Starting Over

We’re ba-a-a-ack!

I first started this blog at the end of 2009, in the run-up to the 2010 tax season. I was launching my website and had a vague idea that I could grow my business through online marketing. A blog would attract people to my website, where they would quickly learn what a smart and talented guy I was and understand that it was in their best interest to hire me.

Turns out my online marketing produced—and I always track my marketing with the exactness of an accountant (what else would you expect?)—exactly ONE client that year. Ha! Luckily, I had success with the more traditional methods.

Throughout 2010 I managed to write an entry each month, and even better, managed to keep them fairly interesting and topical, which became harder and harder as the year went on. By the time the 2011 tax season arrived, I was so swamped I simply no longer had time for it. It was my busiest season up to that point, and I did it mostly evenings and weekends while still working full time for Universal Accounting. Unfortunately, once I fell out of the blogging habit, I never got started again. 2012, 2013 came and went without a peep from me!

So that’s why, with the debut of Bottom Line’s new website, we also announce the return of our blog. No, no—don’t applaud. You’re embarrassing me.

What will be different this time, you might be asking? Will the blog still be here next month, or the month after?

Well, for starters, online social media is more popular now than it was even those few years ago. I now have not only a personal but a business Facebook page, and I have made and kept a commitment to post something new to my business page virtually every working day.

In addition, the marketing power of the internet has likewise exploded since my blog entered its unplanned hiatus back in 2011. Last year, of the more than 100 new clients we acquired, nearly 25 of them found us online. It actually got to the point that I was afraid to do more web marketing for fear of not being able to keep up (I was also teaching at SLCC at the time).

I’m actually really excited to start again. I’m a writer in my bones. Always have been, to one degree or other, and I’ve been storing up topics to address for quite a while now. It also helps that I no longer run Bottom Line in the spare cracks of my time. Even in my busiest months, I have managed to post new content to my Facebook page almost every day. Running things on a full-time basis should make it possible to also post a new blog once a month.

And of course, when I say “blog,” my emphasis is on the communal meaning of the word. It is my hope that you will find the discussion here interesting enough to join. Please feel free to visit often, to share my comments and those of others who visit here. The topics will often be on taxation and accounting, but handled with thoughtfulness and humor. They will also be on more general business, marketing, and even life and family matters. My goal will be to inform but also to entertain, and as sensitive as the subject of taxes can be in this country, I promise to do so in as politically neutral a way as I can if you will promise the same. The only rule I will insist on with regard to the dialog here is that it must be civil.

There. I’m back. Hope you’re as excited and optimistic about it as I am. Please join me, please spread the word, and let’s have some fun!