Speaker 1: One of my mentors always says, You either get the result you wanted or the lesson you needed.
Speaker 2: We take our mistakes and we learn from them and we teach them to others.
Speaker 1: I like, cool, I'm literally willing to do anything. I will clean toilets.
Speaker 2: We'll feed into that and they're more attracted to that than the positive stuff, which is super unfortunate. This is gonna get some people thinking. This is the millionaire bookkeeper, where successful bookkeeper and accountant entrepreneurs share their biggest losses, biggest wins, and most significant lessons learned along the way. I'm your host, Max Emory, founder and CEO of Time Capital Bookkeeping and Time Capital University, who sponsor this show. And today we have a very special guest with us who is a or was a ⁓ Corporate CPA who walked away from the corporate world, where she had her second daughter and turned that leap into two thriving businesses. She's the owner of Of Course Financial and the founder of the Ambitious Bookkeeper, where she mentors bookkeepers and accountants to build businesses of their own. She's a mom of three, a CPA, and apparently a closet musician. ⁓ Serena Shoot, welcome to Millionaire Bookkeeper.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 2: So so happy. So happy you're we are doing this. So talking about music, this is a bookkeeping podcast, but I I I think we need to dig into this a little bit. And so I found in on the internets guitar, ukulele, trumpet. Is that accurate? You play all three of those?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and drums.
Speaker 2: And drums. No way. Wow. We're we're trying to get our our our toddler is a big drummer now, so we have him a little set, you know, and he he just whacks away on that thing. Okay, so four musical instruments. Anything else?
Speaker 1: ⁓ vocals, I guess you can consider that. That's that was actually the catalyst for me creating this audio setup was to actually re start recording the music that I write. And also the catalyst of learning guitar was so I'd have something to sing with way back in the day. But ⁓ yeah, I ended up getting this whole like mic setup. Like super, super high quality mic. This is what they use in like high quality studios. Wow. All the whole thing. And then I was just like, This is this is a lot. And then I was like, Well, I need to use this, so I'll start a podcast.
Speaker 2: And it's worked out really nicely. That is super cool. So so when did you start the music?
Speaker 1: I've been around music my entire life. My mom wrote music and performed at church growing up. ⁓ so I was part of like children's choir and all of that. And I picked up guitar in about fourth grade. My dad had an acoustic guitar that he bought and I was like, ⁓ I wanna learn and he had like a little beginner's book, because this was pre pre YouTube guys.
Speaker 2: What
Speaker 1: You either get private lessons or you teach yourself. From a book. So yeah, I taught myself the basics from this like beginner guitar book and would mostly just like listen to stuff and pick out what I was hearing. Like I remember one of the first lead kind of riffs that I learned was from a third eye blind song.
Speaker 2: Ha ha ha. ⁓ nice.
Speaker 1: Me probably. You're probably younger than I am. ⁓ so I started learning guitar, teaching myself guitar in fourth, fifth grade, sixth grade I joined band and I started learning trumpet. And so I learned how to read music on trumpet. That is the only instrument that I read music on. The others I just learned how to play by ear, basically.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. That's super impressive. Yeah. Very musically inclined. I played trumpet in sixth grade and and that was and that was it. That was it. At least you tried it. I took to it pretty quickly and like I could read the music. yeah. And then I was just like, Yeah, I don't really want to do this anymore.
Speaker 1: You know what? Like I would say that when I when people are like, Man, you're so consistent. We we could get into this when it comes to success, like consistency is one of those things. And I will say that learning music is the is what gave me the foundation of struggling through something to and being consistent with it on almost a daily basis in order to improve. And that has shown itself again and again, even now, like I started learning guitar. way back then, and then went through high school and all of that with a garage band. I played drums, I played guitar, I played trumpet, all of this stuff. And then when I graduated high school, I pretty much stopped playing music because I then became a mom very soon after that. And just put everything all of that on the shelf. And it wasn't until 2020 when the world closed down and I was like, I want to start playing guitar again. And that was 15 years after I had pretty much stopped. Every so often I would pick up my guitar and like fiddle on it, like the stuff I already knew, but I wasn't progressing. I wasn't learning anything new. ⁓ I was just playing the the old songs that I had memorized way back when. So there was no like improvement and all on and honestly, that long goes by. You're not as good as you used to be either. So yeah. In twenty twenty I was like, Well, I have all this extra time, which I didn't really have extra time because I was also building a business, which we'll get into. But that was one of the things that I really was like, I'm gonna pick my guitar back up and even if I only pick it up for fifteen minutes a day, it's better than nothing. And so that's what I did. Gave myself permission to just pick it up even for five minutes, as long as I touch that guitar every single day. And the reward to myself was a few years later I bought myself a tailor. Which is a very it was a nice, it's a nice guitar.
Speaker 2: ⁓ okay. ⁓ I've yeah, I'm I'm not a super big, you know, like I'm not a musician or anything, but I have heard that brand and I and I I know it to be a a very it's like a top of the line type brand, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I love that. So dang, I didn't know this about you. That's super cool. I was doing a little bit of research and I was like, ⁓ this is interesting. We should talk about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always love diving into like the other sides of people's personalities because, you know, accountants don't get like the best reputation with being ha having personality.
Speaker 2: With being interesting. We we do stuff sometimes ⁓ other than numbers. Well, awesome. Thank you. Thank you for that. One more thing about this, and I promise we'll get to the bookkeeping. But my wife really wants to learn guitar, so I'm just gonna give her that cue of just you have to touch the guitar, you know, just once a day, even if it's just five minutes and just kind of see where it goes from there. Cause I I I think she could be really good, but it's just it's that consistency that you spoke to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't like the reward doesn't show up right away. Like it takes that things I'm still getting better. I still take lessons every week. I go well, they're more like songwriting sessions, but I still go to lessons just to make myself show up for that and do my homework and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, I like I learned how to finger pick, which was not something I learned way back in the day. I just did chords before. And I'm like, yeah, I can do finger picking and that's from showing up every day and hand handling my guitar.
Speaker 2: Dang, that's super impressive. I I could talk about this for a while, but all right, we're gonna move it on, I promise, to the bookkeeping. You spoke, you know, super briefly to kind of you know things getting started. First, we're gonna talk about kind of where you're at now. We'll we'll set the baseline for today and then we'll roll back the clock. Speaking about today, your comfort level, give dollar figures, don't give dollar figures, whatever you're comfortable with, you can get percentages. But how big is your company? And I'm really interested in because I know you offer some like, you know, advisory services as well as the bookkeeping and and maybe even other things I don't know about. And so I always like to know the breakdown kind of between the services. So it's like we're eighty percent bookkeeping, we're twenty percent advisory, like by revenue, wh whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So today we have about 20 clients, give or take. A few of those are annual or quarterly. We have about ten percent are so like two to three clients at any given moment are enrolled in that like CFO level service, which I'm gonna define that for what it is for my firm because this is one of those areas that like people are like, Well, what does that even mean? And also you get to decide how deep. you are going with clients, but our CFO package includes a monthly meeting to go over financials and strategize. It includes an annual budget and we'll do multiple scenarios of like this is the big goal. This is like if we have to scale back or, you know, economy stuff is being weird. So let's do a version where everything is like very lean. And then we do monthly comparisons to that budget. And then quarterly we update it based on what's actually happening and we'll reforecast it. So that's pretty much what's involved in my CFO level services. I'm the one delivering those currently. My team is still does all the bookkeeping and then I I do the the meetings with the clients and the strategizing. And there's definitely more than numbers stuff that comes up on those calls. So I like to be transparent about that too because I don't want people to think that all they have to do is know the numbers. I think there is a layer of Having a real understanding about the industry and different strategies with r for running and operations of running businesses so that you can have conversations around other things. And one of the things that comes up a lot with clients is it starts with, can I afford to hire? But what it what the question really is, is like, Am I ready to hire? Do I have the mindset? what kind of position do I need to hire? We end up unraveling like, can I afford to hire? Yes, but what kind of role are you hiring? Or maybe the answer is I don't know yet, because we need to figure out how much you're gonna pay them, which means we have to figure out what role you're hiring hiring for, which means we have to know like what you're trying to achieve with this position. And it's just like you start unpacking all sorts of stuff. So I digress. It's like a total tangent. And then the rest of our clients, 80 to 90% of our clients are bookkeeping with a layer, because I don't do just basic bookkeeping. There's like a layer of still explaining the financials to them, giving them bullet points or loom videos. And there's various packages in there. So even our lowest cost package still has a layer of that advisory light where we're explaining the numbers and pointing out things that they should be paying attention to.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. We we have the we just call it like our review and interpretation service, you know. We just we call it exactly exactly what it is. And yeah, that's ⁓ awesome. Okay, great. That's really cool. And so yeah, with with those advisory calls, back when we used to offer that and I used to do those services myself as well. I mean, yeah, they would I mean they would just turn into like personal calls sometimes, you know, just like Yeah, yeah. I felt like that was a big bulk of that. It's great for relationship building. Like the the clients I used to personally do that with, you know, this was four or so years ago. They're I mean, they're still with us today, you know. ⁓ despite us not offering those anymore, just offering bookie things. So you guys do have a niche. And so what is that niche?
Speaker 1: Online business, which can I mean it's still that's still broad, but within online business, when you narrow that down, it's coaches, course creators, consultants, and e-commerce. For a long time, I went really, really narrow initially just to course creators and consultants. And then I had some course creators that decided to launch products. And I was like, Well, now we have an e-commerce component, so we may as well just include that in what we define our online business.
Speaker 2: Got it. Got it. I like it. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Ours ours kinda expands and contracts and I'm I'm sure you see that with your students as well. I I I know we do. And so la kind of last thing about, you know, where you're at today. So what what does your work day slash work week look like now?
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll do work on Mondays, but I don't usually take calls on Mondays or Fridays. So those I usually reserve for like that CEO level work or appointments or traveling or whatever. So it's like on the end of a weekend. So I'm so down. Like I was like, yes, of course. Podcasts are fun to me. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I try to kind of batch like my theme of what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Well thank for taking this one, by the way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Tuesdays and Thursdays I do take calls. Tuesdays are more outward facing calls with clients and things like that. Thursdays are usually more internal calls with teams. So one on ones, we have a team meeting every week. And then Wednesdays I reserve for that deep work. Whatever is on my plate that actually needs my attention, whether it's a level of client work or marketing or whatever. I just love having a good five to eight hour chunk of uninterrupted time to actually work on things because I'm one of those people that like I don't do well with contact switching. And ⁓ I don't like to start a project unless I think I can finish it in one sitting. And I know there's ⁓ obviously like larger projects. Like one of the larger projects I have right now is revamping my advisory program. And that's obviously not something I can do in one sitting, but there's a lot that I can batch within one sitting of of similar type tasks. So
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Have you read 10x is easier than 2x? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They they talk about that in there. ⁓
Speaker 1: I've picked it up from that a long time ago, but it's also like just sprinkled through it's logical. You know what I there's a lot of research around
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Makes a ton of sense. Yes. Yeah, it it's funny though, un until someone kind of brings that to your attention, it's like it sounds overly simplistic, I guess, you know, but it's like so effective. Yeah. I mean it's yeah, it's it's nuts. And so okay, so that's that's really good to know. I know you have like you really prioritize your family. Is is what I'm trying to say. Like you Yeah, you're you're you you have like pretty strict boundaries around your work and when you do certain things like you just spoke to and making sure you're you know you're you're there for your family a lot. ⁓ that's that's something I know know about you and respect a lot. I I try to do the same myself. So rolling it back to where you started, you were initially an education. You're really good at bookkeeping, but you cringe at the thought of marketing and selling your services, like not You don't just cringe. It it like kind of makes you like squirm a little bit or sweat a little bit. If that's you, not to worry, I have a solution for you. It is called GoPro Bookkeeping, where you're gonna learn how to get leads, you're gonna learn how to convert those leads, and you're gonna learn how to only work with clients you absolutely love, all while maintaining your introvertedness. This is coming from an introverted bookkeeper myself who has closed well over a million dollars in services just within a few years. No marketing sales or business background, no accounting degree, no letters whatsoever beside my name. I've never had a large social media following. And yet I was still able to market and sell my butt off while still being an introvert, not doing any of the crazy, cringy, salesy stuff that that just makes me uncomfortable to even think about. This is a school community, by the way. So it's at school.com slash go dash pro dash bookkeeping. Or you can just go to school.com S K-O-O-L if you're not familiar and just go to the search bar, type in bookkeeping. We're going to be one of the ⁓ communities up there at the very top of the page. What's inside GoPro Bookkeeping? ⁓ so we have a proven lead generation system that's gonna be where you learn everything that you need to know to market your services while being an introverted bookkeeper. ⁓ a sales framework specifically built for introverts. It's based on what I've done and what I still do today that actually works. Templates and scripts, live calls, of course. And then last but definitely not least, maybe the most important thing is transformational relationships. That is what everyone gets the most out of. It's the relationships they make. So no commitment, cancel any time. Okay, enough of that. Let's get back to the show. Elementary education, right, in college. Okay. And so then you at some point you switched to accounting and went that route. And so tell me about that.
Speaker 1: There's always a very deeply personal level to people's motivations for doing things. I've found anyways. And sometimes it's not by choice. In when I was in college, I was a very young mom. I had my first child during my first year of college. And I was, you know, enrolled full time, going to school for elementary education. And I don't know. If listener like anyone listening that knows this, maybe they do, maybe they don't. You think education to be a teacher is like a four year degree and it can be, but it requires you to actually take more than a full load. Wow. Like a full eighteen hour load every semester, not like the minimum twelve hour load that you can usually finish a degree in any other Not any other, but a lot of other programs. Around the time that I was wrapping up my basics and starting to get into the actual core program content of like doing the observations and creating lesson plans and learning to actually be a teacher, the same time that I split up. my husband and at that point I was like I have to get a job. I went or like I had a friend that was working at one of our little grocery stores and he worked in the produce section. He's like, I think we're hiring, you should come check it out. And I was like, cool. I'm literally willing to do anything. I will clean toilets.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. ⁓
Speaker 1: I needed the money. And so I went in there with that attitude. So anyone listening that's an entrepreneur probably has the same attitude. Like you have to be willing to work your way up and do whatever it takes. So I went in there and was like, I would love to work for you guys. I will go wherever you need me. I will cashier, I will clean toilets, I will answer phones, whatever you need. And they were like, Well, we need someone to answer phones in the office and light bookkeeping and stuff like that. And I was like, Cool. I happened to have experience with the software they use, which was Peach Tree, because my dad ran an HVAC company. He owned an HVAC company when I was growing up. And I used to invoice his customers through Peachtree. So it's my early And that was why I got hired there because they were like, ⁓ you already have experience with this software. And I was like, Yeah. I
Speaker 2: It's a crazy overlap.
Speaker 1: worked in the back office making seven dollars an hour, answering phones and doing accounts payable. And my boss, the finance manager, saw how quick I was with counting the deposits every day, doing the accounts payable, fast and accurate. And she was like, You have an act for this. Have you thought about taking some accounting classes? And I was like, I guess I could do that. So I just I didn't change my major at that point, but I decided to take some accounting classes and I convinced the dean of the school to allow me to take principles of accounting and cost accounting at the same time, which normally they don't allow you. You usually have to do principles first and then cost accounting or managerial accounting. And I was like, please just let me do it because the it was such a small university that they didn't offer the same classes every semester. And I was like, if I don't take them both now and find out if this is where I'm what I'm supposed to be doing, like I'm gonna have to wait a whole nother year. So just if I if I fail. You can drop me from the class, but I promise you I won't because that's not my personality. ⁓ and so they let me take both classes concurrently, and and I was like, this is it just clicked. It was so easy to me. And I was in the same class with business management majors, and I was helping them understand what was happening because they were like, I don't get this, I don't understand these debits and credits. And I was like, it's easy, you just look at it like this. And ⁓ so I was basically tutoring my classmates. And then one ⁓ day one of the professors was like a master's or a PhD student, and she was teaching the class. And she basically had me get up in front of the class and teach one day because I got like I ace the test or something. And I was just like, this is so wild. And ⁓ so, anyways, long story short, I decided at that point the the dean of the school, she was also cost accounting professor. She was like, You should change your major. You obviously you get this, and not very many people do. And also you can finish within four years. Dang. And I was like, okay. So I that's what I did. I changed my major. And then it also provided more of an opportunity at the store where I was working. I got promoted into the finance manager position, which is a whole other backstory, I guess, but it does play into getting to where I was in my career because I had really rich experience before I even graduated college. And so I had more years of experience. than my peers that were graduating. And so it worked in my favor, but it wasn't because I mean there is a little bit of luck and timing, but also it was like I worked really hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, yeah. I mean it you were willing to do anything and your your back was definitely against the wall with your family situation. And you were also had a full load of classes and credits and all everything that goes along with college. I remember I remember all that. Man, that yeah, that's and that's a crazy turn of events with just how things just kind of stacked on top of each other and just happened and then you ended up switching to accounting. That's just nuts that that that's how it happened and now it now you're at where you're at, you know, and you're like training other people on this stuff and and inspiring other people to do this kind of thing. It's super cool. And so going back to so you're the finance manager, you're getting really good experience and you ⁓ you know, you can speak to kind of what you did in that position, but graduate college ⁓ what happens after that? What what did you do immediately after that?
