Golden Practices

Our Fave Website Design Yet!

Today is a great day! We are super excited to launch our newest site & blog. Rowling Dold & Associates is a firm of CPA types who are primarily financial/wealth advisors.

A really cool thing about RDA is how they let us pretty much run with our ideas and designs. This is pretty rare and we savored every minute of it.

The other really cool thing about RDA's website development is the theme.

Sheryl Rowling, RDA's managing partner, took a long, well-deserved trip to Europe last year with her business partner Cheryll Lurtz right after launching their product Total Rebalance Expert (a very cool rebalancing software for advisors who use Schwab Portfolio Center) at the big Schwab conference in Atlanta.

Sheryl & Cheryll included us in their email photo-journal of their trip: almost daily recaps of their escapades with a couple select photos of the day. The photos were exceptional and we (the recipients) lived vicariously through them for a few weeks as they gallivanted across Europe.

When we started on their web design, we hadn't thought about using those photos but when conversation turned to imagery, their goals were: artful, professional, and more scenic than stock people. A San Diego based firm, our thoughts naturally turned to ocean-related scenery.

Then we remembered the photos.

Big believers in personalizing a website to the degree that you get a feel for the personalities comprising a firm, we wanted visitors to have a feel for Sheryl's trip the way we did. 

So we wanted it to be really obvious that these were home-grown photos. Each photo links back to a photo credits page.

Hope visitors enjoy looking as much as we enjoyed building. This one was a joy!

Sheryl, Lisa and team, thank you for letting us help you with this fun project!

And congrats on having what I think might be the first Financial Services blog by a CPA!

I'm Afraid it's a Terribly Unfortunate Problem When We're Negative

Got an unsolicited email about negativity in speech. Don't normally read my junk mail, but SO glad this item escaped my ruthless delete stroke so that I could share the gem with you:

Negative Vocabulary: Say what you will do, not what you can't do.

We can change people's perceptions of a situation by changing the words we use to tell them. Being negative is one of the most common bad habits we all seem to have! Why are we so negative and specialise in looking on the dark side?

We seem to specialise in telling people what we can’t do, not what we are able to do, however small.

Many people go through life pointing out things about themselves, their houses, [and] their cars that they do not like and then telling people not to take any notice of them. Notice is only taken because we point them out.

We then compound this with using negative vocabulary.

Negative words like "unfortunately" "I'm afraid" "The problem is..." "I'm sorry but..."

The situation doesn’t change, but the way the other person feels about it, changes totally. For example, which is better received?

"Unfortunately we close at 7.00pm"
OR
"We are open every day until 7.00pm"

"Unfortunately we’re going to disconnect/repossess if you don't pay"
OR
"Mr Smith, we need a payment today to prevent disconnection/repossession"

In my many years of experience the negative is the most widely used! If you think you can, or if you think you can't, you're absolutely right.

This Marketing Tip of the Week was provided by Ann Nobbs of Telmark Training who concentrates on working with people to improving telemarketing results.

With her negative example of "I'm sorry but..." ... the simple change to "I'm sorry and..." makes all the difference in the world.

This "and/but" thing is VERY helpful, too, if you are disagreeing with a colleague -- especially in a meeting where you don't want to come across as a jerk. After someone says something you wish to counter, or add a differing opinion on, try, "I hear what John is saying AND I'd like to add..." as opposed to "John thinks that BUT I..." 

This simple change is far more respectful and far less confrontational.

The word "but" should pretty much be removed from any customer relations conversation. It will only get you in trouble.

Policies for Emerging Technologies

This topic keeps coming up. People have differing comfort levels with newish technologies and therefore have very different tolerance levels for others using it.

True that some people just don't "get it" when it comes to being polite. The cell-phone screamers and mid-conversation texters or email-checkers come to mind.

The common reaction seems to be "We need a company policy for [fill in technology here]?"

