We’ve all had shady clients. The question is what you should do when encounter one? For Ben, he gets rid of them as quickly as possible. [1:15] There isn’t an easy solution if a shady client makes up a good portion of your business’s revenue, but working with an unscrupulous person can put your business in jeopardy. [1:45] The first signs of a shad…

Getting online reviews is the lifeblood of a virtual bookkeeping business. Reviews are one of the first things people look at when considering whether to buy a product or service, without them a certain element of trust is missing. [1:35] Where are you already? We want to make sure you’re being reviewed where your clients can see them easily. Your …

Everybody needs to be marketing, but that doesn’t mean you have to take on clients. One of the cardinal sins in this business is to stop marketing. [1:10] Your message needs to be going out into the marketplace all the time. It takes time for the marketing engine to warm up, so you want it running once things start to slow down. [1:45] We don’t wan…

Niche marketing is one of the keys to success for 21st century bookkeepers because you have to go deeper with your clients. If you’re working with a number of different niches, you won’t be able to fully understand your client’s businesses or offer them your best service. [1:00] Marketing is about three important elements: your market, your message…

Heather has always had a desire to help people and that’s reflected in the jobs she’s had in her life. Once her daughter was born, Heather decided she wanted to stay home with her. After a few years, she wanted to explore working again. She looked into becoming a financial advisor before finding Bookkeeper Business Launch but once she found Ben she…

We all face difficult things in our lives, but on the other side of difficulty is usually some victory. For example, getting through the Air Force’s basic training and passing the CPA exam. [1:20] It wasn’t what I expected, but I persevered, followed the system, did what I was told and pushed through it. When I graduated I was very proud. It was a …

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

All the things we do in bookkeeping are generally historical, but where we want to take it is in interpreting the data so that you can actually give your clients advice. [1:55] Before starting with advisory services, you need to be able to produce financial statements in a consistent, timely, and accurate manner. If your client isn’t getting you th…

Erin has had her bookkeeping business for just over a year. She was a stay-at-home mom facing a divorce and needed to figure out something flexible and lucrative. In many ways, bookkeeping seemed too good to be true. [3:00] Erin was formerly a school teacher, so she never had any experience with bookkeeping before getting into the business. After g…

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

David started out like most entrepreneurs, looking for painful problems to solve. He worked as a freelance marketer and saw a lot of accounting firms struggle with various aspects of their business including project management. [3:45] He realized there was a gap in the market because if you’re a firm owner with a number of clients to manage, the av…

Randy started her bookkeeping business after the age of 50. She had been working in a dance studio for over ten years until things went awry, and she felt that if there was no security in the traditional job market anymore she might as well do things her own way. [3:25] Freedom means being able to go out for lunch with her son completely unplanned,…

Once you’ve documented your processes and created the checklists, you need to put yourself into a different frame of mind and ask “how do I improve on these?” [0:55] One of the biggest traps that people fall into is documenting their processes while trying to improve them at the same time, which is a recipe for disaster. You have to clearly disting…

One of the most common questions that Ben gets is around documenting processes because they are often all over the place. [0:35] The first thing to do is to distinguish between process documentation and process improvement. Whether or not you have your processes written down, you will have processes in place on how you do things. [1:00] The reason …

Jessie has a background in education and actually worked as a history teacher. One day in her third year, she wanted to teach some new classes and was given a flat refusal from her boss. At that point, she realized her days as a teacher were numbered. She stumbled upon Bookkeeper Business Launch on the Penny Hoarder and it seemed like a good fit. S…

Brooke started off in the industry as an account manager with a construction company, until one day she got fired which was a first for her. Brooke was a day trader for a few years after that but once that became stale, she started looking for other opportunities. She had always wanted to start a business and after doing some searching, she found B…

Dave and his wife have been working together for a long time. She took on the bookkeeping side of things, while Dave had been running his pharmacy. After selling off the business and traveling for a while, they got into real estate investing and eventually started looking at bookkeeping itself as a business. [4:30] Dave knew what his niche was goin…

Kevin has been hustling his entire life. Multiple streams of revenue have always been a focus for him and that has manifested into multiple businesses during his adult life. [6:00] Math had always been a favorite subject for Kevin, and he worked with his father in an accounting role during high school and college, but eventually wanted to do someth…

