Larissa Feeney’s Entrepreneurial Journey

Larissa Feeney’s Entrepreneurial Journey 

Many entrepreneurs find themselves unprepared for the realities of running a business which are usually beyond their core technical skills. For them, making the transition from technical expert to business leader requires a difficult shift in focus. Not doing so is a failure point for many. 

Today we hear about an unexpected journey that provides the essential groundwork for business growth: a profound focus on the customer, a robust problem-solving mindset, and the discipline gained from external investment. You’ll hear about the initial struggles, the pivotal decision to embrace a remote, online model and the crucial strategy for scaling a service-based firm through acquisitions and technological adoption. 

This special episode features our own host and CEO Larissa Feeney, stepping into the hot seat to be interviewed by guest presenter, Richard Curran.  

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT
 

• The pivotal shift from hospitality to accountancy 

• The early struggle to build an online brand 

• The necessity of outside investment and discipline 

• Stepping back from client work to grow 

• Why commercial awareness is vital for finance. 

GUEST DETAILS 

Larissa Feeney is the CEO and Founder of Kinore, a high-growth, remote-first accountancy practice in Ireland. Her main skills are developing business strategy, advocating for women in business, and successfully scaling a professional services firm from a small client base to a team of almost 80, proving that a remote model can achieve significant scale and success in the finance industry. 

Guest Host Details 

Richard Curran is one of Ireland’s most respected business journalists and broadcasters, currently presenting the Business Show on Newstalk radio. With over three decades of experience covering Irish business, economics and entrepreneurship, Richard has interviewed thousands of entrepreneurs and business leaders throughout his career.  

Twitter/X: @RichardCurran 

QUOTES  

What I see lacking in the industry right now is the lack of commercial awareness, the reality of running a business. It’s not just about the numbers, it’s about the customer and the client. All of those that were not taught in accountancy school. – Larissa Feeney 

That’s something that has stood to you later on. It’s how important the customer is, to always keep forefront of mind the customer’s journey is important, how the customer’s feeling is important, and to always make a decision with the customer in mind. – Larissa Feeney 

I realised that location is not an issue. The client doesn’t care where you were. The client wants their work done. The client wants to get you whenever they need you, but they don’t care where their work is done. – Larissa Feeney 

The only way that you can grow your business is to step back and bring in great people who can deal with the clients on your behalf. That stepping back is really hard.  – Larissa Feeney 

People think that how do you manage workflow, deadlines, productivity. That’s the easy part. The systems take care of all that. What’s challenging is building relationships, helping the team get to know each other as people. What you save in accommodation you put into bringing people together. – Larissa Feeney 

 

TRANSCRIPTION 

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription. 

Larissa Feeney  0:00   

What I see lacking in the industry right now is the lack of commercial awareness, the reality of running a business. You know, it’s not just about the numbers, it’s about the customer and the client. All of those that were not taught in accountancy school,  

 

Voiceover  0:14   

No unicorns, no brands, just hard working people who built their business from the ground up, sharing their experience so others can learn. Presented by Larissa Feeney from Kinore, this is real business conversations. 

 

Richard Curran  0:34   

Well, you’re welcome to this edition of real conversations with Kinore. My name is Richard Curran, and I’m delighted to be a guest on this podcast. It’s always nice to be a guest, but it’s a little bit unusual to be a guest presenter, especially when the person I’m interviewing is the person who normally asks the questions. Larissa Feeney, I’m delighted to be joined by Larissa. Larissa, it’s high time you were in the hot seat and answering a few questions on this podcast. How do you feel about talking about yourself? Does that come easily?  

 

Larissa Feeney  1:05   

No, it does not come easily, not at all. But thank you for being a guest presenter on the podcast, Richard. I’m delighted you’re here.  

 

Richard Curran  1:12   

I haven’t done it yet. Don’t thank me too soon.  

 

Larissa Feeney  1:14   

I’m delighted you’re here, and I’ll do my very best to answer your question. Just be kind.  

 

Richard Curran  1:18   

Kind is my middle name. Larissa, let’s start at the beginning. For you, born in Dublin, and the family moved to Sligo.  

 

Larissa Feeney  1:25   

Born in Dublin and raised in Sligo. Yeah, moved to Sligo whenever we were very young.  

 

Richard Curran  1:29   

And how come Sligo? What was the reason?  

 

Larissa Feeney  1:32   

So we moved to Sligo because my dad would have worked for On Post back in the day, and then for Telecom Eireann and then in eircom. And we moved to Sligo because my dad was from Donegal, and my mum was from Mum was from Leitrim, and they wanted somewhere that was pretty much in the middle. So we were about an hour from both grandparents in opposite directions where we settled.  

 

Richard Curran  1:51   

That was a well thought out plan.  

 

Larissa Feeney  1:53   

Yeah, really was, and it worked out really well for them.  

 

Richard Curran  1:56   

And you were just outside Sligo town. Where were you a townie or a rural Well, how did that?  

 

Larissa Feeney  2:02   

I married a Townie, right? But no, we were not. I was in the north side, so wasn’t far from WB Yeats grave, actually, in Russel’sl Point. Yeah, right, yeah.  

