Fiducial | We help your business grow and be profitable.

by Stephen Parezo

Carl Flair

March 15, 2006—From building a profitable division for a major company to developing a small business from the ground up, Carl Flair has always enjoyed problem solving and putting things together. It all goes back to when he was a youngster playing with his erector set. He assembled bridges and cars and “things that moved” including robots.

After earning an industrial engineering degree from the University of Tennessee, Flair served in the U.S. Army before heading for corporate America where he worked for 25 years. He began his career in the beginning of the seat belt era and during the last six years of his corporate experience, took Allied Signal’s airbag business from zero to $300 million in sales.

Now a Fiducial franchisee in Macon, GA, Flair finds the role reversal interesting between the corporate side and running a small business.

“I had always run a large business and just simply told the accountants what to take care of,” he said. Now with his own business, his staff accountants are “telling me what I have to take care of.”

When Flair took a parachute and left the corporate realm he was confident he could make a go of it on his own. After all, he knew inherently about the start-ups’ mentality because he had built a profitable division from scratch.

“It’s a peoples’ business,” said Flair. “If you can tie together leadership qualities with a start-ups experience, once you’ve done it you could do it again.”

With small business owners, he believes 90% of their shortfall problems are either due to paperwork, compliance issues or IRS complaints/audits. He knows that if you keep clients from receiving notices from the IRS, they will understand that their advisors fill a vital role.

Heading off trouble

One such example involved Flair and his staff taking an overview of a dental practice and finding that a regional accounting firm had not dug deep enough into the details between the practice’s rental properties.

“It was essentially an inside-the-books transaction and as an oversight they left out the rent expenses for five years which meant we received $30,000 for the client from the IRS and we got the practice,” he said.

Unlike the dentist’s former accountants, Flair noted that his office always has a close relationship with its clients so they’re better able to head off trouble before it starts.

Another example involved helping a doctor launch a second business as a start-up. The doctor wanted to own a convenience store/service station which is known as a C-store and turned the entire project over to Flair.

“We took that company from scratch to a $2.5 million operation,” he said. “We went through all the licensing and all of the details. It was important because the doctor was Nigerian and there were some language difficulties.”

Helping Flair build a successful team for his business has been long-time colleague Tom Reid, a former controller from the corporate side, whom he has worked with for 25 years.

“The team concept is very important,” he said. “This business is difficult to do as a one-man show. You’ve got to have the flexibility of a small organization.”

Solving clients’ problems

That team concept works particularly well when it comes to serving the needs of clients.

“For the people that are our clients they’ve got to have a team,” he said. “Certainly missing from the regional accounting firms or mid-sized accounting firms is the relationship with the clients. We are involved in the business. Other firms have sort of a silent wall between them and their clients.”

Flair says he has spent his entire career pointing people in the right direction.

“Many of my clients depend on me to solve problems with their staff,” he said.

This includes helping clients improve the productivity of their employees, especially when it comes to dealing with accounts receivables which is probably the most important area for a business.

“If you don’t get the money in it doesn’t matter what you make,” he said.

A key to preventing problems before they occur, Flair says, is staying on top of the client’s activities. His office typically has the proper paperwork in front of the client so, for instance, they are reminded to compile their quarterly payroll figures before they think about the need to do it.

“We’re very dependable,” he said. “We’re very much involved with our clients.”

Stephen Parezo is the Media Manager for Fiducial.

Whatever your small business needs, your Fiducial tax and financial professional can analyze your situation and recommend an appropriate action plan. To locate a Fiducial office nearest you on fiducial.com, see the Zip Code Locator located in the upper right hand corner of the page. Do you have a particular topic that we should be writing about that can help your business? Please send your suggestions to: stephen.parezo@fiducial.com.

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