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 shady client will come up when you’re marketing. When you connect with a potential client, you should try and get a sense of how they feel about taxes.

[2:10] Everybody should avoid taxes as much as possible, but there’s a big difference between avoidance and evasion. If the person insinuates an interest in evading taxes, walk away.

[3:10] If your potential client is hiding something, that means they are lying, and if they are lying to the IRS, do you think they are going to have a problem lying to you?

[3:30] When you’re consulting with these clients, look for things that are off. But if they are already a client and things start to feel wrong, there are some steps you can take.

[4:00] If you start to see warning signs, the first thing to do is to document it and bring it to their attention. First, assume they don’t know and get them on the phone. It may be an innocent mistake, but if it’s not, you’re going to want to call out your client immediately.

[6:15] Ben’s general rule of thumb is one mistake can slide, but if they make a second “mistake”, that’s a pattern and that’s the end of the relationship. Even if the shady things seem small, if you’re seeing them more than once, you should end your relationship with that client.

[7:00] It’s okay to get rid of shady clients. You don’t need to serve them. Most people are fine, but for people that want to pull something over, it’s okay to turn them down. Handle them with care when severing the relationship, and consult an attorney if you need to.

[8:20] You want to work with quality clients that respect you, that respect the laws, and obey everything that they are supposed to.

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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 Facebook page is one avenue, the Better Business Bureau is another. The BBB is a very commonplace that potential clients go to find reviews. Claiming your Google Business page is another important channel. Trust Pilot is another option that’s becoming more popular.

[4:15] When you ask for a review is key. Being consistent and asking for reviews every month from your clients is the best practice. The best time to ask someone for a review is when they are already excited to be working with you. The key way to phrase the question is “would you mind sharing your opinion with everyone else about my service?”

[6:10] Five stars is great, anything else is not good. Ask them beforehand is there any reason that they wouldn’t rate you with a five star. A one-star review will definitely hurt your business.

[6:55] Avoid giving the client a script, just focus on the five-star rating and let them phrase the review how they feel.

[7:10] Reviews are one of the biggest trust elements that will allow you to serve clients online. Ask for reviews from all your clients and make it part of your monthly service.

[8:15] When someone does leave a review, make sure to always reply. This lets other people know that you are involved and care about your clients.

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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 want one way to get ten clients, we want ten ways to get one client. If you’re relying entirely on one channel to get clients, you are vulnerable when something changes. You should add additional channels to whatever is already working.

[2:30] Most bookkeepers are transitioning over to a virtual business model since that allows them to get clients anywhere and serve them no matter where they are.

[2:50] The first thing you have to do is have a niche and be able to define your market. Marketing has three important elements: your market, your message, and your medium. Your market will dictate where you go to find your clients.

[3:50] Define your market’s jobs, pains, and gains. You need to have a deep understanding of your market and what they are trying to avoid, what they want, and what they do. Find out where the industry is hanging out. Facebook groups and pages on that subject with a lot of activity is a good sign. Join those groups and start contributing value to them.

[6:30] Marketing is how you put out your message into the market. Sales is where you’re one-on-one with someone to sell to them directly. Don’t confuse the two.

[7:00] Figure out who the associations are that deal with your chosen industry. Determine who has a presence online with a large membership. Another thing that very few bookkeepers take advantage of is trade shows. They are a great place to network and build your business.

[8:55] Is there a local association of the big industry, one that you can join and get in front of? Being able to present information to these groups is a powerful way to add value and attract people to your business.

[10:15] Don’t spend a lot of money on advertising initially until you clearly define your market. You have to come up with a true value proposition of how you help them to achieve gains, how you can help them avoid the pains, and how you take away those jobs that they really don’t like doing. Then refine your message by speaking with your clients one on one.

[11:50] When you have your market clearly defined, and know your message and your value proposition, that’s when you can go to the medium and start running ads. Until you’ve nailed those things down, don’t spend money on advertising.

[12:45] Your website should be focused on one thing: getting the visitor to contact you. As you are creating your site, think about what actions you want the visitor to take and give them an easy to follow path towards connecting with you.

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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, and your medium. Most people start with the least important which is the medium. The very first thing you have to do in all of your marketing is to clearly define your market, and that’s what your niche is.

[1:50] If you already have clients, list them from favorite to least favorite. Take the top 3 clients that you love working with and look for commonalities between them. What attracts you to those clients? Picking a niche doesn’t necessarily mean an industry, it can also mean choosing the type of person you want to serve.

