Do you know the mission statement of any companies you work closely with?
If your company has one, do you know it? Like, off the top of your head?
If you have employees, do THEY know it??
Mission statements are meant to be aspirational in nature… but also easily understandable. When working on the mission statement for Luma, many of the obvious business books were read to help figure out what really rang true for what we wanted to build.
At Luma Accounting, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, we knew our mission needed to connect not just with our team but also with the small businesses we serve nationwide. As an accounting firm focused on bookkeeping, job costing, and financial clarity, our mission had to be simple, powerful, and memorable.
The big “Aha!” happened after Kim connected with local Portland-ers Shawn Busse and Anja Taylor of Kinesis – on LinkedIn no less – and took advantage of proximity by visiting them at the Kinesis office. At some point during the conversation, Shawn casually mentioned that he had written a book titled “Marketing from the Inside Out” in 2018. Not having come across many real book authors in real life, Kim got the book and read it and was very intrigued to find that it directed business owners to:
Have a One-Word Mission ™
There are many reasons laid out in the book but the ones that spoke the loudest were:
- Inspire and motivate your team
- Guide your people’s actions
- Define your reason for being
So what ONE WORD could an accounting firm use as its mission that would accomplish these actions and would also be immediately understood by potential clients, team members and the public at large?
In thinking through all the obvious ones, nothing was proving to be the unicorn… And then Kim started thinking about any short phrases that might describe the aspirational state Luma was striving for, and the audacious goal of giving our clients the BEST EXPERIENCE they’ve EVER had – of any service provider, not just accounting. And suddenly, 3 words stood out:
BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER.
Not only did these 3 words meet the actions from the book, but as a phrase it was extremely easy to remember to boot 🙂
As happens with anything of importance in the firm, the proposed mission was brought to the Leadership Team… and all agreed that this felt special and meaningful… A mission statement was born!!
And because a visual is always so helpful, we came up with the image above that helped bring everything we’ve defined in the firm together in one place:
- Our ideal CULTURE helps determine our ideal TEAM and ideal CLIENTS
- When you bring the ideal TEAM and CLIENTS together, you get the ideal SERVICE
- And when the ideal SERVICE happens, the team is happy, the clients are happy and the ideal FINANCIAL SUCCESS should also happen for all involved as the firm has priced the engagements appropriate to the value, the clients are thrilled and the team is compensated accordingly.
- With all of this, BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER. is achieved for all parties!
BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER. also became the way we describe how we solve client challenges, whether that’s cleaning up bookkeeping, simplifying job costing, or giving business owners the financial clarity they’ve been missing.
A year later, everything at Luma uses BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER. (or B.X.E. for short) as the firm’s “true North” on everything:
- We have it clearly stated on our website
- We include it in our emails to potential clients
- We use it as the criteria upon which our 1-question client survey is based
- We use it with legacy clients to explain that we may no longer be THEIR best experience ever and that we will help them find an accounting/bookkeeper provide that will be
- We talk about it in our Leadership Team meetings every week and brainstorm what else we can do to provide it to our clients
- We review case studies of work with clients that highlight how we met the goal – and especially how we DIDN’T
- We use it as our litmus test in all decisions and discussions – It is literally driving everything we do
But B.X.E. isn’t just for clients – equally, if not MORE importantly, it is for #TeamLuma as well. We try to accomplish this by:
- Allowing flexibility for the women on our team, almost all of whom have situations in their personal lives that requires it through working remotely 100% of the time and working whenever it is convenient for them
- Sending out a team survey every month to confirm the current desired number of hours they want to work as well as hear what wins they’ve had, what hard things they faced and what new things they might want to learn
- Having at least 2 team members on every client so that there is always backup for vacations, illness or any curveballs life happens to throw
- Understanding what each team member ENJOYS doing – including the Partners!
So ultimately, while we (again) bucked the usual convention, we feel like we found the perfect mission statement for us. ALL. THREE. WORDS. of it.
Need reliable bookkeeping, accounting, and job costing support for your Portland or U.S.-based business? Contact Luma Accounting today by filling out our quick form to get started. We’ll follow up to schedule your free consultation and show you how we solve financial challenges while delivering financial clarity with a team that truly lives its mission statement.
