Good is the enemy of great!

We have good schools, not great schools, good churches, not great churches and good businesses instead of great businesses, so starts Jim Collins’ ‘landmark’ book ‘Good To Great’.

And he’s right.

Taking this one step further, we have many good accounting firms in our country, but few truly great firms.

And there’s a commonality among all these comparisons.

You see, when we create a good business, it often provides us with a lifestyle and a level of income that is simply good enough for us.

The same goes for an accounting firm. We recruit good people, find good clients and do good work for them and this provides us with a good, or acceptable, lifestyle and income.

Yet, with some fine-tuning, and a subtle change in direction, we could achieve so much more.

Taking your accounting firm from ‘good’ to ‘great’ requires making a quantum leap. Very often a permanent change in mindset occurs which enables us to build truly great accounting firms. The results can sometimes be quite amazing. It can make a huge financial difference to you.

For example, if you’re presently making $150,000 a year you could easily double that to $300,000 or more a year, no kidding!

Why is it then that so few Chartered Accountants build truly ‘great’ firms?

In many cases we create a practice that, if we are not careful, starts running us, rather than having us run the practice. As my friend Paul Dunn (yes, THE Paul Dunn of the Accountants’ Boot-camp fame) says, we spend the majority of our time working IN our practice rather than ON it.

Michael Gerber first coined the phrase ‘work ON your business, rather than IN it’ and Dunn adapted this mindset and created a very powerful set of tools that literally swept the accounting world off its feet in the mid 1990’s.

Just think of your own practice for a while. How many days do you go to your office with the intention of completing tasks ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ for example, only to find yourself getting distracted by things that might be urgent, but in the big scheme of things are not really important?

I know I used to fall into this trap time and time again. I would often leave the office late at night, having given it my all during the day, only to find that I am not even half way to completing task ‘A’ and haven’t even started to tackle tasks ‘B’ and ‘C’.

That is one of the many distractions that prevent us from creating truly great accounting firms. And I decided it was time to put a halt to this ‘cancer’ that prevents us from:

· Doing what we enjoy instead of what we feel we have to do.
· Leveraging our expertise and value billing for maximizing profitability instead of earning what our clients dictate is a suitable level of income.
· Creating a practice that realizes maximum value for the outgoing practitioner when the time comes to exit from our firm.

You see if we focus on the right type of client and the right type of work at the right fee level for us, everything else tends to fall into place.

That is why I created the ‘Quantum Leap’ seminar and I am delighted to be presenting this for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta in February 2006 as a part of their PD course offering.

I last visited Edmonton and Calgary as a part of my natio0nwide ‘book tour’ – promoting my first book for the CICA ‘The Succession Planning Toolkit’ which helps practitioners to plan the exit from public accounting and the sale of their practice or stake in a larger firm.

When I was with you last time, we had some lively debates and interesting discussions during the four seminars I presented, and I am really looking forward to coming back.

This time I am presenting two different seminars: ‘Creating A Marketing Mindset For Your Firm’ and ‘Quantum Leap’. Places can be booked through the usual channels for PD courses with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta.

I look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible.