MEMBER SUCCESS

STORIES

Growing a firm is never easy. On this page you'll hear the real life growth stories of our members and what they needed to do to grow their firm.

They took the plunge and committed to their journey and success.

When will you?

a plant growing in a hand to represent cloud accountancy growing

Growth Story: How Graeme Morris Turned a Declining Practice Into a Flourishing Business

By Becky Rogers | April 15, 2024

A journey from grumpy to grateful and from worried to winning (on the way to growing to £400k!). In 2022, Graeme Morris of Cloud Accountancy Ltd was struggling. He was just over £100k in turnover, but the practice was declining, clients were leaving, and his mental health was not at a good level. It felt…

man on a mountain peak to represent reconnecting with why

Growth Story: Discover How Graeme Tennick Built a Scalable Accountancy Practice in Less Than Fifteen Months

By Becky Rogers | March 18, 2024

A rollercoaster tale of entrepreneurial and personal discovery, business scalability, and not being afraid to start again. From March 2021 to the latter part of 2022, Graeme Tennick of Tennick Accountants took his practice from almost bankrupt to thriving. It’s been a rickety roller coaster ride with intense highs and equally dramatic lows, but along…

glass ceiling

Growth Story: Learn how Paul broke through the ceiling and grew his practice to 500k

By Becky Rogers | February 19, 2024

How Paul overcame business hardship to start over and grow a family-owned practice from £250k to over £600k in five years. Paul Donno is the owner and Director of 1 Accounts Online, an award-winning cloud accountancy practice in Haverhill. Heather first met Paul at the British Accountancy Awards in 2016, where he had just won…

lorna leonard

From clueless about business development to winning £140k per annum of new business within 9 months of joining the club.

Before I joined the club the growth of my business had plateaued for the last 3 years, and I was in danger of losing some of my portfolio due to succession. Due to my high level of client commitments I only have a few hours a week to dedicate to marketing and business development.

Working with Heather has allowed me to see my inexperience with business development is not a weakness, it's a development area. Heather and I initially clarified the value my firm brings to clients and exactly who we work with. We then worked on a simple networking marketing strategy using LinkedIn. I now have a step-by-step process which I follow daily and weekly to make sure I am meeting and talking to the right people.

Now I know what to do with business development, I am finding I am doing it very well. It was the missing piece of the jigsaw for me and my business. My confidence has grown so much around business development, I'm even advising my clients on their own sales process. When you consider that I still need to update and redo my website, winning £140k of new business within 9 months is nothing short of remarkable.

Lorna Leonard

Leonard Business Services
paul wareham

This year has been revolutionary for me and my team

As a member of the Club, I no longer feel alone and have a library of excellent resources to utilise to help me get where I want to be. For me, it was all about gaining control and enthusiasm for my practice once more. I had no complaints on the profitability of the practice prior to joining, but, I also understood my business model was not for the long-term when you consider where the industry is going. While working in the business, I had become too focused on day to day operations and was not taking time to plan the direction of the firm. Working with my coach, I was able to see what I truly wanted and what I needed to do to get there. This year has been revolutionary for me and my team and I am looking forward to honing things even more in 2020 with the help of Heather and the team

When I joined the Club, I wasn’t looking for one big thing to make all the difference/justify their fee. For example, increase existing client fees x% / grow the fee bank x%. However, there have been many improvements. The big gain has been the complete re-engineering of my internal systems and workflows: changing one thing here got us back over 3.5 weeks production capacity. The other big gain has been finding a niche and then targeting exactly how I want to go about attracting those types of clients. For me in my local area this meant no more meaningless networking events. Freeing up this time and generating more capacity was crucial for the next stage of growth in bringing in new clients and being able to offer the service we want.

When we get back to full firepower in 2020 we are all looking forward to welcoming the new clients from the North West who make and move stuff. This growth will definitely allow me to take more time off to be with my family and get back into cycling more often.

Paul Wareham

PS Accountants
Rebecca Foy circle

The club helped our team members go out and win work which helped us grow our accounts team income by £15k a month over the last 12 months.

 

Our firm has a specialist tax team. As a result of the work done within the club, all of the senior members of our tax team now have the confidence to go out and find, quote and invoice their own work. They are also now referring work to the accounts team because they have the confidence that we will quote and deliver it properly.

Rebecca Foy

Davis & Co
naveed new

After 6 months in the club I was able to stop worrying about cash flow.

 

When I first joined the club I was living hand to mouth with my cash flow, often having to dip in the money I had put aside to pay my VAT and corporation tax bill.

 

I’ve learnt to ask for a price which is in line with the value our firm brings to our clients. In fact, my time in the ‘member spotlight’, was probably worth £50-100k of extra turnover within 12 months of the conversation.

 

After 6 months in the club I was able to stop worrying about cash flow as I now normally have 30-90 days of cash in the bank on top of the money I need to pay my VAT and corporation tax squirrelled away safely.

Naveed Mughal

Purlieus Consulting
graeme

The amount of resources, assistance and advice has been nothing short of mind-blowing.

Having now been in the programme for just over a month; it feels like longer, and having worked so closely alongside my coach, I strongly doubt that I would have made this amount of progress without the club. In the last seven days alone:

  1. Attracted a client who have committed to fee just shy of £500 per month that we would have historically charged £200 per month
  2. Have proposals out there that would more than double our clients paying over £300 per month including one where; subject to acceptance, would be in excess of £1,000 per month

Graeme Tennick

Graeme Tennick and Co