Three jobs, one habit: never taking the first answer
I hold roles that most people assume don't overlap. By day I lecture in taxation at Oxford Brookes Business School, teaching the same technical rigour to the next generation of chartered accountants. I run a practice built for creators whose income HMRC's guidance was never really written for. And a couple of years ago, in my fifties, I started training as a pilot — because I wanted proof I could still learn something hard from scratch. All three come from the same instinct: don't accept what you're told is fixed until you've checked it yourself. In tax, that means treating HMRC guidance as a starting point for research, not a finish line — legislation, tribunal cases, first principles — rather than defaulting to whatever's safest for me to say.
My first client was my own daughter
Years before "influencer accounting" was a phrase anyone used, my first digital client wasn't a client at all — she was Eva, my daughter, building what's now a career as a filmmaker with her own show on National Geographic, Superskilled. I sat with her actual invoices, her actual platform payouts, her actual mess of a first tax return. There was no playbook. I had to write one, and I've been refining it for creators ever since.
Learning to fly in my fifties
A couple of years ago, at an age most people think is too late to start something new, I began training for my pilot's licence. Sitting in a light aircraft for the first time as a nervous passenger, then choosing to change direction as an adult — the fear, the slow competence, the moment it finally clicks — taught me the same patience I now bring to clients figuring out their finances for the first time. Nobody starts out knowing this. I didn't either.
Teaching the rules I also challenge
Since 2016 I've taught the ACCA TX and ATX modules at Oxford Brookes — the technical foundation every chartered accountant is examined on. Knowing that material inside out is exactly what lets me spot when HMRC's public guidance oversimplifies, or gets it outright wrong. I'd rather build a client's case on the actual law than on the path of least resistance.