Danny Pritchard
September 19, 2024
I started Double Yolk about 5 years ago. We were a local New Zealand company that provided offshore staff to growing businesses. Recently we were acquired by Outsourced, a global company that provides great talent to businesses across the world. So now we are part of Outsourced!
A great question! I knew there was a business need for it. I was really interested in the prospect of helping to connect local entrepreneurs with global talent, and I knew there were some cost efficiencies with this proposed business model too. I think I was also just really keen to have a go at something entrepreneurial - I'd had a few businesses in the past, and after an enjoyable stint in the corporate world I was keen to have a crack at it. Having past business experience had shown me that there was a need for finding offshore talent because I had faced that problem myself.
Figuring out how to start Double Yolk was a matter of trial and error. After finishing my corporate job, I started to figure out who might be a potential customer. After initial research and talking to lots of people to figure out what it was the market wanted, I jumped on a plane, landed in India and went from there!
It was more following our nose. We were always open to opportunities but it was a unique set up in the sense that they are a company that we were already familiar with, had looked up to and knew they did things really well in the market. There were really nice synergies between the two businesses. We also really liked their strategy and their team, so it was a no brainer for us to join forces. So whilst it wasn’t necessarily a clear part of our initial strategy, it was always something we were open to.
Bring On Monday was a really good option for us; what was really appealing was the level of involvement the BOM team took with our business. It was critical to us to have this advice and council. BOM also has a really reasonable cost structure; when you’re in those early stages of business those fixed costs are really important, so being able to work in an agile way to get what we needed was great and has been of tremendous value.
We went for an all round service with Bring On Monday so we got a lot of support for everything; bookkeeping, GST, PAYE support, cash flow management, annual financial statements and reporting - basically a wide range of accounting services. We also went for the ad hoc services to help when we had things pop up, which they do in business! It was really nice that we always had the ability to jump on a phone call, talk to a real person, run through any business questions or talk about any challenges we were having, and get some advice. It’s a fantastic service!
I suppose it depends how you look at it, but one of the great things about being in business, especially when you’re in the early stages, is that the challenges are quite varied. There’s a lot of things to work on and solve. If there’s one consistent challenge throughout it’s probably getting and retaining good people. A big thing for us is making sure our people are happy, healthy and engaged. Businesses always evolve and change, which adds a layer of complexity. As the business changes the people that you need change. It keeps it an exciting ongoing challenge. We’re in the game of business, we’re a company, which means we are it the game of people, it's probably to be expected that one of the key challenges to get right is to make sure that people are in the right roles, that they are engaged and clear on what we are trying to achieve as a business.
The important thing is being really clear on what your roles are when you are bringing new people in. There are several models and frameworks that we work with, but the overall idea is to build a scorecard for each role that will help us be objective in choosing candidates. We also try to bring as much of that person's role as we can into the pre interview phase. We have a 3 stage employment process, the last of which is a focus group where we do role play. This can be a bit quirky and unusual but it’s really important to us to be able to create situations that we’d expect that person to be in, and gives us a good ability to see how that person would perform in that role when it’s real life.
It’s a good question - the milestones are obviously great. They are a good chance to look at the work that has been done and reflect. There are some things we have been really excited about like hitting certain revenue targets and picking up various awards such as the Deloitte Fast 50, and joining Outsourced. But really it’s the things that happen on a daily basis; you have small wins, see people in the team achieve certain things, and processes improve - it’s these moments that we’re here for. It's hard to define moments of achievement when really it’s the journey we have been on that feels like one big achievement. Now that we’ve been acquired by Outsource we’ve got a whole new journey ahead of us which we are very much enjoying and looking forward to seeing what we can do!
Bring On Monday helped us keep really good records and stay close with our numbers. That meant that when the time did come to work through the partnership with Outsourced, we already had sound documentation ready for the due diligence process. Having Bring On Monday in our team helped us get into a really good position for being acquired.
One thing that’s always been good about Bring On Monday is that they always reiterated right from the start about the importance of good cash management. They helped us gain clarity and understand the timing of our cash flow, and helped us to realise that it’s a great thing to put some money aside when things are going well so you have a rainy day fund.
Just a willingness to learn. To recognise it can be a tricky game at times but the good thing is lots of people have done it before you, hence why there are so many books and podcasts out there - so soak up as much info as you can.
I’m really excited about this next chapter with Outsource. We’ve loved becoming part of their team. I'm excited to be learning from Mike, the CEO of the group, and really interested to see what we can achieve together.
You can learn more about Outsourced here.
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