Discover How Cracking a Book May Increase Your Bank Account

Steven Covey’s seventh habit for highly successful people is better known as “sharpening the saw” and refers to a number of ways in which you can renew yourself to become a better professional. In Japan they call this “kaizen,” a term that refers to the constant improvement of oneself.

Even the most dedicated accountant can get a little burned out working day in and day out for their practice. In order to rejuvenate and rededicate yourself, you must look for ways to sharpen the saw. In Steven Covey’s example, he explains that the long-term use of a saw, let’s say nine to five every weekday, can dull the edges, making it more difficult to be productive. In order to sharpen the saw you must sit back and take out your whetstone, attending to your craft without necessarily performing your craft.

The Value of Reading

Reading is a great way to sharpen the saw. It exposes you to countless new ideas and enables you to become a better, more thoughtful professional. In fact, the more books you read the sharper your saw becomes and the better you perform your accounting functions. And not only that, but the better business owner you’ll be.

In one job I held employees were required to spend 30 minutes a day reading the latest news on our discipline in order to be informed of current and even cutting-edge techniques. Not only did it keep me abreast of current events, but it helped me learn new approaches that I could incorporate into my day-to-day work activities. I became more efficient and more informed as I performed my duties. It also enabled me to sound intelligent when talking to peers about my profession.

We suggest that you try to do the same. Schedule 20 to 30 minutes a day, during which you will search books and magazines that will enable you to become a better financial professional. Perform searches on Amazon, ask colleagues and peers for recommendations, and research the literature getting the most buzz. The more you read the longer your reading list will become. Don’t get discouraged; just start at the top and work your way down.

Our Recommendation

The best books for you may be those focusing on running a successful small business of your own. Not only will it help you better manage your practice, but it will also help you consult your clients in doing the same.

Allen Bostrom, president and CEO of Universal Accounting Center has written a book designed to help any and every small business become more profitable, and it’s called In the Black: Nine Principles to Make Your Business More Profitable.

Allen’s father, Alf, made a living turning small businesses around. In fact, he was called the Turnaround King. For a small percentage of a business’s future profits, Alf would their business around, often yanking them from the brink of bankruptcy. In doing so, Alf learned many key principles about ensuring a business’s success. He passed those on to his son, Allen, who also has extensive experience helping small businesses thrive. Using his father’s principles and those he developed himself, Allen wrote In the Black.

In the Black presents 9 practical principles that you can begin applying to your practice, or your clients’ businesses, immediately. It’s a quick read that will enable you to see how, exactly, you can increase a business’s profitability. And as an accountant, you can use this information to enhance your practice, becoming your clients’ Profit Expert.

If you would like to enhance your business, and your bank account, by reading books that will sharpen your saw, start here. Order In the Black today and have 9 principles, at-the-ready, that you can use to enhance your accounting practice. This small investment will make a big impact on your future.

Retirement Savings Motivation

While the information provided in this article doesn’t necessarily help you as an accountant or bookkeeper, I thought it would be valuable for you to know. Please let me know if you would like to have more articles of this type in the future.

Results from the 1998 Women’s Retirement Confidence Survey are both encouraging and discouraging. Major findings of the survey, which was conducted by the American Savings Education Council (ASEC), show that…

* Fifty-nine percent of women have saved for retirement, while 41 percent have not.

* Twenty percent of women are very confident about their retirement income prospects, while 40 percent are somewhat confident, and 31 percent are not confident at all.

* Among those women who are saving for retirement, only 30 percent are confident that they are investing their savings wisely.

* Sixty percent of women say that they have not figured out how much they need to save for retirement.

Why Women Don’t Save

While women cite many reasons for not saving for retirement, by far the most common reason is too many current financial responsibilities (67 percent). Other major reasons for not saving include uncertain economic events (30 percent), lack of retirement savings plan at work (26 percent), expectation of a pension (24 percent), lots of time remaining until retirement (23 percent), have not thought about it (21 percent), and retirement will work itself out when it comes (21 percent).

A smaller but significant number of women indicate that they have not saved for retirement because they can’t find investment information that is easy to understand
(19 percent), they don’t know where to start (19 percent), or they are not comfortable dealing with banks or other financial institutions (13 percent).

