How Gabs and Charley are turning their passion for sport into a successful business

Off to the big leagues with QuickBooks at their side

Gabs and Charley never set out to build a business. What started as two friends having fun, filming content in their flat and at the gym, has grown into a successful content creation business.

"We started out about three years ago, making content just in our flat and at the gym, being silly, and suddenly started growing a bit of a following," says Gabs. "We progressed into making football and sport content, and now we get to work with amazing brands and teams like West Ham."

At first, they didn’t see it as a business, it was just something they loved doing. "When we started out as content creators, we never really thought of it as a business," admits Charley. 

"It was more of an accidental thing that we were even able to turn it into a business. And now that we have, it wasn’t something that we really knew anything about doing."

But as their channel gained traction and more brands came knocking, Gabs and Charley realised they needed to step up their game and get organised behind the scenes. 

Building a strong foundation

Just like in the gym, you need a strong core to stay balanced—and that’s exactly what Gabs and Charley were missing in their business. They needed a simple way to manage admin, track income and expenses, and keep everything in one place.

"I'm probably the worst person in the country to do admin," says Gabs. "When we started as content creators, I didn’t know what to do. Charley told me about QuickBooks, and luckily, she's actually good with admin."

Charley had already used QuickBooks for another business and knew it could help them stay organised. "We brought QuickBooks in to help with all the bookkeeping, so we don't really need to do it ourselves," says Charley. "It’s super user-friendly, and I already knew the interface from another business I run. I thought, we’ll just bring it into this business and make life easier."

For Gabs, QuickBooks' clear and simple dashboard has been a huge bonus. "For me personally, using QuickBooks was super easy. Right off the bat, I thought it was going to be super complicated because I've seen other accountancy software, and they all looked confusing. But the layout and the dashboard are so simple that you know exactly where you need to be."

QuickBooks also gave them the structure they needed to stay on track. "QuickBooks has made life so easy," says Charley. "It's given us so much time to focus on our content. We just put everything we need to import, and then it's all calculated for us. We only need to go on there and check. It's just really easy."

QuickBooks also helps them stay on top of their finances. "The only bad thing is it tells me how much I'm spending!" jokes Gabs. "I don’t want to know how much I'm spending but thank God it also tells me how much is coming in. And as long as that number is higher than the outgoings, I’m happy."

Learn more about how QuickBooks supports content creators here. 

Scoring with payments, invoicing and taxes

Managing invoices and payments is a key part of their business and QuickBooks made it easy for them to keep cash flow steady and on target.

"The feature I love is the invoicing because you just create your invoice template, and then every time you send out an invoice, you just put the client’s name and all their information pops up and then send it off," says Charley. "It’s that easy."

For Gabs, the ability to match payments to invoices automatically has been extremely helpful. "When you can match the invoice you created with the income into your bank account and it does it for you that is ideal for me. I need that in my life."

When tax season rolls around, Gabs and Charley rely on their accountant to protect their business from costly mistakes. 

"We have an accountant, and they find it super easy. All they need to do is log on to QuickBooks and they can see everything we've ever input," says Charley. "We don’t need to give them anything, and they can just send it off to HMRC."

"Without QuickBooks, I would probably not put anything through and have to pay a massive tax bill," says Gabs. "But this makes life a lot easier and means that I can run my business properly and not have that huge tax bill at the end of it."

Find out how to streamline your invoicing with QuickBooks here.

Building for the future

"We have loads of plans for the future of how we want to grow our business," says Gabs. "We just want to keep progressing in the way that we are, push more into sports and football, and continue working with brands and teams like West Ham."

Charley adds, "We love working with brands that we enjoy and people we enjoy working with. That's definitely West Ham and QuickBooks."

QuickBooks has given them the freedom to focus on creating content. "If I could give QuickBooks an award for anything, it would be for saving me time," says Gabs. "My time is precious, and QuickBooks appreciates that and understands that. That’s what I need — my time back."

Why QuickBooks?

For Gabs and Charley, QuickBooks isn’t just helping them stay organised, it’s helping them move faster and more efficiently.

"If QuickBooks was a car, I mean, we’re going to have to go Lamborghini," says Gabs. "It just gets us from A to B as quickly as possible." 

"To be honest, QuickBooks has saved us so much time. I used to write down in my notebook, do admin, and that would just stay on my to-do list every single day. And now doing my admin, doing my invoicing is so much simpler because I do it in QuickBooks."

Charley agrees: "QuickBooks makes my life easy. That’s the best kind of business tool."

Powering Your Possible

At Intuit QuickBooks, we believe that business owners like Gabs and Charley deserve more than just tools - they deserve the confidence and control to dream big and make it happen. The Power Your Possible campaign is about giving businesses the solutions that can drive their growth at speed with the insight needed to take control of their future.

Read the rest in our series:

Utter Waffle - read more

The Marketing Production Company - read more 

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