| It happens to most of us at some point. November seems to be a busy month for me these days and I’m getting used to it. In the same way that December was busy when I ran a bigger accountancy practice alongside having to do all the family and school Christmas stuff. Many accountants extend this busy period into January too. There may be other busy periods in your life due to business or home peaks. If you know they will only last for a short period then it is okay to power on through. (It is NOT okay if busyness is the norm!) It is okay to feel tired. It is not a weakness. So here are a few tips to get through busy periods. Not all of them will be possible but hopefully one or two will help you. 1. Plan ahead and clear the decks as much as possible beforehand 2. Update your systems and processes in the quiet periods to make your busy period as easy as possible. This is why we run two strategic planning days in the new year. January for business owners and February for accountants (Check out our website or reply to this email for more info) 3. Learn to say “no”. If it doesn’t have to be done in your busy period then say “no” or “later”. 4. Balance your whole load. If you are having a busy period at work then be gentle with yourself at home. Your family can survive on oven meals for a short period and they may even see it as a bit of a treat. Your housework will also wait for you or get your kids to help out (it’s probably better than nothing and will train them for later life) 5. Ask for help. This may be from family, friends or employing extra help. 6. Buy extra time. I have two wonderful cleaners who work wonders on my home once a week so that I am free to get on with my work or to do something for me. 7. Try to take some rest and time for yourself. Even in your busy periods try to take at least one day off for you each week. And remember that working late will leave you too tired to work productively the next day so better to finish a bit earlier and get a good night’s sleep. 8. Remember to eat, sleep, hydrate and exercise to keep yourself as strong as possible. 9. Find a way to relax quickly. What are the quick, simple pleasures in your life? I like a bubble bath or a walk by the sea or a massage (anyone else get tense shoulders hunching over their desk?). None of these need to take much longer than 30-60 mins but they make a world of difference. Please feel free to send me any other tips for this list. |
Rules are there for a reason
Did you hear that a lot in your school days? Even though most of the rules seemed a bit, well, stupid? I certainly did!
A few weeks ago, I broke one of my own rules. It was a good rule and there to protect me, but I was doing somebody a favour to help them out. (You’ve probably made the same excuses yourself)
A training company was looking for a speaker at short notice and a colleague recommended me. There was a lot of backwards and forwards to see if I was a good fit which meant that time was even tighter by the time it was all agreed. And then they sent over their terms and conditions for signature which were different from my standard speaking terms in one main respect. There was no up-front payment.
As most of you aren’t professional speakers, I’d better explain that, for a speaking assignment like this, I would spend 2 days learning the material (I usually spend a similar amount of time writing my own) and rehearsing so that everything is flawless without looking over-rehearsed. I spent a day travelling and a day delivering the content and incurred related expenses. 4 days work plus travel and hotel costs.
Event organisers may charge attendees up-front, but they prefer to pay their speakers after the event (Although far too many expect speakers to work for ‘exposure’, but that’s another problem). Event organisers often cancel at short notice if they don’t get enough people signed up which can leave speakers with wasted time and prebooked travel costs. This is simply solved by charging a deposit at the time of booking.
As everything was done at short notice to help out the new client there wasn’t time to negotiate a deposit.
So, I did ALL the work and incurred all the costs before invoicing them at the earliest possible moment and guess what?
They didn’t pay on their agreed date! And they didn’t even bother to let me know why not!
Anyway, several weeks later and after wasting far too much time chasing, I finally got paid.
But I won’t be making that mistake again.
Please learn from my mistakes and get paid up front where possible. At Minerva Accountants our annual fee is all paid by direct debit before the year end. Have a look at your terms and conditions and see if they could be tighter.
How to train your clients
I see lots of people complaining or rolling their eyes at the behaviour of certain ‘vampire’ clients that suck far more time and resources than the average client. But what can you do?
