Bob Rounsfull, CPA

CPA Becomes An Executive In His Own Practice

"I've been a CPA all my professional life, which has been about 18 years," says Bob Rounsfull, of Hart, Rounsfull and Hackbart, an Evanston, Illinois practice. "And it wasn't really until last October that I realized that I was spinning my wheels and not getting where I wanted to go. Actually, it's kind of embarrassing to think it took that long, but the practice was going well at first, then for the last couple of years there was no change. I found myself working real real hard and not being rewarded sufficiently for it.

"About that time, Sterling contacted me and when I watched their video, something clicked.

"What I like about Sterling is the way they deal with so many aspects of the practice. Rather than just saying, ' Apply our marketing technique and you'll get more clients,' or going for some particular marketing niche, Sterling gave me how to manage people, how to work with people, how to work with employees, how to deal with clients, not just in a marketing sense, but on an interpersonal level.

"So after I had seen the video, I talked to the people at Sterling and some clients of theirs and did some soul-searching with my self and my family and took the plunge.

"The best thing was the way the management technology is geared towards, 'This approach will solve this problem,'" explains Rounsfull. "It's a definite approach without a lot of guesswork."

Part of that approach included management by statistics, something Bob Rounsfull found very congenial.

"We CPAs enjoy working with numbers," he says. "We couldn't get along without them.

"Perhaps the biggest realization I had, though, was my own responsibility, how whatever was wrong with the practice was the result of what I wasn't doing, that I needed to be doing what an executive needs to do in the practice, not just what an accountant needs to do.

"So with a strategic plan for my practice, I went back excited and met with my three staff members, who were extremely curious to see what all this was. They were a little nervous at first, but when they saw what the management technology was for, they were really positive and we started working through the plan.

"Since then production has been excellent," says Rounsfull. "We get more work done in the same amount of time.

"In my experience," he says, "CPAs sometimes get too deep into just the numbers instead of getting back and looking at what the numbers mean and what the business really needs. Sterling helps you do that."