Tony Recchia, CPA, has been practicing accounting for fifteen years, but last October he had had enough.
“I decided I just wasn’t happy with the way things were going,” he remembers. “In fact, I was ready to put the ‘For Sale’ sign up. I had no time for my family, I was working tax season all year around. I thought, I have had enough of this, I’ve paid my dues. Yes, I’m making some money, but it’s not worth this effort.
“It was my brother Peter and his partner who introduced me to Sterling. I followed their progress through the program, and I was impressed.
“Still,” says Recchia, “I was suspicious, because there are a lot of programs out there that deliver less than they promise. In looking for help, I had made mistakes in the past, and my concern for Sterling was, if it turns out to be another mistake it would be an expensive mistake. An earlier one had cost me $2,500. ‘How do I know,’ I said, ‘you’re not like everyone else?’
“After talking with my brother, he had me talk to five, seven other people, and I was still not sure. He said, aren’t they answering your questions? And they were, and that wasn’t really the problem.
“So I had a heart-to-heart talk with my brother, who told me, from his experience, ‘If you do what you learn it will work, it’s that simple.’ And that convinced me, because that’s the kind of guy I am. As long as I could control if the program worked or not, I was willing to go along. Because I could make it work. For me, ‘no’ means I haven’t worked out how to do something yet.
“If not for my brother, I wouldn’t have gone, because I had that much fear of a program which might not deliver what was promised.
“And what I found out about Sterling is that they absolutely deliver what they say they’re going to. They have dedicated employees who are going to do what it takes to make sure you succeed!
“If you look at what they teach you and your staff give a real commitment to applying it, it will work. The only barrier is you and your staff.
“So I talked to my assistant, got her commitment, without her even knowing really what it was.
“When you go to Glendale, you see they have dedicated employees who are very knowledgeable about what they do. I can’t argue with my results and my statistics.
The results? “Production went up! I have a better relationship with my assistant and clients commented on the difference in how I sounded. This tax season I got more questions from my personal tax clients, because—they say—other years they were afraid to ask a question, because it would hold me back from getting work done. My clients commented on how relaxed I sounded!
“Production is up by a third for the first five months of this year in comparison with a year ago. Instead of having a ‘May Meltdown,’ the production in May was 64% ahead of a year ago. And in June, when I went out of town, and missed 6 out of 20 workdays, we still beat the previous June’s numbers, by 13%!
“And things are better with my family. We went to a concert the other evening and I drove 40 miles from the office to pick them up and take them to the concert. Before I would have not have driven to pick them up; in fact, I would never have entertained doing something on a weekday.
“If any CPA thinks he couldn’t learn from Sterling, you should ask him if there anything in his life that could be improved upon, and if he answers yes, you could suggest maybe he should look at some other things, or some new methods to augment what he’s already doing.
“Overall,” says Recchia, “nothing Sterling taught me was something earth-shattering. It was more that they had the recipe, and I’d been looking for it for 20 years and didn’t find it on my own, so why try to re-invent the wheel? There’s a program out there that works, so use it!
“Finally, at Sterling I have not met anyone that was not dedicated to helping. They’re my kind of people. I like to work hard, and play hard. And with me, when I was trouble, nobody gave up. They stayed in there with me. I can really say, they don’t treat you as just another client!”
