WEBVTT
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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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W four CY Radio.
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Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
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condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helen n believes that certainly
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applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at
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W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com
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and now your host, Kevin Helen.
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Thanks everyone for joining in again today. I'm Kevin Hallandan
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and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
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W four cy. Of course, we're streaming live on talk
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four tv dot com. That's the number four, in addition
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to streamingline live on Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio,
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as well as available in podcast form after the live
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show on many other platforms including YouTube, iHeartRadio Spotify, Apple,
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pretty much wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. The
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mission of Winning Business radio and TV, as regular viewers
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and knowers and listeners know excuse me, is to offer
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insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others.
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That's to learn best practices, the how tos, the what tos,
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the what not tos, to be challenged and hopefully to
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be inspired by the successes of others. Those are consultants, coaches, advisors, authors,
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founders and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know,
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virtually every successful person I've ever had a chance to
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talk to has said some form of failure in their
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lives and careers. So I say it every week. While
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we all have to get our knees skinned once in
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a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing
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major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we
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don't repeat it. I've given the better part of my
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career equipping businesses to grow from solopreneurs to small and
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medium sized companies all the way up to the Fortune fifty,
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and I've seen some of those companies win in to
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varying degrees. I've seen some of them fail I've had
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the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest
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performing people around and with some who probably should have
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found other professions. And in my own businesses, I've had
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lots of success, but some failures too, So I like
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to think I've learned a lot about those lot from
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those experiences. So you're going to hear from me, but
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mostly you're going to hear from guests. Today's no exception.
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My guest is Jonathan Bellow, founder, CEO, and principal accountant
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of one to eight Solutions, and here's his bio. Since
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launching one to eight Solutions in two thousand and one
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and becoming a certified QuickBooks Provisor pro advisor excuse me,
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Jonathan developed a client first business attitude, always putting his
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client's unique business needs first. Mostly, he's driven to continuous
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grow and improve his business skills to help clients grow theirs.
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Accounting and bookkeeping are two of the deepest levels of
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understanding of one's business, and Jonathan and his team value
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that partnership. They seek to understand the unique nature of
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their client's businesses to achieve improved results. The gather knowledge
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of the business's inner workings by conducting a detailed assessment.
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They don't just learn about expenses and revenue. They also
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discover what's on the periphery that have a meaningful impact
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to the success of the business. They assess how the
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customer base is acquired, the systems used to manage the business,
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and a lot more. This manner of gathering information allows
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Jonathan and his team to take a more holistic approach
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to accounting needs and giving information back in a more
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timely way while providing meaningful knowledge or the other half
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of the story, caring about business his client's businesses is
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Jonathan's business. He likes to say that he helps business
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owners sleep more soundly at night knowing that financial operations
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are stress free. He was born in Boston, so he's
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a Cheue Bostony and he spent the first seven years
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of his life in Niedham, Massachusetts, then moved to Newton,
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where he has lived since and where he now runs
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his business. He spent five years in Maui, so we'll
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have to ask about that. And his significant other of
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thirteen years is Jen and they have a ten year
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old Giant Schnauzer named Gunner Oh and they currently dog
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sit for their nephew's six year old cavapo named that
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this is how it's spelled hunter. And finally, Jonathan is
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an avid skier. Jonathan, welcome to Winning Business TV and Radio.
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Thank you for having me here. Kevin and I get
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to say you have a.
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Second life as a talk show of boats.
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Well, that's this, that's this, that's the fun. So I
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want to talk about a little bit of family and
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then some background. Tell us about jen.
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Oh. Jen is my partner and she is my foyl
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and she has helped me settle down in my life.
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So for many many years I had fomo.
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If I didn't go out, I thought I was missing something.
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And now she has gotten me very comfortable to be home,
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comfortable in my own thoughts, being quiet, which is a
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huge change of pace, which also sometimes causes conflict because
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after a long day of working, I got to tell
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one to make a small change in the crawl. It's
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one to eight solutions. It wound up being ton just
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noticing that in the crawl. And so sometimes I cause
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this conflict because like after a long day, I'm ready
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to sit. Imagine she's been waiting for me to come
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out and be part of her life.
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More conversation for sure.
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But you know, it's been a very positive part of
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my growth in my life having a partner like her.
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Especially over the past year or so, some health issues
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have cropped up, you know, not being alone. And you know,
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of course, loneliness is one of the biggest problems playing
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American you know, America.
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The world.
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Uh, you know, you know, men mostly more so than women.
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So it's good. It's good to have somebody around.
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I like hearing that. All right, tell us about the dogs.
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Okay, So living in Maui, I went from being a
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person who was weary of dogs, scared of dogs, and
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uh and to a per I met this woman and
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she had two Schnauzers.
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She had a giant Schnauzer and a miniature Schnauzer.
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We had a MANI for a long time.
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Yeah, that's right. We've had this conversation before. And so
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the first time she introduced me to the dog, I said, oh,
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these dogs are nice, but they smell. So two years later,
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if they smelt, I was washing the dogs on my own.
