Banish the Bottleneck: 7 savvy steps to grow the (almost) perfect team for your accountancy practice

This is a book written by an accountant, for accountants.... but don't let that put you off 🙂 There is so much in this book for owners of any service based businesses who want either growth, or freedom, or indeed both. Simon Chaplin has gathered together his accumulated wisdom gained through experience of buying and building a successful accountancy practice which now runs with little input from himself.Don't let the "7 savvy steps" in the title fool you into thinking this is a blog post that's become a book. It's a comprehensive, thorough and extremely practical "how to guide" that covers leadership, management, accountability, communication, emotional intelligence and planning. It's core message is about helping you shift your thinking from you to them.There's a big section on KPIs (what do you expect - he's an accountant!) however it's not what you might think because he's boiled it down to what he calls the famous 5 - two of which surprised me.I love his style of writing because it's sprinkled with anecdotes to illustrate the lessons he's personally learned over the years, peppered with numerous quick wins and seeded with insightful questions to help you think about how to apply it to your business.Simon is an extremely humble man (just check out the swimming pool story) and generously shares his wisdom that's not just worked with him, but also the many accountancy practices he's helped achieve similar success.If you're an accountant with your own practice, you need to audit what's in these pages closely. If you're an owner of a service based business wanting to grow or ease yourself out of the day to day running, then it won't be long before your accountant will be recommending you read this too.

I have been working with Simon for over a year and he has helped me change my business immeasurably in that time - for the better of course. The book has inspired me to go even further and challenged me to take the next steps (which are more difficult), and the resources provided will support me. It has done what he set out to do!The book is, unlike most management books, easy to read and totally relatable to the business of an accountancy practice but also to any people-centric business. I highly recommend it, read it, take action and improve the lives of both your team and yourself.

Having worked with Simon for a while I was delighted to read the book. It highlights the simplicity of his methods and allows far more people to benefit than the ones he can directly work with through his Accountants Mastermind.If you have a bottleneck in your business, read and apply the information in this book!

Great book, I wish I read it 20 years ago.It is full of information, and it gives a practical plan how to build a good business team. Difficult situations with underperforming team members happen all the time and HEFFF process gives clear steps how to approach the problem so you can avoid guilt and embarrassment, as well as legal complications.Although some KPI, given in the book, are specific for accountancy practices, but the same process can be applied in any organisation, who want to build an effective and happy team.

A lot of books are written by authors who know the theory but have never walked the walk. This book is full of the best ideas and helpful hints which have been tried and tested by Simon over his career whilst owning Greenstones.If you want to move your Accounting Business on, get your team on your side and grow you as a business owner. If you implement the stuff in this book, your business cannot fail to grow, be run more efficiently and effectively and therefore increase in profitability.If you haven't bought this book then don't hesitate put it in your basket now!

Although my profession is law rather than accountancy, I found much useful and thought-provoking content in this book, which sets out a well thought out and systematic approach to improving the management of an accountancy firm, and reducing the personal load on the business owner. Definitely recommended.

I loved this book. I am not an accountant but I read lots of business books, and Simon's book was recommended to me by a friend as I have a team of people working for me. I found the content to be solid gold. I really enjoyed Simon’s conversational style of writing and how he shared his real-life experiences of working with his team. The part on the ‘Letters of Expectation' made the book worth reading on its own. The book is an absolute must read if you have a team you want to empower even more and get even most value from.

If you want to learn some key strategies of how to build a great accountancy practice from a owner who has been there and done that, then you can’t hope to come across a better book.Of course, knowing is one thing, doing is quite another! This is where Simon’s mastermind groups come in, which compliment the book perfectly. It’s this level of accountability that really drives the change that’s possible if (when?) you implement the learnings from the book, together with all the other tips, tools and strategies which there must not have been room for!