You Can Account On It

Thursday, October 26, 2006 at 12:20pm by Evan Prieskop in Start-Ups

Regular readers of this column are aware that I often allude to my familiarity and facility with the “boring” details of small business. It is true, I feel generally comfortable dealing with strength/weakness analyses, amortization tables, and quarterly tax projections. Even so, I would never open a business without the aid and assistance of an accountant.

The accountant my partner and I hired for my first small business, a retail storefront in Albuquerque, is almost certainly the finest CPA I have ever worked with. Her fees were not the lowest, but she was capable, motivated, and proactive in assisting my small business startup and protecting the business’s assets.

I will admit, with some chagrin, that the method by which we chose her was somewhat rudimentary; I chose her name out of the yellow pages because I liked the layout of her ad. Of course, I was also impressed with her professionalism on the phone and walked away happy from a face to face meeting we set up prior to hiring her, but she was still literally the first CPA in town that we tried.

Nonetheless she had one distinctive feature that cemented my decision to work with her more than anything else could have. One virtue made her stand out so much that I saw no reason to continue shopping around after I discovered her: she was rich. She worked out of a home office in a multi-million dollar house. She did not need to work. She liked to do so, part time, because she enjoyed her job.

I hope, gentle reader, that you see why this one trait should be so important. Wealth, and the daily, personal experience of having, holding, protecting, and expanding it is an invaluable baseline from which to build and maintain the very skills most vital to an accountant. Anyone who can build and hold a fortune is uniquely suited to helping me build and hold my own burgeoning wealth.