[4:00] Bookkeeping is first and foremost a relationship business, there is a good chance your relationship with those clients is what puts them at the top of the list.

[4:25] Once you find the commonalities and the character attributes that you love, list out the industry your clients are in. Which industry do you have the most clients in? Consider the top industry you serve and see if there is any overlap between that and your top three clients. Ask yourself a few questions: Do you like serving that industry? Do you know a lot about it? Are you passionate about the industry?

[7:25] You may also find that the industry that most of your clients are in is something you don’t enjoy working with. You need to be passionate about serving an industry for you to make it your niche. 80% of bookkeeping and accounting is the same for every single business. But when it comes to the last 20%, it’s all about the niche.

[8:20] Most people think they have to find a niche but sometimes the niche finds them. We don’t usually find something we are passionate about, we typically find something that we are good at and become a talented craftsperson at it.

[9:30] Your medium term goal should be to focus on a niche. If you have clients in other industries already, you can continue to serve them as you bring on new clients from your chosen niche and just let them go gradually until you are only serving your niche clients.

[10:25] The more you can systematize your business, the easier your life is going to be. Imagine having one chart of accounts for your clients or being able to get a profitability study that gives you insights into your industry. You’ll be able to take the best practices from your niche industry and apply them to your client’s businesses.

[11:40] If you pick the wrong niche, you can always change it. Hopefully you put in the effort now to figure out the right one, so you can avoid doing that. Revisit this exercise frequently until you find the niche that fits your business best.

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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 didn’t look back.

[3:05] Heather currently has four of her own clients plus several others that she subcontracts for. The freedom of being able to choose her own schedule is very important to her as well as genuinely being able to help her clients in their businesses.

[3:55] Heather’s daughter will be going off to Kindergarten soon which will increase the amount of time she can dedicate to working on her business instead of just in her business.

[4:30] The biggest challenge, in the beginning, is just getting clients, and that’s what Heather experienced and pushed through but that often leads to getting multiple types of clients and stretching your ability to become an authority. Heather wants to be able to drill down into the specific niche of real estate investors and narrow down the kinds of clients she works for.

[6:45] Heather has had other real estate clients that’s she’s enjoyed working with, plus she also has a desire to learn more about real estate investing with the goal of doing it herself in the future.

[8:45] Heather’s main challenge is learning where real estate investors congregate, what language they use to describe their work, and how to price her services correctly for their industry. Before getting into a niche it’s important to find out more about it, one of the best resources to use is the Bookkeeper Business Launch community and connect with people who already know.

[11:30] There is no substitute for experience and getting face to face with people that you want to serve. Networking events are a great place to start, especially in the real estate space. Be clear with your intentions and be honest with them, but don’t think you’re going to get clients at the event. The focus should be on research and relationships first.

[14:25] Industry associations are another good resource to explore. Find their websites and see what they are talking about. Read their content and social media. If the niche has conventions, look at the topics they discuss. If the topic is something that they talk about every year and it’s something you can add value to, it may be a good area to explore. Look for authority figures in the space and see what they are putting into the market.

[17:30] Investing in a risk management association study for the industry will give you a good idea on financials for the niche as a whole and could be a good starting place to think about pricing.

[19:00] What are the books and thought leaders that people in that niche are reading and listening to? Who already has the attention of the people you want to serve? Getting to know them will give you different perspectives on the industry but will also help you plant the seeds for referral marketing.

[24:05] The most effective thing you can do is to get in front of potential clients and ask them the right questions. What are the challenges they face? What would they change about their business? What you want to get from the answers is a value proposition, also known as your offer.

[25:15] Nobody wants our bookkeeping, they want the result. They don’t care what you do or what tools you use, they want a solution to their problem. Everything we do in life is based upon feeling better about ourselves or feeling important. Everything you do for your clients should come back to those basic desires.

[27:50] It’s a journey, expertise in a niche takes time. When you get your first client, don’t worry about the fee. Use them to learn everything you can about that industry. When you’re in the books of a client you learn much faster than from the outside.

Mentioned in this episode: Triangle Business Solutions

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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 similar story to passing the CPA exam.

[2:15] It doesn’t matter where you are in the evolution of your bookkeeping business, there are difficult things that you do not want to do. Usually, on the other side of the struggle that we have to go through is the very thing that we want.