Kevin started off in the IT world and he quickly got pretty tired of getting yelled at all the time. One of his friends started a business, and Kevin started doing the IT stuff for it, which eventually developed into business management. After that Kevin went back and got his MBA, graduated in 2016, and along the way, dabbled in real estate. The re…

Prior to bookkeeping, Annette was a dental hygienist for 35 years. Her life was very structured, and every minute of her time was accounted for. Her journey into bookkeeping was pretty tumultuous. After her husband suddenly died, at the age of 56, she took over his business and realized that the books were a mess. In the process of trying to figure…

Jackie’s family had always wanted to live in America so her family moved to LA, but for various reasons, it didn’t work out. She needed to set something up that was relevant to her degree in order for it to be seen as successful in the eyes of Immigration and be able to stay in the States. She stumbled across Bookkeeper Business Launch in 2016 and …

Jessica’s personal style is hyper feminine, but deep down she likes math and numbers. That synthesis is where the moniker Sparkle Bookkeeping came from. [2:50] When Jessica was in college she had an opportunity to work for a cannabis tax firm, and got a feel for the industry as well as learned bookkeeping directly. After a while, she wanted to try …

Jenna used to work as an auditor, but the position involved being surrounded by negative people as well as physical demands that didn’t work with her family’s schedule. After getting denied when she tried to adjust her work schedule, Jenna realized that she should probably venture out on her own. She found the Bookkeeper Business Launch program and…

Kerrie went into corporate accounting after getting her accounting degree. She decided after 5 years that it wasn’t her cup of tea and opened her own business that lasted for a couple of years. A major move meant she had to find something else and she ended up working in a public school for 13 years. During that time, Kerrie’s husband developed a c…

Heather got her accounting degree in 2014 and worked in corporate accounting for a few years. That’s when she realized that she was meant to be her own boss and really didn’t enjoy the corporate environment. She discovered Bookkeeping Business Launch and after giving birth to her son, she decided to dive into it and give it a shot. [4:10] Initially…

Elizabeth was looking for a way to earn money that also allowed her to spend time with her children. Bookkeeper Business Launch seemed like a good fit so she signed up in August of 2017. She didn’t originally do much with the program until she was talking to someone who essentially told her that they would hire her if she finished the program. She …

Ashley is very organized and isn’t afraid to ask for help which is the thing that makes her business possible. [2:15] Ashley was a stay-at-home mom to her four kids in the beginning, but she always wanted to be able to contribute more to her family and the world at large. She felt that starting a business was the first step to contributing to her s…

Mary can remember always being good at bookkeeping, even when she was young. While going to school, she worked full time in a corporate office in the accounting department for three years. She never finished her bachelor’s degree. Instead, she moved back to where she and her husband were from and worked for a local pharmacy where she was mentored b…

Melissa was working 70 to 80 hours a week at her job and was starting to get really burned out. She decided that she needed to make a change and that was when she was injured during a run. This gave her plenty of time to look for opportunities to work from home. She found her first client online and that gave her three months to find more. Word of …

In January of 2018, Christopher was two years away from retiring from the military and was thinking about the future. He wanted to figure out how he was going to make money once he was out and found the Bookkeeper Business Launch course and thought that it might be a good fit. Turns out it was. [3:45] Chris got his first client one month after comp…

Hannah found that with her previous business she was traveling a lot and wasn’t able to spend much time with her husband. She was researching jobs that she could do from home at that time and came across the Bookkeeper Business Launch course on the Penny Hoarder website and decided to give it a try. [6:10] Hannah serves around 12 clients at this po…

David went to school to be a math teacher but ended up in engineering and getting a math degree. Due to the recession, he got laid off and found himself wondering what to do without a job. He started working at a church and did some of their admin work, which was David’s first real exposure to bookkeeping. One bookkeeping gig turned into another. […

After Daniel’s last deployment he was looking to start his own business. He had some experience and education in accounting so that field made the most sense. When he discovered the Bookkeeping Business Launch program, he decided to take the leap. [3:50] Painters were the niche that Daniel served, mainly due to running a painting business of his ow…

Amanda was a bank teller in the past, which is where she discovered her love of working with money. She started her bookkeeping business in 2017 after going through the Bookkeeper Business Launch program and has since built up a base of 15 clients. [3:30] Amanda gravitates towards artists and creatives; 90% of the people she works with fall into th…

