10 Years in Business – Success, Challenges, and the Hard Decisions

10 years ago in March 2012, the first Total Guide to site went live.

Sat in their tiny, rented office, waiting for developers H2 to give the nod to say the site had successfully propagated, Alex Pollock (our first employee) and Liz Hutchings were full of excitement, fear, anticipation, and impatience!

Managing Director, Liz Hutchings, explains her experienced over the last 10 years of running Total Guide to – the Successes, Challenges, and the Hard Decisions. 5 Successes • Building a happy and ambitious team who enjoy a culture of trust, balance, and satisfaction. Frequently used but so true – You’re Only as Good as Your Team! I have found the recruitment process tricky over the years, but we’ve finally nailed this down, and we all enjoy our culture of working hard and smart. The team know if the weathers’ good, I’ll be saying “go out, enjoy it, have a bike ride, run, whatever makes you happy”. I know they’ll put the hours in, and productivity will be through the roof because they’re happy and fulfilled. • We have a 90% client retention rate; many have been with us since day 1 and boast 100% 5-star client reviews on Trip Advisor – this speaks volumes about the results we’re delivering and the relationships we have with our clients. • Being profit making from year 1 and building a cash ‘cushion’. The beauty of being a digital business meant we could start lean and grow organically. • Surviving the lockdowns – the financial cushion saved us. I have managed to find a balance over the years of constantly re-investing in the business while holding cash reserves back. Had it not been for these reserves we wouldn’t be bouncing back as hard as we have. • Our site traffic, social channels, email stats continue to grow year in, year out.

In 2021, despite being in a lockdown year we recorded over 2 million page views! 5 Challenges • Suffice to say the last few ‘Covid’ years have tested us more than we could have imagined. Thanks to being a local information source, we couldn’t down tools and furlough – we had to keep going to support the local community and fellow businesses. Our growth has been stunted and we made a small loss as we stopped billing our clients but continued to promote them. • Recruitment and HR – Finally after 10 years

I’ve cracked our recruitment process and

Hybrid working has really helped open up the talent pool. But I still struggle with identifying exactly what role we need to recruit for when we’re nearing capacity workload wise. This applies to the franchise model too – recruiting the right franchisee is a huge task and selling a franchise to the wrong fit can be costly and time consuming. • Time – or lack of it and the culture of always feeling the need to always be ‘on’.

Since the launch of our first site. Juggling a 4 and 1 year old with a husband who works away a lot along with navigating a business through lockdown and now re-building has and is a huge challenge. I manage the workload by working through nap times even on days off but realise that never having down time is a mental drain. We can finally get away as a family so the batteries can be fully re-charged. • I’m still heavily involved in the business. I know the key to any successful business is the business owner making themselves redundant – I’m working on it! • Digital Marketing evolves at such a rapid rate, the team and I are constantly learning and trying new things. It’s a challenge but it’s a big part of why we love what we do; you can’t beat the satisfaction of implementing a new approach and making them work hard for clients. We recently created a reel for a client which reached 22,000 people in just a few days and their engagements and therefore enquiry rate rocketed! Hard Decisions • I always find recruitment-based decisions to be tricky. Our next hard decision is now we’re in a period of growth, what skills do we need to bring in? During Summer 2021, I was sick of standing still and made the decision to start re-building and invested in taking on new staff. This was a difficult decision still having the threat of more lockdowns hanging over us, but you must take a punt and invest in the future and I’m happy to say it was worth the gamble. I’ve also had to let 2 employees go; this was the right decision for both parties in the long run, but it was difficult at the time. • I’m a Solopreneur and I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing as we take the business on to the next stage.

My next hard decision will be deciding what ‘help’ looks like. • Learning to Say No. It’s taken time, money, and passion to build our traffic and intellectual property.

We have many PR Agencies contacting us expecting free placements for their clients (who are paying them!) and it’s insulting. We’ve also had some (thankfully, not many at all) clients expecting the world for a very small budget. We’ve learned to say no, and time morale and profits are higher as a result. We’re also not afraid to turn business down if we feel we’re not able to help a particular business. For example, we’ve been approached by some very niche business and have put them in touch

with industry specific media who would be better suited to their target audiences. • I’m constantly trying to decide how to be the best business leader and mother

I can be. How do I give 100% to both?

Difficult decisions around this include childcare options, staff, growth plans. • Whether to let it go. I’m not going to lie, during the last lockdown I did have thoughts of handing over the reins. With my girls’ nursery having several closures due to

Covid cases and the constant uncertainty of how I would rally the troops and our clients to get through another lockdown, I hit an all-time low. Thankfully this coincided with

Christmas, I had a break, we didn’t go into lockdown and I’m back and raring to go! I’m sure every entrepreneur has thoughts of

‘wouldn’t it just be easier if I got a real job’.

