firm where I not only have a really strong Gen Z team, I also have a very strong Gen Z client base, In my opinion, Gen Zs aren't lazy. They're actually just leveraged. They are leveraged against high interest rates. They are leveraged against a housing market where houses are, what, 10 times someone's salary? I think this misconception is quite an easy thing to say about a Gen Z, but in my experience, that's absolutely not the case. And so, I do have to defend all of my Gen Z employees. I obviously don't speak on behalf of all Gen Zs. I am not one myself. But yeah, I think from my perspective, If you are a business owner and you think that people who scroll on social media are lazy, I would challenge you that actually the people who are scrolling on socials probably wouldn't want to work for you anyway. And so in my perspective, in my case specifically, I am actually through engaging people and finding people on social media, I am actually finding people who want to work for me who love accounting so much they consume that content even when they're not at work. That's who I wanna hire.
Al ElliottIs it only that kind of generation or age range that people apply for your jobs?
Rachel HarrisSo, we are quite a young team, short answer. Longer answer is diversity is deeply important to me. Age diversity, gender diversity, all of the data, because I've done my research, because it's something that really, it is a champagne problem in that we don't struggle to recruit. But it is a problem nonetheless that sometimes the demographic of the people who apply for jobs very often reflect the founder. I am a young white woman. And so, actually, all of the data says that up to 50 employees, in most firms, when you get past 50 employees, that's when the demographic starts to change and more diversity starts to come through. But yeah, the short answer is yes, we do have quite a young workforce. I never know if it's because Someone that's older than me might not want to work for me. I never know what the answer to that is. I know that in terms of, I poll my audience a lot, and I know that I have a really diverse following in terms of age, and that actually the most, like the biggest age range that follows me is actually the one above me. So, that goes up to 45, but those people aren't the people that are applying for jobs. And so, yeah, it's a really top focus for us and something that I feel like actually there is so much data. around where we are at in that weird sort of like, we're past 20 employees, but we're not quite 50, and we're definitely not 100. And where do we sit? How do we make sure that we are able to speak to those people? Because I consume social media in my spare time, and I definitely follow people who are like me. I follow people who are my age, who are going through the same issues. Me and my husband would love a family, and so I'm following people who have families. And I think it's By nature, we follow people who feel like us. For me as an employer, I never want that to become a problem or something that means that actually as a workplace, we are not as diverse as we could be.
Al ElliottSo, let's just kind of round this off and let's talk about how we actually do recruit, because you, you said before quite specifically, you'll rarely see you going on going, hey, I'm just looking for some new members of the team. If you're interested, pop your link down below. That seems to me like that's the worst thing you can do. So, how, what's the right way to do this?
Rachel HarrisI don't know if it's the worst way. I think In my opinion, it's normally— again, I'm a marketer by trade. I used to be an accountant. My full-time job now is being a marketer. I've always found that the soft sell normally performs better rather than the hard sell, especially as you're scaling. I feel like team members might not want to be like, oh, they're hiring again. And so I'll always go for the soft sell. But again, for me, It's the same within the accounting firm. It's the same as an employer. I have the easiest job in the world. My full-time job is to talk about real things that are happening behind the scenes every single day, whether that is the core values, whether that's we take our team on all-inclusive, all-expenses-paid holiday to Mallorca every single year. The content writes itself. We're playing traitors at work and we're having roundtables and calling each other traitors all of the way through to our Bring Your Kids to Work Day and our— return to work for people who've just returned from parental leave. I have the easiest job in the world. The content is there. My job is to actually just tell stories. And so, I just get to tell stories in that when people start with our firm, the biggest surprising moment for them is that everything is exactly as it seems on socials. My hardest job actually is that as someone that creates content, people who consume content are quite rightly in 2026, a bit suspicious. Is it AI? Is it real? Is it, you know, does it look like one thing and I'm gonna start and everyone's gonna be dead behind the eyes and not talking to each other? And so, actually, the most common kind of surprising moment for anyone who starts our firm when we do kind of 1-month probation reviews is, this is better than I ever expected it to be, and I had incredibly high expectations.
Al ElliottSo, if someone is listening who's like, I don't think I can do this, do you got any advice for them to actually achieve what you've done? But not sit there and go, hi, my name's Carl and I'm interested. You know what I'm talking about?