In many ways Jeremy started his bookkeeping business on a whim. He encountered Bookkeeper Business Launch online and always had an entrepreneurial streak so it seemed like a good fit. The freedom to call his own shots and choose his own destiny is what Jeremy was looking for, combined with his appreciation for numbers and it just made sense. [5:30]…

Kim started in late August of 2017 after purchasing Bookkeeper Business Launch. Four days later she registered her business name and closed her first client, who later on became her husband. [3:00] Kim had been in the banking industry for 16 years and knew that there was definitely a need for bookkeepers in business. When Kim’s husband decided to s…

Kirsten took an accounting class in high school many years ago and she really enjoyed it. She eventually dropped out of college where she was studying accounting and became a mother. She was a stay-at-home mom for 18 years and tried a number of business ideas but none of them really resonated. She eventually got an email from Ben about becoming a b…

Jaime has been running his bookkeeping business for the past two years and has acquired 13 clients in that time. He’s hoping to get more clients and continue growing, but it’s a scary thing to think about. [3:10] When Jaime first started, he was going to partner with a friend of his that had a degree in Bookkeeping. He discovered that a lot of rand…

When Justin was 19 years old, he was introduced to the idea of owning a business but he felt like he wasn’t ready to go it on his own. He decided on a career in banking which worked out well enough for the first few years until his wife told him they were going to have another child. This led him to looking at how to make money on the side and even…

Tracy had been in the accounting world for 20 years and decided to leave the corporate world to spend more time with her kids. She ended up driving a school bus for a little while and decided that she needed to find a way to combine her love of numbers and spending time with her family. Tracy ran into Ben’s videos online, and that led her to buy hi…

Amy worked at a bank for 14 years and eventually it became not worth the hours she had to put in anymore, so she decided to retire. This led her to thinking about what else she could do for work, ideally from home. Since she was good with numbers already, bookkeeping seemed like a solid choice. She signed up for Bookkeeper Business Launch and went …

Tracy’s 35th birthday really changed things for her. She was working as a substitute teacher and wasn’t really enjoying it when her husband suggested that taxes may be a way to go. She stumbled upon some videos put together by Ben Robinson, and she decided to jump in with both feet. [4:20] Tracy learned most of her bookkeeping skills by going throu…

Ben had graduated with his degree in 2017 and worked part-time for a local music guy, which was great until music turned out to be not very lucrative. After getting hooked by a Facebook ad, Ben decided to check out a great course that helped him launch his bookkeeping business. [3:00] 99% of what Ben focuses on is real estate. Oklahoma has a growin…

Why should you ask candidates about their salary expectations? Co-hosts Hannah Robinson and Melissa Honan discuss how business owners can set salary expectations based on a candidate's skill level, experience, and location. Hannah and Melissa start the conversation by announcing that this will be their last episode on the podcast. Ben Robinson will…

You think you've found someone who would be a good fit for your bookkeeping business. How do you make them a job offer they can't refuse? In this episode, co-hosts Hannah Robinson and Melissa Honan go through the key steps to creating enticing job offers that get you the right candidates every time. Hannah and Melissa start the conversation by desc…

Want to learn how to conduct successful interviews and improve your skills in assessing candidates? Co-hosts Hannah Robinson and Melissa Honan go through the main elements of an effective interview and how you can significantly increase your chances of hiring the right person. Hannah starts the conversation by highlighting how interviewing can be d…

Want to know how to create job postings that attract stronger candidates? Co-hosts Hannah Robinson and Melissa Honan discuss creative, inviting ways to write effective job postings that filter out unqualified applicants and attract the ideal candidate. Hannah introduces the topic by highlighting the struggles new business owners face when it comes …

When should you use fixed rates versus hourly rates for your bookkeeping tasks? In today’s episode, co-hosts Hannah Robinson and Melissa Honan explore the pros and cons of flat-rate pricing versus hourly billing - and which payment type works best for a bookkeeping business. Melissa starts the conversation by highlighting the difference between pay…

Should you hire an employee or a subcontractor for your bookkeeping business? Co-hosts Hannah Robinson and Melissa Honan break down the difference between hiring an employee and a subcontractor, their pros and cons, and when it makes sense to go with either. Melissa starts the conversation by describing the difference between hiring employees and h…

Want to know how to write a compelling job description? Co-hosts Hannah Robinson and Melissa Honan discuss the process of writing compelling job descriptions. They break down the key components of a well-written job description and explain why it should accurately reflect the duties and expectations of the position. Hannah starts the conversation b…