Nowadays, more accountants and those with accounting background are finding solace in entrepreneurship than it used to be. Come to think of it, who do you think is better equipped with the required training to make a good accountant?
The vocabulary ‘accountpreneur’ has suddenly found its way into many English dictionary because of the increased number of accountants that has successfully become big time entrepreneurs.
7 reasons why accountants make better business owners
Complexity of doing business: the effect of globalization fuelled by the continuously improving state of business related technology has made business environment more sophisticated for many people. It is no longer enough to have a good business idea in order to succeed in business.
One needs to be well vast in the areas of business analysis, risk management and compliance management. The natural thing for accountpreneurs to do is to get involved in business knowing fully well that they possess the required skill needed in complex business environment.
Extensive involvement in decision making: accounting as a profession exist for one main purpose, and that is to provide management with useful information to aid their decision making process. Due to the fact that businesses now have to make extensive business decision, accountants being highly knowledgeable in processing business and accounting information for decision making, they find it easy to make decisions when they are in business for themselves.
Changes in accounting curricular: the curriculum of accounting education and professional accountancy body doesn’t stand still, it changes in line with modern business reality to better equip accountants with both technical and soft skills needed by new generation accountants.
They understand the language of figure and business: accountants become successful entrepreneurs because they speak and write the language business. Business operation will be chaotic if poor accounting records are kept, therefore, businesses will be better managed by people with the right mix of skills which are all embedded in accountancy courses.
High level of unemployment: the high unemployment rate also motivates accountants to become entrepreneurs. No one likes to be unemployed for a long time especially when he or she knows they can easily go into business for themselves.
Incredible opportunity created by globalization and internet: the internet is a great business environment leveller for people of all works of life including accountants. Accountants use the internet to reach out to a greater number of people would not have been possible if not for the rapid growth that we have all witnessed in the adoption of IT in business processes.
The temptation to become an entrepreneur as an accountant is so high now that only very few people who are trained in business studies can resist. I was having a chat with an old school mate the other day and he told me that he regret wasting some years of his life working as a full-time accountant as opposed to taking up a part-time job and doing his personal business as well.
The desire to win: accountants are by nature dogged people and will never quit until they achieve their goal. After spending years studying for rigorous accounting courses, accountants became used to winning and easily get bored doing things that would not be challenging enough.
One of the people that coached me in business always says that every accountant deserve to be in business for themselves and not selling their business expertise for peanuts. Imagine what accountants miss out of by selling their time advising business owners on how to grow their businesses without having any sort of business that they can call their own.
I hope that at this stage of this writing that I have been able
Collen says
Inspiring indeed, thats exactly one of the reasons why i took up the accounting profession.
thanks.
chinweike says
On point Collen. Thanks