For over 15 years, Maxim Charted Accountants has grown to become one of the premier firms in Canberra, and a quick look at their website reveals the company's overarching philosophy that underpins this success:

MAXIM (n): a guiding principle, of reasoning and truth which drives our commitment to gain maximum advantage for our clients.

However, with so much experience in the Canberra buisness community, there has to be more to it. The Shaker sat down with Founding Partner Mark Peatey to disocver more about the company's culture, it's success and what it means to operate a busines sin Australia's capital city.

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For the few people in Canberra that don’t know who you are, give us the quick elevator pitch. What is Maxim?

We don’t like to describe ourselves as accountants – rather we think of ourselves as true business advisors. We work with clients to help them grow and to help them recognise opportunities. Some of those are really obvious, and might be right in front of the owners, while some are a result of our networks or connecting clients with each other.

We’re basically glass-half-full operators that are always looking to push everyone through exciting strategies.

 

Maxim started with the four of you (Lisa Stone, Gerard Bounty and Mile Petrevski), and since then Maxim has grown significantly. However, the company is known for a strong culture within the team. How do you describe the culture, and what benefit has it delivered?

Maxim’s culture is based around investing heavily in people, and we’ve always had a focus on investing in young people. Around 80% of our staff are under 26. We love to get them as graduates or with only one or two years of experience so we can shape them within our culture.

It’s a great way to cement the can-do culture of the directors, and it’s important to us that new staff are given greater scope than they’d normally receive in order to test and push themselves. Everyone gets plenty of rope to see what they can achieve, which makes it a pretty exciting place to work.

 

Is there anyone you looked up to as a model when setting up the company?

No single person in particular, but we like to describe ourselves as having the professionalism of The Big Four (KMPG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and PriceWaterhouseCoopers), but matched with business acumen (and a little bit of mongrel!).

 

How does that translate into your services?

Watching a business like Bloc Constructions come together was great for us. They were far from being a start-up – all the partners were independently successful within the industry –  but we could see the benefit in them all coming together.

We’re really proud that we could see the potential and guide them through the process of creating the company. Bloc’s success has been incredible, and we’re proud to be a part of it.

 

That’s great proof of how important networks are in this city. We have local networks, but this is also a national and international city. What do you see as the key opportunities or linkages that many Canberra businesses fail to realise?

It’s exactly that: the value of networking, and the importance of positioning yourself to engage with international players. Canberra businesses have traditionally considered themselves to be in the shadow of bigger cities.

We’re now doing 25% of our business with companies outside of Canberra. That only came as a result of delivering for our local clients, and subsequent referrals that led to us picking up business in Sydney, Melbourne and beyond.

 

A great networking event is the The Maxim Invitational tennis day. I feel it’s an important event for your company. Talk me through its aims and its evolution.

I guess there’s a perception that Maxim deals with the ‘rich and famous’ in Canberra, so it’s important for us, as good corporate citizens, that we give something back to the community.

We pick a different charity every year, and one that is based in Canberra. The amount of money we raise most years is pretty significant, and can be transformative for some of the organisations we work with.

 

Outside of work, what does living in Canberra mean to you?

Wow. Canberra’s just the whole package at the moment - it’s really come into its own over the last couple of years. I love seeing the new hotels, the level of quality in bar and restaurants, and the creativity that it all represents.

What makes that shift even more interesting for us is the effect on staff retention. Given our aim to employ young people, a decade ago we’d expect to lose 60% of our staff after three years – and that comes at a huge cost to the business.

Now, with Canberra really maturing, we find that number has dropped to around 10%. It shows there’s something really good happening in this town.

As someone who’s pretty active, this is a great place to live. I love heading to the snow to do some skiing, or driving down the coast to get into the water.

Obviously, through the Maxim Invitational, I love tennis, so that takes up a bit of my spare time as well. It’s a real passion.

 

You’ve watched Canberra evolve to this point, but what could the Canberra business environment look like in 10 years’ time?

There’s a real sense of confidence around town, and in an environment that feels sure of itself, business is more willing to spread its wings. If there’s no sense of embarrassment about being from Canberra, then you’re going to be encouraged to engage with business in other cities.

It goes back to the importance of networking, but the great thing is that the operating environment is much, much better. It sets us all up for a pretty exciting decade.

 

So, what does the city need to achieve its potential?

Canberra needs to promote itself better, but we need to do the same. When we have interstate clients come to Canberra to meet with us, I make sure they fly in through the new airport, that they stay at one of the exciting new hotels and that we go to an amazing restaurant for dinner.

It gives them a fantastic experience that they communicate to others when they get home. If we all do this, then Canberra will be seen as the amazing city that we all know it is.