[2:45] List out the difficult things in your life as they relate to your business right now. What are the things that you are putting off and avoiding? Then ask yourself what would happen if you did those things. What are the best-case scenarios and worst-case scenarios?

[4:20] Sometimes we have to trick our minds into looking at the benefit that is going to get us there. We’ve got to get over our initial reluctance and just go do that thing.

[5:05] Some difficult things are things that can’t be avoided, but we’re talking about the difficult things that we know will move us closer to our goals, if only we could get over our fears.

[5:30] Busy work is often stuff we do in order to avoid doing the things that we know we need to do to turn the dial in our business. Two of the most common difficult things that bookkeeping professionals avoid are networking and marketing.

[6:35] Feel the fear and do it anyway. Verbalize what you’re afraid of and then go do it. Whenever we are trying to do something new, our subconscious is going to try to dissuade us and convince us of the easier and more comfortable path.

[7:30] Once you identify the difficult things you are avoiding and list them out, figure out the things that you should be doing. Set yourself up for success by putting them into your schedule and giving someone the responsibility to keep you accountable.

[9:00] Take your list of difficult things and start taking action on them. That may mean getting rid of bad clients or letting go of a team member, but you have to keep in mind the benefit on the other side.

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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 full time and had a couple of rental properties but having kids really changed things. They made some big moves, sold their properties and that was initially how Kelly found bookkeeping as a viable option.

[7:15] Kelly now works from home as a bookkeeper. Her former career was in financial services helping clients invest their money. She enjoyed the numbers aspects of the job and helping people with their money. She stumbled on the idea of bookkeeping after having a chance conversation with her godfather.

[8:40] She started out doing everything wrong (in her words) but she figured it out day by day. Kelly thought that there must be other businesses out there that need bookkeeping services, and that’s when she found Ben’s videos online and joined the course.

[9:40] The best part of the bookkeeping business is the flexibility to make her own schedule. Kelly also enjoys working with people and hearing how they built their business, it also helps that she genuinely enjoys doing their books.

[11:00] There were challenges at every turn but right now Kelly’s biggest challenge is in bringing people into her business and leveraging them to create more time for herself.

[12:10] Always start with the vision of where you want to go. Your vision gives you context to make better decisions. It needs to be specific and well defined in order to be useful.

[13:00] Kelly has a three-year vision where she wants to grow slowly and bring in some contractors to help her. She has a pretty aggressive income goal of quadrupling her current income, and one of her goals is for her bookkeeping business to help fund her real estate activities.

[15:20] One of the things that Kelly always puts off is the manual data entry tasks. This is one task that she be added to Kelly’s not-to-do list right away and is a good candidate for a virtual assistant to take on. Make your to-do list every single day and mark the tasks that you just don’t want to do, those are your first targets for delegation.

[18:15] As you scale your business, the benefit you get is exponential but the downside is also exponential if you don’t get it right at the beginning.

[19:30] Always ask yourself this question, ‘What are my clients paying me for?’ Are they paying you to do manual entries? No, that’s part of what you do to get what they are paying you for but they aren’t paying you for that. They are paying for your smile, for your information, for your reports, and for your interpretation.

[20:10] Only do what you can do. Find someone who can follow instructions, document your task, and then give it to them to take care of.

[21:00] Start with the smallest and least technical tasks and then increase the workload a bit at a time. Starting small keeps the costs down and reduces the learning curve. When someone does make a mistake, make sure you show them what the error was instead of just fixing it yourself.

[24:00] Bookkeeper Elite is a great place to find someone you can add to your team.

[25:45] Temper the expectations at the beginning of the relationship. With VA’s the time commitment is very flexible, unlike a traditional employee.

[27:00] Kelly currently spends around 80 to 100 hours a month working on her business, not counting the random nightly phone calls from clients.

[28:45] Work expands to fill the time allotted. Look at your schedule, chances are you can drop 20% of your time just by giving yourself a cap on the time you allow yourself to spend on it. When you are on you are your off time, be careful about letting your work intrude on your personal life.

[32:40] Once you’ve been more efficient with your time, that will lead you to start thinking about who can help you make your time more useful.

Mentioned in this episode: Precision Bookkeeping

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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 the info you need, that’s going to be a problem. A good rule of thumb is to not work with people who drag their feet.

[2:50] Financial statements include a balance sheet, an income statement, and a statement of cash flows.

[3:30] The second thing you need to have before you start with financial services is an eager client, someone who is interested in improving their business, making more money, and who is willing to pay for the advice.

