“I ask new clients, ‘Where do you see your business going?’ and ‘What do you want from your life?’ That might be travelling to Asia. It might be a two-day week. It might be opening a rescue shelter and fostering a million dogs. At a micro business level, you have to take a holistic approach, because the business is the person.”
Working with small businesses often means thinking beyond the bottom line.
That’s the approach Emma James, founder of The Number Ninja, takes with her clients. They are creatives, developers and social entrepreneurs, all carving their own path. As she sees it, giving good advice is as much about understanding their life goals as it is about getting to grips with their business.
On helping businesswomen
“Historically, there’s been this attitude that women shouldn’t worry their pretty little minds about finances and money. The majority of the businesses I work with are female-owned, and I think it’s particularly important for women to have a really good idea of their numbers. Because financial knowledge is power; it’s strength; it’s building whatever life you want with your business.”
Sometimes the disadvantage is two tiny words: I can’t.
Emma is out to change that. For Emma, her job isn’t just issuing invoices or sorting VAT returns. It’s helping those clients shake off an idea that gets baked into many women way before they hit the working world. The idea that numbers are the enemy, that finance isn’t ‘for them’.
Why it doesn’t pay for accountants to be gatekeepers
“There’s a lot of gatekeeping among more traditional accountants. They think you shouldn’t share your knowledge with the business owner. But just because I know how to change the oil in my car doesn’t mean I’m going to try to replace the engine. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want people to be empowered. If clients have a true understanding of their business, it makes the relationship better.”
For Emma, accountancy is more than dropping off a spreadsheet once a year.
She wants her clients to know their numbers and understand the why behind the what. That might run counter to the traditional idea that finance pros need to hoard what they know so clients can’t do what they do. But that’s not how Emma sees it. As she puts it, ‘I work almost in partnership with clients’.
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