Tom Yaxley has been in practice on his own in Champaign, Illinois, since May of 1987. He has two other full-time staff (one administrative assistant and a CPA), and another person with a Master's degree in accounting who works for him just during the busy season. They do tax work almost exclusively.
"I started with Sterling in January of last year. Personally, I was getting burned out. I had come through a bad year the year before; I split up with a partner, which was a loss. I wasn't very focused or working very hard - that's what triggered my interest in Sterling. So I was hopeful when I went out to Glendale for their training in January that I could get focused.
"The next tax season, while there was a slight improvement in gross production, there was a substantial improvement in realization. In the accounting business, you may spend an hour on a client at $150 an hour, but you may only be able to bill that client $130. In that case you have a $20 write-off. We had substantial improvement in that. We were much more efficient. I attribute much of that to Sterling. Things were better regarding my own attitude too.
"One of the things I got from the Sterling training was how to set targets and goals, from five-year goals all the way down to one-week targets. Then how to figure out what you need to do to meet those goals. Now we have a weekly staff meeting where we go over them. Before, we tended to be Lone Rangers. We would each do our own thing without much communication. Now we sit down as a group and look at the practice every week. This has greatly improved communication in the office.
"When I came back from my training, I was very excited about what I'd learned, but I decided to get more help as far as educating my staff on the management technology. So we had Sterling come to deliver the SPEEDO* Program here during the last week of August. It was great, very intense. It really helped to get the technology implemented in the office.
"The first two days of the SPEEDO, the consultant trained my staff on learning skills and the basic staff hat. After that, it was a matter of starting to apply, as an office, the condition formulas. She helped us work on that and get our organizing board together. She helped set up the communication system. We're still using all that now. The net result is that it has kept us more focused on what we're doing and what we're trying to get done. The communication system streamlined things in the office.
"One of the best things we learned as a practice was Hubbard's idea that if you don't put something in writing, it's as good as not being said. I had always thought that in the back of my mind and thought I was practicing it, but I realized I wasn't practicing it the way I should be. So now we are really trying to put everything in writing. That makes things much more efficient because you have less interruption, less likelihood of the communication dropping through the cracks or being misunderstood.
"It's more interesting to come to work now. It's more intense, I have more interest in getting done what needs to be done.
"In terms of the bottom line, we are up about 50% over last year. In October I went out again to Sterling for their Sales and Communication training, and we had the SPEEDO in August - even so, we've already made back everything we've spent on Sterling to date.
"The Hubbard Management technology itself is great. I realized during my training in Glendale that I knew squat about management. I'd had one management course in college, which was worthless. I'd been with a national firm as a partner, but I was really treated like more of an employee there. When I started my own practice I just went out and got staff, clients and got to work. It was management by default. I had problems keeping staff and keeping clients. Hubbard's management technology has really opened my eyes to the fact that there IS management technology available to my business—to any business for that matter. Of course, you have to spend time at it to learn about it and then do it, but if you do it you will see positive results.
"You're probably like me in that you'd never had any training in management. I've only got three or four people here, and you might think, 'Well that's too small to worry much about management.' What's amazing is how much it takes to manage any business. This training is a whole source of information and technology that will allow you to enjoy managing your business. I think most businesses are putting out fires and chasing their tails, thinking that if they just work harder they'll get it under control—instead of working smarter.
"I'd say the major win I've had from Sterling is in the whole idea of empowerment. I am at cause now, rather than at effect of what's happening here. With this system, you look at what's happened last week and you figure out what you can do about it. What I would do before is either I wouldn't look at it or something bad would happen and I'd go, 'Poor me!' and think there was nothing that I could do about it. This system takes the emotion out of it. I look at my statistical graphs rationally and say, 'What happened, why did it happen, and what can I do about it?'
"The information about communication that I've learned from Sterling has just been tremendous. This has helped me at work and personally. It's more than just about wanting to communicate. It's gaining an understanding of the other person on the other end of the line. The Emotional Tone Scale technology is incredible, yet so simple and informative it gives you many tools. I've still got a long way to go with it, but at least I know where I want to go!
"My Sterling consultant is excellent. I talk with her about once a week, for half an hour. One of the primary things we talk about is dealing with staff, helping me to understand my staff and working with that to help improve the business. I lost a secretary (she wanted to work at home to be with her young son) and I worked very closely with my consultant in hiring a replacement. She has an eye-opening approach to hiring people, which turned out to be very, very successful.
"My consultant also helped me recently in handling a client who was upset about a billing situation. She helped me not to react to that, but analyze it and figure out what needed to be done and then do it. This gave very positive results: I kept the client, re-structured the billing (without compromising on the amount) and got paid. Without my consultant I probably would have compromised on the bill and hoped to hang onto the client, seeking to maintain some kind of equilibrium, and might have felt subservient to that client afterward. Now I'm on top of the situation."
Tom Yaxley, CPA
*SPEEDO = Staff Production Enhancement and Establishment by the Debug Officer