016: Building #TeamLuma

While these numbers show you how many people were team members at 2 points in time, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what “#TeamLuma” really means.

Oh, and don’t forget, these are individual people – because almost all of our team is part-time, this translates into ~ 3.5 FTEs!  (without the Luminaries – Heather & Kim)

One of the most important things to both Heather and Kim in the building of Luma Accounting, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, was culture.  Both knew that they didn’t want to replicate some of the places they had worked in the past and the idea of Luma being a place for individuals that need part-time work due to personal situations (e.g., caregiving, health issues, etc.) was a guiding light for everything.  

Creating a culture through being remote, “work-on-your-own-time”, our Core Values and BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER. caused the following to happen:

Forming a Leadership Team

Kim and Heather had already created teams before partnering into Luma and it was remarkable to see how well-aligned the combined team was on day 1, which clearly speaks to the fact that both Luminaries had had the same qualities for team members in mind from the start.  

2024 was the year of “merger mania” and creating a combined team was one of the first priorities.  One of the first steps taken was forming a “leadership team” which included the 2 Luminaries and the 3 Lantern Leaders we had at that time.  This Leadership Team had its first weekly meeting on 2/28/2024… and thinking back on those early meetings makes us laugh because no one really knew each other and there were big gaps of silence.

But we continued with the weekly meetings and as the weeks and months went by, a real camaraderie was palpable… and that has grown with each major win, unexpected difficulty, and of course year end.  As of February 2026, the Leadership Team now includes our Luminator (ops manager) and 2 newer Lantern Leaders for a total of 8.  The decisions, ideas, camaraderie and vulnerability in these meetings is like watching our Core Values in action.

Recruiting

In 2025, we had a few points in the year when we realized that our capacity was getting quite thin and that caused us to start looking for a new team member.  Here are some things that have changed over the past 2 years:

• “Next Up!”
  We posted an actual job position on LinkedIn back in early 2024 and we did find one of our Lantern Leaders – but there were a LOT of applicants and we didn’t really have a process in place.  Based on this experience, we came up with the idea of “Next Up!“ – we started listening for experienced bookkeepers that were looking for part-time work and we interviewed them even when we were not looking to immediately fill a role.  This allowed us to build a list of “screened” applicants that we could reach out to the moment we thought we were close to needing to bring on another team member. 
  
• Promoting from Within
  In 2024 we coined the phrase “The Luma Way” as a reference to identifying the things we wanted everyone in the firm to do the same way because it was the BEST way.  And we realized that it is going to take a while for anyone new to the firm to learn The Luma Way just on processes and our tech stack alone… much less in managing client relationships in the Lantern Leader role.  We therefore decided to try as much as possible to find our next Lantern Leaders from within our team instead of hiring from the outside.  In 2025 we ended up promoting one of our Lightkeepers to Lantern Leader and we also brought someone in from the outside into the role.  Our key finding is that it CAN be done to hire for this position from the outside, but it takes a special individual 🙂  And when we can promote from within, it can be a huge win-win for the team and the clients.
  
• Testing for Quickbooks Online Proficiency
  It’s all in the connections… When one of our besties from All Star Accounting Professionals, Jenny Luchsinger of Accountable Bookkeeping, announced that  she was offering live, remote, proctored testing of Quickbooks Online and accounting skills, we jumped at the chance to test it out.  And not just with a recruit, but also with one of our Lantern Leaders who we knew has mad Quickbooks Online skills so that we could know whether to trust the results. 
  
  As soon as we saw the results, we knew that we were NEVER going to make a hire again without this testing – you actually know whether the skill level being presented checks out in reality!

Radical Candor

We very much want B.X.E. for all of our team members as well as our clients, and one way to support that with both groups is to really try for radical candor (based on the book by Kim Scott).  We talk frequently in the firm about bringing to light anything that is not working well as soon as we notice it – with team members, this could be skipping tasks in a month end close, tone in correspondence with clients, missing deadlines, etc.  

Keeping in mind that feedback is a form of kindness, we try to focus on what we need from the team for Luma to provide B.X.E. to clients, and if that doesn’t work for any reason with the team member, Luma likely isn’t going to be THEIR B.X.E. either.  The sooner we can all figure that out, the better for everyone involved!

And we ask for radical candor FROM our team members, both within the team and regarding clients.  Within the team, we have monthly surveys that allow the team to tell how they are feeling about their workload, share a win and any significant challenge they faced.  Lantern Leaders have meetings with their Lightkeepers as needed and the Luminaries have check ins with each team member at least twice a year.  And regarding clients, we have the Lanterns rate their clients once a year – this rating is a key input during annual client rate reviews and it is often the reason that we start talking to clients about whether they might find their BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER. with another firm.

2026:  GROWTH

Our word for the year is Growth – growth in terms of adding clients and also growth in the size of the team in order to support the new clients. As demand grows for reliable bookkeeping, accounting, and job costing support, expanding the team thoughtfully helps ensure every client continues to receive the BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER. So #TeamLuma is always forefront of mind as we build a pipeline of leads as we want all team members to be able to keep to their desired capacity and not feel overwhelmed (a distinctly un-B.X.E. state).

We created the Luma Launchpad in 2025 – a series of “tasks” in Double (formerly Keeper), our task management system, give those new to Double a taste of how it works and each task is either a video walkthrough or link to support documents of things like:  Core Values, how to use certain tools, how to track time, etc.  This reduces the time required of working team members and ensures that all new team members hear the same messaging… all on their own time.

To help avoid overwhelm, we have a general rule that we will only bring on a max of 1 client per month into a Lantern in order to give the Lantern Leader time to work with the client to get processes in place and understand any intricacies.  Once they’ve gotten a lay of the land, then they bring in the designated Lightkeeper to start work – this allows the Lantern Leader to be a great resource to the Lightkeeper as they experience things for the first time.

We talk weekly with the Leadership Team about leads in the pipeline and Lantern capacity so that we know when we need to tell our Next Up! recruit that “It’s time!” and get them onboarded into the firm.  And having this constant dialog allows the Luminaries to set expectations with leads immediately about when we have availability to bring on our next client – a dream of ours started in 2024 of having a backlog of new clients for 2-3 months… and we are close to realizing that goal – at least for a period of time! 

#TeamLuma is more than just a hashtag – it really represents a group of people that come together every day/week to fulfill this mission of BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER.  It is truly the heart of the firm.

Need reliable bookkeeping and accounting support for your business? Luma Accounting, headquartered in Portland, Oregon, serves small businesses across the U.S. If you’re looking for better financial clarity and a team committed to delivering the BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER., learn more or get in touch here: https://lumaaccounting.com/get-started