Charles Stanislawski, CPA

"It's a Tried and True Management System"

Charles Stanislawski has been practicing in South Pasadena, California, his home town, for nearly twenty years:

"I've been a Sterling client since July of last year. I had recently gone through a complete reorganization of this firm; I had just finished up tax season and was looking for a management company that specialized in CPAs to assist me in improving my personal management skills and my management of the firm. So, in July I did twelve days of intensive executive training at Sterling.

"The training was quite enjoyable and very valuable. I loved the information on management by statistics - I implemented those right away. I am just now implementing some of the office procedures. Sterling helped me to visualize what the perfect CPA firm would be like and the type of people who would be in that firm, and that's what I'm looking for. They've even assisted me in the hiring process by helping design the advertisement that goes into our classified ad.

"Production has increased. The last two months in a row our production was greater than last year - September and October was up about 40%! Income has also increased, to keep pace with our production.

"I'm definitely a better manager now - I got what I went to Sterling for. It's always nice to bounce ideas off a consultant, and I feel a lot more comfortable with my decisions to change staff, to require staff to maintain production levels, that kind of thing. I've got more confidence as a manager.

"Right now we have eight full-time staff: myself and another CPA, one Enrolled Agent, one MBT, one staff accountant, and the rest are administrative staff. I need to get some more staff in order to improve further the quality of our service.

"I had very few written policies before. I had some covering vacations and time off which we had developed over the years. Now Sterling is helping me implement a full booklet of policy for each of the staff. A lot of issues, detailed things about dating personnel or dating clients and on and on, things that we had never addressed before, are now being addressed.

"I keep up to date weekly and monthly graphs of our production. I meet with my staff every Monday and we talk about their production during the last week and what they plan to do this week. That's helping - it keeps them focused on what they really need to do, and it has really improved some of the staff significantly and identified the other Ôproblem' staff easily. My staff are more responsible than they were, say, six months ago. When you give people guidelines and expectations, naturally they are knowledgeable of what is expected of them. When you give them those expectations, when you set your goals and write them down, the ability to achieve those goals is easier because at least you know what they are.

"The consulting I'm getting from Sterling is very good: my consultant is great! She has helped me solve a lot of problems. This firm has been around for almost twenty years and I'm now taking it over and I'm certainly changing its direction. It's been very difficult for some of the staff who have been here for a long time to change with it; so, bottom line, I've had to sit down with some of them and say, ÔWe're going this way. You're either going to be with us or without us. Decide.' My consultant has helped me with that. It's great to have somebody who has already gone through this with a number of other CPAs to help guide me with my decisions so I don't feel like I'm running blind.

"I've had an increase in production, an increase in profits, and an increase in my belief in my management of the firm.

"Because I own the firm, every time a win occurs it is a personal win for me. When profits go up, that's a personal win. When staff have a better understanding of my expectations, whether it be through the office policies or the statistics, that's a personal win. I am also now reorganizing the firm so that my second in command, my tax manager, will take over all the tax department responsibilities. That is going to relieve me of a lot of time and effort on the administration of the firm on the inside, which will allow me to go out and obtain new clients on the outside. It was very interesting to me that when I went over this with my tax manager, she said, "Well, this is what I should be doing!" It was wonderful!

"One of the reasons I went with Sterling was that I needed an already tried and true management system. I didn't want to spend years to learn it. So, I was willing to make the investment and jump in with both feet in order to change completely the direction and productivity of the firm in a short amount of time. That is definitely happening now.

"Not that I wasn't skeptical about Sterling. But I found the concerns were not at all well founded. Once I learned more about L. Ron Hubbard, I found out that he'd done quite a bit in his life and he developed many great management techniques, which have been applied successfully over a long time. Personally, I think the Hubbard management technology is great! I'm impressed with it and I enjoy applying his techniques. I would recommend to any CPA that they take the classes and learn about these techniques because they certainly do work."