Allen Bostrom – Universal Accounting

Allen Bostrom's Story

My father, Alf Bostrom, was my hero. Following the Second World War he came back home and started working with various small businesses.  Eventually he took over bookkeeping for one of those small businesses and then later became the office manager. It was there that he discovered the critical value of a business’s numbers. With this knowledge, he quickly rose to become the general manager of a struggling car dealership and was instrumental in turning that business around.

His biggest surprise was that most of the small business owners didn’t share his enthusiasm for the numbers in their own businesses.  As a result, he established a company called the Metropolitan Business Bureau through which he would take struggling businesses and turn them around.  In fact, he became known as the Master of Turnarounds. He was able to take nearly any business on the brink of bankruptcy and, using certain principles and the accounting information available, reverse the trend and place them on the road to financial recovery. In fact, most of these businesses still exist today.

My father was a very busy man, so we didn’t see him much at home. He had clients throughout the state, so he was constantly traveling. If I wanted to spend any time with him I had to do it on the road between client companies. Some of my best memories with my father are of us driving the 45 minutes up to Ogden, Utah together.  On those drives we would talk, and he would teach me principles that make businesses successful.

When I was deciding what I wanted to do when I grew up, my father advised, “If you want to have anything to do with business, you have to understand accounting.” And that’s how I chose my profession. By the way, many of those principles he taught me are captured in my two books, In the Black: Nine Principles to Make Your Business More Profitable, and most recently, Red to Black in 30 Days.

In my early career, I worked in various departments within one of the largest corporations of the world. I learned that when you are in a big corporation, you get niched. This means you see a very small portion of that huge process, and you get very good at that small portion, and sometimes only that portion.

When I saw my accounting skills deteriorating I decided to work with small business clients. So, I started doing what my dad did. And that’s why I’m here today.

Allen Bostrom

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