Dick Ingwersen refocused GH&I on growth during the recession

Throughout the early 2000s, growth had been a focus for Dick Ingwersen and his team at Gifford Hillegass & Ingwersen LLP.

“My feelings have always been that if I grow too fast, then things are going to fall through the cracks, and I’m not going to do the kind of job that I want to do, and the firm’s not going to do the kind of job that we want to do,” the co-founder and managing partner says.

The addition of Sarbanes-Oxley kept the business rolling in, but in 2008, the accounting firm was flat, and by 2009, it was down about 9 percent.

“Sarbanes-Oxley created so much work for everybody that … you just answered the phone and that’s how your business grew,” he says. “When [the recession] hit, that stopped. People had gotten maybe less aggressive being out there doing things to grow the business, because it was just growing automatically.”

Ingwersen took action. He went out and got his 80 people focused back on growth, and now, he expects more growth moving forward.

Smart Business spoke with Ingwersen about how he led GH&I through the recession.

Retain your top people. Be sure that you’re doing whatever you have to to keep your best people. Raises and bonuses were really down across the board, but [for] your top performers, it’s business as usual. Make sure that you don’t treat them like everyone else. We said, ‘Hey, raises are down this year, but for our top people, we’re going to give them better raises — they deserve it for what they’re doing.’ You do that; you talk to them. You communicate with them; you let them know that they’re our young leaders group. We say, ‘You’re a young leader, and we’re planning on you to be not just a young leader but a leader overall.’ They’re doing a good job so they deserve a little bit more overall and just encourage them and coach them and mentor them.

We would do that, and we would tell our clients the same. You know a lot of people that you work with, and some you hate to lose and some you wouldn’t mind to lose. The ones that you hate to lose, you need to pay more attention to — that’s just common sense, but sometimes people don’t do that.

People take things for granted sometimes and they don’t do that, and then it’s a devastating kind of thing if one of your very top performers came to you and said, ‘Well, things weren’t going that well, and I saw a better opportunity over there,’ and they were gone. You don’t want that to happen with your clients either.