The ASEC points out that with interest compounding, a 25-year-old woman who begins saving $20 per week will accumulate a $132,000 nest egg over 35 years. For a woman aged 65, $132,000 could purchase an annuity for life of $870 per month or $10,440 per year.

The survey points up the need for more and better education for women about planning and saving for retirement. While many are saving, many still are not. What’s more, even those women who are saving need help–most have no idea how much they need to save, and many are not doing a good job of investing their savings.

Other Features From Today’s Newsletter:

• We Want You To Teach Us How to Improve
• First Impressions Do Count
• Give Clients Early Warning
• Show Me How to Make $80,000/year With My Own Accounting Service

Eight Time Management Secrets for the Accounting and Bookkeeping Home Business

You took the leap of faith and started your own Accounting / Bookkeeping business, and now you have enough clients to keep you busy for a long time. But you’re starting to wonder how you’ll keep up with it all, providing your clients with quality service while having that time to yourself you’ve always dreamed about. So how do you manage your business so that it doesn;t manage you? Here are eight time-saving tips to help you manage your business and recover your life.

1. Better Organize Your Home Office

If you’re like most people, you have wasted seconds, minutes, hours in precious work time hunting for that one invoice, file, or perhaps even the stapler. Your mother probably taught you that there’s a place for everything and everything should be in its place. That’s sound advice. If your office is well organized, you’ll waste little time hunting things down. While it may seem a daunting and time-consuming task at first, you’ll save yourself lots of time in the end if your organize your home office now (for more help on this, read our two articles: “Organizing Your Home Office Part I” and “Part II“).

2. Templatize

How many repetitive tasks do you do in one day? If you’re wasting time recreating the same documents or sending the same types of email, it’s time to standardize some of these tasks. Create form letters, standard documents, and redundant text for typical, lengthy emails. This should save you time, and because time is money in this business, you’ll be able to spend that saved time either making more money or enjoying what you’ve already made.

3. Punch The Clock

Okay, okay. So you quit your day-job so you wouldn’t have to punch the clock anymore. But the truth of the matter is if you don’t set your own hours and keep them, you’ll find yourself on the job 24/7. Generally, when working a 9 to 5 job you only work past five when there’s an emergency; do the same while working for yourself. Set some rules right now. For example: “I will work from 5AM to Noon, Monday through Friday and I will only work overtime when…” Be specific. Otherwise you’ll find that your work is managing you rather than the other way around. You’ll be amazed at how this will help you to work smarter. You may be wasting two hours everyday simply because you have them to waste. Also let your family know what your working hours are. If they know that you need to honor your business hours in order to honor family time, they’ll be more likely to give you the time and space you need (as long as your respect that time set aside for the family).

4. Plan Daily

The old adage goes, ” If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” How true that is! Take a few minutes every morning to review your schedule and plan your day. Take a few minutes when you are wrapping up work in the evening to plan your next days activities. Whenever you do it, do it daily, this time will go far in helping you use your time more effectively.

5. Prioritize Tasks

Just last week I spent 5 hours on a project I felt strongly about, but when I looked over my accomplishments later, I realized I hadn’t finished a task that was more important and timely. When we don’t prioritize our tasks, we run the risk of putting a lot of effort into something that isn’t crucial. By planning daily you will be able to find that the prioritization gets easier to do.

6. Avoid Procrastination

Procrastination is the great time-killer. All of us have had our bouts with it one time or another. It would be interesting to count up all the time wasted simply by procrastinating the essential tasks. How much time and energy do we spend worrying about one of those important to-do items? How often do we distract ourselves with silly busy work that doesn’t get you anywhere? Stopping short of diabling the game of solitaire on your computer, you need to fight the urge to delay the “unpleasant” tasks of the job. Take a deep breath and procrastinate no more. Delve into the task as soon as you can, with the attitude that it is as pleasant as the most simplest of tasks. And it will soon become that.

7. Become a Speed Reader

We’re not kidding. Some of us are slow readers, and lots of time could be saved in learning how to locate significant data quickly. It also helps us to keep on top of information that is crucial to our success in the accoutning and bookkeeping profession. Just think of it, how much reading do we do each day? If we could cut our time we spend on that and still get the same benefit, why not work to gain that reading skill?