Speaker 1: I worked at the store for about three years and I had that finance manager role for Like two of it, two of those three years. And then I was very open and honest with the store manager and the board of directors because it's a it's a co-op. So we had a volunteer board of directors who I actually presented financials to every month. Wow. So I got really good experience presenting financials to people with really no financial background because they're not like your typical board of directors. And also learned the budgeting and all of that kind of stuff. So I did like end to end accounting plus the finance piece. And ⁓ I was very open with them that like when I graduate college, I'm moving away because this was my hometown. My plan was to never stay there. So but everyone knew I was like I was gonna be done. And so I helped them hire my replacement and train them up and all of that kind of stuff. And when I graduated college, I moved to Arizona and found, you know, I did like a stepping stone job of like just getting my foot in the door at like a big corporation. Did did did some medical billing, wasn't even using my degree. And during that, I was just looking for an actual accounting role. And so I ended up finding an a position. Originally it was called full charge bookkeeper at a CPA firm. And it was a very small single solo owner CPA firm, tax focused. Our niche was restaurants. And yeah, got that role as the full charge bookkeeper because they used Peach Tree. And ⁓ and that was the early days of QuickBooks Online. So we had one or two clients that were on the first iteration of QuickBooks Online. If you don't like it now, you would have really hated it then. And yeah, so I got that job. They kind of changed the position into more of a staff accountant role. So I was learning tax and doing the bookkeeping for several of our restaurant clients. And so I got that experience of working with multiple clients. It's a kind of a different ball game. to be honest, juggling, talk about contact switching, juggling all the different clients and and being available for that kind of stuff. And so I did almost two years of tax there. And ⁓ and then I moved to San Diego and took a role in a manufacturing company. Central manufacturing to be exact.
Speaker 2: Okay. And so and so your role with them was within the financial department.
Speaker 1: Matt. Yeah, I was a staff accountant there and I got a lot of really good experience with that as well because we were part of a division of a really large public company that was responsible for like acquiring the CFO that I reported to was responsible for acquiring lots of complementary businesses to the main business. And so we would acquire a company. It would be a private company. We would roll them into our public company reporting deadlines and everything. And so I got to travel, you know, up to Seattle every month to help them get onto our accounting cycle and do our month end process and stuff like that. So got a lot of really good experience with that. And the thing about that business that made it kind of unique too. was all of their accounting was actually like accounting finance hybrid. So everyone had, at least at the controller level, you were responsible not only for like the actual accounting, but also for budgeting and forecasting. And so that's a piece that I feel very, very blessed to have gotten that kind of experience throughout my entire career because not all accounting departments are structured that way. And I think that's an area that a lot of accounting folks want to learn, but they weren't afforded that opportunity in their accounting role. And so that's part of why I have my advisory program because I'm like, I could show you the what what I learned in case you didn't get the opportunity.
Speaker 2: That is gold. Yeah. I I see I see most accounts. I mean, it seems like there's kind of two different lanes. There's like the tax lane and there's there's all sorts of different lanes within the tax lane. And then there's like more so the like controller CFO lane. And they're they seem to be pretty distinct. Like usually when I when I meet someone, it's like they are in either lane and they don't mix. You know, they're like, ⁓ I've been a CPA for twenty years, I've literally never touched tax. Like I've only ever like, you know, served in the the controller CFO type seat. So yeah, it's it's super interesting. And yeah, personally I like the I like that side of it. The the the the more advi you know, CFO type advisory ⁓ side of it. The ⁓ but you know, whatever floats your boat and then also whatever you can just get exposure to. So that's super cool. Okay. And and so what ⁓ you know, speaking of what you offer, like which program is your advisory program where you teach that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's called Elevate. I call it the foundations of where you need to get to in order to start becoming an advisor or a CFO. So a lot of programs out there kind of they're teaching more of like how do you sell those services, but they're not actually teaching the skills of them and the foundational pieces. And so I felt like there was kind of a gap because not everybody has been exposed in corporate or has a mentor that is willing to show them. And I was lucky enough to have mentors in corporate that I could like shadow and be like What made you say that or make that decision or recommend that versus this just being very observant and like being a sponge to the people around me and And like I said, it was more of a hybrid department. Like we had exposure to each other and it made that a lot easier. But a lot of bookkeepers maybe have like gone through a program like Bookkeeper Launch. They've never had someone to shadow or to mentor them in this finance side of things. And if they're interested in it, it's the first best step because I teach like how to analyze financial statements, which is kind of an accounting skill, but kind of a finance skill. So you're like analyzing for accuracy versus annual And analyzing for trends, which you can do both at the same time if you're already looking at it for accuracy. And so I teach that process. I teach budgeting and forecasting and kind of like having strategic conversations, what kind of questions to ask, and all that kind of stuff. So I wouldn't say it's very foundational because I have gotten feedback that they're like, ⁓ that was way over my head. So if you're like it sounds too elementary, like there's gonna be stuff in there that is higher level. But I'm one of those people that's like you've gotta expose yourself to people that you feel like are way. ahead of you or like you feel like it's way over your head because that's what's gonna cause you to grow leaps and bounds. Because it's gonna force you to stretch yourself. If you're surrounding yourself with people that are at the same level as you're likely not going to grow unless you're just a natural leader finding ways to grow otherwise. So
Speaker 2: Yep. I love it. I love it. Yeah. A hundred percent agree with that. Awesome. So elevate. Elevate. That is the one. Cool. And so we left off at the manufacturing plant, the dental manufacturing specifically business. Let's go to when you start your business and you you know, you start getting that going. So like when was that?
Speaker 1: So there was one more company in between dental manufacturing and when I left corporate, and that was a biotech company. So it had a a blend of the manufacturing. It was a a new industry. So it was also the startup culture, which was very different than an established public company. In that company as well, the finance and accounting were underneath same person, the CFO. And I got a lot of exposure to again more budgeting and all of that kind of stuff, as well as building a team. Because when I started the company, we had 60 employees across the board. When I left, we had like 400. And so I was instrumental in growing the accounting team. It was me, the VP of finance and A financial analyst when I first started. And when I left, I had a team of 10 accountants from AP to staff accountants to accounting managers. And when I left, I was the corporate controller. So that was what happened in between. And then I ended up pregnant with my second child 10 years after my other one. So there was a big gap of me pursuing my career. And then I was like, okay, I'm ready to like pick up. Family building again and basically started over. And I was fortunate enough to be in a position where my income wasn't necessary in order for me to stay home. And so I got to retire, quote unquote and stay home with my baby. But anyone listening knows that maternity leave, it's not retirement.
Speaker 2: ⁓ yeah. Ooh, it is tough. Yeah. Very, very thankful for you guys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not a walk in the park, but ⁓ about a year into that I was like, Okay, I did all of this work to really get my CPA license to get to where I was in my career, and I was really having a hard time letting go of that and I was like, I feel like there's a way I can do both. And so I made there be a way to do both. Yeah.
Speaker 2: 'Cause your personality.
Speaker 1: ⁓ because I'm ambitious. And so I started freelancing as just doing some bookkeeping freelance stuff. ⁓ I got my first few clients on Upwork and there's a whole story of learning how to value myself coming from corporate and then going out on my own and feeling like, well, this is way easier than what I did in corporate, so it's not that valuable. I'm not I'm gonna charge like thirty dollars an hour and like if you've made the mistake, I have to. Like we all start there. It doesn't matter what your all corporate experience is. To be honest, I mean, I'm sure there's a few people that leap corporate and they understand their value, but a lot of us don't. So solidarity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A hundred percent. okay, cool. So man, that's so interesting. And those kiddos are ten years apart. You're starting the business. And so you're essentially full-time mom. And then I'm assuming starting your business was part-time. I mean, there's only so many hours in the day. I've watched my wife Sedona with our you know, she's with our kiddos all day, every day, and I'm just like, Holy cow, like your job is way harder than mine. I'm just like Talking to Serena, having a good time, you know, and you're you're up there hooking and jabbing. ⁓ so so yeah, like what what did your work days look like, you know, call it the first first year or two in your business?
Speaker 1: About a year in, like I said, my I had a year year ⁓ a one year old and any mom listening to this is probably gonna be like, Yeah, I can relate to that. Like the first year you're kind of like in a forest. Like there's nothing like then and then you start to like emerge and feel like a person again. And so that's when I was like, Okay, I think I could like I'll just do like one or two clients on nap times and stuff like that. And then and then I got pregnant with my son. Who is my youngest, and I did that throughout my pregnancy with him. I was freelancing. And then whenever he was born, when you have two like I know I had already had my second child, but it having an age gap is so different than having like two kids that are babies. Very, very different ballgame. And I was like, I completely overestimated my abilities of being able to manage client work and two kids at home. And so I pretty much shut that down. Like I shut down any freelance work for his entire first year. And so it wasn't until he was one, my other one was two. And that at that point I was like, okay, I can I can do this on nap times now because they're both like on the same schedule and all of that. And and so I started freelancing again at that point, ⁓ had a few clients. I hired a nanny to come over and just like play with them and entertain them for a couple hours a couple times a week. The other thing about me is like if I'm anticipating being interrupted, it's just as bad as being interrupted. So I like that. So that's why I just hired someone was like whether or not they're napping, like she's gonna come over if they wake up from their naps, she's got it. She can entertain them I'm still here with them. I can see what's happening and I felt really good about that. It was kind of me pouring into myself. There were times where I wouldn't use that time to work and I would go to the chiropractor or go get a massage. I was paying for that with my bookkeeping practice. So that's awesome. That was the other thing is I was like, this is for me. Like I I deserve this. I think I had about five clients with that schedule where she would come over twice a week for I think it was like two to three hours at a time. So that was basically like six hours a week that I dedicated to like that's when I would schedule my client calls if I had any or schedule the time to work on them. Or if I didn't have work to do, like in later in the month, as we know the the work fluctuates, I would just use that time for myself. And so I was about five clients in. It was at that decision point where I was like, Okay, I either need to hire someone in my firm. to do some of the bookkeeping or I need to give my nanny more hours and I was not willing to sacrifice more time with my kids and so I hired in my firm.
Speaker 2: That's so funny 'cause that's my that's my next question. When when did you decide to scale past yourself? Okay. And so five clients, yep.
Speaker 1: Five clients. If you listen to people in the industry, season of life you're in, how much time you want to even be working, you don't need to be giving it an arbitrary like, ⁓ you have to be at a hundred K before you hire. But like context, you know, context matters. And so I obviously was not at a hundred K with five clients, but I was pricing in a way that I could just like, okay, I'm just gonna roll in a bookkeeper to manage all the bank reconciliations and all the basic Bookkeeping stuff and then I'm still gonna review it. I'm still gonna send the financials to the clients. It's all good. And so I had built that pricing structure in from the beginning, which also helped later on. Cause a lot of people get stuck in the trap of like, you know, not hiring for a long time and their pricing based on them being the only person in the firm. And yeah. And so ever since the beginning, I always allocated a certain portion towards a team member. I never took home a hundred percent of the profit ever.
Speaker 2: Very high margins.
Speaker 1: from the beginning. So ⁓ that helped s with with that piece for sure.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. And it's so I mean, I I made my first hire at five clients too. I was like, you know, it some of it comes down to to like, what do you want to do? You can own a bookkeeping business and not do any bookkeeping. Like that's you know, that that's fine. You can you can do whatever you want to do, which is which is the beauty of entrepreneurship, you know. So doing your own thing. Yeah, I I like that. I like you sharing the part about your kids, you know, because when you say yes to something, typically there are things that you're saying no to. Yeah. You know? And and and that's a that's a big thing too when the when the kiddos are young. I think about that all the time, which like you you know that like I have strict a strict work schedule as well. But anyways, I love that. Very intentional. Like I'm, you know, really big on lifestyle design and it sounds like you are too very intentional about your time and how things are designed and positioned. I like that a lot. So what are the most significant lessons you've learned? You know, we talked about where you're at now, where you started even building up to where you started the business. You know, kind of through all that and you have a lot of corporate experience too. So what are some of those most significant lessons that you've learned kind of a along that arc?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say there's so many lessons. I'm like, which one do I learn? One of the most significant lessons that I've learned in entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurship will highlight your I don't want to sound cliche or anything, but like your mindset issues. Like entrepreneurship is like
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. It's hard. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It will force you to develop yourself. I don't even really know how to articulate it, but it'll really force you to look inward to understand why was I so willing to charge thirty dollars an hour when I was literally getting paid more in corporate than that. So it just really forces you to look inward and also it really forces you to really learn how to prioritize. That's not something I really got in corporate because I was on salary. I knew I was gonna be there eight hours a day at least. There was so much wasted time that I really had to like take a step back and be like, okay, perfectionism is not gonna fly in entrepreneurship. So like I would say like the perfectionism thing was was big, especially as an accountant. And I even have to like train my team when they come on from a corporate environment. I'm like, we don't have time to like worry about a $20 difference because our client doesn't care about that. You know what I mean? And so I have to like also teach other people how to actually prioritize their time. That one was one of the bigger ones. Yeah. And just like making the decisions of like the sacrifice potentially being made of like working more. Because I do have the gift of hindsight. She's not my 10, my then 10 year old when I left corporate is now 20. And
Speaker 2: Hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I really understand how fast time flies and that was constantly playing in the background when I was making decisions building this business with my little ones because I like I really understand how fast it goes and I wanted to give them a different experience than my oldest had, like her experience of me was always working, always at school, always, you know, she was in after school care. It was completely different and the gift of hindsight is really valuable. And so I really was intentional with building around that.
Speaker 2: Amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And we first started entrepreneurship is like extreme ownership, like to the T. You know, it's like a hundred percent of it is up to you. Like literally a hundred percent. And that's scary. It does cause you there's a lot of introspection that goes on where it's like, ⁓ I thought I was good at this, but I guess I'm not because I'm not, you know, I've been doing this for years and like not getting the result in that specific lane. So it's like You know, yeah, it's just everything is up to you. Like if you're successful, whatever success looks like, which is different to everyone, like it's on you. If you're not successful, it's also on you. So it's like whether they come from corporate or not, it's just having kind of that super analytical perfectionist brain that a lot of bookkeepers and accountants ⁓ come with stock, you know? So it's like
Speaker 1: Which is something that makes us successful in employee roles because everything is accurate, probably efficient, but maybe not. It doesn't really matter. It's accurate, right? When you're an employee. So it's like that was rewarded back then. It's not necessarily real rewarded anymore. So
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Queuing into what the client really cares about and like super duper delivering on that and usually that's more so speed over accuracy as bad as it is. Like usually that's that's that's that equation. I love it. Really good lessons. You're a bookkeeper and you just signed your first real estate investor client. Congratulations, but now you're like ⁓ shoot. What do I do next? How do I serve this industry? Like what does this client care about? How do I do, you know, all those little nuances that need to be done within the within the bookkeeping for all the properties and the entities and the deals and all that stuff? This group that we have, this beautiful community, ⁓ bookkeeping for REI on school is perfect for you. We've helped build systems, gain confidence, and create a sustainable and very profitable REI bookkeeping firm. So if that sounds like you, this is perfect for you. We have a technical REI bookkeeping course. We have a grow your firm course. We have templates, tools, live calls, but most importantly, the transformational relationships that you're going to make in our community. That is the most valuable piece of this community. So cancel anytime, no commitment. You immediately get access to everything. any sales we run throughout the year, you'll see it on the about page, school.com slash bookkeeping dash forward dash REI, or you can just go to schoolsk o l dot com. ⁓ just literally just type in bookkeeping into the search bar and we're going to be the first community that pops up for you. So can't wait to see you inside. Okay, back to the show. What's the biggest loss you've ever experienced kind of during this journey?
