Smoke drifts lazily over the ruins of a dead city.
The machines have won.
And humanity is eking out an existence living amongst the charred ruins of society. There’s little power, little food and even less hope…
But amongst the rubble, two people are making a difference. One is a former businessperson – the other is an accountant.
This is their story.
Harpreet the accountant
Harpreet had qualified as an accountant just six months before the machines finally wrested control from the humans.
She’d always had an affinity for numbers and finance, so she’d loved those few months of working with her clients and finally putting all her learning to good use – until the world ended and kinda threw a spanner in the works career-wise!
So now Harpreet had a problem (aside from the end of the world having happened that is). How was she going to exist in a world where money and finance no longer existed? How could she be an accountant when there were no businesses left to advise and no money to account for?
It was an issue, to say the least. And she wasn’t at all sure what the answer could be.
Maybe she should ask her neighbour, Ben, the chicken guy…
Ben the businessperson
Ben had been a big cheese in the telecoms industry before Judgement Day had hit and the economies of the world had collapsed. Now he was no longer a big cheese: he was a guy who owned one pair of trousers, no shoes and lived in the shell of an old pig shed that had somehow survived the attacks unscathed.
But Ben had a plan.
He’d happened upon two slightly blackened and singed chickens in a burnt-out farm a year ago now.
As it turned out, it was a male and female and now he had a whole yard full of chickens and chicks, pecking through the dust and debris looking for elusive worms and long-forgotten tufts of greenery.
So, Ben was now ‘the chicken guy’ and used them to barter for all sorts of things.
With no economy and no money to use, most of the world existed by bartering for goods and services, so having lots of chickens had proved to be a great investment for Ben.
But, just like the cockroaches, even bureaucracy survives the end of the world. There was a government of sorts (ten people in a cow barn near what used to be Westminster). And the government had started taking an interest in people’s bartering and business activities.
They wanted Ben to declare his chickens to the revenue. He had the stone tablet that was ‘Livestock Ownership Form 27b’ in front of him now.
And all he could think about was why they even had a revenue if the world was supposed to have ended. Wasn’t that the benefit of the end of the world?
For a start, Ben was not good with numbers. Business ideas and entrepreneurial thinking had been his stock in trade in the old days. He HATED counting things. And chickens are not the easiest things to count, spending very little time standing still, as they do.
And as for filling out the form…well it was just gobbledygook to Ben. What was a ‘Poultry Tax Credit’ anyway?
That’s why Ben got talking to Harpreet…
The power of business ideas and finance brains
Ben was busy running around his yard one morning, trying to pin down his chickens for the umpteenth time and swearing loudly at his inability to count his hens. And Harpreet was leaning on the chicken wire watching him with a sense of bemusement.
‘You know, if you want, I could count these for you’, she said.
‘Really?’ said Ben, tripping over a particularly speedy hen. ‘You’d really do that?’
‘Sure, it would cost you a few eggs each week, but I’d be happy to count them for you. And if you wanted, I could fill out that ‘Livestock Ownership Form 27b’ for you…I noticed you weren’t too good at chiselling the numbers into the stone…’
Ben stopped chasing the chickens and stood very still.
‘That would be utterly amazing!’ he said. ‘I really HATE counting these chickens, however much I love looking after them and making sure they grow up big, healthy and lay lots of eggs’.
‘I spotted that you hated it’, said Harpreet. ‘So, is it a deal? I’ll do the counting, the form filling and you just get on with looking after the chickens and doing the stuff you really enjoy?’
And that’s when Ben and Harpreet shook hands and both realised the power of having a great business idea when you’ve got someone with the finance brains to help make it work.
This all happened six months ago.
And not only is Harpreet doing the chicken counting and the form filling, she’s also bartered a few of the smaller hens with Ted from the pig shed three doors down who’d built a rudimentary chicken coop for the birds to shelter from the worst of the acid rain and apocalyptic dust storms. And she DID get him the Poultry Tax Credit too saving Ben a week’s worth of eggs he’d have had to hand straight to the tax man (or Kevin to his friends).
Why your clients will always need an accountant
And that’s why you’ll always be needed as an accountant.
Because some of us are just better at numbers, better at getting the admin done and better at seeing ways to make a good profit and find the resources to grow a business.
So, even if the machines do take over and the world ends tomorrow, your clients are still better off working with someone who understands business, understands your numbers and knows how to give you the help you need to make your enterprise succeed.
In the unlikely event that Armageddon does occur tomorrow, check out our unique End of World Outsourced Marketing packages – for the discerning future Harpreets among you.
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