Tag: business advice

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No more Google! 

Why are you googling when you have a dedicated accountant on tap? Someone who can give you good quality personalised advice. 

Whether it’s ‘my mate at the pub’ or ‘my colleague on the golf course’ there’s nothing more annoying to accountants than their clients taking tax ‘advice’ from unregulated sources. 

As a qualified accountant I have to stay up to date with the latest legislation every year, to spend time understanding my client’s circumstances, and to refuse or refer work that I’m not personally qualified and experienced to carry out. But that doesn’t stop ‘Dave at the pub’ from offering his personal insights. 

Depending on the advice my usual response is that it’s not applicable to my client’s particular circumstances, not viable, or it may even be illegal. It may even refer to US tax legislation rather than UK! Even HMRC’s own website is so heavily dumbed down to be accessible to lay people that it can not always be relied upon. And it certainly isn’t personalised. 

I’m often asked to do live budget commentaries but I always refuse these as I prefer to listen, make notes about the clients each aspect will affect, and then read the full supporting documentation. Only then will I start to offer advice.  

I’m very much in favour of HMRC clamping down on unregulated tax advisers. Let’s make sure that accountants offer the best service possible by staying technically up to date and taking time to understand our clients and their financial circumstances. 

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What do you value?

Struggling to write this today as I hide in a café in the village while a house clearance company dispose of 14 years of my life.

But I’m a natural optimist (and the future is looking very good once I’ve waved goodbye to the memories here) so it’s easy to see the silver linings.

I’ve always believed that people are more important than things and so it was a no-brainer that I would choose to run my first business on just 25 hours per week so that I could spend time around my kids as they were growing up. I also worked from home until the team grew beyond 5 people and we had to take on external offices in the next town.

Working on limited hours meant that I soon became an acknowledged expert on how to run my business as efficiently as possible and it’s something that I love to share with accounts and business clients through coaching and courses. Which is how my second business was born.

Seeing my possessions go out of the door (some to new homes via a charity, and some to the dump) is hard but they are just objects compared to the family, friends, staff, and clients who ate around my dining table or shared their dreams in my offices.

What are your most precious memories? Does your business allow you to do what you want to do?

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How much do you charge?

I’m always tempted to say “let me get my tape measure out and work out the length of that piece of string” but somehow, I bit my tongue and explain that, like a builder, I can’t quote until I understand the job.

First, I need to understand the starting point:
• Type/complexity/size of business
• Limited/partnership/sol trader (we don’t handle personal tax except for directors of our business clients)
• Bookkeeping quality and software

Then I need to understand the desired end point. What services they want /need.

This helps me to understand the level of staff required, how much time they will spend, and any specific skills or tech the work needs.

Finally, I need to understand if we’re the right accountant for them:
• How tech savvy are they so that we can automate more work?
• What is their attitude towards paying tax?
• Are they looking to grow their business or make other changes where they can benefit from our business advice?

Only then can I produce the magic number from my costing spreadsheet.

In the meantime, we try to give a ballpark figure and put some sample packages on our website. We’re not cheap but, according to our testimonials, we’re worth it.

How do you set your prices? Do you quote one single price for an identical item, or does it need to be tailored to the specific customer?

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Tax Tip

This week saw the release of the quarterly ICAEW South West business confidence monitor. Have a read to see how the region is feeling about doing business. Do you feel the same?

Although generally positive late payments and increased regulation are worrying many.

In a separate survey, almost 50% of businesses said their costs had risen because of the increase in the National Living Wage. Almost 20% put up prices to cover the increase. Around 20% have already improved efficiencies, including using automation and investing in technology. Others have closed pay gaps and increased upskilling of staff in response.

On Friday 2nd August at 8.30am ICAEW will be holding an online discussion and overview of the results for the South West Region, led by ICAEW Head of Business, Simon Gray and Ed Tellwright from the British Business Bank – to join us please register here.

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Should you be selfish in business?

I believe that you should be selfish in business, but perhaps not in the way that you think.

When you set up your business you gave up regular income and security in order to run the business of your dreams. Your dreams may be similar to mine or perhaps not, but the point is that we want something out of our business in the form of work-life balance, profit, or passion.

And we should be selfish about structuring our business to achieve our personal goals.

I see far too many business owners who are working long hours for below minimum wage or just not enjoying whatever their business has become. Some of them come to me for coaching. They are worse off than if they had stayed in their imperfect employment and they need something to help them out of the rough and onto the fairway towards their original goal. (And there, as a non-golfer, my golfing analogies end!)

