A 30 Years' War: A Study of and Remedy for the Decline of the American Entrepreneur

I was taught that in this life you need a credential. Quite by accident I found it was possible to get a CPA. All you had to do was find an accounting firm that would hire you, last three years and pass the exam. Believe me I was a tough wage negotiator, after I offered repeated wage cuts, they were finally convinced I was cheap enough to take the risk.

My immediate supervisor was a woman. I already had a mother so the thought didn’t thrill me. (Bear in mind things were different in 1965. I can only say that years later the president of a local chapter of a decisively feminist organization approved of my views. My views had changed.)

Well things didn’t go too well. A year went by and I walked into her office asking for a review. Before she could reply, I told her I didn’t understand why I hadn’t been fired. She did agree that I had made many messes, and that I had better stop. Six months later, she left to join her husband’s business and recommended me for her job.

The CPA was 19.5 hours spread over 3 days. At that time the pass rate for people like me was 2%. Each day at lunch breaks, guys were talking over the questions and the answers they gave. I could hardly remember the questions; my answers weren’t anything like theirs. It worked out anyway.

I had my credential and was off to other work. At first that other work came from drowning owners, who seeing no one else on the dock, volunteered me. Mostly things were flying in the 60’s from the guns and butter politics of the time. By the seventies things were beginning to squeeze and I spent a lot more time throwing what we all hoped were lifesavers.

A lot of them worked.

It seemed like each crisis brought up one more thing I didn’t know. They like to call accounting a practice, but crisis consulting was my practice. The owners had it more right, practice it wasn’t. They were paying me for my education.

And education it was: negotiation, forecasting, business plans, computer models, risk mitigation, start-ups, workouts, data systems, arbitrations, statistical analysis, economic models, strategic volatility, pricing timing, chaos theory, capital planning, expansion and start-up funding, on so on.

All this stuff that didn’t apply to small business, but it did. Small business didn’t have enough zero’s for such stuff. For me, starting in 1971, the computer began to change this work. Bit by bit technology carved large chunks out of the cost. Buffet said something to the effect that technology doesn’t reward capital because all the gain goes to the customer. So all this practice, this fancy stuff, became practical for small companies, so practical that now late adopters get rolled without knowing how or why.

It is the greatest time ever for business, especially small business, for by virtue of technology those with the will have a level playing field.