I know we’ve heard this before, but as a reminder, there are no people with magic skills who are smarter than us at business. But we do get confused when we see people who seem to have a touch of ‘magic’ in the craft that they perform. How do they do that? When you study these people you find that they have a different view of what it takes to achieve mastery in their work. Essentially, mastery of something is a matter of getting in more reps than anyone else in your craft. Kobe Bryant is one of those people. His skills on the basketball court seem like magic, but you find out they are just a ..read more

When designers and freelancers begin to think about growth, they eventually run into needing to hire. When you sell services there is no other way to grow except to hire people. You can use software, become more efficient, and even let AI help you do some of your work. But you will eventually have to replace yourself if you want to grow the revenue of your creative studio.  Who do you hire first? Of course this depends, but there are some general principles we can learn from here. When growing, most smaller design and freelance studios think of replacing themselves to grow. So if they do ..read more

My partner and I work with a lot of service-based entrepreneurs that are seeking to grow their firms, agencies, and consultancies. We’ve been doing this for decades, and the more we work with these entrepreneurs the more we see the trouble so many have with something that is generally labeled “Capacity Management.” Many want to know if they have the right team capacity to take in a larger amount of revenue. Many don’t even understand how closely capacity management is tied to revenue performance. And many don’t look at these concepts at all, and their agency begins to consume them because it ..read more

If You Only Do 5 Things In The Coming Year, Do These So here we are again, facing the end of one year, and the beginning of a whole new year. A shiny, brand-spanking new and unused year, full of possibilities and opportunities. This time of year always has me reflecting on the past year, as well as thinking ahead to what I’d like the next year to look like.  Here are some ideas for what I want to take into 2024; hopefully you can find something useful for your new year, as well. Decide what your work/business “word of the year” is for 2024. Then try to live it.  The “word of the yea ..read more

One thing we believe that sets us apart as a firm is our commitment to learning with our team. You can always know this about our firm: we are talking about new things, learning new things, being challenged by what we already (think we) know, and making presentations of new concepts to each other. It means we are in a constant state of maturing as a team. Of course, we have to do this on the technical side of our profession (it’s required!). And we let the team lead this learning too, from their own perspective. Our leadership team is always seeking to know what our learning is for the upcomi ..read more

Principles of a Strong Team Team work makes the dream work, right? At least that’s what they say. But it takes effort and intentionality to get to that point.Yet a strong team is essential to good client service and a growing company.   Let’s look at four principles of a successful team, shall we?  Technical Capacity  Technical capacity is when team members have the understanding of how to perform their role with some autonomy.  When leadership is taking their time to micromanage or “stay in the weeds” doing the day-to-day tasks, this is robbing the agency of its tech ..read more

Hiring Tips & Red Flags Team management…it’s constantly on every leader’s mind.  It seems like every agency we know is either hiring, firing, or is having a team member leave.  It’s like there is this big “Fruit Basket Turnover” happening in the corporate world right now, and it doesn’t look like there is an end in sight anytime soon.  We’ve put together a list of “Hiring Tips & Red Flags” that can help you find the right person for the right seat in your company, and hopefully sooner rather than later.  You need to add science, experience, conversations and anyth ..read more

By now you probably know a little bit about Blumer CPAs.  You know we are intentional in every aspect of the firm, from onboarding clients to internal operations and firm values.  We wanted to take some time to shed some light on our internal Core Values and Characteristics that we appreciate as a firm.   Each week we set aside time in our team meeting to do “Core Values and Characteristics” call outs.  I’ll be honest.  When I first started at Blumer CPAs, this was hard for me, but over the last couple of years, I am learning to embrace the “call-out”. Mark Twa ..read more

The Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law on August 16, 2022. In this time of rampant inflation and the drastic moves by the Federal Reserve in hiking interest rates, which is hitting us all painfully in the wallet, something called “The Inflation Reduction Act” sounds fantastic, right?  A law that will help bring down inflation? Bring it on! Except…wait a minute, what is in this law, exactly? And how is this law going to reduce inflation? Good questions. Let me take a few minutes to try and answer them for you as we take a brief tour of The Inflation Reduction Act. Does the Inflat ..read more

Protect Your Business (and Your Contractors) with Forms W-9 and W-8 BEN We are fast approaching the end of the year. Which, among other things, means we are fast approaching the time when accountants everywhere start gearing up to prepare client Forms 1099 for the 2022 tax year. So if your accountant starts asking you if you have W-9’s and W-8BEN’s for all of your independent contractors, know that they are thinking ahead to the year-end tasks that keep you, as a business owner, in compliance. Compliance isn’t the most thrilling concept. And remembering to collect all of those Forms W-9 and ..read more