Speaker 1: One that comes to mind from like pretty recent, which I haven't even like really shared publicly, but I recently had to refund a client almost four thousand dollars. That's a financial loss, obviously, but it was also it signified a lot of things I needed to work through and caused me to reflect, probably to my detriment. I always look to see like what role I played in things either falling apart or not going as expected. And one of my mentors always says, you either get the result you wanted or the lesson you needed. So I always look at stuff. If I didn't get the result I wanted, what was the lesson? And in this particular instance, the lesson was we have a niche for a reason. I need to stick with that, no matter if I think we can help this.
Speaker 2: Definitely. I think that's great.
Speaker 1: business owner, if they can afford it, all the things like sometimes you get into a position of n I wasn't in desperation, but I was like, Yeah, we need another client. We lost one. We have to replace that revenue. This person definitely can afford us. It's telling us that we, you know, needs the things that we're gonna do. And, you know, it seemed okay in the beginning, but ⁓ there was just a lot of miscommunication and changing of minds and things like that. Ultimately, someone else also not taking responsibility. So I was just like, you know what, it's not worth a headache. Here's your money back. I didn't refund a hundred percent of it, but it was like a lot of hours that my team put in and all of that kind of stuff. But in the end, I just felt better about like just take it and like we all learned from this and wish you well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's I mean it sounds like that's probably the the best for both sides, you know. Yeah. And I'm I'm sure you kind of felt a relief after that, kinda like a weight's been lifted. I I know I always do when I mean every firm has to do stuff like that, you know. It's like it's like, I hate to lose that revenue, but man, that feels good. ⁓
Speaker 1: And it was actually the refund was caused by me disengaging because I was like, this isn't a good fit after a a month or two in. I was like, this is my team is stressed out, things keep changing, and you're not taking our advice. And I was like, this is not the right fit. And that client was upset with my decision. And so I think they felt like they wanted money back, even though the work had already been done. So I was just like, whatever, fine. All good. I can make more money.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it was a little bit of a gut punch, I'm not gonna lie. I was like scrolling indeed and stuff and looking at job descriptions. It was a dark night.
Speaker 2: ⁓ no. ⁓
Speaker 1: The reality of it, like I just feel like more people need to be honest about that stuff. And sometimes you just need to do that in order to bring yourself back to like, ⁓ I don't want any of these jobs. I don't want to go back to corporate. I love the freedom and flexibility that I have, even if I do have to deal with people like this or like refund somebody one time. This is the first time in eight years of business that I've ever had to refund anyone. I think
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is incredibly impressive.
Speaker 1: In that business. I've done refunds for my other business, but that's a different
Speaker 2: A totally different animal altogether. Yeah. ⁓ man, that is super impressive. Eight years in business, first time doing that. I I can tell you that is not the case for me.
Speaker 1: You know what? And that's okay. It's not typical to go that long and not have to refund a client for something. You know what I mean? I mean, I've covered a refund in this situation was very different than like, ⁓ we screwed something up, so I'm gonna cover your penalties and interest on that. Like I've done that several times. ⁓ we were late filing that. I'll cover the interest and penalties. That's out of my pocket.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a solid way to operate too because they, you know, whether they disengage or not, they do remember that and it it's just a reputation thing. You know, it's like, well, they messed up, but at the end of the day, you know, they they did what they could to make it right. And so, you know, we're not gonna go badmouth ⁓ on Facebook or whatever. That's that's that's always the hope, right? Yeah. Well, cool. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. ⁓ so let's talk about your biggest win that you've experienced, so the opposite side.
Speaker 1: I would say one of my biggest wins has been and I'm gonna take it back to like the personal level, I guess, like 'cause I did a tactical
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: To take it back to like more abstract. Back to kind of what we were talking about a minute ago with the personal development that is required of you with entrepreneurship is when I started my business, I was lucky enough to find mentors in the space early on that showed me a different way of thinking about life in general, not just business. And that was around the time that I was like. Early 30s. And up until that point in my life, I did not understand that I could choose to be happy. I went through li I've had I had trauma growing up, just like we all do. Like I lost my mom when I was a teenager. And ever since then I just had this really negative outlook on life and deep seated anger. And I just felt like I was biologically at a lower starting point than most people for happiness. And so I just was like, this is just how life is. Like I'm just not as happy of a person. And ⁓ I learned that I actually can choose my outcome and how I view things really does change my happiness levels. And there's other th tactical things that can be done as well. Like making your bed every day, like super easy thing to do. It really actually boosts happiness levels.
Speaker 2: Ha ha Wow. Something so simple. I I guess the military has it figured out, huh? Yeah. That's so fun. Well man. Yeah. Sorry to hear about your mom, obviously. man, that's super tough. That's an incredible like Turning it around moment or or journey. I don't quite know what I'm trying to say, but ⁓ that's super cool that you were able to get around people to kind of like change your perspective on things. Like that that's something I've found it's probably been the most impactful on happiness, on success, just like on living a good life is just kind of like who you hang around. Kind of like your your environment is huge and the people in your environment are probably the biggest piece of your environment as far as, you know, impacting how you look at things and how you act and how you operate and what level you move through life at. That is huge. And so how did you how did you do that? Like how how did you how were you able to get around people like that?
Speaker 1: It's literally podcasts. Which is like so cr the I think that's part of like my subconscious attachment to podcasting. I think it can actually change people's lives, like to have positive stuff in your ears every day. And ⁓ it wasn't like positive affirmations or anything. It was just like different mindset shifts sprinkled around in business content. ⁓ and also I did listen to like some audiobooks on specifically happiness, but I've just reached this point of like I'm kind of tired of feeling this way about life. I I want a change. And so unfortunately, you can't force anyone to get to that point. Everyone has to come to that point on their own. But if you're listening to this and you haven't reached that point, I implore you to ⁓ just decide how you want to feel and then seek out ways to to get that feeling and in positive ways. Yeah, positive, healthy ways to find happiness. But yeah, so I just started kind of immersing myself in content with just like more of a positive spin on things. And one of the catalysts was listening to Gretchen Rubin. She has a book called The
Speaker 2: Yes, positive, healthy ways.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Project. And I first listened to that book. I don't even remember how I found it. I think one day I was just like Googling, like, how do you be more happy? And
Speaker 2: Effect that's an effect of Google probably.
Speaker 1: And so I listened to that book, and one of the things in there talks about just daily habits that can change things, and one of them is making your bed and things like that. And I was like, I have nothing to lose. Just start making my bed every day. And I've been doing that now for a decade. And then listening to like business content with people that just have more of a positive spin. And anytime I do come across business content that is centered around tearing other people down or talking about how bad this, that, or the other thing is about the industry. I'm just like, okay, like that's not for me because I'm very prone to getting sucked into that.
Speaker 2: It you know what? They've obviously done studies on that, and and that's why, you know, we have a 24 seven news cycle now of just negative stuff, you know, because like that's what people people feed into that and they're more attracted to that than the positive stuff, which is super unfortunate. So like to your point, I have to do that as well, where it's like because people make that type of content to get more eyeballs, right? Because it's it just comes down to statistics. And so it's like You can easily get sucked into that stuff because, you know, some of it's interesting or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and honestly, like I did like a little experiment with that the other day. I because I saw someone's post and I thought it was kind of funny. It was like XYZ things I hate about my industry and it was a totally different industry and I was like, I should try this because I definitely have some pet peeves about our industry, but it was more tongue in cheek. That piece of content gotten way more traction than any other piece of content on my page in the last like, I don't know, months.
Speaker 2: ⁓ man, this is how it happens, Serena. This is this is exactly how it happens. And I saw that post. I think I liked it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was like in a funny way and but yeah, people are definitely love being given the opportunity to gripe about something and I d I do too, but yeah, it we just have to draw the line somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It it yeah. It it is satisfying, feels good to a certain point, and you're exactly right. You have to draw the line, otherwise you'll kinda just go down, you'll just be a negative person. Awesome. I like it. Man, that's so funny that got more views. That's how it happens.
Speaker 1: And just engagement, 'cause I did prompt people to like share your own in the comments.
Speaker 2: ⁓ man. So yeah, social media is so interesting. Well, I think it's time let's go into rapid fire questions. First one, what is your big goal for this year?
Speaker 1: In my firm, my big goal is to well, we're already in like mid year. I'm like, at the beginning of the year my goal was to double my client base. ⁓ exactly, because like our industry more clients come in at the beginning and the end of the year, so I know we We still have time to do that. So I'm gonna keep that one for my firm. My big goal for the ambitious bookkeeper is to just get more visibility to just a different way of doing things. Like to my content, obviously. But I love to just share a different perspective with people. Like you can build a lifestyle firm and also make money. It's not like one or the other. And so yeah, I'm definitely doing a little bit more marketing-wise this year to just spread the good news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. You have this the ambitious bookkeeper socials. You have your YouTube. Are you still doing the podcast?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm doing the podcast and YouTube videos. So I'm kind of alternating like video content versus podcast content, but both are still going. Good. ⁓ yeah.
Speaker 2: think at the end of last year and you were kind of thinking you may more go towards YouTube than you know kind of probably spread out the podcast a little more not focus as much on it. So that's why I asked that. But but yeah, your podcast man, it's reached a lot of people. I mean I I was listening to your podcast pretty consistently. I'd say a few years ago, ⁓ especially when I was yeah, when I was first starting, super helpful. I would listen to it. I would take notes, ⁓ I would I would implement stuff in my business. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, your your podcast is awesome. The ambitious bookkeeper podcast. So yeah, check that out. it's I listen to it on Spotify, but I I know I'm sure it's everywhere. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. So so yeah, you guys find Serena. okay, second question. Where are you taking your firm in the next five to ten years? That's like for me, that's like crazy far out, but I just like to see what people say.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I and I do. I cast visions that far out too because I think it really does help with the actions that you're taking today. Five to ten years, hopefully I will have exited.
Speaker 2: Perfect. I love that. Yes. Yeah. Working towards an exit. Yes. Amazing. Number one source of new clients.
Speaker 1: Referrals. Mm-hmm. Yep. Some are like internal like current client referrals and some are just referrals from other people who have found me on the internet.
Speaker 2: Perfect. Best advice for how to get your first five clients.
Speaker 1: Number one, and I know that you talk about this too, is just tell people in your network what you're doing, land that first client however you can, and then do an amazing job serving that client so that they want to share you with everyone. Yes.
Speaker 2: Over deliver. It sounds so simple, but I think most people probably mess that one up. They're like, ⁓ I need to get the next one. I gotta replace mancom or like whatever it is, you know. Yeah. ⁓ man, that's so true. Number one most effective thing that you guys do today for marketing.
Speaker 1: Probably YouTube. So I actually leverage my YouTube channel, even though it's the ambitious bookkeeper channel. I leverage that client facing as well. So if you watch the videos, you'll see me like be like, I'm Serena. I'm the host of this channel. And I'm also the owner at Of course Financial, where we help online businesses. So like there's all that SEO in there. And so there's always whatever I'm showing for bookkeepers, like on zero or tax draw or whatever, it's applicable to business owners too. So I try to like cross Paul. there and I've gotten clients from YouTube. I love that.
Speaker 2: I love that. That's so cool. That's a very cool way to to leverage that. Are you guys experimenting with like anything new or anything these days when it comes to marketing and or sales?
Speaker 1: The YouTube is still kind of in that experimental phase, which I know it works. So it's a matter of like just doing figuring out do I do dedicated content towards business owners or whatever. The other thing that I am wanting to experiment this year with, which I probably won't until towards, you know, the end of the year, but ads. Because I run ads in the ambitious bookkeeper. I understand them. I know how to do them. It's just a matter of carving out the time to do that for my firm.
Speaker 2: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I may have to hit you up for for ads one of these days. I'll never mess with that. But seems intriguing. Hardest part of growing your firm.
Speaker 1: ⁓ the hardest part of growing your firm is probably not that it's hard to deal with people, but just like the people side of things because the only way to really scale a bookkeeping firm is people. Even if you're implementing AI and using AI, like someone still has to oversee that. So There's always gonna be a human element of like as you grow you're gonna add more humans. That's a difficult thing, especially if you've never been in management, even if you have been in management. Like there's things I learned running my own business that I never learned in corporate, wasn't open to receiving, yada yada.
Speaker 2: There is such a personal side to that. ⁓ when it's your business and it's a small business, you know, less than ten people in it. Like, yeah, it's ⁓ yeah, that that's a it's a steep learning curve. Most important piece of tech in your firm, and this is outside of yeah, I know you guys use zero for the for the bookkeeping, and so outside of your like client portal operations management thing as well.
Speaker 1: Most important tech in our firm, I would say, is ⁓ there's like a few. Yeah. Okay, definitely we use Asana for project management. This probably is the most important because this gives me villa visibility to like where all client work is at any given moment. So that one is pretty key. Another one would be like now we use content snare for getting stuff from clients. Like
Speaker 2: You can say all of them.
Speaker 1: open questions and things like that. And we use it in our onboarding process, which has really automated a lot of that. So those are my two top softwares right now.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Awesome. I love it. Best advice for hiring your first contractor or employee?
Speaker 1: My best advice for hiring your first contractor or employee is to evaluate what you're doing that is not a something you enjoy or B that you should be doing. There's also a fine line, some people are like, Well, I enjoy doing Canva. But I'm like, But should you should you be spending your time there? ⁓ so it's like evaluating the tasks that are things that you could delegate and you're just not because you're procrastinating on something else. But yeah, should you be doing it and it's easy to delegate stuff you don't enjoy doing. So that one's like a no brainer, but
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Yeah. A task audit. I'm sure there's other names for it, but ⁓ that's what I call it. Just do you can probably you can probably even Google a template for a task audit and it's gonna come with, you know, automate, delegate, stop doing, keep doing, whatever. I I love that. That is absolutely the first step. I'm glad you talked about that. How are you currently using AI that may maybe most bookkeepers and accountants aren't right now? If if if you're using AI.
Speaker 1: Okay, so ⁓ I have like ⁓ like an excitement about it and then like an also a dread, probably not in the same sense a lot of people in our industry do. Like a lot of there's a lot of fear around AI right now, like will they take our jobs? Like I'm not afraid of it from that perspective. I have a hard time with it because of the potential impacts to our environment. ⁓ I'll just leave it at that. It's like I mean, it's already impacting it. It takes so much water and stuff. So I have a like
Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. ⁓ literally the like earth environment. Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like actual like planet.
Speaker 2: Got it. Yes. Okay. That is super interesting. Okay.
Speaker 1: And so like I while I want to adopt it more, I've actually resisted utilizing it for things that I know I can accomplish with my brain because A, there are already studies where like people are outsourcing their thinking to AI and it's causing brain atrophy. And then B, if it's doing that and also affecting water resources for certain communities, then why am I gonna even try typing into the AI a question? Like I still use Google to find things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, that's so interesting that you brought that up. I was not expecting that. I I thought you were talking about like the work environment or the client environment or like you know, like I didn't know you were talking about the actual environment. I have seen some articles about about it not being the best for certain things. ⁓ yeah. Man. So water. I just want to dig into this a little bit. And so like short water shortages.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the data centers are I don't know if you've ever been into a data center. I actually had the opportunity I've been inside of a data center before because when I worked in biotech, we had large amounts of data that we would store from, you know, the blood tests and there's lots of data in biotech. There's a lot of data and so we stored our data in remote data centers. There was one in Michigan close by to where our lab was.
Speaker 2: ⁓ yeah. I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: And ⁓ they're just big buildings with servers in them, basically. And s in order to keep servers cool, you're constantly running the AC because they heat up. And so if you think about all the servers that are required to host all of the computing that's happening with AI, they're massive. They're building them in rural areas that already don't have a lot of water in any ways to cool these data centers. They're using local water resources. And so like some people are not getting clean or enough water in their own communities anymore because they're being reallocated to the data centers. So yeah, like I think more awareness needs to come out around this. Like it's starting to pop up but
Speaker 2: I would say so because I I haven't heard this. I mean, we we we use a lot of AI. We're super hot on it, you know, just for the survivability component of this. Yeah. But yeah, I've heard other issues. I've heard more so power issues where it's like we're drawing power and you know, now it's causing issues in these areas and
Speaker 1: Same, like it's affecting communities. So
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I heard the water. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1: And also like, you know, 'cause they're building, so like the construction jobs that it's providing is great, but then it's like what's the downstream imp implication? And a lot of people are hopeful that like we'll solve the issue just like we're solving the non renewable resource issue for like gasoline and stuff. And it's like but I yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is a big, big rabbit hole. That is a ⁓
Speaker 1: So anyways, I try not to like I don't really watch the news, but I do stay plugged into certain things and ⁓ I try not to go too far into stressing about certain stuff, but it's worth considering and that's one of those things that I kind of like consciously have a hard time with, even though like I don't want to like I agree, like you have to adopt AI in order to survive in any industry at this point, but to what extent and to whose expense?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a balancing act for sure. Man. Ooh. This is gonna this is gonna get some people thanking. You've you've got me thanking.