Rachel HarrisPeople find me on social media and they inquire to become a client because they're like, oh, this feels good. It feels safe. It feels warm. It feels energetic. And the experience that they receive behind the scenes exactly mirrors that. I am very confident that probably thousands of times a day, someone would land on my profile and think, abso-bloody-lutely not. My question to you, if you're listening, is my abso-bloody-lutely not could be your abso-bloody-lutely yes. And so just because they're a no to me doesn't mean they're a no to you. It could be that you have a specialism, you have a niche, you have experience working with a specific type of person. What is your abso-bloody-lutely yes? And just market to that person. Again, to grow an audience of that size, you kind of have to be a little bit Marmite. For me, I had always, within the accounting industry, been told that my personality type was a bit fluffy to be an accountant. And so, I just leaned into that and created this world where it's half Spice Girl, half Barbie movie, half being an accountant. I'm sure there's people every day that are a bit put off by that. But actually, the louder I turn up the volume on those values, the faster it gets rid of people that don't align with them. And so my challenge back to you would be, how can you create a system which is like that, but for your target customers? It could be that Instagram is not that place for you. It could be that TikTok's definitely not that place to you, but it could be that LinkedIn is, or YouTube in long-form, deep educational content also is. And so creating avatars of who you're talking to, who your target market is, and exactly how they consume content is really interesting. Because my target customer, consumes content on Instagram. They search on Instagram, they are educated on Instagram, and my target employees love this industry so much, they consume that content in their free time too.
Al ElliottSo, I think you just very quietly, quietly gave us a, like, a lesson in choosing the platform. Can you talk more about that? It seems quite overwhelming to most people going, oh my God, I'm gonna have to be dance on TikTok and then be serious on LinkedIn. What's your thoughts on each of these platforms?
Rachel HarrisOf course. And again, I think it's really easy to, you know, if I was an accountant right now coming into the industry, I would be thinking, who do I need to look at to learn? They might find me and they might think, oh my gosh, she is creating 3 times a day on Instagram Stories, once a day on Instagram posts, once a day on TikTok, once a day on LinkedIn, sometimes 3 times a day on LinkedIn if she's had too much caffeine that day, and she's posting weekly on YouTube and she's got a weekly podcast. That's not where we start. We don't start there. Do not compare yourself to someone who has created this into a full-time job, completely monetized personal brand that will do 7 figures just within the personal brand next year. Don't do that. Compare yourself to me 5 years ago. Me 5 years ago was, I have a mortgage to pay. The problem that I have right now can be solved by finding clients. What clients do I want? I started on one platform with one purpose in one place. My top tip to anyone looking at the market thinking, oh my gosh, I need to be creating content in 3 different places, is firstly, you don't. Just choose one. How do we choose one? Choose the platform that is most intuitive to you. That will 10x any creation opportunities that you have on that platform, because if you consume content on that platform, it is way easier to create on that platform. I chose Instagram because I am a millennial. Instagram was my native platform. I scrolled on Instagram in my free time, so I understood what makes me stop scrolling. What makes me click follow? What makes me send something to a friend? What makes me send this to my husband and say, we should go on holiday here this year? I understood the behavior of my target audience. And so that's where I started. 5 years later, it's turned into a social machine with full-time employees that help me to do that. But actually, I started in one place, on one platform, with one purpose. If I couldn't do it myself, could I get my employees I personally would never pass the face of the practice to anyone but me. I think when I started 5 years ago, it was a huge undertaking to even know where to start, but it's actually become my greatest financial asset. Like, I have the login details to an account that can generate millions of dollars a year. £2 million in new work every single year. On top of that, that platform generates, I probably make £50,000 a month in brand deals. I have the login details on my phone. Why would I give that to anyone else? And so I think that, but I believe the following comes from it being me. No one else cares about the business as much as me. Obviously, they're not paid enough to. No one's paid enough to do that. No one cares about the business as much as me. Nobody actually has the business awareness to be able to see across all of the businesses that I have what has to happen today on socials in order for us to get 1% better tomorrow. So I don't think many people would have the commercial ability to be able to do that. I'd also say it's more than a full-time job. Like, I am, you know, whether it's Instagram stories, creating content, like, this is something that Takes a huge amount of time. And before I had the ability to delegate and, you know, get help, this was something that I probably spent 25 hours a week on outside doing 40 to 50 hours in the accounting firm. I do see lots of people do that. For us, the hybrid between the two was employee-generated content, which I feel like you've probably got some more specific questions on.
Al ElliottWas there ever a discussion of whether it was gonna be you or James who was the face of this?
Rachel HarrisSorry, for anyone who's listening, I'm laughing. Yeah, we do sometimes joke that we did rock-paper-scissors, but we are both very, very introverted. But I'd say I am slightly less introverted than James. Also, James is a very offline person in terms of he's not a scroller in his free time. And so the ability to spot trends and understand how people scroll very much sat with me. And so when I said to him 5 years ago, James, I've had an idea, I've seen what this person's doing in this industry and this person's doing in this industry, and it's all founder-led social content. He said, I don't think it'll work, but if it will work, I think it's gonna be you. And so, yeah, not really ever a conversation.
