Allen Bostrom – Universal Accounting

Over my professional life, I’ve enlisted the help of dozens of consultants of different types.  In my mind, the purpose of a consultant is three fold:

1. to bring in additional skills
2. to offer a fresh perspective
3. to provide objective feedback (positive or negative)

With rare exception, I’ve been disappointed.  Either they oversold their specific abilities or background, or they told me what they thought I wanted to hear, and not what they truly felt, for fear of offending me.

One of these few exceptions was Tim Orlando, of San Diego, California. Three years ago, we invited Tim to spend a week with us at our offices in Salt Lake to assess our readiness to take on a new project.  He came with a unique background that we felt was well suited to our industry, so we agreed to pay his substantial fee.

Frankly, before he arrived, we felt the project was a slam-dunk, and we were just the people to move it along.  At the end of the week, Tim candidly let us know that we were ill-prepared to take on the challenge.  It was a tough pill to swallow, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t hurt a bit.

After his visit, my team took a sober look at what we had learned from Tim, and began the effort to fix the shortcomings that he had pointed out.

Yesterday, Clay Neves and I spent another day with Tim Orlando, describing where we were now, and were pleased to find out (although we are still not perfect, according to him), we’ve made the needed course changes, and are now ready for the next step.

Stayed tuned during the next few weeks we’ll roll-out our new program. It’s going to be exciting.

Allen Bostrom
Universal Accounting Center