Such a special episode for you today! This is our 50th episode AND the kickoff of a new series we’ll be doing offering on air Strategy sessions. What better way to celebrate our 50th episode with a real-life mentoring session?!
Today I’ll be offering some strategy and advice to a current Bookkeeping Business Accelerator student, Penny Rose, CPA.
Penny is a CPA who offers tax advisory and preparation along with bookkeeping. Penny and her husband also offer financial coaching. They moved into their RV full time a couple of years ago. Penny is still working her 9-5 job and plans to support the family’s lifestyle with her business in the next year. Penny’s niche is content creators.
In this episode you’ll hear:
If you’d like to connect with Penny, you can find her on
Thanks for listening.
If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram Stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper and Penny @fififofumpersonalcfo
For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:
Visit our website: ambitiousbookkeeper.com
Follow the Blog: ambitiousbookkeeper.com/blog
Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/ambitiousbookkeeper
Connect on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/SerenaShoup
Connect of Facebook: Facebook.com/serenashoupcpa
Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.
Podcast Publishing Tools
Such a special episode for you today! This is our 50th episode AND the kickoff of a new series we’ll be doing offering on air Strategy sessions. What better way to celebrate our 50th episode with a real-life mentoring session?!
Today I’ll be offering some strategy and advice to a current Bookkeeping Business Accelerator student, Penny Rose, CPA.
Penny is a CPA who offers tax advisory and preparation along with bookkeeping. Penny and her husband also offer financial coaching. They moved into their RV full time a couple of years ago. Penny is still working her 9-5 job and plans to support the family’s lifestyle with her business in the next year. Penny’s niche is content creators.
In this episode you’ll hear:
If you’d like to connect with Penny, you can find her on
Thanks for listening.
If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram Stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper and Penny @fififofumpersonalcfo
For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:
Visit our website: ambitiousbookkeeper.com
Follow the Blog: ambitiousbookkeeper.com/blog
Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/ambitiousbookkeeper
Connect on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/SerenaShoup
Connect of Facebook: Facebook.com/serenashoupcpa
Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.
Podcast Publishing Tools
[00:00:00] welcome back to the ambitious bookkeeper podcast. I am Serina. I am your host, and today's a really special episode for a couple of reasons. This is officially our 50th podcast episode. If you don't count the bonuses. So I can't believe we're here. We've almost made it an entire year of a weekly podcast plus some bonus episodes. And if you've been here with me since the beginning. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I truly appreciate you, this podcast would not exist without you because you're listening. And if you are new here, welcome to you as well, and I hope that you do go back and binge the rest of these 49 other episodes. And if I may ask you to just please leave a rating and review. Wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps us reach more listeners, just like you who need this type of podcast. So you can also share this with another bookkeeper or accountant in your life, whether they're still in corporate or they are exploring going out on their own. I think it would be super valuable for them as well.
[00:01:10] So the second reason why this is a very special episode is we've decided to do some on air strategy calls with people like you. So whether you are already a student of mine or a one-on-one mentoring client of mine, or just an audience member, you are all equally wonderful in my eyes. And so I wanted to extend the opportunity. In my groups to book a strategy call with me for free, in exchange for allowing me to put it on the podcast. So this is the first one that we're doing as we move forward and do some more of these, I will be sharing on social media when they are available, we just have a couple slots available at a time for now. So we have some more coming that are already booked, but as we build these into the podcast, you'll be able to search back in the podcast. If you look for the word [strategy] in brackets before the title. So this is the first one, it's our 50th episode. I thought it would be great to celebrate with letting you hear exactly how I really mentor and coach. My students. Right here on the podcast.
[00:02:25] So today I have miss penny rose, who is a CPA and she offers tax advisory and preparation along with bookkeeping. She and her husband also offer financial coaching. So think personal finance. Penny and her husband moved into an RV full-time a couple of years ago. And she's also still working her nine to five job and plans to support the family's lifestyle with her business in the next year. Meaning she's planning on quitting her nine to five job, as you will hear on today's podcast. And her niche or niche. Of clients is content creators. So I'm going to welcome penny onto the show, and I hope that hearing her. strategy call will spark an idea for you and your business or help you break through something that you have been struggling with. So without further ado welcome Penny.
[00:03:20]
[00:03:49] Serena:
[00:03:49] Hi, how are you?