Speaker 1: Yeah. As far as how I'm using it, I would say I try not to use it when I know it's just like a simple Google search. So like if everybody operated that way and like just continue to use your brain for certain things and don't outsource all your thinking to AI, but use it in smart ways. I try to also mostly just use it for built in to tools we're already using. ⁓ so that like also things are secure because there's the whole security thing too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And we could talk about that for a long time as well. There's there's a there's a lot of concerns. next one. Your current task list of like what you do daily, weekly. What are those, you know, top ten percent, top twenty percent items that you work on, you know, on on a we'll say on a weekly basis that you've identified that drive the needle a lot more for your firm than the rest.
Speaker 1: I would say one of the things that needs to happen weekly is some sort of outreach or marketing activity if you're growing, right? That's one thing I try to to carve out time for, even if it's as simple as like sending an email to our current clients and letting them know we're accepting new clients. Like people need to be reminded. And other thing is pouring into my team and being available. For them. I know there's still like a boundaries, yes, or a thing, but also don't be so inaccessible to your team unless you have managers managing for you, which I don't. Like I'm still managing the people and having a cohesive, happy team culture is really important to me because I get to control that.
Speaker 2: ⁓ that that is everything for the company, that culture piece. ⁓ man. I love that. I love that. That mentorship aspect, being accessible. Incredibly important. What's ⁓ so we're almost ⁓ let's see, we have we have two more questions. What's the most impactful productivity hack that you've implemented?
Speaker 1: Productivity hack. I'll do one that's kind of personal, but as an entrepreneur, like everything blends together. And one of the things that I love sharing about, because people are like, I had no idea. I use because I'm big on home cooked meals. That's one of the sacrifices I'm not always willing to make. Like we eat out sometimes when we need to, but like I really care about the type of food that my family eats. And so I cook a lot. And also I like to cook. So I meal plan and I use an app called AnyList where I can pull in recipes from the internet and it'll pull in the ingredients. And then I can just like check them off, add them to the list. And then I can also do an online grocery order like all through that and either pick it up or have it delivered. Or I just have the list on my phone and I can go to the grocery store. Like either way, it's all in one place. That saves me a lot of time because I used to do I've been meal planning and doing all of that kind of stuff since my first daughter was born. So basically since I was twenty years old. And I used to sit down with magazines and recipes and write down my grocery list and then I would rewrite it in the order of where it's at in the grocery store. Does all that for you. ⁓ and it's like literally fifteen dollars a year.
Speaker 2: Goodness. A year? Holy cow. How do you spell it?
Speaker 1: A N Y list L I S And you can collaborate with people. So like my oldest daughter, I share the list with her and she can add things to it and like it's all yeah, it's all there.
Speaker 2: Any ⁓ okay, any less. Okay. That is super cool. Yeah. I didn't know that existed. Yeah. Incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's one of my big productivity hacks. The other one is sitting down every week and actually looking at my calendar to see what's happening and reallocating. Like every time I do that, I end up moving a meeting or canceling something. Because then I'm like, I see all my appointments and I'm like, actually this is not gonna work for me this week.
Speaker 2: Priority thing too. I mean, that's that's yeah. ⁓ I mean we've we've talked about this before, but yeah, that like the the just the calendar is a super incredible planning tool for your for your business, as simple as it is. I love that. All right, last one. What's the number one thing you would say that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 1: I would say the happiness factor. I think that's the number one thing because there's a lot of stuff wrapped up in that, but just understanding that I'm not a victim to my circumstances, like I can choose something different, I can choose to look at things in a different way and I can be open to possibilities. But when you are in a really dark negative mindset all the time, like you're not open to possibilities. If you're not open to possibilities, you're not gonna be successful.
Speaker 2: Happiness factor. I t I just thought of a couple people that maybe I can send that book to, maybe not. That might be an insult. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The other the other book that was really life changing around that, which didn't I didn't read until years later from The Happiness Project. So like The Happiness Project was the first happiness book I read and then I actually I don't know if you've ever been to BKX. It's the it's the event that Bookkeeper Launch used to put on. I don't know if they're d still doing it or not, but in our goody bag the first year I went to it, there was this book called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. And that book was actually life changing too. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay. Awesome. Thank you for putting those out. This is great. I'm I'm learning so much in this in this interview. This is amazing. I think it even came up in Ten X is easier than two X I I've called that out a couple of times because that's the most recent book that I've read. But it called that out as well. It's like when you when you show up to what you're doing, really anything that that you're doing, just like Happy and like not burnt out and you know, just just all the things ⁓ that you've probably, you know, gotten from those books and executing like your work is just so much better. Like your relationships are so much better. Like so much more productivity comes out of just you showing up in a good mood, which is like again, it's just overly simple, but like it's it's so true. So and it's hard. And it's hard, you know, especially
Speaker 1: Right. Eighty percent of the time. But it's just being willing to constantly reset and have grace with yourself and try again. Every day's a new day. You can even like ⁓ minute to minute, like you can have a reset. So it's like just being willing to not be so discouraged and just keep trying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. So all right, that's our that's our thing. That's a wrap. Thank you so much for your time, Serena. Appreciate you so much. I got a ton out of this episode. So I know anyone who listens to it is gonna get a lot before we let you leave. And I'm sorry we're so over time, but I just didn't want to stop the conversation. So that's on me. But before you go, what do you have for our audience? What's the thing right now? So obviously the ambitious bookkeeper, that's huge. Everyone needs to check out what you have with that. And I I'll make sure to link, you know, websites and stuff. But yeah, what what do you have?
Speaker 1: I don't know when this is going live, but from June first to June fifteenth I've actually teamed up with a friend of mine in the industry, Workflow Queen, Alyssa Lang. ⁓ to put out the state of the virtual bookkeeping industry survey. This is Last year was the first year I did it. I did it on my own, but this year I was like, I'm looping her in because I know she's gonna have so many good ideas and we're gonna make this better and bigger. It's a survey of the virtual bookkeeping industry from the perspective of not from a perspective of software vendors. Those are usually the ones that put these surveys out, but from a perspective of helping people make decisions and getting context around certain things like average minimum price or the average monthly price for bookkeeping, but also being able to see like, okay, so their average price is this, but they don't have a team. So that provides context. You can't compare your situation to someone else's if you don't understand the underlying context and background. So we're gonna be gathering all that information. It's completely anonymous. It's at ambitiousbookkeeper.com slash survey. So if it's between the first and the fifteenth, you can opt in Give your own like answer the survey and just answer honestly. Like I said, you have to opt in to get the results, but your information is not tied to the survey. So you can rest assured your name is not going to be attached to anything. And we're going to compile all the data and hopefully have it released by July first. So you can also just opt in for the results if you don't want to share your response. But do want to respond. We're donating a dollar for every response to Make a Wish Foundation, which you'll have to listen to my podcast to understand why we're donating to that charity this year. Last year I donated to Charity Water. So we're doing that up to a thousand responses. So last year I think we had six hundred and forty-five responses.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we just want more information from the perspective of the little guys. Some of those industry reports are done by Thomson Reuters and like huge industries that are actually surveying huge firms. And most of our audience are not hundred person firms. We're all like five to ten employees or maybe even less. So it's a different ballgame.
Speaker 2: Totally, totally. I love that. And from the c you know, from our customers perspective and prospective clients and all that, you know, because we are smaller, they expect just certain things from us, you know, that they wouldn't expect from like a massive firm where they know they're just a number, but with people like us, they're they expect different things. And so it's extremely valuable that you're getting context from people like us who were actually doing this industry at our level. I think I think that's amazing. And then you also have elevate that's happening again in the fall, right?
Speaker 1: Yes. So I'm currently revamping the program to make it even better. I have some things I'm working on in the background that I don't want to necessarily announce in case it doesn't come through. But but yeah, I'm still making the program a lot better, like giving you knowledge checks and homework reviews. So you're getting feedback on actually implementing the skills. So it's like basically having that mentor incorporate. But if you didn't have that opportunity, you have a LVA program. I love
Speaker 2: that. I love that. That mentor in corporate. That's super cool. Cool. And then socials, ambitious book at ambitious bookkeeper, pretty much across the board. You can search that on any of And yeah, make sure to follow along on YouTube, the podcast, all that stuff. Everything's super valuable. Thanks again for joining me, Serena. This was a lot of fun. Thanks. Awesome. That is our episode with Serena Shoop, the ambitious bookkeeper.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Man, there's a lot of stuff in this episode to unpack. I'm definitely not gonna hit all of it, but just some things that are kind of like in the forefront for me in my mind. Right after filming the episode, man, Serena was really in grind mode, like in those early years, being a young single mom, going to to college full time, you know, working to provide for for her child as a single mom during that. Super inspiring. That she made that work and she she did what she had to do and she was very motivated. And, you know, that experience honestly ended up leading her to accounting. And she found her groove and and she was off to the races, built her career in the corporate sector and then branched out on her own. And it's all in the episode. I don't need to go through it right, but just super impressed kind of with that origin story and just exercise a lot of grit in that situation. So kind of getting into how you're getting started, you know, over delivering with your first few clients and them referring you out. That's kind of a common thread that I've heard from other people in our space as well. But it's been so true in my experience. I got that a little wrong when I first started, to be honest with you. And so now I preach to my communities to get that right. Don't make the ⁓ I I provided a good service to my first few clients, but I wouldn't say I over delivered to them. I I delivered what was the expectation and and that was it, right? If I would have over delivered, we we would have gotten a lot more referrals there in the beginning. But instead I chose to focus on ⁓ marketing efforts really, ⁓ honestly, other than, you know, over delivering ⁓ to those first few clients. It all worked out obviously. And this is why we hop on podcasts like this and and we, you know, we have communities where we teach people because we take our mistakes and we learn from them and we teach them to others, which is amazing. So hopefully other people don't make that same mistake. But yeah, that stuck out to me, over delivering to your first few clients. Talked a little bit about AI in this episode and Serena actually brought up the environmental impacts of AI, which is something I've heard Little bit about it, just like power issues. But outside of that, I hadn't really heard anything. And she brought up a, you know, it causing water issues because it takes a lot of water. They have these big AI plants out in the middle of nowhere, places that don't have a whole lot of water to begin with. And they have to drain the reservoirs of some communities to cool. you know, all of this technology, because you know, big computers and all that, I'm not a techie guy, but big computers and all that get really hot, right? And so, you know, it takes a lot of water to cool that stuff. And that's like one of the things that that helps cool ⁓ all the machinery and stuff that makes this AI stuff work. I had not heard of that. I I hadn't talked to anybody about that. ⁓ and so that is something to look into and be aware of. ⁓ we need to implement AI into our businesses to survive going forward. That's a must, just to be honest. And to be as efficient as we can be and to expand our team teams that we have or or or if you're a solopreneur, you know, expand your capabilities to provide continuously provide a better service to our clients. But on the other side of this, we we do need to just be aware of the impact you know, the negative impacts the AI has as well. Yeah, that really stood out to me because I had not heard that before. And then Serena pointing out that success looks different to everyone. She has her version of success. And it really comes back to lifestyle design, right? She's been very intentional about maintaining her relationship with her children, especially her young children, as she's doing this entrepreneurial thing. And that's very important to her. And that's kind of like a non-negotiable to her. And I super duper respect that. That's how I am as well with my family. I have hard non-negotiables and And it doesn't matter, you know, the amount of success that maybe could come my way from working extra hours or or like whatever it is, right? I d I don't care because family is the priority. And so she's been very intentional about designing her business to fit her life, which is what everybody needs to do, right? To truly be happy. And so she made the decision to hire with just five clients so that she could continue spending the amount of time with her young kids, you know, those vulnerable ages that she wanted to spend with them. And so that's just super duper cool. And that speaks to really how much control we have as business owners, as bookkeeping Entrepreneurs, as I like to say. For better or for worse, we are 100% in control once we take the lead and go full time into this. And so that lifestyle design piece that she spoke to, I think that's beautiful. Something else that I don't hear talked about a whole lot that she said is you have to give up perfectionism as a small business owner. You know, that's tough for the financial industry. That's Especially ⁓ you know, the types of people like myself have an engineering background, right? The types of people that the finance industry attracts to work within that industry. We're very analytical, we're typically type A, like we have a tendency towards perfectionism. But I a hundred percent agree with Serena, you have to give that up as the business owner. Now you want your team who are providing the service, you want them to have a level of perfectionism. But there's just some things like Serena spoke to that are not worth our time. Like if a reconciliation is a few cents off, it's not worth spending two hours to find that two cents, right? You keep it moving, you move on to the next account, and clients most likely likely not gonna care about that two cents. You disclose it, obviously, the communication piece is huge with what we do. ⁓ but their tax pros not gonna care, their CFO's not gonna like literally is no nobody's gonna care. Even the government. Will not care. Most likely. Depends on the auditor, but most likely they're not gonna care. And so you have to weigh these things of like, you know, we're not a large corporation with a thousand employees. We can't afford to waste money, right? And so if we or our team wasting time doing things that aren't value added, that is wasting money. Time is money. That's wasting payroll. Just something we need to be aware of once we are no longer in a W two, right? We're in the small business owner seat. And so we have to start thinking like a successful small business owner. And so just lean into what your clients actually care about and just don't give a ton of weight to things that are outside of that. And I would say you're on the right track with that. And then she spoke the number one thing that that's contributed to her success. She cited the happiness factor. Which I believe is a book. She cited another book that she read before that one, but and just the concept of like the happiness factor, right? But being the biggest game changer for her and that kinda you know, she she spoke to mindset a lot, which is amazing. I like mindset conversations and frameworks and things. But You know, this was just such a unique and refreshing answer to that question of like, what would you say the number one contributing factor to your success is? And she spoke to kind of her mindset in previous years with her specific situation. Her mindset just wasn't the best. And it wasn't productive and it wasn't leading to any happiness. She was an unhappy person. And so reading these books, listening to these podcasts really changed how she viewed the world, how she viewed herself, how she viewed decision making, how she viewed what was possible, what's a priority. Prioritize what to not, what to give weight, what to not. And this is huge for your success with anything in life, right? If you show up happy and your competitor shows up not as happy as you, you're most likely going to win. And it's not that we're all in competition, right? But I'm just kind of using that as an example. Like if you show up with a really good in a really good mood, you're happy, really good mindset, you're optimistic, you're gonna have a much more productive work day than the person who is not showing up with that, right? And you do that over the course of years. The gap between you and As that happy person that has the happiness factor versus the version of you that was less happy, like this happy version of you is gonna be leap years beyond the unhappy version of you, say three to five years from now. So that is something to consider. That's something I have tried to lean into a little a little more lately is like what truly makes me happy? And how can I spend more time doing that? For me, a lot of that is just spending time with my family. Right. That makes me super happy, good mood. I feel refreshed. I feel recharged. And that allows me, I don't work as many hours these days as I used to, but that allows me to use the hours that I do work to just be super energetic, super positive, super productive and crush that seven or eight hours that I'm working versus the, you know, twelve to fourteen hours that I used to work kind of, you know, before I had a family. That's something to think about. That's something to consider. And then last but not least, you know, something that's contributed greatly to Serena's success is getting around people who can inspire you, mentor you. level you up, change the way you view the world. It's a huge environmental thing. I'm a big believer in people form our environments more so than anything else. It's the people who we have around us who are going to lift us up or or drag us down or keep us flat or whatever. It's typically due to the people around us. And so you really want to Look at the people around you and are they where you want to be? Or are they encouraging you to follow your dreams, you know, hit your goals? Do they have goals? It's something to consider. It's something I've thought about a lot. This exact point is why, and I assume it's the same for Serena, like the circle of people that I spend like real time with is extremely small. And it seems to get smaller the older and more experienced that I get just in life. And so that is also something to consider for yourself. Hopefully you guys got a lot out of this. I got a ton out of this. ⁓ I can't wait to kind of, you know, get this out to the masses. But thank you again so much, Serena, for doing this. We're definitely gonna stay in in touch and keep chopping this type of stuff up. And I will see you guys in the next episode.
