Tag: business advice

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Create without restraint 

I saw this on a social media post yesterday and it got me really excited. (Okay, accountants clearly have a different tolerance for excitement compared to the rest of the world 😉) I love coming up with ideas to improve my own businesses and also clients’ businesses.  

We even have quarterly meetings to discuss my ideas. Strictly they’re our 90-day planning meetings where the team get together, in person, if possible, to plan the next quarter. 

Fortunately, I have a very pragmatic business manager (Kate) who restrains me and keeps me on track! Apparently, we don’t have time to do EVERYTHING I want to improve the businesses in the next 90-days, so we discuss everything and then prioritise.  

Kate then creates an action plan and sends these out to each of us. And then she NAGS me to get these done. This accountability means that my ideas become reality instead of drifting away like dandelion seeds on a summer day. 

We even package this as for our clients: 

  • Business coaching from me (I’m a qualified coach as well as an accountant) to help unblock your business  
  • 90-day planning sessions with Kate who also runs a VA business to get things done 
  • Clarity financial reviews to grow your business by numbers (and I’ll even throw in a copy of my Growing by Numbers book) 

So, feel free to indulge me and my creativity by booking a group or individual coaching session this month. 

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Be a Joy Seeker 

Marie Condo goes through homes clearing out anything that isn’t essential unless the client can honestly answer the question ‘Does this bring me joy?’ 

My suggestion is that we should do the same with our businesses. Weighing up profit and passion. 

Some work we do because it is highly profitable but, if you’re like most business owners, there’s probably some work that barely breaks even. You can either stop doing it or find a way to do it more profitably, perhaps by automating it? This may be the nature of the work or the particular clients, so it is worth reviewing both each year. 

Some work we do because we love it. Coaching is my passion, and I love seeing the result of my advice in clients reclaiming their work-life balance or taking holidays after making their businesses more profitable. 

Ideally you would only do things that fall into both categories but sometimes they only manage one. Once you’re making enough money to cover your essentials I’d focus on your passion. If we do this, we will generally do a better job and be able to increase our fees.  

If something is neither profitable nor enjoyable then you should stop providing that service or pass on that client. And you should carry out this review each year until you have a profitable business that you love.

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Building a business can be as painful as walking on Lego 

I read this somewhere last week and it is so true. Whilst there are great highs on the roller coaster of business there are also some real lows. 

So what can you do?

When you identify a problem that is likely to recur in some form then it is worth spending time to make changes to prevent it. But sometimes the solution is not really obvious. 

It may help to work through this with a coach, a colleague, or on your own by asking some simple questions 

  1. What exactly is happening? 
  1. When did this issue start? 
  1. What is the impact? 
  1. What changed recently that might have triggered this? 
  1. Have we had a similar problem before? How did we resolve it? 
  1. What outcome do I want to achieve? 
  1. Is this realistic given any current constraints? 

Here’s to using your Lego creatively instead of as an instrument of torture. 

Business confidence monitor 

The Q3 ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor is here and shows the increased tax burden are holding back business and economic growth 

ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor | ICAEW 

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Accountant: therapist or dentist? 

When I set up my first accountancy business one of my old school friends, now living in USA, told me that a visit to her accountant felt like a visit to her dentist. As I’m one of those people who is terrified of the dentist (in spite of never needing treatment) I was determined that my business would be nothing like that. 

When we had offices I invested in a decent coffee machine and we ensured that clients could charge their phones while visiting. 

When we used to provide monthly envelopes for clients to send in their invoices for bookkeeping I chose some that felt quite velvety (even though they were four times the price of the others) so that clients would have a bit of niceness. 

We send welcome gifts of chocolates from a local business (obviously we had to sample them first!) and birthday cards by a local artist. 

Now we are busy building an app for clients to calculate how much tax they need to save and how much is available for dividends. 

What can you do to make your clients’ experience smoother? 

Business confidence monitor 

The Q3 ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor is here and shows the increased tax burden are holding back business and economic growth 

ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor | ICAEW 

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Charge what you’re worth, not what your competitors are worth 

Pricing is often difficult when you first start your business, and you may well have based your initial prices on what your competitors charge. But you soon learn where you sit amongst the competition. 

At Minerva Accountants we charge slightly higher than others and have testimonials from clients that we are ‘worth it’ as well as other success stories. They might just say that we’re easier to deal with or perhaps quantify it by saying that coaching has helped them save three years in growing their business. There are also the silent testimonials when clients return with a new business or refer others to us. 

So where do you sit in the hierarchy of your competition? 

And is that reflected in your prices? 

In order to increase your prices, you may first need to raise your services to a higher level or, if you’re already ahead of your competitors, you may need to differentiate yourself more to your prospects. As accountants we’re often seen as offering the same commodity service as any other accountant. People think we just fill in tax forms once a year and keep them legal. 

But we can do soooo much more.  

We can spend time learning about the business and identifying where profits are being left on the table. We can help clients to pluck the low hanging fruit. Or build a ladder to harvest the higher rewards too. This is where we get most satisfaction and provide most value. When we move beyond hassle-free accounts to more profitable clients. 

First, improve the value of your offering, then promote it widely.  