 

Richard Curran  2:12   

Were you into school? Were you somebody who was very nose to the grindstone, or were you more likely to be in trouble?  

 

Larissa Feeney  2:20   

No, I was a very sensible oldest child,  

 

Richard Curran  2:22   

Organised person,  

 

Larissa Feeney  2:24   

Organised studious. Loved my reading, loved school, always did what I was told, very much, a people pleaser, didn’t get into trouble. My dad even said that whenever at my wedding speech, whenever he talked to my wedding, he said that I never gave them a day’s trouble. And I never did, you know, and I should have done, of course, but I didn’t.  

 

Richard Curran  2:44   

You decided to study hospitality, one of the reasons being that you’d worked in a number of hotels.  

 

Larissa Feeney  2:51   

Yeah, so I started working hotels when I was 15, as you do,  

 

Richard Curran  2:54   

What was your first job?  

 

Larissa Feeney  2:55   

I was waitressing in the Bon Cher on high in High Street in Sligo. I loved working with people. I loved the hotel industry. And I never remember really getting any advice around what to study. And, you know, post leaving cert and I went for hospitality management. I don’t really know why, other than, I liked working in hotels. So I travelled north. It was the Northern Ireland hotel and catering college at that time in Portrush, and that’s where I studied hotel management. And then I went to McGee in Derry for the last year of the degree, which was Hospitality and Tourism Management at University of Ulster.  

 

Richard Curran  3:34   

And you worked in other hotels as well in Donegal and Dunfanaghy.   

 

Larissa Feeney  3:35   

I did so. I worked in what was the Carrick road hotel in dunfanaghy, and I worked in bars and Derry and nightclubs in Coleraine, wherever we were, we, you know, we were able to work in hotels. I worked in America. Worked in TGI Fridays in Melbourne, Australia. Like there’s one industry that takes you everywhere,  

 

Richard Curran  3:49   

but it’s quite an education, isn’t it, in dealing with customers and dealing with problems when they arise.  

 

Larissa Feeney  3:58   

Yeah, it’s a great industry for education, for educating a young person on how to deal with people, how to think on your feet, how to deal with pressure. I mean, there’s nothing like the feeling you get whenever you’re mid service on a Saturday night and everything’s going well, but anything can happen at any minute, and you just have to deal with it. And I loved that, but it’s hard to do it over the longer term. You know, you’re working when everybody else is off. That element is very difficult, especially for family life,  

 

Richard Curran  4:27   

and it’s one of the things you mentioned about, you know, things can go wrong. And a wedding day in a hotel, difficulty in a restaurant, somebody not happy with something, problems with a booking, all that kind of stuff. One of the things that strikes me, though, having spent a long time interviewing and talking to entrepreneurs, they’re very good at problem solving, but they also almost like dealing with things that go wrong, because it’s going to happen when you run a business all the time, and that experience is a real training for that, isn’t it? 

 

Larissa Feeney  4:59   

Yeah. And actually, you make a really good point, because I say to the team all the time, well, we know what the problem is now, so now let’s just fix it. You know, you’re it’s worse when you don’t know what the problem is, or you feel that there’s a problem, but you’re not too sure what the actual issue is. So yeah, that is great training ground, because you have to think on your feet. But it also really helps you keep in mind the customer, because the customer always comes first. So it was great training from that perspective as well, which is really I really brought with me. It’s how important the customer is, to always keep forefront of mind the customer’s journey is important, how the customer’s feeling is important, and to always make a decision with the customer in mind.  

 

Richard Curran  5:39   

And that’s something that has stood to you later on. We can talk a little bit about the whole accountancy profession and the business, but in the meantime, you had studied hospitality. You enjoyed that. How did the connection with the world of accounting come about? 

 

Larissa Feeney  5:53   

Like looking back now, accountancy was my best subject in my leaving cert, and I don’t know why. I was never advised to go down that route. I suspect I probably was, and I didn’t listen. What happened was, I got to the end of the summer, whenever I was working, in the car, grew in dunfany, and that was a season Hotel. So it was really full on. The challenge with season hotels is you don’t have a core team, generally speaking, 20 years on, you know, I’m sure it’s changed, but back then, there was no core team, so it’s really firefighting every day. And it was a tourist town, so it was very busy. I got to the end of that summer, and I think I was just very tired, and the car grew were closed, so I had to look for a new job. Anyway, closed for the season, so I decided I wanted a nine to five job, and I answered a job in the dairy journal and advertising in the Derry journal for Director of first impressions within an accountancy firm. 

 

Richard Curran  6:44   

A director of first impressions. Did you know what that was?  

 

Larissa Feeney  6:47   

I figured it out.  

 

Richard Curran  6:49   

What was it?  

 

Larissa Feeney  6:50   

A receptionist. 

