When Jeff Lawhorn left his position as a private controller in a large business for his second public accounting job in 1977, he noticed a major discrepancy between big and small business. Big businesses maintained private departments of financial experts, ready to advise on even the minutiae of business problems. Small businesses, meanwhile, struggled to find a ray of wisdom in the clouds of financial uncertainty. With their public accountants bogged down in routine financial reporting, small entrepreneurs were left to sink or swim in the turbulent sea that is small business, without a financial advisor in sight to throw them a secure line.
Jeff Lawhorn sought to level the playing field between the big and small business groups in 1979 when he founded Lawhorn & Associates. His grand scheme was to automate everyday accounting while expanding higher-level financial analysis for small businesses. Acquiring one of the first computers in Knoxville, Lawhorn initially focused on processing typical data more efficiently through computer software. Once he felt comfortable servicing clients with computerized intelligence, he began transforming the data into analytical reports and strategic planning, effectively communicating them in the easy-to-understand, educational fashion that was to become a hallmark of the Lawhorn practice.
Under the major headings of technology, business strategy, and education, the firm grew over the next decade to a staff of fifteen. Finding that not just small businesses but all entrepreneurial people were hungry for fiscal knowledge that empowered them with the edge in the marketplace, the firm decided to take decisive steps to further focus on its three major benchmarks.
In 1991, Lawhorn & Associates launched the first phase of a long-term plan to hone in on its preferred services while enriching its clients’ accounting experience. The firm partners determined that by outsourcing financial auditing, the firm could better serve the majority of its clients with the analytical accounting that helped comprise its philosophical core. This move facilitated a greater shift toward strategy-based consulting, ultimately paving the way for similar decisions that propelled firm clients to personal and business success.
The next step centered on refining the automation that made sophisticated strategy a possibility for average business people. In 2001, Lawhorn & Associates began integrating its processes with the powerful accounting software developed by Thomson Tax and Accounting. Over the next four years, the firm would continue to offer new services to its clients based on its vision and the new software developed by Thomson for automation.
By 2004 the decision to go paperless was in full force. Knowing that an electronic platform could provide its clients with greater protection, speed, and accuracy, the firm began training its clients on automation with the software that enabled its own move to a paperless environment. This software integration and training, combined with a team approach to accounting, created an atmosphere in which clients dealt with the firm as with their own personalized accounting departments. The new technological environment truly began to bridge the advantage gap between big and small business.
As Lawhorn & Associates drew closer and closer to the realization of its full plan, reflection on the achievements of the last two and a half decades uncovered several interesting revelations. First, the firm had consistently maintained its initial vision of automation, strategy, and education over that period of time. Second, the vision itself was solidly based on the needs of others and the service of those needs, which were the seeds of Jeff Lawhorn’s initial observations. Ultimately, the firm members felt that the vision could be summed up by the success of its clients. Accordingly, in 2007 the firm adopted as its slogan, “When you succeed, we have succeeded.” Keeping this refined vision in mind, the Lawhorn team strives to make the personal success of its clients the apex of its efforts.
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