8. Log Interruptions

Everyone in business is interrupted countless time a day. Some of those interruptions help grow your business (like clients who call with work for you to do). But some interruptions are unecessary and counterproductive to the working environment. If these can be anticipated, and handled in a timely manner, you will have a step up from the rest who cannot. We would suggest for those who would want to be better at handling the interruptions of their day to take a small pad of paper and note each interruption for one week. Be sure you note the time, date, interrupter, and the subject of the interruption. Once you have the information, you can evaluate it. Which interruptions could have been avoided? Which were of no value? Perhaps you have someone calling you for information that you could teach them to find themselves? While the teaching moment may cost you an hour now, it may save you hours in the end.

We all need to be aware of our time and how we spend it. Money is time and time is money in what we do, and we would need to stay on top of those things that are keeping us away from making what we could if we were just that much more organized. If you are able to do that, then the time spent working is more effective (and profitable), the time spent on them is minimized, and you will be able to enjoy that free time doing what you want to do when you want to do it.

If you are looking to become trained as a Professional Bookkeeper, and be able to handle your time better with the time-saving tips contained in the training program, click here to find out more

Become a Professional Bookkeeper today.

8 Tips in Achieving Balance in Your Personal and Professional Life

Last week you took our quiz to determine whether or not you are a workaholic. If you’re reading this now we’re guessing that you realize that you are indeed overworking yourself and it is negatively impacting your personal life. If achieving a healthy balance between your work and personal lives is important then you’ll find the following 8 tips to be extremely helpful:

1. Join a recovery group
Whether you’re an extreme or budding workaholic you may find a recovery group to be helpful. Workaholics Anonymous has meetings around the globe and you might find local groups that can help you better balance your life. There you will find like-minded professionals who can provide you with practical tips and techniques in recovering from workaholism.

2. Determine your true priorities
Before you can balance your life you must first determine what your priorities are. Workaholics are generally value -driven individuals who have confused their priorities a bit, coming to view excessive work as a representation of a strong work ethic, the desire to provide for their families, and the will to be a successful and valued professional. You must reflect on what really matters to you and then list your priorities so you can begin scheduling for them. With workaholics, often what matters most gets the least amount of time and attention.

3. Schedule what you value
Now that you’ve determined what your true priorities are, you can schedule accordingly. If family is important to you then you must ensure that you can spend quality time with them. This will mean setting limits for yourself. At what time will you stop working and start concentrating on personal priorities? This may require an initial concerted effort, but after time you will come to appreciate this new-found balance.

4. Step away from your planner
Workaholics tend to overschedule their work week, planning for too many meetings and appointments than are reasonable. As a recovering workaholic you need to learn how to underschedule, giving yourself time between appointments to prepare, reflect and make necessary action items that will enable you to work more effectively.

5. Take your multitasking habits to task
If part of your workaholism includes an unhealthy amount of multitasking you need to practice moving from one task to the next without become distracted by other projects or tasks. This will require a fair amount of concentration and focus.

6. Schedule breaks
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re the type of professional who sees a gap in your schedule as the chance to get more done, to leap ahead, to log one more billable hour. But remember, if you don’t take a break now and then (at least 30 minutes total throughout the course of your workday) you’ll find yourself paying for it later, either in sick time or with feelings of burnout.

7. Safeguard your health
The healthier you are the more energy you’ll have to run your business. If you haven’t already, schedule in daily time for exercise and/or meditation. Also, ensure that you’re eating foods that will fuel your work activities, enabling your mind to be sharp and alert.

8. Substitute activities
Workaholics Anonymous recommends that you stop adding new activities to your schedule. Instead substitute, remembering that each new item you add to your schedule should replace one with equal time and energy requirements. This forces you to recognize that your time is a limited resource that should be measured accordingly.

Small business owners, more than most, are extremely susceptible to becoming workaholics as they strive to not only keep their businesses afloat, but see that they are profitable enough to sustain their families and often a support staff as well. While it may be difficult to take these steps to better balance your life, the rewards will be innumerable. And as you attend to your personal needs and better prioritize your time, you’ll find yourself rejuvenated and refreshed so you can tackle your business with a renewed sense of vigor and dedication.

Resource
Workaholics Anonymous

Take Our 10 Question Quiz to Find Out

There’s nothing wrong with being passionate about your business. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with being a driven entrepreneur. But when you become consumed with work, your practice can eclipse your personal life and make it difficult to function healthily. Take our quiz to find out if you’re a workaholic.

