Category: Business

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Building a business that works for you 

When I take on a new client, whether for Minerva Accountants or for coaching, I always start with WHY they started their own business. They usually fall into one of three categories: 

  • Freedom 
  • Flexibility 
  • Control 

A few want to make a difference to the world. Only once have I taken on a client whose primary motivation was financial. But somewhere along the line they have lost this in the business of making a living. They might be growing, but they’re growing in the wrong direction. 

After founding five businesses and successfully exited two, as well as coaching numerous business leaders, I’ve found that the measures of success are different for everyone. For some it is time with their family, for others it is the freedom to travel, and there are some who just want a few luxuries without killing themselves working long hours. 

There’s no single blueprint but there are definitely principles that work across all sorts of businesses.  

I’m fortunate to have a space to share this in my books and from stages around the world but I particularly enjoy coaching owners and nurturing individual businesses where I can see the results of my advice and support. 

The best business isn’t always the biggest one, it’s the one that works for you.  

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How I won my first clients and what I’d do differently today

Looking back on when I first set up my first business I didn’t have a clue about marketing.  

I’d read all the books (okay, maybe not ALL of them) and even taken a few courses but reality is very different when you start day one of your business. Running a business is a real roller coaster of fear and exhilaration and nobody is there to guide you. 

I found my first clients for Hudson Accountants (my second business) by hand delivering a mailshot to local businesses on the High Street and a local trading estate. They were individually addressed as I’d walked down the road making a note of the business names. I’d even included a reply paid card. When I received the first (and only) one of those reply paid cards we celebrated with a glass of bubbly. 

Networking was another terrifying experience. These days it comes much more smoothly as I enter a room where people often know me from social media or other connections and I even bump into clients at some events. But my first Chamber of Commerce lunch in Manchester in 2009 I didn’t have a clue what to say!  

As you can see, I’ve survived, moved the business from Bolton to Bristol and then sold it. I now run three other fully remote businesses including Minerva Accountants. 

For business owners looking to avoid the same learning curve, the 30 Day Start Up course provides practical guidance on the key skills needed to build a successful business, while Minerva Accountants helps entrepreneurs stay on top of the financial side as they grow.

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The 7 Biggest Mistakes Business Owners Make 

Most of the mistakes come down to a lack of confidence and uncertainty.

1. Undercharging – you don’t know how much to charge and aren’t confident of your value 

2. Taking any client with a pulse – you’re desperate to build that million pound business and you don’t know what a good client looks like and who is ideal for you 

3. Selling everything – whatever your clients or prospects ask for, you try to sell it. But which work or products are profitable and which should you say “no” to? 

4. AI paralysis – you can’t tell what is hype and what is helpful so you do nothing 

5. Avoiding marketing – ‘build it and they will come’ doesn’t work unless you tell people about it. You may even need to tell them before you’ve finished building it. 

6. Trying to do everything themselves – you may be trying to bootstrap but some things are worth investing in. 

7. Waiting until everything is perfect – paralysis by perfectionism. Bryony Thomas says it best when she suggests that you start when things are ‘functional but not embarrassing’. I’ve founded 5 businesses to date and even sold one of them for 32% above average and none of them are perfect but they’re profitable.

The good news? Most of these mistakes are avoidable. Building a business is a skill in itself, and it’s not something many of us are taught.

That’s why the 30 Day Start Up course was created: to give business owners practical guidance on the key areas that matter most, from marketing and pricing to finance and strategy.Prefer to learn live? A live Start Up workshop will be taking place later this year. I’d love to see you there, so reply if you’d be interested. 

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Why competence isn’t enough to run a great business 

Whether you’re a lawyer, a plumber, or a graphic designer technical competence and business success are not the same thing.

There are three main strands to a business: operations, finance and sales.

As you grow your business you will be able to recruit people with specialist expertise but, from day one, it needs to be you.

Hopefully you’ve already spent years honing your craft and maybe even observing how your boss runs the business side. But there’s a lot to running a business and you’ve probably never had to handle sales and marketing before.

Being good at your job isn’t enough to build a thriving business.