For everything from listening to ipods (wrote "iPods Are Not the Enemy") and blogging ("Blogging Policies" post) to streaming video watching at work or accessing facebook, business leaders want policies. Especially accounting and law types. We want to control it!

I've written an article that was just published in Practical Accountant and WebCPA, but it applies across many industries. It's called, "Charting a Firm's Social Media & Communications Policy" and I hope you'll check it out. 

Basically it explores a facilitated session I led with managing partners to explore how to deal with emerging technology urging them to take the time to fully understand it... hopefully BEFORE cranking out a policy banning or stifling its use.

I just read lawyer Jay Shepherd's blog post on Gruntled Employees called Does Your Company Need a Smartphone Policy and he raises some of the same issues and links to three other terrific posts. My favorite is A Two-Word Corporate Blogging Policy.

Something you'll find in my article, above, is that getting the partners/owners on the same page about your policy approach, in order to make policies that make sense, requires giving them the opportunity to hash through what REALLY concerns them, and dealing with those concerns, rather than jumping to policy FIRST.

CPA Bloggers of Note!

Boy, have things changed.

A year ago in June, we had about 35 practice blogs by accountants on our Accounting Blog List. Now, there are 95. January 1 there were 65. There is some now some momentum.

30 were built and launched during "busy season" which is amazing enough because back when I entered accounting marketing in the early 90s, CPAs took a marketing hiatus for the first four months of each year. Not so anymore.

Still only 22 "industry sector" blogs so if you are mulling over starting one, the playing field is very wide open for you to own your space.

This isn't about numbers, though, it's about results. I've mentioned some blogger success stories before but a couple exciting new ones have come to be known recently.

Scott Heintzelman, The Exuberant Accountant

Scott launched his blog a year ago. He learned about the potential for CPAs in this interesting medium a year earlier when he attended a meeting of IGAF Worldwide, his firm's international association where I happened to be speaking. Scott was fired up!

I remember talking to him at dinner and I could almost see the wheels spinning: "I've got to do this...how can I make this happen..." (He's in a bigger firm, McKonly Asbury, where I imagine he was thinking that not all his partners would likely be on board with this wacky concept). But his firm acquiesced and his terrific marketing director Jim Rodgers, helped him breathe life into the blog, aptly named if you know Scott!

Corresponding with him when he first started it, Scott had some questions about approaches to his post writing and other normal concerns (am I doing this right? are people really gonna subscribe to my blog?).  Some early blog comments from friends and strangers served to encourage him on his journey. It wasn't long before Scott was invited to join the AccountingWEB Bloggers Crew.

It's a year later. Scott emailed me a week or so ago about the first (known) 100% blog-driven referral he received. Here's what he said:

I had never met this gentlemen prior to our meeting, but his quote to me at breakfast was that he felt like he knew me and what I stood for because of the blog. The power of the blog is that it allows me to leverage my time and “ping” many folks at one time (it expands my reach). They in turn get to develop like and trust with me (and our firm), without me being present.

And, as beautiful luck would have it, Scott's blog--along with a few other great accounting blogs including another firm I mentioned in the prior success story link above, Mercer & Hole--were just picked up in Entrepreneur in a story "Accounting Blogs" by Peter Renton.

Paul Neiffer, Farm CPA Today

Another blogger of note is Paul Neiffer. Paul contacted us (through this blog, in fact) late in 2008 and officially went live with his blog in Feb 2009. He had a nice little backlog of posts when he launched and has been going to town on it since then.

Paul grew up in a farm business and gets his own tractor time each year still though he doesn't have a farm in Washington where he practices accounting. This CPA completely got it that his posts needn't (actually shouldn't) all be about debits and credits. You will get to know Paul's genuinely helpful, thoughtful personality in a handful of posts.

Because his blog is sector specific, his audience will appreciate and find relevant anything that farmers care about. This makes for a much more interesting read and Paul is proving to be a natural at delivering great content in a friendly way.

