Well last week’s post definitely hit a nerve! Without doubt it’s been my most popular article so far with 453 views on LinkedIn, 47 likes and 20 comments, on top of the hundreds of subscriber views. As well as so many of you offering support and outrage on Kate and Andrew’s behalf, too many people had similar stories to share of shoddy accountants causing serious damage to businesses.
I saw “Andrew and Kate” on Wednesday evening to make sure they were on track with their business recovery plan, and Andrew felt strongly that he’d like the chance to respond to my article and many of the comments that were made on LinkedIn this week.
Hi I’m “Andrew” and I feel compelled to write a response to Serena’s article last week.
Because her rendition of what happened (as painful as it was to read) is very accurate and I thought it would be worth passing on how things have changed in my business and for Kate and myself over the last 4 months.
When I discovered the situation in my company I was in total shock. It was devastating. But I realised quickly that had to make some rapid changes. And just to make that even harder, I was out in Australia at the time seeing clients, so my time window each day to get anything done was very limited. I had my first meeting with the insolvency practitioner on Facetime in an airport at 5am!
If you remember, I’d engaged a professional accountant part-time, and delegated this part of my business to someone who I thought would be better at it than me. And I was constantly being told by him that everything was “fine”. But for over a year my gut was telling me otherwise – I wish we’d acted sooner on this. That would be my biggest lesson I think – trust yourself even if the professionals are telling you a different story.
Now one of the key things is that this is our company, it’s our house and our life depends on everything, not my accountant’s. And actually by me agreeing to his decisions and ignoring my gut instinct, I put our whole life in a very vulnerable position.
I had to sit my children down in December and tell them that Christmas 2015 was not going to happen; (I kept the fact we might lose our house from them at that point) Clearly my accountant has nothing to lose and we have everything to lose.
When I switched my decision making process, I started to realise that it was my actions that would grow or kill the business – that kind of focused the mind!!!
As my eye had been taken off the ball I had to focus on what I needed to do and keep on that track, by monitoring everything.
So we made a plan. Short term crises management, a mid-term plan of where we’d like to be, and a long term strategy. Even at that time I knew it was important to have clear view of where we wanted to be, assuming I could survive the crisis
When we made the plan some of the points were critical and we had to achieve them. It’s strange how much you can achieve when you HAVE TO step up, and this was the main lesson I wanted so share with other business owners – I do honestly believe now anyone can achieve anything, however you have to believe 100% in yourself and your business. I knew we’d created something special and something worth fighting to save.
What’s been amazing to me is how this becomes so empowering – success really does breed success. Getting the confidence from taking actions and seeing things start to work, and when you see the results you know it’s a reflection of your ability, and again you can build on this.
Many of you asked why I didn’t insist on information from my accountant. Well I did. All the time. The figures he gave me just didn’t make sense. (I now know they were completely wrong) but the more I challenged him, the more aggressive he became. He said he didn’t know what else he could do to make me understand, leaving me feeling stupid and belittled. He made it clear that it was my problem I couldn’t understand the figures.
As you know it’s a manufacturing company and the every member of staff is so much more motivated on board and committed to the cause which is a direct link to my own personal involvement and performance lead from the front with your tem not in it !!