As CEO, MD or Business Owner, whatever your title at the top, you have a lot of people counting on you.

Your employees, customers, suppliers, and most importantly, your family. That can create a lot of stress, a lot of which often comes down to finance – making sure your business is, and stays, financially viable.

In some ways it’s great as you are your own boss, you don’t need to answer to anyone, and you get to make your own decisions on how things are done. But really, you’re answering to everyone and in most cases with no trusted partner by your side to be a sounding board supporting you.

I suspect most of us try not to take our concerns home, or at least we try to, but that has become more difficult as we work from home more nowadays. Our families get a look into our business world and the pressures we are under and the additional pressures we put on ourselves. As a business owner, MD, CEO we can feel terribly alone unless we have someone in our inner circle who we can trust.

Trust is a huge part of the puzzle to feel more human, more okay, more capable – as you are! But we never remind ourselves of this. We’re generally bad at celebrating the achievements and great at focussing only on what’s not going right.

Celebrating your achievements, and that doesn’t have to be an award, it may be a great review from a customer, agreeing better terms with your supplier and even having that honest conversation with yourself and admitting that you need some help, must happen.

It is these steps that can help you move forward and remind you why you do what you do.

If you’re constantly juggling things, the responsibility all lies with you and you’re doing a job that requires many different skill sets; some of which might not be your strength. And you might not have anyone to talk to about it all.

How amazing would it be to have that one person you can confide in, and you know that they can help you?

You are the lynchpin of the whole business – without you there is no business. Why would you not work with someone that helps you bring focus to what you really want and what you want to achieve.

With the right focus on where you’re heading then you can start to work backwards as to how the business is going to help you get there. That focus may be to have more time with the family and truly not be thinking about work, it might be to travel more or take that dream holiday, it may be to retire early.

Without that focus you are just a hamster on a wheel with some financial goals that are meaningless. You need to bring meaning to your business so that you can survive the journey and not get lost along the way or get to a point where you really can’t function anymore. We’ve always stood by the fact that Troy Accounting are different, that we go beyond the numbers, and this is becoming truer every day. The clients joining us are always surprised when we’re more interested in them and what they want to achieve first as that is the only way that we can resolve any issues in the business and get it on track to where it needs to go. Yes, we are absolutely all about the data and the figures, but we draw on our experiences and our knowledge to guide business owners along the correct business path. We don’t have all the answers, but a lot of owners, MDs and CEOs do have the answers. They just don’t have the capacity or space to talk about them freely, openly and honestly.

We often play the role of “devil’s advocate” – asking difficult questions that might feel uncomfortable but are ones that you know you need to think about. It’s much easier for us to ask them because we’re not in the day to day running of the business, so can step back and view things differently. If you want someone you can confide in with your concerns, your ambitions and dreams, someone who can be a sounding bound and figure out how to get from A to B without scaring all the people counting on you to succeed, then maybe you need an Outsourced Finance Director from Troy Accounting. Now that probably sounds scary as isn’t a Finance Director ridiculously expensive and you have to employ them full time? With us the simple answer is no!

We work flexibly with you and your team on the basis that you need us. We will always tell you what you should have in terms of the data to be able to make the best decisions for your business. However, the most important part of our role is getting you away from the business for a period of hours on a regular basis to bring focus to what you want to achieve and therefore what the business needs to deliver. We’ll agree actions together and we’ll hold you accountable to them. We’ll encourage and arm you with the knowledge you need to make the decisions you need to make.

Want to explore what our Outsourced Finance Director service can do for you and your business ?

Well, we’re happy to have a chat anyway and talk about what level of financial skill you need supporting your business right now and in the future, so that you are aware of what you should be doing.

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