What having brain surgery meant for my business – Pt 2

Ok, so the surgery was a success. The surgeon removed all the tumor and seemed quite excited about my recovery prospects.

That being said, after the surgery I was still in a lot of pain. I couldn’t bend my head below my chest (due to the surgery being done through the nasal cavity). I also had a constant nose bleed for the first 3 weeks of recovery.

In other words, I was in no condition to work.

But I had a plan in place!

Fortunately I was prepared for this. We had known that the recovery period would take up to 6 weeks. So I had already instructed the team on what to do. The accounting team would handle the usual accounting tasks (GST returns, bi-monthly reports, income tax filings). The admin team will handle the invoicing, onboarding and chasing up clients for payment.

That being said there were still some hiccups. Reflecting on the period I was away, there were a few things that we could have done better:

Equipping the accounting team with better communication skills

Most of the time, client queries were easy to deal with. Our accountant was able to answer simple questions like:

‘When is my tax due’

‘How much should I put away for taxes’

‘How much GST do I have to pay’

etc.

However there was one moment where we almost had a crisis on our hands. To cut a long story short (and to protect the privacy of our clients) we had a situation where there was a communication breakdown between us and the clients. I had to step in to instruct the accounting team what to do (while still in recovery). Fortunately the crisis was averted and the client still remains with us today.

Reflecting on that moment, I feel that if we had better administrative systems setup (note that I had been doing most admin work by myself up to this point) we could have avoided that error. I also believe that the accounting team could have better training to defuse tense situations – but I need to ponder on how to best deal with that in the future.

Creating a SOP for the administrative team to handle communication with clients

Our clients are usually a lovely bunch. Very easy to work with and pay their invoices on time. However over my break there was one incident where we lost a customer due to what may have been a communication mishap.

The issue was regarding invoices that they had to pay. To (again) cut a long story short. This particular client was paying their Xero subscription to us at a discount. That discount had ended and our accounting price had increased. They demanded to know why their monthly bill was about $50 more than what it usually was.

At this stage, our practice manager had only just come onboard to look after our administrative queries. They did their best to explain to the client that, actually the client had been paying a lot less than they should have been for the past 3 months as we had not updated our invoices to reflect the removal of the Xero discount.

However the email displeased the client and then they switched accountants. Upon reviewing my practice manager’s email, I’ve come to realise that this could have been a communication/cultural issue. Our practice manager is a native English speaker and the client was not. The email itself sounded ‘ok’ but it did make use of some complicated language and long sentences. The client must have taken this the wrong way, which led to them leaving us.

My main learning from this is that we need a SOP for writing emails in the company. Something that focuses on simple language, concise writing and being straight to the point. I’ll have to think this one over!

Upskilling the accounting team to deal with more complicated questions

Fortunately during my absence the accounting team didn’t get too many difficult tax questions. Tricky questions like payroll issues or the treatment of grants were often met with the reply of ‘Please wait until Sam gets back’.

Luckily we have amazing, understanding clients. But it still did make me feel like the accounting team has some gaps in knowledge. If we had less patient clients, these unanswered questions could have led to client losses.

So the objective this year to challenge the accounting team to tackle more difficult questions. Its not the kind of thing you can specifically train for. But keeping them in the loop and having them draft out responses to challenging questions in the future will be good for them.

I enjoyed being on break!

Overall I enjoyed being on break. Having 6 weeks off to myself was amazing! Even if the first half of it I had a constantly bloody nose. I managed to catch up on my hobbies like playing video games and painting miniatures.

Speaking of painting miniatures, I managed to paint up an absolute large pile of grey plastic. Now they look like amazing masterpieces!

This was the longest time I had spent away from the business since I started it in 2020. It was scary leaving the business behind for an extended period of time, but since I had put in the work to train the team up, the business is still standing!

In saying that, I don’t think I’d leave it for any longer than that for now! The next step is to grow the business so that it can run without needing me in it!