“Most of my life has been pure luck, if I’m entirely honest,” Tom Fleuriot says with refreshing candor. But behind that modesty lies a sharp mind determined to shake up the consultancy world. From the charming Dutch town of Edam, he runs Flocsam, a company that supports companies’ legal teams without binding them to costly contracts. We spoke with Tom about his ambitions.
Tom’s story begins at defence and security company Babcock, where he worked on tenders, contracts, costs, pricing and compliance for submarine and surface ship fleets around the world. As well as offering him the chance to study law, his career progression led him to Australia. There he met his Dutch wife, with whom he eventually settled in Edam. He became Global Legal Director at Reckitt Benckiser, where he spent ten years supporting R&D, marketing, procurement, ecommerce and product development teams around the globe. This experience gave him valuable insights into how legal teams function in large corporations.
The Consultancy Circus
During those corporate years, Tom observed a frustrating pattern: consultancy projects often started small but grew into expensive, multi-year trajectories that frequently stalled or failed to deliver promised value. The biggest frustration? “All of the knowledge and understanding is housed in the consultant. I saw consultants doing this to us as a company.”
Small, Sharp, Effective
A year and a half ago, Tom decided to take the leap and launch Flocsam to approach things in a radically different way: “What I focus on in Flocsam is the smallest impactful change that you can make. We go very tiny, very narrow, very deep, and we produce a shift in working within two days.”
His process is clear: he visits the company, speaks with stakeholders, and determines within days what can change tomorrow and how success will be measured. As Tom sees it: “It’s like learning to fish. Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him to fish and he’ll eat for life. Probably you still can’t learn to fish in a day. It takes time and practice, but you have to start somewhere.”. If something can’t be fixed within two to three days, Tom believes that shows it’s too complex for the next step, and risks running into yet another failing long-term project: “Focus on what can be done”.
Tom Fleuriot, founder of Flocsam
A world of difference
As an international entrepreneur in the Netherlands, Tom faced practical challenges, for example with his previous accountant. As he puts it: “They showed no interest in what I actually did as a company.” A filing mistake eventually cost him a significant five-figure rebate.
Through Portside Tax, Tom was referred to Enbition, and he describes the difference: “When we had the kickoff session, their enthusiasm for seeing how you can maximize the financial assessment was brilliant. It was a complete sea change from the previous accountant.”
Now Tom works with Gabriella at Enbition and particularly values their shared philosophy: “It’s the exact same principle. You want people to have enough knowledge that they can have ownership and that they can do it themselves if they want to. While also understanding that sometimes it is more effective if someone with that day-to-day regular expertise comes in and does it for you.”
For Tom, the partnership provides peace of mind: “It’s just the comfort that I’m not getting it wrong, particularly as a non-native Dutch speaker. It means I have to spend less time second-guessing and looking into stuff.”
Let’s move fast, let’s fix something
Tom remains committed to his approach going forward. He already has several lawyers in mind to bring on board to make legal support “sharper, more outcome oriented and more systemic.” Even with growth, he sticks to his core principle: “I am deliberately rejecting the land and expand business model where you take a client, and you rinse as much cash from them as possible.”
For companies struggling with their legal workload, Tom offers a 60-minute conversation: “They download on me what their challenges are, and then I come back and say, look, here’s what I think will be that smallest impactful change. And then it’s like: let’s move fast, let’s fix something!”