Al ElliottAll right, let's get into this employee-generated content. So, I feel like I can just put a pound in you and get 10 minutes worth of great advice on this. Tell us, what is it? Why do you do it? Who does it for you? How do you manage what people post? Tell us everything.
Rachel HarrisAbsolutely. So, we have an employee-generated content scheme, which is where the team can earn bonuses. They can earn up to 3 bonuses every single month just by creating content. I'd say, again, I mentioned earlier that the biggest problem, and it's not a problem that is a champagne Taylor Swift problem, but the biggest problem we have as a firm Is that because we do so much on socials, very often people are like, a bit of Instagram versus reality. Again, people see us on a beach, on an all-inclusive holiday, doing all of these things, and some people are at a point in their own employee journey at a firm where they think that is absolutely not possible. And so therefore, what I'm seeing online cannot be true. It must be manufactured in some way. And so, I wanted to find a way to make sure that I wasn't the only person speaking about StriveX as a firm. Very often the founder is the only person, and like, I'm also quite a suspicious person. And if just one person was being like, it is so good here, I would think, yeah, show me your team, because if they're dead behind the eyes, I'm not listening to you. Like, you say you love employee wellbeing, you say you pay for their gym memberships and their private medical, but what if they look like zombies? And so, we started testing it. I love giving the team personal development opportunities as my career has grown and scaled, I've been able to extend a lot of those opportunities that I get to my team. And so, speaking gigs, speaking events, panel discussions, I will always, if I get invited to do a talk, say, let me bring someone on the team. If I get booked to speak about anything about being an employer, please don't let it just be me. Because if I was sat in the audience, I would be thinking, yeah, it's in your interest to say that you have a great workplace and that your team have great employee wellbeing and that your ENPS score is 4 times the industry average. But Show me a team member. Let me talk to them. Let me ask them questions about KPIs and core values. And so, whenever I get booked for something that is employee-focused, my follow-up question is, do you have the budget to help me bring a member of the team? And so, we've done really large, on stages where there's 10,000 people, we've done group discussions of me with my team talking about what it's like to be a leader, how the team works, the employee engagement, all of those things. So, it came from me Having this really strong desire to just drop the barriers in that I am the person whose full-time job it is to create content, but how can I create more voices in a way that makes sense? And so, once I saw the impact of people being able to see my team on stage or on social media, we'd always encourage lots of our team to post on social media. But I then realized, again, with our Google review scheme, we're always trying to make sure that the team are financially rewarded for anything that happens at work. So if they are upselling, they get bonuses. If they get a Google review that mentions their name, they get a bonus. And I was like, okay, this works. You know, if someone's delivered a great service and they're a bit busy and they just wanna end the call, they're probably not gonna ask for a 5-star Google review. But if they get a bonus every time they, every time their name gets mentioned, that's probably gonna push them past that just extra 60 seconds on the call. And so how can I create that within this scheme too? There's lots of content about this available online, lots of people who speak about it with lots more data-backed insights than I'll be able to today. But we implemented something called the Employee Generated Content Scheme, which is, yeah, people can be financially rewarded for creating content about what it's like to work here, whether that's just creating a little day in the life video and posting it on TikTok, whether that is being in content that is shared on my platform, all of the way through to one of the bonuses is awarded for the highest engagement on any platform. But we don't do it based on the number of engagement. We do it based on the engagement divided by the view count. So, even if you are a micro creator, or if you only have 100 connections on LinkedIn, actually, you've still got a fair race in the game. And so, lots of people create content about what it's like to work here. We then also have an employee referral scheme where if someone that they know applies for a job with us, and it says, I heard about you through so-and-so, they get £250 for every person that we recruit that they refer as well. So, most of the team are creating EGC and getting paid for it with the goal of getting new members of the team whilst also getting paid for it.
Al ElliottAre you giving them guidelines on what to say and where to post?
Rachel HarrisNo.
Al ElliottLiterally, they can do whatever they want?
