Driving to the office this morning, Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” came on the radio. The words to the song weaved in and out of the daydream that plays over and over in my head. The one where I am the coolest business/numbers/bookkeeping teacher on the web. I think the song is about moving ahead on a date or in your love life or something equally as “country songish” but it inspired me to think about how I have been Fearless in starting my own business.
I have been a solopreneur for 2 years now. I believe that’s the sexy new word replacing the fuddy duddy “sole practitioner” which is what my industry would consider me.
I remember when I first wanted to break out of the employee world. At the time I was a cost accountant for a manufacturing company. I loved my job, just not the time restrictions of doing it. The company would not ever let me work from home, and had a hard time accepting that I loved to work at 6 am in the morning some days. Or, at 9 pm at night after the kids were in bed. The turning point came when my daughter got a disease that required a hospital stay 8 hours away, and continuing care at home. I realized working in corporate America wasn’t for me anymore. What if I could make more money AND make my own schedule?
I admit, there was a little bit of fear there. Not because I don’t trust my skills and abilities, but because my husband and I would give up a regular paycheck that let us take extra vacations and buy great Christmas presents for the kids.
Oh, and we’d been through some of my entrepreneurial ideas in the past. One was in the early 1990’s when we attended one of those crowded seminars where some guru would stand at the front and tell you how great it is being in the gumball business. Another was when I jumped on the real estate bandwagon in the late 1990’s. Bought some late night TV courses, attended some real estate club meetings, and spent a lot of time learning the business…only to purchase one rental property. If I had thought about these barriers for too long, I may not have left my job.
FEARLESS……Here was the deciding factor. I had extremely marketable skills that any company would die for (at least in my mind)….so, why not hop out on my own and find a job later if I needed to?
It only took a few months working for myself to decide I would never work for anyone again!
FEARLESS….The company I was working for asked if I’d be willing to come back and work on special projects….and guess what….my answer was not an enthusiastic YES! I realized this was not the market I wanted to serve.
Here are some very unconventional, unCPA-ish things I decided when I first opened my business:
A) I did not want to do tax returns (am I nuts?…lots of CPAs make great money doing this!)
B) I did not want to specialize in audits, reviews and compilations (even though that was my specialty when I worked for a CPA firm for almost 5 years)
C) I did not want to find the largest and richest clients to work for (hmmmmm….wouldn’t you make more money working for those kinds of clients?)
What I did want was:
A) To teach small businesses some of the tools that larger businesses use to analyze and manage their finances. (my idea of small is 10 employees or less)
B) To break down all the hard mumbo jumbo banker language, and teach it in real easy language any solopreneur or small business owner could understand
C) To inspire more people to become FEARLESS and open their own business
I looked around my community and couldn’t really find a great place that was doing this. I call it a hole in the marketplace….and I intended on filling it.
First things first. I love Quickbooks. I love numbers and bookkeeping and the like. I know, that sounds geeky. I’m happy to be a geek. Guess what? Turns out a ton of businesses are not geeky in the same way I am and need help with Quickbooks and bookkeeping.
I started off offering what I knew. To add more expertise to my CPA designation, I became a Certified Quickbooks Proadvisor. I teamed up with a local startup business that really wants to promote entrepreneurship, and started holding Quickbooks workshops in their space.
I gained new clients through word of mouth and workshop attendance. I started to get into a “schedule” with the bookkeeping, and noticed that the more bookkeeping clients I had, the less time I had to work on training materials and programs and that elusive book I’ve promised myself I’d write.
These are all the reasons I needed to make another fearless decision. This decision could go terribly wrong, but I don’t think it will. I now have total faith in what role I play for other business owners, and where I can provide the most value.
FEARLESS… This past week, I admitted to one client (who I actually receive about 10% of my cash flow from) that I’m moving out of the bookkeeping business. Yup, my main source of cash flow…and I’m moving away from it! After I said it, I got a pain in my stomach that I quickly quashed.
Now that it’s been several days since I voiced where my business is going, I feel a sense of greatness and renewal. Like maybe I get to go through the infancy stage of my business all over again. Like, this time, I’m building my business in a way that doesn’t require trading hours for dollars. I’m getting a buzz just thinking about all the possibilities!
Where am I going? I have found my passion and enjoyment really is in training entrepreneurs about bookkeeping and analyzing numbers. We don’t have to talk about ROI and days sales and inventory turnover and indirect cash flows. At least, not in those terms.
What I can do is start at the beginning with a business. Build a good bookkeeping system or rebuild the broken one, train them how to run that for a while, and then determine what the business needs to know in order to grow.
I have expanded my reach. I am starting to get a following of people on the web. My local community is small, and I don’t want to restrict my business potential by only offering local workshops. I’ve learned a bunch about offering online trainings, and am developing products as you read this.
FEARLESS…that’s how I feel. There’s only bigger and better things on the horizon for my business.
What FEARLESS things can you do to either start your own business, or make your current business move in a bigger way?
Tags: Business, Business dreams, Entrepreneur, Starting a business