[4:05] If you’re making your client money that is true value building, which is something you should be paid for. Getting paid $1200 a month to prepare financial statements is not value-building, that’s a fixed price. Make sure you know what you’re providing your client.

[4:45] You need to have a receptive client that is willing to pay and can provide you the financial statements on time, but you also need to work with businesses that have the ability to pay you. That means 7-figure-plus businesses. Your marketing should be targeting those clients because they are the ones that need your help the most.

[5:50] You can price these services in many ways but whatever way you choose, you should not think in terms of how much money you can make. We want to think in terms of how much help or value can we provide to the client.

[6:40] You have to separate the preparation of the financial statements from the provision of advisory services. We have our minds in one mode when we are preparing statements and another when we are advising. Don’t go straight from preparing the statements into the analysis, do them at separate times.

[7:55] Advisory services can take a little bit of brain power to get right. Think about when you are at your best during the day, that’s the time you should be setting aside to do those advisory services. This also applies to everything else in your business.

[9:35] Advisory services are the key to our future. We are 21st-century bookkeeping professionals and advisory services are going to be crucial to our long term success. This is one of the critical things you can do to differentiate yourself from artificial intelligence and automation.

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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 getting into Ben’s program, she had an aha moment where it all came together. Bookkeeping is like learning a language; it takes some time and has a bit of a learning curve, but it can be done.

[5:45] Erin is currently serving seven clients, with word-of-mouth being the main way she landed each of them. One of the major things she did early on was to get in touch with a local Vermont bookkeeper to vet the course, and that relationship has yielded three clients so far.

[6:50] There is a lot of job security for bookkeepers who know what they’re doing.

[7:15] Erin would love to build a team. She wants to grow her business and build her empire, but she isn’t 100% positive on what that ultimate vision looks like yet. Her main question today is knowing how much work to take on at any given time.

[9:40] Erin has almost been burned by taking on too much, especially as a single mom. You can only stretch yourself so thin before it becomes a problem.

[10:40] Never ever stop marketing. That doesn’t have to mean spending money or that you have to take on the clients though. Be selective with the clients you choose continually marketing will take you off the roller coaster.

[12:05] Taking on a new client will always involve a learning curve, but that can be minimized by implementing processes and systems.

[13:45] Another option to reduce your potential workload is to raise your fees. For Ben, he has a rule of thumb where approximately 25% of prospective clients don’t want to work with him because of his fees. If everybody is accepting your price, you can probably raise your fees.

[15:45] Erin doesn’t even have a website yet. If you are landing clients already, don’t worry too much about not having a website until a prospective client turns you down because of it. There are a number of simple options that will get your business online in the course of an afternoon.

[17:55] If you’re not having people complain about the lifestyle you’re leading, you’re not growing too fast. If you can’t meet deadlines, that means you’re probably growing too fast. Unless you have those problems, keep growing.

[19:25] Stagger your potential clients and start them at different times. Temper their expectations right at the beginning so that you aren’t wasting their time or yours. You can make clients wait if you have to. It lets them know that you are in demand and are upfront with everything.

[22:30] Client compliance is a common issue that Erin is facing, especially with onboarding. Start with a specific checklist for the client verifying what you need. You can also schedule a future one-hour call with the client where you can get everything you need all at once. If you don’t have everything, you can’t start the work. If you make that clear, you will put a fire under them to get what you asked for.

[27:00] One of the biggest things that people don’t like is the pain involved in switching bookkeepers. If you can make that painless by helping them through the process, you’ll have much more success.

[27:30] When Ben’s doing the marketing, he likes to put them in situations that he’s going to be experiencing with them when they are his clients. It’s like dating and marriage; the client is probably going to be a bit better during the courting phase so it’s good to know what you’re getting yourself into.

[28:50] You can have the best processes and efficiencies, but if your client is the bottleneck, everything suffers.

[29:30] Don’t shy from charging a setup fee. Make that part of your engagement letter. If people continue to drag their feet, you can call the whole thing off. This is something about which they have to be serious.

[31:15] Don’t think in terms of people; think in terms of tasks. Do the task audit and hire a VA who can take those tasks off your plate. Don’t go out and hire a bookkeeper right off the bat.

[33:10] In many ways, the business is like a puzzle where you are putting the money-making pieces together to make everything easier.

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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 are their trusted advisor.

[1:20] Once it gets to the point where they are asking you consistently to do extra work, you have to bring awareness to the out-of-scope nature of the work. We want to let them know because 90% of the time, as long as you are working with quality people, they just don’t realize the issue.

