What? You want to start your own business? Why?

I'm in the process of trying to expand my CPA practice into a new area.  I want to give seminars to other small businesses about how to start a small business, what to expect once started, and if the small business is already plugging along, how to make sure the business is moving in the right direction and not heading over a cliff.

I didn't come up with this over night.  It was a long process.  As I stand on the verge of actually giving a seminar in September, I thought there might be some people who'd like to know how the process of starting a business works.  What?  You want to start your own business?  Why?  Believe me, I sometimes ask myself those same questions.

First some background.  I am a CPA.  I've been a CPA for over two decades and I grew up in my father's small CPA practice in Knoxville, TN.  As soon as my sister and I were able, he had had us pulling blank tax forms from the file cabinet and filling in the tax payer name and ID so he wouldn't have to take time to do that when the client came for their appointment.  (Yeah, I'm so old we used to prepare taxes by hand with paper and pencil.  But I try to stay current.)

I didn't start out to be a CPA.  It wasn't something I dreamed about or planned to do.  In fact, I was certain I didn't want to be in business at all and majored in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Creative Writing while at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.  Well, that lasted about as long as it took me to realize that the pay check of a "secretary", which was the best job my major could achieve, was not for me.  I could survive on that pay but I didn't want to.  Eventually my father wanted to retire and sell his practice.  My mother suggested he offer the practice to me or my sister first.  My sister had no interest at all, but I thought, "Hey, he makes more money than I do."  I also liked the freedom being self-employed would bring.  I was in.

I had to go back to UT and take all those business courses I'd avoided during my first pass at a college education.  Luckily I was going back to school during the last few days when an individual could sit for the CPA exam with any undergraduate degree and thirty-six hours (if I remember correctly) of accounting and business.  Currently a candidate for the CPA exam must have a Masters in Accountancy which I didn't want to do.  With my extra business credits in hand, I signed up for the Becker CPA review.  Forty hours a week and then some, studying for a two and a half day exam.  It's not that way now but back then, the first time a candidate sat for the CPA exam it started on Wednesday afternoon and finished Friday evening.  Yes, you got to go home in the evenings, but Thursday and Friday, you were back at the testing desk taking that exam.  It was brutal.  The studying was brutal.  The worry over making mistakes was brutal.  I had never studied for an exam in my life the way I studied for that exam.  I had decided to sit for the CPA exam only once, sink or swim.  I was not going through this again.  Since I did want to be a CPA, I wanted to pass the first time.  And pass I did.  I will never forget the day I received my grades in the mail along with the happy news that once I passed my ethics exam and spent two years as an apprentice CPA I'd have my certificate to practice.  It was a happy day for my dad as well.  The day I received my permit to practice, he walked out of the office never to return.

Over night I had a small CPA practice in my hands.  Since all the clients knew me, I didn't lose any business.  During my wandering and unplanned journey through the UT educational system, trying to find a major I enjoyed enough to finish, I had taken a public speaking class.  I now put this skill to good use by giving short talks about various tax issues to business groups at luncheon and dinner meetings all around town.  The practice was growing.  I was in charge.  Life was great.

Then my left leg began to go numb.

Eventually I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  Remember I'm old (well, older) and when I was diagnosed there were no medicines for MS at all.  The best that could be done was to try and stop the progression of a flair up and return the patient to "normal" as quickly as possible.  MS is an extremely unpredictable disease and at the moment of diagnosis it is impossible to determine how the disease will progress, but most people lose mobility rapidly and are unable to work.  I didn't know what my future would hold.  I continued to work and had massive MS attacks at every tax deadline.  Lucky for me, I had purchased private disability which my doctor suggest I use, and my mother and I retired to her home town of Woodbury, to await our mutual declines.

The loss of my tax practice was devastating.  I love taxes.  The tax code is crazy and funny and weird.  I love reading it.  I love preparing taxes.  I love talking with clients.  My Knoxville monthly write-up clients followed me to Woodbury, first via mail and phone, and then by email and skype.  I didn't have to be in the same town as my clients to do my job.  But working still wasn't easy.

Gradually as client's needs changed my practice contracted and I started a family.  The decline in the stock market and the US economy decimated my disability income.  I needed more work.  As a stop gap measure I went to work for a local client who was in need of reliable help.  It wasn't easy work but it was steady and gave me time to think.  I came up with the idea to give seminars for small businesses.  Not the small business by IRS definition of grossing five to fifteen million dollars, but the real small business with one employee - the owner.  The small business owner who sells the job in the morning and goes back in the afternoon to do the job.  The small business consisting of the husband and wife working together; one doing the work, the other handling the paperwork while their kids played under the kitchen table.  The small business that doesn't have time to stop and ask questions because they are living on the edge and stopping to reflect and ask questions doesn't happen very often.  Most often, when something happens to throw the whole train off the track.

I began to ask the small business people I know if they would have been interested in a seminar like this when they were starting out.  Oh, yes, was the answer every time.  So I began to do the research and put together my seminar while living off the line of credit on my house.  The line of credit is running low and the time is now to begin.  Even after being in business for decades, starting a new type of business is frightening.  If it's frightening for me, a seasoned business professional, I can only imagine what it's like for someone with no experience.  Therefore, these blog entries.

As I write this I don't know if my Business Education Seminars Today or BEST of Small Businesses will even pay for the advertising I have already agreed to buy.  And it is frightening.  But nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Let go of the rope.  You know all the old adages as well as I do.  The bottom line (another old adage) is that I have to start somewhere and I've started.

Next blog entry: how I prepared and shaped my new venture before I booked the venue or advertised.