What have I done?
I was sitting in a cafe in Cape Town, South Africa, buried under the weight of the tasks on my ever growing to do list, wondering to myself just how in the ever loving hell I got here. Just two weeks prior, I had been an employee of a great company, in a role that I loved, receiving a count-on-me paycheck at regular intervals — fast forward to a present day, constantly stressed, unemployed, mind-a-mile-a-minute shell of my former self, eyes growing wider and the bags beneath darker, sunny disposition now served with a side of tinny nervousness, smile a little more maniacal, voice a bit higher pitched every time I answer when asked how its going.
A little over a month before this post, I accepted a call from a friend of a friend to have a conversation about the accounting and tax needs for her growing company. When I dialed into that call (4 minutes late), I had no idea it would be the one to change my life, but when I hung up over an hour later, there was an electricity running through every vein in my body. I wore a smile you couldn’t slap off my face, and while my mind was racing with the thousands of implications of what I was about to do, there was one thing that was clear: I wanted to quit my job to start my own business, focusing on small business and personal tax consulting for digital nomads.
And why not? I had the creds to back it all up:
- CPA
- PFS (no one knows what this is)
- MBA (no one uses this)
- 4 years of corporate accounting experience
- 5 years experience in public accounting
- 5 years running my own side gig focused on these needs
- 18 months as a digital nomad
- An absolute passion for helping people
- Previous experience in burning down everything I knew to embark on a new and unknown adventure (cough, Remote Year, cough)
But wait… Owning a business is not something I ever wanted for myself. I was perfectly content to be on a team, helping other firms facilitate their client’s needs, running my teeny consulting gig on the side for some extra scratch. Sure, I’d kicked around the idea, especially as I started to see a need form in the community around me (see a need, fill it), but I always nah, not me’d it away because I wasn’t the kind of girl to abandon all comfort and fling myself off a professional cliff…. right?
Wrong.
The next few days were filled with overwhelming support from friends and family as not a one of them thought it prudent to have my sanity checked or dissuade me from this foolish endeavor, so I resigned my cushy salaried position, reduced my social calendar drastically, cashed in all my savings, checked my sleep and the ability to think about anything other than this business at the gate…. and threw myself off the aforementioned cliff.
I wanted to build a business born out of the desire to serve the digital nomad community in a way that matched the life that we chose to lead. I wanted to provide a service that was as forward thinking, growth driven, and adventurous the people that it served. So, much like everything else in life that I set my mind to, I did.