Are you where you want to be in your business? If yes then give yourself a round of applause, if not then reply to this email for news on our various coaching programmes.

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Doing business on Deep Space 9 

I’m a bit of a scifi geek and I love the Quark character who owns the bar in Deep Space 9. He has some great business traits. And some bad ones! 

The good news is that Quark tracks his KPIs (on an hourly basis which is probably overkill!).  

In Season 2 Episode 10* Quark has enlisted a musician to draw more visitors to the bar BUT the musician is so good that nobody is actually drinking or buying food. He talks about his indicators which feed into his projections which in turn lead to profits.  

In one of my businesses I track speaking events because the more I speak, the more enquiries I get for coaching and courses. In another I track networking and ‘coffee’ meetings as relationship building leads to more referrals. 

What lead indicators do you track in your business that you know will lead to more profits in time? 

*in case you want an excuse to watch it  

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The problem of growing too fast

It sounds as though it’s a nice problem to have but many small businesses fail at this stage

  • Overtrading – lack of cash to cover your higher costs while you wait to collect those higher debts. Clamp down on your credit control to ensure that you have sufficient working capital
  • Lack of systems – don’t reinvent the wheel but create a system for anything that you’re likely to do more than once. I’m running a live webinar for accountants on Tuesday 16th so email us for the link
  • Unable to find the right people – you will probably need more staff but you may also need different staff for a scaleup rather than a start up. If you prefer to do the work then you could employ a manager to run your business. I like to train my own team as we work very differently to many traditional accountants but you will have more choice in recruits if you offer REAL flexibility on hours and location.

What have you found helpful as you grew your business?

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How I manage to run three businesses (and still sleep 8 hours a night!)

People often ask me how I manage to run three businesses.

It started 15 years ago when I set up Hudson Business Accountants and Advisers to fit around my small children in just 25 hours per week. There was a lot of juggling parenting and business responsibilities to get the balance I wanted. I sold this business for 32% above average as it was set up to run efficiently without me.

Roll forward a few years and those small children have now left home for university and I run three new businesses

  1. Minerva Accountants does what you might expect: accounts, tax, bookkeeping and business (not just tax) advice
  2. Minerva Technology is a small fintech startup
  3. Hudson Business Advice is mainly me speaking, writing, and coaching other accountants and business owners how to run their own business more efficiently and profitably.

So how do I do it?
• I employ people better than me
• I am happy to delegate to these and other experts and subcontractors
• I invest in technology (hence why I had an idea for the tech business!)
• I choose clients that are a good fit for our services and don’t try to service unsuitable clients.

How could you manage your business more efficiently and profitably?

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How to spoil your clients 

I often write and speak about how important it is to move along clients who aren’t suitable for your business. But today I want to speak about how you can spoil the clients who are right for your business.

You obviously need to do the work as efficiently as possible. This usually means investing in good technology and the best people.

And then you need to offer a wow customer service. If you are too busy doing the work then you may not have time to do this. In order to spend time with your clients you need to have time when you’re not involved in the day to day work. This means having a good team and not taking on more clients than you can handle.

Charging a good price will allow you to pay for your team and technology and means that you don’t need to take on too much work.

“Charge a fee you’re happy with. Find clients who are happy to pay it. And then spoil them. Answer their questions. Proactively support the needs they didn’t know they had”. – Megan Guest

If you want to spoil your clients (don’t we all?) then you need to charge enough to build this into your business.

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Recruiting the best

I like to recruit people who are better than me. But there is a shortage of accountants (and other STEM careers) at the moment.

Fortunately I also like to recruit non-accountants and to train them up. I particularly look for people with customer service experience who can look after our lovely clients while we use software to run things as efficiently as possible behind the scenes. This suits our tech savvy clients.

The downside of running a modern business is that we do things very differently to most traditional accountants so it is often easier to train somebody from scratch than to persuade them to unlearn bad habits acquired elsewhere.

I like to do careers talks or interview practice in local schools so that I get an early glimpse of the new talent about to hit the workplace. One of my trainees came to me for work experience as a 17 year old and is now a manager in another local accountancy firm. And I expect they’ll go further.

If you are looking for a general manager to free you up to develop your business you could try looking at retail managers. They have a broad range of skills and could soon learn about your particular business and sector.

When it comes to recruitment try thinking outside the box.

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