In The Trenches videos are brought to you by Thriveal and Bill.com.
You can find Jim on the web at J.F. Bell Group or on twitter at @JFBellGroup.
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My wife, Jennifer, has been going through some changes in her life to become more healthy in her life, her work, her body, and her relationships (read more about her journey on her blog). She finally got me into her 5:00 am trips to Greenville Adventure Bootcamp. Wow! I’ve never attempted exercises that are so difficult, so scary, but so satisfying! Here’s a video of me barely attempting hermit crabs:
In The Trenches videos are brought to you by Thriveal and Bill.com.
You can find Karen on the web at Schneider & Associates or connect with her on LinkedIn.
ROWE may be simple, but it is not easy.
Our firm is diving deeper into defining results and truly trying to be a company that honors both customers and team members. But it’s not easy! We all work from home, but recently we had an opportunity to be together for two days in Hendersonville, NC for our retreat. We had games, margaritas, prizes, gifts, and lots and lots of discussion on how to manage projects. Read more
Whether you like it or not, your firm is telling a story. And it probably sucks.
According to Lisa Johnson, author of the e-book Story Juicing, “being influential is about connecting emotionally with your audience and bringing your ideas to life.” Problem is we’re unimpassioned CPAs with no emotions for audiences to connect with. We tend to barf data into our customers’ laps and hope they’ll be moved by our data puke.
They won’t.
That’s why we need to incorporate simple yet effective story elements into our presentations. Read more
I think we’ve been duped: you, like me, have probably been told somewhere along the line that ‘accounting is the language of business.’ It’s not.
I think we like to think it is. I think we feel good that we can say that about our chosen profession. But I think we do a disservice to ourselves and our customers by subscribing to this notion.
You might have heard that joke about the helicopter pilot that got lost in the skies above Seattle — it was a foggy day, and visibility was very low. He circled and circled, but couldn’t seem to get his bearings. Then he pulled alongside a window of one of the taller skyscrapers, and had his co-pilot scrawl a question onto a poster board and hold it up to the cockpit window: “Where are we?” The folks inside quickly found some flip chart paper, wrote up their reply, and held it up to the building window: “In a helicopter.” The pilot immediately headed north, took two quick turns, and set the chopper down back at the landing pad. Stunned, the co-pilot finally managed to ask, “What … how…did you know to do that?” “Well, I knew we were at the Microsoft building, and it was a just a matter of making a few turns to get home,” the pilot replied. “But how did you know we were at the Microsoft building?” “I knew because the engineers there gave me an answer that was technically correct, but completely unhelpful.” Read more