CPA Success Stories

Chuck Stanislawski, CPA

In 1995, I became the sole owner of my family’s CPA practice. The challenge that arose was that I had always been a highly billable partner with no management responsibilities. As the sole owner, I was forced to take on the CEO position. Despite a BS in Accounting and a Master’s in Taxation, I had no formal management training. I had always been a “worker bee,” but now I was both a manager and the key producer.

Kling & Pathak, CPAs

It’s not unusual for people to meet in college and later decide to form an accounting practice after graduation. With Greg Kling and Nitai Pathak, the story begins much earlier.

Mark Sherman, CPA

Like most people who go into business for themselves, I wanted to control my own destiny. As a CPA, I wanted to help others achieve their professional goals. That’s why in the year 2000, I left my job as CFO of a steel company to open my own CPA practice.

I knew that to run a successful practice, I had to hire good staff and manage them well. These were skills I had not been taught in school. As a result, I was having personnel problems that I had never dreamed of.

Dan Wasserman, CPA

After 14 years of managing my own practice, growth slowed and became tougher to maintain. We were doing okay by most metrics and I was making more money than most, but I was working harder with more stress. When the recession hit in 2008, I lost several clients who had gone out of business. As a result, we had our first down year ever.

Robert DeFruscio, CPA

A CPA for 16 years, Robert DeFruscio first worked for Price Waterhouse, then opened his own practice in the suburbs in 1986. Robert is the only CPA of the three accountants at R.A. DeFruscio & Company of Greenwich, Connecticut. "I had become professionally frustrated. I wasn't seeing it because I had been too close to the fire for too many years. My initial phone interview with the Sterling consultant convinced me that they had seen my problems before and had dealt effectively with those problems. They knew ways to fix them. That impressed me the most.

Ben Leonard and Peter Recchia CPA's

"We didn't notice the way it happened," says Ben Leonard, CPA, "but the fun had gone out of our practice." Mr. Leonard and his partner Peter Recchia, CPA, of Leonard and Co., have a practice with 13 employees in Elwood Park, Illinois.

"We were not communicating," says Recchia, "and were mostly fed up. It wasn't enjoyable, doing each other's jobs, sometimes things getting done twice. People got so they just wanted to work some reasonable hours."

Bobby Medlin, CPA

Bobby Medlin, CPA, has been in practice eleven years in Tipton, Missouri. For the last four years, he has also maintained a part-time office in California, Missouri, using the staff from his Tipton office.

"I've been a Sterling client for the past two years.

Brian Russell, CPA

Brian Russell, CPA, and Laurel Russell, Office Manager, of The Russell Group in Pasadena, California get far more done with much less stress now that they use the technology they learned from Sterling.

"We finally realized we needed to get into the management part of our business," says Brian.

"Then too," adds Laurel, "our girls had just graduated from high school and we needed the practice to produce more so we could put them through college."

Henry Frye, CPA

After working for a large accounting firm and as the accounting manager for a Fortune 500 company, 30 years ago I opened my own CPA practice in Leominster, Massachusetts. Although the gross kept rising, the profits weren't following suit. It got to the point where I was having to put my own money back into the office to cover the expenses.

Robert Malone, CPA

Robert Malone head, of The Malone Group of Houston, Texas, had been practicing as an accountant for eight years when he found he needed management training to expand.

My revenue had plateaued," says Malone. "It had been pretty much constant for three years. I needed to expand the things I could do, but I needed help from my staff and I just wasn't getting that help. So my interest in management was from looking for a way to generate revenue.