- Don’t take them on in the first place. Learn to recognise them and say no right from the outset. Unless you’re a lawyer or a licensed taxi driver then you are not obliged to take on every single client who comes to you (and even these have ways of turning down work)
- Onboard well with a clear scope of work. Make sure that your onboarding process includes managing your clients’ expectations. Ensure that everything is set up well from the start and that clients know your working hours and who deals with what. For instance, we have a ‘reasonable use’ clause on our telephone support. If we can’t answer something straight away on the phone because it is complex or requires detailed calculations then this is an additional charge.
- Service level agreements. Be clear on your turnaround times for answering questions or delivering your finished project/product/services. We aim to respond to queries by next working day and ask clients to reply within 1 week. We prepare year end accounts within 8 weeks and ask clients to send information within 8 weeks of the year end.
- Automate reminders in your systems so that you don’t hold up starting work through lack of information.
- Charging more is an option but sometimes this just encourages clients to feel entitled to more of your time or to send things closer to deadlines.
- If all else fails ditch the client. There are plenty of good clients out there waiting to work with us.
Remember that it is your business and you get to choose who you work with.
Can I ‘just’ pick your brain?
How often do you get asked this? People you barely know, if at all, wanting to take some of your valuable time and expertise in exchange for a coffee or less.
There are some people whom I’m happy to say “yes” to due to close relationships or help that they’ve given to me or others in the past. There are some people who only ever take and, for these, it’s a straight “no”. But, for most people, I’d love to help but I don’t have the time in between earning a living and my own community commitments.
So how can you help people without giving up too much of your precious earning time or offering discounts on your core products and services?
I do this through writing books, running courses and group coaching sessions which are all cheaper than my individual coaching. But even this is too expensive for some so I write these Tips and provide free webinars. We run 6 Better Business webinars per year for accountants and bookkeepers and 12 Minerva Money Matter webinars per year for other business owners.
As a member of ICAEW or a local accountant or business woman I’m often asked to speak in schools and for other local groups. Lots of people helped me when I started out so I’m happy to do this. For those in even greater need we give a percentage of our turnover to charity each year.
How can you give back to others? How can you have the greatest impact on most people through one to many support? Or would you prefer to sponsor an individual? Perhaps you already do something like this? Let me know how you prefer to support your local community or preferred charity.
Trust the process
You’ve probably been there. Business is quieter than usual and you don’t know why.
When you’ve been running your business for a few years you get used to this and know that doing the right things will produce the right results but sometimes you doubt yourself or your process.
Even after this long in business I still have these wobbles.
October has been quiet for me with fewer enquiries than usual and even fewer suitable enquiries. I’ve given away a lot of free advice or referred them to another coach or accountant who was more suited to their needs.
In the background I (and my wonderful PA) continued to do the usual marketing and to prepare the new 30 day start up course for accountants and bookkeepers.
But it was still too quiet for my liking.
And then the flood gates opened, and I’ve been busy this week with enquiries for coaching, courses, and accountancy services. And a big consultancy lead that had gone quiet suddenly turned into a signed contract overnight. And now I’m wondering how I’m going to fit in all the extra work.
Such is the roller coaster of running your own business. Sometimes you just have to trust the process. Doing the right things will produce the right results.
Are you working too hard?
With Summer holidays over and Winter drawing in I’m seeing more exhausted business owners. Although there may be particular pressures on accountants facing tax return season everybody is affected to some extent by the cost of living crisis.
Here are a few things that you can do to make your business run more smoothly so that you can take more time for yourself.
- Software – invest in software that will free up time for you and your team. If you set it up properly it will also be less prone to mistakes than tired human beings.
- Recruit – invest in people to share the workload
- Training – if it’s hard to recruit at the right level then invest in training and ‘grow your own’ team who will do things your way right from the beginning. Invest in training for you and your team to help you to work more efficiently.
- Business coach – invest in a business coach so that you have an external view on how to improve your business whether that is profitability or work-life balance. As well as accountability to help you to put all that reading and course into effect.
- Increase your prices – we run regular (free) webinars on how and why to do this so I won’t explain this here but please contact me if you’d like more information on our next event.
- Sack poor clients – whether you define that as unprofitable or vampire clients that suck your time your life will be much happier and profitable without them. You’ll either have more time for yourself or to take on more profitable and enjoyable work.