 

So it was an accountancy firm in Derry run by the managing partner and the owner. At the time, he has since retired, was a really forward thinking guy, right? You know, Director of first impressions, you can that’ll give you a clue. I applied for the role, and I had to do a presentation in front of the team. It was the team that picked the whoever was going to get the job, and I got the job. So I started off working in reception. Did you enjoy it? Loved it. It was really different. Richard, like you think about it. I was coming from a hotel environment, which was busy and loud and chaotic, actually, and going into an environment that was luxurious, very quiet, really professional, quite plush. And I just thought, my God, it was. It was amazing to me how people could actually make money in these types of environments, you know, that wasn’t mad and busy all the time. So I loved it. I was on reception for about a year, and I the way that the building was structured, all the trainees were in the top floor was like a three floor building in dairy, and the trainees were on the top floor, and they were around the same age as I was at that time, so they had just come out of university, or they were going the technicians route, so obviously I would have gravitated towards them in terms of friendships, and they would have said to me, would you not consider doing your exams or training? So I was thinking about this, and for you know, I just took a notion, and I thought, Well, do you know what I’ll ask the partner? Now, the partner was scary to me at that time. You know,  

 

Richard Curran  8:24   

he seemed a bit aloof and salute the boss  

 

Larissa Feeney  8:27   

Absolutely, probably 20 or 25 years older than me, maybe, and obviously an important man in the city, and I wasn’t. So I knocked on his door. His office was a big room with a big mahogany desk, and you can imagine the beautiful, plush curtains behind him, with the big windows looking out over Clarendon Street. And I asked him, I said, I have something to ask you. Would you mind putting me through my accountancy exams? And he said, Would you consider doing your company secretarial exams? And I said, No, I want to do my accountancy exams. I didn’t have a notion what the company secretarial exams were, and he sort of let me think about it. So I walked out the door, and I know as soon as I walked out the door that I went out of his mind. That was the type of man. He was right. He would never he wouldn’t have come back to me. Yeah. So two weeks later, I walked up the stairs and knocked on the door again, and I asked him, had he thought about it? And to his credit, he said he would, he would let me do my exams. So that September, I was moved up to the top of the house, and there was another receptionist appointed, and I joined the trainees.  

 

Richard Curran  9:29   

And he really took to it.  

 

Larissa Feeney  9:30   

I did. I really took to it. I loved it. The first year, I was placed first in Northern Ireland at the exams, actually, and 10th in Ireland in the Chartered Accountants exams, was prof two. In those days, I worked really hard. I really loved it, and I asked him, because my degree was in Hospitality Management and I couldn’t. Years later, I asked him why he had said yes to me, because he didn’t have to  

 

Richard Curran  9:51   

Yeah.  

 

Larissa Feeney  9:52   

And you know, none of my other colleagues on in the trainee room at that time had any type of a background that wasn’t accountable. See, right? They all had accountancy degrees or accounting technicians. I was really the odd one out, and he said, You got a first in your degree. So I knew you could do it. 

 

Richard Curran  10:09   

And that was it. That was it. But even if you had, which you clearly had an aptitude for it, it doesn’t happen accidentally, that you get first in Northern Ireland in your first year. Did you have something to prove? And if so, to whom, to yourself, or to the other trainees, 

 

Larissa Feeney  10:24   

All of the above. I think I was, there was a lot of imposter in me. You know, I really suffered from imposter syndrome for years afterwards, actually, because I was coming from, again, you know, the chaotic environment of a hotel where you’re serving pints and food and you’re cleaning up after people, and then you’re in this room where you know, you’re you’re having access to really sensitive information about businesses, and you’re listening to their challenges. And of course, we were sitting in on meetings with the partners and hearing these big decisions been discussed and decisions been made. And you could hear the qualified accountants, you know, steering business owners in certain ways, and meeting with banks, all of that stuff, right? So I was really suffering from imposter syndrome. Plus, again, I was coming from hospitality background, the other trainees who could have been in the same year as me from a trainee perspective, but they were way ahead of me from a practical perspective. They I had no background, or very little background in accountancy, and they have loads. So I was always, I always felt I was a couple of steps behind, so I was trying to prove myself, I think, to myself and to them and and also trying to validate, you know, the decision that was made to allow me to examine the first place. 

 

Richard Curran  11:31   

Would you say that you were always quite a driven or motivated person, or was this maybe a first real example to yourself, to show yourself that that’s who you are. I think 

 

Larissa Feeney  11:43   

it was probably the first real example, like, I didn’t do great in my leaving. Sir. Richard, okay, I got a first in my degree. I really came out of myself in college, I think in general. But this was probably the first real example of deciding to do something and then getting it done. 

 

Richard Curran  11:57   

Yeah. So after you did that, you worked in industry for a while, and you had an opportunity then to work in a firm in Claudie County, Derry. 

 

Larissa Feeney  12:05   

It was an elderly accountant based outside of Jerry and he needed some help, so I helped him for that first season, and then I actually bought the clients off him, and that’s, that’s how it started. 

 

Richard Curran  12:16   

And that was it. So that was a big step,  

 

Larissa Feeney  12:19   

It was. And my father, God, rest him, lent me the money to make the first payment. It was only 30 clients. It wasn’t a big it wasn’t a big portfolio, 

 

Richard Curran  12:28   

but you were crossing the threshold of a door there where you were becoming, essentially, you were becoming an entrepreneur at that point in time. 

 

Larissa Feeney  12:36   

Yeah. Now he, the retiring accountant, said to me, look you, I want to give you first refusal. And I said, Yeah, absolutely. And as I said, my dad led me the money to buy those first clients, and he was nervous about that. I was because I’d never, I’d never taken money that way off my dad, and I had to pay him back at 400 euros a month.  

