Tom's Blog

It's Thanksgiving day, 2006 and this is my first blog entry. It seemed appropriate to me on this day that I should talk about the concepts of scarcity and abundance. After all, most of us in the U.S. spend this day celebrating our abundance and giving thanks for it. This is as it should be.

I wonder, though, if we maintain this focus on our abundance the rest of the year. I'm not talking about the matter of being thankful for what we have. While that is also important, I'm talking more about the way we think about what we could have and what we could share with others.

There are two schools of thought about money. One is that we need to protect our money, save it for a rainy day, because there is a limited amount of it. In other words, money is scarce. Opportunities are also scarce, so we need to protect the opportunities we have, keep them to ourselves, and never share. This is the theory of scarcity. Since there is only so much to go around, we better protect what we have and keep it to ourselves.

The other school of thought is that there is a never-ending supply of money and of opportunities. Rather than save our money, we should invest it. Rather than keep opportunities to ourselves, we should share them with others. And if one opportunity passes us by, there will be another opportunity coming right after it.

There is a great parable in the Bible about these two theories. It is called the parable of the talents. A talent, of course, was a denomination of money in Biblical times. A master was going away on a trip and he needed someone to take care of his money while he was away. He decided to split it up among three money managers. To the first, he gave one talent. To the second, he gave two talents. And to the third, he gave five talents.

When he returned from his trip he asked the money managers to give an accounting of the money. The manager who had the five talents told the master that he had wisely invested the funds and there were now ten talents. The manager who had two talents had done similarly and had turned the two talents into four. But the manager who had one talent did something different. Rather than invest it, he buried it in the ground. He knew the master would be unhappy if he lost the money and so instead of investing it, he saved it.

The master was most unhappy with this manager and called him a wicked and slothful servant. He took the talent from that manager and gave it to the manager who had the ten talents. Then he said something very interesting. He said, "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken awa even that which he hath."

There are many things to be learned from this parable, but the one I would focus on today is that when we think in terms of abundance, we will always have more. And when we think in terms of scarcity, whatever we have we will lose.

Some of you are saying now, "Well, I never think in terms of scarcity. I always want to invest." But I believe that most of us, while wanting to think abundantly, frequently think in terms of scarcity. I know I have to continually remind myself to think in terms of abundance. After all, my parents grew up during the Great Depression, a time when scarcity ruled the world.

Let me give you and example of scarcity thinking that I encounter frequently, and find myself doing at times. This is example is what I call "Shopping for the Best Price." This happens when we in a store or talking to a service provider (e.g., an attorney or accountant) and we focus on the cost of the service or the item. That is an example of a scarcity mentality. A person thinking from an abundance point of view instead would be focusing on the value of the item or the service. "How can this item or service improve my life?" Is the cost fair compared to the value? This is different than focusing solely on the cost.

Another great example is partnerships. I am a big believer in the value of a good partnership and that teams always produce better results than independent achievers. A few years ago, I was in a partnership that was breaking up. As with most breakups, it was not pleasant. It reminded those involved of a nasty divorce. Immediately after the breakup, I formed another partnership, this time with a partner whose values aligned more closely with mine. This new partner, Ann Mathis, who is still my business partner, asked my why I would want another partner after just going through a messy breakup of my previous partnership. I responded that I believe that a good partnership will always be better than being on my own and I was willing to take the risk that any partnership entails because of the potential upside of a good partnership.

Five years later, Ann and I are still partners and have done some amazing things together, most recently the creation of the ProVision brand. And, of course, we did not do it by ourselves. We had many partners involved, including our branding company, BrandWithin and our website developers, Epsilonium. We also had tremendous help from our staff and professionals at ProVision.

So, I too am very thankful for the abundance I enjoy on this Thanksgiving Day. I challenge each of us to think abundantly in everything we do, from shopping to investing to interacting with our teenagers (perhaps a subject for another blog entry). I would be most happy to have your feedback about my blog and this entry. Please let me know what you think and how you think abundantly.

