I have written extensively for and interacted with professionals from field engineers, research scientists, and corporate management to international accountants and tubing crews. My employment history consists of accounting, auditing, and contract administration for all aspects of the oil and gas industry. I have worked for large, integrated multi-national corporations and for owner-operated well servicing companies, and everything in between. These activities involved U.S. locations, off-shore drilling, and overseas manufacturing and sales. I will be pleased to share my expertise with your endeavors. Let’s get together.
Here’s my story:
I was born in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1943, and even though we moved away soon after, those roots might have contributed to my adventurous nature. We moved to a farmhouse near my grandfather’s farm, so that my father could help with the farming while his brother served in the Pacific during World War II. Though it certainly wasn’t like city life, my mother said we were pretty up-town. No indoor plumbing, but we had a three-holer outhouse, and a hand pump attached to the kitchen sink, not connected to a well, but it looked classy nonetheless.
I have fond memories of the farm, where I learned about hard work and the rules of commerce. Early risers called the milk cows to the barn for milking. The low-toned, throaty song echoed across the pasture and bid the cattle to come do their part. Processing the milk to extract the cream followed shortly, and the remaining skim milk was used to slop the hogs. Then it was time to gather the eggs. All self-respecting farmers kept chickens. The extra eggs and cream were taken to town to sell for cash, which supplemented the primary farm income from planting and harvesting winter wheat.
From the time I could walk, I loved being part of the whole process. I sat on a feed trough and watched my grandfather and father milk the cows. Occasionally they would say, ”Open wide,” and squirt warm, fresh milk into my mouth and sometimes all over my face if I didn’t hold really still. My grandfather let me help gather the eggs. It was an adventure to find where the hens had laid their eggs. They were clever to hide them in hopes of keeping them. We weren’t allowed in the chicken yard without an adult. The hens were sometimes annoyed, but the rooster was always mad when someone invaded his territory. He would chase us and could do some damage if he got close enough to peck.
Wanting to participate in all of farm life also gave me my first introduction to what has always struck me as senseless discrimination. On the farm there were barn cats and house cats, and woe be unto you if my grandmother caught you trying to sneak a barn cat into her yard. I’m still puzzled by the whole concept.
The war ended, my uncle came home, and we became city folk again. We still visited the farm often, and those visits solidified my understanding of how family life worked. To wit: when you are a Daddy, you don’t do any housework (except gender specific tasks, like fixing things or sharpening knives). However, when you get to be a Grandpa, you do all the housework while Grandma watches the new television set and tends her vast scrapbooks of newspaper articles, including every move of the Dionne quintuplets and Lindberg’s famous flight, and many movie stars’ lives, and political figures both here and abroad. I wonder what ever happened to those records of early 20th century history.
Back in the city, I explored other ways to be involved, which led to my first business venture. I set out at the tender age of nine, knocking on doors, offering to wash windows for a penny a window. I had quite a few takers, including a woman who had an enclosed porch the full length of her house, with paned windows. She paid me a penny a pane, and it took me the rest of my day. I collected over a dollar, which I thought was fantastic. I returned home and announced my success. My father beamed with pride, and my mother was livid. I had used up all her Windex. That was my introduction to “cost of sales”.
I was a curious sort who had a strong need to figure things out. One such puzzle I took to my sixth grade teacher, a gruff old man who was also the school principal. Why, I asked, did a small clock tick faster than a very large clock? It didn’t make sense to me. Anyone could see the hands had farther to move on a large clock face than on a small one. Shouldn’t the large clock need to tick faster to move the greater distance? I tried asking several different ways, thinking he just didn’t understand the question. He finally barked that I asked too many questions and that I should just learn to accept things as they are. I pondered that, and took his advice, sort of. I never asked HIM a question again.
The end of the fifties brought about many efforts to emancipate segments of society. My church youth group held a weekend convocation for which they brought in a church expert to talk to us about race relations. I’m sure that isn’t what they called it, but there it was. We were told that “those” children should attend the same schools as we did, perhaps even eat in the same cafes as we did, and we should be on our best Christian behavior. That didn’t extend, however, to living in the same neighborhood. After all, they should be with “their kind”. When I asked about socializing, i.e., dating, or marrying one of “those” people, I was asked to leave. I remembered my puzzle over the barn cats and the house cats.
