As far back as Vinita can remember, she has always loved numbers.
She excelled in her mathematics and physics classes growing up. When it came time for her to go to college, she left her home in India to attend Southern Nazarene University to study Computer Science and Mathematics. She eventually earned her associate’s degree in mathematics from Oklahoma City Community College but did not complete her bachelor’s because she needed to work instead.
Vinita met her husband while working as a desk clerk at a motel. After they were married, he asked her what she wanted to do in life and she told him she was interested in tax preparation. As someone who is passionate about numbers and highly detail-oriented, that work piqued her interest.
So, he paid for her to take a tax preparation course at H&R Block to help her reach this goal. To her surprise, she won a raffle after the class and ended up receiving the class for free. Equipped with this new knowledge, Vinita worked for H&R Block for one tax season.
When her son was born, she stopped working and focused primarily on raising her children. Over the years she found different opportunities to flex her bookkeeping knowledge. Whether it was bookkeeping for her husband’s rental business, being the treasurer for her son’s Cub Scouts troop or taking on the treasurer role at the Oklahoma Romance Writers Guild, Vinita kept busy.
Another passion of hers is reading and writing romance books. She connected with fellow readers and writers in Oklahoma first Oklahoma Romance Writers of America. She had goals of becoming their treasurer, but unfortunately they changed the requirements that the treasurer must be a CPA. A friend recommended her for the assistant treasurer position of the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation, Inc. In 2015, she found herself as treasurer for OWF.
In 2017 her husband took on another business that sold used motorcycle parts, so she became its bookkeeper and in 2019 she helped establish the Oklahoma Romance Writers Guild as a nonprofit and acted as a board member and treasurer.
Over the years, her experience in for profit and nonprofit bookkeeping grew. When her children were teenagers, she realized that she would need to find work when they were gone.
“I knew that the kids would grow up and leave the house so I wanted to develop skills that could help me start a business,” Vinita said.
While she was passionate about writing, she knew that it would likely take years to finish a book then get it published, so she considered her other skills – bookkeeping.
So, Eggers Tax & Bookkeeping was incorporated in July 2020.
Vinita took online courses at the American Institute for Professional Bookkeepers and found REI Oklahoma’s virtual events and workshops through an internet search. Her family lived outside of Poteau, so she was always on the lookout for online resources. The first class she took was in 2020 and focused on Microsoft Excel.
Since then, Vinita has taken courses on QuickBooks and Facebook Ads. The class that has made the largest impact on her business was REI Oklahoma’s How to Write a Business Plan.
After getting work through UpWork and acquiring local and national clients in the first two years, 2022 and 2023 were not as successful.
“I stalled after 2022 and 2023…and was rethinking everything in my life,” Vinita said. “What I was doing wasn’t working.”
In 2023 while staying in Oklahoma City to take care of her mother-in-law, Vinita used her downtime between doctors’ appointments to search for resources on how to write a business plan. To her frustration, what she found online was vague and generalized. This is when she found REI Oklahoma’s course on writing a business plan and loved it. “I really liked that class; it was really detailed. The questionnaire that they gave us broke it down into doable steps,” she said.
The level of detail in the class and questionnaire was helpful to her as someone who is highly detail oriented. She worked through that questionnaire over the next month, and it helped her narrow her focus and take a bird’s eye view of her business and where she wanted to go. Questions about her customer’s pain point really got her thinking about how to better market her company.
“Most small business owners go into it because they enjoy doing something, but what they don’t enjoy is doing their bookkeeping. I enjoy playing with numbers!”
She realized that her passion for numbers could help other small business owners by doing something that they don’t enjoy doing for themselves. Another realization was that she should try to connect with the business community in Poteau and use her connections in the state to get the word out about her services. Word of mouth referrals had helped her get clients in the past and, the more she put herself out there, the more people she met who were interested in her services.
This past May, Vinita was in Oklahoma City for a writer’s conference and stopped by the OKC Women’s Business Breakfast. She was nervous to attend because she’s an introvert but was pleasantly surprised.
“You all are very welcoming, I did not feel out of place or like I was being a burden to ask questions,” Vinita said. “It was a very welcoming experience.”
Through that event and the August OKC Women’s Business Breakfast Vinita met with several people who were interested in her bookkeeping services.
“If you are a business owner who is introverted like me, I would encourage you to do it and go to these events,” Vinita said.
Now that her business plan is written, Vinita has clearer goals for Eggers Tax & Bookkeeping. She looks forward to attending more local and REI Oklahoma networking events and registering for more online trainings in the future.
When asked what she would say to other business owners like her about REI Oklahoma, she said, “REI Oklahoma has extensive and very helpful resources.”
Finally, to those who invest in the mission of REI Oklahoma, Vinita says thank you. “The amount of information REI Oklahoma offers for free would cost so much otherwise, thank you for helping us access this.”
Vinita Eggers
Eggers Tax & Bookkeeping
504 Grace St., Poteau, OK 74953
vinitaeggers@gmail.com | 918-635-0846 | Facebook Page