Haiden Turner has been on his own as a CPA for about eleven years, with his own practice for ten years. He is located in Farmer's Branch Texas, right outside of Dallas.

"We have a real mixture of clients; a general practice. We're more aligned toward businesses than individual taxes but we do a lot of that, too. A large portion of our business is helping people with their accounting software. We also do financial statement audits of some of our larger clients, on a recurring basis. At one point I had two CPAs working with me; right now I only have one assistant working for me.

"I became a client of Sterling in June of 1998. During the training in Glendale, I realized that I needed to do a number of things when I got back to my practice. The consulting after that helped me to follow through with the things I talked about doing when I was in California, and it gave me some moral support to really go through with it and keep myself pointed in the right direction.

"We had a big increase over 1998. We rebounded pretty dramatically in 1999. We're doing 51% better this year to date on our revenues. That's half again as much revenue as last year! Our overhead hasn't gone up any; the expenses are for the most part less than last year or holding steady. The bottom line is even more dramatically different, 200% better than last year. So our net income is three times what it was last year. That makes my life a lot happier!

"I had a CPA working with me for several years, who left me in November of 1997. So I was here during the tax season all by myself, without even a receptionist. Normally I would hire someone temporary during tax season to be the receptionist and do odd jobs. I didn't even do that in 1998; I didn't feel comfortable trying to pay for someone else. I thought, wrongly, that I could do it all myself and it wouldn't be that bad. But it was; it nearly killed me!

"So basically, I was just dead at the end of tax season. That was about when the mail showed up with one of Sterling's flyers. I sent it back in expecting to get a bunch of advertising or promotional stuff in the mail. Instead, they called me and I signed up. I went to their sales training course to learn how to sell like they do, too! That has helped with sales. It's funny, our business had picked up so much that I hadn't been able to use it as much as I wanted; we were so busy. Those are very good sales techniques.

"My consultant and I covered this in a consultation, how to use those sales techniques before it got too late in the year. Obviously, I had to hire another person to help me in the tax season.

"My Sterling consultant helped me with the classified ad I placed to hire Sharon, looking over what I had created before I placed it in the newspaper. I was really concerned at the time because here in Dallas our unemployment rate is phenomenally low. There's practically nobody out there to hire. I had been talking myself out of being able to find somebody because I thought nobody would respond to the ad. Actually, I got a big response to it. I had a lot of people send in resumes. Once I interviewed some of those people and narrowed it down a bit, I had them take Sterling's tests and sent those in to them, and my consultant went over the results of those with me. So Sterling was involved in the whole hiring process.

"One of my pre-conceived concepts I am struggling with is that it's hard to rely on employees to do the work right and to be what you're really looking for. So we've had to deal with that in the consulting. Nobody's perfect; I sent Sharon out to Sterling this past year and put her through a week of course work. That was a good thing and I'm glad I did it; there was a big change when she came back as far as her interaction with me. 

"I speak with my consultant every couple of weeks and I really look forward to it. As one person running your own business, you really need somebody else to hear what you're thinking about and second-guess some of the things you're talking about and give you some different perspectives. So I really look forward to talking to my consultant. It's never been just a routine deal where we go through statistics and say, 'See you later.' We have always had plenty of fertile ground to go over. There's still plenty of fertile ground left! I've only been involved with Sterling for over a year, so I by no means have everything implemented that I would like to have implemented. But we're working on it.

"Without the consulting, there's no way that I would have implemented all that I have in the last year. I wouldn't have had the focus I've been able to put on things here, because I wouldn't have had somebody else to talk about it.

"My consultant has also helped me with personal issues. Once such area is my interaction with my wife; the way the two of us have interacted about the business. We're getting better perspectives of how we ought to feel about that and the roles that each of us should be playing. My wife doesn't work in the practice, but she's very concerned about it; it's our livelihood. She works too, but she was very concerned about the practice.  

"We've gone around and around about it over the years, where she wants to tell me how I ought to be doing things - which is natural, I guess. It's helped to be able to talk to my consultant about that and to get some input about what's fair and what's not and how to handle those kinds of things. So she has helped me in my personal life as well as in my business.

"I use Hubbard's formulas for success in our approach to handling things. Those are really well thought out and work when you do them right. The Hubbard management technology is incredibly on target. In dealing with real-life situations here in the office, employees, clients and so on, when I've been able to get back from it a little bit and look at it using the technology; it is so right-on so often it is astounding.

"I would definitely hang a big piece of the credit for my success this last year on getting involved with Sterling."

Haiden Turner, CPA