Posted Under: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Our Heroes

Our next guest under the ‘Our Heroes‘ series is Jesse Mecham, former CPA, now Founder of “You Need A Budget”. Jesse’s personal need and pain of not having an easy to use budgeting system that works too, made him work on a side project which he later on launched and scaled into full blown business that helps thousands of individuals and families have a debt free life, save more, and eventually stop living paycheck to paycheck. Let’s find out more…

DD: Who are you and what kind of corporate job were you at?
JM: I’m Jesse Mecham, and I was a Certified Public Accountant (slowly recovering).

DD: What made you leave the job? When did you realize that you wanted to be an entrepreneur & why?
JM: While still in grad school for Accounting, my wife and I knew we needed to watch our meager earnings like a hawk. I researched all the existing budget plans out there, and found a common problem in all of them. They were all static budget plans–built around projected income. I knew then how great the need was for a living budget–a method for tracking and using income from the previous month in order to handle the current month’s expenses.  With several semesters left to go, and lots of penny pinching to do, I began creating a workable budget system that would remove the guess work and stress of a standard budget plan. Overtime, I continually improved it. I knew it could be something worth selling. In 2004 I dubbed it “You Need a Budget” and launched it. I graduated from school and begun full-time work as a CPA. But I knew I could be a lot happier, and help a lot more people, if I took the plunge and made the pet project a full-time endeavor.

DD: What did you do to break the corporate jail? How did you prepare for the employee to entrepreneur transition?
JM: At first I’d planned to climb the corporate ladder like so many others. When I began work on YNAB, and saw the need it filled in the personal finance world, it only made sense to make it my main focus. I stayed with my 9-5 job and built up my business simultaneously. Once the revenue was double my take home pay as a CPA, I left the corporate world and dedicated myself to YNAB full-time.

DD: What is one resource (person, coach, book, organization) that helped the most?
JM: Google. I’m not kidding. You can find the answer to almost anything if you google it. It was all a new experience for me, and I definitely googled my way through the process.

DD: What do you know now that you wish if only you knew when you made the transition?
JM: I wish I would have known how crucial it was to vett and hire good, upstanding people from the get go. Getting the right people, either contractors or employees, is  absolutely critical. I had no idea how to do that when I started.

DD: What are your suggestions for aspiring entrepreneurs?
JM: Ship quickly. Your product is never perfect, but its really important to ship early and ship often. If you try and rework and rework and rework, it’ll never launch. Just go for it.

DD: How are you doing and how do you feel now?
JM: My business is doing better than I ever imagined it would–such a huge blessing. Six years ago, I never would have pictured everything on such a large scale as it is now. I feel great.

DD: Ladies & gentlemen, that was Jesse Mecham, Founder of ‘You Need A Budget’! Ship quickly – very rightly suggested! You see a product would never be perfect and if you got into the perfection paralysis then you you’d never be able to finish and launch which is what matters the most. Similarly, those on the fence, waiting for the perfect time or perfect idea, get out of the perfection paralysis and take action. Just go for it.

Success to all!