Very Short Interview No 1

I chose to interview my dad, Scott Smiley.  Scott Smiley is a lawyer in Tallahassee Florida.  After working for a big law firm for about three years, Scott decided to start his own lawfirm with some of his peers from law school.  He has since then been rewarded best law firm in Tallahassee multiple times and been able to join the International Association of Defense Council (IADC).  Here is the questions and answers from the interview:

1.As an entrepreneur what were some of the struggles you faced early on?

One of the biggest struggles is finding clients and covering overhead costs.  Everything front rent to secretary salaries need to be paid off before you can get paid.  N the beginning, my partners and I only had a few clients that carried over from precious jobs.  This required us to advertise ourselves and find new clients to bring in business for the firm.  With the overhead costs and the amount of clients we had.  The partners did not even take in salaries until a few months into the business.  The biggest thing to remember from starting a business is always to cover the overhead before thinking of your salary. 

2.What do you wish you would have learned before starting your own law firm

Coordinating the advertising like yellow pages.  There was a lull in name recognition at the start of the business.  Also, knowing which clients would go with us, but they wouldn’t commit to us or the old firm.  You can’t really fix that, but when you can’t necessarily expect to bring a lot of clients over. Clients like to see you succeed on your own before they take the risk of switching.  Lastly, always have more expenses than you plan for.  There are so many expenses that go into your bottom line that you do not even expect.  Now that I have worked for a long time, I see how much expenses there really are.  Budgeting with a bigger plus or minus swings. Sometimes an expense you thought would be $500 ends up being $700.  At the start of a business when you are bringing in as much revenue, $200 is a big change and you need those bigger plus minus swing budgeting to help cover possible overages. 

3.Expectations I should have in an Entrepreneurship class?

Getting a solid understanding of startup cost. Get an idea of how to do it and a good grasp of planning and implementing start up across the board, not just what you are going to do but the budgeting of what you are going to do.  Say you are going to sell sandwiches, ads insurance, and salaries are needed to be thought of in the planning process.

4.What does being an Entrepreneur mean to you

It means whether on your own or not, its coming up with a plan or goal and implementing your plan.  When you see your plans and dreams come to fruition that’s entrepreneurship. From the start up idea to moving towards profit.  Ideas alone do not do it.  Ideas with implementation that makes the business.  The theory is forming a company you are in charge of. 

5.Was “being your own boss” the main reason starting your own firm?

It was definitely a reason.  I wanted to be n control of my future and my goals.  However, you learn that in reality Are you ever really your own boss? 

This interview was interesting because it really got me to fully understand how my dad has gotten to where he is today.  I grew up knowing that my dad started his own law firm, however, I was too young to remember some of the struggles he went through when starting up his own law firm.  I thought it was interesting how much emphases he put on budgeting, and how you dont really know how many expenses you have until you start up.  I hope to learn even more about entrepreneurship and startup business from him in the future