Starting a successful business requires:

> Marketing

> Sales

> Pricing

> Systems

> Client and deadline management

Not to mention confidence and self-motivation on the bad days.

None of this is taught at school. I’ve founded 5 businesses to date and successfully exited two of them (I still run three businesses but that’s another story)

I’ve been a guest lecturer on the UWE Entrepreneur degree course but, generally, this bit of the training that has been missed up until now.

Of course, it can all be learned from books but that takes time to figure out what will work for you. Fortunately, we run a StartUp Bootcamp for business owners where we have 30 videos taking you through the key skills that you need to run a business. You can sign up for this online​ or let me know if you would like to join our live workshop later this year.

At Minerva Accountants we also work with entrepreneurs to take care of the finance part of your operations along with our courses Finance for Directors and Directors’ Responsibilities to help you to stay on top of your growing business.

I look forward to seeing you there and being part of your success. Let’s do better business.

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Borrowed years 

Most business owners set up with a purpose, with an end in mind. Whether that is a £million business or a particular income or just a decent work-life balance. They start off full of energy and enthusiasm and many achieve a degree of success. 

And then they hit a glass ceiling! 

They’re working too many hours for not enough profit and borrowing time from the future as their original goal remains just out of sight.  

It’s not uncommon to work silly hours when setting up a business but, if you’re three years into your business and you’re still working those silly hours, or your growth plans have gone out of the window (assuming you had a business plan to start?) then something needs to change. 

Burnout is real. It may be time for a chat. 

As an accountant AND a business coach AND an award winning business author AND the founder of five businesses with two successful exits to date I have the skills to review your business analytically, to help you to get back on track, and to measure that progress.  

Further down the line you may have a board to share the burden with you and to bring in expertise but, for now, that’s not affordable (if that was ever part of your vision). So we have lots of ways to help business owners (and accountants and bookkeepers who run businesses too). From strategic planning days, to monthly or quarterly Clarity reviews, from online courses and workshops (because you’re not the only one who needs to know this), to coaching and mentoring sessions we can provide business advice and accountability to get you to your end goal faster. 

Stop borrowing time from future years and take some action to get back on track.  

Let’s do better business.  

Together.

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MTD. Achievement unlocked 

After years of preparation we have finally completed our first live MTD submissions. We’ve also helped several clients to do their bookkeeping and MTD for the first time. 

As accountants this is the sort of thing that we do all the time but many business owners are scarred by school maths lessons, or are just too busy to know all the rules that we just seem to absorb by osmosis (and years of slogging through exams!). Not to mention a fear of authority in the form of HMRC (they’re usually quite nice individuals, honest) 

Our lovely clients are always very appreciative when we help them out with things in our world but it’s because I try to put myself in their shoes.  

I find doctors and dentists terrifying as it’s all unknown. And potentially painful. Lawyers may feel at home standing in court but I would need to be on my best behaviour, fearful that I might have broken some law that I didn’t know about. And, amongst tradespeople, I am completely inept without my laptop and would have no hope of plastering the perfectly smooth surfaces that I see in my home and elsewhere. I couldn’t even manage a render that looked halfway decent. 

We may not be able to save our small client millions in tax, but we can take away their fears and hassles.  

Our role as accountants isn’t just filling in forms. We are what my kids call a ‘safe space’. A safe space for clients to ask all those questions about tax, money, and business generally. A safe space where they can feel at ease discussing their business, their ambitions, and even their fears.  

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I love you, I love you, I love you … 

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve come off a call or received an email and commented ‘that’s one of my favourite clients’.  

And it’s no accident that we have the best clients.  

I used to do it in my first practice too. 

At Minerva Accountants we’re very clear on who we enjoy working with and only select clients who are a good fit. That means that we give them a better service so everybody wins. 

