HOW DID YOU FINISH?

As the year ends, it’s time to look back and assess our accomplishments for the year.

At the beginning of 2009, I introduced business owners to the book, Finish Strong by Dan Green (published by Simple Truths). And, I challenged business owners to do like the book says: Finish Strong.

Through out the year, I have provided additional inspirations and resources to business owners based on the book, so that they could Finish Strong.

So how did you finish 2009?

Please share your Finish Strong story.

Movies as Inspiration

Recently, I was on a business discussion forum, and the moderator asked, "What movies have inspired you?"

Here's my response:

Miracle (by Disney) that tells the story of the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team and their gold medal win.

I was particularly inspired by coach Herbie Brooks and the way he brought together the best people to create a winning team. He worked with each player to bring out the best in them. The greatest example of this is reflected in one game where the team score 7 points by 5 different players. I aspire to be like that when I work with my customers. Recently, I sent a copy of the DVD to my customers and some business associates to inspire them in much the same way.

WOW – how many CPAs do something like that!

Please share the movies that have inspired you.

Kick Start Your New Year

Recently, SUCCESS magazine published 44 Ways to Kick-Start Your New Year.

What would you add to the list?

Business Boot Camp Groups

Every so often something NEW comes along.

Of course, it’s even better when that something new also happensto be something that adds terrific value to your business.

With those two things in mind (new and adding value) I would like to tell you more about the Business Boot Camp™. It is exactly the sort of program small business owners have been asking for.

Research from lthe 2007 Good to Great event indicates that business owners want to be educated about the following:

• Understand their business


• Understand their financials


• Understand problems and solutions


• Enhance business ownership skills

In addition, business owners also mentioned that they enjoyed the opportunity to meet with other business owners to talk and learn about business processes. The Business Boot Camp™ is an opportunity for small business owners to come together and develop their CEO skills, and in turn create extraordinary businesses and extraordinary lives. Business Boot Camp™ groups are now forming.

Contact Brenda Richter, CPA for information on how you can get involved in a Business Boot Camp group.

Also, if you know any other business owners who might be interested, please share this information with them.

Life

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.

Your business is the means for creating those moments.

What to do About Non Performing Team Members

Peter Drucker once said:

“Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to
tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs."

My friend Scott Heintzelman, CPA has written an excellent blog expanding on this concept. I encourage you to read it.

Scott's blog: Help, I Want to Fire a Family Member From the Business

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ronald Reagan once said,

“There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits to human
intelligence, imagination and wonder.”

Earlier this year, I sent business owners the book Finish Strong by Dan Green and inspired them to dedicate 2009 as the year to Finish Strong! As we search for way to Finish Strong this Thanksgiving, in addition to being thankful for friends, family and good health, we can be thankful for our intelligence, imagination and wonder. For these are the things that will bring our businesses growth and prosperity during the next year.

Does a Small Business Need Leadership or Management?

The answer is both. Have you ever heard the expression “Too many generals and not enough soldiers?” Well it works both ways. Too many soldiers without a strong general will surely find themselves fighting the wrong battles.

Businesses with too many leaders fail from their inability to manage and implement day-to-day business issues. Likewise companies with excellent managers fail because they did not innovate, motivate, change nor watch for strategic threats.

It’s important to develop managers who can lead and leaders who can manage. So what is the difference?

For example great managers manage costs, inventory, cash flow, processes, information systems, facilities and operations. When it comes to leadership, great businesses lead their people, drive the company vision, guide their team and customer perceptions, and ultimately generate a positive and productive corporate mindset and culture.

As the business owner, you are responsible for leading your business to success and getting your people excited about your vision for the business.

Too often leadership is seen as defining a step-by-step business strategy and expecting people to follow the steps or suffer the consequences. Coming up with a strategy and relying on your position as business owner is not enough.

That model fails you, your team and your business. People will learn to do just what they have to so that they can meet expectations and not lose their job. True leadership is the art of understanding and rewarding your team so that they are motivated to make your business a success. It’s important to recruit competent people who can manage the day-to-day tasks and operations so that you can lead your organization forward.

The final test of your success as a leader is the financial statements. Financial statements are the final result of the accounting process, and accounting can be simply defined as the quantification of business activities. Perhaps business owners should give consideration to changing the name of their income statement from “Results of Operations” to Results of Leadership”.

Measure What Matters

Do your business's internal measurements give you a competitive advantage in the marketplace? Do they judge the success of your company the same way your customers do? Are they leading indicators that have predictive ability, and correlate with value as defined by your customers? If you get what you measure, what exactly, do your internal metrics get you?

Yesterday I attended a progressive CPA course and walked away with a deeper perspective on the different ways to measure an organization’s success.

