The Exuberant Accountant - Scott Heintzelman

I spent the past 3 days in Kansas City attending The Boomer Consulting Circle Summit, an Accounting Industry Summit on Technology, Human Capital and trends in the world of Public Accounting.  This group represents approximately 50 of the largest 100 CPA firms in the country. This is a great way for McKonly & Asbury to challenge old assumptions, confirm we are on the right track and learn best practices and trends across the country and the world in general.

 

Some key topics related around:

•           Security - The project of securing McKonly & Asbury's data will never end.  We strive to keep up in a fast changing environment. According to the FBI, 80 percent of attacks come from internal sources.  That percentage may be low. All companies need to have security awareness training.

A good friend of mine, who knows that I am a proud Eagle Scout, sent me this great article. The article tells the heartfelt story of a 50 year old man who earned the rank of Eagle when he was a teenager, but due to various reasons never received the award. Only about 2% of all boys who join Boy Scouts obtain the rank of Eagle. While the Boy Scouts do a great job of building character in young men, there is something special about a young man that receives his Eagle (there is also a special feeling in the young man when he receives his Eagle).

The story then goes on to share how his family pursued the award (even after all those years) just to honor him. We all can only hope our kids love us as much as this gentlemen’s. What a great story of love and perseverance. Warning, the story has a very happy ending and may make you misty-eyed.

As any one who is familiar with me, they know I love to read. So recently several people have suggested I start a Shelfari.  A Shelfari is a resource that allows readers to share, discuss, rate, tag, and organize books onto your own bookshelf. It’s like standing in front of someone’s bookshelf in their office. If you are what you read, then your bookshelf can tell others a lot about you.

Since I am asked all the time what books I would recommend, Shelfari is a dynamic way anyone can keep up-to-date with what I am reading. If you find a book that looks interesting on someone’s shelf, it’s very easy to put it up on yours.

A great quote from the famous Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.”  I believe this quote to my core as well as his other famous quote, “Leaders are Readers.”

I was attending a picnic on Thursday afternoon with a bunch of CPA’s from various accounting firms. We do this annually and have some fun and play volleyball to see which firm is the best. Our team from McKonly & Asbury finished in 2nd place out of 16 teams. Not a bad day. However, I must be getting older because in the Championship game I landed hard and hurt my heel (but I did finish the game). It started to go numb and swell so I decided to go to the Emergency room for x-rays...

The interesting part was the ER, the employees and the many patients waiting with me for over 4 hours. For a person like me, that is a whole lot of thinking, people observing and time on my blackberry. The people in the waiting room are a strange group of people. I literally saw a 65 year old man threaten to hit another person, because they were staring at him.  That of course just made everyone stare even more.  I could go on with more strange people stories, but the really important story of the night was the staff at the Hospital. They mostly seemed engaged. I had many encounters with different hospital personnel and was impressed. I am sure the hospital works hard to engage the staff, but considering the many strange folks waiting with me, it takes a special person with a high empathy strength to care for all these people. I am thankful for that!!

My heel is healing nicely this weekend, although as any typical guy, I milked it for all it was worth at home. J  I am married to a very patient and loving woman, who thankfully tolerated my whining and limping around the house.

My post yesterday created some interesting discussion.  More than one person suggested the example of Manny Ramirez.  Here is a guy who might be the greatest right handed hitter in the league today – helped the Red Sox win two World Series – breaking the curse!  Yet the organization so wanted him off the team, that they are paying almost all of his salary remaining on his contact just to incent the Dodgers to take him.  Wow!  Talk about wanting to make a bus stop and get someone off!  Manny is a high performer who is now motivated to prove the Red Sox nation was wrong.  I imagine he will perform at a high level the rest of this season – besides the fact that his current contract expires at the end of this year.