 

Richard Curran  12:58   

You still remember that number?  

 

Larissa Feeney  12:58   

I still remember that number. 400 euros a month is what I had to pay him back. And that, yeah, that was a four that, yeah, that was the first step in doing the business. 

 

Richard Curran  13:04   

 yeah. And then, really, after that, you moved to a point where you began to think about doing things differently, and you were thinking about website and marketing and online. That was clearly very much on your mind.  

 

Larissa Feeney  13:18   

2011 was when I thought about, Okay, it’s time to build a website. It’s time to, you know, put myself out there in some way. So I did. Now, there wasn’t a huge amount of accountancy websites in Ireland at that time, but whatever ones were there were very same, same, you know, you could probably picture what they looked like. So I started looking in the UK, UK sites as well. The UK has always been a little bit ahead in our industry. I remember one specific site. It had a picture of, you know, the Royal Mail post office, post box, the red post box, and it had, you know, 1, 2, 3, you send us your records. We prepare your account. We send them to you for signature, something like that. It was really simple, right? And I thought that’s it really interesting, because I was in Donegal, and this was recession times, right? So, I mean, it was very hard to get new clients and the great accountants in Donegal, and you know, you’re not going to, you can’t go and take clients off them. So I thought that might work. So I actually put two websites live on the same day, Larissa Feeney and CO. And what it was accountantonline.ie, which was essentially our version of the red post box, and the 1, 2, 3, and it was that website that actually gained traction. And the first call I got from that website was from a business in Cork. And I remember thinking, okay, that’s, that’s Wow. How did he find me? He’s in Cork, and 

 

Richard Curran  14:41   

And that opened up a world of opportunity.  

 

Larissa Feeney  14:43   

World of opportunity, because then I realised that location is not an issue. The client doesn’t care where you were. The client wants their work done. The client wants to get you whenever they need you, but they don’t care where their work is done.  

 

Richard Curran  14:57   

You must have been working very hard, though, a lot of. Pressure around that at that time, 

 

Larissa Feeney  15:01   

ah, there was like in those days, those days were hard. Anyway, I mean myself and my husband were working three days and three days, so we didn’t have childcare, apart from every now and then I was building the business. The children were tiny, and I had a sick parent as well, because my dad had passed away from a heart attack at 59 and my mother had had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s not long before he passed away. So at this stage, we as a family were caring for her as well. So I was, you know, kind of stuck in the middle of all of that. So that was hard. Those few years were difficult.  

 

Richard Curran  15:36   

A lot of draws on your time, and a lot of stress as well, I’d imagine, yeah, 

 

Larissa Feeney  15:39   

and I mean working early in the morning, working late at night when the kids were in bed trying to juggle like I remember, actually said it to my husband over the weekend. I remember hiding in the car from the kids on the phone to my client. They were going, mommy, mommy, 

 

Richard Curran  15:56   

like, and you say, oh, there’s some children outside. I don’t know whose they are. 

 

Larissa Feeney  16:01   

I remember another time my husband said to me, right, you go downstairs now and go into the office and work, and I’ll tell them you’re not in the house. I’ll tell them you’re God, because otherwise they’d be banging at the door, you know, 

 

Richard Curran  16:10   

when it gets into that kind of juggling and then maybe putting the kids to bed, and then checking the website to see if you’ve got new customers. 

 

Larissa Feeney  16:18   

Yeah. So I used to log on to Google every night after the kids were in bed. And I mean, those, these were the days before nobody was on the website other than me. So the guy built it, he built it and left it. And obviously there was no money to pay anybody. So I was figuring out what to do myself. So I used to do my own blogs and do my own updates and all of that. And I used to check where the website was on Google every night, so I remember finding it on page 14 at one point and then watching it slowly climb up the ranks. It eventually grew to be one of the busiest accountancy sites in the country. 

 

Richard Curran  16:51   

But it’s very hard, isn’t it, to from a marketing point of view, to get up from that page 14 or page 13, or whatever it is on Google. I remember somebody once saying that the best place to hide a dead body is on page four or page five of Google or whatever. It’s a hard slog. 

 

Larissa Feeney  17:08   

Yeah, yeah. And it’s constantly changing more so now than it did in those days, you know, in those days. But for me, and maybe was purely ignorant, ignorance on my part, I watched a climb, and I was posting blogs and making changes, and, you know, having all the words, and I think I got up to page one by myself, if I remember correctly, for certain keywords. But now, of course, in Google, algorithms are changing all the time. Chat GPT has come into it, so it’s a completely different landscape now than it was then.  

 

Richard Curran  17:31   

I want to ask you a little bit about technology and the influence it may have on the future of the profession and your own business. But just at this point, the business really took off, and you were working incredibly hard and juggling all of these things, but to get to a point then where you decided that it would be helpful to take in outside investment. 

