Hello there! Welcome to the lair of the Punk Rock Accountant.
My name is Douglas Scott, and I’m a CPA from Atlanta, Georgia. My goal here is to help musicians, creatives and entertainers better understand their finances. With a better understanding of your business, you are able to make more informed choices and can help to avoid potential traps and footfalls, from understanding the terms of your record contract to managing your inventory to learning how to spread out your advances so you’re not broke in 6 months.
I grew up obsessed with the Washington, D.C. punk scene and label Dischord records. I was an awkward kid that didn’t realize he was autistic until he was an adult, so music was my outlet and my savior.
I always had a desire to do something larger, but struggled to find what that thing would be. I grew up in a small town in Georgia, so not a lot of options were presented to me. I had to hunt for them myself. I craved diversity, both intellectual and cultural, so as soon as I started driving, I was in downtown Atlanta as often as possible.
That was where I explored the most, going to concerts, skateboarding, and working every job I could find. In my ongoing quest, I started to travel, both domestic and abroad, which also became an obsession. While in college, my anxiety started to ramp up and it led to the development of some major sleep issues. (Don’t worry, this isn’t a sob story. All will become clear with time.) My greatest breakthrough came at the age of 32, when I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. At the time, I was on the area of the spectrum known as Asperger’s Syndrome, but we no longer call it that since Hans Asperger was a Nazi bastard. Good riddance. Regardless, having a framework to analyze my thoughts and actions had a profound effect.
It was around the same time that I went back to school for accounting. I had been studying physics in my mid-20’s, but after my sleep issues arose, it was clear that I needed to focus on my health, and I wasn’t going to become a theoretical physicist only going to school part-time and broke.
I really took to accounting, since I was always a big math nerd. I like seeing how things connect, and I was fascinated when I found out that financial statements could tell you a story. Boring as hell to most people, but it was cool to me. I found a great internship with a small tax firm in January of 2014, and I am still with them today because they are a great group of people and I enjoy the work. But even though I enjoyed working in the business world, I mostly hung out with creatives. Musicians, writers, filmmakers, painters, tattoo artists, woodworkers, you name it. I always felt very comfortable and welcome in those circles, I think in part because we were all outcasts to some extent.
I received my undergraduate degree from Georgia State University, and went back to grad school there as well, graduating with a Master’s degree in Taxation. Most of my career has been spent in the private equity space. As I began moving up and considering who I wanted my own clients to be, my first thought was the music and entertainment industries. They have many similar complexities to what I was used to, namely with state for foreign taxation. I already had a few creative clients from my circle of friends, so it was an obvious choice to build out a specialty in that field. Being around so many artists growing up, I have seen it all. Some friends went on to play at sold out stadiums, but many more crashed and burned, often from poor planning or lack of business acumen. That’s where I decided to put my focus.
I always tell people that I am 80% business minded, and 20% creative, so my goal is to get creatives to be 20% business minded. That way, they can go into situations with more realistic expectations and a clearer head.
These days, I spend what little free time I can scrounge up hanging out and traveling with my weird but awesome family; my wife, our son and a menagerie of rescue animals. I also went back to studying music – playing guitar again, cello, and learning the drums with my son.
Well, that is me in a cracked nutshell. If I haven’t scared you away, or bored you to death, feel free to browse the site and make use of the information I have provided for creatives related to the business of art. Life is too short to deal with people or problems you don’t like, but life is also too short to make simple mistakes that can ruin your career or lead to burnout and losing interest in your passion for making art. Create and enjoy!
Cheers,