- Undergraduate Degree: U.C. Berkeley (philosophy and literature major. purely decorative)
- Accounting Education: Santa Clara University
- Government Credentials: Certified Public Accountant
- Street Credentials: Full Service Accounting Firm for five years, Tax firm for a year. Designed my own cryptocurrency methods and worked with a software engineer to build a custom software suite to handle the work.
Here’s a joke I stole from a fellow accountant named Anne Marie: How can you tell your accountant is an extrovert? They look at your shoes when they’re talking to you.
We’re not a dynamic people.
I started with bookkeeping for restaurants. Answering questions like “how many customers do I need in order to break even?” and “Do I need to file anything with the government?” and “what’s my most profitable item?”
I worked for a great accounting firm, SFBay Financial. It’s a bookkeeping and accounting shop handling Hospitality, Retail, Tech, Property Management, Law Firms, Manufacturing, etc. etc. I did accounting for every kind of industry. I’m a huge fan of SFBay Financial and if you need a whole team of accountants, they’re great.
I worked for a tax firm, Mah & Associates. It’s a tax and audit shop handling everything from simple personal tax returns through multi-national corporate returns. If you need a good tax preparer, they’re great.
I do most of my ongoing work with Alex Kugelman (alex@kugelmanlaw.com) and do things like compiling evidence for tax audits, expert witness testimony, things like that. Alex is a full-service tax lawyer, so his shop files tax returns, represents people under audits, soothes your frazzled nerves, etc. Alex is the best you can get, unless you’re obscenely rich.
I’m a pessimist, which makes me a good accountant. Also, I live and work alone in my home in the woods, which makes me uniquely suited for tedious, meticulous tasks. Also it makes me, you know, nobody is wowed by my charisma or anything. Mostly talking with me is a chore. But I’m a good accountant, so I’ve got that going for me, and getting your chores done isn’t all bad. Sometimes people get me talking about backcountry snowboarding in the Sierras or hiking in Nepal or bodysurfing in Central America, but then we forget to talk accounting.
If you’ve called your accountant, talk accounting.