Speaker 2: We take our mistakes and we learn from them and we teach them to others.
Speaker 1: I like, cool, I'm literally willing to do anything. I will clean toilets.
Speaker 2: We'll feed into that and they're more attracted to that than the positive stuff, which is super unfortunate. This is gonna get some people thinking. This is the millionaire bookkeeper, where successful bookkeeper and accountant entrepreneurs share their biggest losses, biggest wins, and most significant lessons learned along the way. I'm your host, Max Emory, founder and CEO of Time Capital Bookkeeping and Time Capital University, who sponsor this show. And today we have a very special guest with us who is a or was a ⁓ Corporate CPA who walked away from the corporate world, where she had her second daughter and turned that leap into two thriving businesses. She's the owner of Of Course Financial and the founder of the Ambitious Bookkeeper, where she mentors bookkeepers and accountants to build businesses of their own. She's a mom of three, a CPA, and apparently a closet musician. ⁓ Serena Shoot, welcome to Millionaire Bookkeeper.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 2: So so happy. So happy you're we are doing this. So talking about music, this is a bookkeeping podcast, but I I I think we need to dig into this a little bit. And so I found in on the internets guitar, ukulele, trumpet. Is that accurate? You play all three of those?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and drums.
Speaker 2: And drums. No way. Wow. We're we're trying to get our our our toddler is a big drummer now, so we have him a little set, you know, and he he just whacks away on that thing. Okay, so four musical instruments. Anything else?
Speaker 1: ⁓ vocals, I guess you can consider that. That's that was actually the catalyst for me creating this audio setup was to actually re start recording the music that I write. And also the catalyst of learning guitar was so I'd have something to sing with way back in the day. But ⁓ yeah, I ended up getting this whole like mic setup. Like super, super high quality mic. This is what they use in like high quality studios. Wow. All the whole thing. And then I was just like, This is this is a lot. And then I was like, Well, I need to use this, so I'll start a podcast.
Speaker 2: And it's worked out really nicely. That is super cool. So so when did you start the music?
Speaker 1: I've been around music my entire life. My mom wrote music and performed at church growing up. ⁓ so I was part of like children's choir and all of that. And I picked up guitar in about fourth grade. My dad had an acoustic guitar that he bought and I was like, ⁓ I wanna learn and he had like a little beginner's book, because this was pre pre YouTube guys.
Speaker 2: What
Speaker 1: You either get private lessons or you teach yourself. From a book. So yeah, I taught myself the basics from this like beginner guitar book and would mostly just like listen to stuff and pick out what I was hearing. Like I remember one of the first lead kind of riffs that I learned was from a third eye blind song.
Speaker 2: Ha ha ha. ⁓ nice.
Speaker 1: Me probably. You're probably younger than I am. ⁓ so I started learning guitar, teaching myself guitar in fourth, fifth grade, sixth grade I joined band and I started learning trumpet. And so I learned how to read music on trumpet. That is the only instrument that I read music on. The others I just learned how to play by ear, basically.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. That's super impressive. Yeah. Very musically inclined. I played trumpet in sixth grade and and that was and that was it. That was it. At least you tried it. I took to it pretty quickly and like I could read the music. yeah. And then I was just like, Yeah, I don't really want to do this anymore.
Speaker 1: You know what? Like I would say that when I when people are like, Man, you're so consistent. We we could get into this when it comes to success, like consistency is one of those things. And I will say that learning music is the is what gave me the foundation of struggling through something to and being consistent with it on almost a daily basis in order to improve. And that has shown itself again and again, even now, like I started learning guitar. way back then, and then went through high school and all of that with a garage band. I played drums, I played guitar, I played trumpet, all of this stuff. And then when I graduated high school, I pretty much stopped playing music because I then became a mom very soon after that. And just put everything all of that on the shelf. And it wasn't until 2020 when the world closed down and I was like, I want to start playing guitar again. And that was 15 years after I had pretty much stopped. Every so often I would pick up my guitar and like fiddle on it, like the stuff I already knew, but I wasn't progressing. I wasn't learning anything new. ⁓ I was just playing the the old songs that I had memorized way back when. So there was no like improvement and all on and honestly, that long goes by. You're not as good as you used to be either. So yeah. In twenty twenty I was like, Well, I have all this extra time, which I didn't really have extra time because I was also building a business, which we'll get into. But that was one of the things that I really was like, I'm gonna pick my guitar back up and even if I only pick it up for fifteen minutes a day, it's better than nothing. And so that's what I did. Gave myself permission to just pick it up even for five minutes, as long as I touch that guitar every single day. And the reward to myself was a few years later I bought myself a tailor. Which is a very it was a nice, it's a nice guitar.
Speaker 2: ⁓ okay. ⁓ I've yeah, I'm I'm not a super big, you know, like I'm not a musician or anything, but I have heard that brand and I and I I know it to be a a very it's like a top of the line type brand, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I love that. So dang, I didn't know this about you. That's super cool. I was doing a little bit of research and I was like, ⁓ this is interesting. We should talk about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always love diving into like the other sides of people's personalities because, you know, accountants don't get like the best reputation with being ha having personality.
Speaker 2: With being interesting. We we do stuff sometimes ⁓ other than numbers. Well, awesome. Thank you. Thank you for that. One more thing about this, and I promise we'll get to the bookkeeping. But my wife really wants to learn guitar, so I'm just gonna give her that cue of just you have to touch the guitar, you know, just once a day, even if it's just five minutes and just kind of see where it goes from there. Cause I I I think she could be really good, but it's just it's that consistency that you spoke to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't like the reward doesn't show up right away. Like it takes that things I'm still getting better. I still take lessons every week. I go well, they're more like songwriting sessions, but I still go to lessons just to make myself show up for that and do my homework and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, I like I learned how to finger pick, which was not something I learned way back in the day. I just did chords before. And I'm like, yeah, I can do finger picking and that's from showing up every day and hand handling my guitar.
Speaker 2: Dang, that's super impressive. I I could talk about this for a while, but all right, we're gonna move it on, I promise, to the bookkeeping. You spoke, you know, super briefly to kind of you know things getting started. First, we're gonna talk about kind of where you're at now. We'll we'll set the baseline for today and then we'll roll back the clock. Speaking about today, your comfort level, give dollar figures, don't give dollar figures, whatever you're comfortable with, you can get percentages. But how big is your company? And I'm really interested in because I know you offer some like, you know, advisory services as well as the bookkeeping and and maybe even other things I don't know about. And so I always like to know the breakdown kind of between the services. So it's like we're eighty percent bookkeeping, we're twenty percent advisory, like by revenue, wh whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So today we have about 20 clients, give or take. A few of those are annual or quarterly. We have about ten percent are so like two to three clients at any given moment are enrolled in that like CFO level service, which I'm gonna define that for what it is for my firm because this is one of those areas that like people are like, Well, what does that even mean? And also you get to decide how deep. you are going with clients, but our CFO package includes a monthly meeting to go over financials and strategize. It includes an annual budget and we'll do multiple scenarios of like this is the big goal. This is like if we have to scale back or, you know, economy stuff is being weird. So let's do a version where everything is like very lean. And then we do monthly comparisons to that budget. And then quarterly we update it based on what's actually happening and we'll reforecast it. So that's pretty much what's involved in my CFO level services. I'm the one delivering those currently. My team is still does all the bookkeeping and then I I do the the meetings with the clients and the strategizing. And there's definitely more than numbers stuff that comes up on those calls. So I like to be transparent about that too because I don't want people to think that all they have to do is know the numbers. I think there is a layer of Having a real understanding about the industry and different strategies with r for running and operations of running businesses so that you can have conversations around other things. And one of the things that comes up a lot with clients is it starts with, can I afford to hire? But what it what the question really is, is like, Am I ready to hire? Do I have the mindset? what kind of position do I need to hire? We end up unraveling like, can I afford to hire? Yes, but what kind of role are you hiring? Or maybe the answer is I don't know yet, because we need to figure out how much you're gonna pay them, which means we have to figure out what role you're hiring hiring for, which means we have to know like what you're trying to achieve with this position. And it's just like you start unpacking all sorts of stuff. So I digress. It's like a total tangent. And then the rest of our clients, 80 to 90% of our clients are bookkeeping with a layer, because I don't do just basic bookkeeping. There's like a layer of still explaining the financials to them, giving them bullet points or loom videos. And there's various packages in there. So even our lowest cost package still has a layer of that advisory light where we're explaining the numbers and pointing out things that they should be paying attention to.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. We we have the we just call it like our review and interpretation service, you know. We just we call it exactly exactly what it is. And yeah, that's ⁓ awesome. Okay, great. That's really cool. And so yeah, with with those advisory calls, back when we used to offer that and I used to do those services myself as well. I mean, yeah, they would I mean they would just turn into like personal calls sometimes, you know, just like Yeah, yeah. I felt like that was a big bulk of that. It's great for relationship building. Like the the clients I used to personally do that with, you know, this was four or so years ago. They're I mean, they're still with us today, you know. ⁓ despite us not offering those anymore, just offering bookie things. So you guys do have a niche. And so what is that niche?
Speaker 1: Online business, which can I mean it's still that's still broad, but within online business, when you narrow that down, it's coaches, course creators, consultants, and e-commerce. For a long time, I went really, really narrow initially just to course creators and consultants. And then I had some course creators that decided to launch products. And I was like, Well, now we have an e-commerce component, so we may as well just include that in what we define our online business.
Speaker 2: Got it. Got it. I like it. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Ours ours kinda expands and contracts and I'm I'm sure you see that with your students as well. I I I know we do. And so la kind of last thing about, you know, where you're at today. So what what does your work day slash work week look like now?
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll do work on Mondays, but I don't usually take calls on Mondays or Fridays. So those I usually reserve for like that CEO level work or appointments or traveling or whatever. So it's like on the end of a weekend. So I'm so down. Like I was like, yes, of course. Podcasts are fun to me. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I try to kind of batch like my theme of what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Well thank for taking this one, by the way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Tuesdays and Thursdays I do take calls. Tuesdays are more outward facing calls with clients and things like that. Thursdays are usually more internal calls with teams. So one on ones, we have a team meeting every week. And then Wednesdays I reserve for that deep work. Whatever is on my plate that actually needs my attention, whether it's a level of client work or marketing or whatever. I just love having a good five to eight hour chunk of uninterrupted time to actually work on things because I'm one of those people that like I don't do well with contact switching. And ⁓ I don't like to start a project unless I think I can finish it in one sitting. And I know there's ⁓ obviously like larger projects. Like one of the larger projects I have right now is revamping my advisory program. And that's obviously not something I can do in one sitting, but there's a lot that I can batch within one sitting of of similar type tasks. So
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Have you read 10x is easier than 2x? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They they talk about that in there. ⁓
Speaker 1: I've picked it up from that a long time ago, but it's also like just sprinkled through it's logical. You know what I there's a lot of research around
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Makes a ton of sense. Yes. Yeah, it it's funny though, un until someone kind of brings that to your attention, it's like it sounds overly simplistic, I guess, you know, but it's like so effective. Yeah. I mean it's yeah, it's it's nuts. And so okay, so that's that's really good to know. I know you have like you really prioritize your family. Is is what I'm trying to say. Like you Yeah, you're you're you you have like pretty strict boundaries around your work and when you do certain things like you just spoke to and making sure you're you know you're you're there for your family a lot. ⁓ that's that's something I know know about you and respect a lot. I I try to do the same myself. So rolling it back to where you started, you were initially an education. You're really good at bookkeeping, but you cringe at the thought of marketing and selling your services, like not You don't just cringe. It it like kind of makes you like squirm a little bit or sweat a little bit. If that's you, not to worry, I have a solution for you. It is called GoPro Bookkeeping, where you're gonna learn how to get leads, you're gonna learn how to convert those leads, and you're gonna learn how to only work with clients you absolutely love, all while maintaining your introvertedness. This is coming from an introverted bookkeeper myself who has closed well over a million dollars in services just within a few years. No marketing sales or business background, no accounting degree, no letters whatsoever beside my name. I've never had a large social media following. And yet I was still able to market and sell my butt off while still being an introvert, not doing any of the crazy, cringy, salesy stuff that that just makes me uncomfortable to even think about. This is a school community, by the way. So it's at school.com slash go dash pro dash bookkeeping. Or you can just go to school.com S K-O-O-L if you're not familiar and just go to the search bar, type in bookkeeping. We're going to be one of the ⁓ communities up there at the very top of the page. What's inside GoPro Bookkeeping? ⁓ so we have a proven lead generation system that's gonna be where you learn everything that you need to know to market your services while being an introverted bookkeeper. ⁓ a sales framework specifically built for introverts. It's based on what I've done and what I still do today that actually works. Templates and scripts, live calls, of course. And then last but definitely not least, maybe the most important thing is transformational relationships. That is what everyone gets the most out of. It's the relationships they make. So no commitment, cancel any time. Okay, enough of that. Let's get back to the show. Elementary education, right, in college. Okay. And so then you at some point you switched to accounting and went that route. And so tell me about that.
Speaker 1: There's always a very deeply personal level to people's motivations for doing things. I've found anyways. And sometimes it's not by choice. In when I was in college, I was a very young mom. I had my first child during my first year of college. And I was, you know, enrolled full time, going to school for elementary education. And I don't know. If listener like anyone listening that knows this, maybe they do, maybe they don't. You think education to be a teacher is like a four year degree and it can be, but it requires you to actually take more than a full load. Wow. Like a full eighteen hour load every semester, not like the minimum twelve hour load that you can usually finish a degree in any other Not any other, but a lot of other programs. Around the time that I was wrapping up my basics and starting to get into the actual core program content of like doing the observations and creating lesson plans and learning to actually be a teacher, the same time that I split up. my husband and at that point I was like I have to get a job. I went or like I had a friend that was working at one of our little grocery stores and he worked in the produce section. He's like, I think we're hiring, you should come check it out. And I was like, cool. I'm literally willing to do anything. I will clean toilets.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. ⁓
Speaker 1: I needed the money. And so I went in there with that attitude. So anyone listening that's an entrepreneur probably has the same attitude. Like you have to be willing to work your way up and do whatever it takes. So I went in there and was like, I would love to work for you guys. I will go wherever you need me. I will cashier, I will clean toilets, I will answer phones, whatever you need. And they were like, Well, we need someone to answer phones in the office and light bookkeeping and stuff like that. And I was like, Cool. I happened to have experience with the software they use, which was Peach Tree, because my dad ran an HVAC company. He owned an HVAC company when I was growing up. And I used to invoice his customers through Peachtree. So it's my early And that was why I got hired there because they were like, ⁓ you already have experience with this software. And I was like, Yeah. I
Speaker 2: It's a crazy overlap.
Speaker 1: worked in the back office making seven dollars an hour, answering phones and doing accounts payable. And my boss, the finance manager, saw how quick I was with counting the deposits every day, doing the accounts payable, fast and accurate. And she was like, You have an act for this. Have you thought about taking some accounting classes? And I was like, I guess I could do that. So I just I didn't change my major at that point, but I decided to take some accounting classes and I convinced the dean of the school to allow me to take principles of accounting and cost accounting at the same time, which normally they don't allow you. You usually have to do principles first and then cost accounting or managerial accounting. And I was like, please just let me do it because the it was such a small university that they didn't offer the same classes every semester. And I was like, if I don't take them both now and find out if this is where I'm what I'm supposed to be doing, like I'm gonna have to wait a whole nother year. So just if I if I fail. You can drop me from the class, but I promise you I won't because that's not my personality. ⁓ and so they let me take both classes concurrently, and and I was like, this is it just clicked. It was so easy to me. And I was in the same class with business management majors, and I was helping them understand what was happening because they were like, I don't get this, I don't understand these debits and credits. And I was like, it's easy, you just look at it like this. And ⁓ so I was basically tutoring my classmates. And then one ⁓ day one of the professors was like a master's or a PhD student, and she was teaching the class. And she basically had me get up in front of the class and teach one day because I got like I ace the test or something. And I was just like, this is so wild. And ⁓ so, anyways, long story short, I decided at that point the the dean of the school, she was also cost accounting professor. She was like, You should change your major. You obviously you get this, and not very many people do. And also you can finish within four years. Dang. And I was like, okay. So I that's what I did. I changed my major. And then it also provided more of an opportunity at the store where I was working. I got promoted into the finance manager position, which is a whole other backstory, I guess, but it does play into getting to where I was in my career because I had really rich experience before I even graduated college. And so I had more years of experience. than my peers that were graduating. And so it worked in my favor, but it wasn't because I mean there is a little bit of luck and timing, but also it was like I worked really hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, yeah. I mean it you were willing to do anything and your your back was definitely against the wall with your family situation. And you were also had a full load of classes and credits and all everything that goes along with college. I remember I remember all that. Man, that yeah, that's and that's a crazy turn of events with just how things just kind of stacked on top of each other and just happened and then you ended up switching to accounting. That's just nuts that that that's how it happened and now it now you're at where you're at, you know, and you're like training other people on this stuff and and inspiring other people to do this kind of thing. It's super cool. And so going back to so you're the finance manager, you're getting really good experience and you ⁓ you know, you can speak to kind of what you did in that position, but graduate college ⁓ what happens after that? What what did you do immediately after that?
