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 mouth and BNI has been how she’s found the majority of the clients she has now, with the process being largely organic. [4:45] Melissa serves 62 clients that they work with every month and she has a goal to get to 100 clients by the end of the year. [5:25] We rarely stop to smell the roses and appreciate everything we accomplish. Remember to write down how far you’ve come and keep that in mind. [6:20] Melissa has made plenty of mistakes over the past 18 months. One of the biggest things she’s learned is to stick to her pricing and not negotiate. If the client wants to negotiate, that may be an indicator that they don’t value your service. [8:15] Melissa works solely from home and most of her clients are local to Sacramento. One of the motivations for her in starting her business has been to spend time with her kids and this led to her finding a team member that likes serving clients face-to-face. [10:30] Working at home can be very isolating, so Melissa really appreciates the chance to go to BNI meetings and meet people on the same journey as her. [11:40] The best piece of advice for someone considering starting their own bookkeeping business is you have to be a self starter. There will always be things out of your control and you just have to push through it and get things done. There is also a major difference between dealing with multiple clients instead of one boss. You need to develop a thick skin. [13:30] You have to be very self reliant as a business owner because the buck stops with you. [14:25] There is a lot of room for growth in the bookkeeping industry. Melissa hasn’t run into any real competition in her area. If you’re thinking about getting into the business, now is a great time to jump in. [16:00] In three years, Melissa would like to be in a commercial space with 10 bookkeepers working for her. The key piece of the puzzle will be a solid office manager to bring it all together so that she doesn’t need to touch client accounts anymore. If you can pay somebody to do something better than you, you should do it. [18:15] Strategy is marketing, and marketing is the core of your business. It’s hard to outsource the marketing because they don’t have the same incentive as you as the owner of the business. [19:15] In some ways the desire for an office space is about ego but a commercial space does come with some other advantages. Melissa estimates that she’s lost approximately one client a month that didn’t decide to work with her because of the lack of physical space. [21:40] A physical space also comes with a lot of baggage. It can become your golden handcuffs or an anchor. [22:40] Managing people is difficult, every person you bring on increases the complexity of your business. It’s important to think of things from the standpoint of the result instead of the function. Melissa doesn’t want to have 10 people work for her, she wants the result that 10 people can bring. [26:50] Melissa’s challenge is setting her business apart from the competition. Answering the question of “how are you different from other bookkeepers out there?” is hard. [28:45] Bookkeeping is first and foremost a relationship business. If we try to compete on the tasks, we’ll lose. You should think about how to deepen and build upon the relationships with prospective clients and existing clients. [30:45] You have to know how to communicate with your client in a way that they will understand, and then go above that by advising them. Take a vested interest in their success from the deliverable standpoint. [32:30] Bookkeeping used to be about abdication, now