Cheers to 50 more!
Tom Luken, CPA President email | bio
January 2011
This past year has been particularly reflective for us at Kolb+Co., as we celebrated our 50th anniversary in 2010. In 1960, two young men – Bob Kolb and Larry Lauwasser – grabbed hold of their entrepreneurial spirits and hung a shingle on a small CPA firm in downtown Milwaukee. Now, 50 years later, the American Dream is alive and kicking in the Bishop's Woods office park of Brookfield.
Many things have changed in 50 years, but our core values have not. Providing unparalleled service and integrated business solutions remain at the heart of our strategic and business planning. We continue to align our services with our clients' needs and feel that our size allows us to be nimble and flexible in recognizing opportunity in our changing times.
The center of our practice always has been and always will be closely held businesses. While we add services to help them grow, we find new opportunities to serve larger companies within our community. For example, the addition of SAS 70 audit, internal audit and IT audit services allows us to serve larger companies who are required to perform these audits, as well as smaller companies that see the benefit of an in-depth review of their control objectives and activities. We continue to grow other consulting services, like cost segregation studies, merger and acquisition assistance, retirement plan administration, wealth and risk management, and technology project management.
As we expand our services, we continuously look for ways to be more efficient and cost-effective. This year we invested in the "Lean CPA" process, a program dedicated to identifying internal processes that can be improved. We targeted our tax practice as our launch group, and our clients will notice a shift toward more electronic records and a focus on eliminating the duplication of efforts between their internal staff and our team. Our freshly integrated workflow software extends these efficiencies, virtually eliminating the "inbox" and keeping projects moving.
As we grow, we naturally expand our market reach, serving primarily southeastern Wisconsin and growing into northern Illinois and the Sheboygan area.
We also contributed to growing our profession by adding a record number of "future CPAs" to the population. We celebrated the birth of 10 babies in our Kolb+Co. family this year! I'm not sure what came first: the many young families we employ or our family-friendly environment. Nonetheless, we are proud to have been recognized again with a handful of workplace awards, including The Business Journal's "Top Milwaukee Workplace Award," Accounting Today's national "Best Accounting Firms to Work For," the MMAC's "Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence and Flexibility," and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's "Top Workplace Award." These awards pay tribute to our core belief that a happy, well-balanced employee is one who will be productive and serve our clients well.
To that end, we initiated a wellness program this year presented by our good friends Anne Tremel and Highlander Elite. Based on the New York Times best seller, "Younger Next Year" was a six-week program that coached employees on how nutrition and exercise can change our lives and our attitudes about aging and help us live fuller, more balanced lives. I know I'm not the only one here who plans to roll the program into my new year's resolutions!
Not only are we taking better care of ourselves this year, we are taking better care of our community too. Our new Volunteer FORCE (Focus On Raising Community Engagement) program promoted monthly, firm-wide community service activities, like helping Special Olympics teach basketball skills, serving a meal through the Salvation Army, and participating in the Earth Day "Weed Out" for the Urban Ecology Center. The highlight of Volunteer FORCE was our Action Day when we closed our doors at noon and sent all our employees to clear trails, trim trees and ready the Boys and Girls Club's Camp Whitcomb-Mason. Our goal through this program was to support more than 50 nonprofit organizations in our 50th year through service, collections, donations, and other contributions. I'm pleased to report that we far exceeded that goal, and we plan to continue the program indefinitely.
As we look back on the past 50 years and look forward to the next, we know that our good fortune has taken a lot of hard work and the loyalty of our clients, employees and other business colleagues. So as we toast to 50 more, we look forward to many new challenges and good times with friends old and new. Cheers!