Blog

Can your Accounting firm run indefinitely without you at the helm?

Harvee Pene, founder of ChangeGPS Collaboration not Competition Community on LinkedIn, outlines the steps you need to take to get there.

Accounting firm owners, especially those just starting out, often make the mistake of getting caught up in the day-to-day operations of their business—the work of running the business—so much so that they don’t take time to consider how the business runs.

Are you guilty of putting your nose to the grindstone and forgetting to come up for a look around? Tax Returns, Financials, FBT etc…

If so, it is critical that you understand the point I’m about to make. For if you do, neither your business nor your life will ever be the same.

Your business is not your life.

The CEO of our Accounting firm just recently returned from their annual voyage to Singapore and Dubai for close to a month. Our firm ticked along just fine without him. (Not discounting his contribution when present!)

Once you recognize that the purpose of your life is not to serve your business, but that the primary purpose of your business is to serve your life, you can then go to work on your business, rather than in it, with a full understanding of why it is absolutely necessary for you to do so.

This is where you can put the model of the Franchise Prototype to work for you.

Working on your business rather than in your business will become the central theme of your daily activity, the prime catalyst for everything you do from this moment forward. Freeing you up for the annual Dubai-Singapore vacation or similar.

How do you work on your business?

Pretend that the Accounting firm you own—or want to own—is the prototype, or will be the prototype, for 5,000 more just like it.

Not almost like it, but just like it. Perfect replicates. Clones.

In other words, pretend that you are going to franchise your business.

And if you are going to set up a model that is the prototype, there are rules you must follow:

• The model will provide consistent value to your customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders, beyond what they expect.
• The model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill.
• The model will stand out as a place of impeccable order.
• All work in the model will be documented in Systems and Manuals.
• The model will provide a uniformly predictable service to the customer.
• The model will utilize a uniform colour, dress, and facilities code.

If you are going to create a Firm that serves your life, you must create an organization that will stand on its own. You need a model that is systematized so that it functions the same way every time, and can be run by people with the lowest skill level. Then, you can step away.

And that is the mark of a true business owner—the ability to enjoy the freedom of owning a business, without the requirement of doing work in the business every day.

Look at your firm – Can it function in your absence? If not, what would it take to get it there? Get to work on your business today.

Harvee Pene is a systems guru, Gen Y advocate and founder of the Accounting industry’s most collaborative community of successful public practitioners. Register for the next Overview of ChangeGPS webinar to see how proven and done-for-you systems can give you the freedom to step away. Or if you want a Singapore vacation of your own, feel free to join us at our first annual conference in Singapore in September.

This article was adapted from an article by Michael Gerber, Author of The E-Myth Revisited.