Back in 2012 our youngest child was born; we were working 24 hours a day with a new-born baby at our Hotel. Needless to say it was exhausting!
So, we decided to change careers! Mike began his journey as an AAT student at the bottom of the ranks and I began studying at home in between baby naps and feeds with the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB). We wanted to make a difference to our family’s future but also help small businesses by supporting them in a way that we felt we weren’t supported by our accountant.
Fast forward to 2015 and SMART Bookkeeping was born, 3 years of hard work and I had my practising license. I worked from home in our conservatory, but very quickly I needed more room and structure. So, we moved my office to MENTA in 2017. It was great, being surrounded by likeminded small business owners. I no longer felt isolated as many freelancers do.
Lisa joined me at the start of 2018 and we were a team ? SMART was really taking off. It felt good that we were able to help so many small businesses and make a difference. Lisa settled in so quickly, it was like she had always been my right hand.
2020 was a tough year for many, it started off very well… but who knew a pandemic was about to hit? However, before the pandemic, March 2020 another breath of fresh air joined our team. Emily! Part way through her AAT level 3 Emily showed great determination, she had to, within a week we were all summoned to work from home! It was like a whirl wind wasn’t it?! Emily did amazingly, being thrown in the deep end, we used Microsoft teams and worked together, supporting each other as the chaos unravelled.
COVID – 19… with so much uncertainty of Lockdown 1.0 Mike and I began doing as much as we can to offer any help to small businesses wherever we could. Mike began recording videos to explain and break down the complicated rules around Furlough, Business Grants, who can work and who cannot, who can claim and who can’t, VAT differed, rent holiday’s… it was an endless task of changes that were being made by the government at a very intense speed that needed to be deciphered. It was quite intense, but our videos reached tens of thousands of people ?
In June 2020, Alice joined the team ?. Thankfully we had a nice little run at the office working safely, our team is still growing to enable us to keep up with the demands of our wonderful clients ?.
September 2020, we moved out of MENTA and into our very own office space at Manor Park, Great Barton. It was a very exciting process, we had so many ideas and brought in small local businesses to help us design and furnish, and most of these trades were our clients ?. In November Jordan joined the team embarking on an AAT Apprenticeship! Jordan was the 3rd hire of 2020 which we needed to make sure we could help as many local businesses as possible.
2021 – Mike is now ACCA qualified and part way through an MBA and we have so many plans. We will keep moving forwards and continue to up our game in helping small businesses. Increasing our offering and providing value to our clients. Expanding our services, introducing Training and Mentoring… Because your business is our business… And we will do everything we can to help you be successful.
Sarah ?
