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Catalyst for growth?

As I’ve had time to speak to more businesses this week it would seem that Covid 19 has been a catalyst for all sorts of business improvements that were already in the pipeline.

I’m sure that many business owners, like me, have a file full of ideas, some of which might even have made it as far as a full blown business plan. Minerva Accountants was one such plan for me (although the reality took a bit longer waiting for ICAEW to process my practising certificate).

I’ve also heard of businesses combining sites, implementing new technology, and outsourcing work. All things that they had already identified as cost and efficiency gains. The virus has moved these things from the important but not urgent quadrant to the urgent and important.

What ideas have you got in your repertoire that now need to see the light of day?

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You don’t need to outrun the lion

Things are starting to settle down a little as we adapt to a new normal and start to consider the best way to make use of life under lockdown and beyond.

Whilst the virus is still out there we need to remember that it is only social distancing measures which have prevented more of us from being infected. The reason that lockdown is able to be lifted a little is because we now have spare hospital beds. So please keep up your usual physical distancing precautions if you’re out and about.

But we do now have a roadmap of how the UK will change over the next few months, so we are able to plan how to get staff working as safely and efficiently as possible.

There will undoubtedly be some sort of recession but those of us who have been through the last few recessions are not scared by this and I’m blowing the dust off the content from the last recession as you read this. At the moment the economy is said to have contracted by about 30%. So only 70% of the opportunities are available and they’re not spread evenly across all industries.

So you don’t need to be ahead of the roaring lion, you only need to be ahead of 30% of your competition to ensure that your business is not one of the ones being eaten.

What can you do to stay ahead of your competition? Build a plan to include:

  • Marketing so your name is out there when others may still be licking their wounds
  • Tech investments or general efficiencies so that you can carry out work cheaper, better or faster than your competitors
  • Recruiting and training the best people as they are laid off from other jobs

If you need help planning then please do shout but, as always, the important thing is to have a plan. And a bit of cash from a bounce back loan may help too.

How is your plan looking for the next 3 months?

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Ready assembled vs flatpack

I was thinking about the difference between ready assembled furniture and flatpack.

The former is generally more substantial, better made and may last for generations. The latter might be cheap and convenient at a certain point in our lives but we have the hassle of putting it together, it often wobbles and I have no idea what do with the ‘spare’ parts.

Where else do we try to cut costs but spend more time for an inferior product?

Should you use a professional for your bookkeeping/accounts? Many accountants/bookkeepers do this to focus on their core business!

What about your graphic design? Outsourcing our visual brand and design to a professional meant that we were shortlisted in the British Accountancy Marketing Awards last year.

Should you self-publish your book quickly or use an independent publisher? Choosing a good publisher helped The Number Business to win the specialist category at the Business Book Awards last year so I’m using the same publisher for Growing by Numbers

And what about IT? I’m pretty good with tech but I’ve spent several months with a niggle on my emails and now I’ve called in the professionals (good/bad news is that it’s not a simple issue for them either). It’s costing me time each and every day!

What should you be delegating or outsourcing in your business?

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When your confidence has gone AWOL

At the moment there are too many tired people trying to do too much under difficult circumstances. They’re out of routine and possibly disturbed sleep too. No wonder that more than a few business owners are feeling bruised and shaken.

So how to get a quick confidence boost irrespective of what is going on around you?

  • Read through the testimonials on your Linked In, website or elsewhere. If you don’t already have a collection then start now with every nice think that is said to you.
  • Stand tall. Imagine that somebody is pushing down on the top of your head and push back up. Shoulders back, down, and relaxed (easier than it sounds). Strong core; abs, stomach and back should all be strong. If you look confident you will start to feel confident
  • Have a favourite incantation for times like these. My favourite as a teen was Coue’s “Every day in every way I am getting better and better” repeated 20 times, twice a day.
  • Forgive yourself. These are “unprecedented” times, as you have probably heard far too often recently, but that means that we’re all making up at least some of it as we go along. Relax and let go of any mistakes.

I’d love to hear any more quick confidence boosts

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Life on the outside

After the initial crisis a couple of weeks ago we now seem to be settling down to a new “normal”. Now that we are through the worst of the firefighting we can start to improve our current situation for the next 3-6 months.

As always start with the biggest processes and look for ways that they can be improved. Not all changes will be worth making as they may not reap sufficient benefits in the timescale to justify the time or money required to set them up. This shouldn’t stop you coming up with the ideas; it is just that there are now two potential payback periods of “lockdown/recovery” and any benefits after this time.

It is also worth thinking about what sort of business you want to run after the virus. Have you learned new things or implemented new processes or products/services that are worth keeping?

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Simple tech to get paid faster

This week has been exceptionally busy for some of our clients. To cheer them up a little I ordered a little something to be delivered to all our course alumni.

It took a while to find a suitable supplier who was still trading but I took a certain geeky delight in receiving an invoice emailed from their Xero software. Not just any old invoice but one with buttons!

  1. One button to upload the invoice directly into my own Xero software. Even simpler than forwarding the email to my Xero mailbox
  2. One button to pay straight away by card so I didn’t need to add bank details for a transfer. In the current climate I knew that paying straight away would help that small business and so did the owner.

As systemising for efficiency and speeding up cash inwards are two of the areas we look at on all our courses it I was in tech paradise

How can tech help you in your business?

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How to go paperless

We’re delighted that MTD (Making tax Digital) prompted so many businesses to review their accounting procedures. For those of you who would still like a hand to do so or to take it further then please do get in touch.

But are there any other systems that can be moved away from paper?

