A road paved with t-accounts
I’ve always had this vague desire to run my own business. The problem is, it’s business itself that I’m passionate, not any particular craft or trade. That’s why I decided to go into accounting, because you get to work with the foundation and underlying parts of the company that make it all run. Also, in audit, you get to work at several different clients, which suits my attention-span more than committing to my own start-up.
A successful start-up takes a lot of work, dedication, and even then is likely to fail. I honestly don’t feel innovative enough to be an entrepreneur like the guy who started Starbucks, etc.
A lot of the big companies we work on seem to form by just buying up a bunch of other companies, packaging their products together, and not actually making anything new. That takes a huge amount of existing capital though, and of course, you would need to be pretty familiar with an industry to see how to pull off something like that.
If starting a business were something I really wanted to do, I am seeing how working in something like public accounting gives you the opportunity to learn about industries, make connections, and get some real-world experience. So if you want to run your own company someday, here is my vote for majoring in accounting!
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I’d say about 15% chance you’ll stay in public accounting (just pulling a number out), though it’s probably not a bad estimate for what percentage end up staying.
But I would also say that you’ve picked the perfect field to be in when you feel that way about business – this way you learn about how a bunch of different businesses, what works and what doesn’t, and you become that Valuable Asset in the future.
Whether you start your own shop, or join someone to be the financial/accounting smarts behind someone else’s idea, you’ll definitely have options – and yeah, that’s one of the big things that appealed to me when getting into this line of work.
this is exactly how i feel! “The problem is, it’s business itself that I’m passionate, not any particular craft or trade. ” haha!
On a side-note, have you heard of any seniors who graduated with an accounting degree, and went on(straight after grraduating) to clinch a job that is more of what one with a business degree would do? e.g. Banking, running of businesses, etc.