The Beginning of The Tangible Effect

My goal was to create something different. Sure ultimately I am a bookkeeper and I have a team of bookkeepers, accountants really. Whenever I say what I do I am quick to say, but I’m not a CPA and I don’t do taxes. I guess I think that most people including business owners think that the only reason they need a bookkeeper or accountant is to do their taxes and that they equate taxes, accounting with CPA. The truth is that most people don’t really understand the financial end of things and who’s who in the zoo. So, back to the beginning.  I wanted to create a business that was beyond me.  Provide a service that I could actually hire or train someone to do and do well. I wanted to help businesses beat the statistics.  I wanted business owners to grow beyond what they thought they could do.  I wanted them to be able to retire or sell their businesses and get something for all of the years of blood, sweat and tears.  I wanted their businesses to be something special not just a job with a lousy boss.

How did we come up with the name?

About a year before we rebranded as The Tangible Effect, I held a strategy session with my staff at the time.  I wanted to instill a camaraderie that struggled due to the mix of clients and the way we delivered our services to them.  Simon Sinek has a TED talk where he talks about his Golden Circle.  The Golden circle is where he explains the WHY.  It answers the questions about “WHY” someone does business with a company.  Well, we played that TED talk, we discussed it, we challenged it, we agreed with it and disagreed with it.  One of my team, Janette, discovered that there was something missing from the circle.  Janette persistently tapped away at the screen of her new iPhone.  Janette, wasn’t big on new technology.  We tried to interrupt her, but she persisted.  All of a sudden, she bursts out and says, RESULTS!  TANGIBLE EFFECTS!  His missing the result, the outcome.  We are all about the outcome!  We care about the why, but our why is because we achieve results, we don’t just do transactions.  She sat back satisfied that she had found the words.  We all just stared, Janette wasn’t one to burst out with ANYTHING, but then we got to thinking and she was right.  We are all about results, outcomes and making a difference for our clients and their companies.

Of course, then we took two months to decide what we were going to name the company, never even checking TheTangibleEffect.com .  Once we knew it was available then the journey started for a logo or an image that would “mean:” something.  I grew up being a Girl Scout.  Once I was an adult, I joined again.  Everything means something in Girl Scouts.  During this time, I had the opportunity to go to Florida.  In Florida, citrus trees are everywhere.  What fascinated me the most was that the trees had both blossoms and fruit on at the same time.  In the Northeast, where I had always lived, trees that bore fruit would blossom in the Spring, bear fruit in late Spring or Summer and then lose their leaves and go dormant for the winter.  Having blossoms and fruit at the same time, just struck me.  It reminded me of a business.  A business, starts out as an idea, much like a blossom, it’s the hope of something yet to be.  A blossom that is pollinated properly will grow into fruit.  The fruit, if not picked, will eventually ripen and fall from the tree.  The seeds in the fruit can then become new trees.

We chose an orange blossom to represent the hope of bearing the bigger, most succulent fruit to serve the most clients, by pollinating their businesses and adding water and nutrients by educating them on how to use their financial information to grow their businesses