Starting My Social Security Earnings History Early

Born in the small town of Remsen, Iowa, I had my first paid job walking beans on my grandparents’ farm. Jobs that followed (none ever making it onto a résumé or LinkedIn) included babysitting, house cleaning, elder care, and waitressing. Twenty years growing up in the Midwest taught me how to work hard, long before I knew where that work ethic would take me.

Going to college a mere nine miles from my childhood home was not exactly the grand adventure I had envisioned, but I thrived at Westmar College. I majored in accounting, tutored other students in accounting and writing, and at nineteen, became a published writer.

My first published piece had absolutely nothing to do with accounting. It came from my Composition and Critical Thinking class.

My Briefcase, Suits, and Nylons Era

My first job was as a staff accountant for Peter Kiewit Sons’ in Omaha, Nebraska. I graduated from college on Saturday, May 13, 1989, and started work at 8 am the following Monday. Apparently, I wasn’t interested in easing into adulthood.

Until I retired from corporate work in 2015, I never really took a break, other than vacation time and short (probably too short in hindsight) maternity leaves.

After passing my CPA exam in 1990, I joined Lutz & Company, a public accounting firm in Omaha. I would stay for twenty-two years, moving from staff accountant to partner and becoming the firm’s first female partner at age thirty-one. During those years, I watched Lutz grow from fifteen employees on my first day to more than 150 when I left in 2012.

Forty and Ready for Something Different

Just before my 40th birthday, I was honored as one of Omaha’s Ten Outstanding Young Omahans and one of its 40 Under 40. By then, Lutz had become a pillar of my identity and my young adult life. I loved my work, my clients, and my co-workers, and over the years I oversaw the firm’s healthcare department, along with stints in client accounting services and business consulting. A lot of life happened during those twenty-two years, too. I married, had three sons, and divorced.

As my life changed and my sons grew older, I wanted something different. I left public accounting to become a founder and CFO of Think Whole Person Healthcare, a large Omaha-based healthcare start-up. I spent three years bringing the vision to life, starting with another co-founder and me. After a year of raising capital and development with no payroll, our first payroll had ten employees. Six months after we opened our doors, we had 350.

I loved the people, the energy, and the experience of building something from the ground up. I also learned something important about myself: my days in large corporate finance were behind me.

Independent and It Feels so Good

In May 2016, I started Sandy A Lane Consulting after taking my first life sabbatical, six glorious months off work. That break taught me something. I wanted to work differently. Consulting let me set my own pace, enjoy life, and work with select business clients as they grew their companies and navigated change.

It also gave me the opportunity to bring together what I had learned throughout my career. My financial background taught me how to understand the numbers and what drives business performance. Decades of working with owners, employees, customers, investors, and partners taught me something equally important: you can't separate financial performance from the people who create it. People First. Profits Follow. became the philosophy behind my work and remains at the heart of my consulting today.

A new husband, Garrett, and a two-city lifestyle came during these years, too. My consulting business gave us the freedom to travel, spend a ridiculous amount of time outdoors, and eventually add our Goldendoodle, Zeke, to the mix. I had mastered remote work long before COVID made it a thing.

Welcome to Durango

On January 1, 2020, we relocated to Durango, Colorado, bought a house, and settled in just three months before a pandemic changed the world. Through my consulting work, I helped clients navigate PPP funding, worked alongside their banks, and did whatever I could to help small businesses stay afloat during an incredibly uncertain time.

Durango quickly became more than the place we lived. I became involved in the local business community, supporting entrepreneurs, mentoring start-ups, and volunteering with organizations throughout the region. That community involvement continues today and has become an important part of my life here.

Along the way, speaking became another extension of my work. I’ve enjoyed keynoting on stages and presenting to business groups, sharing stories and insights about the two things that have followed me throughout my career: people and profits.

My Business + Books Era

Nearly forty years after becoming a published writer at nineteen, I’ve come full circle. When I’m not working on business growth projects, I’m writing essays about life, people, memories, and adventures.

My Substack, The Leisure Athlete, chronicles my outdoor adventures, often involving my attempts to keep up with my decidedly non-leisure-athlete husband. But writing isn't new for me. From 2010 to 2018, I wrote Tales of the Ordinary Days and frequently contributed to the Omaha World-Herald’s Momaha section. Today, I’m bringing some of those stories back to life while continuing to write new ones, all collected here under Writing.

Now, as I approach sixty, I’m working toward my first book: a collection of stories about growing up in small-town Iowa.

Funny how things come full circle. At nineteen, I was an accounting major who got published because of a composition class. Nearly forty years later, I'm still working with businesses. And I'm writing again.