[2:05] At a certain point you will get frustrated with the extra requests so before that happens, make the client aware that you are happy to include the work but you need to revisit your agreement.

[3:05] You should also send them an invoice for the task that you completed with the price for what it would have cost, but you should also give them a courtesy discount. You’re putting the fact into context that the requested work is outside the scope of the original engagement.

[4:00] It’s about open communication between you and your client, and so you’re not a doormat that’s being taken advantage of. If they are trying to pull one over on you and don’t want to pay for the work, then that’s a clown, not a client.

[4:25] Scope creep comes full circle with marketing in that the right marketing will filter out the clowns that you don’t want to work with.

[4:40] These are awkward conversations to have with a client but when you don’t communicate, that’s when you start to struggle. Not getting it out in the open will only lead to resentment.

[5:15] Don’t work with people that do not respect you. Bookkeeping is first and foremost a relationship business and in a healthy relationship there is respect. You need to be excited to serve them and they need to be excited about having you work with them.

[6:00] We want to help our clients, but we also want to make sure we’re being paid for our work.

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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 average project management tool is not client centric at all. Sales tools are built for handling a pipeline, not for dealing with tasks. A conversation with one of his first customers lead to the genesis of Jet Pack.

[5:40] Creating a solution and then searching for a problem is a recipe for bankruptcy. David is trying to instill that idea culturally into his business and is always trying to identify the pain that they are working to solve first.

[6:25] By interviewing people in a specific niche and trying to solve their problems, you begin to learn the language of the industry and really understand the challenges they face. If you’re in the world of business, do more interviews and listen to them.

[8:45] The bad news is that there are many challenges, the good news is they are common challenges to the business. The big shift happens when you go from an owner that does everything to being able to articulate the right process for your team to follow. The most successful firm owners begin to think of their business as a product and understand that the quality of their product is determined by their workflow.

[12:10] When something goes wrong, always go back to the workflow that lead to that result. The SAT framework (Standardize, Automate, Track) comes into play when you’re hiring and scaling clients. If you don’t know where to start, begin with the tasks that have the biggest revenue impact or take up the most time. If you can’t get the process out of your head, have an assistant interview you.

[14:50] None of us want to be micromanagers. If you can’t step away from your business without having a panic attack, it probably means you don’t have the right set of tools to give you the visibility to feel comfortable about the progress of the firm.

[16:50] Every business has three systems: the deliverable, the marketing, and operations. Within each system there are processes that instrumental to the successful function. Simplicity is key in your checklists.

[19:20] Whatever muscles you build today are going to be the muscles that you’re using when you hire somebody. If you start building up the discipline of documenting your processes today, you will have those muscles in place when you need them. Anything you ignore in your business accrues, at some point you will have to deal with it. When you start learning you will discover patterns that will make it easier.

[25:00] If you are already using a task management tool and it’s working well, keep using it until the cracks start to show.

[26:30] The more you can systematize your business, the more valuable it is. Nobody wants to buy a business that is basically buying a job. The more days of vacation the owner can take the higher the potential value of the firm, it indicates that there are processes and systems in place, and those are key to living a lifestyle you enjoy.

[30:30] Planning your month in advance is one of the most freeing things you can do because you can see where you are each week and if you’re reaching your goals. We’re always a work in progress, you always have to reevaluate the structure of your workflow and integrate what you’ve learned. If you’re not seeing the information in front of you it’s impossible to improve it.

[34:15] You don’t have to bring all the business improvements to the table, you should rely on your team to bring ideas on how to make things better. Don’t be afraid to ask your clients how you can serve them better. There are innovations in the minds of your clients as much as there are in your team.

[37:50] More often than not, the insights are sitting outside of you in the connections and people you know and work with.

[38:40] The Net Promoter Score is a simple system for pulling insights out of your clients. You will get a lot of feedback from your clients using that tool that you may never hear otherwise. It’s amazing when you listen to your people and what they will tell you. Insights from the Net Promoter Score will uncover the client experience so you can deliver a great workflow.

[43:20] Create a guarantee that will hold you to being able to deliver on the goods. The industry is moving incredibly fast so if you don’t stand out from the pack you will fade into obscurity. A guarantee will highlight your marketing and force you to sharpen your workflow.

Mentioned in this episode: Growing Your Firm podcastDouble Your Accounting Firm by David CristelloJetpack Workflow

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