What Mentoring Means to Me

By Michael B. Allmon, CPA

I have been fortunate through the years to have had many mentors influence my life and career.

My first memory of a mentoring experience is from my first year in the profession when I worked for Alexander Grant & Co, CPAs. The firm encouraged all new staff to become involved in our profession, so I contacted CalCPA to find out how I could become involved. The woman to whom I spoke would end up having a profound impact on my career.

Hazel Elder supported my desire to become involved and encouraged me to join the Membership Committee, probably because I was too inexperienced to have any technical committee interests. She always made me feel welcome during meetings and answered any questions that I had about CalCPA, the committee … whatever. She also saw that I was not making full use of my background. While my degree was in accounting, I had a minor in psychology and was interested in the psychology of money. As a result of her realization and our discussions, I began looking for a firm that would help me work with individuals, rather than public companies, once I obtained my CPA license.

I joined Satin, Tennenbaum, Eichler & Zimmerman, CPAs, where I found several mentors—and friends—including Bob Satin, Milt Zimmerman, Jeff Geibelson, Don Levy and Steve Wolowicz. These men were leaders in our profession and provided me with valuable professional guidance.

The firm then merged with Laventhol & Horwath and I was soon up for partner. My move to becoming an owner of a CPA firm, but not a partner at Laventhol, was encouraged by a Mike Gordon, a partner at Laventhol. Mike helped me understand my own motivations and goals and I realized that a more appropriate fit for me would be at a smaller firm where I would have more management control.

I joined Alan Zusman, John Cameron and Marty Shallon in the firm Zusman, Shallon, Cameron & Allmon, and once again, I had new mentors. Alan Zusman and John Cameron, with help from Chris Fredrickson, CPA, probably most heavily influenced my management style. They also helped me define my career goals to be more client focused rather than staff management. This led me to start my own firm with Dick Moon, CPA (from Laventhol) and others.

Others who have provided me with their mentoring skills included Don Gursey, Chuck Gumbiner, Saul Braverman, Hal Kant and others. I learned different ways of looking at the same problem from them.

My personal assistant for close to 20 years taught me the importance of personal service to our clients. She then retired and I began hiring accounting students to assist me in the office, who taught me that intellect and willingness to try new things were the most important traits in my employees. I began mentoring them, as well as other students about five years ago. I feel that I am continuously learning from them and that the mentoring process is a wonderful experience.

I have learned that the mentoring relationship should be defined by those involved, and my experience has been that the informal evolving relationships are the most interesting and beneficial to both parties.

Additional mentoring resources can be found here.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 10:58 am and is filed under Chapter News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.