Accounting would seem to be a profession about numbers and numbers alone, but at the highest level it’s about understanding people and what they’re trying to achieve. Build a business. Save the most possible for retirement. Leave something for your children. (And yes, pay the least in taxes!)
For Michael Trugman, our Lead Dad of the Week from Hoboken, N.J., accounting was a way to do something he was good at. It wasn’t a passion. It was an accomplishment.
“In college, I told my parents I wanted to be a psychology major,” he said. “They steered me into being a general business major. Accounting was a very pragmatic, practical safe choice.”
It provided a good living. It also wasn’t what he wanted to do – and that started to impact other parts of his life. When he was seriously dating the woman who is now his wife, he began thinking about how he could do what he really wanted to do. When he later became a father, he knew he needed to show up differently for their son Nathan.
Michael began working as a career coach in 2019 but he took it slowly. “In beginning I was coaching people for free, as I worked on the business of coaching.”
Theirs is a two-income household and he was mindful of his financial responsibility to his family. He slowly pulled back his accounting work to part-time as he ramped up his coaching business. All the while he was working mostly from home so his wife, who works in digital advertising, could focus on her career, while he handled the logistics of their life.
Earlier this year he made the leap to focus full time on his coaching business. “I can see how doing something that’s aligned with who I am doesn’t seem as big of a risk as before,” he said. “The bigger risk was suffering through a job that was depleting to me. I’m doing meaningful work and spending a lot of time with my family.”
Why did he do it? He had a skill set in helping others think through their problems – which is what accounting is at its core – and a desire to be a better version of himself as a husband and father.
There’s been a short-term financial hit. But he can see the path to increasing his income, while also being the go-to parent for their son. And he’s embraced Dr. Becky’s mantra of “sturdy leadership” for himself, his family and his clients.
Welcome, Michael, to The Company of Dads. And for those who want to learn more, sign up for his next event: “The Good Life: A Life of Meaning and Mastery” on Thursday, November 18 at 10am ET. Here is the registration link.
