"We Became More Organized, Less Chaotic, Happier and More Satisfied"

Together, Donny Trant and Karen Weisman had 37 years of experience as CPAs when they went to a Sterling seminar, beginning a highly profitable relationship that has lasted five years so far.

Says Donny, "We had been searching for a way to deal with the problems in our practice because we had very little control over the practice. It was running us, rather than us running it, and the gross income had plateaued. We tried different things, and nothing seemed to work.

"I got interested in Sterling because I had a dentist client who was a Sterling client. When I was doing his tax return, I noticed the increase in his gross fees and the fact that he was a whole lot happier. Well, when I inquired I found that he was being consulted by a firm who at the time was dealing only with medical clients - CPAs, chiropractors, and so on - so there was nothing we could do.

"So, it was in 1992, sometime afterwards, he came to us, and said Sterling was opening up to professionals other than medical people and was giving a conference in Corpus Christi and would we be interested in attending and I said yes, of course.

"I convinced Karen to come along with me. Frankly, I was pretty much convinced that Sterling was for us by my earlier experience with my dentist client. The seminar just made it really definite."

Karen Weisman recalls: "The seminar let me see what our client had actually been doing. The seminar pointed out a lot of the problems we were having. In fact, the client spoke at the seminar, along with others, who spoke about their experiences."

The partners were now in agreement that Sterling was for them. When the partners got to Glendale for their training at Sterling, they both found a lot that made immediate sense:
"Probably for me, management by statistics was the most important," says Donny, "because this was a tool that you could put your hands on and see exactly what is going on in the practice."

Karen agrees: "It was a way of making numbers from the production and then the way you work the formulas - powerful basic steps for improving any condition - this was great, because we are numbers people.

"We also started right out putting in the three-basket communication system and getting office policy codified, written down and issued to people in the office. As it turned out, that turned up some problems which we then fixed."

Donny explains: "We had a problem employee we didn't know we had. Our consultant at Sterling had discovered the problem in the observation questionnaire we had filled out before we came to Glendale. But we didn't believe her. But she said, once you write and implement policy it's going to become really obvious.

"As it turned out, that was exactly right. When we laid down policy, the employee quit almost immediately.

"Things improved rapidly. We became more organized and less chaotic. We had more control over the office. I felt happier, more satisfied. Our goal was not to have the tremendous growth our dental client had had. We had always been profitable, although, of course, we always like being more profitable. "But in my case, for instance, there had been a lot of interruptions, both staff and client interruptions, and these were dramatically reduced. I find myself a lot more productive."

Karen adds: "It's the traffic which is useless, which doesn't get you production. It's called 'Developed Traffic,' or 'Dev-T.' And before Sterling, the Dev-T was killing me."

She concludes with a statement they both agree to:
"We should have done the Sterling program ten years before we did!"