Client Driven

There was a moment in October when Samantha Howes knew she had made the right decision to form her own accounting firm.

After just one month in business, she made more money in one week than she had made in six weeks working for a large regional accounting firm.

Not bad for a woman who started her quest to become an accountant while selling drinks from a golf cart at a Sanibel Island golf club. Quick with numbers, Howes, 41, became a CPA in Fort Myers after she had started a family.

The child of French and Italian parents, Howes grew up in Canada, where her father was a builder. She attended fashion design school, studied theater in Paris and worked for two years as a flight attendant for a Canadian charter airline ferrying workers from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan to Kuwait after the first Gulf War. She met her husband while on vacation in Sanibel and started working at one of the island's golf clubs, dispensing drinks from a cart. Her boss there suggested she would make a good accountant, so she followed his advice and earned a master's degree in accounting and taxation from Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers.

Howes left a large regional accounting firm in September after working for the firm in Fort Myers for seven years. “There was no room to grow,” she says. “Being a woman in a big firm didn't help me.”

Now divorced but sharing parental care for her two sons, Howes says the Fort Myers-based accounting firm that bears her name is growing so much she needs more office space and plans to hire a bookkeeper for routine tasks.

Many of Howes' clients are entrepreneurs themselves, and they urged her to establish her own practice. She started with a dozen clients. “I wasn't afraid because I already had commitments,” she says. “I had enough clients to survive.”

For example, she credits Fort Myers homebuilder Victor DuPont for giving her the confidence to strike out on her own. “I believe in entrepreneurship, and I've been my own boss for 30 years,” he told her. “No risk, no reward.”

It cost Howes about $5,000 to start the business, including a $300 desk she bought from a client and business cards she printed from her own computer. Because she doesn't have costly overhead, she charges a relatively low $100 an hour. Her pitch to clients of high-priced accounting firms: “Whatever you paid last year, I'll cut it in half.”

Since she started her own firm in September, her roster of business clients has grown to 50. Howes believes the regional economy is rebounding and that will benefit her clients, many of whom are in the construction fields. “We can't get much lower,” she quips.

Howes says one of the biggest challenges of forming her own venture is handling the administrative tasks such as billing. “I make a to-do list every day,” she says. “You work your list; you don't make the list work you.”

Despite the growth in her business, Howes says she now has more time for charitable endeavors such as Junior Achievement, Special Equestrians and Rotary. “Every Sunday, I play golf,” she says, proudly displaying a plaque for a hole-in-one she scored recently.

She's also planning a summer vacation to the Bahamas with her sons. “That's the reward,” she says.