I was invited to a High School Leadership Week at a prominent State University, (primarily because my sister was there as an honor student). One of the big presentations was on educating women to enter the work force. I asked about the impact that would have on the national unemployment problem. And who would care for the country’s children if all the moms were at work? I was told those things were not of consequence to the topic, and I might be more comfortable waiting outside the auditorium. Could it be that I was becoming a house cat/barn cat supporter? I don’t think so.
My first job away from home was a reflection of my need to make all things right with the world. I became a caseworker for the welfare department in a large urban area. After two years of working hard, I became ill and had to go home. What I learned from the experience was that “you can’t legislate fairness”. There will always be people who truly need assistance who don’t qualify. And there will always be people who don’t need it who learn to scam the system. That is also one of those recurring lesson in life.
The early years of living on my own, and early marriage, formed many of my attitudes toward value. Products I gravitated to were those which didn’t have large advertising budgets. Advertising, it seemed to me, was a frivolous cost that didn’t add to the value I received. It would take years for my attitude to evolve and to appreciate the value of marketing. Not only was it a huge industry employing thousands of people, it seemed to provide a necessary component to success as my favorite products disappeared. That would not be the first attitude of mine that would succumb to evolution.
Fast forwarding a decade, two beautiful children, and a not so beautiful divorce later, I was one of those working moms struggling to juggle all the requirements. I went to work for our local bank. One of my jobs was to determine checks to be returned each day for insufficient funds. I checked for pending deposits which could cover the apparent deficit. I noticed there were a select few large customers who routinely had deposits pending. However, I also noticed that the pending deposits were drawn on accounts which were also overdrawn. When I pointed this out to a senior bank officer, I was told just to note my findings and not return the checks. House cats win again.
At this time in history, prior to the approval of “branch banking”, the creation of a new bank required an assessment by the Comptroller of the Currency determining that there was a need in the community for an additional bank. Now, it seems, led by the Federal Reserve folks, the need is only the ability to outwit the competition to create questionable profits nationally and worldwide. The house cats are now world travelers. Barn cats are still relegated to the barn and ever fewer barn mice.
I ended up in the trust department of a bank where I witnessed a couple of customers and a few of their golfing friends scamming the stock market. They had a favorite small, local, over-the-counter company whose stock normally traded between $2 and $3 a share. Depending on rumors going around the local coffee shop, sometimes the stock would fall to $1. That would signal this group to buy, buy, buy. Amid all this activity, the stock would soar to $8, and sometimes even $10 a share, whereupon this group would sell, and the value would fall back to its normal range. These rises and falls in value had nothing to do with the small company or its business success or efficiency. It was purely the speculation of this group of friends. Prior to this experience, I truly believed the price of a stock was some indication of the value and strength of the company. Another lesson I see repeating itself in the real world. With the modern analytical capabilities of computers, speculations no longer depend on rumors at the coffee shop. Corporate activity and even trash can be digitally collected from the world over and used to base investment decisions on.
During this time I found it prudent to go back to college and get a degree. After all, I had two small children to support. In the first week of intermediate accounting, I asked why all those rules were necessary. If everyone reported honestly how their company was doing, wouldn’t that do? Guess not. And so many things open to interpretation, and oh so many opportunities to be creative. My evolving career as an accountant and auditor would confirm that, through my personal observations and from many shared “war stories” from associates. Some of those stories were of very creative practices, and some so creative that they bordered on fraud.
For example, sometime around 1958, when there was lots of very expensive drilling for oil being done in Saudi Arabia, a brilliant accountant at Texaco proposed that, in the spirit of the most basic accounting principle of matching expense to the revenue it produced, the cost of drilling a producing well was really not just the cost of that well, but also the cost of the six or seven preceding dry wells it took to hit the producer. Everyone knew this was a standard, predictable statistic. So Texaco began capitalizing their dry holes, the total of which would be recognized as cost of the resulting producing well in the area. This had an immediate and impressive effect on Texaco’s financial statements. On-going costs of drilling weren’t burdening revenues, so income increased dramatically. And the capitalized costs appeared as assets on the balance sheet. Their success was phenomenal, and the stockholders were rewarded accordingly. It took a few years, but industry skeptics caught on and began similar practices. Another decade or so, and the accounting rule makers caught on and “reserve recognition accounting” was born. Now all upstream oil and gas operations must capitalize their drilling activity and report extensive information in their audited financial statements. This part of the reporting is “not audited” because auditors don’t know how to determine reserves and certainly don’t want to be held accountable. However, until it became a requirement for SEC reporting, Exxon continued to expense all its drilling activity. Its position was that, if the drilling program is stable, there is very little difference in the results after the initial years. And that is true. But the rule makers feel as though they have added clarity to the financial statements. Or have they just added many ways to further creativity?
