RunningYourPractice
Striking the right balance
Grace Hardy
It’s easy to assume becoming your own boss will improve your work/life balance, but the first few years are extremely busy. However, the pay-off can be hugely rewarding, as Calum Fuller finds out
The ideal vision of being your own boss is an exciting one: choosing when and where you work, having control over when you start and finish your day, and who your clients are.
Setting up and running your own firm could be the most rewarding step you take in your career, with greater freedom, variety and flexibility all on offer. That’s not to mention the higher earning potential, job satisfaction and setting your desired work/life balance.
But getting there is by no means instantaneous and requires work. Lots of it.
I work most days but that's because I want to work, because it doesn't feel like work.
The hard yards
The early stage of running your new practice — particularly the first year — is typically very busy and demands long hours to get your practice going and established. However, identifying and navigating the steps you need to take are also a major element of doing so.
Grace Hardy MAAT set up Hardy Accounting in 2023. She admits that, while it was daunting, the challenge of launching her business with her own initiative was exciting.
“You think that you will have meetings every single day, all day,” she says. “But the reality was, I hadn’t networked. I hadn’t put myself out there, so my calendar was empty.”
Once she began networking and producing content online, things began to change.
“I started by creating informative ebooks around basic things around financial education and information packs for business owners to put on my website to gain some traction and have some things talk about,” Hardy reveals. “So that’s how I started off, going to networking events and in-person events and really putting myself out there.
“I work most days but that’s because I want to work, because it doesn’t feel like work, and I have so many little side projects going on, aside from accounting, that I love doing. My workload, obviously, is very large, but I love everything that’s on it. Life is too short to do something that makes you unhappy.”
Ali Jaw FMAAT set up his practice, Severn Accounting, in 2013. For him, there has been an improvement in his workload year on year but it’s an ongoing process.
“A mentor once told me that until you can take yourself away from the business and have the business still run as it should, then there’s still ground to make up,” he says. “Every year I can see things getting better as I have more systems and a better team in place. If I look back 12 months ago and where we are in terms of self-assessment even this year is much more relaxed.”
Casting his mind back to when he began trading as his own firm, he admits it was daunting.
He adds: “No one teaches you how to get your clients, for instance. You have to learn how to be a salesperson as well as be confident in your own ability to deliver for your clients.”
Ali Jaw photographed by Tristan Newkey-Burden
The cost
Starting your own practice can also come with some financial uncertainty. Often, doing so entails either giving up a full-time job or going part-time, meaning the likelihood of a drop in income or more variable income.
When Hardy decided she would set up her firm, she knew she would need a nest egg to tide herself over while she built up her practice. She had been working for top 10 accountancy firm Forvis Mazars for three years and built up savings to enable her to make the leap into self-employment.
“Just before I took my synoptic AAT Level 4 exam, I decided that I was going to leave my employment and be self-employed once I had passed,” she recalls. “That’s when I started thinking, ‘right, how much money do I need to live per month? How long am I going to give myself to make this work?’.
“I was very lucky in the fact that my aunt lived in London and invited me to live with her, so I could easily go to networking events and put myself out there, which was so nice of her. I gave myself a year to make something happen and I wanted to be able to hit my employment income within a year. I had saved up the initial costs, so I just needed to make it happen.”
Jaw also self-funded setting up his firm and was able to gradually transition from his finance management role in his previous job into his practice, taking on his former employer as a client in the process. He recommends saving enough to cover three to six months of expenses and ensuring clients pay on a monthly basis, rather than the traditional single lump sum at year-end.
“Have some savings in place just in case, as some months will be very dry as you are starting out because you are building a client base,” Jaw says. “Most accountants now take fees on a recurring basis rather than waiting until the year-end. You take payment as you go through, so every month you are receiving payment rather than waiting till the year-end then billing the client. That really helps with cash flow early on.”
The prize
Once you are established and have built up a client base to a healthy level, you can find the level of work that is right for you and enjoy the flexibility that comes from being your own boss. For Hardy, that means keeping hours which suit her better and enable greater productivity.
“I really struggled in my nine-to-five because we had to be in the office for 8.30am. If I don’t have my 10 hours of sleep, I’m not a nice person to be around,” Hardy says. “Running the practice means that, essentially, I can wake up when I want. I’m more productive in the afternoon, so it means that I can start my day later and work later because that’s what suits me.”
Jaw is very much motivated by the entrepreneurial spirit but also hopes that growth continues to enable a better work/life balance, so he can spend more time with his family.
“I like to build my own thing,” he says. “I enjoy the value and the personal relationships I have with clients and doing so with my own identity. I have missed some things over the years and I still do sometimes — for instance, football with my kids on a Saturday. But the more we invest in efficiencies, the more time is freed up, which will mean spending more time with my family and enjoying what we like to do outside work.”
Read AT's Setting Up Your Practice series
Interested in setting up your own firm and exploring what it takes to get started? Read our Setting Up Your Practice series:
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Methods and techniques for prioritising your tasks and goals can be found in AAT's Bitesized CPD modules.
