This year I participated in a program called Leadership Torrance, a program of the Torrance Chamber of Commerce. I have wanted to participate for many years, but the dates of the program are January through June each year. As a bookkeeping business, I am extremely busy during most of those months (January is the busiest with quarterly and annual reporting plus all our regular work). Each year we have lots of new clients come to us needing assistance so CPAs can do tax returns, so our workload doesn’t usually die down until mid-May at least.
Because of the impact this very busy time has on my availability, I had never applied to be part of the cohort. However, last November, I left my office in the hands of my very capable staff when I flew to Taiwan to visit my daughter. With the 16-hour time difference, it wasn’t possible to communicate the same day if issues arose (the 8 hours they were in the office was the middle of the night). I wanted to spend quality time with my daughter while I had the chance, so I wanted to limit my access to work e-mail as much as possible.
I was gone 2 1/2 weeks in November and my staff handled everything just fine. I decided at that time that if I could be gone for such a long period (granted it wasn’t during our busiest time) I could be gone twice a month for program days with Leadership Torrance. I applied and was accepted to the program.
Leadership Torrance brings together people from different aspects of the community. In our case, we had a few employees of large companies, city employees, a director of a not-for-profit organization, and small business owners. There were usually two program days a month where we learned about the history of the city, met with government leaders from Torrance, Los Angeles County, and state representatives, visited businesses, learned about the ever-changing climate in the medical field, learned about the STEM education programs in the school district, and more.
As a group, we had a project to complete that would benefit our community as well. We discovered the Madrona Marsh, the only wetlands in the region, needed a barrier fence to be built to keep the grass from encroaching into the garden which has natural habitat plants. We decided this would be our project for the year. We determined the supplies needed, dug trenches and placed decomposed gravel to level the area, cut wood, pounded rebar, and it turned out fantastic. We had nothing but positive feedback.
Last Thursday was our graduation ceremony. It was a lot of fun, but it signals the end of this chapter of my business life. Although it’s a bit sad it has come to an end, I know the friendships I’ve developed will continue for a very long time.
