Practice zone

Sarah-Jane's first blog: my consultancy begins

When I found out I’d won the TAX UK/AccountingWEB tax consultancy competition I was probably ecstatic for three hours. My practice was going to receive £10,000 of expert development help out of the blue, and it was very, very welcome.

Don’t get me wrong. I do make a point of keeping up-to-date with practice management issues, and most weeknights will see me browsing AccountingWEB with my son on my knee (currently eight months), looking for ideas, information and tax tips, or just to browse the Any Answers section to see if I still have my finger on the pulse. But the actual night I entered the competition I felt frustrated with my business. I wanted to take it further but I couldn’t see how – most of my employees never do what I want and take ages doing it, I am driven by deadlines and I have three children under four not to mention my husband working ridiculously long shifts.

When will someone like me ever be able to work ‘on’ my business and not ‘in’ it? I know the phrase only too well, but putting theory into practice has proved extremely difficult. It seemed to me I was having a taste of success but I was not making the most of every opportunity, and I always knew I could do more.

I used to work in the tax department of a medium-sized firm and I loved it. However, as time went on, I seemed to be getting more responsibility and more and more work - I think in the end I just felt overloaded. I always knew I wanted a family and I couldn’t quite see how this would fit in a practice environment and my need to be on top of the game.

So on 1 February 2001, I struck out on my own, working from my spare bedroom. I was very fortunate at the time that I knew lots of people, and bookkeeping work flooded in. However, I was not trained as a bookkeeper, and therefore I started to find clients of my own – with the ethos of giving small clients exceptional tax advice that they may not get at a bigger firm. The other string to my bow was to offer tax advice to larger clients without doing the accounting work.

Two office moves, four employees, 190 clients and seven years later I have grown a monster! This monster requires me to handle most of the clients, come up with and execute all the tax planning, produce accounts, ensure we are sticking to all the rules, bookkeep, manage my team, keep up-to-date with tax news, take major decisions about our future and have to take all the risks and not much reward. The list is endless! With a job description like this I sometimes daydreamed about being employed. I am great at particular aspects of my job, like spotting tax ideas, relaying this to clients and gaining new ones, but something is holding me back.

When Lesley Stalker from TAX UK was flying down for my first session I got a case of cold feet. It felt like someone was about to go through my knicker drawer, so to speak. But I decided that if I was going to get the most out of this experience I had to be brutally honest, and I pushed my thoughts of panic to one side. I was not wrong.

I met her at the airport and within minutes I knew this was going to be an exciting opportunity. She clearly knows her stuff and she had not been put off so far.

We went through some rather basic financials that I had put together and discussed my current business performance and my future aims. Already I felt relieved! Finally I had someone to share with that understood what I was talking about and who did not laugh but encouraged me. I was totally honest and it felt good – great, in fact.

In the afternoon we moved on to SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis and got the whole team involved. This reminds me that they should be involved more and that they do have good ideas.

Briefly, our key strengths are that we are a young team, that my staff think that they work well together, that our clients trust us and that we have a high level of customer satisfaction.

Our weaknesses mostly centre around staff development and workflow organisation. Another key point is that we sometimes do great work for low fees - and I know this sounds ridiculous, but sometimes no fees at all. When the work hasn’t been positioned correctly from the outset making a fee announcement is not always possible.

We face many opportunities but mainly in the relationships we have with people (clients and others) and in the tax planning that we can offer.

Threats include the reliance the practice has on me and the fact we lack time to explore more interesting work.

So there it was in black and white: a simple document that would allow us to move on and grow our business. It contained what we needed to know and gave us a direction to head in, and it will certainly be incorporated into our ever-growing business plan.

Then Lesley and I took a break and looked at one of my tax cases – it was lovely to have someone in my office to bat ideas off. She confirmed to me that I was heading in the right direction and that my ideas were sound. However, my anticipated fee was insufficient for the work and ideas involved! Shortly after her visit I managed to position my biggest fee to date.

When the visit ended I was walking on air. My practice seemed full of opportunity again, a feeling that spread throughout the office. It occurred to me that whilst I sometimes go through these processes with clients I don’t with my own practice. Now it was time to start.

Lesley and I are now communicating regularly between monthly meetings. She provides me with a monthly action plan, which I am sticking to because I want a better practice.

If I had known what an investment Tax UK would be I would have done it a long time ago. In six weeks I have generated an extra £12,000 of work that I wouldn’t normally have got around to doing, even if I’d had the confidence.

My staff can’t believe how we are seeing opportunities and taking them, we are increasing some fees, we are taking time to follow up more work – things felt incredible in the office. The confidence the process has given me is amazing, but as the second month rolls round I must admit I can feel that familiar deadline-driven approach coming back. But this time I am trying hard to fight it!

Read Lesley's guide on how to carry out a SWOT analysis of your practice