From working-class roots to multi-award-winning founder: meet the accountant rewriting the rulebook

Nic Lonsdale, founder of Ginger Bucks, a West Midlands-based accounting practice that helps young founders get more profitable, talks us through why she wanted to do something different with her accounting qualification. 

Nic is multi-award-winning, scaling fast, and currently hiring her first full-time employee. She’s also 24 years old, proudly working class, and entirely self-made. 

Her story is the kind that AAT’s Filling the Gap research suggests the profession urgently needs more people to hear. New research commissioned by AAT reveals that 30% of people feel accounting lacks role models, 23% believe it’s a career for people from higher socio-economic backgrounds, and 33% think it’s only for the highly intelligent or numerate.  

Dropping the plan and finding a better one 

Growing up in a working-class household in Birmingham, with both her parents working in hospitality, Nic had decided she would be the one to do things differently. “I thought, I’m going to go to university. I’m going to be the one who breaks this chain,” she says. But about a year into her A-levels, with health problems and a part-time job, she started questioning whether the path she was on was really hers, or just the one she’d always assumed she had to take. 

She dropped out of sixth form and spent a month researching her options. Apprenticeships kept appearing, and within those, accounting kept popping up. “I absolutely loved maths at school. Numbers were my thing,” she says. “I wanted to go into forensic accounting. So, I thought, let’s learn about it, get on the job, and see what this can be.” 

She found an apprenticeship at a small business in South Birmingham and began studying AAT Level 2. It wasn’t easy, as being on an apprentice’s wage, Nic still worked a part-time restaurant shift after she finished her accounting job at 5pm and would study in whatever time was left. “I appreciate I didn’t have real big household bills,” she reflects. “But I was still running a car, putting petrol in it to get to work every day. It was really hard as a 17-year-old navigating that.” 

Nic pushed through and excelled, finishing with a Distinction in her Level 2. She then moved into roles across motor trade, construction and manufacturing, and climbed from accounts assistant to management accountant while completing Level 3 and Level 4 at night school.  

Her Level 3 was government-funded; her Level 4 she self-funded, paying for it out of her own salary. “I was getting paid between £20,000 and £28,000 from the age of 18 upwards,” she says. “But I made it work.” 

The breakdown that built something better 

By her early 20s, Nic was qualified and experienced, but had two mental health crises in the space of six months. “It came from really high pressure and unhappiness in a very toxic workplace,” she says. “After the second one, I realised there was obviously a trigger going on here. And I really looked inward and asked myself when was I last happy?” 

She realised she wanted autonomy and freedom, and the job she was in wasn’t going to give her either, so she made the brave move of stepping away, and spent two months exploring her options. “I realised I was 100% passionate about accounting. It wasn’t the work I hated; it was the environment. That reignited my passion.” 

Ginger Bucks launched from that realisation, and although the first year was extremely tough, by year two, the business had grown by 850% in revenue and 900% in profit, breaking into six figures. The practice has since won Best Newcomer Accountant, Best Accounting Services in the West Midlands, and “the one that meant the most”, AAT Practice of the Year. 

“I went to the AAT Impact Awards with three nominations and was just happy to be there,” she says. “Coming away with Practice of the Year was indescribable, especially with how hard year one was.” 

The role model she never had 

Nic is clear that when she was coming up through the profession, she didn’t have role models to look up to. “I’d been in accounting for eight years,” she says, “and it wasn’t until I set up the business that I actively went out and tried to find mentors. That’s when I realised there were role models, but they were in the broader community space, not the industry as I’d experienced it.” 

When speaking about AAT’s research around the perception that accounting is for people from higher socio-economic backgrounds, her reaction was visceral. “It genuinely gave me goosebumps,” she says. “It’s a mission I feel strongly aligned with.” 

Because where Nic started is not where she ended up, and it doesn’t have to be where anyone else ends up either.  

“Where you start in life, whether it’s from poverty, working class, or upper class, does not mean that’s where you’re going to end up. Accounting gives you the understanding of money that is crucial and that opens doors for everyone.” 

If someone told her that accounting wasn’t for them. Her answer would be, “Why not?” 

For more information about AAT’s Filling the Gap campaign, and to read the full report, click here. 

Sophie Cross is the Editor of Freelancer Magazine and a freelance writer and marketer at Thoughtfully.