Make sure to join Susan Tinel in her webinar with Intuit Practice Management on November 3, "Gain Clarity and Transparency in Your Firm with Intuit Practice Management." You can register here.
You’re never ready.
You can prepare and practice all you want, but you are never truly ready for that moment when it comes.
I’m sure each one of you can think of a moment that you prepared for and when it came, something happened. It might have been Congress, it might have been missing information that suddenly popped up, it might have even been your Internet going down. Whatever that moment was, it was unexpected, unplanned, and unwelcome.
How you handle that moment is the true lesson to learn. What you learn from that moment is priceless.
In my previous career, I practiced with my ballroom dance partner for over 40 hours every week for competition. We had practiced most diligently, and we were "ready" for one competition that comes to mind. We had 5 dances to dance, and four passed splendidly. On the last dance, during the last 30 seconds, my shoe was kicked off and hanging by a strap on my ankle. We had to leave the floor. There was no way to continue. It was the right decision for the moment, but I was not ready for that to happen, and we had to concede. The valuable lesson I learned was never pick such an important tool by looks again.
Managing my firm, I have taken these lessons and applied them. Sometimes with success, sometimes with failure. Getting my workflow and tech stack in shape has been a long journey, and I could not have gotten there without knowledge of the prize and learning from my past mistakes. Each step along the way it never felt like the right moment.
So, when do you know it is the right moment to adopt that new solution for your firm? The short answer is you don’t. It’s never the right time. There’s always going to be something getting in the way. If you wait until after tax season, there can be a myriad of things that comes up. If you wait until after extensions, that’s when we prep for the following tax season. And, of course, just forget January to April, that’s pure insanity.
Point is, we are busy all year long these days. Tax season has become longer and longer. If your capacity is completely tapped, there’s not a moment to spare in sight.
The moment, the true right moment, is when you say it is. You’re never going to be ready for it, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I desperately needed a CRM (customer relation manager) and anywhere I looked, it was a bad time. The time had to be now! I drew my line in the sand in March. Certainly not a great time, but nonetheless, action had to be taken.
I threw the three final contestants for the CRM crown to my app stack through live, real use cases. My team and I targeted several clients to be the test subjects. I listened to my team carefully; ultimately, they would be daily users too. Intuit Practice Management was a clear winner early on. There was clarity that came right away, usability, and a nice marriage between the other apps we use.
By June, we had gone all in, set up the tax return work templates and other work, and were as ready to go as we could be. It wasn’t perfect. There were still a lot of holes but we had something to work with that would build and grow as we prepared to enter the second half of the season.
Up until the final deadline, we put Intuit Practice Management through rigorous use. We all learned and got better along the way. Our work templates look very different from when we started and we have a solid bead on all the changes and adaptations to our workflow that will need to be set for the next tax season, which is already coming at us at full steam ahead!
As a firm owner, I try very hard to time the implementation of anything new to a period when we can absorb it the best, without losing any quality in our work and service. Timing can be everything, but you also don’t have to let it be everything. It may seem like I just jumped into an app implementation at the height of tax season, however, along the way, from the very start of this journey, I prepped and practiced and got ready for it. Because, even though you will never be ready for that moment, what you can control are the decisions you make. Prioritize the moment and make it yours!
Make sure to join Susan Tinel in her webinar with Intuit Practice Management on November 3, "Gain Clarity and Transparency in Your Firm with Intuit Practice Management." You can register here.