Rachel HarrisYeah, absolutely. One of the prizes for the highest engagement ever, the hook of the post was Rachel Harris is the biggest micromanager ever. And this was the person who reports directly to me. She's our content lead and accountant. And again, our full-time job is working out what will perform well on social media. And so, the hook was, yeah, Rachel Harris is the biggest micromanager ever. It actually, the post, when you clicked on it, and your face changed, you were my target audience, because you would've clicked on it. When you expanded it, it actually spoke about the systems and the processes and the way that we work together, and like, just what a level of like data and insights we have available to us as a team. But yeah, no, there's no guidelines, there's no goals. My goal really was, again, just to drop the barriers, to make sure it was never just me being the only person. Because it's relatively easy to create content when you're me now, when your full-time job is creating content. But it's hard if you're an accountant working at your desk during January, what's the incentive to create content saying, that was the best January I've ever had? It's been amazing to see how widespread that's become and how people just want to be able to share their story of whether that's core values, whether that's being A mum returning to work after maternity leave. Like, there's lots of people telling really, like, deeply profound, incredible stories because of the schemes that we've been able to create as well.
Al ElliottSo, I'm gonna ask you a question, ask you to put yourself in my shoes for a second. Imagine I've implemented the CGC. I'm really pleased with it. There's, I've got 6 people. The 7th person posted something this morning that was kind of negative about the company. It wasn't really nasty. It was just a bit like, Having a bit of a shit time at the moment, and, you know, work's tough, whatever. They're posting that on their personal thing. Is that something I need to get involved in? How would you, how would you coach me through this problem?
Rachel HarrisCore values being at the center of everything just makes everything else make sense. And so, I firstly would come down to, does that align with our values? The answer is no. I can pick 2 of our core values that that's probably infringing on. The first is be the best you can be. Publicly posting that you are having a terrible time at work is probably not being the best you that you can be. Whilst also the second core value that that would infringe on is leave it better than you found it. Are you leaving these people better than you found them? It's probably not. So from a values perspective, it gives you the ability to open the conversation. I'd say for you as a manager, your biggest issue is that you have someone who is struggling so much that they think the appropriate place to post that is on social media. And so whilst the goal of EGC is to make sure that everybody is speaking freely and telling their story, it's very important to make sure that you have appropriate mechanisms in place that if anyone ever decided to say something that didn't reflect super well or super accurately on your business, you contractually have the ability to say to them, actually, please, can you take that down? I'm very lucky. That's never happened to us. But I can imagine that, I think a lot of people, when they feel like they're learning about something new, The first place their brain goes is fear, is what is the worst case scenario? Obviously, the worst case scenario is a member of staff being like, this is the worst place to work ever. I would say if that happens, you've probably got more problems than just social media. There's probably something else happening within your business. And so it's about creating a workplace where you are very confident that you can roll out this scheme and have the desired effect, whilst also creating a landscape where people who consume the content feel like they're learning from it, they'll be left better than they found it because they've consumed that content.
Al ElliottDid you say that there is some kind of a contractual agreement I should have had in place with this person where I can ask them to take it down from their personal media? Have I understood that right?
Rachel HarrisI don't know if there's a policy that you can have in place that's particularly enforceable. I'm sure you can add a policy in there that's like, do not say negative things about the company on social media. I don't know how enforceable that would be. I just mean, yeah, in terms of a relationship, I believe, and my gut is saying that if I had a team member that was posting that on socials, that social media post wouldn't be the only problem. And that I would probably be having a conversation with them around like, are you enjoying your job? Like, if you feel so strongly that this hasn't come up in an appraisal, but I'm seeing it on social media, like, we probably have a different problem here. So let's have a conversation. In the same way that I wouldn't want my employees to find something out for the first time on my social media, I wouldn't wanna find something out about them For the first time on social media, I feel like it comes down to respect. Again, at the center of values-driven business is, are you making decisions with what is best for this company in mind? In that case, that's probably not, you're probably not doing that. And so, that's just an open conversation with a team member around what has led to this. Because if this is something that has come up in appraisals and it's being dealt with and you're posting it on socials, that's probably an issue. If it's something that hasn't come up in appraisals and I'm seeing it for the first time on social media, that's also an issue.
Al ElliottAnything that you've done or any mistakes that you've seen that kind of backfired a little bit, something you wish you'd known before you posted?
