Professionals set milestones, yet miss some or many. The author in this article proposes a reason for why goals are not met and proposes a solution in this article. You know what you need to do to grow your practice. You say you’re gonna do them. They are on your to-do list. So why haven’t you done them? Face it, we generally know what we need to do (in almost any situation). But most of us, including me, stumble when it comes to actually getting it done. Here are five things I wanted to do in 2023, but have not…
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Client Onboarding Onboarding clients is a critical task. This is a process that enables practitioners to mitigate risks and set client expectations. The author shares his views on the importance of client onboarding. While the experience of a new client or matter can be enthralling, practitioners should consider utilizing a formal, comprehensive client onboarding process to mitigate risk. Accepting a client or matter that does not align with you and your organization’s business goals can be a deflating experience for a professional and his/her team. Professional organizations have created standards for which their members should ascribe to and serve as…
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Annie Cushing is on a Mission to Rid the World of Ugly Data. Learn About Data Collection, Analytics, Technical SEO, Analysis, and Beautification. Annie Cushing, a Senior SEO at SEER Interactive, a Philadelphia-based online marketing agency, explains that “There comes a time in a marketer’s life when making pretty charts with a predefined dataset just doesn’t cut it. “And finding the sum and average of a column of data just doesn’t satisfy you anymore. Eventually — and it’s really inevitable — you will actually have to dive deep into the data and cull out a smaller dataset or manipulate it…
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MidasFund Will Not Acquire Distressed Companies; However, it Will Buy Stable Divisions of Bankrupt Companies. Here’s Why. “Last week’s announcement that MidasFund had started acquiring zombie companies caused a flurry of emails,” writes Rob Slee on the MidasMoments blog of the MidasNation site. “Many of you asked about the differences between acquiring distressed, zombie and healthy companies. Let’s dig into this.” Here’s an excerpt:
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Considering Technology, Integration, and the Future Clint Boulton at the WSJ CIO Journal reports: Research in Motion Ltd. Wednesday [tomorrow] is introducing two smartphones based on its new BlackBerry 10 operating system software, giving CIOs yet another platform to consider supporting at a time when consumers are bringing in their own smartphones to use at work. CIOs are skeptical about the uncertainty surrounding RIM’s ability to continue to compete against Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which, thanks in large part to the BYOD phenomenon, have eroded the Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone maker’s share of the corporate market for mobile…
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Watch Out for Decreases in Communication, Respect, and Aspiration; Increases in Isolation, Negativity, Rifts. Good News? It Can Be Cured. Rosabeth Moss Kantor asks on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network: How do you know a team, company, or country is on the slippery slope of decline and needs a culture shift? She writes that she found nine universal warning signs of change-in-the-wrong direction in research for my book Confidence, which compared downward spirals with the momentum of success. Watching out for these behaviors is the first step toward building better habits:
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Ahead of the new health-care law, small firms worry about crossing the crucial 50-person threshold — and about rising premium rates Emily Maltby at the WSJ Law blog reports on increasing concerns about the forthcoming healthcare laws among small business owners. This seems to be a prominent issue and concern among small business owners, and has been noted in most every major media outlet in recent weeks, from the New York Times to Forbes, CNN, US News & World Report, FoxNews, The Economist, The Hill, the Washington Post, and more:
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Here are four surprising ways to protect yourself in a law suit and keep legal fees to a minimum. Kevin Daum at Inc. advises: “Shakespeare said, “First kill all the lawyers.” Maybe this seems a tad aggressive, but then again, for most people the last thing you look forward to is someone showing up at your door with a subpoena. Whether a lawsuit is business related or personal, the thought of engaging an attorney for protracted litigation can strike fear into a person’s heart.” Not only is there emotion and argument to contend with, but the sheer agony of…
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Spotlight On Payment Reform, Alternative Care Models, and Physician Employment Agreements Debra Beaulieu at Fierce Practice Management weighs in with Top 10 Physician Practice Trends to watch in 2013, a year that will not only be a watershed for the U.S. healthcare system, but, for many physician practices, a pivotal one professionally—where the’ ability to adapt and evolve may make the difference for many physicians between folding and thriving in a post-health-reform world. Here’s what Ms. Beaulieu foresees as key trends:
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Engage Employees with Teamwork and Consensus; Look Beyond Your Own Industry, and Execute Carefully In a recent issue of the Financial Planning Association’s Practice Management Solutions, Paul R. Brown identifies important factors successful business owners pay careful attention to when managing substantial change in their organizations successfully. Here’s what to pay attention to.