 

Larissa Feeney  17:54   

So the business was growing. And it was after the Brexit referendum that a colleague of mine based in Derry asked, Would I attend a meeting? There was a lot of discussion at that time, Richard, you might remember, as a result of Brexit, would British businesses move to Ireland to be their European base, right? So this particular group thought there might be something in this, and it would be worth getting together to discuss it, which is exactly what we did. But at that meeting, there was an actual investor there that I didn’t know at the time, but over the following months, we continued to have discussions, and they ended up investing in the business in January 2017 that was a six month long conversation that we had. And I, of course, was naive, because I never did it before, and I just remember being so unbelievably shocked and surprised that somebody else saw the potential within this business 

 

Richard Curran  18:47   

Maybe a leftover of that sense of imposter syndrome as well, maybe. 

 

Larissa Feeney  18:52   

And I definitely was naive, but I was also incredibly lucky with the people that invested in me. They were, you know, they were fantastic. They were great to work with. Had a brilliant experience. And I know not everybody’s that lucky. 

 

Richard Curran  19:02   

Getting outside investment is wonderful for bringing new opportunity and resources for new opportunity, but it brings its own pressures as well. Did you feel the pressure of somebody from the outside investing in your company? 

 

Larissa Feeney  19:15   

Oh, I did. I felt huge pressure. I could see the opportunity, and they could see the opportunity, but the only reason investors invest in a business is to make money. So I I really felt the pressure to make the business work. I also wasn’t experienced enough to actually look at the funds coming in and allocate them really where they should have been allocated to. So we put a lot of money into marketing, into a new website, into an E commerce part of the website, and I didn’t put any money into operations, or, you know, that side of the business at all. And I just thought, well, that’s okay. We’ll just keep hiring, and, you know, as the clients come in, so I didn’t think about it strategically, I suppose typical entrepreneur, right? You. Just do it and, you know, say yes and figure it out later. That was very much where I was, but I did feel that responsibility to to run the business well and to grow the business for the sake of the investors. It’s also very good from a discipline perspective, because you’re reporting to investors. And even though I’m an accountant, you know, sometimes we’re not great at our own numbers, and, you know, the cobblers, children and all that, all that, right, yeah. So that really put manners on me from that perspective, making sure that I knew my numbers and that the numbers were right, because I had to report them every month, you know, and I never did that before. 

 

Richard Curran  20:38   

One of the other big challenges as a firm is growing, and particularly if you take on outside investment, is how you manage your own time. What do you spend your day doing that’s to the maximum benefit of the business? Did you have to re examine that? 

 

Larissa Feeney  20:53   

Yes, and I had a huge amount of help, and I’ve had help all the way along this journey, from loads of people and organisations, and you really can’t do this by yourself. But one of the areas whenever the investment came into the business, we took in a senior sales and marketing director at the same time, and she was really good from a sales and marketing perspective, but also teaching me where I should be spending my time. So the challenge with us accountants and practice is that obviously, you’re dealing with clients, right? But you can only deal with so many clients in day or a week or a month, and that’s once you get to once you get to maximum capacity, you can’t grow anymore. So the only way that you can grow your business is to step back and bring in great people who can deal with the clients on your behalf. That stepping back is really hard, stepping back from client relationship to free up your time to actually manage the business and grow the business and work on the business, think about the business as well. Yeah, that’s really hard. That took me about two years to complete that circle and to step away from the client relationships, and it was really difficult. And even to this day, I still find it probably one of the hardest things that I’ve had to do, because I actually love working with clients, and I love helping clients out and seeing their business grow. But the reality is that there’s actually much better people within Kinore Now that does that. 

 

Richard Curran  22:15   

It’s obviously grown and continues to grow as well. Can you give me a snapshot of the business today, terms of its size, what kinds of clients you have and what you do for them, sure. 

 

Larissa Feeney  22:27   

So the business, whenever, the whenever the investment came in in 2017 and it was a small amount of investment, but it really was enough to, you know, to kickstart the growth. At that time, I think I had a team of maybe about five. Now we’re almost at 80. So it’s a team of 80. It is a remote team. So we are widely dispersed across the country. We work with SMEs, mainly SMEs, so those, those are businesses from the revenue could be 500 or a million, right up to 10 million or 40 million or so. I think our highest is, and we do, if you think of compliance, that’s essentially what we do for our clients. So payroll, bat, accountancy, tax, and increasingly, we’re doing a lot of digital work with clients, so helping them to automate their processes, helping them to transition to better systems, and to make sure that they’re using the best tech stack, I suppose, within their finance function, and 

 

Richard Curran  23:23   

that whole remote model that you developed and built has tremendous advantages, particularly post covid, where people want to have greater freedom, greater options, the cost of housing around the country, so people who work for you can live, you know, in theory, anywhere in the country. And still, that must be a tremendous advantage when it comes to hiring. 

 

Larissa Feeney  23:43   

It’s part of our culture, and it comes from, I suppose, my own experience, way back to when I realised that the client doesn’t care where we do our work. And I really believe that if a professional wants to work and live wherever they choose, and the client doesn’t care. Well, then why would? Why should the business care? It has to be the right person though. 

 

Richard Curran  24:05   

Is it harder to manage, whether it’s the people who work for you or the clients themselves? 

