Does it ever seem like some people know everyone? At the least, they know someone who knows someone who can help you with any problem you have.

Of course, there are times when this type of person is overbearing, and their attempt to connect themselves is self-serving, heavy-handed and quickly wears thin. There are a few, however, who we find genuine, whose connections serve us well and who we are happy to know.

Relationships with that type of person should be cultivated and allowed to shine.

Last week in this space, I wrote about being open to reaching out to others, giving information about what we do, and sharing this with others who could benefit from it. Of course, some people are just better at this than others.

In his book “The Tipping Point,” bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell looks at the idea of ‘epidemics,’ not from a viral standpoint, but through the spread of ideas. He tips off (forgive the pun) some of his findings in the book’s subtitle, “How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.”

If you don’t believe that little things can make a difference, let me steal a thought experiment from Gladwell’s introduction. Imagine that you had a piece of paper you could fold in half 50 times, how tall would it be at the end? No matter how difficult it may be to believe, it could reach the sun.

It is the mathematics of exponential progression - once things begin to build, the numbers can take off. In this scenario, after all, just one more fold of the paper makes it big enough to get to the sun and back.

That concept helps show why it is good to reach out to the right people; they may be just one person, but they can reach many more. Gladwell picks out three types of people who are powerful at affecting others: Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen.

Connectors are those who cultivate large numbers of acquaintances and, thrive off knowing many people. They keep a foot in many different areas, so they can draw people together whose worlds may otherwise not have collided.

Mavens are those we trust for expert opinions. They pride themselves on finding the best deals, the best places to eat, the best places to stay and do it with a level of precision that gives credence to their opinions.

Finally, salesmen are those with a charisma that convinces others to listen. We tend to know when we are being sold a bill of goods, but we also know that sometimes it has been done well enough to work.

This doesn’t mean that to be a thriving member of a community you need to be one of those three types. They are just the ones who have the natural abilities to be influencers. Those types are so strong that it probably won’t take much thought to come up with an example of each in your life.

If you are not one of those types, you cannot force yourself to become one. Being aware of them, though, can help you use their power. If you are an individual looking to reach into different social circles, connectors can help. If you are in a business that could serve someone who is a maven or salesmen, put a little more effort into that relationship, for it is bound to pay off exponentially.

And if you doubt the power of these types, here is a final example that Gladwell gives in his book:

In the late 1960s, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find how human beings are connected. He mailed a packet to 160 people who lived in Omaha, Nebraska. The recipients were also given the name and address of a stockbroker who worked in Boston. They were told to write their name on the packet and mail it on to a friend or acquaintance that the person thought would get the packet closer to the stockbroker. The idea was that Milgram could trace the hands the packet went through until someone delivered it to the stockbroker.

Amazingly, half of the responses reached their endpoint through the final hands of three people. “Dozens of people,” Gladwell says, “chosen at random from a large Midwestern city, send out letters independently. Some go through college acquaintances. Some send their letters to relatives. Some send them to old workmates. Everyone has a different strategy. Yet in the end, when all of those separate and idiosyncratic chains were completed, half of those letters ended up in the hands of Jacobs, Jones and Brown. Six degrees of separation doesn’t mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.”

And it is very worth knowing those special few.

I like to think that putting words in this spot gives our company the chance to reach out to you in a way that goes beyond a business transaction. That is a gratifying part of being in business that does not always get embraced, the building of relationships. I am sure that no matter whether you’re a long-term client or one on the newer side, and whether we have multiple interactions per year or only talk during tax time, we each have things we could say to each other that stretch beyond business.

So this is a way to do some of that, to put my thoughts onto virtual paper, place it where those I know can see it, and hope it resonates with some of them. Yet, it is impossible to say that it is not partially business-driven, for I also hope that it also gives a chance to make you aware of some aspects of our business you did know about.

That last bit there is what I want to focus on for the rest of this piece. First, if there is ever any sort of financial service that you wonder if we provide, please ask. I certainly cannot promise that the answer is yes, but if it is not, I am sure we can at least help point you in the right direction.

Beyond that, though, please also do not be afraid to let us know if there is something YOU do that we could benefit from. It is possible that we only know you as an individual whose taxes we see once a year, and those W2s and 1099s don’t exactly give the full picture of what you do. We are all more interesting and useful than those numbers, so if there is more to you that you think we should know … let us know!

Also, let us not be afraid to go beyond that.  We would love to be a place you feel comfortable sending your friends. So if you know someone who would benefit from any of the services we offer, please feel free to put us in contact with each other. And again, from the opposite direction, if you think we may be doing business with people who could benefit from your services, let us know and we would love to point them in your direction.