Document management system

Often it’s just a case of not printing out the documents you creating but defining an online filing system for Word, Excel and PDF items. You might want to invest in a document management system for maximum searchability but even ordinary File Managers are quite powerful. Storing these in the cloud with Onedrive, Googledocs etc can make them accessible to your whole team if you wish to share them.

When devising a filing system you should bear in mind how often documents are retrieved and ensure that filing time does not outweigh retrieval time.

Software

Sometimes additional software is required:

  • If you’re not already doing it then we can recommend software for your purchase invoices and receipts to be automatically uploaded into your accounting software through a photograph, a forwarded email or a scan. The invoice will be stored electronically as well as creating the accounts record.
  • Can you keep an online appointments system which works with your CRM?
  • Can you schedule and keep a record of staff hours? (See Deputy) It may be possible to link this with your payroll software too.
  • Can any site inspection documents completed and stored electronically?
  • Can your clients book appointments online? (see Calendly.com for a free tool)
  • Can your team share work and ideas online? (see Trello.com, Slack, Asana)
  • What about meeting records? We’re communicating much more online now with Zoom and Teams. If you record a Zoom meeting (do let participants know) you will have a record of these meetings. If you need a text record then you can use transcription software with the saved audio file
  • Online signatures can save printing out reams of paperwork for contracts. Signable.co.uk is UK based so complies with GDPR.

There are all sorts of possibilities which can help you to operate remotely,  more efficiently, and reduce your environmental footprint.

Post in

Any paper post will need to be scanned. Depending on your volumes you might want to invest in a fast feed scanner or just photograph single documents.

Legacy paperwork

Old paperwork can be scanned OR you can just move to paperless from today and gradually archive the papers as time passes.

There are so many ways that you can go paperless and, as always, we’d love to help your business efficiency and sustainability.

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Morning routine of a moderately successful woman

Do you ever read those articles about people who get up at 4am, run 10 miles, meditate, create a new business product and look absolutely gorgeous before their kids are even awake? Apparently this is the reason they’re so successful.

Well here’s my version.

My alarm goes off at 7am and I eventually stagger downstairs to put on the kettle. I take a pot of tea (and some breakfast) back to bed and throw a sandwich and drink in the direction of my daughter’s room as she’s even worse in the mornings than I am.

Once I’ve drunk the 2 pint pot of tea I start to feel human so my next task is to decide whether to go for a run. This decision making process goes on until I run out of time.

After I’ve kicked the children out of their beds and off to school, I check my diary and realise that what I thought was a coaching call by phone is actually a video meeting so I throw on some suitable clothes and do a 30 second makeup job on my face. I have a post-it note on my laptop reminding me to smile for my audience. It does the trick and I soon feel genuinely cheerful. It helps that I like my job.

Fortunately, by now, my brain is sufficiently rehydrated that I’m able to get some decent work done throughout the rest of the day but, rest assured, my morning routine is nothing like the gods of industry. And, while there is definitely room for improvement, I’m actually quite happy with my slow start to the day.

What’s your morning routine?

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Minimising your interruptions

Interruptions can be a real pain when you’re trying to get on with the real work or the sort which requires concentration.

Here are a few ideas of how you can reduce, or at least manage, your interruptions:

  • Calendly is my best friend. Linked to my diary people can book phone calls at a convenient time. No more of those emails backwards and forwards trying to find when everybody’s diaries are free. The first tier of Calendly is free.
  • If you have a PA or receptionist then give them clear instructions for managing your phone calls
  • If you’re on your own then invest in an answering service. We use Answer IT who will either take messages or put through calls like your own receptionist. They can even manage your diary. You can divert your phones to them whenever you need to focus.
  • Turn off your notifications or leave your phone in another room. Yes, I know you’ve been told before but actually do it please.
  • A default diary makes it much easier to control your week. I block time out when I need intense concentration.
  • If you have a team then an open/closed door can be a good indicator of when they can and can’t interrupt you

Try one or two of these suggestions and let me know how you get on.

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Working out your hourly rate

People often ask me how much they should be charging. What they’re thinking of is the market rate and where they sit on the sliding scale of value.

But it is also worth thinking about what you want/need to earn for yourself.
 

  1. How much do you want to take home after tax each month?
  2. Multiply by 12 to find your annual requirements.
  3. How much profit do you need before tax? For quick calculations like these I usually work on 30% for tax/NI for sole traders or corporation/dividend tax for limited company shareholders.
  4. What are your overheads? I use a lot of software to automate repetitive parts of my business so mine might be higher than a business which does everything manually. Add these costs to your profits to find out the turnover you need to generate.
  5. Now work out how many hours you want to work a week. When my kids were small I worked an average of 25 hours a week to build my accountancy business.
  6. How many weeks holiday do you want each year? How many weeks will you work?
  7. Multiply the average number of hours per week by the number of weeks you want to work to give you your annual working hours.
  8. How many days a week will you work on your business? The sort of time that you can’t charge to clients such as strategy, management, marketing, networking, CPD. I spend a lot of time generating content in the form of books, talks, courses and free webinars so only 2 days a week am I actually earning money from all that content. This means that I’m only charging 2/5 of my time.
  9. Now comes the big reveal: divide your required turnover from (4) by your working hours from (7) and then multiply by your chargeable fraction from (8). This will give you your minimum hourly rate.
  10. Now sense check whether you are worth this amount. Do you need to cut your costs, cut your personal income, or increase your hours? Can you pay for a little automation or manpower which will increase your costs but free up your chargeable time?
  11. Once you’ve set your minimum hourly rate and you are sure that it is realistic then you should be very strict with yourself about NOT undertaking any work that generates less than this rate.

You can, of course, set up your own spreadsheet but if you’d like a copy of mine then please contact us via our form with ‘HOURLY RATE’ in the title. It’s free and will save your precious time!

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