If you would like to discuss these matters, please contact me. I am ready to have a meaningful conversation on how to implement Key predictive Indicators that matter.

Back to the Book

“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” - Albert Einstein

For many companies and individuals 2009 has been a difficult year. In anticipation of this I started the years out with the message of “Finish Strong!” from the book with the same title by Dan Green and published by Simple Truths.

The difference in success or failure is not chance, but choice. When adversity strikes, it’s not what happens that will determine your destiny; it’s how you react to what happens. That’s what Finish Strong is all about. With just a few weeks left in the year, please take some time to re-read your Finish Strong book, and once again resolve to “Finish Strong!”

With the resolve to Finish Strong, and to enhance my existing Delta4 advisory services and skill base, I will be making a substantial investment in highly specialized training. The program involves a very intensive program that includes:

A feature presentation by Steve Wilkinghoff renowned author of “Found Money – Simple Strategies to Uncover the Hidden Profit and Cash Flow in Your Business”

• Enhancing outsourced CFO services – going beyond the basics
• 10 Stage Business Improvement Program for economically challenging times
• Creating recession proof strategies
• Business succession planning
• Using social networking tools for business
• Working with an association with a global network of CPAs and CAs dedicated to playing an increasingly important role as an advisor to small and medium size businesses to guide them through the process of making strategic business decisions

I am making this investment because as a Delta4 business advisor, my role is not just a tax preparer. But, my role is primary business advisor to help you achieve your vision of success.

If you are aware of any other business owners who could also benefit from looking at their business information in a whole new way and resolving to Finish Strong, please give consideration to referring them to me.

If you have any question regarding this program, please feel free to call me. I consider it a pleasure and a privilege to serve you. I appreciate your cooperation. I look forward to talking with you and exploring all the possibilities with you when I return.

In the mean time, take the time to consider the strengths your business has to get through these times.

BONUS FOR MY BUSINESS PLUS CUSTOMERS – Watch your mail box! In a couple of weeks you should receive valuable tools to help you “Finish Strong!”

Give Your Best

" Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it!"

George Halas

Does your business give its best everyday? Does your business have a strategy in place to continue to give your best and to make your best even better? Are your team members motivated to give their best?

As a business owner, you have the opportunity to work with CPAs who are a members of the Principa Alliance. These CPAs are specially trained and have tools and resources to help you develop a business strategy that you won't regret. And, the offer solutions such as The Team Advisory Board and Towards Awesome Service to get your team motivated to do their best.

TEAM ADVISORY BOARD

Every day your team members are on the front line of customer service. Do your customers experience positive, motivated people who are empowered to help them get what they need, or are they meeting roadblocks at every turn?
If you're thinking of ways to build your business's success, it makes sense to start where the action is—by asking your team!
The Team Advisory Board workshop is a facilitated interactive session designed to help you tap in to your team's collective experience and get a sense of how they feel they can make a contribution, and where they see opportunities for improving your business.
Getting your team's feedback and buy-in is as important getting the same thing from your customers. After all, it's your team who deliver on your business promise to your customers every day. It’s important for your team to be as committed to your business’s success as you are.
By providing a forum for your team to express their thoughts and ideas, you're creating a work environment that gives them a say—and a stake—in your business's success.
The Team Advisory Board guides your team through key areas of your business, such as:

• How they see the business, and their place in it.
• How your team interacts with your customers, and ideas for how to serve them better.
• The business's current systems and process—do they work? And how can they be improved?
• How your business can and does differentiate itself from your competition.
• Your business’s structure—what level of decision making powers do your team members have?

Used in conjunction with the results from a session like the Customer Advisory Board, your team will be committed—and accountable—like never before to deliver a standard of service that will truly delight your customers.
A team that works well together is a fantastic asset for any business, and your customers will really notice the difference.
The Team Advisory Board will help you create an environment that's positive and productive—for you, your team, and your customers.


TOWARDS AWESOME SERVICE

Just some of the ideas and concepts you'll take away from the Towards Awesome Service workshop:

• Create a business your customers love coming back to!
• Create a business your team love to be a part of every day.
• Dramatically increase your customer retention, your team's performance, AND your profits.
• Learn how to move beyond 'customer satisfaction' and into the realms of 'customer delight'.

So if you're ready to take your business to the next level of customer experience—into the realms of delight—then Towards Awesome Service is quite simply a MUST attend workshop.
There's no doubt that businesses that distinguish themselves through service excellence also distinguish themselves with far higher levels of sales and profits.
Towards Awesome Service aims to help you create this distinction in your business so it's more profitable, and more enjoyable—for you, your team, and most importantly, for your customers!
Towards Awesome Service is a facilitated training session that uses a case study approach to teach a unique combination of customer service and business development strategies. Strategies you can apply immediately to achieve real and measurable results for your business.
You'll learn how to easily deliver service that's thoroughly AWESOME!, enhancing the experience your customers have when they do business with you.
So, not only will they be coming back for more—they'll even be referring people to you!At Towards Awesome Service, you'll learn how to generate countless ideas that will make your business really stand out, so it not only becomes more productive and profitable, it becomes a more valuable asset for you!

