Learn the Language of Business

By the seventh grade, I knew two things: I loved math and I needed to find a career. I remember the day I went up to my math teacher and asked her about careers that involved math. Her response? "You should be an accountant."

That night, when I went home and told my math-loving Dad that I wanted to be an accountant, he was thrilled. A career salesman, Dad spent his days calling on CPAs who bought tax books for their reference libraries. He knew for a fact that CPAs were successful business people.

From that day on, I was absolutely 100% focused on becoming an accountant, a Certified Public Accountant.

In order to live the dream, I would have to make good grades, go to the right school, and start saving money for college. I doubled up on math in high school so I could take AP Calculus before I graduated. I studied vocabulary words so I had a better chance of getting the kind of SAT score that would help me gain admission to the right out of state school.

That advice gave me a purpose. It kept me focused on a long term goal. My dream of one day being a CPA helped me endure the angst of being a teenage girl, especially one who liked math. It helped me stay the extra semester it took to complete the accounting program once I got to the University of North Carolina. And while my exposure to a social life got me a tad off-course once I got to college, that vision gave me the courage to interview with Big 8 accounting firms when I didn't have the requisite grades. It kept me studying weekends and nights so I could pass the CPA exam which was administered over a couple of very hot days in Fayetteville, NC.

More importantly, that advice kept me motivated to stay in the profession long enough to become a partner in a CPA firm, to gain a real understanding of the language of business, and to figure out that it wasn't the right career for me.

Accounting is a great profession. It's about order, structure, and organization. It requires attention to detail and an understanding of the rules. It is a profession filled with amazing people but at the time, it was the wrong place for me. I had tried every job in accounting. I had worked at big firms, small firms, in corporate tax, and as a controller. I just didn't fit. I felt trapped.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that I like to create, to educate, and to communicate. I found moments of joy in interpreting and applying tax rules to different business scenarios and in helping small businesses implement accounting software. But I wasn't great at detail and most of the work didn't come naturally to me. I had to work long hours just to be average. I was exhausted from the constant struggle to be someone I wasn't.

What do you do when after more than 20 years of being focused on a single dream, you discover it to be the wrong dream?

First, you feel like a failure, an idiot, and a loser. And then you find a new dream.

And so I did. I stopped practicing accounting and went into technology, where I could apply what I knew. There I dreamed of being a writer and speaker. But every experience I had during those years of being a practicing CPA helped me succeed at my new dream.

It is impossible to get very far in any career without speaking the language of business. Thanks to that early advice, I had become fluent in accounting.

There is no wrong path. I am very grateful for that early advice that gave me a purpose and made it possible for me to be who I am today. I am also grateful I found the courage to change course when the time was right.