Too often, being in business can feel like you are on an island. We get into ruts where we do not branch out enough beyond what we have always done. We know what others do for us, trust in their work on those tasks, but it goes no further. So consider these words an attempt to go a little beyond that with those we work with. (Or have yet to work with, if you are looking for new services, we want to hear from you, as well. In the interest of ‘going beyond,’ new networks would only help.)

It is an idea can be taken beyond the business world, too. Let us be open and honest about who we are, what we do and the things we desire. Let us then be open to accepting help from those who give it, give it those we can help, and lead others to where they can receive it. 

One of the best parts of doing the job we do is the chance to work with lots of different types of people who work in lots of different types of industries in lots of different types of ways. No one is quite like anyone else, even those who work in similar areas.

Even with all these differences, what we do is fulfilling when we can help those other businesses reach their goals. For even though there are many ways to get there, we all are aiming toward similar endpoints.

The concept of these different ways to work came up last week due to the Memorial Day holiday. For, just like every three-day weekend, the idea comes up of how it would be great to always have a four-day work week. The Atlantic covered the idea in a rather in-depth article last year, with views both in favor of and against the shortened work week.

Then again, if you want only the rosy view of working fewer days, you should instead read this more biased piece on inc.com. If even that is not enough, take a look at a San Diego Company that stands by five-hour work days.

The jokes almost write themselves when it is a beachside paddle board company that is embracing less work hours as a company tenet. But if it works for them, and still allows the company to thrive, can anyone fault them for it?

Not every company could work like that, however. Some manufacturing work simply could not hold up to that schedule. Sure, it may be possible to buckle down and put in a lot of work on a paddle board during a five-hour shift, but if you are running a machine in a factory that takes a specific amount of time to turn out a product, a certain and definite amount of productivity is lost with working fewer hours.

Again, certain ways of work are better for different companies.

Another recent article, in fact, wrote of how uber-tycoon Warren Buffett controls his schedule by only setting up meetings one day in advance. It is another novel concept, ideally letting you pursue passions and ideas as they happen instead of forcing inspiration to wrap itself around meetings that may have been scheduled weeks in advance, seem less important and feel draining while attending them.

And sure, one can certainly appreciate the theory behind this, but the fact that Warren Buffett can do it has a lot to do with the fact that he is Warren Buffett.

When it comes to what we do in our company, well, we are not Warren Buffett and (unfortunate as it may be) do not work with anyone of his caliber. We do, however, work with many great people and businesses. They run the gamut from individuals who are successful through short bursts of intense work, to those who work hours that sound numerous and draining, but yet they love it.

Either way, I find that the most successful endeavors are carried out by those who love what they do. That passion and drive shows in the end product. Our passion and drive is to take care of some of the financial aspects for those companies, while they pursue the parts of business that excites them most. So if this is something we could help you with, please feel free to contact us. 

I know that tax season is over and no one really wants to think about taxes anymore. Trust us, we feel this more than most (although I am pretty sure that my blood-versus-caffeine levels finally returned to normal last week). Yet there is a need to speak of taxes and the IRS even here as we start the month of June.

It seems almost every week comes with a new scam warning from the IRS. One of the latest came around last week as the IRS advised of phony phone calls telling potential victims that they needed to pay a “Federal Student Tax,” a non-existent tax.

Scams often seem to target the elderly, but this one goes in the opposite direction. It makes sense, though, to target students and recent graduates, people who possibly haven’t filed an in-depth tax return and have limited knowledge of tax law.

One has to imagine that this dynamic is also behind another recent criminal trend, scammers claiming that people need to pay their back taxes via an iTunes gift card.

I think it is important for everyone to remind themselves of some signs of scams the IRS has posted. (Pay special attention to the first one, which should immediately raise your hackles if you receive a call from an apparent tax collector.) The agency will never:

·                   Call to demand immediate payment over the phone, nor will the agency call about taxes owed without first having mailed you a bill.

·                   Threaten to immediately bring in local police or other law-enforcement groups to have you arrested for not paying.

·                   Demand that you pay taxes without giving you the opportunity to question or appeal the amount they say you owe.

·                   Require you to use a specific payment method for your taxes, such as a prepaid debit card.

·                   Ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone.

Also this week, I wanted to visit an article from inc.com that appeared last week and relates to many of the topics I wrote about in this space over the last month. First, it stresses how it is important to make employees feel like they have a stake in a company, and that one’s performance changes if that dynamic exists (remember Zappos?). The article makes a comparison between being a renter and a homeowner. You want your employees to feel invested in how the operation is operating and not just operate like they are only there for a short period of time.

The article also stresses the importance of having open books to achieve this dynamic (remember the increased access technology can provide?) The more that employees feel you are being open with them about numbers, ones that employees don’t always get to see, the more trust is built. Openness means that one does not always have to agree with every decision made by a business, but employees can at least feel that those acts are based on facts.

Unlike those who call you demanding tax payments of which you were never aware, which are never facts.