1. Do you feel overwhelmed?
Stress is not necessarily a bad thing; it enables you to stay on-task and complete priority projects. But if you find yourself constantly overwhelmed by your work, then it may be time to take a step back and reassess your approach.

2. Are you irritable?
Workaholics often find that their patience wears thin and they are easily irritated. If you’re running on a short fuse and it’s working its way into your personal life we’re guessing your relationships are suffering.

3. Do you think about work when “off the clock”?
While it’s okay to enjoy your business, a balanced life includes things outside of your office. Workaholics often haven’t achieved that balance and think about work 24/7.

4. Have you made small mistakes because you have too much on your plate?
When your business begins to suffer because you have overbooked yourself or said “yes” to too many clients and too many projects, you need to reprioritize. What good is all that work if you’re unable to perform effectively?

5. Do you find yourself multitasking more than you single-task?
Has your laptop become an accessory? Do you check your email while eating lunch? The quality of your work may be suffering as a result (see number 4).

6. Do you feel guilty when not working?
If you find it difficult to enjoy your personal time because you’re consumed with guilt, you owe it to yourself to find a better way to manage your professional life.

7. Do you impose lots of unrealistic deadlines for yourself?
Workaholics tend to task themselves unrealistically and then become severely disappointed when they don’t meet their own expectations.

8. Do you find it difficult to relax?
What good is a thriving business if you can’t enjoy it? Your personal time provides you with the opportunity to relax and regroup. If you find that to be difficult you should strive for more balance.

9. Are your personal relationships suffering from your obsession with work?
Again, what good is a thriving business when your personal life suffers as a result? There are lots of business owners who manage to run successful businesses while enjoying healthy personal relationships; you can be one of them.

10. Do you find yourself forgetting important events like birthdays and anniversaries?
If you answered “yes,” then this is proof that something in your life is distracting you from significant events. If that something is your business then you need to reevaluate your approach.

Passion is an important characteristic of any successful entrepreneur. But if taken too far that passion can become obsession and infringe on your personal life, negatively impacting those you love and care about. If you’re interested in managing your business rather than having it manage you, come back next week to learn how to better balance your work and personal life.

Achieving a Healthy Balance

When you first went into business you probably thought working from home would be ideal. Most contract accountants don’t anticipate the difficulties they will encounter when trying to balance their personal and business lives. Often it’s easy to become distracted when working where you live. It can also be difficult to leave your work behind even after the metaphorical whistle blows. So in order for you to achieve true balance with work and home life, you must have a strategy. Here are six things to consider:

1. Leave work in the office
If your office doesn’t have a door you need to get one. When you’re on duty you should close the door behind you; when you’re off duty you should also close the door behind you. Your work should stay in the office. Avoid carrying files around with you. You should train your mind to be prepared to work as soon as you step in that office; and you should work hard until you’re ready to leave. You should not train your mind to work from your living room as you spend time with your family or from your bed while your spouse tries to sleep. This closed door policy will make that transition from work to home life much easier. Also establish some rules with your family so they understand if and when you can be disturbed.

2. Determine work-free days/hours
When you work from home it’s equally important for you to set aside work-free times you can spend relaxing or with your family. When the line between work and family life is blurred, resentment for your accounting practice can build and cause tension at home. So when you take time off be sure to enjoy it.

3. Prioritize
Obviously you must do what it takes to see that your business succeeds. Often this requires long hours. In order to compensate for this drain on your personal life you must use your “free” time wisely; you must prioritize your values and the way in which you spend your time. If eating dinner with your family is important then you must ensure that your schedule and work load accommodate that priority. If you want to be present for your children when they get home from school, then leave that time free and make up for it either earlier or later in the day. It’s important that you not sacrifice your family for your business. Balance is key.

4. Use your imagination
When working from home where the refrigerator and television may only be steps away, you must devise a plan that will enable you to focus your efforts and “stay” at work. Some find that using a little imagination can help with this task. Arrange your office so that somehow you are able to imagine yourself miles away from home and in an environment completely void of distraction.

5. Set strong boundaries
This goes for both your clients and your family. You need to have work hours both honor. Obviously emergencies happen and your family and your clients should know how to reach you in such circumstances. Otherwise you need to do all you can to ensure your boundaries are respected. This means you shouldn’t answer your phone after hours; nor should you answer your home phone while you’re working.

