Harish Sharma found his results improved dramatically after just one month with AVN.
The reason I started working with AVN was that my stress levels were very high. I’d lost clarity on what we were doing; in fact, I’d lost sight of why I was in this business in the first place.
Every morning I’d wake up worrying about compliance deadlines. And not just that — I needed to get paid, there was a bit of a cash flow issue to manage, and I didn’t want to lose any clients. I was trying to please everyone, which meant I was providing a compromised level of service just to accommodate them all. I’d priced my clients way too low, well below the market. We were overworked and underpaid, and that was a big part of why I was so stressed.
We started our practice in 2012 with a handful of clients. Today we have 750+ clients across the UK, based in Coventry and Milton Keynes. Around 95–98% of what we do is compliance, and it’s only recently, through AVN, that I’ve come to understand the potential of the other services we could be providing. It’s opened so many doors for us to think about and start structuring the services we offer our clients.
The decision to join AVN
It took me a good two to three weeks to decide whether to join. I was going through Shane’s book, ‘Putting Excellence Into Practice’, and I realised AVN isn’t just covering one aspect of running a practice, it covers the entire thing: pricing, advisory services, automation. It’s a complete package.
Quick wins in month one
In the first month of joining, I could already see changes and not just on pricing. We’ve been given guides on systemising and automating, and even though we haven’t fully implemented those yet, my coach and the team have already given us plenty of advice. The quick win: I’ve managed to put my prices up by 10 to 25% on average, across around 20% of our clients. I’m really glad with the outcome so far.
My coach is Andrew, and he’s been amazing. He makes me think by asking the right questions, so I come up with most of the answers myself. He supported me to find my own solutions rather than just instructing me or telling me what to do. I loved that; I’d never experienced it before.
Where we’re heading
My vision is to move into advisory and to empower my team. I want to get all the SOPs, systems and automations in place so my team members can handle the day-to-day compliance work and even step into advisory roles. At the moment most processes rely on me. I do the final review, and clients always want to speak to me — so I want to step back and have my team service the clients.
Because I’ve now got the confidence to put my prices up, my return on investment — even based on just one month — has come in at around 20 times. That’s a genuine win-win.
My advice to other accountants
To any accountant who’s struggling, who’s stressed running their business, or who feels alone and needs support, I certainly recommend AVN. They’ve got all the tools, support, advice and tips to make it work from day one, month one. I strongly recommend it, especially to one-to-three partner firms: approach AVN and get to know what they do.