Step 7 of Building a Better Business

Anna Stubbs • August 2, 2023

Get someone independent to hold you to account

Have you ever set a New Year’s resolution and then reset the same one again the following year? It's widely recognised that approximately 80% of New Year's resolutions fail. How can we increase our chances of successfully achieving our goals? Accountability.



The most foolproof way of ensuring you complete the actions you’ve committed to is to give someone nagging rights to follow you up. This may be your personal trainer at the gym who makes sure you show up at 6am, or it could be your accountant who checks in on you every 90 days to make sure you’re on track to completing your actions and achieving your business goals.

A soft coach will encourage soft results.

If you think about the type of coach a successful sports team would benefit from, would it be a hard coach or a soft coach? It’s no different in business. We all need someone with the backbone to hold us firmly to account and follow through on consequences for failure to act (‘give me 100 burpees!’).

A soft coach, maybe a life partner or a friend, is likely to worry they’ll upset you if they nag about inaction. They’re likely to accept your excuses. Whereas a hard coach isn’t going to worry about hurting your feelings and they won’t accept excuses. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a heart. Great coaches have backbone and heart; they just care more about your results than your excuses.

If you really want to achieve your goals, seek accountability from a coach who’ll console you after you’ve done the burpees, one who discourages inaction, and enables you to achieve. We can help.

“A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, and has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you can be.” - Tom Landry

Making Tax Digital to be extended to more sole traders and landlords

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Hiding in the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) announcements published on 26 March was a technical note entitled ‘Modernising the tax system through Making Tax Digital‘. This note announces that the income threshold for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax & Self Assessment (or MTD for ITSA) is to drop to £20,000 per annum for sole traders and landlords. If you fall into this category, this means moving your tax completely over to digital by April 2026. But don’t worry, let’s see what MTD for ITSA is all about.

Reducing the uncertainty: financial forecasting and planning

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Uncertainty can be a major threat to your strategic financial planning. Being unsure of what lies around the corner makes it difficult to make those important financial decisions around operational budgets, investment and growth funding. But by using forecasting and scenario-planning, you make it easier to manage your finances and reduce some of the financial uncertainty.

What's new in Xero (Spring 2025)

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Some great new enhancements have come to Xero in the first few months of the year, here's some important features that have been released: Enhancements to the new invoicing Keyboard shortcuts. Drag and drop attachments. Date Picker quick select. Exchange rate adjustments in the invoice. Tracking categories for invoices. Automated bill entry The ability to upload bills directly to Xero, create one or many bills by dragging and dropping multiple files. Xero creates draft bills with the key details, and the original document is attached. Other important features (region dependent) Bank feed updates (Australia adds Suncorp Bank, United States gains PNC Commercial). Simplified whole operations with improved sales orders (United States). Easier 1099 reporting and filing (United States). Streamlined tax workflow and compliance (United Kingdom). Easier reporting (United States Schedule C compliance report, New Zealand not-for-profit tier 3 & 4 PBE reports). For the full breakdown read Xero's update .