Category: Business

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If accounts are the language of business learn to say “hello”

It works both ways. Business owners need to understand the story that their accounts tell about their business and accountants need to be able to translate the accounts story into plain English.

Too many people are terrified of their numbers. All those crosses across school books can be quite intimidating. Start to look for the patterns. We can see at a glance if one playing card is higher than another without needing to count the hearts etc on the face of the card. Concentrate on which numbers are higher than last month, last year, or compared to budget. Know whether they should be higher or lower.

And you don’t need to look at all the numbers. Business owners should agree with their accountant and/or business coach which 2-3 numbers to focus on each time.

I feel so passionately that I even wrote a course to help explain it:
➡ Finance for Business Owners

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You are not a bank!

And, as far as I know, you are not a charity. So why are you lending clients money by allowing them extended credit or even working for free?

Here are some tips to help you collect money faster:

  • Invoice promptly. Xero can help with repeating invoices, invoicing from quotes, and invoicing from your phone while on site
  • For longer contracts consider getting paid up front or in instalments. Minerva’s clients pay us over 12 months as we are doing work for them throughout the year with monthly bookkeeping health checks and other advice as a minimum
  • Make it easy for people to pay you. Make sure that your bank details are on your invoice. Our regular clients pay by direct debit through Gocardless. We can also take payment by card and there is a button for this on our invoices or we use Zettle to take payments for booksales at conferences etc.
  • Send invoice reminders. We can help clients to set up the automated reminders in Xero. The first one is just a polite enquiry to check that they have received the invoice and that everything is alright. Later ones are more severe. If clients require more functionality we can help them with Satago or Chaser.io
  • Credit check your clients with an app like Satago.
  • Be prepared to take legal action. Clients pay for their services. Requesting services without the means to pay is like shoplifting. If they’re not paying they’re definitely not clients. Clients ghosting you is definitely a broken relationship, get paid and get out!

You work hard so you deserve to be paid.

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The most important training session

The most important training session isn’t the toughest one, and it isn’t the last one before your A race. It’s the one that you really don’t want to do but you do anyway. It might be a cold, wet, or icy morning. Or it may be during a heat wave. But having the discipline to do that tough session instead of skipping it is what will make all the difference on the big day.

That’s why we include actions and accountability in all our courses*, group coaching sessions, and of course our individual sessions. Yes, I like to think that you’ll feel motivated by my eloquent words and inspirational ideas 😉 but on Monday morning it’s up to you to get things done.

Discipline is worth much more than motivation.

*next cohorts start 15th Sept so do get in touch if you keep meaning to book but haven’t got around to it yet. You can find out more about our courses here.
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My life isn’t as perfect as my timeline

Nobody’s is!

I’m all in favour of authenticity but I also hate oversharing. You’re my wonderful clients and business contacts, not my best friends, and there need to be boundaries in every relationship.

We all draw that line in a slightly different place. Although I will never deny that I have dirty laundry I certainly won’t be airing it in public. In spite of my very public social media profile, I’m actually an introvert and a naturally private person. I’m also a positive person who prefers not to dwell on any negatives in my life.

I love social media, especially Twitter, but there is a strange phenomenon where we all think we know each other perhaps better than we really do. The downside of this is that it is surprisingly easy to be the victim of ‘catfishing’ and all sorts of fraud.

There is also a tendency to believe that what we see is the whole story. Whilst some people overshare, others overedit causing real FOMO and other envy or depression in others who feel that they haven’t achieved as much. I love celebrating your successes, but I also assume that you’ve worked as hard as I have and there is blood, sweat and tears behind the picture of you with your latest award.

