My Car Ride Epiphany

Kimberly Green | 2024-09-06

I recently had to face my biggest personal fear, driving longer than 4 hours. I’m currently homeless (not in the dramatic, “I’m a wandering soul” way, but more in the “I don’t want to sign a 12 month lease right now so let’s go travel” way) This weekend, I’m meeting up with 9 of my vetted friends from college at a ranch near a small town in Texas called Boerne. Since I didn’t book my flight in time, I had to make a choice: pay $800 for a roundtrip flight from Atlanta, Georgia or endure the self-imposed challenge of a long drive. So, I decided to break up the 16 hour drive from Atlanta to Boerne by splitting it in half and stopping in Baton Rouge to visit my grandparents before heading to Boerne. It was during this stretch to BR that I had a couple of significant epiphanies about Sam’s List. Eight hours of monotony initially seemed daunting, but it turned out to be the well-suited backdrop for some deep introspection and way-too-loud music. ([For me, a bit of noise can actually help clear my mind and accelerate my thinking— I’m sure there’s a name for that…..haha) It’s like being on a treadmill where your brain suddenly starts running at full speed. I found myself reflecting on Sam’s List, our current position, our goals, and the roadblocks we face. Epiphany trusted: My Communication with Sam and Joe Needs Improvement Sam’s List was literally days from shutting down because of a communication error on my end. I’ll get to that point next, but if it wasn’t for this 8 hour car drive, I genuinely don’t know if Sam’s List would have existed next month! I realized that while we’ve proven there’s a need for Sam’s List, we haven’t yet achieved the scale we’re aiming for. It’s like hosting an amazing party with only half the guests showing up. We’ve got accountants extremely eager to join our platform, but our users (those looking for an accountant) aren’t as enthusiastic. Sam, who is actually looking for a new accountant, recently tweeted about his frustration with how accountants seem less than thrilled with the platform. I get where he’s coming from—he was matched with an accountant through Sam’s List, reached out, and received no response. From my vantage point, as the person who interacts with both sides—users and accountants—it’s clear that the real bottleneck isn’t the accountants. It’s the users. And Sam and Joe did not realize that. Because...