A big, often overlooked skill needed of business owners is the ability to let go. This takes many forms, such as knowing when to let go of clients, or let go of staff, but what about letting go of your workload? Often, if there’s a specific service you’ve positioned yourself as the expert in, or a client has an issue you know you’re best experienced to fix, then you’ll just do it. You’ll know you can do it 80% - 90% right. And delegating it would mean it would get done 70% right. That’s why it feels easier to keep hold of it and do it yourself. The problem arises when you keep hold of everything, and find you’re at capacity and end up doing 0% right because you haven’t had time. A more valuable use of your time, as the business owner, is to let your staff do it 70% right, then work with them to get it 71% right, then 72% right, and so on.  That’s how you’ll successfully build your business overtime and have people doing things for you.  Learn more about how you can banish the bottleneck in your team from this post from The Accountants Mastermind, Simon Chaplin... scroll to the end for the full webinar with myself and Simon. Client Stories“GoProposal is the cheapest product you'll get for your accountancy firm. It's been worth £30,000 in revenue to me this year.” Euan Brown | Founder of Total Accounting Hear Euan's Full Story READY TO GET STARTED?Take the guesswork out of pricing & control your profitabilitySign Up Now for Free

You only need one thing to combat the fear of repricing clients in your Accountancy business. Before you go into a fee review meeting with a client, where you know you’ve got to increase their fee, before you come up with a whole plethora of excuses, all you need is need self-awareness. Self-awareness is so, so important. You’re afraid of having this conversation around repricing, so in order to become self aware you need to think about what it really is you’re worried about. Then you need to chat through it, out loud, with somebody else. Because in our own mind, these thoughts spiral out of control. We think, what if they leave? And then the next logical thing is, what if they all leave? What if EVERY client leaves because of what we’re going to do here? But just say to another member of the team, “I’m really afraid to do this.” It’s just to reassure ourselves and say, “Well, is that really likely to happen? Let’s just reprice five clients first, let’s see what happens there. Then let’s judge to make that incremental change and move forward to the next part." GoProposal can really help with this. It is the consistent pricing system you need. As it’s client facing, it’ll enable you to be transparent with your clients, in the meeting, and show them why you’re charging those amounts. Watch the full video and join in the conversation over on LinkedIn Client Stories“GoProposal is the cheapest product you'll buy. It's been worth £30,000 to me this year.” Euan Brown | Founder of Total Accounting Hear Euan's Full Story Are you ready to start charging what YOU'RE worth? Let's Get Started Let's Get Started Let's Get Started

There are other MARGINS that exist in your accounting business, other than PROFIT margins. These margins remain largely invisible but decision by decision, they get squeezed, taking you closer to the edge. You then only need something like the Corona Virus to push you up to, or over the edge. Now hindsight is a wonderful thing, but as we rebuild and prepare for the new world, I think it’s important that we bring these ‘margins’ into view, so we can be more intentional about protecting them moving forward. (This video was heavily inspired by my friend Paul Scanlon who’s a pastor and incredible speaker. Search YourTube for "Paul Scanlon - Simplify Your Life)

ven if you’re one of the few firms which has figured out how to correctly charge your clients in the first place, the complexity of the services you provide and the constantly changing nature of your client’s businesses, means that the scope of work can quickly become out of alignment with what they’re paying you. So unless you have a system which flexes throughout the year which is driven by your team , you’ll end up over-servicing and undercharge your clients. This then leads to a lot of accountancy firms not making enough money to be able to deliver the level of service your clients are happy to pay for and one of two things tend to happen: - You over-service and undercharge your clients (nightmare for you.) - You attempt to hit them with an ‘ambush invoice’ at the end of the year... IF..... you can figure out what they actually owe you (nightmare for you AND them.) Neither work. All you want is to be paid for the hard work you do right? There are several ways firms attempt to solve this, but over the years, we’ve refined a process which is being successfully used by accountancy firms around the world, which we call the 1-3-12 Rule™. In this online masterclass you will learn… - How to start any new client engagement off in the right way (which includes the first fee review after month three) - The best way to position the 1-3-12 Rule™ to your clients so that client’s actually welcome the call - The key bottleneck that will prevent this from working and the unexpected way firms are removing it