Maybe, but I know I wouldn’t be as happy and fulfilled and I wouldn’t be able to be there for my family as much as I am now. I love being in control of my own destiny and am excited to see where the next 10 years takes us! I will be eternally grateful to our wonderful team and previous employees who have given so much and are an honour to know and work with. I must give a special mention to my dear friend and colleague Rachael who has been with us almost since day one. My husband quite accurately describes her as embodying the Commando Spirit – ‘Cheerfulness in the Face of Adversity’, and this has never rung truer than during the last few years of lockdowns.

Thank you to Rachael, Ryan, Bethany, Phoebe, Annie, Jo and of course Liam our first franchisee and to our suppliers and customers, here’s to the next part of this exciting journey!

www.totalguidetopoole.com

Azets acquires Inspire Accountants in Poole

Azets, the UK’s largest accountancy firm and business advisor to SMEs, from March announce the acquisition of Inspire Accountants, an award-winning independent business and tax advisory firm based in Poole.

It marks the second UK acquisition in three months as Azets continues to deliver on its ambitious growth plans across the UK.

Inspire was established in 2004 by Warren Munson and has an office on Commercial Road in Poole with 30 employees providing services to around 1,000 clients across Bournemouth, Poole and the wider Solent region.

The acquisition takes Azets’ regional network to 86 offices across the UK and enhances the UK Top 10 accounting firm’s key service lines to entrepreneurial and growing businesses in Poole and its surrounding area. As a niche practice specialising in providing advisory and strategic advice to entrepreneurial and growing businesses, Inspire also provides an on call Financial Director service, known as FD on Demand, which provides clients with the experience and expertise of a fulltime FD for the times when they need it.

Inspire’s clients will benefit from Azets’ current and future investment in technology, helping to provide a smarter delivery of client services to continue to help them grow, as well as access to more specialist advisory services such as banking and finance, data analytics, cyber security, forensics and restructuring.

Acquiring Inspire adds 30 people in business support and client-facing roles to the Azets team, including three Partners. Adam Wilson, Regional Managing Partner, Solent Region at Azets, said: “We’re excited to welcome Inspire to the Azets family; this firm has a reputation for highquality people providing high-quality client service. The acquisition is another significant step on our growth journey to increase revenue by 50% in the next five years.

“Inspire is established among the leading accounting and business advisory firms across the Bournemouth, Poole and wider Solent area, with a broad capability across accountancy and business advisory services.

“Azets offers trusted, business-critical advice, compliance and outsourcing services to ambitious companies and business owners. Inspire is a logical and valuable addition to Azets, as we work to provide our clients with more advice that will improve their businesses and their lives.

“We believe strongly in the local delivery of personalised client services, whilst giving businesses in the South the opportunity to benefit from our breadth, depth, and experience as an SME focused international accounting, tax, audit, advisory and business services group. Inspire has a strong regional reputation for its personable approach and specialist expertise which, combined with Azets’ local and international reach, opens up a wealth of opportunities for our clients.” Warren Munson, Founder and Managing Director of Inspire Accountants, said: “This is a wonderful opportunity for Inspire and our clients, and the acquisition demonstrates our commitment to the continued growth of our business, as we enter the next phase of our long and successful journey as part of the UK’s newest Top 10 accounting firm. Azets is a business which shares our clear focus on people and clients – it is the perfect fit both strategically and culturally.

“Inspire has a hard-earned reputation for delivering service excellence to entrepreneurial, owner-managed businesses across Bournemouth, Poole and the wider Solent region. As part of Azets, our existing and new SME clients will benefit from an even broader set of specialist expertise, as they continue to drive forward the UK’s economic recovery.”

www.azets.co.uk

Graham Hart, Managing Director of Harts of Stur

Enhanced enables Harts of Stur to increase instore and online growth

Enhanced continue to deliver Microsoft IT systems and services to support business growth. With the right people and the right products, they offer personal and professional award winning IT support.

Harts of Stur, one of the UK’s largest instore and online retailers of cookware, is a prime example of how working together delivers real, worthwhile and profitable investment in IT solutions.

Based in Sturminster Newton and established over 96 years ago, Harts, albeit a successful company, were struggling with stock control and time management due to the rapid growth and expansion of the business. Their existing systems prohibited them from delivering the excellent level of customer service they pride themselves on. They needed help. Enhanced visited Harts, listened to their problems and spent time fully understanding their business needs. They recommended an integrated solution to link all processes and capture information all in one place, at the same time releasing valuable employee time and enabling them to focus on customer service.

Since 2015, when Enhanced started working with Harts, the company has experienced amazing results. They have seen a steady growth of 96% increase in turnover, and more importantly a 296% growth in profitability. This is predominantly down to being able to optimise stock flow. They can now also effectively monitor and react quickly, efficiently and be responsive to ever changing market trends.

When asked about his relationship with Enhanced, Graham Hart, Managing Director of Harts of Stur said that he would recommend them to anyone. “They are friendly but professional, don’t talk tech all the time but listen and deliver solutions to fit our requirements. Even after implementation of their solutions they keep in touch and monitor our progress.”

Graham Hart admits the main benefit of trading with Enhanced is being able to take back control of the business. www.enhanced.co.uk