The first time I told the following true story to a friend, I realised it had profound implications for many sole practitioner accountants.
Long ago, in a firm far away….
Shortly after I was promoted to a manager role at Touche Ross (now Deloitte), I was sent on a management development course with around 20 colleagues from across the firm.
One of the exercises was deceptively simple. We were asked about our ambitions.
Like most of my contemporaries, I said I wanted to become a partner in the firm.
The facilitator then challenged us to think about what other careers might appeal to us. At first, it felt like an odd question.
Weren’t we all there because we wanted to become partners?
As we explored the possibilities, however, the list grew surprisingly quickly. We talked about becoming a partner in another firm, taking a senior non-partner role, moving into industry, perhaps with a client, running our own accountancy practice, starting a completely different business, or working in the charity or education sectors.
It transpired there were plenty of alternatives that few of us had considered. That is not however the lesson I want to draw.
On the course we were split into pairs, with each pair allocated one of the possible career paths. Our task was to identify what someone would need to do over the next year or two to put themselves in the strongest position to achieve that ambition.
When we came back together, we compared what each group had produced.
What I remember most clearly is that, once we had examined what becoming a partner would really involve and compared it with the alternatives, very few people still seemed enthusiastic about following that route.
Perhaps that says something about that particular group of managers. Or what we thought about the route to becoming a partner in such a firm back in the day.
The lessons of that exercise impacted my own ambitions and I left the firm within a few months.
I later heard that many of my contemporaries did the same and that that particular exercise was never repeated.
The exercise wasn’t valuable because it persuaded people to leave.
It was valuable because it forced us to examine assumptions that most of us had never previously questioned.
Are you still chasing the right prize?
I see something similar when working with some of the sole practitioner accountants whom I support.
Many spent years looking forward to running their own practice. They worked hard, made sacrifices and eventually achieved exactly what they set out to do.
Once they get there, however, many assume that the only challenge is making the practice more successful.
- More clients.
- Better systems.
- More staff.
- Higher profits.
Those are all perfectly sensible objectives, but working harder may not be the most fulfilling route to follow.
On occaison I have suggested that the more interesting question is:
If you weren’t already running this practice, would you choose to create this version of it today?
It isn’t an easy question to answer because you’ve already invested years of effort. Clients depend on you. If you have a team, they may depend on you. Your identity may now be wrapped up in the practice you’ve built.
That can make it surprisingly difficult to recognise that there are still choices.
More choices than you might think
Many sole practitioners behave as though there are only two options: carry on much as they are or sell the practice.
In reality, there are many possible directions.
You might decide to:
- deliberately remain small and highly profitable
- grow into a larger firm
- focus on a particular niche or specialism
- seek out more outsourced finance director work
- reduce your client numbers while increasing your average fees
- outsource bookkeeping and payroll rather than continue providing them in-house
- become much more advisory focused
- recruit someone to take over the day-to-day running of the practice
- merge with another firm
- combine practice with consulting, mentoring or training
- prepare the practice for sale over the next few years
None of these is inherently better than another.
The important point is recognising that they are all legitimate choices.
The question I usually ask
When I’m working with an accountant who feels stuck or frustrated, I rarely begin by discussing marketing, pricing or software.
Instead, I want to understand what they’re actually trying to build.
It’s remarkable how often someone tells me they need more clients, when the real issue is that they’ve created a practice they no longer enjoy running.
Sometimes they don’t need growth.What they really need are FEWER clients, BETTER clients, to specialise more openly, or to stop doing work that no longer makes commercial sense.
Sometimes they simply need permission to recognise that the practice they wanted ten years ago isn’t the practice they want today.
Until we’ve had that conversation, it’s difficult to know whether we’re solving the right problem.
Looking beyond the next improvement
One of the lessons from that management course has stayed with me for decades.
The value wasn’t in identifying the “right” career.
It was in stepping back long enough to compare the alternatives before becoming even more committed to one particular path.
The same principle applies to your practice.
Every few years it’s worth asking yourself not just how to improve what you have, but whether you’re still building what you actually want.
They’re very different questions. And a number of accountnats have engaged me for a single focused discussion to talk through their options – without committing to anything more.
Some become clients. Some don’t. I’m fulfilled simply if they feel more confident about how to move forwards.
The accountants who seem happiest with their practices aren’t necessarily those with the biggest firms or the highest fees.
More often, they’re the ones who have consciously chosen the kind of practice they want to run and have shaped it accordingly, rather than simply allowing it to evolve by default.
