Stories

Where do I start? Before I was introduced to Sebastian in late 2016 I was under the impression that your accountant would only contact you at that one time of year, well I was wrong.

I first ran in to Sebastian at a contractor’s event held by NECA at their head office in South Melbourne, where he was invited to address a full room of contractors to discuss the importance of knowing and understanding the sate of your businesses finance well before it had an effect on the performance. As soon as he started with his presentation I knew that he was what we were missing.

I have been the head of an Electrical contracting business for over 10 years, and before engaging the services of SP Solutions I never had the comfort of knowing the exact financial position we would be in prior of being in that position. Right from the start we worked together with Sebastian’s team, we put in place a 12 month budget utilizing real figures. Catching up every 2 months to analyze the past and next two months, we were able to plan ahead knowing the financial position we would be in before we were. This enabled us to make financial decisions with the peace of mind knowing we could afford to.

Sebastian has not only become our accountant, but a business advisor and some one I am glad to say is a mate.

Over the years we engaged several Business Advisors/Consultants to help us build the foundations of our business. When we started up, our business grew too quickly and we felt out of our depth. We were making plenty of money, but no profit and wanted to know where we were going wrong. We needed to understand the fundamentals like pricing, cash flow, management of debtors, profit and simply when we could afford to put on an additional staff member. We needed to establish easy yet meaningful measures and transparent reporting to monitor how our business was performing.

Desperate and stressed, we signed annual contracts and paid previous advisors as much as $3000 per month to try and get answers. Instead, we got the opposite of what we asked. They insisted on us giving marketing advice, time management advice and asked us to read books of success story that weren't relevant to us. They thought they could bring their corporate experience and processes to our trade business and it just didn't work. We'd constantly asked them to provide the information that we thought we signed up for, but frankly they didn't have the answers. Worse still, they were so full of their own self-importance that they had no idea that they were getting it so wrong. We ended up more stressed and burnt out than when we started with them.

Recently, we attended a Master Plumbers series of talks called "Know your Numbers " run by Sebastian and Sam at SP Solutions, and were blown away by the depth of understanding they have about running a trade business. In a few short hours, we got the information that no one else could give us, in language that we could understand. The sessions were interactive, so we got to ask questions relevant to our business. These guys are passionate about educating tradies on how to run a successful business.

We have now taken on SP Solution as our Tax Accountants and Business Advisors, for nowhere near the cost of our previous advisors and couldn't be happier. In a few short months they have already transformed the way we run our business and held our hand through the transition. We feel confident to make decisions as we now know our numbers and we are making more profit on our jobs. We can't wait to see what happens next.

The team at SP Solutions are knowledgeable, empathetic and always available to answer our questions.

I couldn't recommend the team at SP Solutions more highly.

I recently read SP Solutions' book, The 5 Levels Of Business Ownership, and I must say I loved how they were able to explain the usual problem of spending too much time working IN your business, as opposed to working ON your business in such simple terms. The 5 levels of business ownership described in the book are very much what I'm used to seeing in the SME world, where the majority of my clients would be in the owner-manager and owner-director stages.

I will definitely pass this book on to a couple of my friends who run their own trade-based micro businesses as it is a much easier read than many other business books out there and as such, will have a much higher likelihood of actually being read by tradesmen.

I first met Sam during his time as partner of CP Partners in the late 1990's. When Sam left that partnership to establish SP Solutions in 2002, I immediately followed him as his client. Since then, Sam has been instrumental in advising me and my partners on all tax and business matters through the entire business lifecycle; from the establishment of our first venture, to the acquisition of several businesses, and finally to guiding us through a business sale process we are currently undertaking. I regularly reach out to Sam to gain his thoughts on issues of a strategic nature. His practical thinking, ability to think outside the square and easy to understand advice have contributed enormously to the success of our business.

Sam Polimeni has been my accountant and business advisor for many years now. He took me on as a client when I was sole trader plumber and encouraged me to grow my business.

For a number of years leading up to 2011, Sam worked very closely with me and my plumbing business to prepare it for sale. This included advising on system and process improvement, KPI reporting, human resourcing, financial forecasts and information memorandums. Sam’s advice continued to be extremely valuable throughout the long negotiation period.

Post the successful sale of my business, Sam continues to act as one of my key advisors and sits on my advisory board, to advise on potential business opportunities such as the new plumbing business I recently purchased equity in.