[00:03:53] Penny: I am so excited.
[00:03:55] Serena: Me too! Awesome. I see you're in your car.
[00:03:59] Penny: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm on my lunch from work, so.
[00:04:03] Serena: Yay. Okay. So my question for you is thank you. That's not this. Isn't a question. Thank you for looking at this strategy call and I'm going to start with asking you to give us some background on what your business is, where it's at and who you are basically.
[00:04:27] Penny: Okay, it's true. Thanks. I am currently still working full time and my business fits in where I can on the weekends and nights and lunch and that type of thing. And I see four clients right now, and I've been seeking clients for almost a year and I keep changing how I brand myself. And my current idea is to say that I offer personal CFO services because I offer bookkeeping, tax preparation, tax advising, but I also offer financial coaching with my husband and I want to. Work with schedule C business owners. And I want to work with their whole picture. I don't want to just help them get their business where they want it to be. I want their personal finances to fit in appropriately, you know.
[00:05:31] I have a client. Who has some, some personal debt and she needs some help with that, and I'm helping her with her business so that she can use her business to help her personal finances. And that's a passion of mine to keep those together. And I don't have any trouble talking to people I would at work every single week if I could.
[00:05:58] So really I'm looking for opportunities to continue to grow my business so that I can leave my job in a year. And. Keep a holistic view for clients their business and their personal finances.
[00:06:15] Serena: Thank you for the background. So where would you like to focus our call today? Where can I offer the most support for you?
[00:06:26] Penny: The best example of this is I can sign up a client and they'll know what they want. So we'll talk and then I'll have an idea of what the next product is or service that is appropriate for them. And. I think I would benefit some with some guidance on how to have the conversation to say, okay, I understand you came to me for tax advising or tax preparation. I see you have these additional needs that we uncovered in the process of this. I would like to feel more confident about how to say to them, I offer this service and, oh, by the way, I also charge for it not here, I can do this for you and leave it open for them to interpret whether do that for them for free. Or I do that for them for an additional service.
[00:07:26] Serena: Oh, this is such a good question. So, as you were talking, I was like, it sounds like she has no problem. Saying this and maybe it's because now you're put on the spot to like articulate what you're doing, but it's like, it sounds great the way you were presenting it. So you came to me for this service, but in the process, we've uncovered these other things that you need. So like, you're going to have to go back and listen to how you worded on the recording, but like, that's what I want you to do. And just practice saying that again. And again, like in front of a mirror, in your car, in front of your phone, on a loom video practice talking through that.
[00:08:07] And then when it gets to the point of saying, and this is something also, we can talk about, including that in your bundles of services. So it's like, you know, pretty much when I think we all, after we're in business for a while, and you work with a few clients, you start to see all the clients pretty much need the same things. They have the same struggles. And so you'll know, like all of my clients truly need this thing. So for me, it's like, all of my clients truly need somebody to meet with every month, and so we just include that in most of our service packages and increased our base price because of it.
[00:08:47] And for me, that felt more comfortable. Then presenting it, like, here's our package, but you need this. So it's an additional fee instead of having a conversation like that, just build it into your pricing and say, this is the price for this package of services. And this is included in this package because we find that most clients need it. If that makes sense to you.
[00:09:15] So maybe try that on for size on your next call.
[00:09:19] Penny: Yep. Yeah.
[00:09:21] Serena: And keep practicing verbalizing the way you did with me. Like we have uncovered all of these different things, which is great because I actually include this in my service and that's why it's priced the way it is.
[00:09:34] Penny: That sounds great. And I think if for each one of my clients that I already have, when I initially priced them, I said, you know, these are the prices for the first three months, you know, we're going to look at what you need, what you benefit from. And so I went into it saying that, you know, this is not always going to be your price. So I think I love your suggestion of saying the next step is to have a meeting because I currently don't have any clients that I have regular meetings with. So I love using that as my first next step with my client. I think that's fantastic.
[00:10:18] Serena: Yeah, and it doesn't have to be a whole hour long. It could be a 30 minute meeting. It could be a 15 minute meeting. It just kind of depends on what you plan to cover in these meetings. And also what your communication structure is outside of those meetings with clients. Like, do they have unlimited communication? If so, you don't probably need a whole hour of a meeting. And honestly like I love toying with keeping meetings short, because you're more focused, you can accomplish more.
