Business

Q. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

A. Back in 1969, I graduated from college with a writing degree. I moved to New York and I needed some money while trying to write a novel. So, when I saw an ad about a free H&R Block course on how to do taxes, I enrolled. Then they hired the best students to work part-time. I got a job for the tax season and proceeded to do that for six years. At the same time, I got to know more writers and started helping them with their tax preparation. In 1975, I decided to try to do it full time. Gradually, the business grew. Now, we have three partners and 11 employees.


Q. How did you fund the business?

A. It wasn't that hard. In the beginning, I worked out of my living room. Then, I rented the back room of a restaurant around the corner. And a friend loaned me $500.


Q. What has been the biggest challenge you've faced?

A. Finding good people to expand with. It's very difficult to find people who are both competent in taxation and can have the right kind of rapport with clients.


Q. What mistakes have you've made and what have you learned from them?

A. We hired an employee who made a very bad mistake on somebody's return -- and we didn't have errors and omissions insurance. We wound up with a $30,000 bill. It taught us we needed to be protected.


Q. Have you changed your business strategy?

A. The business plan evolved as the business grew. We've gone from preparing personal tax returns to preparing corporate tax returns, to dealing with people's estates. It's been a growth process.


Q. What surprises have you encountered?

A. It's always a surprise when people leave. We've had four people leave; one we tossed and three quit, sometimes precipitously. The other surprise involved the World Trade Center. We had a national disaster declared in New York City and, because of that, there were certain concessions related to taxes. The deadline for an extension was extended well into the next year. So we overlapped our two tax years, and it made for a lot less down time than we usually have.


Q. Who in the business world do you look up to, and what have you learned from them?

A. I'm in a group of enrolled agents who have large tax practices. That group has always given me ideas about how to run my business.


Q. How do you set yourself apart from others in your industry?

A. We try to be very much a West-Side-of-Manhattan firm. Our offices are in an apartment building. And we maintain a feeling of being in our home, laid back, an unstressed atmosphere. We have book jackets of our clients on the walls, like family pictures. By being seen as having a style that is more outside the box, we hope our product will be viewed as having some originality as well.


Q. What advice would you give someone starting a small business?

A. Follow your niche and try to be the best in that niche. And, also, remember that the process of doing something is almost as important as what you do.