#173 Graham Arrowsmith & Kevin Appleby – Business Q&A

Business Q&A with Kevin Appleby and Graham Arrowsmith This week's episode involves a business Q&A session. Kevin Appleby and Graham Arrowsmith discuss what's fresh in their businesses. It's a long time since we talked to each other without having a guest on the show. Each week we find out what our guests are up to, but we rarely talk about our own businesses. Graham recons its 40 episodes since we last chatted without a guest. So what's new in our world? What is Kevin Appleby doing? We started our Q&A with Kevin's consulting business. Kevin is developing management accounting courses alongside the work he is doing with his current Home Office consulting client. These courses enable Kevin to share his consulting skills with other finance professionals. Developing the 21st Century Finance Business Partner Kevin has been developing courses aimed at management accountants. As we publish this episode these have only just gone on sale. Kevin has delivered 4 and 5 day courses in the past as single events. But there is a big lesson learned from this. It's a single high value sale and requires a big time commitment from the customer. This isn't a price issue, but rather the time spent away from the office. The new courses address this issue and both make the training more accessible while also increasing the potential lifetime value of the customer. The courses take a modular approach. Module one gives a high level overview of the skills a management accountant needs in the 21st Century. Further modules lasting one or two days will give a deep dive into specific subjects. WE are packaging the first 3 modules together and running these over a 5 day period later in the year. Customers can buy all 3 modules or single modules. Eventually there will be a series of 7 or 8 modules. Module 2 focusses on helping your business team develop strategy and reporting progress against the strategy using scorecards and dashboards. Module 3 looks at cost management and zero based budgeting. You can take all 3 modules as a single course. Helping the accountant in practice become a broader business advisor Kevin is also talking to one of our previous podcast guests, Patrick McGloughlin, about developing training for accountants in public practice to help these people develop better consulting skills. The accountant's traditional compliance and book-keeping are being commoditised by the rise of service providers such as Xero and Quickbooks. Making Tax Digital is also simplifying and automating much of the accountants traditional work. To survive and grow the accountant needs to learn new advisory skills and take on more consultancy and coaching work, but he was never trained to do this. Patrick and Kevin are looking at what might be done to help fill the gap. 21st Century Business Accountant To support both of these developments, Kevin has launched a YouTube channel, and he is planning to publish weekly videos aimed directly at accountants. Check it out and subscribe What is Graham Arrowsmith doing? Graham is spending much of his  time with business partner Steve building a brand new business. Its too early for us to share details about that. But, when the time is right, we'll dedicate a whole episode to it. Graham has a new 3rd sector client Graham's main business, Finely Fettled, has a big new client. Graham is getting really excited about working with them. They are operating internationally and are looking to attract individuals who want to make a philanthropic investment.The charity is dealing with the homelessness problem. This charity's target donor is likely to be part of the affluent over 50's demographic that Graham specialises in, and Graham will provide an end to end direct mail service for the charity. Graham is working with copyrighter Martin Booth to develop direct mail. Martin was our guest back on episode 148. Much marketing done by charities focusses on what the charity does,