Case Study - David Dixon

I am a qualified Chartered Management Accountant and prior to joining TaxAssist Accountants worked as a Group Financial Controller for a large motor dealership group based in Colchester. Prior to that I had many years experience within the small company sector including several years as a director of the family motor dealership business. I also spent a year working in the Stock Exchange following qualification.

I joined TaxAssist Accountants in November 2002 opening my first shop in October 2005. I opened my second in 2007, based purely on the success of my first shop. I am now planning to open my third shop in the autumn. The growth of my business over the last six months has been faster than ever before. It's far exceeded our projections...I've found that the shop front produces pretty much all the volume of new business that we can handle, putting the business in its best position yet.

In response to the increase of business I now employ four full-time accountants and an administrator between the two shop fronts. I was initially wary of taking on people unless absolutely necessary but I found that it's clearly the way to go if you want to grow your business. The last thing I want is to have to turn business away so to cope with demand and to maintain good client service the team is absolutely essential.

With two shop fronts, it's important to put some thought into how to manage both at the same time. I have now appointed a manager to run the Bishop's Stortford shop front and I am based in Colchester. The third shop front will run on a leaner basis as a satellite of the Colchester business, with one person dealing with clients' accounts day to day, letting me come in two days a week. I expect the new shop front to grow steadily and when the time's right I expect I'll take on a couple more employees in relation to the amount of business. The rate of development with TaxAssist Accountants is very fast – there's a great deal of potential there for franchisees.

As my business has grown, I've continued to make use of the training and support on offer from the Norwich based Support Centre. TaxAssist Accountants have provided me with an incredibly comprehensive training package that included a five-week course that focused on all aspects of running a business. The training taught me new approaches to accounting while reinforcing what I already knew. It gave me the confidence that I would be able to bring success to the business - refocusing my existing skills to ensure I had a full understanding of the TaxAssist Accountants model.

I was initially attracted to TaxAssist Accountants because of the significant support – the whole package is incredibly solid and I found it very reassuring. In fact, since I launched the business in 2002, in many ways the support has kept on getting better. TaxAssist Accountants are dedicated to their franchisees and their advice and guidance is very clear, to the point and incredibly helpful.