The phone rang with a name I hadn’t seen in years.
We’d worked together at another company a long time ago, and we hadn’t stayed in touch — the kind of contact you assume you’ll never hear from again. I looked at the screen and thought about letting it go to voicemail.
I answered.
“I need your help.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m on the board of a nonprofit. Their books are in really bad shape. We need you to fix them.”
It was a school in Florida. Their books were, in fact, in bad shape — and I wasn’t the first person they’d asked. They’d already brought in other people to clean it up, and it hadn’t gotten done.
That’s more common than you’d think. Cleanup work looks like data entry from the outside, so organizations hire for data entry, and then the project stalls partway through because nobody can figure out how the file got that way in the first place.
We fixed it. Not just the numbers — the processes underneath, so it wouldn’t drift back. Then I trained their new bookkeeper to run it.
That was three years ago. I still consult with them on the complicated things.
That call is the shortest version of what this business actually is. Somebody is in trouble with their books, they’ve usually tried something already, and they need someone who will see it all the way through instead of leaving halfway.
I’m glad I picked up.