 

Larissa Feeney  24:10   

I would say it’s it’s definitely more challenging in a few ways, not in the way people think. People think that. And indeed, you know, I’ve been asked this question loads of times, how do you manage workflow? How do you manage deadlines? How do you manage productivity? That’s the easy part, right? The systems take care of all that. The managers manage the teams, and, you know, the deadlines are met and the clients are taken care of, right? That’s the easy part. Another challenge I’m always asked about is, you know, how do you train remotely? But actually, Richard, what I found it’s not the trainees that’s the problem. It’s the trainers that have difficulty training remotely, not the trainees that have difficulty difficulty being trained. So that’s all taken care of. And as I said, you know, I’m happy with that side of the business. And. What’s challenging is building relationships with, you know, help making sure, helping the team get to know each other as people. Because sometimes, you know, teams, messages and emails come across in a way that they’re not intended, and you need to get to know the person behind the email. And the same applies to clients. I was given great advice a few years ago. One of my non executive directors said to me, what you save an accommodation you put into bringing people together. And that’s exactly what we do. That budget goes in to bring people together, see the structures around that, team events, client events. We bring to people together as much as we possibly can, and I always think we can do more that, because the more we bring people together, the more they get to know each other, the more they learn to work together, and the better results that we get. That’s the where the challenge is. It’s not in the productivity or the efficiencies. 

 

Richard Curran  25:51   

When you look at accountancy and some of the big changes that are taking place, technology and AI is one of them. Do you welcome it are? Is there a sense in which a lot of people are worried about the implications for the profession in the future and for employees and job numbers? 

 

Larissa Feeney  26:07   

No, I welcome. I just answer your first question. I think, if you know, if I look back over my career, whenever I first started, you know, we were manually calculating payroll. We were manually doing bank reconciliations. I remember an older accountant, whenever account payroll software came out first questioning the need for payroll software, because, you know, how do we know that it’s right, and how we make how are we training the trainees to calculate payroll? So that challenge has always been there with technology, and that remains today, the technology that we see now, okay, it’s different and it’s more advanced, and will continue to be. So we get much faster calculations, we get better integrations, and we get better automation, obviously. So it’s all a better result for the client, and if it’s a better result for the client, then we have to adapt to it. 

 

Richard Curran  26:54   

Do you think that the profession it so much is invested in training and education around how to perform tasks that AI may well be able to perform. So therefore, accountants need to look at what other skills they need to bring to the table. 

 

Larissa Feeney  27:10   

What I see lacking in in the industry right now is the lack of commercial awareness, the reality of running a business, you know, it’s not just about the numbers, it’s about the customer and the client, the marketing and strategy, all of those that were not taught in accountancy school. We’re also not taught about the client. You know, the importance of customer service, where my training and hospitality was solely focused on the customer, less so in technical training, of course, because we’re really focusing on the technical elements,  

 

Richard Curran  27:43   

You’ve brought that experience, which was almost kind of accidental, really, from the hotel industry, accidental in the sense that it wasn’t where you were going to end up being, and it was something you did for a while. You’ve the things you learned there are valuable to you today, yes. 

 

Larissa Feeney  28:01   

So what the hospitality training gave me was an insight into the importance of the customer getting investment early in the business. Gave me an insight into the commercial realities of running a business. Those two were really crucial learnings for me, and really gave me the foundation that allowed me to grow the business to what it is today that commercial awareness or commercial training is something that I had no visibility of before I got the investment. 

 

Richard Curran  28:29   

What about other challenges that? Are there people, people’s attitude to risk and a younger generation? Sometimes, you know, people will dump on a younger generation and say, there’s this, there’s this, there’s that, there’s this wrong with them. They’re not whatever. Do you see a change in relation to that? That’s intergenerational about risk. 

 

Larissa Feeney  28:48   

So what I’ve seen is that, and I can only tell you, I suppose, from my experience so far. So we’ve grown Kinore organically up till the middle of this year, when we did our first acquisition. We did it on the 23rd of July this year. Currently, we’ve completed two acquisitions, and we have another two that I hope will complete before the end of this year. What I hear is that the younger generation are not as willing to step into ownership roles or owner managed roles as would have been the norm in the past. So why do you think that is well, again, what I’m told is there that they’re not willing to take the risk, they don’t want to put their name on as guarantor for for lending, and they’re happy getting a salary.  

 

Richard Curran  29:33   

Is there an element of a post financial crash generation about that? Perhaps 

 

Larissa Feeney  29:39   

it could be that I actually think it’s more to do with how well the economy is doing right now, because unlike for me, whenever I started the business, I had no choice. It was either do that or or what, and there was no choice, well, the way I saw it, but today, there’s so much choice. And. If you don’t want to put your neck on the line, you don’t have to. 

 

Richard Curran  30:03   

People have more to lose, in a sense, because when things are going well, they have that bit more in terms of quality of life, in terms of income, in terms of so why jeopardise it?  

 

Larissa Feeney  30:12   

Exactly. Why would you jeopardise it? And why would you remortgage the house, or, you know, put your name down for a personal guarantee? And there’s also a much better awareness of the importance of work life balance. And it’s very hard to get a good work life balance if you own a business, especially in the early years, it’s easier as the as the business stabilises. And for me, I have a great team there, and that really, really helps. But you’re still always carrying business ownership, and it’s a responsibility that you can’t let go of on a Friday evening. Unfortunately, 

 

Richard Curran  30:43   

You talked a bit there about acquisitions. What about your future plans for the business? Where? Where would you see it all going well in five or 10 years from now? 