Continuing professional development
This week I’ve been busy with my QAD inspection. As a chartered accountant I have these inspections regularly. Although I like to think that we do everything ‘by the book’ at Minerva Accountants I always worry that I’ve missed something. While these inspections can be quite nerve wracking they can also be reassuring when everything passes with no queries or comments. It’s also reassuring for my clients to know that our regulators are checking up on us to ensure that we reach their required standard.
As a member of ICAEW Council and speaking, writing and coaching accountants to run a better business, it is important that I set a good example myself in my own accountancy business.
One of the things they check up on is my CPD, aka continuing professional development. Complying with this is no problem for me as I write books and articles to help accountants as well as business owners so I’m always researching.
Here are just some of the areas that I read up on, attend webinars and talks, and research in depth.
• Latest tax and accounting developments to support our clients at Minerva Accountants. No mean feat with 4 ‘budgets’ already this year and MTD (Making Tax Digital) on the horizon
• Latest research into growing businesses or making them run more efficiently for my coaching clients. Also useful for running my own businesses better
• Latest coaching developments as I’m a qualified coach and mentor as well as an accountant
• Ways to improve my speaking as a member of the Professional Speaking Association
• Anything interesting as I love to expand my mind
Education is the wing on which dreams fly
I’m not sure of the original source of this quote but it strikes me as very true.
As a chartered accountant I get hung, drawn, and quartered (or something similar) by ICAEW if I don’t keep my knowledge up to date through CPD (continuing professional development) ever year. But, as a business owner, I need to develop so many skills beyond just my accountancy ones.
I’m a member of the PSA (Professional Speaking Association) to improve my speaking skills, I used a writing coach for my first book, I have a formal coaching and mentoring qualification to help both my coaching clients and because it is a great way to help advise business owners.
And that’s without going into all the books and articles I read, some of which I recommend here.
It’s why I like to speak, write and run courses for business owners of all sorts. Yes, you’ll pay a premium for the most valuable courses (which all come with a guarantee) but I hope you’ll get a lot of benefit from the free webinars too. We run the Minerva Money Matters series for general business owners and the Better Business series for accountants and bookkeepers.
What other means do you use to educate yourself on how to run a good business that will not just survive, but thrive, through these tough times?
What business owners can learn from cats
Bryony Thomas (author and founder of Watertight Marketing*) may liken customers to cats in the way we tempt them in but never own them. But I think business owners can learn by watching cats themselves.
Cats generally spend vast portions of their day sleeping. Many business owners don’t get enough sleep. Learn how to take better care of yourself in this, and other ways.
Cats do as little as possible and we should all learn to work more efficiently so that we can work fewer hours. The recent trial of the 4 day week has left 90% of the participants intent on adopting this as a permanent measure as they became much more productive.
Cats can become quite loud and insistent when they want food. Do you need to ask for what you want more clearly? Perhaps a little more politely though.
Cats are very good at expressing their thanks. Do we need to say thank you more? Although I wouldn’t suggest rubbing yourself all over your customers.
Cats are all about cupboard love. Whilst this isn’t a good way to develop real relationships being nice to people will definitely smooth the wheels of industry.
Many people are allergic to cats and we should accept that not everybody will like us. That’s why we tailor out marketing to the type of client where we can help most.
What qualities do you think dogs have that business owners can learn from?
*If you haven’t yet read Watertight Marketing I’m happy to recommend it. You can buy a copy here and don’t forget to register for Bryony’s free workbook.
Good causes vs charities
Not all good causes are charities and not all charities are UK charities. Why does this matter? Only donations to UK charities are tax deductible.
Please don’t let this stop you donating to good causes around the world but I just wanted you to be aware that your donations can go further if they’re to UK charities.
I also meet a lot of people wanting to set up charities for very good causes. The regulations around running a charity are enormous so, if you’re just running a few events, it may be easier to treat it as a fundraising event for an existing charity. Why saddle yourself with all the additional accounting, admin, and audit of setting up a charity when you could use that energy to raise money for the good cause itself?