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Owners: Don’t Exit Before You’re Ready, Lock Yourself In, or Count on Future Consulting There is no single formula that will result in a happy retirement for business owners. Over 75 percent of business owners say they regretted selling their companies a year after the sale, according to a PwC study entitled “Whose Business is it Anyway?” But there are ways to improve the chances that consultants can help owners exit their business successfully and enjoy a rewarding retirement, writes Richard Jackim, attorney and co-founder of the Exit Planning Institute. Here are common exit planning mistakes consultants can help business…
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Why Choosing Good Counsel to Help with Exit Planning Can Be the Most Important Decision a Business Owner Makes Venture Resources believes many business owners don’t fully appreciate the complexities and factors that are present in the deal structuring and business selling process, including understanding how to project the company’s future, applying alternate deal structures, and maximizing current business potential. Here are some tips.
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Smart Consultants Use Benchmarks to Add Insight and Increase Profits Business valuation professionals constantly use benchmarking tools to evaluate businesses that we determine values for—but we aren’t always as diligent in using benchmarking tools to evaluate and to manage our own consulting businesses. Dave Cooper explains why this should be a priority.
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The June issue of Investment Advisor includes a story on practice management that features an interesting graphic:
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New Medical Billing-Code Provides Precision; Nine Codes for Macaw Mishaps Today, hospitals and doctors use a system of about 18,000 codes to describe medical services in bills they send to insurers, Anna Wilde Matthews reported in the Wall Street Journal not too long ago. Apparently, that doesn’t allow for quite enough nuance.: A new federally mandated version will expand the number to around 140,000—adding codes that describe precisely what bone was broken, or which artery is receiving a stent. It will also have a code for recording that a patient’s injury occurred in a chicken coop. (See code.) Indeed, health plans…
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Cut Down on Email, Increase Your Biz Dev So advise Bret Owens and Dan Markovitz at AccountingToday: Too many CPAs begin the day reading through their email inbox. No doubt, reputations depend on near instantaneous client service. But let’s face it—if the only value you’re providing for your client is rapid response, you’ll eventually be replaced by someone in Mumbai, Shenzhen or some other time zone who can respond even faster. Moreover, that level of service comes at a cost: CPAs become reactive rather than proactive. No matter how quickly they respond, they are always fighting fires, always behind the…
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Why Most Investors Don’t Measure Returns Correctly At the NY Times Bucks: Making the Most of Your Money blog, Carl Richards opines: There’s an old saying that you should take a look at your checkbook and your calendar to see what you really value as opposed to what you say you value, because the calendar and the checkbook never lie. Dollars and cents are easy to count in the checkbook. Happiness, on the other hand, isn’t a line item in the ledger. It’s much more difficult to say we’re happier today than yesterday because we coached our children’s sports team…
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The Accountable Care Fiasco That’s what the Wall Street Journal calls the state of developing real-world guidelines for “the Accountable Care Organizations that are supposed to be the crown jewel of cost-saving reform.” The theory for ACOs, as they’re known, is that hospitals, primary-care doctors and specialists will work more efficiently in teams, like at the Mayo Clinic and other top U.S. hospitals. ACOs are meant to fix health care’s too-many-cooks predicament. The average senior on Medicare sees two physicians and five specialists, 13 on average for those with chronic illnesses. Most likely, those doctors aren’t coordinating patient care. This…