Meet Tanya Luken, Owner and Certified Public Accountant @ Tanya Luken CPA PC

Tanya Luken CPA PC is an accounting firm that offers accounting services, resources and guidance aimed at startups, nonprofits and small businesses. 

Luken leads workshops and collaborates with business support organizations in the community, such as GROW Nebraska and Nebraska Enterprise Fund. 

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur or support other entrepreneurs?

My two-and-a-half-hour daily commute (when living in the Phoenix area in Arizona) inspired me to become an entrepreneur. I really don’t like to commute. 

And then as far as helping other entrepreneurs, if I can make accounting approachable for them, that’s the altruistic goal of mine. If business owners aren’t afraid of their financial statements, imagine what they could do.

A lot of solopreneurs and startups, they probably need accounting help more than a business that’s been in it for five or 10 years. It’s so critical for business owners to understand their financial statements. And if you catch them when they’re young and teach them good habits, I feel like it lasts them the lifetime of their entrepreneurial journey. 

So that’s what I was trying to do with AaaS (Accounting as a Service). It’s designed to capture those startups and solopreneurs. 

It’s designed to teach them how to use QuickBooks to track all of their revenue and expenses, how their accounting system should be designed, what’s important, what’s not important, what may be new in the world or a tax law change or something like that.

And then the unintended consequence is that you end up in this cohort with people, and they all support each other as a community. It wasn’t my intent to do that, but it’s so amazing to see it. When someone’s struggling through something, we stop talking about accounting and we help them with whatever they need. 

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time to when you were just starting out?

I should have trusted my gut more. There’s instances like that.  

The other thing is that 10 years ago, I set a goal to reach $1 million in revenue, and I realized that my goal took nine years and nine months. So, shortening the time frame that I give myself to accomplish my goals is something else. 

That’s what I encourage other entrepreneurs and my clients to do now is to shorten the timeline for their goals. Because I think we’re capable of more if we push ourselves a little bit more. 

If I had given myself three years to do it instead of 10 years to do it, I probably would have had different priorities for three years. But because I gave myself 10 years, I was like, “Oh, I can do that tomorrow.” 

I think that it reframes your priorities when you shorten the timeline. 

How do you stay motivated when things feel overwhelming — or stagnant?

I have a really good network of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organizations that I belong to. So I can lean on them when I need encouragement or someone to share an experience that they might have had that relates to where I’m at. 

What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome and how did you overcome it?

Revenue and cash flow, like every other entrepreneur. I would have to fire clients every once in a while, and we take a hit to the revenue. Or a client would take their accounting in-house because they just got too big. Those times are hard. 

Within the last six months, I’ve kind of shifted into this different position where I’m working only on my business and not doing accounting as much anymore. And that shift, me getting out of my own way, is something that has really leveled up my game. 

So trusting my staff because they do excellent work. Just letting them do the work and not having to look at it all or do it all or try to oversee it all.

Because the women that work for me — they’re amazing accountants — and leaning on them more to accomplish all the client goals while I get to help the client work on the next goal.

How can the Nebraska community support you?

I’m personally super excited about all of the startups that I’ve been hearing about. I don’t know if you know this, but accounting’s kind of boring. So to live vicariously through clients and through all of the groups like 1 Million Cups and Techstars and things, to see what innovations are coming out of Nebraska, is really exciting.

I think for startups, the biggest thing is cash flow, understanding their cash flow, and understanding their revenue cycle — how long it takes. Where businesses fail is with cash flow. 

So, not being afraid to ask for help, not being afraid to say, “I don’t understand this.” Because out of all of my clients, I’m the only one that was trained to be an accountant. They didn’t start their businesses because they wanted to be accountants.

It’s knowing that there’s no judgment here about not understanding accounting. We’re here to help, and point you in the right directions, and help you understand what the story behind the numbers is.