“You’ll know it’s time to hire…when you’re not able to do the things you love and excel at.” -Lesley Pyle Placing our trust in other people is scary. Struggling along by ourselves can oftentimes feel safer than taking a risk on a new hire. But it comes at a cost. The more time we spend working on the day-to-day details of our bookkeeping businesses, the less we love them.  When searching for the right people for our business, it is important to remember that trust is built over time,...

“It is just part of the journey, you are not doing anything wrong, you just need to take a breath and say, ‘what do I need to do next?’” -Sharon Darmody HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 2024 is here and our first episode of the year is one you won't want to miss!  Despite our best efforts there are always going to be challenges in the workplace. What matters is our intention, our planning and when problems do arise, how well we embrace them as part of our journey.  Our workplaces are hubs of...

It's almost the end of 2023 and wow, do we have a fun episode for you! In our Year-In-Review show, Michael talks to a panel of amazing guests about the ups and downs of the bookkeeping industry this past year. Our returning Year in Review panelists are Debbie Roberts, co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping, Jessica Fox, owner of Florida Virtual Bookkeeper, Teresa Slack, co-founder of Financly, and Katrina Aarsman, CEO of Pure Bookkeeping Australia. Our guests reflect on their biggest surprises of...

“Things like that, I get to show up and be excited about things again because I know everything else is taken care of.” -Ashley Chamberlain In the pursuit of success, there comes a transformative moment when we ask ourselves, "What am I spending my time doing that someone else could excel at?" This realization is often weighed down by our belief that we can only be successful if we are doing it all by ourselves. But, when we embrace the power of delegation, it becomes a powerful...

“We want to identify those moments that matter, that help us center around connection… going back to the employees and saying, 'what does this look like to you?'” -Jennifer Johnston There are so many different points of view when it comes to remote, office and hybrid working, that it can be hard to know what is best for us, our employees, and businesses. Remote workers increase the pool of skilled talent you might hire, but in-house employees create culture and connection with no extra...

“I had to think, what am I going to do if I stay in this position forever? Is this going to be fulfilling?” -Ashley Chamberlain Leaps of faith are never easy, we can often be left feeling like it is better to remain in a situation that makes us miserable, than take a risk on something new and different. It comes down to what we want from life. Do we want to be working our lives away to build someone else’s dreams, or do we want to put that effort into growing something of our own? In the...

“If you charge a bit more, and you’re in that sweet spot, you will just naturally get more clients, who can appreciate, or want to pay those extra dollars per hour.” -Andrew Seguin There will always be more clients. It is hard to shake a scarcity mindset, but the truth is, if you are good at what you do, there will always be people willing to pay a premium to have you do it for them. We have to apply our passion and love for what we do, not only in how we price our clients but how we pay...

“Our industry is in such a huge demand, and no matter what, we can have a whole conversation about AI, but bookkeepers in general that can really understand a client’s businesses financial health, will never go away.” -Andrew Seguin Many of us have the desire to build our own businesses. To become masters of our own destiny. Yet we also often feel crippling self-doubt, like we are imposters, pretenders in a sea of people far more talented than we are. The truth is, no one knows what will...

“Culture always defaults to the worst behavior that we allow. And I think that is true of our leadership as well.” -Zach Montroy All of us have had experiences of toxic or unhealthy workplace cultures. While a healthy culture is everyone’s responsibility to co-create and maintain, office power dynamics are normally structured from the top down. It is the leaders who have to set the tone and make sure everyone has what they need to show up motivated, knowing they will be supported in their...

“Going those first few years on that solopreneur route can be very lonely at times and finding people that you can talk to and collaborate with and learn and grow from is huge.” -Danielle Hendon   Building a business is all about bridging gaps and creating connections. Between yourself and your clients, your team, and your network. But before we can build anything successful, we have to be confident and sure in our own abilities.    If we can’t articulate what it is we can bring to...

“I’m all about making money, but at the same time, we are taught our whole life that money is the answer to everything, and it’s really not. Because at the end of your life, you don’t think about your wallet.” -Bridget Hilton Life is short. We know this all too well, and yet rarely make changes to ensure we are living a life without regret. Research shows that we feel the loss and regret of the thing not done, far more than the things we did, but got wrong. Not only that, but our biggest...

“If you want to turn your customers into superfans, being good is not going to cut it, you have got to be super!” -Brittany Hodak We’d all like for our potential clients to pick us over the competition, yet we often struggle to communicate our experience and value in a way that speaks to the heart of the customers we want to work with. Awareness of your business isn’t the issue; it is apathy that kills revenue. If you can’t clearly communicate why potential clients should care about what...

