I’ve always been a performer and thought I would find my career in the arts. However, through dancing and working for the Adelaide Fringe Festival I kept meeting people who needed help with their businesses and finances. That’s how I found my niche as a sort of translator and coach for people in the arts, making the money-stuff less overwhelming and confusing.
When clients sign up, we give them a lot of resources and templates to use. We encourage them to keep pictures of their receipts in the cloud, neatly organised by financial year, and to keep their spreadsheets or accounting software up to date so they always have useful, accurate numbers to make better business decisions. Money stuff can often be very emotional, so we do our best to break the process down into achievable steps.
Helping people for whom accounting is not their thing necessitates a particular approach. In our opinion, it involves a combination of organisation, a good process to follow, doing a little bit of work often rather than letting it build up, and having a money guru (your accountant) on call when you have random questions.
Beyond being tax compliant, which of course is super-important, this approach can help small businesses thrive, especially those in the arts. It offers their owners a sustainable income and financial freedom. It has also enabled our own practice to grow from just five clients at start-up five years ago to over 300 clients today.
Photo credit: Katherine Schultz Photography
I found my niche as a sort of translator and coach for people in the arts, making the money-stuff less overwhelming and confusing
I see this business model as a potential growth sector for the accounting profession. I think a lot of firms tend to look at micro businesses and individuals as not very profitable clients to have, so they quite often fail to service those clients with the time and attention they deserve.
While of course we want to make a profit, that’s not our core purpose. We are here to help the people that so many other firms don’t value. We see these micro businesses as humans, entrepreneurs, creatives and like-minded people who are often running quite healthy businesses.
We have some very sophisticated systems in the back end that keep us running smoothly so that we can help everyone and provide a top-quality service. I’m not sure our particular model is what every firm should be adopting, but I do wish that firms would treat their smaller clients with more appreciation and give them the time and resources they need to succeed.