Another example relates to a young, bright, ambitious auditor of a prominent soft drink producer. He asked to make a presentation to the executive committee when the audit report was being provided. He had charts and graphs and pointed out with zeal that his recommendation could save the company millions. “We currently outsource the production of ‘caramel coloring’ to a non-affiliated company. If we produced this important feedstock ourselves, our profits would rise significantly.” A hush fell over the room. His boss quietly got up and ushered him out. During his exit interview the next day, the puzzled auditor learned that if the stuff were produced in-house, the ingredients would be required to be disclosed on the label. In the subsequent weeks, while seeking new employment, he pondered that perhaps that would not be a good thing for the company. Now this was not specifically an accounting issue, rather an FDA one, but the lesson might be the same.
Then there was the subsidiary which produced products vital to the drilling industry. Sales had been slow and numbers were not looking as good as management would like. The top Manager had his sales force pull out their rolodexes and contact all their major customers. “How much of our product do you anticipate buying in the first quarter of next year? All right. I’ll write up a sales order and have it ready.” Also, I will give it to accounting to record as a sale now. Year-end sales numbers looked great. Not only that, but cost-of-sales numbers were impressively lower than usual. Manager got promoted.
A small sub was created to break into consumer products. They had really quality plastic goods and an exclusive contract with a national store chain. Doing very well. Rubbermaid decided it was a market they would like to be in. They approached the chain’s buyer. “We have comparable products, and our price is 50% of your current supplier.” Really? Buyer contacts small sub which quickly puts out a price list with prices at 40% of their original prices. Buyer calls Rubbermaid. “I have a new list from my supplier, do you want to counter?” “Nope,” says Rubbermaid. “Our price stands….50% of whatever their price is.” Small sub loses lucrative contract. Manager does not get promoted.
In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s I worked on the corporate response to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1978, i.e., documenting internal accounting controls. I taught the documentation process to accountants worldwide. It was a really big deal…until Congress amended the act’s language to say that if management didn’t know, they wouldn’t have to go to jail. The original bill put the fear of God into corporate executives. The revision said they could claim ignorance and just send the accountants to jail, a much more acceptable result which could command a far smaller slice of the budget. While doing that training, I made an attempt to learn local accounting concepts to better understand the broad picture of consolidated accounting. I learned that in Belgium, at that time, corporations were encouraged to choose whatever accounting practices each year that would portray the company in the best light. Consistency was not an issue. I think about that now when there is talk of the USA and the ECU adopting the same accounting rules for worldwide transparency. I’m not really worried about that happening, nor would I feel comfortable relying on the results if it should happen.
In the ‘90s I worked on the COSO risk assessment project. I recall the attitudes of managers, when asked to perform the assessments, as being pretty condescending. Accountants asking them if they know the risks in their business? Duh. And now they have revised the whole COSO thing. And then there is Sarbanes-Oxley, which created a whole new accounting specialty and more angst for management. However, several years into the requirements, house cats are still basking in the sunshine.
I will digress a bit, back to my days in school as an old lady. I took some finance and economics in addition to my accounting classes. Puts and calls were just being created. I was uncomfortable with the prospect of tradable instruments which were not backed by anything tangible. Still am. And the banking classes I took, coupled with some economics, made me very uncomfortable with the money supply measurements M1 and M2. I felt then that credit card activity should be included in money supply calculations. Still do. I left those concerns behind in favor of being on someone’s payroll. I did have two children to support. And like my resistance to the marketing industry, I have come to accept the changes to the financial industry and to economic measures. Life continues to provide changes and we do our best to accommodate the challenges. Healthy skepticism is still a good analytical tool.
During the course of my professional life, I have learned to be a pretty good detective. I have shared with young accountants that the hardest part of going into a new job (or a new company or a new audit) is figuring out who knows anything about what you want to know, and which of those who know will be willing to share their knowledge. Sorting out what they share is then your challenge. And always question what you are presented. As an auditor, and at times as a new employee, you are a barn cat seen to be sneaking into the sanctum of the house cats.
