Accountancy Value
Helping business owners realise their ambitions
Mike Keoghan ACMA
0791 073 6074
My own story
I have had a passion for engineering and particularly automotive engineering since boyhood. As I left school in the midst of the 1980’s recession the opportunity to follow a career in engineering was limited.
By the age of 22 I found myself running a small garage business. I loved the work did a great quality job and had lots of happy customers.
However I was working long hours and wasn’t making any money from it and that was a problem because as the years went by I watched my friends buy houses drive around in new cars and work much fewer hours than me. I had to find a way to turn things around. I didn’t know who to turn to and I couldn’t afford to pay for advice.
I ended up doing a business studies qualification through evening classes at what is now John Moores university in Liverpool. I enjoyed it so much I was persuaded to go on and study accounting. Through a friend on the course I landed a job as a junior accountant, sold my garage business and set my course for what became the rest of my working life.
However I didn’t quite get the car bug out of my system and went on to design and build my own cars 25 years later...I even managed to sell a few !
A couple of Creative Sports Cars products
Throughout my finance career I have always brought a practical approach gained in my earlier working life to business finance.
As a business owner I have always known that businesses are not just about numbers...they are about people and relationships.
However it’s a mistake to think that being good at what you do will guarantee success. Effective financial management plays a vital role in any business success.
As I found with my first business if you don’t understand what really makes it tick you can end up running very hard and not getting very far.
"Finance has to be practical and make a difference"