6. Remember your motivation
Most people start their own businesses in order to enjoy the freedom to dictate their own schedules and spend more time with their families. While this isn’t as easy as it sounds, you must continually remind yourself why you started your practice in the first place. A daily or weekly reminder can help you maintain your focus and your priorities.

Balancing work and home life isn’t impossible, but it does require a strategy and the establishment of certain rules to help guide your efforts. And when you attend to these 6 items, you’re on the right path for finding the peace and freedom your business affords.

Stay In Touch

To keep existing clients, they need to know that you are there for them. Keeping the lines of communication open with them is absolutely essential to keeping clients happy.

Objectives of communication with clients which email can facilitate include:

• Two-way communication of information needed to accomplish the tasks your clients are paying you for.
• Show your clients you are always there for them when they need you. Demonstrate that not only do your services cost less than if a client had hired their own bookkeeper, but that you are just as available.
• Show your clients that you are on their mind and that their success is important to you.

Your goals in communication with clients facilitate one of two goals. You want to keep the clients you have and find additional paying clients.

Advantages to Email Over Other Ways to Communicate

Email Is Time-Efficient

Phone calls and personal meetings rob you of time. Phone calls often result in spending large amounts of time socializing with clients. While you need to maintain a good rapport with your clients, they will appreciate you staying focused on the things they are paying you for. Their time is precious too.

Personal meetings are probably the worst wasters of time, since you not only have the time spent in the meeting itself, but the commute to and from a client’s place of business.

You can leverage from one email to another. You may find that you get the same questions by many of your clients. Look in your email client’s Sent box and see what you said last time. This will save you time and it ensures that you give consistent, well-researched answers, while keeping research time to a minimum.

You Get Time to Think

When you are face-to-face with a client or on a phone conversation with them, you often do not have the opportunity to take a few minutes to mull over the best answer. You won’t get time to research your answer if you need more information. While you can always tell a client that you will find out, if you use this tactic too often, you run the risk of your clients feeling like you don’t know what you are doing.

With email, you can take your time composing just the right response. If you are in doubt about how it may be received, you can always bounce the email off a friend to see how you can better phrase things.

Email Is Inexpensive

While postal mail costs money for envelopes and postage, if you already have Internet access (and if you don’t, you should), it costs you nothing besides your time.

Rules For Effective Emails

Communicating with clients through e-mail need not be a challenge. The best way to compose effective e-mail messages is to set up a basic format to follow.

Start by handling each of these areas:

The Subject Line

Write clear, specific, and concise subject lines. For example, rather than writing, “We have something we want to tell you about your profit & loss,” which is vague and wordy, write, “Your financials are done!”

Main Body of the Message

The first paragraph should restate the client’s question (if you are writing a reply to a client’s e-mail message).

The Closing

In the closing paragraph, thank the client again, and offer further assistance.

Be Polite

Because there’s no face-to-face contact in an e-mail communication, people tend to be more casual, outspoken, or even rude than they would be in person, or even on the phone. But good netiquette requires the utmost courtesy at all times.

Because a large percentage of communication is non-verbal, it is more easy to be misunderstood when you are not speaking directly to a client. Things like voice inflections and body language are often cues as to a client’s reaction to your statements. With an email, you never know the mood of the client when they read your correspondence, so you must be extra careful in your wordings and how they could be taken.

Formatting

Avoid using capital letters (except to punctuate names or the beginnings of sentences). In e-mail, capitalizing all the letters in a word is tantamount to shouting.

Accounting/Tax Terminology

Minimize accounting jargon. Avoid using financial acronyms and buzzwords unless you are e-mailing a true expert or long time client. Many clients will not understand this terminology, and may end up misunderstanding the message as a result.

Solve Issues the First Time

Resolve issues on the first contact. First-time resolution is just as important with e-mail as it is with traditional telephone interactions. It saves everyone time if you completely fulfill clients’ requests or resolve their problems in the first response.

Attachments

Use attachments only when necessary. E-mail attachments require readers to download the files, which can be annoying (or impossible if a client doesn’t have the appropriate software to open it with). Certain types of attachments may be blocked either by the email client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, etc.) or by the recipient’s internet service provider. Some kinds of files may contain viruses or other ill effects, so they may simply not arrive at their destination.