[00:10:52] Penny: Yeah. And I mean, we spoke about it in one of our recent hot seats in that. Bookkeepers were saying that you can go into it with an idea of what you want to cover and then leave plenty of time for the cause you have no idea what the client may come up with. And as a result of having a conversation, I can imagine things come up that they said, oh yeah, I meant to ask you about this. I never did. So I think that's, I think that's a fantastic idea.
[00:11:27] Serena: Yeah. And for you too, you can think about quarterly meetings instead of monthly. If that's something you want to try on like you can say, the quarterly meeting, this is kind of what we cover or a monthly meeting, but there's definitely various ways that you can structure that. Yeah. So, all right, so that was question or, you know, roadblock number one. What else can I support you with?
[00:11:56] Penny: Trying to think for the most part, things are going pretty well. It's, you know, very early on, you made a recommendation to need free to focus. And that's been huge because I am working full time and I have a husband and I'm having to fit things in and that's been very helpful. So I feel I feel like I have control in that area. But and I don't know that this is necessarily something they can help with, but I feel like someday I'll be like Apple and I'll have so many clients and be like, oh, I don't have time to work. My normal job. I'm so busy with my clients. I'm trying to fit things in. And I think that would be a fantastic problem to have.
[00:12:44] Serena: Yeah. And sometimes like there might be a point in time where you do have to kind of make a choice of like, when you get to a certain amount of clients where you are busy enough to like you know, the throttle is like, okay, well, if I didn't have the full-time job, then I know I could really turn up the volume over here on my business. And so it sounds like you're not quite there yet, but if you have a plan to leave your corporate job in a year, are you feeling like you're on track to, to be at that point within a year?
[00:13:22] Penny: My plan is that I'm going to be able to leave whether I'm ready or not. And once I leave, I will have built all kinds of muscles to know exactly what to do when I have enough free time to do it. And it'll give me the motivation, you know, once I don't have a salary anymore, it'll give me the motivation to really make a difference. And, and I think especially with podcasts I'm speaking at podcasts and I have a, I think I have a really good idea to get and I got published in a magazine and so I think it's a balance right now while I'm working up to it. To, take on new clients and remember that. Okay. Yes, I'm really busy taking on this new client, but I need to keep working to get the next client, even though I'm really busy right now. And that's a fun focus to, you know, don't back off on anything that's working and bringing clients in just because I'm really busy because, It's a small span of time that I'm having to work extra hard on a new client.
[00:14:35] Serena: Yes. That's a really good awareness to have. So for anyone listening, it's like, there are going to be stretches of time that you feel a bit overwhelmed, but it's, going to drop off because you're going to get into the rhythm of things with that new client. So are you starting to see leads come in from the magazine article or any of that?
[00:15:00] Penny: Not yet.
[00:15:00] Serena: Not yet. Okay. Yeah. I know, even for me, there's times where it's like, I, I know as soon as I turn up the throttle that people will come to me. So there's that little bit of fear of. Well, I actually, I don't know if I have the capacity. Sometimes it's a real, I don't have the capacity and sometimes it's perceived, I don't know if I have the capacity. So you let that be the excuse to not take the actions that will lead to clients coming to you.. Yeah, but --
[00:15:33] Penny: I can totally see that.
[00:15:35] Serena: I'm super proud of you for still booking the pod Fest to stage and going forward with that and you're working on finalizing your speech and creating the lead magnet for having a place for those people to go. And sometimes we think that, oh, as soon as I go up there, people are going to flock to me. But in reality, they're probably not. So you're still safe.
[00:16:04] Penny: Yeah. And back to the article, I haven't booked any clients from it. But I was invited to be on a podcast that is related to the topic of the article. And so people in that niche are seeing that I'm actually out there and doing things. I mean, between the article and the podcast, I think I'm going to get a call. Cause I, when I speak with the people that have a regular listeners of the RV podcast, they'll say, oh, I was looking for a bookkeeper and I listened to all the podcasts of all the bookkeepers that have been interviewed. And you know, this person never responded to me and I contacted on three different ways and this person responded, but they're too busy. And so I know. I know there's space in there.
[00:16:55] I know, you know, there's going to be people that finally get it. They're going to be just in the right point in their business, that they're going to need somebody to help them either with taxes or bookkeeping or personal finance. And they're going to hear my podcast. They're going to go through and find it and say, Oh, here she is right here. This is me. So I am so excited for that to happen.
