Episodes

We’ve all had shady clients. The question is what you should do when encounter one? For Ben, he gets rid of them as quickly as possible. [1:15] There isn’t an easy solution if a shady client makes up a good portion of your business’s revenue,...

Getting online reviews is the lifeblood of a virtual bookkeeping business. Reviews are one of the first things people look at when considering whether to buy a product or service, without them a certain element of trust is missing. [1:35] Where are...

Everybody needs to be marketing, but that doesn’t mean you have to take on clients. One of the cardinal sins in this business is to stop marketing. [1:10] Your message needs to be going out into the marketplace all the time. It takes time for the...

Niche marketing is one of the keys to success for 21st century bookkeepers because you have to go deeper with your clients. If you’re working with a number of different niches, you won’t be able to fully understand your client’s businesses or...

Heather has always had a desire to help people and that’s reflected in the jobs she’s had in her life. Once her daughter was born, Heather decided she wanted to stay home with her. After a few years, she wanted to explore working again. She looked...

We all face difficult things in our lives, but on the other side of difficulty is usually some victory. For example, getting through the Air Force’s basic training and passing the CPA exam. [1:20] It wasn’t what I expected, but I persevered,...

Kelly wears a number of different hats. She’s a mom of three little boys, a wife to a husband who travels a lot for business, a landlady and real estate investor, on top of her bookkeeping business. [3:30] The real estate side of things were...

All the things we do in bookkeeping are generally historical, but where we want to take it is in interpreting the data so that you can actually give your clients advice. [1:55] Before starting with advisory services, you need to be able to produce...

Erin has had her bookkeeping business for just over a year. She was a stay-at-home mom facing a divorce and needed to figure out something flexible and lucrative. In many ways, bookkeeping seemed too good to be true. [3:00] Erin was formerly a school...

Scope creep is not a good thing and it tends to run rampant in most client relationships. The question is what do we do when a client asks us to do something that we didn’t agree to do? [0:45] If you’re working with exceptional clients, this...

David started out like most entrepreneurs, looking for painful problems to solve. He worked as a freelance marketer and saw a lot of accounting firms struggle with various aspects of their business including project management. [3:45] He realized...

Randy started her bookkeeping business after the age of 50. She had been working in a dance studio for over ten years until things went awry, and she felt that if there was no security in the traditional job market anymore she might as well do things...

Once you’ve documented your processes and created the checklists, you need to put yourself into a different frame of mind and ask “how do I improve on these?” [0:55] One of the biggest traps that people fall into is documenting their processes...

One of the most common questions that Ben gets is around documenting processes because they are often all over the place. [0:35] The first thing to do is to distinguish between process documentation and process improvement. Whether or not you have...

Jessie has a background in education and actually worked as a history teacher. One day in her third year, she wanted to teach some new classes and was given a flat refusal from her boss. At that point, she realized her days as a teacher were numbered....

Brooke started off in the industry as an account manager with a construction company, until one day she got fired which was a first for her. Brooke was a day trader for a few years after that but once that became stale, she started looking for other...

Dave and his wife have been working together for a long time. She took on the bookkeeping side of things, while Dave had been running his pharmacy. After selling off the business and traveling for a while, they got into real estate investing and...

Kevin has been hustling his entire life. Multiple streams of revenue have always been a focus for him and that has manifested into multiple businesses during his adult life. [6:00] Math had always been a favorite subject for Kevin, and he worked with...

Kevin started off in the IT world and he quickly got pretty tired of getting yelled at all the time. One of his friends started a business, and Kevin started doing the IT stuff for it, which eventually developed into business management. After that...

Prior to bookkeeping, Annette was a dental hygienist for 35 years. Her life was very structured, and every minute of her time was accounted for. Her journey into bookkeeping was pretty tumultuous. After her husband suddenly died, at the age of 56, she...

Jackie’s family had always wanted to live in America so her family moved to LA, but for various reasons, it didn’t work out. She needed to set something up that was relevant to her degree in order for it to be seen as successful in the eyes of...

Jessica’s personal style is hyper feminine, but deep down she likes math and numbers. That synthesis is where the moniker Sparkle Bookkeeping came from. [2:50] When Jessica was in college she had an opportunity to work for a cannabis tax firm, and...

Jenna used to work as an auditor, but the position involved being surrounded by negative people as well as physical demands that didn’t work with her family’s schedule. After getting denied when she tried to adjust her work schedule, Jenna...

Kerrie went into corporate accounting after getting her accounting degree. She decided after 5 years that it wasn’t her cup of tea and opened her own business that lasted for a couple of years. A major move meant she had to find something else and...