01: How I Quit My Job: My Entrepreneur Story
Paden Ep 1: Transcript
Paden: Self Q + A
[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Paden Squires, and I'm the host of the podcast. This podcast is for those who are dissatisfied with where they are at in their life and career currently- I used to be one. When I got out of college with my master's degree, I started working in banking, I eventually moved to a Fortune 500 company.
I quickly found out being an employee was not for me. I was bored out of my mind and did not like it whatsoever. Something eventually lit a fire under me. I started studying for the CPA exam, listening to podcasts, and reading books every day. By doing that, I had passed all four parts of the CPA exam in eight months and quit my job.
I opened up my own tax firm, having never been paid to do someone's taxes. That was in 2014. Since then, I've consistently grown my business. I had a lot of success in other business ventures, including real estate, property management, among other things. And now, I'm looking for a new venture. I want to help inspire you and other entrepreneurs to [00:01:00] achieve their potentials and dreams, as well as learn from the stories of these entrepreneurs, as to see what has gone well, and what hasn't gone well for them.
Let's go create a bunch of healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs.
paden: Hey, quick ask from you guys, if you ever got any value from these podcasts, I kindly ask you to rate and review it. It really is the best way to help us grow and reach more people. We want to get as many healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs out there as possible. Thanks, now to the show. Hey guys,I interview a lot of other people and so today I'm going to answer the same questions I ask a lot of my guests: First question, tell me about yourself and what you do. So yeah, I'm Peyton Squires. I am a CPA, also a CFP. I do a lot of tax and wealth consulting.
paden: My journey, currently I own and operate WR Tax Planners, [00:02:00] Missouri, that's a new company of mine. I have partners on it as well. new company that had, Squire CPA, my old company I ran has merged into,providing the tax and wealth, services all under one roof.
paden: So my background, so I'm married, married to my wife, Devin. We've been married for, almost about 11 and a half years. We have three kids, they are a seven year old girl, six year old girl, and a four year old boy. We like to do all the normal family stuff, our lives are pretty consumed right now with, dealing with the kids and, you know, and also our busy lives, my wife's, a nurse practitioner.
paden: So she's got a busy career. I’ve got a very busy career. and we have three young children. what certainly keeps us busy. Tell us about your journey to get where you are now. I quit my job. I had a couple of jobs out of college. So I went to college, got a bachelor's degree, got a master's degree.
paden: I came out of college with my MBA, went into banking for a couple of years, found out that kind of, it was traditional, [00:03:00] small, smallish bank, not really what I wanted to do, while working in there, you look ahead and see man, there's nobody ahead of me that has a job I would even really want.
paden: So what,what am I doing here? From there I went and worked for a fortune 500 company, worked in the finance department, did a lot of cost accounting. We manufactured all kinds of frozen food products. And you know, I was the guy like counting the carrots, making sure we didn't use too many carrots or peas and the pies, and just tracking the cost for all those items. It was really boring work, at least it was for me personally. I probably had enough work to keep me busy for maybe 10 hours a week. The cool thing is that's when I took advantage of the situation. Nobody cared really what I did. I just sat there in my cubicle and didn't have much to do.
paden: So I decided to take the CPA exam. So I spent eight months, working at that job, listening to audio, basically daily for hours at a time, CPA exam. So I took all four of them, passed all four of them in eight months, which was pretty quick to do that.[00:04:00] from there, I quit my job. I opened up my own accounting practice, which was the plan.
paden: I had zero public accounting experience. I had not filed a single tax return for anybody before then. So I decided it would be a great job to open up my own tax firm, for my living room in small, Fayette, Missouri. but it turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. You know,I slowly grew the business.
paden: I was lucky enough to have a guy in the area that was, retiring, small book of business, a lot of the clients, they came on with me, it was by no means a large book of business, but it was something enough to make me willing to. So I started the business, started running it.
paden: It wasn't until my third year in business where I made as much money as I was making when I quit my job. so it certainly wasn't easy and it certainly wasn't a quick payoff. no, I was in business long enough to catch some breaks, right? You meet people, I guess they take pity on you or whatever.
paden: And [00:05:00] they help you out, right? They introduce you to people, you get people, they're advocates and, and you take care of people and you do a good job and do what you're going to say. And you just start growing and that's what's happened. I grew the business consistently. eventually opened up an office in Columbia.
paden: the business really started to take off. I opened up the office in Columbia in 2017. The cool thing is, that's really when the business really started to take off and is really just. been compounding sense, but that was the same year my second daughter was born.
paden: So we had two almost babies at the same time. They're only 15 months apart and that's really when I started getting committed into self development. 2017 is when I started reading constantly. I probably read 50 plus books that year and it really started me on my growth journey.
paden: I read everything from real estate investing to just mindset stuff,and how to be more positive and things like that. So that, I really credit with my career taking off. I think I really started the [00:06:00] process of becoming more and more self aware, which allows you to operate in the world just so much easier.
paden: Next question: what's your superpower? I've had people tell me my superpower is to take complex things and simplify them or to explain them in a simple way. Especially around financial concepts, literally thousands of meetings, with entrepreneurs talking about their business and the tax situations and the financial situations, that I've had to explain these things, and teach these concepts so many times you get really good at distilling it down to what's the important information and also being able to explain it in several different ways that,if you can explain it enough different times that, the person across from you can understand it.
paden: So I've gotten really good at that. I've gotten really good at just communicating with people, in a one on one fashion around sensitive topics, and you know, as an accountant, like a lot of what we do is counseling, man. A lot of counseling.
paden: You get drug into all [00:07:00] kinds of situations, both good and bad. And you're almost an emotional counselor in a lot of ways, or at least, the best advisors or counselors, for sure, and teachers. So I think that's my superpower. What's the best decision I have ever made? Best decision I've ever made, outside of picking my wife, right?
paden: Which it's amazing that we make a decision on who we're going to marry fairly young. And I was just lucky that I picked a good one, even though I had no idea what I was doing. and it worked out, I think the success to our marriage is, no matter what, we're always just trying to figure out a solution. By no means at all is our relationship perfect, but at the same time we're both willing to grow and change in positive directions when we need to. Now we can count on each other for that. What's one of the biggest mistakes you've ever made? Biggest mistake. I would say the biggest mistake and it's kind of a, I don't know, cliche or whatever.
paden: It sounds hokey, [00:08:00] but it's true. thinking too small. Throughout my career, the biggest limiting success on me was me without a doubt. My goals and what I thought I was capable of, were really small, or at least small to, to what I think I'm capable of now. So it's just a matter of not shooting high.
paden: I kept putting small goals and hitting them, but I know now when I look back on my career that I could have gotten to where I am now a whole lot faster if I just believed. That I could actually get there,
paden: What is one piece of advice you would give to your younger self?
paden: I'd play off the last question. think bigger. Really truly don't limit your goals of your life or where you want to be because you don't think you can get there. You have zero idea of what you are capable of. Zero. You have no idea. you don't know [00:09:00] enough about you to know what you are capable of.
paden: and that is the biggest piece of advice I'd give is to think big and the main thing in any job,what you're becoming has Jim Rohn, famously say, it's what you are becoming in the process of that job is worth way more than anything you're going to get or any money compensation you're going to get out of it. Younger self be completely focused on self awareness and self development and think a whole lot bigger because you have no idea. what you're capable of.
paden: And that's all I got.
paden: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people, as we're trying to accomplish our goal of help creating more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me, Paden Squires, or going to @padensquires.com. On the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal [00:10:00] growth, and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.
