Chris set up Acumist, after being made redundant, to help business owners create their own realities and become successful. He also held a board position, as FD, of a facilities and waste management company dealing with large retail waste solutions. He is now using his eclectic business experiences to engage with the boards of SME clients that are looking for help to grow and/or exit.
Since the early career days of working for insolvency practitioners, Chris has always strived to ensure that business owners do not need to seek the services of such organisations. His practice was set up after being made redundant – twice – ironically due to economic upturn and he decided that helping business owners to define and achieve success was more fulfilling than clearing up the mess after things had gone wrong!
His father’s own redundancy, from what he thought was a secure career started him and Acumist on the current path. Having persuaded him to set up a consultancy, his father needed financial support to ensure he was in control of his fledgeling business. Naturally, he turned to Chris for accounting support and this very quickly turned into an bigger advisory role and one that extended to his father’s many contacts in the banking and computer consultancy world. Chris designed and delivered for these clients, a series of reports that were the forerunners to today’s advisory software solutions. Over time he also became an early adopter of cloud accounting and fully embraces the virtual world and what SAAS and Finance as a Service can do to help clients.
As business grew Chris started mixing coaching and accountancy and enjoyed seeing the positive results that came from applying this. He went on to qualify as an NLP Trainer so that he could better apply interpersonal coaching skills and linguistics to the accounting model. The blend of accounting and coaching now sees clients achieving their goals and ambitions quickly, with targeted feedback. NLP and communications work brought diverse clients such as some of the High Street banks, BBC News 24, David Lloyd Leisure and The Royal Hospital for Neuro Disability. He has had a truly diverse experience across many disciplines and business sectors.
Helping business owners to create their own realities is what drives Chris and he puts his all into helping those he is engaged with to achieve their maximum potential. Let’s also not forget there’s some fun to be had along the way too, once the work is out of the way!
Chris embodies the values of honesty, integrity, open communication, creativity, education and fun.