Be an advocate for the client
The Corridor Business Journal's Entrepreneur:101
By Matthew Grimm
Tim Terry tells the story of one of his clients, a Fortune 100 executive, who took a meeting in Atlanta with his stockbroker. The executive mentioned his accountant, and the stockbroker asked who he used. The exec said, "Oh, you probably wouldn’t know her, she’s in Iowa." The stockbroker said, "That’s weird, so is mine."
Mr. Terry’s accounting and business consultancy, Terry, Lockridge & Dunn, of course, claimed both parties in the story as clients, having quietly become a not-that-well-kept secret of Iowa’s business community. The Cedar Rapids/Iowa City firm and its adjunct money management company, World Trend Financial Planning Services, has some 2,500 clients across 43 states and even some countries overseas. Of his investment clientele, only about a quarter reside in the Hawkeye state. While that may bespeak a deft hand in the accumulation, tabulation and management of wealth and the reputation it has earned in far-flung quarters, Mr. Terry’s paramount secret would likely surprise many in his business and others. Namely, it’s not about the money.
Mr. Terry, once prepared to take a vow of poverty, has set his business apart by building a firm dedicated to being something more to clients than ledger-keeper, to be counsel and guide, if you will, through the oft-byzantine fiscal realities of American life---but that’s not always about making people wealthy or buffering the accounts of those already there.
"Go back and read the myth of Croesus, what that Midas touch really does," he says. "From Shakespeare to Sophocles, we see this lesson told every time: greed, hubris, envy, these are the things that undo everybody. Look at all those brilliant MBAs, they brought you Enron, WorldCom…If the motivator is just to make money, it’s wanting. It’s severely wanting. You sell people stuff they don’t need at prices they shouldn’t be paying, and that’s how you justify being around? History is replete with wealthy, successful people we hold in low regard.
It seems less an outré sentiment for a CPA when you consider where Mr. Terry came from. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., he grew up in a working class Irish/Italian family, the son of an ironworker who impressed the classics of literature and philosophy on his 12 children and led veritable seminars at the dinner table. That discipline was nurtured in high school at a Catholic academy in New Jersey, which put Mr. Terry on the path to become a priest and spurred his journey to Divine Word College, the Epworth, Iowa, seminary school.
But two years into studies, he met his future wife, Debbie, and the path took a detour. Mr. Terry enrolled at Loras College and picked up a night job on the kill floor of Dubuque Packing to pay for his final two years of college. He wound up with completed majors in English, business and accounting, and offers to go work for Merrill Lynch or take a CPA job in Cedar Rapids.
Mr. Terry took the CPA job. He didn’t like it. He found the image of the aloof number-cruncher in the green visor to be all too apt a stereotype, lacking in discursive or even empathetic give-and-take with customers.
"I thought we should be more of an advisor, and advocate for clients," he says. "You get to see a lot of people without their clothes on, financially…They’re engaging you to help them get through this labyrinth of complexity that Congress has created, and you’re like Theseus and showing them how to get out and escape the Minotaur."
In 1978, Mr. Terry hung out his own shingle, intent upon bringing just such a personal touch to the business. He had 80 clients two years later. By that time, he was already offering health benefits to his employees, and, in what had once been an "Old Boys" business, he began harvesting the best female CPAs he could find, including Paula Rogers, now Terry, Lockridge & Dunn’s president. As the firm grew to 10 employees, nine were women, which led organically to the institution of family-leave policies and flex-time accommodating family obligations long before they became standard employer policies.
It all reflected a holism the firm took on as it grew a 360-degree sense of its obligations to its stakeholders internal and external. His company, he said, does not have customers but, rather, "relationships," continuities that can only be managed and nurtured over time, and, not coincidentally, his company boasts employees who have been with the firm for up to 23 years. In 1992, weary of stewarding clients’ finances while referring clients to outside brokers or money managers, he established World Trend as a boutique brokerage essentially to serve his accounting customers.
But just a year later, his wife, Debbie, died, just 38, after a struggle with cervical cancer, and, after two years of coping by throwing himself into his work, he took a sabbatical. He went to Japan, Tibet and Bhutan, studying Buddhism. In 1996, he journeyed to Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, on which expedition a fellow climber insisted he look up her friend Gretchen upon returning to the United States – who would later become his second wife. But his journeys, his witnessing different perspectives from different states of want from the first world to the third, helped cement his philosophy.
"I’ve worked with many successful people over the years, and we always get to this conversation, "When is enough?" Mr. Terry says. "They throw out numbers. And my answer is always, "Enough." Poverty, to me, is defined as not having enough. If you’re envious of that G7 sitting on the tarmac next to your G5, you’re poor…So if I’m getting them to think about where they’re going to be 20 years from now, I can give it a very dry mathematical formula. But until I’ve gotten a sense of what their lifestyle is, what their goals are, what their dreams are. It all really comes down to, what do you value? Because that’s different for everyone."
Sometimes, he says, this approach means the customer isn’t always right. "I tell our staff, we’re advocates for the client, their backstop. If they’re doing something stupid, doing something they shouldn’t be, we should be telling them that, "We should be risking our relationship to tell them the truth…Since the (2008) meltdown, everybody has to do continuing education for ethics. I love going to these things and watching people my age taking notes. And I think, "What the hell, you don’t know this by now?"
Indeed, World Trend has not been unaffected by the nation’s recent economic woes, but a lot less, according to Mr. Terry, than one might suspect. Two clients have cashed out since the recession began. He estimates his companies have doubled revenues about every five years, but he points with even more satisfaction to the fact that his firm boasts a 98 percent client-retention rate.