“I have been a small business owner, and I know when you are short of cash, that three or four days of time, if you could get that money early, that could be a game-changing event for your life.” -Nick Chandi The world is constantly changing, and the pace of that change has never been quicker. Despite this, North America is lagging behind Asia in its adoption of instantaneous payment technologies. We may have digital transactions and payments that seem instant, but even these rely on an old...

“A good manager is not anymore managing people, but also managing tools…if you give the right instructions, you can manage an army of robots…combining that with your team, and combining that with your robot team, then you can be a great manager.” -Nicolas Boucher Artificial intelligence is here to stay, like all great technological revolutions, it can feel scary to have our foundations shaken. That is why it has never been more important to be able to adapt and go with the flow. To ride the...

“Having a community to support me, it just was instrumental. It's something you can't talk to your friends and family about. They just don’t get it.” -Paige Papaioannou Not everything is as easy as the internet makes it seem. But thanks to the internet, there is a wealth of information and possibilities for connection with people on a similar journey to you. By being in a community of like-minded people, you can learn from the mistakes of others and support one another. Paige Papaioannou,...

“By having the opportunity to work with, and work beside, and learn next to, and learn with people who have a different vantage point on whatever the problem is… when we get to be with that other person, our ability to understand the complexity actually increases, and that’s where we are able to innovate more impressive solutions.” -Deb Mashek The better we are at collaborating, the more likely it is that people will want to work with us. Yet so many of us struggle to work effectively with...

“One of the biggest barriers I experience is my own distractibility, my own attention and how I am focusing it.”  -Natalie Ruskin What we show others on the outside, is often not aligned with how we feel on the inside. There is real pressure to present a certain way to be considered successful in business. But the reality is, we all have different ways of working and being and we all need help from time-to-time to understand what it is that really matters to us. This is a challenge when...

“When you like somebody and they do good work, you’re going to refer them. I want my friends to win, I want everybody that I like to win, for their businesses to succeed and for them to enjoy it.” -Cara Steinmann Networking is tough. We have all received an email or LinkedIn DM, selling us hard on a person’s skills. On their unique ability to fix problems we (because we aren’t them) are unable to solve. The people using these methods must have some success, or they wouldn’t be so prolific,...

“I think that the future of bookkeeping really lies in the advisory portion of bookkeeping. I think that we are at the point in technology where we no longer necessarily need a person to do the data entry.” -Jennifer Hume It is hard to know our own value. We often undervalue ourselves while overvaluing the skills and abilities of others. Shifting our mindset to one that balances these opposing points of view is the first step in building the kind of future in our businesses that we often...

“It was like I’m on a boat and I’m either working on my navigation charts, or I’m bailing, bailing, bailing…and what I didn’t do was look up at the horizon to see, hey wait a minute, we have drifted off course and I really needed to be holding the rudder.” -Nancy Gwynne-Vaughan Running a business is hard at the best of times, let alone when we are struck by the unexpected. Despite this, we feel a need to conceal the damage and its effect on us. We throw ourselves into even more work, in the...

“I am just obsessed with helping people get results, because otherwise why are we reaching out to the community?” -Andrea Driessen The first port of call when looking for a business to support our needs is often a quick Google search. The words, pictures and videos on that business website influence our decisions long before we ever meet the person behind the site. Despite this, many of us don’t put much stock in how we are talking about ourselves and what we do online, or in person. ...

“It really is a service that you’re selling. And I think separating that from yourself is massive, because if you tie it to yourself and people keep saying no, it’s going to take a hit to your confidence. There's a lot of mindset that goes into it.” -Brittany Dixon   Productivity is more than filling a calendar with as many events and clients as possible. To be truly productive, we have to be moving towards our ideal of business success. Whether that is scaling the business, freeing up...

“We’ve got to invest in ourselves, and if we’re too busy working on the wrong things, as a leader, we’ve got to invest in the future and be looking forward.” -Carla Caldwell How busy we are has a direct link to how successful and useful we feel. The problem with this comes from busying ourselves with monotonous and repetitive, easy-to-do tasks that take our attention and time away from the things only we can do.  Delegating tasks isn’t easy, maybe we haven’t given effective training or set...

“We’re not going to go back to the way it used to be. We have to accept where we are and explore how to move forward from here.” -Erin Daiber What makes a great leader? This isn’t a question with only one answer. That is why good leadership is so rare. Being successful in the moment is no good if it makes us unwilling to adapt to change, in the same way being scared of the flow of the future limits us from making confident and decisive choices for our businesses. Leadership though, has...

“If you don’t have the right bookkeeper, your business is not going to be around very long!” -Joey Coleman Building a business is often a process of trial and error. We adapt to crises as they happen, rather than planning and preparing to avoid them in the first place. This is true not only in how we take on clients, (clients that prove to be more work than we thought) but also in how we hire new employees. Hiring anyone to just fill a seat then wondering why they aren’t performing is a...