Category: AVN Insights

Trevor had fallen out of love with accountancy. He had an ok practice. A decent number of clients.  A team that mostly got things done. Mostly. But cash was still tight and the hours were too long. Ultimately, he was spending too many hours running around for people who really didn’t appreciate what he was doing for…

Professional networks are often passive beats with not much happening in the true sense of networking and co-operation. Members can be suspicious about giving too much away and fear about sharing their gains with other Members. I think from my experience of working with AVN, this doesn’t have to be the case. AVN is a…

Here at AVN we see many Accountants change their lives and change their Practices. All of these Accountants are at different stages in their business, all with different client bases, all starting with different aspirations for their business. What they do have however is a determination to succeed, a determination to not just put up…

In 2017, Harriet set up her own accountancy practice, having been passed over for partner once too often in the larger, male dominated company that she had worked in for the last 15 years. She set up her business with two family members who, whilst not accountants themselves, were competent and well meaning and able…

Last night I had a conversation with 4 accountants who appeared to be in a contest for “who has the worst, barmiest, annoying client” competition. It is amazing that even these “switched on” accountants still work with these types of clients. Each admitted that they consume huge amounts of time and energy and are bad…

Have you ever met someone and found it difficult to strike up a conversation, don’t necessarily ‘get’ what they’re saying?  Chances are they don’t have the same values as you. Your values and beliefs differentiate you as an individual and attract like-minded people to you. Those with the closest values are your loved ones, your very close…

For a Father’s day get together, my family and the families of my two sisters had arranged to take my parents out for dinner. For a variety of reasons, we agreed on our local Harvester pub and on the following Tuesday since Father’s day itself didn’t work for us all. So we pre-booked a week…

I often hear this phrase about an employee… “They are really sweet but I just can’t trust them to do everything they are supposed to!” Sound familiar?   Well, you have 2 choices: Get rid of them – if you can’t trust them to do the work you will be constantly worrying about it and…