Warmest regards,

Tom

Today we launch our new brand, ProVision Wealth Strategists. I expect the most frequent question from our clients and others to be, "Why ProVision?" We have been contemplating a name change for the past couple of years to be more clear about who we are and what we represent. "DKAdvisors" simply was not a clear representation of the Firm's brand. We considered changing the name back to the original name, Wheelwright Mathis. Finally, we did that which we always counsel our clients to do - we consulted some professionals.

The professionals we consulted were the marketing gurus at BrandWithin. James Burgin and Jon Ward walked us through an extensive exercise to determine a name for our particular brand of service. We had long differentiated ourselves from other CPA firms as a proactive, innovative firm of experienced professionals. What we hadn't done as well was to establish ourselves as a distinct brand and clearly explain what makes us truly unique.

As James and Jon were going through the interview process, it became clear to them that we had one quality that was perhaps truly unique from other CPAs. That quality was the ability to see the vision of what our clients could become. Most other CPA firms are replete with intelligent professionals who want to serve their clients well. That's precisely why I became a CPA in the first place - I wanted to associate with a group of people with these characteristics.

But over the years, I have found that many CPAs live in the past. That is, they work on tax returns for the past year, they audit financial statements of the past year and they record information based on historical cost. While these tasks are necessary, they should not be the only service provided by this group of bright, intelligent professionals.

What most clients need is a clear vision of their future. While some clients see this vision, most of their advisors do not. We learned early on in our firm that this was a peculiar talent of ours. We can see what many cannot see for themselves - a vision of what they can become. A vision is not merely a goal. A vision includes understanding the process of achieving that goal. It includes being able to see all of the components necessary to get where you want to go and the ability to organize these components into a manageable process.

Twelve years ago when I started this firm out of my home office, I had a vision for it. I did not imagine being a sole proprietor doing tax returns for the rest of my life. I imagined a firm where employees could feel challenged and rewarded for their efforts. I imagined a firm where clients would receive responses to their phone calls promptly. I imagined a firm that could deliver creative tax and business solutions.

Later, I imagined a firm that could deliver solutions to problems before the problems occured. One of our first tag lines was, "Solving tomorrow's problems today." I still believe we can do that, so long as we have the proper VISION. Vision is critical to preventing problems and establishing systems that will allow us to accomplish our goals.

Vision is also necessary to keep us motivated. Most, if not all, entrepreneurs begin their business because they want to achieve great things. There is an energy that comes from this desire. Vision is what allows entrepreneurs to maintain their energy. Constantly maintaining a vision of our future allows us to become that vision. It gives us energy and a reason to keep going no matter how difficult the going gets.

Anytime I get at all discouraged, I lean on my vision of the future to get me going again. It's knowing who I am and what is possible that gets me past the difficult times. We all have them. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's part of life. But getting past the difficult times is also a part of life. And how fast we can get past these periods of discouragement can have a major impact on how fast we can accomplish our vision.

Of course, our vision is always changing as our knowledge increases. We begin with a small vision, say of a CPA firm with 15-20 employees. Then, as we are successful, we can see a slightly bigger vision, perhaps of a firm with a few different offices. Our vision today is dramatically bigger than it was even a few years ago. We used to see 10 offices. Now we see ProVision not as a number of offices, but as a methodology. ProVision, along with its strategic coaching initiatives, its visionary capabilities, and its innovative systems, is a methodology that we can see being used by multiple CPA firms throughout the world. There is really no need for multiple offices "owned" by Tom and Ann.

Instead, we need to expand by offering our concepts and thought processes to other CPA firms. This is our mission over the next several years. We begin today by establishing ProVision, a proactive, professional, progressive vision of what CPA firms can and should be. The offices we do own will be the proving grounds for our innovations in client service. But our real vision is to spread these ideas faster through affiliations with other CPA firms.

Our ability to see our own vision and understand how it drives our business comes first. Then, we can use this ability to help others understand their vision and how it can drive their business. This is the business of ProVision - to help others realize their financial dreams faster than they could possibly imagine. After all, this is what professional visionaries should be all about - helping others imagine and achieve their vision.

Warmest regards,

Tom