how it all started …
Accounting is one of those professions that induces groans when people learn it is what you do for a living. Or, it prompts an enthusiastic request for assistance with the annual 1040 filing.
Such was my experience while pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and subsequently, working at one of the Big 4 Accounting Firms. If they weren’t groaning or asking for tax breaks, people would remark, “You’re an accountant? I never would’ve pictured that.” To them, I would justify how exciting and interesting it can be to find that understated revenue account. To save my reputation from being considered boring, I would draw parallels between my profession and that of a private investigator. But, all the while I was lying. And, worse than lying to others, I was lying to myself.
I was a rebellious accountant – taking drama classes at the local city college, wearing loud clothing on the weekends, picking up hobbies in photography, screen-writing, and movie criticism. To keep myself from falling out of my seat each day, I had the most aesthetically appealing spreadsheets in the industry. My soul wanted out of the rules and regulations, the ticking and tying.
Despite convention, I left the firm (and a really nice paycheck). My first foray into the outside world was with a small importer and distributor of fashion apparel as a corporate showroom sales manager. I was allowed to creatively run free: to design visual displays and aid clients in assembling the perfect fashion collection for their shops. This job, while a definite improvement in the expansion of my creative mind, still did not totally satisfy me intellectually and analytically. And, in many ways, I craved the ticking and tying – the “figuring things out” of an accounting job. I wanted more.
Now older, I was conflicted with the ever-present career dilemma of creative stimulation vs. analytical challenge. I cried: what was I going to do with my life? There is no place in this world for people with this conflict. Artists must paint, not paint and count inventory. Rocket scientists must build spaceships, not build spaceships and design the interiors to them. Was I destined to the life of a misfit?
So I decided to take life into my own small hands and start my own business: a business in which I get to create artistically, yet manage analytically.
“Mmm… paper” is what I say when I come into contact with great paper. I have always been a lover of all that is paper: from the basic legal pads at Staples to the luxurious French and Italian stocks of your finer Beverly Hills stationers. You can usually hear me in the aisles whispering to myself, “mmm… paper”.
And, so I stopped the lying. This is what I really want to do with my life. I want to play with paper for a living.
In early 2004, I began my stationery business. You guessed it: mmm… paper. I design wedding invitations, birth announcements, and stationery. Paper has always been a way for me to express who I am – not only in the written words – but also in the actual paper itself. You can tell a lot about someone by the correspondence they send to you. The look, the feel, and the design speak for the person in ways that the writing itself cannot.
Sometimes I wonder what it is I like most about my business: the process I go through to create a new design, or the actual business method behind everything I do. It is a combination of both. But, more important, it is finding ways for my clients to express who they are through their paper correspondence: the accountants who want to act, the salespeople who want to make spreadsheets, the rocket scientists who want to decorate. And, that is something to which my soul can relate.