So, now, I have been retired from corporate life for many years, and been beaten up by the stock market and oil prices, and am seeking further stimulation, both mental and financial. In pursuit of that, I have completed the AWAI Accelerated Program for Copywriters. And have decided to create a niche in support of the oil and gas industry, which has contributed to much of my life’s learning. However, I still have many interests to explore, so my efforts may need to expand. I am interested in continuing to make a contribution to the world I live in. And in continuing to be stimulated by those contributions.
I was born in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1943, and even though we moved away soon after, those roots might have contributed to my adventurous nature. We moved to a farmhouse near my grandfather’s farm, so that my father could help with the farming while his brother served in the Pacific during World War II. Though it certainly wasn’t like city life, my mother said we were pretty up-town. No indoor plumbing, but we had a three-holer outhouse, and a hand pump attached to the kitchen sink, not connected to a well, but it looked classy nonetheless.
I have fond memories of the farm, where I learned about hard work and the rules of commerce. Early risers called the milk cows to the barn for milking. The low-toned, throaty song echoed across the pasture and bid the cattle to come do their part. Processing the milk to extract the cream followed shortly, and the remaining skim milk was used to slop the hogs. Then it was time to gather the eggs. All self-respecting farmers kept chickens. The extra eggs and cream were taken to town to sell for cash, which supplemented the primary farm income from planting and harvesting winter wheat.
From the time I could walk, I loved being part of the whole process. I sat on a feed trough and watched my grandfather and father milk the cows. Occasionally they would say, ”Open wide,” and squirt warm, fresh milk into my mouth and sometimes all over my face if I didn’t hold really still. My grandfather let me help gather the eggs. It was an adventure to find where the hens had laid their eggs. They were clever to hide them in hopes of keeping them. We weren’t allowed in the chicken yard without an adult. The hens were sometimes annoyed, but the rooster was always mad when someone invaded his territory. He would chase us and could do some damage if he got close enough to peck.
Wanting to participate in all of farm life also gave me my first introduction to what has always struck me as senseless discrimination. On the farm there were barn cats and house cats, and woe be unto you if my grandmother caught you trying to sneak a barn cat into her yard. I’m still puzzled by the whole concept.
The war ended, my uncle came home, and we became city folk again. We still visited the farm often, and those visits solidified my understanding of how family life worked. To wit: when you are a Daddy, you don’t do any housework (except gender specific tasks, like fixing things or sharpening knives). However, when you get to be a Grandpa, you do all the housework while Grandma watches the new television set and tends her vast scrapbooks of newspaper articles, including every move of the Dionne quintuplets and Lindberg’s famous flight, and many movie stars’ lives, and political figures both here and abroad. I wonder what ever happened to those records of early 20th century history.
Back in the city, I explored other ways to be involved, which led to my first business venture. I set out at the tender age of nine, knocking on doors, offering to wash windows for a penny a window. I had quite a few takers, including a woman who had an enclosed porch the full length of her house, with paned windows. She paid me a penny a pane, and it took me the rest of my day. I collected over a dollar, which I thought was fantastic. I returned home and announced my success. My father beamed with pride, and my mother was livid. I had used up all her Windex. That was my introduction to “cost of sales”.
I was a curious sort who had a strong need to figure things out. One such puzzle I took to my sixth grade teacher, a gruff old man who was also the school principal. Why, I asked, did a small clock tick faster than a very large clock? It didn’t make sense to me. Anyone could see the hands had farther to move on a large clock face than on a small one. Shouldn’t the large clock need to tick faster to move the greater distance? I tried asking several different ways, thinking he just didn’t understand the question. He finally barked that I asked too many questions and that I should just learn to accept things as they are. I pondered that, and took his advice, sort of. I never asked HIM a question again.
The end of the fifties brought about many efforts to emancipate segments of society. My church youth group held a weekend convocation for which they brought in a church expert to talk to us about race relations. I’m sure that isn’t what they called it, but there it was. We were told that “those” children should attend the same schools as we did, perhaps even eat in the same cafes as we did, and we should be on our best Christian behavior. That didn’t extend, however, to living in the same neighborhood. After all, they should be with “their kind”. When I asked about socializing, i.e., dating, or marrying one of “those” people, I was asked to leave. I remembered my puzzle over the barn cats and the house cats.
I was invited to a High School Leadership Week at a prominent State University, (primarily because my sister was there as an honor student). One of the big presentations was on educating women to enter the work force. I asked about the impact that would have on the national unemployment problem. And who would care for the country’s children if all the moms were at work? I was told those things were not of consequence to the topic, and I might be more comfortable waiting outside the auditorium. Could it be that I was becoming a house cat/barn cat supporter? I don’t think so.
