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.

I had a staff bookkeeper who appeared to be willing and supportive but underneath it all, she was secretly hostile toward everyone in the practice, including me. She would promise to get work done and then wouldn’t do it; I was the one stuck making excuses to the client. Her attendance was poor and when she was in the office, she stirred up trouble among the staff. During her time at my practice, we went through nine receptionists which I attribute to her efforts to make their lives miserable.

My solution was to be “Mr. Nice Guy” with the staff but the nicer I was, the worse they became. They had negative attitudes and brought their personal dramas into the office.

I felt I had lost control of the practice and the stress was taking its toll on my health. Every time we seemed to get back on track, something else would come up. I knew I could not keep functioning this way. In 2006, I contacted Sterling for help with the practice. I took their courses which taught me the fundamentals of management and what I should be doing as the top executive in the practice. My consultant wrote a customized plan to put me back in control and then followed up to help me through it.

Sterling came to my practice to train the staff on their program so we were all on the same page. During this visit, we implemented management by statistics, an objective system that uses statistics to show which staff are doing something worthwhile and which aren’t, regardless of what they are saying. It was no coincidence that a couple of my negative staff left after we began to monitor their productivity.

Learning how to manage the staff was only half the battle; the other half was hiring good people in the first place. With my consultant’s guidance and Sterling’s testing of job applicants, I began to hire good staff.

To keep the staff motivated, my consultant recommended I implement a bonus plan based on the practice meeting certain revenue quotas. When the quotas were met, I paid bonuses to the staff who had rising statistics. We have since developed additional incentives.

Thanks to our bonus plan, the staff are personally invested in the practice. They are motivated because they feel they have a stake in it; it’s a lot different than busting your butt for one person’s gratification. Because the staff know they will be paid based on the practice making its quota, they not only ensure they are productive, they look around and make sure everyone else is, too. If there is a bad apple in the group, there are no qualms about dealing with that person—it’s a different mentality.

Sterling also helped us be more efficient by organizing the practice, assigning specific tasks and responsibilities to each of the staff, and straightening out communications with each other and with clients. Being better organized with a higher quality of staff enabled me to delegate. Freeing me up enabled us to expand our client base and sales.

When I started my own practice, I expected to have to put in the hours.  But I felt like I was alone, no one was joining me. I now have a good, stable group. I can take the time off to be with my family and can rely on my employees to get the work done and go the extra mile. Since they are a good group, I have trained them to take on more of the work and responsibility. As a result, this past tax season was one of our smoothest ever.

Since implementing the Sterling program, our gross revenues have increased nearly 78% and profitability is up by 30%.

What I have learned is that being a competent accountant and hard work are important ingredients in having a successful practice, but they do not guarantee success. I also needed the tools of management from Sterling. We would not be operating at the level we are without them.

My motto used to be “The only good partner is an ex-partner,” but now I feel like I have two valuable partners, my staff and Sterling.