Patience and Diligence

CentralOffice …

began as a concept in 2018. I was happily married to a woman who after years of championing the education of young children had attained a rewarding career in the field. Our boys, now grown, were into careers of their own.

For more than thirty years, I worked the traditional routine of public accounting, performing in both the audit field (verifying historical accounting to the standards) and compliance (spelled t-a-x). As Bob Dylan says, “The times they are a-changin’”. Computers are getting smarter. They have certainly come a long way from the Apple IIe I had in the 1980s with its 5¼ inch floppy disks and playing Pong.

Advancing Trends There are warnings all over the industry that traditional bookkeeping and tax preparation functions will be taken over by artificial intelligence, and the motion in that direction is undeniable. The main concept of CentralOffice is a virtual accounting & tax service, but with a human touch, because computers work one way and the minds of human beings work another way.

So, as CentralOffice approaches two years in the making, why did it just launch in 2020? Because life happens … enter the dragon. Cancer crept up inside my soulmate’s body and snuffed her life away. Life is not always as tragic as cancer. Sometimes it’s a joyful noise, like a baby being born. The point being, when life happens, things may have to be put on hold to attend to it. When that happens, it calls for two things: patience and diligence.

Dear business owner, please be patient with yourself and with the situation. Don’t be driven by FOMO, the fear of missing out. If your business concept was a good idea yesterday, it will still be a good idea tomorrow. By the same token, because change is the only constant and life continues to happen, if that business dream is going to become reality, you can’t give up on it. Be diligent. When nobody is beating a path to your door after you’ve hung out your shingle, it may be because you have not appealed to your customer yet. Who is your customer and how can you match what you have to what they want?