IT'S an exciting time for Serena Humphrey...... After establishing her financial training company last year, she's training business owners, professionals and even bankers. Her company – 'the f-word' – was born out of her desire to prevent business failures. Her aim is to get rid of the fear of finance and help people to take control.
The workshops and in-house training sessions run by Serena translate financial jargon and make finances relevant to each business.
She urges her clients to practice a few fundamentals: have monthly management accounts, weekly flash reports and cash flow forecasts.
Demand for her services has grown over the last year and the West Bridgford-based management accountant now travels across the country for work.
"It's everything I hoped it would be, and more than I dared hope it would be," she said. "I have always been in management accounting and worked with small companies – management accounting is about communicating financial stuff to non-financial people..
"My job has always been about translation – no jargon. I translate things into what they mean for the business.
"I don't deal with construction or the science industry, but aside from that it's my clients are across the board."
While the idea for the company surfaced several years ago, her 'light bulb moment' came when she was an accounts manager for a family business at the age of 22. She had to tell 400 employees they'd lost their jobs and weren't getting paid.
The experience stuck with Serena, who set up her first business – Peopleshare Ltd, a specialist management accounting company – in 2000 with an aim to bring corporate quality financial management to small businesses.
She sold the business in 2012 and went about realising her dream of establishing 'the f-word'.
But it hasn't been all plain sailing. She had to overcome opposition from Gordon Ramsay before she could get the name for her company trademarked.
The celebrity chef's television production company Optomen already used the 'F Word' as a name for one of its cooking shows.
After a brief wrangle, in January she received official confirmation of approval from the Trade Marks Registry to call her business "the f word finance survival training".
Serena now enjoys the freedom of running her mobile operation from home.
After having to overcome a few hurdles to get to the stage where she's now running her dream business, she urged other budding entrepreneurs not to be disheartened by obstacles.
"When you first have your idea you expect it to take off straight away, and when that doesn't happen you just have to keep going ... and going. It can take a while for an idea to get traction.
"Now I've had my business for a year, opportunities are coming in from everywhere.
"I have been asked to go in to train managers at a bank in Nottingham on how to read financial information.
"I've also been asked to speak at events and, I've been asked to be a guest presenter on other people's courses and I've just become a partner in the Deal Makers Club.
"What I hadn't realised with my pervious business was the power of consistency and continuing to do the small things every day.
"In my last business we would become disheartened if things didn't work and we'd say 'we're not doing that again'.
"But I realise now that you have to keep doing what you believe, showing up at events and putting out blogs.
"The big difference has been having complete faith and keeping going because traction starts to happen through sheer consistency.
"That's the advice I would give to people starting out now.
"You can be so convinced that your idea is the best thing in the world and when people don't immediately leap on it you begin to doubt yourself."
As he economy shows signs of recovery, Serena's business is benefiting from an increased confidence.
This also dictates the rhetoric of her teaching, as her clients shift from seeking guidance on managing during a recession to managing growth.
"There's so much optimism now," Serena said.
"People are not talking about managing the recession anymore they are now talking about managing growth.
"People genuinely believe now is about growth and recovery.
"Before growth might have been difficult, so the focus was on managing overheads and controlling margins.
"Those things are still important but now it's also about making sure the business has enough cash to finance growth.
"More businesses go bust in growth than during a recession, because during a recession people 'hold on'.
"Things go wrong quicker when you're growing because you might take on a difficult customer – growth is much more volatile for businesses.
"It's a very exciting time: because it's been such a long recession people can feel a sense of optimism and there's a real sense of excitement.
"But there is still cautiousness as a lot of companies are not financially geared up to take advantage of the growth.
"A lot of companies have burnt their cash reserves during the recession and have much leaner balance sheets than they used to have.
"A lot of companies are not as well placed as they were five years ago to deal with growth – most people still don't quite get that growth means burning. cash. Growth can be a dangerous time."
In the future, Serena hopes to run low-cost intensive workshops for start-ups.
"Most start-ups fail, and they fail for a lot of reasons. I want to be able to find a way to work with those people.
"If you can get businesses while they are young, and get them to grasp some financial principles it helps.
"I work with people in their 50s, running businesses that turn over £5 million, who say if they'd known some of the things I teach they could have made far more."
