Dionne Sherwood FCCA | Accountant and business adviser
If your business takes all your time and still doesn’t give you the income or freedom you expected, something needs to change.
I help owners of established service businesses work out what the business needs to earn to support the life they want, then plan the next 12 months around it.
You went into business to get something a job couldn’t give you. Somewhere along the way, it’s easy to become so busy keeping the business going that you lose track of whether you’re getting it.
Your business looks successful to everyone except you.
The work keeps coming in and you might have people around you to help deliver it, so from the outside everything looks fine. But you’ll probably recognise at least one of these:
You’ve had a good year on paper and can’t see where the money went.
Your prices haven’t gone up for a while, and you keep putting it off in case clients leave.
You take a week off and realise how much of the business only you know how to do.
You’re thinking about taking someone on or borrowing to grow, but you can’t tell if the business can afford it.
One day you’d like to sell up or step back, but you haven’t worked out what needs to happen first.
Your accountant hears about your decisions after you’ve made them.
Working longer hours won’t fix any of these. The place to start is a question many business owners never ask: What do you want this business to give you?
Once I know that, I can put figures around it and show you how far the business is from providing it. I run a service business myself and I’ve undercharged in it, so I know these decisions are harder than they look on paper.
FCCA
Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
40+ years
Working with business owners
Since 2003
Running my own accountancy practice
Early Xero adopter
One of the first UK subscribers in 2008
Award winning
FSB Wales Digital Innovation Award
What’s stopping your business from giving you more?
The cause is usually sitting underneath the day to day work.
You might be making big decisions without a plan. Your prices could be holding back profit, or too much may still depend on you. Often, more than one thing is getting in the way.
I help you find the cause and work out what to do about it. The right time to talk to me is before a big decision, while we can still look at the figures together and the choices are still yours.
What should your business be giving you?
If your business takes all your time and still isn’t giving you the income or freedom you expected, something needs to change. This call is where we work out what.
I’m Dionne Sherwood, an accountant and business adviser. I help owners of established service businesses decide what they want the business to give them, then put figures on what it has to earn to get there.
Tell me what’s happening in the business now and what you want it to be giving you. I’ll tell you what I’d look at first and how I can help.
Work With Me
Where we Start Depends on What you Need
Vision to Plan
Put a figure on what you want from the business, then build the plan to reach it.
If you know the business needs to change but you’re not sure where to start, Vision to Plan gives you a practical way forward.
We start with what you need the business to provide for you, then work out what that means for the next 12 months.
You get a plan built around the business you want, then we use it to guide the decisions you make over the year.
Pricing
Every month at the wrong price is money you won’t get back.
If you’ve avoided putting your prices up, or you still work out fees from the hours a job takes, there’s a good chance the business is earning less than it could.
I go through the numbers behind what you charge and show you what a change would do to your income, including what happens if some clients leave.
You make the decision knowing where you’d stand.
Systems
Stop your business relying on you for everything.
If too much of the business still sits in your head, other people can’t take responsibility for it. And if the same problems keep coming back, the process behind them probably isn’t working.
I help you get the important knowledge out of your head and into the business, then fix the parts of the process that keep breaking down so the business doesn’t depend on you to keep it running.
Who you'll be working with
I’m Dionne Sherwood, a chartered certified accountant. I’ve spent more than 40 years working with business owners and have run my own practice since 2003.
That means I’ve had to make many of the same decisions my clients face. I’ve undercharged in my own business and spent years giving advice away in quick calls and emails.
The turning point came when I stopped looking only at what the business was doing and asked what I wanted it to give me.
That process is now at the heart of Vision to Plan. I use it with clients to connect what they want from life with the financial decisions they need to make in the business.
And I’m the person you’ll deal with every time.
Start with a 15 minute call!
Book a video call and tell me what’s happening in your business and what you’d like it to be doing for you. I’ll ask a few questions, then tell you if I think I can help and where I’d start.