So here are a few things that you need to know about me that I don’t explicitly mention:

  • Like you, I often think about jacking in my business and taking a normal job for an easier life. Running a business is never as glamorous as it seems on the outside. I think it is this experience that makes me a good coach, even more than my Coaching/Mentoring qualification.
  • Although I’ve generally worked with wonderful teams, I’ve also had to dismiss people. I try to do this legally and as kindly as I can.
  • My kids have grown up into fabulous people that I enjoy spending time with but some days they’ve exhausted my patience. If you have a small business and you’re short on sleep, I completely understand.
  • I’m in the process of getting divorced. Fortunately, it’s all amicable but sometimes I really have to bite my tongue and remember to act like a grown up (and he’s probably doing the same)
  • Some days I find it hard to get started. Without motivation it’s just hard slog dependent on discipline.

I don’t think it helps anybody to have the details of my rough times but that doesn’t mean that everything is 100% rosy.

Do you think you have the right balance between being genuine and oversharing?

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What sort of business do you want to run?

I recently quoted a prospective accountancy client. Part of the agreement is that she would move her paper records onto the software that I recommended in order to be ready for MTD (Making Tax Digital).

She asked whether it was compulsory to use software and whether other accountants would insist on the same. I held firm and explained that it would be an essential part of working with Minerva Accountants as we want all our clients to get the benefits of using software and to prepare early for MTD while we have the time to help them get used to the software and quarterly deadlines. I was also honest and explained that many accountants haven’t started this move to MTD yet.

Would you rather work with an accountant/expert who is preparing you for the future or somebody who will let you do what you want?

This week’s reading has been ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ by Robert T Kiyosaki, I think that is a good book for business owners and also for teenagers.

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How’s your memory?

I have the memory of a flip flop (that’s a thong for my Aussie readers but a thong in British English is an item of underwear so stand by for maximum confusion). I remember preparing for interview questions “What’s your worst point?” “I have a terrible memory … which is why I take excellent notes and ensure that everything is properly documented.”

I talk a lot about having systems in your business to improve efficiency and the simplest system is often a checklist. These were great when I was trying to run my first business around two small children as I was always able to pick up again reasonably quickly after interruptions “Mum, J’s dangling from the blind cord” (fortunately it was by his ankle and not his neck!).

I recently stayed at a Premier Inn. I’m happy to mention them by name as their service is usually excellent. But on this occasion the bin in my room had not been emptied before I arrived. A simple checklist before the cleaners left the room would have avoided this oversight.

Checklists are also good for having a replicable process to save reinventing the wheel each time. Especially for things in your business that don’t happen all the time. We have detailed processes for completing accounts and tax returns, for onboarding clients, and for regular marketing work. In an ideal world we’d have a written process for everything but I run a small business with limited resources. For less frequent work we just rely on a quick checklist

I recommend Michael Gerber’s E-Myth revisited for ideas on how to systemise your business (and of course, our own course and coaching ?)

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Process thinking

As you know I really believe in the power of systems for running a an efficient and rewarding business. But what does that mean?

I’m visiting clients at the moment so I had a hotel breakfast buffet. For some reason they had decided to put the plates in the middle of the two hotplates of food. This meant that

  1. They weren’t where everybody expected them at the end
  2. People had to join the queue in the middle
  3. People had to cross over to get from the food on one side of the central queue to the food on the other side
  4. It was all slightly chaotic and much slower than it needed to be

Another common example is the chaos at the tea/coffee table at events. The first thing somebody needs is a cup so these should be at the end. Tea drinkers need somewhere to put their teabag before they add milk (for the non-tea drinkers, tea is a chemical reaction and adding milk too soon cools the drink and quenches the reaction ? ) so they need a spare bowl/bin for the teabag packet near the milk. Getting everything laid out in the right order helps to avoid bottle necks. Moving the table away from the wall can allow people to get their drinks from both sides of the table.

When we first started using Receipt Bank (now Dext) software for processing invoices back in 2013 there was a delay between scanning invoices and the OCR process of around an hour. Our bookkeepers were used to working on one client at a time and complained that they had to wait for the software. So we changed the process to scanning all the invoices for all the clients first to allow time for the first client’s invoices to be ready.

