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Zero Tolerance for Process Compliance: A Blueprint for Success

process compliance concept

In the bustling world of professional firms, where precision and efficiency are prized commodities, the adherence to processes can often feel like a balancing act on a tightrope. Yet, in the pursuit of excellence, it’s imperative to create an environment where processes are not just followed but revered. Enter zero tolerance – a mindset shift…

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Mastering Client Engagement: A Guide to Asking the Right Questions for Business Success

asking the right questions concept

The importance of asking your clients the right questions can have a profound impact on your accounting business’s success. Whether you’re assessing practices, gathering feedback, or fostering professional trust, creating a space for clients to express themselves is invaluable and makes for great client engagement. Initial Contact Begin with understanding how prospective clients find you.…

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The Accountants’ Guide to Fishing

January is the month for holidays, for relaxing, for contemplation. For me that involves spending time at Port Stephens out on the water trying to skillfully convince a succulent fish to hop onto my line. As anyone knows such an exercise involves a great deal of patience. As I have sat in the sun replenishing…

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Hard decisions

You know the feeling. You come to the office and get stuck into your “To Do” list. You focus on addressing those day-to-day business issues – but lurking in the corner like a bad smell are those things that you know that you need to do but you just can’t bring yourself to do it.…

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Soft Skills – the Future for Successful Accountants

soft skills concept

If you have been working for several years in the accounting industry or maybe just a few, you would have noticed that successful team members know more than technical accounting skills. They know how to manage a meeting, put clients at ease, deal with difficult clients and scenarios, persuade and negotiate, and make themselves known…

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Unlocking the Secret of Being a Gun Leader

unlocking the key to leadership

Leadership skills are essential to progressing your career for a wide range of reasons including: You already know that and will undoubtedly be looking forward to discovering more about this (and other insights) at the 2023 Young Guns Workshop. There is one leadership skill that isn’t often mentioned that truly is a critical one. It’s…

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Time for some New Year’s resolutions?

Happy New Year! I hope that your year has been a great success and that you’re not getting lapped. Hopefully your 2022 work is cleared away and ready for the 2023 work to start. If you’ve been on holiday with the kids I hope you haven’t been caught up in the airport chaos. Whether or…

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Leading the new generation of accountants

This month we are looking at something a bit different. I have asked my daughter Jessica (Jess) Holton, a 34-year-old skilled graduate journalist working in digital media and fiercely independent, as only a father would know, to comment on the new generation of employees, particularly in the accounting industry, and how to manage them. Here…

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Insight from your peers

One of the challenges when running your own business is that it can be a lonely place. You’re making decisions based on your own experience and those of your partners if you’re in partnership. The insights and decisions you make can be self-reinforcing as they’re based on what is already happening and past experience in…

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How to get started with marketing in your accounting firm.

Fairly regularly I come across firms who for one reason or another have engaged a marketing consultancy. For many, this is entirely the wrong move. Few marketing consultancies understand the nuances of professional service firms. Many focus on things which might have some merit like brand and website but miss the core matters to be…

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