Very Short Interview No. 1

Interviewee: The person I interviewed is Mr. Arturo Martinez, an accountant in Miami, Florida. He attended the University of Florida and received his MBA in Business Accounting. My family and I have known him for many years, and he actually is the accountant for my mother’s dental office. He has been practicing accounting for nearly twenty years, and has owned his own accounting firm for over ten years. Therefore, I believe Mr. Martinez is a business owner, yet he is constantly implementing new technology to his business, and having innovative new ideas to help his clients. So in part he is also an entrepreneur.

1.    What does it mean to be an entrepreneur compared to a business owner?

A.    “What does it mean? Well that’s a kind of hard to describe, I barely know how to define what an entrepreneur is. I guess to me being a business owner is more of a professional, and an entrepreneur is a person that makes something out of nothing. Companies like Microsoft, people like Bill Gates, represent bold and crazy risk takers. I see myself as a professional, and I think of others as business men who may have no education, but were able to make something out of nothing. Entrepreneurs are constantly evolving.”

2.    What do you wish you had been taught in school before setting out on your own path as an entrepreneur? 

A.    “I wish I didn’t have to take all of those required classes that had nothing to do with what I wanted to do in my career. I felt like I wasted time by taking things like Spanish history. I wish I had taken more things on typing, and learned how to be more efficient with my time. One of the things I regret I suppose is that I was very interested in how to do taxes while I was in the business college at UF, but I had a terrible professor. He was arrogant and made the accounting classes unenjoyable, so much so that I changed the career path I was interested in because of him. All because of one individual I didn’t stick with my plans, and in the end that made it so much more difficult for me when I started doing accounting years later. I basically had to teach myself everything, and figure out things on my own.”

3.    What new technology and programs helped you as an entrepreneur?

A.    “I am truly blessed by how much new technology there is. I like to use technology because it helps me do my job better and faster. It takes about eight or nine people to do the job that I do by myself, but it’s because of the technology I have available to me that I can have a one-man business. To me it’s all about integration and simplifying the work down as much as possible. For example, I have scanners that hook up to my computer and from my computer I have programs that uploads all the bills and taxes that I may be doing for a client automatically into one place. The programs I have keep me up to date with the times, and even though they may be expensive to purchase, I would rather spend my money on the technology rather than spending more time and money having employees do it for me, or have me do more work on my own than what is necessary- that’s just my philosophy. Recently I have been working on a new client portal program that I made which allows for clients to simply log into the portal at their own time and see all their taxes, all their W2 forms, everything that they have ever filed in one secure place. I’ve spent about 20 hours a week working on this new program, and it’s all for the reason that more and more clients want the new technology, they want the ability to control and see what is going on.”     

Reflection: I found it very intriguing on what Mr. Martinez said about wishing he didn’t waste time taking unnecessary classes in college. He mentioned how it’s understandable that some people need those classes so that they can really discover what they want to do in life, but he also mentioned that the people who know what they want to do should be allowed to just dive in and complete their goals instead of going off doing classes that are not relevant to them. I also really appreciated how time and effort he puts into learning about new technology. For being an older guy, he really has bought into the idea on how much using technology can help him as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and how it helps his clients.