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Great Results Personable High Integrity - Jan 27, 2011

Posted by: Debra Christein in Testimonials

“My company, TorranceLearning, and I began working with Debra in August of this year as we were beginning to outgrow our current accounting and bookkeeping set-up. We were at the point where we needed to add metrics and support for decision-making into our financial management picture. Debra started by helping me to define my vision for my company and for my life. Debra then helped us organize (and simplify!) our accounts and build some checks and balances into our day-to-day processes. Once things were cleaned up – which gave her a very good sense for how our business works – she and I went to town defining a few key metrics and setting processes in place for calculating them quickly, without a lot of extra work. All this with an eye to the original vision. Debra has trained individual team members at TorranceLearning, and she’s conducted an all-hands training session as well as we begin the process of opening our books to the entire team. Throughout the process, Debra has been a trusted advisor, sensible sounding board, and devoted fan. It’s not unusual for Debra to send encouraging & inspiring emails to keep me on the path to my goals. I wholeheartedly recommend Debra to my fellow entrepreneurs!”

The Dance Of Business 7 Steps To Success - Jan 17, 2011

Posted by: Debra Christein in Articles

Have you ever taken a basic dance class - swing, salsa, tango? The class starts out with everyone in a line learning the same 6 or 8 beat step over and over, adding some variations to it until you finally get to try it with a real person. By the end of the class, you feel pretty good, and if no one got hurt you consider the evening a success!

And then the open dance starts and people who were not in the beginning dance class step out onto the floor and start dancing - and supposedly they are doing the same dance that you were just doing, but you can't see that basic 1,2,3,1,2,3 step anywhere. They are moving faster and with what looks like total abandon but still moving together - how are they doing that?. Where did the basic step go?

Well, the basic dance step is still there - often indistinguishable but allowing for any amount of improvisation - it is driving the dance. It allows two people to dance together and improvise and move from step to step and stay together and get back on track if they get a little off track and to have the freedom to move away from the dullness and repetitiveness of that basic step. But the basic step is still there. Without that basic step underlying the dance, the dancers can't dance in harmony, have to worry about stepping on each other's feet and don't know where they are in the dance.

This same principle applies to running a business. If the basic steps are in place - structures which maintain sound operations - a business owner is free to improvise, to innovate and to take the company to the next level. If the basic steps of a sound business model are not in place, the owner will spend all of their time bumbling along, figuratively looking at their feet, making sure that they don't step on toes or that there toes don't get stepped on - watching cash, checking operations, looking over their staff's shoulders, wondering what's going on, where are they in this business? - trying to keep in control of a situation that seems out of control.

So what are the basic "steps" in a business?

1. Vision - why ....