After just 3-4 months, and as a direct result of blogging, Paul has been sought out to write the tax chapter of a farming book and he is developing an alliance with a farm organization that he merely admired from afar when we first spoke.

I'm so proud of both of these guys as well as Mercer & Hole's SME blog team, Tom Selling of The Accounting Onion, Key Bell of Don't Mess With Taxes, and the folks at The Accounting Coach, too, for their great work with their blogs which are leading them to wonderful successes.

A Special Memorial Day

I'd like to take a moment and thank all of those who serve and who have served in keeping our country and her people, and our fellow human beings safe, all around the world.

Memorial Day, to me, feels very personal recognizing the service in WWII of my beloved Grandpa, may he rest in peace.

My special Memorial Day weekend included spending a full 24 hours with my soldier son who recently returned from a turbulent year in Afghanistan: his third tour in his seven years of service. The joy in this opportunity was only tempered by the knowledge that too many moms and dads, brothers and sisters, spouses, children, and grandkids, weren't able to spend this day with their fallen soldier, sailor, airman, or marine.

Appreciating those who have made the ultimate sacrifice is critically important. But so is thanking those still living who also deserve our gratitude for their significant and permanent personal sacrifices made on all our behalf. Past, present and future generations have them to thank for freedom and liberty that we enjoy every single day, most of us with little understanding of just how fragile this freedom really is.

Edith Orenstein authored a lovely blog post today entitled "Gratitude." I thank you Edith, for mentioning my family among those you touched on in your post. And most of all, I thank you for sharing the message of The Gratitude Campaign.

Maybe you are like me. I pass many military men and women in my daily travels, and am sometimes too humbled, choked up, and sometimes too shy to intrude, but deeply wish to show my appreciation...this is a very cool way to express yourself when words don't seem appropriate.

The Instigator

Howard Wolosky, former editor-in-chief of Practical Accountant and WebCPA columnist, has a moving post today  called "Auditors: Doing the Right Thing?" on his brand new blog (which I immediately added to my blogroll and I recommend you do the same!)

I love how Howard tells the story and makes us stop and take pause.

His blog is named Instigator which I believe reflects a side of Howard we shall see much more of...the provocative side. The particular post that I refer to discusses courage (and fear) in the context of auditors ability to improve and, shall we say, responsibility to help resolve, the failure of the current audit standards and procedures to accomplish part of their intended task--protecting shareholders by providing enough information about the financial position of the company audited. 

I'd love to see his challenge to the AICPA met. And welcome thoughts from auditors here or, of course, on Howard's blog.

Streamline Your Writing; Improve Readership

Whatever it is you write—your blog, a tweet, an article, a book, a newsletter, web content, or even a good, old-fashioned letter, memo, or email—you want the reader to easily GET what you are saying and act on it.

To accomplish this, you need clarity. And, these days, you need brevity.

One of my favorite bloggers, Dianna Huff, has a terrific blog post called Pruning Deadwood From Your Copy. Of her 5 tips, #3 is my favorite:

Hunt down redundancies. When I write fast and without effort, I find my copy is full of useless words that I use over and over and ideas that I communicate two or three or four times (just like this sentence, ha!).

Here is how I can edit this sentence: When writing fast and without effort, my copy becomes bloated with useless words and repeated ideas.

I love how she illustrated her point. I see redundancies in my work when I rush and almost always in a first draft or braindump. Calling myself out on it more often, I really notice it now in other people's writing.

Dianna's post is for EVERYONE. It is a quick read and worth printing and tacking to the wall!

It's Time

It's, well, time for a LOT of things. But it's high time for two things as I write this:

1) MUST introduce you to Debra Helwig's blog, Service Minded. Debra is the chief evangelist of many things for CPA firm association, IGAF Worldwide. She is committed to the core of continously advancing her association's offerings, quality, and "experiences" for every single member. And she promotes wise practices for every level employee...owner, marketer, receptionist... 

Best of all, she totally practices what she preaches--no easy thing for a busy evangelist and mom. If you are a service provider and you don't read any other blog, you must read hers!