As silly as it sounds, it is very common to refer to an attachment in the body of an email, and then forget to attach the file you refer to. If you are going to attach a file to an email, it is a good idea to attach the file before composing the letter. Once you begin writing the email message, you can easily get involved in the message and simply forget to attach the file. This, of course, looks very unprofessional and is easily avoidable.

Proofread!

It’s critical to proofread e-mail messages before hitting the “send” button. Also, read sentences for clarity and accuracy, and look for any wording that could be misinterpreted. If your email client doesn’t have a spell checker, you probably want to consider using one that does. Few things look more unprofessional than misspelled words or other typos. If your email client does not support spell checking, consider composing your emails in your word processor and spell-checking with it. Then just copy and paste the text of the email into your email client before sending.

Know When Not To Use Email

When clients write with complex questions or several questions, it may save time if you reply by phone.

If a client expresses a preference to use another method of communication, respect their wishes, even if it takes more time or effort. Keeping existing clients pleased with your work usually takes less time and effort than finding new clients if they become dissatisfied.

Email: Just One Aspect of Running Your Accounting Service

Most accounting courses focus on teaching you the basics: debits and credits, general ledger, and so on. One thing they will never teach you is how to run an accounting service, much less how to make it profitable. That’s what we do, and why Universal Accounting training is so different. Sure, you’ll get the basics, but you will also learn how to find clients and how to sell your services for the highest possible hourly rate. If you want an accounting job making $10 per hour, go to a university for training. If you want to learn how to make $30 to $60 per hour, set your own flexible hours, and be your own boss, you owe it to yourself to click the link below and learn more. Hundreds of our graduates started down the road to personal and financial freedom with that same little mouse click.

Learn Why an Accounting Service Will Best Achieve Your Financial Goals

Tax Simplification: “Not Gonna Happen”

A recent student asked me how to respond to a well-meaning relative who felt that accounting was a dying occupation because of tax simplification. I’m often asked if a simpler tax code, meaning flat-tax or federal sales tax, would eliminate the need for accountants. Those who ask this question obviously don’t understand what an accountant does.

First of all, I don’t think such a tax bill could ever pass. Too many special interest organizations with powerful lobbying groups will lose too much to let any such bill pass without a fight.

• Religious organizations will argue that their funding from contributions will dry up.
• National homeowners’ associations will argue (and rightfully so) that homes will drop in value as mortgage interest will no longer be deductible.
• Medical organizations will buy TV ads telling stories about people with debilitating diseases and high medical bills going to ‘tax prison’ because they lost their medical deduction.

And, those are just the obvious problems.

Plus, most tax simplification plans will tax the poor heavier and the wealthy lighter than they do now. That’s a hot-potato that neither political party will support.

No, the public will never let such a thing happen.

Even if we were to assume that such a tax program will be adopted, accountants will remain in high demand. Certainly simpler tax laws may eliminate tax preparers. But most tax preparers aren’t accountants.

The primary and most beneficial roles accountants perform are in the area of management controls, and cash management. A company stands to gain much more through staying on top of these areas than saving on lower taxes. Let’s face it, companies don’t go out of business because they are paying too much in taxes, but they will if they have poor controls, or poor cash management.

Big businesses certainly understand this. A large company I once worked for had four thousand accountants. Less than 1% of these accountants worked in the tax department. In other words, 99% of the accountants with this company were working on providing management with crucial information regarding profitability, while monitoring the company’s financial position. This company understood that income taxes are a necessary evil that require some attention, but the potential for business improvement is much greater in other areas.

So, do we ignore taxes? Certainly not! Taxes must be completed, and done correctly according to law. Besides, a good tax preparer may save a tax payer hundreds of dollars, if not thousands in taxes — sometimes many times the cost to have the taxes prepared.

Tax preparation will always be needed. And, my guess is that it will become even more complicated before becoming any easier.

Regardless of the tax law, however, accountants will always be a critical part of the business world.

Also, see the article entitled “Why are Businesses Begging for Your Services?” This is “must reading” for every freelance accountant.

Communication with your clients and peers is a two-way street. So you must be a good listener–as well as a good speaker–if you want to stimulate a two-way flow of ideas. Here’s a list of some common listening faults I’ve seen practiced and how you can avoid them.

* Remembering the facts. Listening isn’t remembering; it’s understanding. Focus on the idea the speaker is relaying, not the series of facts.