My first job away from home was a reflection of my need to make all things right with the world. I became a caseworker for the welfare department in a large urban area. After two years of working hard, I became ill and had to go home. What I learned from the experience was that “you can’t legislate fairness”. There will always be people who truly need assistance who don’t qualify. And there will always be people who don’t need it who learn to scam the system. That is also one of those recurring lesson in life.
The early years of living on my own, and early marriage, formed many of my attitudes toward value. Products I gravitated to were those which didn’t have large advertising budgets. Advertising, it seemed to me, was a frivolous cost that didn’t add to the value I received. It would take years for my attitude to evolve and to appreciate the value of marketing. Not only was it a huge industry employing thousands of people, it seemed to provide a necessary component to success as my favorite products disappeared. That would not be the first attitude of mine that would succumb to evolution.
Fast forwarding a decade, two beautiful children, and a not so beautiful divorce later, I was one of those working moms struggling to juggle all the requirements. I went to work for our local bank. One of my jobs was to determine checks to be returned each day for insufficient funds. I checked for pending deposits which could cover the apparent deficit. I noticed there were a select few large customers who routinely had deposits pending. However, I also noticed that the pending deposits were drawn on accounts which were also overdrawn. When I pointed this out to a senior bank officer, I was told just to note my findings and not return the checks. House cats win again.
At this time in history, prior to the approval of “branch banking”, the creation of a new bank required an assessment by the Comptroller of the Currency determining that there was a need in the community for an additional bank. Now, it seems, led by the Federal Reserve folks, the need is only the ability to outwit the competition to create questionable profits nationally and worldwide. The house cats are now world travelers. Barn cats are still relegated to the barn and ever fewer barn mice.
I ended up in the trust department of a bank where I witnessed a couple of customers and a few of their golfing friends scamming the stock market. They had a favorite small, local, over-the-counter company whose stock normally traded between $2 and $3 a share. Depending on rumors going around the local coffee shop, sometimes the stock would fall to $1. That would signal this group to buy, buy, buy. Amid all this activity, the stock would soar to $8, and sometimes even $10 a share, whereupon this group would sell, and the value would fall back to its normal range. These rises and falls in value had nothing to do with the small company or its business success or efficiency. It was purely the speculation of this group of friends. Prior to this experience, I truly believed the price of a stock was some indication of the value and strength of the company. Another lesson I see repeating itself in the real world. With the modern analytical capabilities of computers, speculations no longer depend on rumors at the coffee shop. Corporate activity and even trash can be digitally collected from the world over and used to base investment decisions on.
During this time I found it prudent to go back to college and get a degree. After all, I had two small children to support. In the first week of intermediate accounting, I asked why all those rules were necessary. If everyone reported honestly how their company was doing, wouldn’t that do? Guess not. And so many things open to interpretation, and oh so many opportunities to be creative. My evolving career as an accountant and auditor would confirm that, through my personal observations and from many shared “war stories” from associates. Some of those stories were of very creative practices, and some so creative that they bordered on fraud.
For example, sometime around 1958, when there was lots of very expensive drilling for oil being done in Saudi Arabia, a brilliant accountant at Texaco proposed that, in the spirit of the most basic accounting principle of matching expense to the revenue it produced, the cost of drilling a producing well was really not just the cost of that well, but also the cost of the six or seven preceding dry wells it took to hit the producer. Everyone knew this was a standard, predictable statistic. So Texaco began capitalizing their dry holes, the total of which would be recognized as cost of the resulting producing well in the area. This had an immediate and impressive effect on Texaco’s financial statements. On-going costs of drilling weren’t burdening revenues, so income increased dramatically. And the capitalized costs appeared as assets on the balance sheet. Their success was phenomenal, and the stockholders were rewarded accordingly. It took a few years, but industry skeptics caught on and began similar practices. Another decade or so, and the accounting rule makers caught on and “reserve recognition accounting” was born. Now all upstream oil and gas operations must capitalize their drilling activity and report extensive information in their audited financial statements. This part of the reporting is “not audited” because auditors don’t know how to determine reserves and certainly don’t want to be held accountable. However, until it became a requirement for SEC reporting, Exxon continued to expense all its drilling activity. Its position was that, if the drilling program is stable, there is very little difference in the results after the initial years. And that is true. But the rule makers feel as though they have added clarity to the financial statements. Or have they just added many ways to further creativity?