Rachel HarrisI remember at one point thinking, I'm gonna be known as the boob lady forever. I, my first ever live TV appearance, was— your face. My first ever live TV appearance was because I had a piece of short-form content go really, really viral because I posted a piece of content about an OnlyFans creator who expensed a boob job, and it went really, really viral. Again, I had like my professional body on the phone on one hand, and then in the other hand was on the phone to like BBC, ITV, wanting press requests, wanting like TV appearances. I remember thinking like, oh my gosh, this is never gonna go away. This is wild. It was a very wholesome moment because what I went into thinking, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be known as like an OnlyFans accountant, which I'm absolutely not. Like we don't have a niche, we don't diversify. Like our biggest niche is our values. I remember thinking, oh gosh, people are gonna think my niche is OnlyFans. Actually, what I thought was gonna be a PR nightmare, actually, when all of these pieces of press went out, All of the comment sections were just full of people saying, you listened to her and you didn't judge her. My accountant won't listen to me and I run a service-based business. I'm not even an OnlyFans creator, but like my accountant won't listen to me. And so it was just this huge lesson of like, sometimes even when you don't realize that it's happening, it's happening. However, what we can do based on my immediate impending doom that my entire career I was gonna be known as the boob lady, we created a process. Which was before I hit post on any video, I made a checklist of questions to ask myself. The top one is, would I be happy if 10 million people saw this video? And if 10 million people saw this video, would this be a great first impression of me? And so again, if you ever do have those moments, which is, oh, I've got a team member posting on socials, it's really important to challenge yourself upfront of what is the worst thing that could happen? Do I still Am I still willing to accept those risks? And is the outcome better for everyone as a result of that? And so, after that, I then created a process.
Al ElliottImagine you were in a bar and there were 2 employees in front of you at the bar and they didn't know you were there. What do you hope they would be saying about working at StriveX?
Rachel HarrisI would love it to just be a completely offline conversation. I'm very aware now that my personal brand has sparked so much interest in our firm. But when I tell you what you see online is 5% of what happens in real life, the friendships, the relationships. Someone announced they were pregnant today and a team member messaged me straight away saying, do you know what their gender is so that I can knit them, knit the baby a jumper? Anything that you see online is 5% of what is happening in real life behind the scenes. And again, you've only got to look at the Google reviews, the testimonials from the team. To see that. And so, yeah, I guess if I could write that, it would be hugely about the values, about the impact, about my goal in life is to make sure that the accounting industry as a whole is measured before and after I was here in the amount of impact I can generate for not only young women who felt like nerds at school like me, but also for all of the accountants and all of the clients that come after me too. And so, I'm very, very lucky that actually I don't have to hear it when they don't know I'm there. They tell me every day that this is the workplace that they've been waiting for, and I'm super, super lucky, and it is my biggest achievement in life.
Al ElliottThe workplace they've been waiting for. What a fantastic place to end. Rachel, if people want to learn a bit more about you, where can they go and tell us that and tell us where you take to Sakia? And you've got about 90 seconds.
Rachel HarrisI share lots more of the stuff that we've been chatting about today on social, so you can find me everywhere you consume content at accountant_she. It's punny, it's funny, it's Accountant Sheep. And yeah, I'm very lucky that my personal brand has escalated to the point of doing a lot of producer work and a lot of presenting work. So, last year, got to present a TV show with BBC, teaching children and adults about financial education, all of the way through to interrogating Keir Starmer. And so, I was given the opportunity to interview Keir Starmer the day after the Autumn Budget, where he very kindly increased dividend rates. for small business owners in the UK. And so, I got to ask him the question, you know, we've all just watched a manifesto where you promised not to raise taxes for working people. You've just increased dividend taxes by 2% across the board. Do you not consider small business owners to be working people? And if you'd like to see his answers, I would love to see you at @accountant_she.
Al ElliottThat was Rachel Harris, and I hope she's given you plenty of ideas on how you could rewrite the recruiting rulebook.
Leanne ElliottHere are 3 takeaways for any founder or HR leader who wants to stop chasing candidates and start attracting them. Number 1, Recruit like a marketer, not like a manager. Rachel never posts, we're hiring. She posts proof, day-in-the-life stories, team moments, the values in action. By the time someone applies, they're already sold. If you're waiting until you have a vacancy to think about recruitment, you're already too late. Lesson 2, turn your team into trusted voices, not mouthpieces. Rachel's employee-generated content scheme pays team members bonuses for sharing their own stories with zero guidelines on what to say. And the result is content that feels real because it is. And the best performing post is the one that called her a micromanager. Authenticity beats polish every single time. And number 3, your culture is only as credible as the people who can vouch for it. Rachel's most powerful insight is that if your employees won't say publicly that it's a great place to work, That's not a social media problem. It is clearly a culture problem. The EGC scheme only works because the workplace actually delivers. Fix the culture first, the content follows.
Al ElliottYou can find Rachel everywhere as @accountant_she. You can find out more about StriveX at strivex.co.uk. The links are in the show notes, of course.
Leanne ElliottThat is it for today. This is Truth, Lies and Work. We will see you next week. for our 300th episode. And yes, of course, it's going to be chaotic.
Al ElliottSee you soon.