New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

Question

I am a CPA with 10+ years of experience and I work for a CPA firm as a tax and audit specialist.  I feel God prompting me to build a home-based business so I can spend more time shepherding my family.  What suggestions do you have for how I can go about doing that?

Answer

My recommendation would be for you to build upon all of your skills and experiences in accounting and as a CPA.  While working by the hour does not provide a lot of leverage, nor does it build a lot of value, you can certainly start out by simply working from home with your own client base that you build up over time (see the response to the Lawyer Looking to Become an Entrepreneur).  Many small businesses only need part-time accounting, tax and financial support, so you can start out with small client engagements on a monthly recurring basis where you perform their accounting on an outsourced basis as a "virtual" accountant.  From that base, you can start to add services that do create leverage for you so you can generate fee revenue that isn't tied to charging by the hour.  Importantly you would be leveraging your skills and experience and working from home with full control of your schedule.