Why Hire a Business Coach When Your Accountant Can Do All That and More?

While it may seem like a smart move to hire a business coach, often your accountant can provide superior business advisory services.

One of the first things most businesses do is hire an accountant. After all, one of the keys to any business is understanding how to balance the books.

But although many businesses have a long-standing relationship with their accountant, they’ll often then hire a business coach somewhere further down the line.

That may be because they wish to create a business plan, boost their cash flow, or simply have someone to bounce ideas off.

But along with offering a comprehensive range of taxation and accounting services, PrimeAdvisory also offers expert business advisory and wealth management services.

“When I launched PrimeAdvisory more than 20 years ago, I wanted to build up a set of scalable, repeatable, and trainable services that I could train all my staff to deliver,” explained founder Christian Borkowski.

“And those services are really around budgeting and reporting, analysing variances, and having a quarterly meeting with clients where we can go over all these things and talk about some strategies.”

While any qualified accountant can handle quarterly reports, it’s PrimeAdvisory’s personalised business advisory services—backed by more than 20 years of business experience—that help set the firm apart.

“We provide a lot of bespoke business advisory services, which often arise because a client has decided to sell a business, or buy a business, or is otherwise looking for a detailed business plan,” Borkowski said.

“And that business plan is important because it provides a bit of a North Star that we can always refer back to.”

The Right Business Advisor Cares About Your Business

PrimeAdvisory is home to accountants who do more than just taxes—and we’ve always believed there are eight key areas your business advisor should focus on.

Generally speaking, these are: growth, profit, cash flow, tax optimisation, asset protection, retirement planning, getting ready to sell your business, and leaving a legacy.

But while any professional in charge of optimising your business efforts should help boost your cash flow and drive greater revenue, the right business advisor cares about much more than just profit and loss.

“When we sit down with a potential new client that happens to be a business owner, we’re really having a conversation with them about why they’re in business, what they’re trying to create, and what it means for them,” Borkowski explained.

With most owners starting their business for the element of freedom it provides, Borkowski says the right business advisor will help provide strategies to achieve that goal. 

“It’s time, money, and freedom—that’s basically what most business owners are after,” he said.

“If someone is complaining about their business and the results it’s producing, it’s because they’re either time-poor or cash-poor—or both.

“As business advisors, we can really delve deeply into that and explore the reasons for it and start to solve those issues.”

How to Get the Most Out of Business Advisory Services

PrimeAdvisory is home to plenty of clients who came to us to take care of their accounting needs, before also deciding to utilise the firm’s expert business advisory services.

Borkowski says that not only can business advisory and wealth management clients expect the same personalised service as every other client, but that his own experience building PrimeAdvisory into a highly successful firm means he provides business advice gleaned from hard-won experience.

“When I’m sitting down with a new business client, I always just start with an initial, friendly chat,” Borkowski explained.

“I start by asking: ‘how long have you been in business? How did you feel when you first started it? How does that compare to the life you have today?

“Has it delivered everything you thought it would? Are things better, or worse, than when you first started?’

“It’s just a really open-ended, informal conversation like that… just to build some trust and work out any pain points, and see how we can help before we delve into any financials,” he added.

After an initial chat, it is then that PrimeAdvisory takes a deep-dive into the company’s financials to discover exactly how and where it can add value.

“There’s a lot that obviously happens between starting out with a business advisory client and all the ongoing support—we undertake quarterly strategy meetings on top of all the regulation tax stuff, like financial statements and tax returns and BAS, and of all that—that we offer to clients,” Borkowski said.

“As much as we look at the financial performance, when we’re providing business advisory services, we’re also looking at much more than just the numbers.

“We’re setting two to three projects per quarter and holding the business accountable to make sure they have been effectively implemented—or exploring the reasons for why they haven’t.”

The Importance of Hiring a Business Advisor You Can Trust

Plenty of business coaches promise the world and deliver an atlas, which is why it’s important to work with someone you can genuinely trust.

That’s why hiring a business advisor with an accounting background can mean the difference between receiving qualified advice informed by on-the-job experience, and just another marketing hard-sell.

“When it comes to working with the PrimeAdvisory team, I think the main difference is that we’ve built our own business from the ground up for the past 20 years,” Borkowski explained.

“And we’ve helped hundreds of business clients to do the same.”

In a tightening economy where every dollar counts, consolidating your expenses and switching from a business coach to PrimeAdvisory’s business advisory and wealth management services can help stretch your budget further.

It’s all part of providing a convenient one-stop shop of accounting, business advisory, and wealth management services under the one roof.

“We understand that ultimately in business, what most clients are looking to do is make money,” Borkowski said.

“But once you’ve got that sorted, there are a whole other range of factors that go into making sure your business is running smoothly to support your lifestyle.

“Because at the end of the day, your business isn’t your life. 

“It’s something that should help give you back more time and money—and ultimately, more freedom.”

Drop us a line if you’re looking to swap your business coach for an advisor with accounting expertise and the know-how of what it takes to run a company.

And don’t forget to take the Business Owner Quick Quiz to find out how your business is going.