Professional License = Entrepreneurship? Some Clarification

I figured I would clarify my goals a little bit more regarding my quest to obtain a CPA license. This post will essentially explain anyone’s desire to obtain a professional license at all and why it’s a smart decision for me.

A Professional License exists to weed out the people who give a half ass about the profession, and they regulate the amount of people in the profession itself. Artificially lowering of the supply of professionals, aka making a difficult test to pass, naturally increases demand for those licensed professionals. It’s smart for those professionals to maintain the status quo, but annoying for anyone who wishes to break into that profession.

I decided that getting a professional license would not only help me to get to where I want to be, but it would teach me immense amounts about business and finance as well. On top of this, it would free up a lot of time in order to work on other projects.

The CPA license solved many problems for me. First was my complete and utter lack of income. I felt, and still feel, that in today’s world, it takes a lot more capital to do any sort of start up business (including tech), then it did 10 years ago. The need to set up an entity, and get proper licenses, as well as paying contractors creates a problem for someone who wishes to break into that field.

If you dont have the skills necessary to make a product (electrical engineering), or write a software app or program, you are at an immediate disadvantage because you have to find someone who is good at programming or engineering, and pay them. Not only that, but they will also need to share your vision, and be willing to work with you, even though you really dont bring anything to the table (and dont say sales and marketing…). One of the reasons I chose to learn accounting, is so that I could bring something valuable to the table.

Becoming a CPA will raise my chances of starting up a business by:

1. Having additional money in order to Hire a specialized contractor.
2. Be valuable to a programmer/engineer who is looking for the same thing that I am in a start up.
3. Have the time necessary to work on such an undertaking.

As you can see, it was a pretty sound decision. If I had continued to work as a sales employee for some company, I could never accomplish this. I wouldn’t be able to get the free time, nor be able to study programming and finance nearly as much. Including the miserable salaries of the average sales person ($60k or so for where I live with ~5 years exp), I could have never gotten this far.

Aside from all of the above, I like the fact that there is a little prestige involved in having a professional license. People tend to view you a little different when you tell them you are a CPA, Attorney, or Certified Financial Analyst. With all of my previous failures, and mediocre performances at previous jobs (explained more here), my ego definitely needs this. Who said every decision needs to be 100% logical.