Advice from an accountant who’s been through the hard times and come out the other side
You don’t need me to tell you that running an accountancy practice isn’t easy. Chris Brown discovered this the hard way when he set up Brown & Co in Lancashire in 2012. He wanted to run his practice on his own terms, but he hadn’t anticipated how difficult it would be to go it alone. Now, he has multi-million pound businesses as clients, has been nominated for several awards and is thriving. But it’s been a long journey.
When I interviewed Chris, he had some sound advice for anyone struggling to get the results, the profits or the lifestyle they really want. And it boiled down to these three questions.
1. What do you want your practice to look like?
It’s often easier to know what you don’t want, particularly when you first start out. But without a clear goal to aim for, you’ll find yourself bogged down in the day to day with no clear route out.
As Chris says: ‘I had some ideas of how things should go and how it should look, but not a good plan of how to achieve that or what to concentrate on. There was no clarity on where the business was going.’
Chris’s advice is to work out exactly what you want to achieve with your practice and then focus on how you’re going to get there. What kind of work gives you the most satisfaction? What kind of practice would enable you to do more of what you enjoy and less of what you don’t? Don’t be put off if there’s a big gap between the way things are now and how you’d like them to be. Once you know what that gap is, you can start planning a route to the other side.
And it’s really important to look at both your business and your personal goals and how they link together. For example, maybe one of your personal goals is to take three holidays each year. But if your business is totally reliant on you being there, how will you be able to get away for those much-needed breaks? It’s not a question of scaling down your personal goals – it’s how can you create a business that allows you take those holidays?
2. What kind of clients do you want?
Taking on any old client because you need the business just doesn’t add up.
Chris knows this all too well.
‘It was a case of “let's just get the clients and let's get them in for the fee that they feel comfortable with”. We ended up with small owner managed businesses, with perhaps one or two members of staff, very small businesses who weren't looking to grow. So not the kind of clients we were looking for. But we didn't have the confidence to go after the bigger clients or know how to pitch ourselves.’
The more you have of this type of client, the less time you’ll have to focus on the clients you do want. In the end, clients who query every bill and expect advice for free simply aren’t profitable. And they certainly don’t give you the fulfilment you want from your practice.
Write down what your ideal clients look like. Are they in a certain sector? Are they a particular size? Do you want to work with start-ups or well-established businesses? Or in a particular geographical area?
Get crystal clear about this and the value you can give to them. It makes it much easier to focus your marketing messages, your website, your networking pitches and your team on appealing to exactly that audience.
3. Who will hold you accountable?
You no doubt know that progress comes from working ‘on’ your practice and not just ‘in’ it, but it’s hard to do, isn’t it? When you’re so busy with day-to-day tasks, all too often the important-but-not-urgent work gets neglected. And when you’re the one in charge, there’s no one to hold you accountable.
Chris found this particularly hard when he first set up his practice: ‘It's tough at the start because you’ve got to make all the decisions yourself. You don't have anyone to bounce stuff off.’
The solution for Chris was to work with a coach (called a practice growth expert) who has trained specifically to work with accountants. And it’s made a big difference.
‘My practice growth expert is a huge help. Just having another person there to ask how I go about doing this helps to keep things in perspective. So, if I’m going off on one and thinking, oh, this is rubbish, what am I doing, they bring it all back in line and help me look at the things I’ve achieved so far and keep me on track.’
A great coach will help you identify what’s important to move you closer to your goals. And, importantly, to understand what’s stopping you from doing what needs to be done.
Get help to find YOUR answers to these questions
As Chris discovered, doing it all on your own isn’t easy. But things changed for him when he started working with AVN. For 25 years, AVN has been helping accountants to create the kind of practice they really want, that gives them the kind of life they really want – and enough time and income to enjoy it.
If that’s something you’d like too, your first step is to book a discovery call. It’s a 20-minute call where we find out about you, your practice and your biggest challenges so we can suggest some next steps. And we promise no sales pitch.
Shane Lukas, AVN for Accountants