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Mind of Murph
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River
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Shore lunch
While my name is William “Bill” Murphy, almost everyone in the QuickBooks community knows me as “Murph” (Figure 2 above).
I have been working with QuickBooks since literally the day it went on sale, in fact I have every reason to believe I purchased the first copy sold in Oklahoma City. I have a busy practice involving active ‘hands-on’ clients in an 8 state area, as well as remote-consulting clients across the country and in three foreign countries. Right now I would say that major integrations (manufacturing, inventory, e-commerce and EDI) represent about 60% of my work, and ‘data services’ (file analysis and repair) occupy about 35% of my practice.
Of course I also have another QuickBooks related job, and that is Sr. Editor for Intuitive Accountant, an e-magazine specializing in the Intuit Ecosystem, as well as related topics for ProAdvisors, Accountants, Bookkeepers and Business Consultants. I have to thank Joe Woodard, and Gary DeHart (my publisher) for letting me have this opportunity of a lifetime we call Intuitive Accountant. But the ProAdvisor in me is only a small part of my life.
From a personal perspective I would say that my life is Family, Church, Family, Swimming, Family, Friends, Family, Storm-tracking and Family, Trout-fishing. Family is of key importance in my life and I am not talking about wife and kids. As far as wife, been there done that; no children either, but I am caregiver for my mother who is a victim of Alzheimer’s and who lives with me under my daily care. Fortunately I have a brother who also moved in with me after his first major heart attack more than 20 years ago and he is the other half of both the caregiver activities and my business practice, since he provides the ‘IT’ side of our practice.
Church is a labor of love, I not only teach a Sr. Adult class at my local church, but then I travel up the road a ways and perform mission work at a Korean church where I teach classes for older children, youth and young adults every week. I have been teaching scripture for the last 20 years, including 16 years at the Korean church as of this September. I have seen some of my kids (as I call them) grow from youngsters into doctors and lawyers, as well as serving in the U.S. Military; heck, I have even employed a couple of them over the years as summer interns, but not a single one chose to ‘go into QuickBooks.’
Growing up I loved to swim, first in the pond and stream of our family acreage, then later at the country club, and still later on the High School Swim team. When I built the home I currently live in almost 15 years ago, my brother designed a tropical oasis for our back-yard, a desert-like motif more suited for Arizona than Oklahoma, but it included a beautiful pool with two waterfalls as well as beach-entry and hot-tub. (Figure 3) About 7 months out of the year I can swim every morning and evening, and believe you me it has been the home to many a ‘pool party’.
Friends play a vital role in my life, I have ‘work related friends’, and ‘church related friends’ and ‘people I have known forever’. To them all I am just ‘Murph’ and they know that we can share anything. I recently made a lot of new acquaintances at the Scaling New Heights conference in San Antonio and I am going to do my very best to turn some of those into a band of new friends. If it is one thing I know, true friends are worth ‘more’ than their weight in gold. Among those ‘new friends’ are the top 10 ProAdvisors for 2014, in the near future Intuitive Accountant will be featuring one of these ‘personal’ articles from each of them, so you can get to know them as well.
Living in Oklahoma and in fact in Moore, Oklahoma (the Tornado Capital of the World) how could I help but have a ‘storm-tracking’ as interest? Actually that interest was spawn long before either of the ‘F5 tornadoes’ in Moore over the last 11 years. (Figure 4) Even during High School I had an interest in meteorology, and actually served as a ‘summer intern’ at the Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, OK long before ‘weather became big-time.’ At the time I was the youngest person to ever serve an internship, and the local newspaper made quite a big deal over it; I guess that might have been my first ’15-minutes of fame’. I observed one of the very first ‘Doppler radar’ tornado detections that summer, later the system they experimented with was perfected and would become the ‘first line of defense’ in National Weather Service offices across the United States. Today I have a direct subscription feed from 5 radars within Oklahoma to ‘watch the weather’, and the tornado picture included in this article was taken during my trip home from a clients in the 2013 storm that destroyed about 20% of Moore.
Trout fishing is another ‘love of my life’, although I rarely get to go anymore despite the fact that I still own a home on the White River in northern Arkansas just a few miles below Bull Shoals Damn. I can literally walk out the back door, down the incline and onto the dock, then hop in my ‘Jon boat’ and be fishing for Rainbow, Brown and Cutthroat trout in minutes. (Figure 5) The largest trout I ever caught was 8 pounds 4 ounces and 30 inches in length, that is a good sized ‘trout’, but certainly nothing like the world record Brown caught less than 20 miles downriver from my home. That trophy trout is on display at the Bass Pro Shop in Springfield, MO and looks more like a small shark than any trout you have ever seen. Of course the best part to trout fishing is 'eating them', and the best way to eat them is to fry them up right there at the side of the river in a tradition known as 'shore lunch' (Figure 6)....Yummy! I hope in a couple of more years to retire to Arkansas, I will hopefully continue to write for Intuitive Accountant and perhaps still do some data repairs, but the ‘river is calling’ and I am growing ever ready to answer.
Each of our Top 100 ProAdvisors for 2014, starting with the Top 10, will be writing articles similar to this one. The purpose of these articles is to let you, our readers, know that there is more to a ProAdvisor than their practice, and so we are attempting to tell the story behind the person.
Hopefully you will also consider submitting your own story so our readers can ‘get to know you’ too. We would love to share your practice and life with our readers, who we view as 'one big family'.
I hope you have enjoyed finding out a little more about me, and I look forward to reading your story as well.