The Whole Story

Not just because I climbed a mountain in a severe snow storm, but because I have been there and done that. Yes, I have studied at night school for many years to achieve my qualifications, I been the faithful employee, a wife, a step-mother, an investor and an entrepreneur. I am an accountant and worked with the tax legislation in public practice in Australia and in Germany. Two tax systems, two languages, two cultures and two very different belief systems. I have owned several investment properties in both countries and bought and sold shares in both as well.

I believe what I have done, is rarely achieved and my knowledge and experience can be adopted and applied anywhere and everywhere.

I went through school quicker than most, getting through two years in one in the early years of school, three years ahead of the average in the books I was reading and then finished school, after receiving the award for the best student in my year, at only 16. I started working full time in an office which is all I knew I wanted to do.

In that first place of work I was a manager by 19 and by the time I left at age 21, I had learnt everything there was to learn in that office which had about 150 employees in total and I was doing the job that had previously been held by two full time people, alone. And I was less than half their age. I changed jobs but was mentally bored after only 18 months and moved to another workplace. After ten years of experience in accounting in industry, that being manufacturing, the car and forklift industry (new and used sales, maintenance and service as well as monthly reporting to directors and shareholders in a public company), I changed to working in public practice. That is I changed to working for public accountants/tax agents. I was now preparing interim and year end reports for small businesses and tax returns for those businesses. I was dealing with investors and saw first-hand, precisely who made the most money and had the better lifestyle in retirement – those that relied on a pension payment, those with shares or those with property.

After five years’ experience there, I had lost respect for my employers, seeing the client’s needs were not their first and foremost concern and decided to become self-employed. I felt I could do better, I felt I was more ethical and would look after my client’s first and foremost. I initially thought I would just do some bookkeeping but it soon became clear that I would need to be a registered tax agent as well. I already had the relevant qualifications and experience, there was just one short course I had to take and get letters of referral from clients and my then boss. I went through all that and was a self-employed accountant in public practice before I knew it.

I didn’t expect much, I didn’t have a business plan and started working from the smallest bedroom in the house. Soon I moved to the largest bedroom in the house, started teaching a specific accounting software in the local community centre at night (since I also hold the qualification to teach) and after only six months, I had to employ someone to help me. She started out working three days a week and it was not long after that we had to move office. Then we moved again and employed someone else. Then we employed more people and moved again. Within three years I was operating out of 400 square metres of office space and soon thereafter had twelve employees. We had over 1,000 clients and every two weeks I was on a plane somewhere, either to speak at a seminar or conference somewhere in Australia or the Pacific region, or seeing clients, who were also spread out all over the country and Asia region.

I was known as an accountant who spoke about investing and structuring because I invested myself as well. At the time I had five investment properties and experience in the Australia Stock Market. One of my clients had created their own hedge fund and I had arranged the dinner dance for 400 people at a 5 star hotel in Melbourne to launch it. We had guests fly in from all over the world and had to deal with the entertainment, the celebrity guests, the investors and clients.

After I sold my practice at a higher rate than ever heard of before, I stayed on for six months, then when my largest client asked, for the umpteenth time in almost 7 years, could I work just for him, I finally said yes. He and his brother has set up a business installing home insulation and they needed my help. I joined them in late-October that year as there were 6 employees and by the end of January, only three months later, we had 110 employees. I was managing the office and call-centre while one of them was managing the stock purchases and imports from China while the other ran the sales team and invoicing.

After some months I had managed my position so that I didn’t need to be as involved on a daily basis anymore and went down from working 7 days a week to only 3. It was then that I took a month long holiday to Europe, at the end of which, I decided to move. I initially moved to Paris, after some time there, the old East Germany and Tunisia, I ended up in Northern Germany, Hamburg to be precise and now, with ten years’ experience in public practice here, I look after only about 200 clients, work in German, dealing predominately with the English speaking community in Germany, but also German investors and business clients, helping to guide them through the complex German tax system.

The knowledge I gained as an accountant, in both industry and public practice, as both an investor and seeing how clients invested, in Australia and in Germany, has been invaluable and helped me immensely. I hold qualifications in Accounting, Tax, Financial Advising, Teaching and Counselling and so, if you want a coach that has done what you want to do, that can help you to take the next step and the next and the one after that - then look no further.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.