Speaker 1: I worked at the store for about three years and I had that finance manager role for Like two of it, two of those three years. And then I was very open and honest with the store manager and the board of directors because it's a it's a co-op. So we had a volunteer board of directors who I actually presented financials to every month. Wow. So I got really good experience presenting financials to people with really no financial background because they're not like your typical board of directors. And also learned the budgeting and all of that kind of stuff. So I did like end to end accounting plus the finance piece. And ⁓ I was very open with them that like when I graduate college, I'm moving away because this was my hometown. My plan was to never stay there. So but everyone knew I was like I was gonna be done. And so I helped them hire my replacement and train them up and all of that kind of stuff. And when I graduated college, I moved to Arizona and found, you know, I did like a stepping stone job of like just getting my foot in the door at like a big corporation. Did did did some medical billing, wasn't even using my degree. And during that, I was just looking for an actual accounting role. And so I ended up finding an a position. Originally it was called full charge bookkeeper at a CPA firm. And it was a very small single solo owner CPA firm, tax focused. Our niche was restaurants. And yeah, got that role as the full charge bookkeeper because they used Peach Tree. And ⁓ and that was the early days of QuickBooks Online. So we had one or two clients that were on the first iteration of QuickBooks Online. If you don't like it now, you would have really hated it then. And yeah, so I got that job. They kind of changed the position into more of a staff accountant role. So I was learning tax and doing the bookkeeping for several of our restaurant clients. And so I got that experience of working with multiple clients. It's a kind of a different ball game. to be honest, juggling, talk about contact switching, juggling all the different clients and and being available for that kind of stuff. And so I did almost two years of tax there. And ⁓ and then I moved to San Diego and took a role in a manufacturing company. Central manufacturing to be exact.
Speaker 2: Okay. And so and so your role with them was within the financial department.
Speaker 1: Matt. Yeah, I was a staff accountant there and I got a lot of really good experience with that as well because we were part of a division of a really large public company that was responsible for like acquiring the CFO that I reported to was responsible for acquiring lots of complementary businesses to the main business. And so we would acquire a company. It would be a private company. We would roll them into our public company reporting deadlines and everything. And so I got to travel, you know, up to Seattle every month to help them get onto our accounting cycle and do our month end process and stuff like that. So got a lot of really good experience with that. And the thing about that business that made it kind of unique too. was all of their accounting was actually like accounting finance hybrid. So everyone had, at least at the controller level, you were responsible not only for like the actual accounting, but also for budgeting and forecasting. And so that's a piece that I feel very, very blessed to have gotten that kind of experience throughout my entire career because not all accounting departments are structured that way. And I think that's an area that a lot of accounting folks want to learn, but they weren't afforded that opportunity in their accounting role. And so that's part of why I have my advisory program because I'm like, I could show you the what what I learned in case you didn't get the opportunity.
Speaker 2: That is gold. Yeah. I I see I see most accounts. I mean, it seems like there's kind of two different lanes. There's like the tax lane and there's there's all sorts of different lanes within the tax lane. And then there's like more so the like controller CFO lane. And they're they seem to be pretty distinct. Like usually when I when I meet someone, it's like they are in either lane and they don't mix. You know, they're like, ⁓ I've been a CPA for twenty years, I've literally never touched tax. Like I've only ever like, you know, served in the the controller CFO type seat. So yeah, it's it's super interesting. And yeah, personally I like the I like that side of it. The the the the more advi you know, CFO type advisory ⁓ side of it. The ⁓ but you know, whatever floats your boat and then also whatever you can just get exposure to. So that's super cool. Okay. And and so what ⁓ you know, speaking of what you offer, like which program is your advisory program where you teach that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's called Elevate. I call it the foundations of where you need to get to in order to start becoming an advisor or a CFO. So a lot of programs out there kind of they're teaching more of like how do you sell those services, but they're not actually teaching the skills of them and the foundational pieces. And so I felt like there was kind of a gap because not everybody has been exposed in corporate or has a mentor that is willing to show them. And I was lucky enough to have mentors in corporate that I could like shadow and be like What made you say that or make that decision or recommend that versus this just being very observant and like being a sponge to the people around me and And like I said, it was more of a hybrid department. Like we had exposure to each other and it made that a lot easier. But a lot of bookkeepers maybe have like gone through a program like Bookkeeper Launch. They've never had someone to shadow or to mentor them in this finance side of things. And if they're interested in it, it's the first best step because I teach like how to analyze financial statements, which is kind of an accounting skill, but kind of a finance skill. So you're like analyzing for accuracy versus annual And analyzing for trends, which you can do both at the same time if you're already looking at it for accuracy. And so I teach that process. I teach budgeting and forecasting and kind of like having strategic conversations, what kind of questions to ask, and all that kind of stuff. So I wouldn't say it's very foundational because I have gotten feedback that they're like, ⁓ that was way over my head. So if you're like it sounds too elementary, like there's gonna be stuff in there that is higher level. But I'm one of those people that's like you've gotta expose yourself to people that you feel like are way. ahead of you or like you feel like it's way over your head because that's what's gonna cause you to grow leaps and bounds. Because it's gonna force you to stretch yourself. If you're surrounding yourself with people that are at the same level as you're likely not going to grow unless you're just a natural leader finding ways to grow otherwise. So
Speaker 2: Yep. I love it. I love it. Yeah. A hundred percent agree with that. Awesome. So elevate. Elevate. That is the one. Cool. And so we left off at the manufacturing plant, the dental manufacturing specifically business. Let's go to when you start your business and you you know, you start getting that going. So like when was that?
Speaker 1: So there was one more company in between dental manufacturing and when I left corporate, and that was a biotech company. So it had a a blend of the manufacturing. It was a a new industry. So it was also the startup culture, which was very different than an established public company. In that company as well, the finance and accounting were underneath same person, the CFO. And I got a lot of exposure to again more budgeting and all of that kind of stuff, as well as building a team. Because when I started the company, we had 60 employees across the board. When I left, we had like 400. And so I was instrumental in growing the accounting team. It was me, the VP of finance and A financial analyst when I first started. And when I left, I had a team of 10 accountants from AP to staff accountants to accounting managers. And when I left, I was the corporate controller. So that was what happened in between. And then I ended up pregnant with my second child 10 years after my other one. So there was a big gap of me pursuing my career. And then I was like, okay, I'm ready to like pick up. Family building again and basically started over. And I was fortunate enough to be in a position where my income wasn't necessary in order for me to stay home. And so I got to retire, quote unquote and stay home with my baby. But anyone listening knows that maternity leave, it's not retirement.
Speaker 2: ⁓ yeah. Ooh, it is tough. Yeah. Very, very thankful for you guys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not a walk in the park, but ⁓ about a year into that I was like, Okay, I did all of this work to really get my CPA license to get to where I was in my career, and I was really having a hard time letting go of that and I was like, I feel like there's a way I can do both. And so I made there be a way to do both. Yeah.
Speaker 2: 'Cause your personality.
Speaker 1: ⁓ because I'm ambitious. And so I started freelancing as just doing some bookkeeping freelance stuff. ⁓ I got my first few clients on Upwork and there's a whole story of learning how to value myself coming from corporate and then going out on my own and feeling like, well, this is way easier than what I did in corporate, so it's not that valuable. I'm not I'm gonna charge like thirty dollars an hour and like if you've made the mistake, I have to. Like we all start there. It doesn't matter what your all corporate experience is. To be honest, I mean, I'm sure there's a few people that leap corporate and they understand their value, but a lot of us don't. So solidarity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A hundred percent. okay, cool. So man, that's so interesting. And those kiddos are ten years apart. You're starting the business. And so you're essentially full-time mom. And then I'm assuming starting your business was part-time. I mean, there's only so many hours in the day. I've watched my wife Sedona with our you know, she's with our kiddos all day, every day, and I'm just like, Holy cow, like your job is way harder than mine. I'm just like Talking to Serena, having a good time, you know, and you're you're up there hooking and jabbing. ⁓ so so yeah, like what what did your work days look like, you know, call it the first first year or two in your business?
Speaker 1: About a year in, like I said, my I had a year year ⁓ a one year old and any mom listening to this is probably gonna be like, Yeah, I can relate to that. Like the first year you're kind of like in a forest. Like there's nothing like then and then you start to like emerge and feel like a person again. And so that's when I was like, Okay, I think I could like I'll just do like one or two clients on nap times and stuff like that. And then and then I got pregnant with my son. Who is my youngest, and I did that throughout my pregnancy with him. I was freelancing. And then whenever he was born, when you have two like I know I had already had my second child, but it having an age gap is so different than having like two kids that are babies. Very, very different ballgame. And I was like, I completely overestimated my abilities of being able to manage client work and two kids at home. And so I pretty much shut that down. Like I shut down any freelance work for his entire first year. And so it wasn't until he was one, my other one was two. And that at that point I was like, okay, I can I can do this on nap times now because they're both like on the same schedule and all of that. And and so I started freelancing again at that point, ⁓ had a few clients. I hired a nanny to come over and just like play with them and entertain them for a couple hours a couple times a week. The other thing about me is like if I'm anticipating being interrupted, it's just as bad as being interrupted. So I like that. So that's why I just hired someone was like whether or not they're napping, like she's gonna come over if they wake up from their naps, she's got it. She can entertain them I'm still here with them. I can see what's happening and I felt really good about that. It was kind of me pouring into myself. There were times where I wouldn't use that time to work and I would go to the chiropractor or go get a massage. I was paying for that with my bookkeeping practice. So that's awesome. That was the other thing is I was like, this is for me. Like I I deserve this. I think I had about five clients with that schedule where she would come over twice a week for I think it was like two to three hours at a time. So that was basically like six hours a week that I dedicated to like that's when I would schedule my client calls if I had any or schedule the time to work on them. Or if I didn't have work to do, like in later in the month, as we know the the work fluctuates, I would just use that time for myself. And so I was about five clients in. It was at that decision point where I was like, Okay, I either need to hire someone in my firm. to do some of the bookkeeping or I need to give my nanny more hours and I was not willing to sacrifice more time with my kids and so I hired in my firm.
Speaker 2: That's so funny 'cause that's my that's my next question. When when did you decide to scale past yourself? Okay. And so five clients, yep.
Speaker 1: Five clients. If you listen to people in the industry, season of life you're in, how much time you want to even be working, you don't need to be giving it an arbitrary like, ⁓ you have to be at a hundred K before you hire. But like context, you know, context matters. And so I obviously was not at a hundred K with five clients, but I was pricing in a way that I could just like, okay, I'm just gonna roll in a bookkeeper to manage all the bank reconciliations and all the basic Bookkeeping stuff and then I'm still gonna review it. I'm still gonna send the financials to the clients. It's all good. And so I had built that pricing structure in from the beginning, which also helped later on. Cause a lot of people get stuck in the trap of like, you know, not hiring for a long time and their pricing based on them being the only person in the firm. And yeah. And so ever since the beginning, I always allocated a certain portion towards a team member. I never took home a hundred percent of the profit ever.
Speaker 2: Very high margins.
Speaker 1: from the beginning. So ⁓ that helped s with with that piece for sure.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah. And it's so I mean, I I made my first hire at five clients too. I was like, you know, it some of it comes down to to like, what do you want to do? You can own a bookkeeping business and not do any bookkeeping. Like that's you know, that that's fine. You can you can do whatever you want to do, which is which is the beauty of entrepreneurship, you know. So doing your own thing. Yeah, I I like that. I like you sharing the part about your kids, you know, because when you say yes to something, typically there are things that you're saying no to. Yeah. You know? And and and that's a that's a big thing too when the when the kiddos are young. I think about that all the time, which like you you know that like I have strict a strict work schedule as well. But anyways, I love that. Very intentional. Like I'm, you know, really big on lifestyle design and it sounds like you are too very intentional about your time and how things are designed and positioned. I like that a lot. So what are the most significant lessons you've learned? You know, we talked about where you're at now, where you started even building up to where you started the business. You know, kind of through all that and you have a lot of corporate experience too. So what are some of those most significant lessons that you've learned kind of a along that arc?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say there's so many lessons. I'm like, which one do I learn? One of the most significant lessons that I've learned in entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurship will highlight your I don't want to sound cliche or anything, but like your mindset issues. Like entrepreneurship is like
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. It's hard. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It will force you to develop yourself. I don't even really know how to articulate it, but it'll really force you to look inward to understand why was I so willing to charge thirty dollars an hour when I was literally getting paid more in corporate than that. So it just really forces you to look inward and also it really forces you to really learn how to prioritize. That's not something I really got in corporate because I was on salary. I knew I was gonna be there eight hours a day at least. There was so much wasted time that I really had to like take a step back and be like, okay, perfectionism is not gonna fly in entrepreneurship. So like I would say like the perfectionism thing was was big, especially as an accountant. And I even have to like train my team when they come on from a corporate environment. I'm like, we don't have time to like worry about a $20 difference because our client doesn't care about that. You know what I mean? And so I have to like also teach other people how to actually prioritize their time. That one was one of the bigger ones. Yeah. And just like making the decisions of like the sacrifice potentially being made of like working more. Because I do have the gift of hindsight. She's not my 10, my then 10 year old when I left corporate is now 20. And
Speaker 2: Hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I really understand how fast time flies and that was constantly playing in the background when I was making decisions building this business with my little ones because I like I really understand how fast it goes and I wanted to give them a different experience than my oldest had, like her experience of me was always working, always at school, always, you know, she was in after school care. It was completely different and the gift of hindsight is really valuable. And so I really was intentional with building around that.
Speaker 2: Amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And we first started entrepreneurship is like extreme ownership, like to the T. You know, it's like a hundred percent of it is up to you. Like literally a hundred percent. And that's scary. It does cause you there's a lot of introspection that goes on where it's like, ⁓ I thought I was good at this, but I guess I'm not because I'm not, you know, I've been doing this for years and like not getting the result in that specific lane. So it's like You know, yeah, it's just everything is up to you. Like if you're successful, whatever success looks like, which is different to everyone, like it's on you. If you're not successful, it's also on you. So it's like whether they come from corporate or not, it's just having kind of that super analytical perfectionist brain that a lot of bookkeepers and accountants ⁓ come with stock, you know? So it's like
Speaker 1: Which is something that makes us successful in employee roles because everything is accurate, probably efficient, but maybe not. It doesn't really matter. It's accurate, right? When you're an employee. So it's like that was rewarded back then. It's not necessarily real rewarded anymore. So
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Queuing into what the client really cares about and like super duper delivering on that and usually that's more so speed over accuracy as bad as it is. Like usually that's that's that's that equation. I love it. Really good lessons. You're a bookkeeper and you just signed your first real estate investor client. Congratulations, but now you're like ⁓ shoot. What do I do next? How do I serve this industry? Like what does this client care about? How do I do, you know, all those little nuances that need to be done within the within the bookkeeping for all the properties and the entities and the deals and all that stuff? This group that we have, this beautiful community, ⁓ bookkeeping for REI on school is perfect for you. We've helped build systems, gain confidence, and create a sustainable and very profitable REI bookkeeping firm. So if that sounds like you, this is perfect for you. We have a technical REI bookkeeping course. We have a grow your firm course. We have templates, tools, live calls, but most importantly, the transformational relationships that you're going to make in our community. That is the most valuable piece of this community. So cancel anytime, no commitment. You immediately get access to everything. any sales we run throughout the year, you'll see it on the about page, school.com slash bookkeeping dash forward dash REI, or you can just go to schoolsk o l dot com. ⁓ just literally just type in bookkeeping into the search bar and we're going to be the first community that pops up for you. So can't wait to see you inside. Okay, back to the show. What's the biggest loss you've ever experienced kind of during this journey?
