Hard Work Really Does Make a Difference

Source: Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders

The following excerpts, from a blog entry by Rita Keller, are reproduced with permission.

I have been a workaholic. I'm recovering but it is a slow process.

I did not spend all those hours at the firm to avoid my family. I simply believed in “the good of the firm” and that hard work paid-off.

I hear the stories from many of you out there …

“Our managing partner is so smart and he continues to go to conferences and network with other firms to learn best practices. But (and there is always a BUT), he just thinks if he tells all of us in the office about these ideas and initiatives that it will all happen magically.”

“One of our partners loves golf. He plays several times a week and charges everything to the firm. He often plays with clients (who are personal friends) BUT, he plays with the same cronies over and over, not with potential clients or referral sources. The other partners are taking note of how much he is spending and feel like it is coming out of their pocket with nothing to show for it.”

Seth Godin's blog post titled “Hardly worth the effort” brought all this to mind:

In most fields, there's an awful lot of work put into the last 10 percent of quality. Getting your golf score from 77 to 70 is far more difficult than getting it from 120 to 113 or even from 84 to 77.

Seth says, “If all you're doing is the standard amount, all you're going to get is the standard compensation. The hard part is the last ten percent or one percent. Because everyone else is busy doing the easy part already.”

To read the entire blog entry, click here.

From Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders, the blog of Rita Keller, president of Keller Advisors, LLC, [email protected], May 20, 2010, “At Your CPA Firm, Do You Always Put Forth Extra Effort?” Visit http://ritakeller.com/blog/.