What do you currently do?
Managing Director of SJD Accountancy and EasyAccountancy.co.uk  As market leaders we manage the tax affairs for more than 10,000 contractors, freelancers and sole traders across the country.
Historically most of our Clients came from within the IT sector, however due to the credit crunch we are now seeing more and more people move over from other industries such as: engineering, project management, sales and marketing and the financial services. I’m sure this is partly due to the recession and redundancies but also because people are becoming less interested in the whole full time employee experience.

Being a full time employee used to mean you were ‘permanently’ employed and your job was pretty much guaranteed, the company used to show loyalty to their employees and in return their employees showed it back. It wasn’t uncommon for people to have only worked in two or three companies in their whole career. Times have definitely changed, contractors are more mobile, more driven, they earn more than their full time counter parts, they get less involved in office politics and often their opinions are seen as being more valid than internal employees.

As well as managing both of these companies I am also a black belt in kick boxing and I’m learning to become a professional racing driver (not what you’d usually expect from your typical accountant). I entered the Radical Cup last year and won several trophies , this year I’ve moved up a gear (no pun intended) and I am racing in the VdeV European Speed series which includes racing at an a number of the F1 circuits across Europe. My goal is to race in the Le Mans 24 Hour next year or the year after. 

Who is your inspiration in business?
Ayn Rand for writing one of the best selling and greatest books of all time - Atlas Shrugged, creating a brand new branch of philosophy, and being the staunchest advocator of capitalism that ever lived.

Whom do you admire?
Jack Welch for his vision, determination, and integrity which made GE one of the greatest companies in the world.

Looking back, are there things you would have done differently?
The main one is to keep a tighter control of the business. Like most accountancy firms we have benefited from the high volume of contractors coming into the market. However, in good times it’s often easy to let things slip. A prime example of this is that one of our regions employed a new accountant who mainly worked from home. All appeared fine but after an internal audit which we do every six months we realised the new accountant was stealing customers away from us and supplying his own company – corporate espionage isn’t something I would have expected in the professional world of accountancy.

We did get all clients back and sued the accountant in question, however if we had tighter controls this might not have happened or we might have caught it earlier.
Tighter control does have to be balanced and it would be easy to have a total lockdown and not allow employees to be empowered to make their own decisions. This wouldn’t be a good move and I still provide all employees both new and old with total freedom and trust.

What defines your way of doing business?
SJD has grown from a single person limited company eight years ago when I had the idea of providing accountancy services to a niche sector of contractors and freelancers. Today SJD employs over 120 members of staff.

My leadership style has meant that I work no longer than 35 hours per week, but still maintain total day-to-day responsibility for the company. It’s trendy to say you’re staff are your number one asset but within our company it’s true. Each member of staff has been chosen specifically because they are an ambitious self-starter.

My entrepreneurial style is echoed throughout the organisation, we have an open or no door policy, staff are empowered to make decisions which in some companies just means they are burdened with problems but never actually given the responsibility to self-solve, resulting in increased stress. However, as nearly all staff have worked at SJD for at least last five years they instinctively know the right thing do.
A testament to mine and the organisations leadership happened earlier this year, when it was announced that SJD was awarded the highest position ever by a firm of accountants in the Sunday Times Best Companies to work for award.

What advice would you give to anybody just starting out?
Do not miss tax deadlines, getting this wrong can be costly. Make sure things are in on time to avoid all the nasty penalties – this is the easily one of the most common mistakes, tax saving advice can soon be eroded by penalties and interest on the tax you owe, a £300 fine for a £10m company isn’t really much but for a start-up company or smaller business working from home it’s quite a chunk.

Know what you can claim, sounds easy but as the Governments advisory booklet on Expenses is 100 pages long it’s not as easy as you might think.

Be cautious about giving credit terms- ensure your customers know that payment is required on completion, even better get part or full payment up front, this is becoming more and more common place now.

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