Gain More Time

Rachel has been practising as a counsellor for five years now, specialising in family counselling. She loves her work, knowing that she is helping families cope with crises, more often than not related to their teenage inhabitants. The problem is, as her practice has grown, her free time has shrunk.

The last person she expected who could help her gain some personal time was her accountant. A friend had recommended she call on Clinton at Baldry + Sanford to clarify the new GST threshold. In the past she had managed her GST returns quite happily, knocking them out by mid-afternoon on a Saturday every couple of months.

In her initial consultation, Rachel was intrigued by Clinton’s suggestion that she could increase her counselling case load and increase her discretionary time – both and together!

‘Take your GST returns for starters,’ Clinton told Rachel. ‘You don’t need to do your returns every two months, a business your size needs only file a return twice a year. And if it’s taking you most of a day to do your return, is that really something you want to do yourself? Wouldn’t you rather be spending that time either doing what you do well – counselling – or better still, taking the Saturday off?’

Rachel picked up a few further tips in her chat with Clinton. She realised that, in her effort to keep costs down, she was putting too much time into areas of her work that could be well delegated to others.  Processing her accounts, cleaning the rooms that she shared with three colleagues (thus reducing her share of the rent) – Clinton pointed out that others could do tasks such as these faster, more efficiently, and often more cheaply.

‘You know, I’m guilty of the very thing on which I challenge some of my clients,’ said Rachel. ‘A lot of the guys I see – and yes, this applies particularly to blokes – end up working much more than they really want to. Some of them seem to get most of their sense of self worth and value from what they do – so they think, “Let’s do more of it!” And the reality is that they’re getting more stressed out, and sometimes earning less than before.’

‘Some of these same guys you’re talking about reckon time spent planning is wasted,’ observed Clinton.  ‘They can become so immersed in doing the stuff that the business does that they forget to plan and project forward. Then when they run into a problem, like a shortage of cash, the only solution that they can see is to work longer!’

Rachel made an appointment to see Paulette, one of Clinton’s colleagues, to take over her GST returns. She then started to think what she would do with that extra time she had just gained on a fair few Saturdays.

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We’d love to sit down over a coffee and discuss with you how we can help you do the tasks that you do well, and hand over to others the ones you really don’t need to do, don’t really want to do, and often don’t do particularly well anyhow. And you’ll find that you get some good extra time for your family or other interests.

Call Clinton for a free initial consultation.

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