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For over 17 years I have been working with small to medium sized businesses as a CPA and lawyer. From 1995 to the end of 2001 I lived with my daughter in a house I built myself on a remote hillside in central Texas. During those years I still helped business owners go from dream to reality, but my focus shifted to very small businesses, many of them operating out of the owner's home.
Over the years, hundreds of small business owners have come to me for help only after they've gotten into some sort of trouble -- maybe IRS was trying to shut them down for non-payment of payroll taxes; or maybe their customers were not paying and the business was having bad cash-flow problems; or maybe they'd gotten themselves locked into an unfair lease; or maybe they'd sold their business and taken a promissory note for part of the payment, and the new owner was running the business into the ground and not making the note payments. There are more ways things can go wrong than ways to do it right.
When I'd ask why they didn't hire a lawyer or tax professional to help them do things right so they wouldn't get into trouble in the first place, the usual answer was that they couldn't afford it. But with the wisdom of hindsight, they could see that in fact, not doing things right in the first place had cost them 10, 20, maybe even 100's of times more than the professional's fee would have been.
When I came down from the mountaintop after my daughter graduated from high school and went away to college, I decided to set up an efficient system to deliver legal, accounting, and management advice to small business owners at a price they could afford -- so they could do things right in the first place. That system is called the Panterra Business Builder. At our web site www.panterraweb.com business owners can find plenty of free advice, or they can ask a question online and get an answer from a professional.
- Location:
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United States
- Primary occupation:
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lawyer
- Dream occupation:
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lawyer
- Hometown:
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Houston, TX
- Schools attended:
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Robert E. Lee High School, University of Texas at Ausin
- I like:
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chocolate ice cream and kittens and David Austin roses and late afternoon sunlight and the Internet
- Favorite writers:
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Damien Broderick
- Favorite books:
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too many, too many
- Favorite newspapers:
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NYT, WSJ
- Favorite magazines:
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Wired
- Favorite music:
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classical, classic rock, hard rock, renaissance, choral
- Favorite movies:
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Run Lola Run, Les Miserables (version directed by Leloach) ... actually I like all movies except Hollow Man and Poor White Trash Part 2
- Favorite TV shows:
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West Wing and Smallville
- Favorite teams:
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don't like organized sports
- Favorite quote:
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TANSTAAFL
- Gender:
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"It's a girl!"