Another example relates to a young, bright, ambitious auditor of a prominent soft drink producer. He asked to make a presentation to the executive committee when the audit report was being provided. He had charts and graphs and pointed out with zeal that his recommendation could save the company millions. “We currently outsource the production of ‘caramel coloring’ to a non-affiliated company. If we produced this important feedstock ourselves, our profits would rise significantly.” A hush fell over the room. His boss quietly got up and ushered him out. During his exit interview the next day, the puzzled auditor learned that if the stuff were produced in-house, the ingredients would be required to be disclosed on the label. In the subsequent weeks, while seeking new employment, he pondered that perhaps that would not be a good thing for the company. Now this was not specifically an accounting issue, rather an FDA one, but the lesson might be the same.
Then there was the subsidiary which produced products vital to the drilling industry. Sales had been slow and numbers were not looking as good as management would like. The top Manager had his sales force pull out their rolodexes and contact all their major customers. “How much of our product do you anticipate buying in the first quarter of next year? All right. I’ll write up a sales order and have it ready.” Also, I will give it to accounting to record as a sale now. Year-end sales numbers looked great. Not only that, but cost-of-sales numbers were impressively lower than usual. Manager got promoted.
A small sub was created to break into consumer products. They had really quality plastic goods and an exclusive contract with a national store chain. Doing very well. Rubbermaid decided it was a market they would like to be in. They approached the chain’s buyer. “We have comparable products, and our price is 50% of your current supplier.” Really? Buyer contacts small sub which quickly puts out a price list with prices at 40% of their original prices. Buyer calls Rubbermaid. “I have a new list from my supplier, do you want to counter?” “Nope,” says Rubbermaid. “Our price stands….50% of whatever their price is.” Small sub loses lucrative contract. Manager does not get promoted.
In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s I worked on the corporate response to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1978, i.e., documenting internal accounting controls. I taught the documentation process to accountants worldwide. It was a really big deal…until Congress amended the act’s language to say that if management didn’t know, they wouldn’t have to go to jail. The original bill put the fear of God into corporate executives. The revision said they could claim ignorance and just send the accountants to jail, a much more acceptable result which could command a far smaller slice of the budget. While doing that training, I made an attempt to learn local accounting concepts to better understand the broad picture of consolidated accounting. I learned that in Belgium, at that time, corporations were encouraged to choose whatever accounting practices each year that would portray the company in the best light. Consistency was not an issue. I think about that now when there is talk of the USA and the ECU adopting the same accounting rules for worldwide transparency. I’m not really worried about that happening, nor would I feel comfortable relying on the results if it should happen.
In the ‘90s I worked on the COSO risk assessment project. I recall the attitudes of managers, when asked to perform the assessments, as being pretty condescending. Accountants asking them if they know the risks in their business? Duh. And now they have revised the whole COSO thing. And then there is Sarbanes-Oxley, which created a whole new accounting specialty and more angst for management. However, several years into the requirements, house cats are still basking in the sunshine.
I will digress a bit, back to my days in school as an old lady. I took some finance and economics in addition to my accounting classes. Puts and calls were just being created. I was uncomfortable with the prospect of tradable instruments which were not backed by anything tangible. Still am. And the banking classes I took, coupled with some economics, made me very uncomfortable with the money supply measurements M1 and M2. I felt then that credit card activity should be included in money supply calculations. Still do. I left those concerns behind in favor of being on someone’s payroll. I did have two children to support. And like my resistance to the marketing industry, I have come to accept the changes to the financial industry and to economic measures. Life continues to provide changes and we do our best to accommodate the challenges. Healthy skepticism is still a good analytical tool.
During the course of my professional life, I have learned to be a pretty good detective. I have shared with young accountants that the hardest part of going into a new job (or a new company or a new audit) is figuring out who knows anything about what you want to know, and which of those who know will be willing to share their knowledge. Sorting out what they share is then your challenge. And always question what you are presented. As an auditor, and at times as a new employee, you are a barn cat seen to be sneaking into the sanctum of the house cats.
So, now, I have been retired from corporate life for many years, and been beaten up by the stock market and oil prices, and am seeking further stimulation, both mental and financial. In pursuit of that, I have completed the AWAI Accelerated Program for Copywriters. And have decided to create a niche in support of the oil and gas industry, which has contributed to much of my life’s learning. However, I still have many interests to explore, so my efforts may need to expand. I am interested in continuing to make a contribution to the world I live in. And in continuing to be stimulated by those contributions.