Speaker 1: One that comes to mind from like pretty recent, which I haven't even like really shared publicly, but I recently had to refund a client almost four thousand dollars. That's a financial loss, obviously, but it was also it signified a lot of things I needed to work through and caused me to reflect, probably to my detriment. I always look to see like what role I played in things either falling apart or not going as expected. And one of my mentors always says, you either get the result you wanted or the lesson you needed. So I always look at stuff. If I didn't get the result I wanted, what was the lesson? And in this particular instance, the lesson was we have a niche for a reason. I need to stick with that, no matter if I think we can help this.
Speaker 2: Definitely. I think that's great.
Speaker 1: business owner, if they can afford it, all the things like sometimes you get into a position of n I wasn't in desperation, but I was like, Yeah, we need another client. We lost one. We have to replace that revenue. This person definitely can afford us. It's telling us that we, you know, needs the things that we're gonna do. And, you know, it seemed okay in the beginning, but ⁓ there was just a lot of miscommunication and changing of minds and things like that. Ultimately, someone else also not taking responsibility. So I was just like, you know what, it's not worth a headache. Here's your money back. I didn't refund a hundred percent of it, but it was like a lot of hours that my team put in and all of that kind of stuff. But in the end, I just felt better about like just take it and like we all learned from this and wish you well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's I mean it sounds like that's probably the the best for both sides, you know. Yeah. And I'm I'm sure you kind of felt a relief after that, kinda like a weight's been lifted. I I know I always do when I mean every firm has to do stuff like that, you know. It's like it's like, I hate to lose that revenue, but man, that feels good. ⁓
Speaker 1: And it was actually the refund was caused by me disengaging because I was like, this isn't a good fit after a a month or two in. I was like, this is my team is stressed out, things keep changing, and you're not taking our advice. And I was like, this is not the right fit. And that client was upset with my decision. And so I think they felt like they wanted money back, even though the work had already been done. So I was just like, whatever, fine. All good. I can make more money.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it was a little bit of a gut punch, I'm not gonna lie. I was like scrolling indeed and stuff and looking at job descriptions. It was a dark night.
Speaker 2: ⁓ no. ⁓
Speaker 1: The reality of it, like I just feel like more people need to be honest about that stuff. And sometimes you just need to do that in order to bring yourself back to like, ⁓ I don't want any of these jobs. I don't want to go back to corporate. I love the freedom and flexibility that I have, even if I do have to deal with people like this or like refund somebody one time. This is the first time in eight years of business that I've ever had to refund anyone. I think
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is incredibly impressive.
Speaker 1: In that business. I've done refunds for my other business, but that's a different
Speaker 2: A totally different animal altogether. Yeah. ⁓ man, that is super impressive. Eight years in business, first time doing that. I I can tell you that is not the case for me.
Speaker 1: You know what? And that's okay. It's not typical to go that long and not have to refund a client for something. You know what I mean? I mean, I've covered a refund in this situation was very different than like, ⁓ we screwed something up, so I'm gonna cover your penalties and interest on that. Like I've done that several times. ⁓ we were late filing that. I'll cover the interest and penalties. That's out of my pocket.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a solid way to operate too because they, you know, whether they disengage or not, they do remember that and it it's just a reputation thing. You know, it's like, well, they messed up, but at the end of the day, you know, they they did what they could to make it right. And so, you know, we're not gonna go badmouth ⁓ on Facebook or whatever. That's that's that's always the hope, right? Yeah. Well, cool. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. ⁓ so let's talk about your biggest win that you've experienced, so the opposite side.
Speaker 1: I would say one of my biggest wins has been and I'm gonna take it back to like the personal level, I guess, like 'cause I did a tactical
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: To take it back to like more abstract. Back to kind of what we were talking about a minute ago with the personal development that is required of you with entrepreneurship is when I started my business, I was lucky enough to find mentors in the space early on that showed me a different way of thinking about life in general, not just business. And that was around the time that I was like. Early 30s. And up until that point in my life, I did not understand that I could choose to be happy. I went through li I've had I had trauma growing up, just like we all do. Like I lost my mom when I was a teenager. And ever since then I just had this really negative outlook on life and deep seated anger. And I just felt like I was biologically at a lower starting point than most people for happiness. And so I just was like, this is just how life is. Like I'm just not as happy of a person. And ⁓ I learned that I actually can choose my outcome and how I view things really does change my happiness levels. And there's other th tactical things that can be done as well. Like making your bed every day, like super easy thing to do. It really actually boosts happiness levels.
Speaker 2: Ha ha Wow. Something so simple. I I guess the military has it figured out, huh? Yeah. That's so fun. Well man. Yeah. Sorry to hear about your mom, obviously. man, that's super tough. That's an incredible like Turning it around moment or or journey. I don't quite know what I'm trying to say, but ⁓ that's super cool that you were able to get around people to kind of like change your perspective on things. Like that that's something I've found it's probably been the most impactful on happiness, on success, just like on living a good life is just kind of like who you hang around. Kind of like your your environment is huge and the people in your environment are probably the biggest piece of your environment as far as, you know, impacting how you look at things and how you act and how you operate and what level you move through life at. That is huge. And so how did you how did you do that? Like how how did you how were you able to get around people like that?
Speaker 1: It's literally podcasts. Which is like so cr the I think that's part of like my subconscious attachment to podcasting. I think it can actually change people's lives, like to have positive stuff in your ears every day. And ⁓ it wasn't like positive affirmations or anything. It was just like different mindset shifts sprinkled around in business content. ⁓ and also I did listen to like some audiobooks on specifically happiness, but I've just reached this point of like I'm kind of tired of feeling this way about life. I I want a change. And so unfortunately, you can't force anyone to get to that point. Everyone has to come to that point on their own. But if you're listening to this and you haven't reached that point, I implore you to ⁓ just decide how you want to feel and then seek out ways to to get that feeling and in positive ways. Yeah, positive, healthy ways to find happiness. But yeah, so I just started kind of immersing myself in content with just like more of a positive spin on things. And one of the catalysts was listening to Gretchen Rubin. She has a book called The
Speaker 2: Yes, positive, healthy ways.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Project. And I first listened to that book. I don't even remember how I found it. I think one day I was just like Googling, like, how do you be more happy? And
Speaker 2: Effect that's an effect of Google probably.
Speaker 1: And so I listened to that book, and one of the things in there talks about just daily habits that can change things, and one of them is making your bed and things like that. And I was like, I have nothing to lose. Just start making my bed every day. And I've been doing that now for a decade. And then listening to like business content with people that just have more of a positive spin. And anytime I do come across business content that is centered around tearing other people down or talking about how bad this, that, or the other thing is about the industry. I'm just like, okay, like that's not for me because I'm very prone to getting sucked into that.
Speaker 2: It you know what? They've obviously done studies on that, and and that's why, you know, we have a 24 seven news cycle now of just negative stuff, you know, because like that's what people people feed into that and they're more attracted to that than the positive stuff, which is super unfortunate. So like to your point, I have to do that as well, where it's like because people make that type of content to get more eyeballs, right? Because it's it just comes down to statistics. And so it's like You can easily get sucked into that stuff because, you know, some of it's interesting or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and honestly, like I did like a little experiment with that the other day. I because I saw someone's post and I thought it was kind of funny. It was like XYZ things I hate about my industry and it was a totally different industry and I was like, I should try this because I definitely have some pet peeves about our industry, but it was more tongue in cheek. That piece of content gotten way more traction than any other piece of content on my page in the last like, I don't know, months.
Speaker 2: ⁓ man, this is how it happens, Serena. This is this is exactly how it happens. And I saw that post. I think I liked it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was like in a funny way and but yeah, people are definitely love being given the opportunity to gripe about something and I d I do too, but yeah, it we just have to draw the line somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It it yeah. It it is satisfying, feels good to a certain point, and you're exactly right. You have to draw the line, otherwise you'll kinda just go down, you'll just be a negative person. Awesome. I like it. Man, that's so funny that got more views. That's how it happens.
Speaker 1: And just engagement, 'cause I did prompt people to like share your own in the comments.
Speaker 2: ⁓ man. So yeah, social media is so interesting. Well, I think it's time let's go into rapid fire questions. First one, what is your big goal for this year?
Speaker 1: In my firm, my big goal is to well, we're already in like mid year. I'm like, at the beginning of the year my goal was to double my client base. ⁓ exactly, because like our industry more clients come in at the beginning and the end of the year, so I know we We still have time to do that. So I'm gonna keep that one for my firm. My big goal for the ambitious bookkeeper is to just get more visibility to just a different way of doing things. Like to my content, obviously. But I love to just share a different perspective with people. Like you can build a lifestyle firm and also make money. It's not like one or the other. And so yeah, I'm definitely doing a little bit more marketing-wise this year to just spread the good news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. You have this the ambitious bookkeeper socials. You have your YouTube. Are you still doing the podcast?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm doing the podcast and YouTube videos. So I'm kind of alternating like video content versus podcast content, but both are still going. Good. ⁓ yeah.
Speaker 2: think at the end of last year and you were kind of thinking you may more go towards YouTube than you know kind of probably spread out the podcast a little more not focus as much on it. So that's why I asked that. But but yeah, your podcast man, it's reached a lot of people. I mean I I was listening to your podcast pretty consistently. I'd say a few years ago, ⁓ especially when I was yeah, when I was first starting, super helpful. I would listen to it. I would take notes, ⁓ I would I would implement stuff in my business. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, your your podcast is awesome. The ambitious bookkeeper podcast. So yeah, check that out. it's I listen to it on Spotify, but I I know I'm sure it's everywhere. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, yeah. So so yeah, you guys find Serena. okay, second question. Where are you taking your firm in the next five to ten years? That's like for me, that's like crazy far out, but I just like to see what people say.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I and I do. I cast visions that far out too because I think it really does help with the actions that you're taking today. Five to ten years, hopefully I will have exited.
Speaker 2: Perfect. I love that. Yes. Yeah. Working towards an exit. Yes. Amazing. Number one source of new clients.
Speaker 1: Referrals. Mm-hmm. Yep. Some are like internal like current client referrals and some are just referrals from other people who have found me on the internet.
Speaker 2: Perfect. Best advice for how to get your first five clients.
Speaker 1: Number one, and I know that you talk about this too, is just tell people in your network what you're doing, land that first client however you can, and then do an amazing job serving that client so that they want to share you with everyone. Yes.
Speaker 2: Over deliver. It sounds so simple, but I think most people probably mess that one up. They're like, ⁓ I need to get the next one. I gotta replace mancom or like whatever it is, you know. Yeah. ⁓ man, that's so true. Number one most effective thing that you guys do today for marketing.
Speaker 1: Probably YouTube. So I actually leverage my YouTube channel, even though it's the ambitious bookkeeper channel. I leverage that client facing as well. So if you watch the videos, you'll see me like be like, I'm Serena. I'm the host of this channel. And I'm also the owner at Of course Financial, where we help online businesses. So like there's all that SEO in there. And so there's always whatever I'm showing for bookkeepers, like on zero or tax draw or whatever, it's applicable to business owners too. So I try to like cross Paul. there and I've gotten clients from YouTube. I love that.
Speaker 2: I love that. That's so cool. That's a very cool way to to leverage that. Are you guys experimenting with like anything new or anything these days when it comes to marketing and or sales?
Speaker 1: The YouTube is still kind of in that experimental phase, which I know it works. So it's a matter of like just doing figuring out do I do dedicated content towards business owners or whatever. The other thing that I am wanting to experiment this year with, which I probably won't until towards, you know, the end of the year, but ads. Because I run ads in the ambitious bookkeeper. I understand them. I know how to do them. It's just a matter of carving out the time to do that for my firm.
Speaker 2: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I may have to hit you up for for ads one of these days. I'll never mess with that. But seems intriguing. Hardest part of growing your firm.
Speaker 1: ⁓ the hardest part of growing your firm is probably not that it's hard to deal with people, but just like the people side of things because the only way to really scale a bookkeeping firm is people. Even if you're implementing AI and using AI, like someone still has to oversee that. So There's always gonna be a human element of like as you grow you're gonna add more humans. That's a difficult thing, especially if you've never been in management, even if you have been in management. Like there's things I learned running my own business that I never learned in corporate, wasn't open to receiving, yada yada.
Speaker 2: There is such a personal side to that. ⁓ when it's your business and it's a small business, you know, less than ten people in it. Like, yeah, it's ⁓ yeah, that that's a it's a steep learning curve. Most important piece of tech in your firm, and this is outside of yeah, I know you guys use zero for the for the bookkeeping, and so outside of your like client portal operations management thing as well.
Speaker 1: Most important tech in our firm, I would say, is ⁓ there's like a few. Yeah. Okay, definitely we use Asana for project management. This probably is the most important because this gives me villa visibility to like where all client work is at any given moment. So that one is pretty key. Another one would be like now we use content snare for getting stuff from clients. Like
Speaker 2: You can say all of them.
Speaker 1: open questions and things like that. And we use it in our onboarding process, which has really automated a lot of that. So those are my two top softwares right now.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Awesome. I love it. Best advice for hiring your first contractor or employee?
Speaker 1: My best advice for hiring your first contractor or employee is to evaluate what you're doing that is not a something you enjoy or B that you should be doing. There's also a fine line, some people are like, Well, I enjoy doing Canva. But I'm like, But should you should you be spending your time there? ⁓ so it's like evaluating the tasks that are things that you could delegate and you're just not because you're procrastinating on something else. But yeah, should you be doing it and it's easy to delegate stuff you don't enjoy doing. So that one's like a no brainer, but
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Yeah. A task audit. I'm sure there's other names for it, but ⁓ that's what I call it. Just do you can probably you can probably even Google a template for a task audit and it's gonna come with, you know, automate, delegate, stop doing, keep doing, whatever. I I love that. That is absolutely the first step. I'm glad you talked about that. How are you currently using AI that may maybe most bookkeepers and accountants aren't right now? If if if you're using AI.
Speaker 1: Okay, so ⁓ I have like ⁓ like an excitement about it and then like an also a dread, probably not in the same sense a lot of people in our industry do. Like a lot of there's a lot of fear around AI right now, like will they take our jobs? Like I'm not afraid of it from that perspective. I have a hard time with it because of the potential impacts to our environment. ⁓ I'll just leave it at that. It's like I mean, it's already impacting it. It takes so much water and stuff. So I have a like
Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. ⁓ literally the like earth environment. Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like actual like planet.
Speaker 2: Got it. Yes. Okay. That is super interesting. Okay.
Speaker 1: And so like I while I want to adopt it more, I've actually resisted utilizing it for things that I know I can accomplish with my brain because A, there are already studies where like people are outsourcing their thinking to AI and it's causing brain atrophy. And then B, if it's doing that and also affecting water resources for certain communities, then why am I gonna even try typing into the AI a question? Like I still use Google to find things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, that's so interesting that you brought that up. I was not expecting that. I I thought you were talking about like the work environment or the client environment or like you know, like I didn't know you were talking about the actual environment. I have seen some articles about about it not being the best for certain things. ⁓ yeah. Man. So water. I just want to dig into this a little bit. And so like short water shortages.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the data centers are I don't know if you've ever been into a data center. I actually had the opportunity I've been inside of a data center before because when I worked in biotech, we had large amounts of data that we would store from, you know, the blood tests and there's lots of data in biotech. There's a lot of data and so we stored our data in remote data centers. There was one in Michigan close by to where our lab was.
Speaker 2: ⁓ yeah. I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: And ⁓ they're just big buildings with servers in them, basically. And s in order to keep servers cool, you're constantly running the AC because they heat up. And so if you think about all the servers that are required to host all of the computing that's happening with AI, they're massive. They're building them in rural areas that already don't have a lot of water in any ways to cool these data centers. They're using local water resources. And so like some people are not getting clean or enough water in their own communities anymore because they're being reallocated to the data centers. So yeah, like I think more awareness needs to come out around this. Like it's starting to pop up but
Speaker 2: I would say so because I I haven't heard this. I mean, we we we use a lot of AI. We're super hot on it, you know, just for the survivability component of this. Yeah. But yeah, I've heard other issues. I've heard more so power issues where it's like we're drawing power and you know, now it's causing issues in these areas and
Speaker 1: Same, like it's affecting communities. So
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I heard the water. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1: And also like, you know, 'cause they're building, so like the construction jobs that it's providing is great, but then it's like what's the downstream imp implication? And a lot of people are hopeful that like we'll solve the issue just like we're solving the non renewable resource issue for like gasoline and stuff. And it's like but I yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is a big, big rabbit hole. That is a ⁓
Speaker 1: So anyways, I try not to like I don't really watch the news, but I do stay plugged into certain things and ⁓ I try not to go too far into stressing about certain stuff, but it's worth considering and that's one of those things that I kind of like consciously have a hard time with, even though like I don't want to like I agree, like you have to adopt AI in order to survive in any industry at this point, but to what extent and to whose expense?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a balancing act for sure. Man. Ooh. This is gonna this is gonna get some people thanking. You've you've got me thanking.