ven if you’re one of the few firms which has figured out how to correctly charge your clients in the first place, the complexity of the services you provide and the constantly changing nature of your client’s businesses, means that the scope of work can quickly become out of alignment with what they’re paying you. So unless you have a system which flexes throughout the year which is driven by your team , you’ll end up over-servicing and undercharge your clients. This then leads to a lot of accountancy firms not making enough money to be able to deliver the level of service your clients are happy to pay for and one of two things tend to happen: - You over-service and undercharge your clients (nightmare for you.) - You attempt to hit them with an ‘ambush invoice’ at the end of the year... IF..... you can figure out what they actually owe you (nightmare for you AND them.) Neither work. All you want is to be paid for the hard work you do right? There are several ways firms attempt to solve this, but over the years, we’ve refined a process which is being successfully used by accountancy firms around the world, which we call the 1-3-12 Rule™. In this online masterclass you will learn… - How to start any new client engagement off in the right way (which includes the first fee review after month three) - The best way to position the 1-3-12 Rule™ to your clients so that client’s actually welcome the call - The key bottleneck that will prevent this from working and the unexpected way firms are removing it

This one idea has helped us to understand a lot of frustrations we were experiencing in our accounting firm towards the end of last year. Initially, I just couldn't figure out what the problem was. We had more staff, they were better trained and demonstrating great values. We had better processes and systems, powered by better technology. We were attracting our dream clients and our MRR was higher than ever before. But things still felt.......tough... tougher than ever in fact. But why was that? Wasn't technology supposed to be making our lives easier? THEN, one day, I came across this concept of the COMPLICATED versus the COMPLEX in a book called "Brave New Work" and I immediately saw how it applied to our firm and the accounting industry as a whole. Complicated vs Complex So let me start by explaining the difference between something that's complicated and something that's complex. Complicated - A good example of this is a car engine. Something that's complicated can be understood. We can write instructions for it. We can learn about it. It might take time, but eventually we can dissect it. We can write rule books for it and fundamentally, we can control it. That's the key aspect of something that's complicated. Something that's complex, on the other hand, is quite different. Complex - Something that's complex can't be controlled. It can only ever be managed. If complicated is a car engine, then complex is traffic. Traffic is complex because you have different drivers, of different abilities, driving different cars, going in different directions with different focuses. All manner of complexity surrounds that. It suddenly becomes a very difficult situation. We can't control traffic, all we can ever do is do our very best to manage it. Complicated vs Complex in accounting The services we provide and the prices we charge in our accounting business are complicated. They take time to learn. We can put processes in place to plan, maintain and fundamentally, control them. We can get the right technology. We can train our team to use and sell them. However, the complex side of accounting is introduced in the businesses that we serve. Our clients. This is due to having different business owners, with different agendas, different levels of experience, different operating systems, different sized businesses, different markets and many different frustrations that appear. These are people. They're not processes and systems. The challenge that we face in providing accounting services to these businesses, is that it's where the complicated meets the complex. It is in the meeting of these two entities, that causes so much frustration. Where we were going wrong... All of our efforts were being poured into controlling the COMPLICATED (our services) and a much smaller amount into 'attempting to control' the COMPLEX (our clients.) The problem though, as I mentioned above, is that complexity can never be controlled.... it can only ever be MANAGED. And it doesn't matter how good the technology gets, managing that complexity will always be challenging, because it's a hands-on process, which is why we need to develop skills and tactics to arm us in this mission. Now I don't have a silver bullet, but I can help you to understand the problem better and moreover, help you to articulate the problem to your team more clearly. What I want to do in this video, is to help you to unravel the difference between what's complicated and what's complex and to understand the approach you have to take to solve each of them. This is an interesting and strong concept for us to get our heads around. Watch the full video below, then join in the <a href="https://www.linkedin.