 

Larissa Feeney  30:54   

I always knew that we acquisition or mergers would be part of our story as we grow, and that’s the stage we’re at now. So I would hope, and we plan, to do further acquisitions in 26 and 27 and into 28 so that we can continue to grow organically, and also acquire, and hopefully acquire firms that are of similar, similar mindset, and firms that are looking to increase efficiencies, to use technology, 

 

Richard Curran  31:21   

But is it tricky in one level that, if you acquire a business and they’re not necessarily geared up in the kind of remote model that you have developed very successfully, they have to transition into that is that something that’s tricky to manage, 

 

Larissa Feeney  31:34   

that is it’s it’s a difficult one. And of course, the those firms that are ready to sell naturally have owners that are a bit older and they’re ready to retire. So they’re, you know, they’re, they may not have embraced technology to the same extent. However, what we have seen is that the teams themselves are young, and the teams themselves are very tech savvy, and maybe have not had the opportunity to embrace technology that they would like, and they’re very open to it. And similarly, for clients, because for the businesses or for the clients of those firms, they could also be passing to another generation, and they are also aware of technology and the benefit that it can bring. And covid has really helped us. It has really accelerated that, I suppose, that knowledge, and there’s much more acceptance now of remote working and of delivering services remotely,  

 

Richard Curran  32:21   

And there’s a trust as well, isn’t it? That trust that wasn’t really there before covid, in terms of the Trust for clients and technology, if, if I’m a client, and you’re my accountant, and I’m not really overly concerned about when you do things, you know how it operates, I just want a particular service, despite the developments in technology, I’m still going to want my accountant. AI is not going to take over this industry. 

 

Larissa Feeney  32:47   

No, I think AI will help the industry and will be a massive tool for us. And as I said, already, a huge amount of manual processes will be removed and are being removed, and there’s so much opportunity around integrations between, you know, what we do and what the revenue authorities require, for example. And right now, that’s still quite manual, but the business owner will still want to speak to their accountant, and that’s certainly my experience. Now that you know, we can have all of the technology, but the business owner still wants their guy or girl that they trust, that they like, that they get on well with, and that they can have a conversation with. I don’t know if that will change. 

 

Richard Curran  33:28   

And Larissa, you talked a bit about, from your own perspective, imposter syndrome, early days, questioning your own, your own sense of why you’re in a particular role. When you started off in accountancy and so forth. You’re, you have very strong views about women in business. You’ve been a huge supporter of women in business and the Women in Business Network and Donegal, for example. Do you think that while things are improving in relation to women and entrepreneurship, that there’s still a long way to go, and that confidence issue is that a centrepiece of that? 

 

Larissa Feeney  33:57   

What I will say first of all is you always have to look back and look at, you know, remember how far we have come. There’s a huge amount of support for women who choose to start a business. There are so many programmes and mentors and advocates there, and there’s role models that were never there whenever I started. So that is fantastic, but we have a long way to go, especially in the area of funding. You know, I think of like 2% of funding, VC funding, goes to female founded businesses. 

 

Richard Curran  34:25   

Are they not looking for it? Or are they looking for that funding and not getting it? 

 

Larissa Feeney  34:29   

It’s probably a little bit of both. So there’s a large amount that aren’t looking for it and should be looking for it. There’s a confidence issue. You mentioned confidence. There’s and I see this all the time with the women that we work with and in the acorns programme, where there is a belief that maybe we’re just not good enough to get funding, or we’re not we don’t want to put ourselves out there. We don’t want to sell ourselves. We don’t want to take the risk. And it’s not just about equity funding. It’s also about debt funding. You know, whenever you go for debt funding, you have. To give a personal guarantee. In a lot of cases, you have to put yourself out there. You have to, you know, paint a picture of your business and in terms of its growth, you have to bring all the people on the journey with you. And there is a lack of confidence in women, especially, to paint that vision and to put themselves out there. 

 

Richard Curran  35:14   

One of the ways of countering that is steadily over time that women entrepreneurs have more role models and more other very successful women entrepreneurs that they can look around and say, well, she did it, and she did it, and this is how and there clearly are more and that that is moving in the right direction, isn’t 

 

Larissa Feeney  35:31   

it? It is moving the right direction slowly, and the more role models that women have, the better it has to start earlier, though I do think as well, there’s an element of education here, thinking from personal experience the whole time around, whenever the children were small, and whenever I was having babies and had my children small, the reliance on Me over those years was incredibly hard. And if I think about where the business was at, where the children were at where I was at. It’s, it’s really survival, you know. So trying to think of anything around, you know, getting the space to think about a business, or grow a business, or invest in a business, it’s really, really hard to do that. It’s about getting through it. It’s about getting through it, yeah, so the more support we can give to women at that time. And we all, we all know, we know the challenges right now in terms of childcare, for example, and the lack of support there is for young families. That’s where the key is. If we can help women at that stage to start businesses and grow businesses, then we might have more chance of seeing that ripple effect in the future. A 

 