Speaker 1: Yeah. As far as how I'm using it, I would say I try not to use it when I know it's just like a simple Google search. So like if everybody operated that way and like just continue to use your brain for certain things and don't outsource all your thinking to AI, but use it in smart ways. I try to also mostly just use it for built in to tools we're already using. ⁓ so that like also things are secure because there's the whole security thing too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And we could talk about that for a long time as well. There's there's a there's a lot of concerns. next one. Your current task list of like what you do daily, weekly. What are those, you know, top ten percent, top twenty percent items that you work on, you know, on on a we'll say on a weekly basis that you've identified that drive the needle a lot more for your firm than the rest.
Speaker 1: I would say one of the things that needs to happen weekly is some sort of outreach or marketing activity if you're growing, right? That's one thing I try to to carve out time for, even if it's as simple as like sending an email to our current clients and letting them know we're accepting new clients. Like people need to be reminded. And other thing is pouring into my team and being available. For them. I know there's still like a boundaries, yes, or a thing, but also don't be so inaccessible to your team unless you have managers managing for you, which I don't. Like I'm still managing the people and having a cohesive, happy team culture is really important to me because I get to control that.
Speaker 2: ⁓ that that is everything for the company, that culture piece. ⁓ man. I love that. I love that. That mentorship aspect, being accessible. Incredibly important. What's ⁓ so we're almost ⁓ let's see, we have we have two more questions. What's the most impactful productivity hack that you've implemented?
Speaker 1: Productivity hack. I'll do one that's kind of personal, but as an entrepreneur, like everything blends together. And one of the things that I love sharing about, because people are like, I had no idea. I use because I'm big on home cooked meals. That's one of the sacrifices I'm not always willing to make. Like we eat out sometimes when we need to, but like I really care about the type of food that my family eats. And so I cook a lot. And also I like to cook. So I meal plan and I use an app called AnyList where I can pull in recipes from the internet and it'll pull in the ingredients. And then I can just like check them off, add them to the list. And then I can also do an online grocery order like all through that and either pick it up or have it delivered. Or I just have the list on my phone and I can go to the grocery store. Like either way, it's all in one place. That saves me a lot of time because I used to do I've been meal planning and doing all of that kind of stuff since my first daughter was born. So basically since I was twenty years old. And I used to sit down with magazines and recipes and write down my grocery list and then I would rewrite it in the order of where it's at in the grocery store. Does all that for you. ⁓ and it's like literally fifteen dollars a year.
Speaker 2: Goodness. A year? Holy cow. How do you spell it?
Speaker 1: A N Y list L I S And you can collaborate with people. So like my oldest daughter, I share the list with her and she can add things to it and like it's all yeah, it's all there.
Speaker 2: Any ⁓ okay, any less. Okay. That is super cool. Yeah. I didn't know that existed. Yeah. Incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's one of my big productivity hacks. The other one is sitting down every week and actually looking at my calendar to see what's happening and reallocating. Like every time I do that, I end up moving a meeting or canceling something. Because then I'm like, I see all my appointments and I'm like, actually this is not gonna work for me this week.
Speaker 2: Priority thing too. I mean, that's that's yeah. ⁓ I mean we've we've talked about this before, but yeah, that like the the just the calendar is a super incredible planning tool for your for your business, as simple as it is. I love that. All right, last one. What's the number one thing you would say that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 1: I would say the happiness factor. I think that's the number one thing because there's a lot of stuff wrapped up in that, but just understanding that I'm not a victim to my circumstances, like I can choose something different, I can choose to look at things in a different way and I can be open to possibilities. But when you are in a really dark negative mindset all the time, like you're not open to possibilities. If you're not open to possibilities, you're not gonna be successful.
Speaker 2: Happiness factor. I t I just thought of a couple people that maybe I can send that book to, maybe not. That might be an insult. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The other the other book that was really life changing around that, which didn't I didn't read until years later from The Happiness Project. So like The Happiness Project was the first happiness book I read and then I actually I don't know if you've ever been to BKX. It's the it's the event that Bookkeeper Launch used to put on. I don't know if they're d still doing it or not, but in our goody bag the first year I went to it, there was this book called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. And that book was actually life changing too. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay. Awesome. Thank you for putting those out. This is great. I'm I'm learning so much in this in this interview. This is amazing. I think it even came up in Ten X is easier than two X I I've called that out a couple of times because that's the most recent book that I've read. But it called that out as well. It's like when you when you show up to what you're doing, really anything that that you're doing, just like Happy and like not burnt out and you know, just just all the things ⁓ that you've probably, you know, gotten from those books and executing like your work is just so much better. Like your relationships are so much better. Like so much more productivity comes out of just you showing up in a good mood, which is like again, it's just overly simple, but like it's it's so true. So and it's hard. And it's hard, you know, especially
Speaker 1: Right. Eighty percent of the time. But it's just being willing to constantly reset and have grace with yourself and try again. Every day's a new day. You can even like ⁓ minute to minute, like you can have a reset. So it's like just being willing to not be so discouraged and just keep trying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. So all right, that's our that's our thing. That's a wrap. Thank you so much for your time, Serena. Appreciate you so much. I got a ton out of this episode. So I know anyone who listens to it is gonna get a lot before we let you leave. And I'm sorry we're so over time, but I just didn't want to stop the conversation. So that's on me. But before you go, what do you have for our audience? What's the thing right now? So obviously the ambitious bookkeeper, that's huge. Everyone needs to check out what you have with that. And I I'll make sure to link, you know, websites and stuff. But yeah, what what do you have?
Speaker 1: I don't know when this is going live, but from June first to June fifteenth I've actually teamed up with a friend of mine in the industry, Workflow Queen, Alyssa Lang. ⁓ to put out the state of the virtual bookkeeping industry survey. This is Last year was the first year I did it. I did it on my own, but this year I was like, I'm looping her in because I know she's gonna have so many good ideas and we're gonna make this better and bigger. It's a survey of the virtual bookkeeping industry from the perspective of not from a perspective of software vendors. Those are usually the ones that put these surveys out, but from a perspective of helping people make decisions and getting context around certain things like average minimum price or the average monthly price for bookkeeping, but also being able to see like, okay, so their average price is this, but they don't have a team. So that provides context. You can't compare your situation to someone else's if you don't understand the underlying context and background. So we're gonna be gathering all that information. It's completely anonymous. It's at ambitiousbookkeeper.com slash survey. So if it's between the first and the fifteenth, you can opt in Give your own like answer the survey and just answer honestly. Like I said, you have to opt in to get the results, but your information is not tied to the survey. So you can rest assured your name is not going to be attached to anything. And we're going to compile all the data and hopefully have it released by July first. So you can also just opt in for the results if you don't want to share your response. But do want to respond. We're donating a dollar for every response to Make a Wish Foundation, which you'll have to listen to my podcast to understand why we're donating to that charity this year. Last year I donated to Charity Water. So we're doing that up to a thousand responses. So last year I think we had six hundred and forty-five responses.
Speaker 2: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we just want more information from the perspective of the little guys. Some of those industry reports are done by Thomson Reuters and like huge industries that are actually surveying huge firms. And most of our audience are not hundred person firms. We're all like five to ten employees or maybe even less. So it's a different ballgame.
Speaker 2: Totally, totally. I love that. And from the c you know, from our customers perspective and prospective clients and all that, you know, because we are smaller, they expect just certain things from us, you know, that they wouldn't expect from like a massive firm where they know they're just a number, but with people like us, they're they expect different things. And so it's extremely valuable that you're getting context from people like us who were actually doing this industry at our level. I think I think that's amazing. And then you also have elevate that's happening again in the fall, right?
Speaker 1: Yes. So I'm currently revamping the program to make it even better. I have some things I'm working on in the background that I don't want to necessarily announce in case it doesn't come through. But but yeah, I'm still making the program a lot better, like giving you knowledge checks and homework reviews. So you're getting feedback on actually implementing the skills. So it's like basically having that mentor incorporate. But if you didn't have that opportunity, you have a LVA program. I love
Speaker 2: that. I love that. That mentor in corporate. That's super cool. Cool. And then socials, ambitious book at ambitious bookkeeper, pretty much across the board. You can search that on any of And yeah, make sure to follow along on YouTube, the podcast, all that stuff. Everything's super valuable. Thanks again for joining me, Serena. This was a lot of fun. Thanks. Awesome. That is our episode with Serena Shoop, the ambitious bookkeeper.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Man, there's a lot of stuff in this episode to unpack. I'm definitely not gonna hit all of it, but just some things that are kind of like in the forefront for me in my mind. Right after filming the episode, man, Serena was really in grind mode, like in those early years, being a young single mom, going to to college full time, you know, working to provide for for her child as a single mom during that. Super inspiring. That she made that work and she she did what she had to do and she was very motivated. And, you know, that experience honestly ended up leading her to accounting. And she found her groove and and she was off to the races, built her career in the corporate sector and then branched out on her own. And it's all in the episode. I don't need to go through it right, but just super impressed kind of with that origin story and just exercise a lot of grit in that situation. So kind of getting into how you're getting started, you know, over delivering with your first few clients and them referring you out. That's kind of a common thread that I've heard from other people in our space as well. But it's been so true in my experience. I got that a little wrong when I first started, to be honest with you. And so now I preach to my communities to get that right. Don't make the ⁓ I I provided a good service to my first few clients, but I wouldn't say I over delivered to them. I I delivered what was the expectation and and that was it, right? If I would have over delivered, we we would have gotten a lot more referrals there in the beginning. But instead I chose to focus on ⁓ marketing efforts really, ⁓ honestly, other than, you know, over delivering ⁓ to those first few clients. It all worked out obviously. And this is why we hop on podcasts like this and and we, you know, we have communities where we teach people because we take our mistakes and we learn from them and we teach them to others, which is amazing. So hopefully other people don't make that same mistake. But yeah, that stuck out to me, over delivering to your first few clients. Talked a little bit about AI in this episode and Serena actually brought up the environmental impacts of AI, which is something I've heard Little bit about it, just like power issues. But outside of that, I hadn't really heard anything. And she brought up a, you know, it causing water issues because it takes a lot of water. They have these big AI plants out in the middle of nowhere, places that don't have a whole lot of water to begin with. And they have to drain the reservoirs of some communities to cool. you know, all of this technology, because you know, big computers and all that, I'm not a techie guy, but big computers and all that get really hot, right? And so, you know, it takes a lot of water to cool that stuff. And that's like one of the things that that helps cool ⁓ all the machinery and stuff that makes this AI stuff work. I had not heard of that. I I hadn't talked to anybody about that. ⁓ and so that is something to look into and be aware of. ⁓ we need to implement AI into our businesses to survive going forward. That's a must, just to be honest. And to be as efficient as we can be and to expand our team teams that we have or or or if you're a solopreneur, you know, expand your capabilities to provide continuously provide a better service to our clients. But on the other side of this, we we do need to just be aware of the impact you know, the negative impacts the AI has as well. Yeah, that really stood out to me because I had not heard that before. And then Serena pointing out that success looks different to everyone. She has her version of success. And it really comes back to lifestyle design, right? She's been very intentional about maintaining her relationship with her children, especially her young children, as she's doing this entrepreneurial thing. And that's very important to her. And that's kind of like a non-negotiable to her. And I super duper respect that. That's how I am as well with my family. I have hard non-negotiables and And it doesn't matter, you know, the amount of success that maybe could come my way from working extra hours or or like whatever it is, right? I d I don't care because family is the priority. And so she's been very intentional about designing her business to fit her life, which is what everybody needs to do, right? To truly be happy. And so she made the decision to hire with just five clients so that she could continue spending the amount of time with her young kids, you know, those vulnerable ages that she wanted to spend with them. And so that's just super duper cool. And that speaks to really how much control we have as business owners, as bookkeeping Entrepreneurs, as I like to say. For better or for worse, we are 100% in control once we take the lead and go full time into this. And so that lifestyle design piece that she spoke to, I think that's beautiful. Something else that I don't hear talked about a whole lot that she said is you have to give up perfectionism as a small business owner. You know, that's tough for the financial industry. That's Especially ⁓ you know, the types of people like myself have an engineering background, right? The types of people that the finance industry attracts to work within that industry. We're very analytical, we're typically type A, like we have a tendency towards perfectionism. But I a hundred percent agree with Serena, you have to give that up as the business owner. Now you want your team who are providing the service, you want them to have a level of perfectionism. But there's just some things like Serena spoke to that are not worth our time. Like if a reconciliation is a few cents off, it's not worth spending two hours to find that two cents, right? You keep it moving, you move on to the next account, and clients most likely likely not gonna care about that two cents. You disclose it, obviously, the communication piece is huge with what we do. ⁓ but their tax pros not gonna care, their CFO's not gonna like literally is no nobody's gonna care. Even the government. Will not care. Most likely. Depends on the auditor, but most likely they're not gonna care. And so you have to weigh these things of like, you know, we're not a large corporation with a thousand employees. We can't afford to waste money, right? And so if we or our team wasting time doing things that aren't value added, that is wasting money. Time is money. That's wasting payroll. Just something we need to be aware of once we are no longer in a W two, right? We're in the small business owner seat. And so we have to start thinking like a successful small business owner. And so just lean into what your clients actually care about and just don't give a ton of weight to things that are outside of that. And I would say you're on the right track with that. And then she spoke the number one thing that that's contributed to her success. She cited the happiness factor. Which I believe is a book. She cited another book that she read before that one, but and just the concept of like the happiness factor, right? But being the biggest game changer for her and that kinda you know, she she spoke to mindset a lot, which is amazing. I like mindset conversations and frameworks and things. But You know, this was just such a unique and refreshing answer to that question of like, what would you say the number one contributing factor to your success is? And she spoke to kind of her mindset in previous years with her specific situation. Her mindset just wasn't the best. And it wasn't productive and it wasn't leading to any happiness. She was an unhappy person. And so reading these books, listening to these podcasts really changed how she viewed the world, how she viewed herself, how she viewed decision making, how she viewed what was possible, what's a priority. Prioritize what to not, what to give weight, what to not. And this is huge for your success with anything in life, right? If you show up happy and your competitor shows up not as happy as you, you're most likely going to win. And it's not that we're all in competition, right? But I'm just kind of using that as an example. Like if you show up with a really good in a really good mood, you're happy, really good mindset, you're optimistic, you're gonna have a much more productive work day than the person who is not showing up with that, right? And you do that over the course of years. The gap between you and As that happy person that has the happiness factor versus the version of you that was less happy, like this happy version of you is gonna be leap years beyond the unhappy version of you, say three to five years from now. So that is something to consider. That's something I have tried to lean into a little a little more lately is like what truly makes me happy? And how can I spend more time doing that? For me, a lot of that is just spending time with my family. Right. That makes me super happy, good mood. I feel refreshed. I feel recharged. And that allows me, I don't work as many hours these days as I used to, but that allows me to use the hours that I do work to just be super energetic, super positive, super productive and crush that seven or eight hours that I'm working versus the, you know, twelve to fourteen hours that I used to work kind of, you know, before I had a family. That's something to think about. That's something to consider. And then last but not least, you know, something that's contributed greatly to Serena's success is getting around people who can inspire you, mentor you. level you up, change the way you view the world. It's a huge environmental thing. I'm a big believer in people form our environments more so than anything else. It's the people who we have around us who are going to lift us up or or drag us down or keep us flat or whatever. It's typically due to the people around us. And so you really want to Look at the people around you and are they where you want to be? Or are they encouraging you to follow your dreams, you know, hit your goals? Do they have goals? It's something to consider. It's something I've thought about a lot. This exact point is why, and I assume it's the same for Serena, like the circle of people that I spend like real time with is extremely small. And it seems to get smaller the older and more experienced that I get just in life. And so that is also something to consider for yourself. Hopefully you guys got a lot out of this. I got a ton out of this. ⁓ I can't wait to kind of, you know, get this out to the masses. But thank you again so much, Serena, for doing this. We're definitely gonna stay in in touch and keep chopping this type of stuff up. And I will see you guys in the next episode.
