4 marketing strategies to use right now

middleton
middleton

and one pitfall to avoid.

by wesley middleton
middleton raines llp

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how to use guerrilla emotional leadership

“having no emotion is as much of a flaw as too much emotion.”

by wesley middleton
middleton raines llp

middleton
middleton

several years ago a trusted advisor of mine and consultant to our firm, bill reeb, pulled me aside and handed me a book, “emotional intelligence.” he said to me (my paraphrasing of his words), “wes, you are a great leader, but your ceiling is your emotion. you are confusing your emotion with your passion and justifying your emotion as passion.”

related: do not embrace these changes | why my people take 5 days off (yes, in a row) | four major misconceptions about millennials

wow. what a wakeup call. let me be clear, the following post is not intended to be an interpretation or summary of the book “emotional intelligence.” it is a firsthand account of how i used what i read and then implemented.

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do not embrace these changes

… unless you want to grow your business.

by wesley middleton
middleton raines llp

this is not only directed at the profession of cpas of which i am a proud member, but to the clients we serve. i see so many posts on how we need to change and evolve that i am almost disgusted. we have what everyone wants: trust. the absolute trust of our clients. more than doctors, more than lawyers, more than any profession that i can think of. and we need to evolve? what we should do is not lose it!

related: why my people take 5 days off (yes, in a row) | four major misconceptions about millennials

well, yes, we do need to evolve. but not from the perspective of being more to our clients than what we are. it is our business model that must evolve as cpas.
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why my people take 5 days off (yes, in a row)

need more? take more. you’re an adult.

by wesley middleton
middleton raines llp

so we decided to shake things up in the accounting world and offer a benefit that many others don’t have. open pto, or as some call it, unlimited pto.

no more tracking paid time off. no more carryovers or figuring out the carryover policy. should it be 40 hours or 80 hours? we are telling our team what we expect them to get done, when we expect them to do it, and then the rest of the time is on them. please go home or on vacation! you deserve it.

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four major misconceptions about millennials

and six management strategies to unleash their potential for your firm.

middleton
middleton

by wesley middleton
middleton raines llp

from the sound of it, millennials are ruining everything. at least that’s how they’ve been made to feel. supposed experts focus on how different the millennials are, how hard they are to understand, to attract and to retain.

after reading the experts, i decided to offer my perspective as a managing partner of a 72-person firm where the average age of our firm is 34.65 and 49 of our people are the age 35 or below.  this experience – along with a 20-year-old daughter and a 17-year-old son – has given me a different perspective.

in fact, the differences between the generations are exaggerated. it’s funny to see how the older generation always looks at the generation behind them and says they are so different and won’t achieve what we have or that they have some “hard to understand” ideas. they said that about me when i was 25.

i love this generation coming up and here is why: read more →