This is the sort of thing that a business coach can often see straight away when observing your business from the outside. Quite often there are quick fixes that can make a huge difference for little effort. Generally the big wins require longer projects and a little more planning

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Managing your interruptions

Interruptions can be a real problem as, in addition to the time they take, they also disturb your train of thought. Here are a few tips for managing some of your interruptions.

Consider whether you need to answer your phone straight away. It may be possible to use your voicemail or even better, an answering service, for a few hours per day. This will allow you to focus on work for a while and then to block all your calls together to get back to people later in the day. As long as you return the calls and don’t forget about them!

If you work alone then you may not wish everybody to have your mobile number. Consider getting a virtual landline that is answered by an answering service. I have used Answer It for this purpose but also for answering calls when all our business lines were in use.

Emails can all be batched together and answered once or twice a day. Batching similar tasks is much more efficient. Many accountants have a shared inbox linked to a practice management system which allows them to delegate emails/tasks. Technology can be your friend.

Remember that people usually send emails when it is convenient for them, they may be working flexibly or they may be in a different timezone. Big corporations often use an autoresponder to say that your query will be answered in say, 5 or even 15 days.

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A mindset for distinction

Today I learned that I had earned a distinction in a singing exam that I took earlier this month. But it almost never happened.

Mindset fail: I spent too long believing that I couldn’t sing.

After failing to get into my school choir I spent most of my life believing that I couldn’t sing. A few years ago I took a few vocal coaching lessons with my daughter’s singing teacher to help strengthen my voice as I was doing more professional speaking.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could sing better than I thought and I went on to get a merit for my grade 3 Musical Theatre just before lockdown.

With lessons and exams cancelled through lockdowns etc it has taken a while to get around to my grade 4. My exam was in the morning (I’m not a morning person) but I didn’t want to postpone any longer. My daughter also needed to get her grade 7 out of the way so that she can squeeze in her grade 8 and diploma before she heads off to university.

The first two songs sent okay although I could hear that my voice was a bit husky due to hay fever but I carried on as best I could.

Mindset fail: I let one small problem take over my mind

Then we came to the third and final song which I usually sang a whole tone lower than the official score. It’s easy to turn a knob to transpose on an electronic piano but this was a new venue and there was only a grand piano! I had a panicked talk with my accompanist and asked what key I should sing in. There was no choice but to go for the original key. I knew I could only just make the top notes which is why we’d chosen to sing it lower so that I could belt them out with confidence.

I was so fearful that, part way in, I had a complete mind blank and forgot the words! It’s not like when I speak on stage where nobody knows if I’ve diverged from my script; the examiner had the lyrics and score in front of him. I carried on singing some made up words and may have got away with it but then I couldn’t even do that so I had to stop to ask my accompanist for a prompt. I knew I’d blown it and I wanted to leave the room so I could have a comforting cry.

I was cross with myself for letting my terrified thoughts force me into such a simple mistake. But at least I had nothing to lose so I carried on.

Mindset success: I stopped being scared

Just before the belt with the terrifying high notes I remembered my teacher’s instruction to ‘relax’ and her tips on using less breath.

I didn’t just hit the notes, dear reader, I hit them well!

Overall I lost a few marks for the memory lapse but I handled it professionally and didn’t allow it to affect the rest of the performance.

But how many times do we fail just because we’re too scared to try?

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Like wildlife on a safari

I love what I do but I also like to spend quiet time away from my business. This is the life part of my work-life balance. Now that my kids are older it provides time for enjoyment and also for rest so that I am refreshed when I get back into work.

We can all benefit from some quiet time in our lives.

I was fortunate to spend my honeymoon on safari in Kenya. As we waited quietly by a waterhole the wildlife drifted into view and we were lucky to see all of the ‘big five’ animals: lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceroses, and African buffalo as well as some gentler giraffes and zebra.

At home, when I take time to wait quietly or, more normally for me, to walk or run gently, I am rewarded by ideas.

How often do you get away from your desk to get fresh ideas?

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