Principa's Ric Payne on building a great firm in tough times

I've known Ric Payne now for over a decade, and I consider him one of the towering intellectuals in the accounting profession. I've seen his ideas transform the practices of thousands of firms around the world, not to mention improve the quality of life for the practitioners themselves.What I've always admired about Ric is that his content is empirically based on firms getting results, not the usual management fad of the month one sees from many consultants to the profession. Even when Ric and I disagree—as with our infamous debate about the necessity of timesheets—I still end up learning an enormous amount from him.I highly recommend Principa's programs to any professional who wishes to thrive in the future while bettering the profession for posterity. Principa does this by helping firms move up the Value Curve by offering business advisory services to their customers, as well as providing the tools and resources to do this and much more.Ric has a new course he is offering in six locations throughout California, Oregon, Washington and Vancouver, Canada: Build a Great Firm in Tough Times. Ric describes the course this way:

The essence of the program is that difficult economic times present a great opportunity for business advisers to help clients who have basically "good" businesses secure a sustainable competitive advantage by "fine tuning" their financial and people management processes, customer & vendor relationships, pricing and product selection strategies.

Ric has promised he won't be preaching the value of timesheets, nor the ethics of hourly billing.For more information, visit Principa's Web site here.