Deciding to sell my accountancy practice was simultaneously a no-brainer and the toughest decision of my life so far.
A no-brainer because I had fallen out of love with accountancy and tax and it was making me unhappy. In fact, it was making me pretty miserable to the point where getting out of bed in the morning was nearly impossible. I couldn’t face another day of accountancy but I wanted to serve the clients as best as I could. The clients deserved to work with an accountant who is excited by and loves accountancy. That’s who they now work with.
It was the toughest decision of my life because I was moving away from something that I had known all my professional life to date. Stepping away from my comfort blanket was scary and hard.
Also, the knock on effect to me and my family was scary and challenging too as my level of personal income would drop significantly and we would need to make changes to our lifestyle for the greater good of my and my family’s happiness and well-being.
You’re quite right in thinking I received money from the sale of the business but that capital is being reinvested (like a true numbers person) 🙂 so I needed to make sure the income from my other businesses could support my and my family’s lifestyle, our saving and investment habits and our giving habits.
It was also a great opportunity to review our spending habits and cut out spending that was just spending for it’s own sake. We tightened our belts but still had enough to lead a good lifestyle and continue our good habits.
Spending habits in my businesses were also reviewed and improved so that nothing was going to waste but business could still thrive.
Having gone through these changes my family and the businesses were in a really great position financially.
But then I took a kick to the gut that winded me, I struggled to catch my breath for about a week. The newest client in my coaching and mentoring business decided that it wasn’t right for him at this moment in time.
It seemed like my world was falling apart and I had no control of what was happening. This messed up all of my planning for each business, my 90-day goals, my thoughts, my emotions and my and my family’s finances.
Once I pulled myself together and realised that I don’t control the things that happen to me nor the Universe for that matter (paradoxically the Universe is total chaos that appears like order and control) I was able to adapt to the change in circumstances with the things I do control; how I spend my time and the effort I put into things.
I reworked the business finances and reworked my family’s finances. I updated my priorities for the next couple of months and rescheduled my work plans. It’s not quite catastrophe averted because I had to sacrifice certain things in business and so too did my family but we have got through it and adapted.
In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have taken this business on as a client but I was so keen to help and they said all of the right things. The things I would expect to hear from an ideal client and how much value they got from my help, so it felt like a good fit. I can see now that they didn’t have the time and effort to put into the coaching program to get the best out of it.
It was a great learning experience for me to be able to adapt to changing circumstances, that I have no direct control over those circumstances and that despite the best-laid plans life happens and things will disrupt or alter those plans. Also, I’ve improved our client disqualification process to ensure that each client has capacity to follow the program and get great results and rewards for their time invested in it, for the clients benefit as well as mine.
