Blumer & Associates, CPAs, PC - Certified Public Accountants

  They don’t delegate the small stuff.

You may say, “I love doing what I started this business to do.” If you are a designer, you love to design. If you own a landscaping company, you love landscaping. If you are a CPA, you love accounting. That’s great! But as your business grows, you will be required to let go of the details or they will consume you. You can’t do it all. You’ll have to give up some of the designing or landscaping to sell, keep up with your books, etc. I rarely do taxes anymore. I don’t manage my own calendar either. And I am in the process of even handing over my email. We think no one can ever do what we do as well as we do, but we are wrong. Let people help you, or let go of growing your company.

Tell us what you hate about running your business. Maybe we can solve that pain point for you so you can get back to doing the tasks you love.

Hey Business Owners, have you listened to the THRIVEcast yet? Well, this episode is the one for you! No geeky accounting junk in this one. Just common sense for your business.

Hear Jason Blumer and Greg Kyte discuss how to turn your customer’s complaint into a positive experience. Also hear more about a Results Only Work Environment, aka ROWE. Finally, get to hear from Jay Shepherd, author of the must read (seriously!) Firing at Will.

Newsflash: As a business, you exist to bring value to your customers. Let that sink in for a minute. I’m not saying the customer is always right. But you do exist to meet their needs.

Let me tell you a true story about how crappy company policy totally messed with me recently.

You know we love getting rid of paper. We were pumped to finally be past the point of holding onto old file boxes from the civil war era (or over 7 to 8 years old) so we told a shredding company to come pick up 10 boxes. Then we found 3 more old boxes. Woo hoo! A couple of weeks later, they came by to get our boxes. Problem. They thought they were there to get 10 bags. Boxes. Bags. Apples. Oranges. Just take my old files out of my office and shred them.

Nope.

Company policy had this shredding company’s truck driver’s hands tied. He was on such a tight schedule that even though I was going to pay him more, he just couldn’t take my 13 boxes because it would have put him like 5 whole minutes behind freakin’ schedule. Huh?

Lots of discussion later…

The guy took my boxes and shredded them to the tune of $3.50 a MINUTE. I wasn’t happy because it took so much begging just to get there. He wasn’t happy because he had to call and get approval from some higher up to take my boxes. Good job shredding company on making the schedule and the policy more important that serving me.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that they were billing by time. Or that being efficient was more important than being effective.

I’m wondering what policies we have that might be hurting our awesome customers. We are here to bring you value. If we are being stupid, let’s talk. We don’t want to frustrate you like the shredding company frustrated us. You rock!

Proverbs 15:22 says, ” Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.” One stupid thing business owners do is NOT have a coach. I have had a few coaches over the past 8 years and I know I’ve been more successful as a result of this coaching. The more counselors you allow into your life, the more opportunities you have to catch your errors before they get out of hand. You also have the gift of running your creative ideas by others, which can lead to even MORE creative ideas. Coaching also provides needed accountability for acting on those ideas.

If you are in a creative industry, be sure to check out our Creative Coaching Course for 2012.

Other CPAs can receive coaching through the THRIVEal +CPA Network.

A huge mistake some business owners make is to not realize how their profession is changing…right before their eyes.

I’m a big proponent of questioning the status quo. I want you to question your profession’s methods, processes, and its future. If your industry is changing and you don’t notice, then you are already being left behind by your competition. Study your industry and duly note its course! We can help coach you through this process if you are really ready to move forward!