20 Years Later - FMA 20th Anniversary!
OUR STORY
from Rusty Fulling, founder and CEO of Fulling Management & Accounting
I'm not sure I started out with the intention of being a business owner. Somedays I still question the sanity of the choice I made back on April 1, 2000.
Sometimes it takes the prompting from a friend to push you out of your comfort zone….
Sharing Insights
Rich Maris, CPA was a colleague of mine in the late 90's. (That is 1990's for the younger readers.) To keep up with the assigned workload, we were working way too many hours and seeing client satisfaction steadily decline. Eventually the stress of disappointing clients, fast food diet, and lack of exercise caught up with me. It only took a few days in the hospital to realize I needed to make a change. I just wasn't sure where, what or how.
Once back at work, Rich and I had a chance to meet up for lunch. Although it has been over 20 years, I still remember sitting in the back booth at Denny's in North Kansas City when Rich said, "I can't believe you haven't started your own firm!"
While I probably had a million excuses why I'm not qualified, why it is not the right timing, and on and on, it only took a trusted friend's affirmation to spark the idea of "What if……"
What if we could create a different type of firm? What if we could actually have work / life balance? What if instead of a transactional approach to accounting, it could be relational. What if it wasn't always about the next client, but instead, what if we could serve well the clients that we are working with now?
Thanks to Rich for sharing his insights, with some big dreams and 3 small business clients, Fulling Management & Accounting (FMA) officially started on April Fool's day, April 1, 2000.
Serving Others
Some of my favorite memories growing up was watching my parents serve others. My dad was a bi-vocational pastor, so I just assumed that was part of the job. Serving often looked like taking food to someone in need, a short-term mission project, or sitting with someone going through a crisis. Ironically, because our household income was limited, we were often recipients of some of these same gestures. I remember one time a group from the church helped us move. Since it was in a rural community, they showed up with a cattle trailer to load our furniture. It would have been nice if they would have cleaned it out first….
Why am I passionate about serving? That's where life transformation can happen. Whether it is how we serve our clients or participating in a community serve project, we get the opportunity to participate in life change. (Sometimes we are the ones that are changed).
Why invite others to join us? A few years after Fulling Management was up and running, I was interviewed by Evan, a recent college graduate, about what it was like to be an accountant. He went through the typical interview questions, "How did you start?" "What's your ideal client?" etc. My favorite question however was "How do you serve?"
Evan had heard that we had participated in community serve events. He had never participated in a serve project and was curious to know "how" you do it. While we only participated in a couple events throughout the year, we invited Evan to join us at the annual Salvation Army gift distribution program in early December.
Not only did Evan show up for the event, he invited his mother and girlfriend to participate. Evan's background was in the moving industry and he was hands down the best gift box packager that year. He was so excited about the opportunity, he coordinated with the Salvation Army to provide boxes from his moving company at future events!
What if we can provide opportunities for people like Evan and others to use their gifts in serving others.
You may have seen the tag line "Going Beyond You" on some of our T-shirts and materials. That is a subtle reminder and challenge for our team to find ways to go beyond ourselves in serving others.
Seeing Ahead
What gets me up in the morning? Seeing and hearing about life change that we get to be part of with our clients.
"Without you guys, I would still be floundering."
"Fulling has given me my life back. My wife is happy, and I get to see my kids grow up."
"Fulling helped protect me from making a big mistake."
"I always feel so much better after talking with you and your team."
"I think having y'all look at this with me has been invaluable. I don't think I make good financial decisions on my own."
While revenue and profit are critical for success, the "magic" behind FMA has from day one been relationships and serving others. That doesn't just mean serving our clients but also looking at ways to serve our fellow team members and vendors. Our weekly staff meeting shout outs have been a testimony of the great things happening within the team.
"Heather has done an excellent job taking time to teach me the different pieces of TDC's accounting."
"There is no way that I could have so thoroughly enjoyed my vacation and relaxed without knowing that I had back-up while I was gone. I'm particularly thankful for Curtis and Kelly … I came back to a good workload, nothing overwhelming, and this would not have been possible without everything they did while I was gone."
"Starla helped make that possible! The Monday Susie was gone, I reached out to Starla to see if she could process the ABL Bills in Bill.com for me, as I somehow had not thought about that ahead of time. She jumped in and took care of those 25-30 bills so I could approve/pay and not miss a beat! It was great to be able to rely on her and be confident in her ability to get the job done well."
In his book "The Last Arrow", Erwin McManus, talks about living your life without regret. Taking your passion, talent, potential, and resources and using them to make the biggest impact through your life. We have that opportunity each day with those we work with. As we go through our daily activities, our goal is to remember to share insights, consider new ways to serve others, and seeing ahead on what the possibilities are for our team, and individually, for our clients, and community.
Here's to the next 20 years! - Rusty Fulling