Brenda Richter, CPA is a member of the Principa Alliance, and is available to provide these and other business advisory services designed to help you to create a business that gives its best.

Have no regrets when it comes to your business.

Free Cup of Coffee

Brenda Richter, CPA is currently offering a free cup of coffee to Santa Barbara area business owners.

Click here for details.

Entrepreneurs Will Lead The Way

In a recent commercial, American Express asserts that it is the small business entrepreneurs that will be the powerful force in our economy that will spark the changes needed for a positive turn around. It is these entrepreneurs that will lead the way.

And, American Express offers to help. American Express knows that the entrepreneurs can’t go it alone. They need help from their financial institutions (credit cards and banks), from their team members, from their vendors, and from their outside advisors. CPAs who are members of the Principa Alliance, have positioned themselves to be advisors to the entrepreneurs that are ready to lead the way. These CPAs do more than just “keep the score” and file a tax return. They work with businesses to identify areas that are not realizing their full potential and help improve the business to build a more rewarding, more enjoyable and more profitable businesses. To build a business that leads the way.

Brenda Richter, CPA is a member of the Principa Alliance.

To learn more about Principa CPAs, visit: Principa.biz

To watch the American Express commercial, visit: You Tube

On A Mission To Stay In Business

Experience shows that companies with a clear and ever-present mission statement surpass their competition and last in the marketplace. Mission statements define, preserve and strengthen a company’s unique competitive advantages.

You want to create a statement that you and your team can look to every day and ask “Am I fulfilling the company’s mission?” For example, one mission statement could be “to be the leading game software developer for teens.” A more actionable mission statement would be “Surpass XYZ games developer in sales, customer experience and speed to market.” The second mission statement has clear goals and direction, while the more abstract version would be more appropriate for a vision statement than a mission statement. The second statement clearly supports the vision statement.

A mission statement has several defining and distinguishing characteristics:

• It motivates your team
• It translates into what your employees do every day
• It states a goal that can be measured and identified easily
• It reflects and is rooted in the competitive environment in which your company functions

A Principa CPA has the tools to help you create, build, modify, refine or enhance your vision and mission statements with en emphasis towards Sstaying in business".

Brenda Richter, CPA is a member of the Principa Alliance of CPAs.

CHOICES

You are always one choice away from

changing your business and changing your life.

Adaptive Capacity

Every business can be thought of as a plane such as the Boeing 777. When an airline adds a new plane to their fleet, they add capacity. The airlines then go one step further by dividing that marginal capacity into 5 segments. First Class, Business Class, Full-fare Coach, Coach & Discount/Priceline. Other businesses that work with similar adaptive capacity models include hotels, golf courses, movie theaters, and car rentals. Your CPA should also have an adaptive capacity model in his/her business. So the next time you are working with your CPA, think about your budget and what level of service you want from your CPA. Ask yourself the questions associated with these pictures.

Where do you want to sit on your CPA's plane?

Or, would you prefer a private jet?

Business Retreat

My current project is coordinating a Sole Proprietors Retreat for CPAs and other professional service providers.

Many larger hold their own internal retreats where they focus on the key issues within their business and plan for the next year. Sole proprietors and two partner firms tend not to this. That is why I am offering this unique opportunity.

Something for the small business owner to think about - Does your CPA firm participate in an annual retreat?

CPA firms that participate in annual retreats care about their business. If your CPA cares about his/her business this reflects the type of attention they will give to your business as well.

If your CPA is a sole practitioner or two partner firm, encourage them to give consideration to attend the Sole Practitioners Retreat.

For more information about the retreat, visit: Sole Practitioners Retreat

Have You Built a Business or Created a Job?

Many small business owners fall into the trap of building a business so entirely dependent on them it would not survive if they were unable to work. They have not built a business rather, they’ve created themselves a job.

Think about it.

• What’s the sole purpose of a business?
• More importantly, what is the purpose of YOUR business?

It’s to give you more life. That’s the only thing most of us want from our businesses—more life!
And unless your business is built to do that, it will consume your life.

Look at the majority of small business owners. They toil seven days a week, many times 12-14 or more hours a day. Doing it, doing, it doing it. Hoping one day to finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. Most business owners are actually enslaved by their businesses. They’re anything but free. It’s little wonder the majority of small businesses fail. And those that do survive fail to reach their true potential.

Here are five ways you can determine if you have built a business or created a job.