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A few years later she called to tell me that
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she knew met a new breeder and that I should
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get my first giant Schnauzer on my own, and Gunner
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is my third giant Schnauzer and will be my last
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giant Schnauzer because as I get older and strength is
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starting to wane, if something happens, I don't want to
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be picking up a seventy or eighty or ninety pound
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dollar to have to carry them out of the woods
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or something. But he's a goofball. He's very he's ten
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years old. He's got a ton of puppy energy. Handa
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who is. And by the way, nobody in my family
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had dogs before me. The family is now up was
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up to four dogs. We lost one recently. Hunter joined
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us about six years ago, right, you know, they got
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him right before COVID. But he you know, somebody's his
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COVID dog. And he is a fifteen pound kavapoo. He's
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really cute and he's very needy.
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Also, that's all right, oh all right.
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And my brother and his wife are in Tokyo and
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Vietnam for the next three weeks, so we're house sitting.
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Okay, we're not house sitting, we're dog sitting.
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Dog sitting for them too. Wow, Okay, all right, let's
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go back. Let's let's rewind the time machine, set the
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way back machine. Simon Simon to growing up, what were
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your early interests in say, high school?
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Oh, my early interest in high school you know, uh,
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first being a bad boy, going on, drinking and smoking pot.
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That was always my you know, But then you know, truthfully,
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I was not a great student. I was good. I
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was a good student, got me into UMass amates, got
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me in the School of Business Administration, so that was
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an achievement.
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But I was always like, you know, one of you know,
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one of these kids.
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I wanted to you know, go out, have fun and
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play before becoming serious athletic activities was skiing, wrestling. I
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used to joke that my best activities are from the
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waist down and as you know, you see you ski
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with me. Loved music. Around seventeen, eighteen years old, I
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started going to my first life concerts and that was
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always a big part of my life, you know, growing
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up in the late seventies early eighties as a young man,
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was always running into Boston to you know, because I
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lived in Newton, so it was easy so enjoying the nightlife.
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I went to Newport because a friend had rented a house.
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I was the guest who never left.
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And that began like ten summers of doing Newport summers,
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which eventually got me out of accounting into software sales
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e into so.
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Well, I have that question in a minute. How did
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you pick accounting as a career, at least initially and
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then now.
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So accounting as a career. I called myself a reluctant accountant.
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It was math that got me into U MASS. And
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I went to U Mass initially as pre med and
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again my lack of study ethics got in the way.
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You know, I had a great UMass experience, and I
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realized that I'm not going to be going to medical school,
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that I had better choose an alternate route, and I
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was able to do something that was very difficult to
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do and transfer to at that time, School of Business
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and Administration now is the Eisenberg School, and I'm looking
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around at the majors, and I just felt accounting was
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going to be the best fit for me. I very
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quickly realized that I was not going to be a CPA,
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and I was not going to be doing taxes, and
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I wasn't going.
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To be doing audit, and I already developed a leaning
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towards working with small businesses. I got a job in
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the university working with student run businesses, helping.
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Them understand accounting.
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That was back in nineteen eighty seventy nine, eighty eighty one.
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Until I did it, until I graduated and got out,
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did two years of corporate accounting. Hated it, said I'll
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never do accounting again. But I could never get away
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from the industry. It's just like al Pacino in The
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Godfather jes thank you out, you get pulled back in.
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I worked from software.
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Companies and then one of Eight Solutions was started as
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an IT service firm, using QuickBooks consulting as a lead
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to have recurring revenue with my clients. You know, if
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you're doing set up, training, implementation of accounting solutions, your
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goal is to work yourself out of a job. And
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I didn't want to do that. I wanted to build
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a relationship.
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What's behind the one a name? Oh, I'll come back
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to the well you can come back to.
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Just very quickly. So twelve years into the business as
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an IT person, I realized I couldn't scale it, and
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I decided to get into transactional accounting because one thing
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I knew I did well is I teach people how
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to do accounting and bookkeeping. Okay, so how did one
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a come along? So my first consulting shingles was Bell Consulting. Now,
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I hung out my first shingle in eighty seven, right
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after all the Baby Belt all the Bell companies were
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broken up into the Baby Bell. Yes, and so I was.
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I always got the question are you related to Bell Labs?
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Are you part of AT and T? And something like that.
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So when I was when I came back from aUI
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you know, when you're ready, I'll tell you more about that.
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And I had done a couple of stints working for
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some people. I decided to hang out the shingle again
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because it was one the dotknot bust had taken place.
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There were plenty of salespeople who had successful track records.
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Because I always worked with startups as a salesperson that
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never had a track record, I decided to hang out
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the shingleful one eight solutions. I was struggling with coming
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up with a name, and my oldest brother, and I'm
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the youngest of three boys, said hey, come and have
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lunch with me. I get some name for you, and
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he gave me like the first two and then he
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gave me one eight. I go, why one eight? Well,
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I'm Jewish and Hi.
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They let a hi, which is the eighteenth letter of
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the Hebrew Alpha bit was also my grandfather's name, Kiman.
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He lived eighty eight years old, which is eighteen past seventy.
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So there was a numerology there and life wocks. I said,