2) You'll see in Debra's recent post, Letting Go, a stark reminder that surrendering less-than-perfect relationships is not just best for you but better for the client, too. We sometimes hang on to client relationships believing we are doing the client a favor, but in many cases, we aren't!

Check out her post. Then subscribe to her blog.

Social Media: The Unavoidable Intersection of Your Business & Personal Life

For those among you who have managed thus far to maintain good, solid compartmentalization between your business and your personal lives, I offer a hearty “Congratulations!”

Seriously. Not an easy thing to do these days. In fact, for some of us, we couldn’t cleanly sort the people in our lives into the two buckets of "business" and "friends" if our lives depended on it.

But this “blur” of personal and professional isn’t really a new thing, at all, is it?

For years, we've become friends with clients and friends become clients. Co-workers become like family. Sometimes they literally become family. It's not uncommon that lawyers/doctors wed other lawyers/doctors, etc. (With the hours some people put in, where the heck else would they meet anyone?? )

But now it’s in your face and soon to be, if not yet, in your employment policies: dealing with social media applications and the work day.

Collecting all your contacts in one place is complicated, too. There is the clear challenge of deciding how much of your personal side to bare to whom.

You might whip out pictures of your kids to show a colleague at a conference, but do you really want them seeing photos of you in your swimsuit chasing your kid (not pretty is my point)?

For those who want to dip their toe in the pool of the life/work blend (or who are already waist deep) and wishing for a way to be more selective about who sees what, you will probably appreciate this excellent “how to” on Facebook privacy through using “groups” for sorting your friends and business contacts. Read 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.

I’ll briefly touch on policies, too. Frankly, as much as companies have tried over the last decade to stifle employee access of third party email sites, interactive websites, etc, it’s simply impossible to restrict the entire internet. Why bother to lock out hotmail/yahoo when people have email and text on their smart phones??

That era is over.

And it’s dumb to block most websites, too. Disallowing Linked In, Facebook, Blogs and Twitter (yes, some firms lock down all of those) is cutting off your firm’s nose to spite its face. These are valuable marketing tools for those who wish to use them that way.

But more discouragingly for the leery employer, if you ban them, smart people who like a challenge (there tend to be quite a few of those in the professional knowledge firm arena) will spend their time finding a way to circumvent the ban.

C’mon, you were teenagers...you remember the thrill of stretching or breaking a rule just to see if you could pull it off!

So, don’t spend a lot of energy worrying about who is using what forum and instead, if issues arise at the individual level with regard to performance, then address problems one-on-one with that individual. Worry about people not getting their work done is the real issue behind the bans, anyway, right?

Today's reality is that there is little choice now but to trust the way people spend their “time” is appropriate, overall, and simply hold people accountable for the end result: either they are cutting the mustard with performance, or they aren’t.

Good luck and happy entry to this new era of life/work management.

*Hat tip to the incomparable Debra Helwig (excellent new blog: Service Minded) for pointing me to the the Facebook Privacy article and its 239 useful comments

My Soldier's Return Made the Local News

So honored to have been part of the homecoming ceremonies at Fort Campbell (KY) yesterday. My son was among 190 soldiers returning from a year in the mountains of Afghanistan which really heated up on their watch.

Most of the guys on this flight were from the another group of the 101st Airborne Division, but my son was one of the four who came back from Able Company (Currahee!) a few days before the rest of his colleagues will return. 

There is a touching video on the local Fox affilliate and their camera-man caught our family's Kodak moment on video, too.

I want to thank all the wonderful blog and twitter readers/friends who have sent their support and well-wishes for my son's safe return, and that of his fellow soldiers. I can't tell you how much that has meant to me, to his wife and our whole family over the past year. It is, indeed, a lot easier for us all to breathe now!

And here's to keeping all the remaining military men and women in our thoughts and prayers until every single one comes home!

APPENDED: Homecoming story link now operating correctly!