Author archives: charlie

It’s one of the most frequent questions I get. “Garry, why should we outsource our finance function, rather than keeping it in-house?” The truth is that there are many reasons, but let’s just focus on one. Which of those two options makes your business more resilient? I’ve been talking about this a lot in my […]

You know how there’s always one guy for whom everything seems to go wrong? One of our directors, Shirley, swears that’s her husband Phil. If a mistake is going to be made at the bank… If there’s ever going to be a mix-up at work… If there’s any kind of freak incident… …he’ll be involved. […]

A blast from the past… 2003 – Shirley starts working at Insight Associates – yes it was before Facebook! 2004 – Facebook launched!  ‘Blog’ is the word of the year and the iPod dominates the music playing market 2005 – The Worlds first partial face transplant. 2006 – Pluto is downgraded from a planet to […]

So, have you started stockpiling food yet, in case the Coronavirus hits? I was surprised when one of my business contacts told me that her utility room was now full of extra cans of fruit and vegetables, non-perishables like pasta and rice, as well as cleaning materials and toilet paper… She had seen videos from […]

Have you ever heard of “Imposter syndrome”? There’s the official definition: Successful people who feel like frauds (even though they’re not). Then there’s my definition… …Which is rather the opposite! My “Imposter Syndrome” involves people who are fully confident they can do jobs for which they are patently unqualified. Here’s an example I see again […]

“I am not a number… I am a free man!” If you grew up in the 1960s, you’ll immediately be able to visualise Number Six, captured and interned in The Village, shouting into the wind that he is a unique individual, not an anonymous prisoner. (And if you have no idea what I’m talking about… […]

When was the last time that your accountant visited your business, walked around your office and spoke to your staff? I’m going to go out on a limb here, and guess that the answer is “a long time ago”… Or just as likely, “never”. The vast majority of traditional accountants never visit their clients’ offices. […]

“But…. Why didn’t my accountant tell me that!?” My client couldn’t understand it. He had recently launched a business which was growing quickly. But while the money was flowing in…. …He had no business experience, and was quite clueless about basic financial matters. (He would be the very first to admit it.) How to separate […]

She was stuck in the past Years ago, I had a friend who went through a very bad break-up with her fiancé. For more than a decade afterwards, she talked about him constantly. And everyone else she dated was always compared to him. “Andrew did this…. Andrew did that… I remember once with Andrew, back […]

“Garry, I’m at the post office – I’m £10 short!” One of our team, Vikki, was mailing some important documents for us. But when she came to pay for the postage, she realised that her prepaid company spending card didn’t have enough cash on it to cover the expense. Within a couple of minutes, we’d […]