CPA Success Stories

I Was Able to Cut Back my Hours…The Practice is a Lot Healthier

I opened my office in Boulder, Colorado eighteen years ago. I currently have six year-round employees and add another four or five during tax season. 

About six years ago, I started running into some trouble. In September 1999 I moved my office and the following January took over another practice which was sixty percent the size of my existing practice. We burst at the seams. It was extremely stressful and I was working a zillion hours to keep the place going.

Mary Seitz, EA

I have been doing taxes for more than thirty years and have had my own practice for the last nineteen. I love meeting people and doing their taxes for them. A lot of people are afraid of the IRS, and it's great being able to take that area of stress out of their lives. I am currently doing about 600 returns a year and I'm looking forward to helping a lot more people.

Collections Increased the First Year; the Next Year they Exceeded 200% of Our Pre-Sterling Performance

Before Sterling, I'd run my business my way and found myself utterly frustrated with the way I was managing it. It was miserable. I didn't handle staff well or effectively manage client relationships.

By doing it all my way, I'd acquired a whole slew of C, D and F quality clients who were more torture than treasure. With them, it was all about price and never about the amount or the quality of work involved in the job.

This Leads to a Smoother Running, Expanding and More Profitable Practice

Chris Fluke

For the past 24 years, I have done accounting in Hastings, a city of 5000 in southwestern Michigan. In 1981, I joined John L. Walker in his practice, became his partner in Walker, Fluke and Sheldon, PLC. In addition to my partner, Kathy Sheldon, and myself, we have eleven staff, five of them accountants. We focus primarily on providing small retail, restaurant and health care businesses with audits, tax returns, and monthly write-ups.

Our Revenues Are Up 40% and our Bottom Line Has Nearly Tripled

George Parhas

I have a six-person practice that specializes in servicing primarily restaurants and produce markets in the Chicago metropolitan area. After a dozen years, we were working hard, but not making a lot of money. 

I got a postcard in the mail from Sterling, I sent it in and set up a free phone consultation with one of their consultants. My wife and I spent three or four hours on the phone going over matters with him. We decided it was well worth the money to go to Sterling and see if we could get ourselves streamlined, organized, and moving in the right direction.

How to Pick Good Employees and Get Them to Care About their Jobs

Bill Slattery

I have been in private practice for 32 years and have offices in two Southern California cities with a total of nine year-round employees. We try to provide all the services our clients need. In addition to preparing returns for about 1300 tax clients, we also do monthly accounting for approximately 250 businesses. I have both my Securities & Exchange License and Insurance License to help provide my clients with retirement and financial planning.

The Bottom Line is 200% Better Than Last Year

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.