How can you differentiate your yourself? 

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How was your holiday? 

Hope fully you managed some time off (or have a break lined up) from your business without too much hassle.  

When I ran Hudson Business Accountants and Advisers, I remember coming back from a holiday to find that my team had onboarded 2 new clients from new enquiries and already completed the work for one of them.  

It was a very strange feeling to realise that, even though I was the face of the business and the one responsible for business development, my team could function perfectly well without me. Yes, it was what I had aimed for but, like my kids growing up and leaving home, it took a bit of mental and emotional adjustment from me.  

How great to take a relaxing holiday without interruption and not come back to a disaster.  

It also increased the value of my business when I eventually sold it as the business was its own entity and could function to the same high standards without me.  

If I can help you to achieve the same profitable, work-life balancing business then please reply to this email and we can book a call to discuss the options from free to freedom. 

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The Club Tropicana business model 

Apologies, I’ve forgotten where I first heard this description, but according to Wham, at Club Tropicana drinks are free! 

And many businesses appear to be adopting the same model. We often do it ourselves. 

We give away free books, free webinars, free speaking gigs, newsletters like this, blog posts, free discovery calls, etc. Because we don’t value our time enough.  

So this week I’d like you to work out the time and cost of everything that you give away for free. And then compare it to the number of new clients that you have acquired in the last 12 months. What is your cost of acquisition per client? Or per £1 of turnover? 

Most of this fails to convert, not because it isn’t useful, but because we’re targeting the wrong people (if they’re relying on your free stuff they’re probably ‘tyre-kickers’ and not likely to pay for your prime products/services) or because we’re too British about money and sales to give a clear ‘call to action’  

So here is our big, fat CALL TO ACTION 

Accountants and bookkeepers: go to our website and choose one of our courses or book some coaching (individual is the best value but we have group coaching for those on a budget) 

Business owners: stop wishing for a better business and book yourself a Clarity Business Advice session where we can pull up your numbers, identify where you can improve profitability etc, and send you away with an action plan (and maybe book some coaching too) 

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I’m not a disrupter! 

I don’t ‘move fast and break things’. 

And I don’t believe that many of my successful entrepreneur friends are either. 

Agile business development is not about revolution and guillotines. It’s about agility and being open to change and innovation.  

I’m acknowledged as an ‘early adopter’ by the founders of Xero who led large scale cloud adoption in the UK. And I’m an award winning author and speaker on subjects of running a modern business and delivering advisory services for practice and client success. 

I believe in building a business on solid foundations supplemented by innovation. Our team never do anything just because ‘we’ve always done it that way’. Instead we systemise, automate, and delegate and then put a friendly, human front end onto the latest technology. 

I’m far from traditional but I’m not a rebel either. 

Where do you sit on the innovation spectrum? 

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Tax Tip – Directors responsibilities 

It seems really simple, you pay a very small fee and set up your own company on Companies House but did you know that you have many legal responsibilities as a director? The sort that mean you might personally be fined or go to jail? Here are some of them. 

Whilst it might feel good to be the director of your own company you have several responsibilities as directors under the Companies Act 2006: 

  • To act within their powers (in the articles of association etc) 
  • To promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole i.e. not benefitting one member above the company e.g. by allowing one director/shareholder to take out more dividends/loans that the company can afford 
  • To exercise independent judgement – you can take advice but must decide for yourself 
  • To exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence eg using a chartered accountant or professional bookkeeper if you don’t have those skills in house 
  • To avoid conflict of interest  
  • Not to accept benefits from third parties 
  • To declare interests in transactions 

Being a director doesn’t come with a compulsory training (although I do offer a course) so please make sure that you don’t fall foul of the law. 

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Are you goal oriented or process oriented? ​​

Do you get excited by the end goal or do you take the time to enjoy the journey.

Although I like to have a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, I actually get most pleasure from the things I learn on the journey. 

This was brought home to me as I tend to relax by watching something easy on TV just before bed (currently on season 4 of Stargate SG1 if you’re interested) and I’ve recently taken up crochet again to keep my hands occupied while my brain is gently slowing down. 

I’ve chosen a simple pattern for a cardigan as my goal. I haven’t crocheted regularly for decades so a few days later I was about 20 rows in before realising that my tensions were all wrong and the garment would end up at least 20% too big for me. That’s assuming that it will ever be good enough for me to wear anyway. 

As with business problems I went back to my primary motivation to decide what to do. My true purpose was to occupy my hands and the time already spent was a ‘sunk cost’ irrespective of my next action.   The solution was obviously to start again and reuse the wool with nothing lost except time. 

But that time wasn’t wasted! I had learned things from the first attempt that will make the second turn better. I have remembered how to crochet, I will watch the tension more closely and measure earlier and, if all else fails, I will have a third attempt with a smaller needle or rework the pattern to aim for a smaller size. 

Business is the same. It may seem a little more important with more at stake but there’s often a simple way to rescue an apparent disaster (just ask some of my coaching clients how much better they feel after we’ve worked through a gnarly problem together) and lots of learning to be had along the way, 

What’s the biggest problem in your business at the moment?