For me, 2008 was all about starting over, in a multitude of ways – physically, spiritually, financially, career, and relationships. It was a rough year, but in retrospect, a necessary step back.

In contrast, 2009 was about rebuilding, branching out, and trying new things. On the business front, it was a year for testing ideas that are commonplace in my old professional field (real estate) and trying out what might work and what won’t work in my new profession (tax representation). For the most part, things cross over quite nicely. As such, it became a time for testing marketing ideas, creating procedures, and setting up systems. The programming of a web-based practice management system to streamline our operations and improve communication amongst the various business functions (marketing, sales, production, management, payroll, account receivable, etc.) was a crowning achievement for me for the year. While it still has some work to be done, it’s in full production use by our staff and has eliminated several other expensive software programs that didn’t talk to each very well. In addition, it allows most of our staff members to continue providing client service remotely, which before was not possible.

This year, 2010, will have a very different flavor. While the core systems component, the web-based practice management system, will continue being a major factor in my, it will go from being a majority of my day to being perhaps a quarter of my working hours. That will free up substantial time for me to work on full scale implementation of marketing ideas that have accumulated throughout the past two years, as well as enable us to expand the practice into other areas.

We have already started the wheels turning on two major business expansions for us: Offering professional continuing education to other tax professionals, and expanding into the world of business tax return preparation. Last Thursday, I mailed off the application to the IRS to allow us to offer continuing education programs, and will tackle the various state Boards of Accountancy this week. We have also started reviewing tax preparation software options, since we currently prepare tax returns by hand using PDF forms, since we do very, very limited scope tax return preparation for our existing client (most of whom owe back taxes and also have unfiled returns, which their CPA normally prepares). One of my tasks for today is to prepare a postcard mailer for tax preparation and assemble an appropriate mailing list to send out to THIS WEEK.

Back in 1999, Dan Kennedy published a tiny red paperback book that was included in some of his other programs as a bonus item. It was a self-published book, and is not available in bookstores, which is a travesty, because I think it’s the single greatest piece he’s ever written. It’s called “The Ultimate Success Secret. The book is about one thing: action. In a nutshell, goals without action are just words on paper. On top of that, it’s not about just doing SOME actions, it’s about MASSIVE action. That means if you can think of ten ways to grow your business, don’t just do one at a time, DO THEM ALL!

In a nutshell, that’s what 2010 is for me. If I fail to take massive action on all the things I have planned, I will have nobody to blame but myself. And it’s not just in business, either. If I have any real chance of making the U.S. Olympic team, it will take nothing short of massive action. Everybody else has a tremendous head start on me, so I have no choice but to dive in massively.

Speaking of implementation, the past three weeks have been a period of massive action in another business venture. I am happy to say that after many late nights, burning the candle at both ends as the saying goes, the new business is open and productive. The revenue goal for the enterprise is such that it comprises fully 1/3 of my goal income for the year. There is a huge fear factor to me, since I’ve never been involved in a retail operation, as I have always operated service type businesses. It’s also strange for me to be involved in an outright partnership, as I have a difficult time accepting having to rely on other people. However, the partners need this to work out significantly more than I do, as it is their primary livelihood, so there is incentive all around for it to work out.

Now, I have some implementation to go do. ~||~

Make it a great day!

Jassen Bowman