My father had been a CPA and it seemed like a good choice of professions; I decided to follow in his footsteps. In 1985, I joined the CPA practice he had founded 25 years earlier. By 2013, I had become its sole owner and was dissatisfied with how the firm was operating.

My staff picked and chose what they wanted to work on at their leisure. This caused engagements to drag out and also affected realization. Eventually a due date would arise and something would have to happen to satisfy the deadline; that responsibility fell to me.

In my early 30s, I decided to leave my job as restaurant manager due to its demanding nights and weekends schedule. As a single mom with three daughters at home, I needed a daytime profession. I accepted my mom’s offer to join her tax preparation firm, despite my expectations of endless paperwork. I soon discovered tax work wasn’t just about crunching numbers, it was about helping people—and I absolutely loved it.

I was drawn to accounting because it’s black and white, accounts have to balance and it’s far more logical than economics. When I decided to pursue the subject in college, it looked like a good profession and one that I was interested in. I never imagined that 20 years later, I would be the burnt-out owner of a CPA practice.

At the time, I had been trying to build my accounting firm while also running a small software company which sold accounting systems.

Before I did the How to Dream in Color Workshop, in 2002, if someone had asked me for my goal as a CPA, I’d probably have answered, “To finish the tax return that’s on my desk.” I’d hit bottom in 2000 and was just coming up.