Ross Griffiths, Business owner

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Resident of Yarraville

Business owner of By The Numbers Accounting

I’m Ross Griffiths, a local accountant in the Inner West. My business has been based in the Seddon/Yarraville area for the last four years, with our new office relocation from Seddon to Yarraville completed in July this year. By the Numbers specialises in business accounting/taxation advice and support, but we also have a large portfolio of individual clients, the majority of which are based in the Inner West.

I’ve only lived in the Inner West for about six years, having previously lived in Essendon. In 2011, my partner Terrie and I decided to buy a house and move in together. Terrie was renting in Spotswood then and loved the area, and I was similarly a renter in Essendon. We drew a line from Essendon to Spotswood and decided to look for properties in this area. When we came to Footscray and Seddon, we skipped it as we didn’t know the suburb to well, but would happily live there now. We were lucky to find the property we wanted in Yarraville quite quickly.

There’s nothing really like the Yarraville streetscape anywhere else in Melbourne but I really didn’t know what I was buying into then. I remember the first movie night after we moved in when we walked from our house down to the Sun Theatre, which was only two blocks away, and remember thinking to myself “This is amazing. I have an ice cream in one hand and a beer and popcorn in the other and we are only a five-minute walk from my house!”

After moving into Yarraville, I was commuting to North Essendon for about two years as I was a partner in an accounting firm there, having worked there for 13 years. In 2013 I decided to leave that partnership to set up my own business which I felt could enable me to give a more personal and enhanced service to my clients, particularly through being able to adopt a more progressive approach to using emerging technology and other advances in the industry to drive my client’s businesses forward.

When deciding where to locate the business, Terrie and I decided to draw the same line from Essendon to Spotswood again, this time looking for a business space. We tried to rent a couple of places closer to Essendon but they fell through. Luckily for us, the firm’s previous office at Gamon Street came through at the last minute. I remember at that time, the situation was so dire we were mapping out how we could convert the garage into a home office. It was only when we were taking a walk from Yarraville to Seddon and walked past the office on Gamon Street did we see the empty space. It had a ‘For Lease’ sign on it (oddly enough the previous tenant was an accountant as well). We jumped on it straight away.

The office was in a pretty terrible state so we had to completely gut the place – probably a blessing as I was able to put my own stamp on the office with locally sourced art, timber and furniture.

Just before the business’s opening day, I tore my anterior cruciate ligament playing basketball which resulted in me having to have a surgical procedure. I remember hopping into Nicholas Scott Real Estate in crutches to pick up the keys to the office. When the business finally opened its doors, it was a relief.

In 2016, I realised we were showing signs of outgrowing our space in Gamon Street, as I had taken on employees and we were at capacity. When the market rental review on Gamon Street office arrived, an opportunity came about to share offices with another local business, Andre Dirckze from Wealth Effect Group. The decision to move then became about opportunity and growth.

We had quite a few criteria in our minds so it took about six months to find our new offices. The most important of criteria was due to the fact that I was so lucky to have Advieh just next to the office in Seddon. I miss Advieh (“Hi Sandra and Gene!”) and their food and coffee.

With that in mind, as well as being in the Inner West, I knew our new place had to have a café downstairs or next door. The presence of Woven – and their love of fried chicken – downstairs has helped considerably so we know this is the right office. It has more space and has quite a bit of character and soul which we are in the process of finetuning with things like an outdoor office space and walls of locally based art. We had a cool space in Seddon, but we didn’t want it to be like an office. It’s important to differentiate ourselves when there are over 12,000 accounting practices in Australia!

The business has exploded in a really positive way, which I think is largely in part to the word of mouth generated by the Facebook page ‘Inner West (Melbourne) Buy, Sell && Swap’, and for which I am very grateful. This was about the time when the page only had about 15,000 followers. Someone had asked for a recommendation for a good accountant in the local area. A couple of my friends got on there, and thinking they are doing the right thing, recommended me. Then quite a few of my existing local clients got on as well, and very soon it became a giant popularity contest. The power of social media!

Oddly enough, I had read an article about crowdsourcing just days before the community started heard of me through Facebook. In hindsight, the article makes so much sense as here we are, trusting strangers’ recommendations. I think that there’s very little distrust in intent or motive behind a Facebook recommendation when someone says “Ross is good.” However, when paid marketing or a referral is involved, people seem to think there is an agenda behind it. Trust from strangers works. Social media works. We started with 100 returns in the first year to about 600 last year and we are still growing. It’s nuts!

We have made a lot of friends in the Inner West. The Seddon/Yarraville community has opened a lot of doors for us, and vice versa. I remember when we were back in the Seddon space, Huss Saad from Village Real Estate popped his head in and told us how much he likes what we have done with our office, and invited us for lunch at the Plough Hotel. We have met a lot of business owners, which started the local business networking trajectory and By the Number Accounting is a founding member of the ‘West is Best’ business networking group.

Along with two other local financial businesses, By the Numbers has helped form the ‘Inner West Financial Hub’ which is a one-stop shop covering all finance-related queries. We came together because we wanted to add value to people’s lives, not just “fill up a form and see you later!” A place where people can come in for business referrals, have wealth and tax conversations and catching up on businesses with teams. This is something that I really want to grow as we head into 2018. Beyond accounting and financial planning, I hope to see the business establish itself as a hub and offer more services to our clients.

Terrie and I share our Yarraville Village townhouse with our one-year-old Airedale Terrier, Cookie. We love the convenience of the location and can be found most weekends checking out new local cafes, bars or restaurants, or at some of our faves like Advieh, Barkley Johnson Deli && Wine and The Station Hotel.

Personally, I’m a complete basketball nerd, and am NBA League Pass holder, most days start and end with reading box scores, watching replays, getting injury updates, and checking Bleacher Report, I am the Treasurer of the Westgate Basketball Association, and as much as I love playing, I am terrible at coaching! I also play on Wednesday (at MCSA) and Thursday (locally at Footscray) nights, in my position of point centre. It’s not really a position but that’s what I call it – don’t laugh!

I am also a pretty keen snowboarder and love travelling overseas, with quite a few trips to the mountains in Japan, Canada and the USA. My last trip to the USA in 2016 was all about the three B’s – basketball, barbeque and beer, with a bit of snowboarding thrown in. We have also recently bought a holiday house in Yarrawonga, where you can find me on most weekends in summer either wakeboarding or wakesurfing (with some renovating thrown in). In terms of sport I am somewhat ambitious for a six-foot five-inch man who weighs about 120kg, and I’m being generous!

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