| 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. |
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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?
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.