Breaking Away!

I originally wrote this blog entry for our new website that will be launched on July 12th, or perhaps July 15th. Hopefully you will be seeing parts of this blog post again very soon. If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you may recall me mentioning it earlier when I said it would be launched July 5th. Those of you who have launched a website, or a business or even a blog... I'm sure you can appreciate this (flexible) time line. Hopefully the upcoming launch also explains the 2 week gap from my last blog post!

After completing this post for the new website (due sometime in July!), I realized that it would be the next chapter in the story I began sharing in my initial blog post here on "From Scratch to Riches." So allow me to share with you how we got to scratch...

Sitting on the steps of the New York City Library I was filled with self doubt and questioning whether I had made the right decision. I had just left the accounting firm I helped build. I was there for fourteen years. I broke away from the firm and I was on my own. Even though I had advised hundreds of businesses concerning their finances I had never been in control of my very own business. Sitting between the famous Library Lions on those steps I truly felt I was walking into a jungle with nothing but my wits and intuition to guide me. In reality, this was not the case, because I was equipped with training and experience... but I sure was nervous!

As a partner in a regional CPA firm in New York City, I was responsible for internal operations. I developed the billing and management systems and trained the junior accountants during their first year. When I joined the firm there was three partners, two bookkeepers and me. I was the accounting staff.

When I left we had close to 60 employees, 5 partners and three offices in NYC, Chicago and West Palm Beach, Fl. The growth of the firm had been phenomenal. I suggested to the other partners that we modernize our internal systems. I was put in charge of the project. I still remember walking into the office of the most senior partner and his bald head just visible over the pages of his huge client ledger book. All he needed was a quill pen and a green eye shade and he would have looked like he came right out of a Dickens’s novel. This was going to be a big challenge indeed!

Over the next several years I gained valuable experience upgrading the management systems of the firm and spearheading the conversion of our client base from manual books to automated systems. The accounting world was in the midst of huge changes due to the development of the personal computer and I was in the eye of the storm. Actually, this situation reminds me of today, how some businesses are embracing social media marketing while others are resisting using it. Twenty-five years ago some small businesses were resisting automation itself!

As it turned out, my fears and worries never came to pass, my clients followed me, new clients developed and before long I had a staff of four to manage. This was a new business but it was not started from scratch. I started with several clients, a line of credit with the bank and a reputation that invited referrals. I bought a state of the art computer system which had 3 terminals, a magnetic tape backup system, and used 40 megabytes of memory. Yes, that’s right 40 megs. It cost $ 20,000 too!

But this time I am starting from scratch. We have computers, access to capital, and state of the art management systems. But our new client base is entirely from scratch; as my wife (and co-founder of our business), and I develop new friendships, new contacts and build new collaborations from scratch. We've already made new friends, joined new clubs, taken on new hobbies and interests. All things you do when you are starting from scratch.; not even realizing all the benefits in learning new things and building new relationships.

Ironically in golf, scratch is a good thing; a very good thing. To be a scratch golfer means you shoot par or better. I think scratch may very well be a good thing all around.