* Mental blocks. Many of us have words or phrases that upset us emotionally and impair our listening. We may associate some things we hear with unpleasant experiences in our past or with something we simply don’t like. Watch your reaction to such words.

* Daydreaming. Do you let yourself get bored? Let your thoughts wander to more fascinating subjects? Even though a particular subject may seem boring, you may find a few good ideas if you listen closely.

* Distractions. Don’t let yourself be thrown off track during a conversation because of sounds, sights, or sensations in the vicinity. Concentrate on what the speaker is saying.

* Note-taking. Don’t become so involved in taking notes that you only half listen. Learn to take abbreviated notes.

* Supercritical listening. Sometimes we hear something at the beginning of a conversation that we disagree with, and we spend the rest of the time the person is speaking preparing an argument instead of listening. Always hear the person out, then take a few moments to plan your questions or rebuttal.

* Assuming you understand. When you’re done speaking with someone, you may think you have a thorough understanding of the message that was being presented. But to be on the safe side, always repeat what was said to be sure that you understand what was being communicated.

Master these rules of good listening and you’ll increase your knowledge while becoming more persuasive and efficient. And you’ll be able to express yourself more effectively than before.

Click HERE To Learn More Tips On Running Your Business

Gain the right skills and you will earn a better income. Bookkeepers can anticipate a 6.8% rise in base compensation in 2006. That’s great news provided you have the right skills.

The 2006 Salary Guide is based on an analysis of thousands of job placements managed by Robert Half International Inc., and predicts that heightened competition for accounting and finance professionals will lead to increases in base compensation next year.

Companies are Recruiting Accounting Staff

Max Messmer, Chairman and CEO of Robert Half International says, “Organizations are actively recruiting accounting and finance staff to support business expansion initiatives and corporate governance efforts.”

“To attract and retain skilled financial professionals, firms are reassessing their hiring practices and enhancing compensation packages for current staff.”

Bookkeepers are Doing Better than Average!

Robert Half International forcasts an increase in starting wage for bookkeepers and accountants of 3.1%. An increase of 3.1% is OK, but according to the Salary Guide, bookkeepers can anticipate a 6.8% rise in base compensation in the year ahead. Over twice the average. What a great time to consider a bookkeeping and accounting education.

The opportunities for you have never been better in accounting. Click on the link below and discover the potential for you to earn a great income and enjoy a stable, recession free career.

Show Me a Stable Career With a Great Income

The Accounting Department Has Always Offered Great Opportunities

For hundreds of years accountants have contributed to the profitability of businesses all over the world. And they have been well paid to do it. With the right skills you will not only find the right job or enhance your present career, you’ll also enjoy the benefits of increased competition in the marketplace and can expect a bigger paycheck.

Where Can I Find the Right Skills… I Don’t Have a College Degree?

You don’t need a college degree. You do need a specialized education. And you can find it at Universal Accounting.

For the last 25 years, Universal Accounting has taught thousands of people the profitable and exciting skills of small business bookkeeping and accounting. We’re the small business experts and we can teach you to be too.

You don’t have to take my word for it, let’s look at what some of our graduates have said:

“I was amazed how practical this course was, and surprised how much I learned. Having an accounting degree and over 17 years experience in accounting, I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know. This is well worth the time and money, and you will be benefited from this class for years to come.”
-Philip Lufkin

“This was an excellent course. I have a B. S. in accounting, and this class taught me stuff I never learned in college.”
-Catherine Ferguson

“Universal’s accounting course is a very thorough approach to learning small business accounting. The materials and work sets are presented in a professional learning atmosphere. …I felt this class really helped my confidence and mastery of the accounting principles.”
-Bradley Jensen

You don’t need to be a math wiz to enhance your career. Calculus and algebra aren’t necessary. Basic math skills are the building-blocks to a successful career in bookkeeping and accounting. With your basic math skills and a willingness to learn, you’ll be on your way to an incredibly rewarding and satisfying career.

Businesses Have to Do Accounting… It’s Required By Law

It doesn’t matter what type of business, it has to keep financial records and has to have bookkeepers and accountants. Follow the link below and find out for yourself how an education in bookkeeping and accounting will enhance your present career, increase your paycheck and provide personal and professional satisfaction.

Show Me Why Becoming a Bookkeeper or Accountant is Right For Me