1. If you fell ill and could not work for a period of time, the business and the people who work in the business could carry on with minimal interruption.
2. The business can be sold and will run successfully without you in it.
3. You have a clear picture in your mind of what the business will look like and how it will act when it is finally done. You’ve shared that vision with your employees.
4. You have a 3-5 year plan and are working on implementing your marketing, product, and financial strategies.
5. You are able to take extended vacations and can decide not to come into the office on the spur of the moment with no negative impact on business performance.

A Principa CPA can help you build a business that works without you. Brenda Richter, CPA is a member of the Principa Alliance.

Contact a Principa CPA, and ask us how to get started today.

Progressive

In one of the more recent Progressive Insurance commercials sales person Flo touts the newest feature available from Progressive - Name Your Price (SM). It's simple. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for insurance, and they build a policy around your budget.

What a GREAT concept.

Shouldn't your CPA be able to do the same thing for you?

I think so.

Completing the Networking Cycle

After you attend a networking event and pass out dozens of business cards, someone is bound to call. Are you ready for that call?

Peter Drucker once said:

“Marketing is not only much broader than selling; it is not a specialized
activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business
seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer's
point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate
all areas of the enterprise.”

In other words, marketing is everything a business does in order to acquire and retain a customer.

Marketing is part of corporate culture, and as such needs to be addressed in every activity the business carries out.

This means developing performance standards for the day-to-day activities of the business.

For example, every day we talk with each other on the phone.

Every one of us recognizes that each contact represents a tremendous opportunity for us to do an unbelievable job of providing our customers with fantastic customer service.

When we do that consistently, we become known as an organization that’s “switched on” and one that’s great to deal with. Clearly, that helps our image enormously.

The Phone Right program is a combination of live and DVD based training that is specially designed to give businesses ideas and performance standards for dealing with people on the phone. The program makes sure you are ready for the calls that are likely to result from networking activities.

A Principa CPA can lead the Phone Right program for your business.

Brenda Richter, CPA is a member of the Principa Alliance.

REMEMBER ME?

Remember me?
I’m the person who calls you and holds on forever while you eventually decide to answer the
phone.
I’m the person who waits patiently for you to arrive when you’re late for our meeting.
I’m the person who doesn’t complain when the promised information never arrives.

Many would say I’m a very nice person.

But that’s not all I am ...
I’m also the person who never comes back to your business.
And I’m the person who laughs out loud when you spend hundreds of dollars every year
trying to win my business when you had it in the first place.

Has this ever happened to you? Could it have happened to your customers?

A Principa CPA can help you develop a customer service strategy that make sure it does not.

Brenda Richter, CPA is a member of the Principa Alliance.

Jesusita Fire

Thank you to all the firefighters who have battled the Jesusita Fire this week, and to those who are contining the fight.

A special thank you goes out to the team who put a stop to the fire at Stevens Park.

Lastly, a thank you to Ethan who created and monitored the best fire information map. It was great to have such a resource while in Burbank on evacuation.

Sincerely,

Brenda Richter, CPA

Develop Your Hedgehog

Good to Great by Jim Collins is one of my favorite business books.

However, whenever I bring up the Good to Great concepts with my small business customers I am often met with a lot of resistance. The major objection is that they are a small business, and the companies cited in Good to Great are all big companies. Well, the fact of the matter is that the concepts in Good to Great are universal concepts that apply to any organization no matter what size it is.

Take for instance, Trinity College. Trinity College is a small college of just over 2,200 students located in Hartford, Connecticut. Given their location, they would of course be in direct competition with Ivy League schools. Yet they didn’t let size stop them. They applied the Hedgehog concept from chapter five. They asked the three simple questions:

1. What are we passionate about?


2. What can we be the best in the world at?


3. What drives our operational engine?

And they succeeded.



Congratulations to Trinity College Men’s Squash Team for achieving a 202 game winning streak. The longest active winning streak in any intercollegiate varsity sport. And, congratulations on their 11th straight national title. Trinity won the title on Sunday with a 5-4 victory over Princeton.

Read more about Trinity College and their amazing record at: http://www.trincoll.edu/


So what’s your “hedgehog”? Get started with The Hedgehog Concept by working in the Hedgehog Laboratory at: http://www.jimcollins.com/

If you need additional help with your hedgehog and the related budgets and strategy, consider working with a Principa CPA. These CPAs are a global consortium of consulting CPAs who are dedicated to working with small businesses. Business owners that work with Principa CPAs have access to tools and resources to help them grow their business, gain a better understanding of their business, develop greater management control, increase profitability, and, perhaps, most important – achieve peace of mind when it comes to their business. Learn more about Principa CPAs at: http://www.principa.biz/

Brenda Richter, CPA is a member of the Principa Alliance.