So I encourage you to: 

  1. Identify your ideal client 
  1. Adapt your marketing as if speaking directly to this client  
  1. Triage your existing clients A-D. My D clients may be your A clients or vice versa but it’s usually based on profitability (not fee), how easy they are to work with, and whether you smile when their number comes up on your phone. 
  1. Ask your best clients for referrals  
  1. Deal with your D clients. They may need a price review or a bit of retraining or it may be that they’d be better suited to another accountant so you need to let them go 
  1. Stop scrabbling around for business at any cost and refer to 1 above when deciding whether to take on a new client. 

Don’t settle for what you have, build the business that you first dreamt of. 

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When was the last time you worked on your business?

We have a July year end, a legacy from when my children were small and my life revolved around the school year. 

August is my quiet planning time and, with three businesses, there’s a lot to think about. 

It is important to take time out of your business and we run strategic planning days for businesses and accountants for just this purpose. It’s now time to take some of my own medicine. 

When do you take time to plan? 

(Our next group strategy days are in Sep, Dec, Jan, Feb, and Mar or we can run a bespoke day for your business) 

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Xerocon benefits 

I’ve just spent this week at Xerocon London. So what was the benefit of 3 days out of my business? 

  • listened to all sorts of interesting talks from the best accountants that will help me to improve my business 
  • getting beyond the AI hype to some practical ideas for embedding more AI into Minerva Accountants 
  • hearing about the Xero roadmap and all sorts of new features to help accountants and business owners 
  • chatting to other software companies about how they can help Minerva Accountants and our clients 
  • chatting to other forward thinking accountants from around the world about the issues that we face in our businesses, what works, and what doesn’t 
  • being invited to speak about accountant/entrepreneur/high performer 4am waking and what we can do to help ourselves 
  • breakfast with the Small Business Commissioner (Emma Jones who wrote the foreword to my second book) to discuss the problem with late payments and new legislation that is making its way through parliament 
  • generally relaxing knowing that my business was in safe hands with my fabulous team 

I now have a head buzzing with ideas on how to improve Minerva Accountants so that we can offer better advice and more efficient services to our clients. 

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How to survive a crisis 

After spending a couple of years working in an IT department and part of the Disaster Recovery business resilience is always high on my agenda. And having been being responsible for the IT department preparing an engineering company for any potential Y2K (Year 2000) crises means that I am quite used to risk assessing businesses.

But these days I run 3 small businesses without anything like the level of resource available to me back then. We are small but strong because we use a lot of technology and employ a brilliant core team. We are therefore hugely dependent on both the technology and the people.

Which is what prompted this post.

I was just about to set off on a two week holiday followed by 3 days at Xerocon when my Business Manager, the ever efficient Kate, notified me that she would be off for a major operation. While I was away! And while our newest team member has only been with us for a month!

When I finally uncurled from my foetal position I assessed the situation and realised that we were actually in quite a strong position because of all our ‘usual’ preparations and processes.

So here are the things that we do right:

  • We keep documented procedures on our shared drive. They’re not as up to date as we’d like but they’re a good start and Kate has a few days to refresh anything. This means that we’re not too dependent on any single individual.
  • We always try to stay well ahead of deadlines. As at today (22 June) we only have one year end due 31 July and two for 30 Sept. We’ve chased these clients enough times that it is now entirely their responsibility. Confirmation statement information is chased early so we have a few weeks in hand. Bookkeeping is updated monthly, if not weekly. As part of my holiday I had even written 3 of these blogs in advance so this makes the fourth one.
  • We all work fully remotely so, if I need to log in while abroad, everything is set up.
  • We operate a shared Inbox so everybody can see client messages 
  • We have a fabulous answering service (I highly recommend Emma Fryer and the Answer It team) who will answer and pass on messages to us and also call back our clients if required 
  • We have VOIP phones so we can call from our business line anywhere in the world.
  • Our practice management system holds all client info and emails so that any member of the team can see what has been going on. We encourage the team to add permanent notes and current reminders too. These can always be improved.
  • Our practice management system tracks all client deadlines and send automatic reminders so nothing is missed. 

So, I think we’re going to be all right, and our small team will be able to run without one of our key people and with just the lightest of touches from me. So I’m going to enjoy my holiday.

(TLDR we survived Y2K and the National Grid continued to provide power to all UK homes during my employment)