Richard Curran  36:32   

Couple of quick fire questions I’m going to throw at you before we finish. One of them is, if you were to reflect back what was one of the best days in work or in your career you ever had, 

 

Larissa Feeney  36:44   

I think, you know, it’s whenever you get the business to be a staged and I don’t think it was one particular day, but it was probably, there was probably one day, and I remember it where there was a realisation. So it dawns on you suddenly that actually the business doesn’t need you. That’s a fantastic place to be. Whenever the business got to a stage where there was a there was a team in place, not just a team, but a leadership team, a leadership team who are who are ambitious, and they’re they want to grow the business. They want the best for the team. They want the best for the client. And everybody’s on the same page and heading in the same direction. That’s a great place to be 

 

Richard Curran  37:26   

Building a business is tough. There are good days and bad days, stressful days. Is there any particular time you remember when you say, Oh my God, have I? Have I lost it here altogether. This was a mistake, this. This is just too much. Oh 

 

Larissa Feeney  37:39   

God, so many times, Richard, I don’t even count. Like my husband, at one point, he used to say to me, you have a breakdown every six months where it’s just, you know, drama, drama. I can’t do it. I just can’t do this anymore, you know, just, I just want to hide under the covers. And there was two occasions that I did literally hide under the covers over the last What 14 years and 2011 kind of disappeared for a while, did you or just literally hid under the covers and didn’t come out? I remember one particular day where Tommy came into the room with a glass of wine, as I was underneath the covers, you know, grappling with whatever challenge was at that time. So, 

 

Richard Curran  38:18   

And you said it more than a glass of wine.  

 

Larissa Feeney  38:20   

Give me the bottle. 

 

And yeah, so that, look, it happened a lot in the early days where I thought, I just can’t do that. Now, that was obviously compounded, compounded by the children being young and my mother being sick and all of that, right? I remember on one mentorship programme I was on the lead said on the programme, she said, the first time you come up against an issue, a difficult issue, you want to hide in bed for a week. The second time you come up against the similar issue, you have the tools, you know how to deal with it. And that is so true, because you learn, and the next time you do it a bit better. So things that I would have lost sleep on or hid under covers on 10 years ago, I don’t lose sleep on anymore. What motivates you? Oh, that’s a great question. There’s a little bit of stubbornness in me. Okay. I mean, you know, this probably the same stubbornness that you know saw me get first in Northern Ireland in my profession, exams that saw me qualify, you know, coming out of a Green Hospitality, the same stubbornness that started a business in the middle of a recession with three small children, that stubbornness to prove people wrong, because people have always said, Sure, what are you doing that for? You know, that’s hard. Would you not do this? Would you not just, that’s a great life, would you not just right? There’s still a little bit of that, even now, Richard, right, even now in this economy, there’s still a little bit of stubbornness in me that wants to prove that you can build a business in rural Ireland, you can build a business as a female entrepreneur, and you can build a remote business. 

 

Richard Curran  39:58   

Someone would say you’ve done that. You. Have achieved that, but you clearly want to keep going. 

 

Larissa Feeney  40:03   

I do because even I had a conversation recently with an acquaintance of mine. He questioned, how you know a business, a remote business, would work at scale, you know, what he where he was coming from, was he? Was he was coming from a place? You know, how would this business be attractive to somebody in the future if somebody wanted to acquire it, or whatever the case might be, that’s a big discussion in this industry right now. You know, there’s a lot of private equity activity, you know, so that this is a big, major point of discussion. Would Kinore be valued differently because it’s a remote model, and I’ve always felt, again, back to the beginning, the client doesn’t care where the work is done, as long as it’s done to a high standard, and we’re there whenever the client needs us. So why shouldn’t we work wherever we want to work, whether we’re female or male or whoever, we can still be professionals, and we can still do brilliant work, and we can beat industry expectations in loads of ways, as a remote team, and so I’m a little bit stubborn still, 

 

Richard Curran  41:06   

so it’s it’s not just about proving that you can do it, but it’s actually about proving that the model itself, this way of doing things, can 

 

Larissa Feeney  41:14   

work. The model works, and we all know it can work, and because we do it, and we’ve been doing it for a long time, but it’s still even all these years later, it’s still unusual in the market. 

 

Richard Curran  41:26   

Finally, Larissa, what does success look like for you, for the firm, in the future, down the road? What would you like it to look like? 

 

Larissa Feeney  41:34   

Investment in technology is very important to me right now, so continuing to invest in development, in automation and in improving the client experience, but also making sure that my team aren’t doing work that is not necessary for them to do. In other words, all those manual processes need to be removed to allow the team to serve the client and to be there when the client needs them. And that’s difficult for an accountant or for any of our technical teams to do because they’re so busy, and I would I hope that our journey of acquisitions continue and that we’re able to add similar value to those firms and their clients. Well. 

 

Richard Curran  42:14   

Larissa Feeney, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Congratulations on everything you’ve achieved. It’s extraordinary what you’ve done, and a fascinating journey to get to this point as well. That’s it from me until the next time when Larissa, no doubt, will be back in the chair. Thanks for listening. 

 

Voiceover  42:30   

Thank you for listening to Real Business Conversations with Kinore. For more information on this episode, see the description area of this podcast or visit our website Kinore.com  

 

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