[00:17:21] Serena: Oh, I can't wait. And I just, I have to say, I love your outlook on this, and this is where. Like that true. It's that true abundance mindset of like, I know the right people are going to find me at the right time, especially when you like, cause you're taking the actions and you're putting yourself out there for people to find you and someone might find you a year from now bingeing a podcast. Cause that happens like, yes, that's for sure happens.
[00:17:48] Penny: I am. I am so going to put it out there in every way that I can. And then. Keep working on what I've got now and be open for those people to show up.
[00:18:02] Serena: Yeah. You are energetically open and it makes a huge difference. It really does. I don't, I don't know how to prove it to people other than just like, seeing it happen with students, seeing it happen with myself. Like when I energetically, have the open sign on, leads come to me when I am energetically closed, because I'm like, I don't know if we have the capacity, so I'm not going to like, Energetically be open then no leads come. That's just how it works. It's crazy. I don't know how to explain it, but awesome.
[00:18:43] So let's see, you are going to leave your job and in a year from now.
[00:18:50] Penny: Yes.
[00:18:51] Serena: And it sounds like you have sort of a plan for having the conversation with future clients on presenting to them services that, you know, they need. And here's the other thing that is just beautiful about what we do is when we meet with a potential client, we know, and they know they already need our services. It's just a matter of Is it the right fit. And honestly, it's usually like, is it the right fit personality wise? And with the services that I offer because we're in such a beautiful place that we don't have to do any convincing or trying to sell somebody on something. If you know, in your heart that they need the service that you're offering, it makes it a lot easier because they're already on the call with you. They know they need it to some extent. You're just now educating them on the additional things that would benefit them. And like I said, if you know in your heart that they need this service and it will benefit them, it makes it a lot easier if you already just have that built into your packages and your prices.
[00:19:56] Penny: Yep. I love it. I love it.
[00:20:02] Serena: Well, it was kind of a short strategy call. Are you sure? There's nothing else I can help you with?
[00:20:09] Penny: Well, actually, I have a question about saying that I'm a personal CFO. I always worry that, you know when I say I have a lofty title for the services that I'm offering, is it likely that if I say to somebody new that I've never met, that doesn't necessarily know whether they need my services or not. I offer personal CFO services, is that an appropriate title for what I offer?
[00:20:36] Serena: I think so. I honestly love that. Where the deep sigh of relief, here's the thing about the titles. Like, first of all, I think. You know what you're offering with it. So I don't think you're going to have a hard time articulating what that means if someone says, Hey, what does that mean? In a very simple and easy to understand way I'm sure. So I think that's the biggest piece. If you're going to go with whatever title it is, there's enough of a curiosity factor, where someone might be like, Hmm, I've never really heard that before. Maybe they kind of know what a CFO is, especially if they're in this online business world. I think there's been a lot of education out there in the marketplace of what a fractional CFO does for businesses or maybe not. But it gives you that edge of like that curiosity factor where someone then does have to ask, well, so what does that mean? Or what is that? And that gives you the opportunity to, to delve into, and to talk about what you offer.
[00:21:44] So while sometimes it's good to be really like clear and name things so that people understand what it is right away. There's also the flip side of that, where it's like, sometimes it's good. If there is that like curiosity factor that is like, oh, what does that mean? Most people think they know what a bookkeeper does, so that one's pretty easy. So I think it's, I love it, honestly.
[00:22:11] Penny: Thank you. And it came about because. I was at a personal finance retreat and talking to people about personal finance and I said, what do you think about bookkeeping for people in the personal finance space? And they said, we don't, that's not us. We're not going to need it. And I said, okay, you know, tax, advising, tax preparation. Absolutely. So I said, I need a cute name for it that encompasses the services that people need, as opposed to, I just do one thing. And the potential client says, I don't need that. That's not me. And so I'm, I'm so relieved to hear your feedback.
[00:22:57] Serena: Not that you need any validation.
[00:23:00] Penny: I know, I know.
[00:23:03] Serena: But yes, I love it because it is a way to encompass everything that you're offering, whether they need it, use it or want it, without them just completely dismissing, oh, I don't need a bookkeeper. So I'm not even going to listen to what she has to say.
[00:23:16] Penny: Yep. That's perfect. That's exactly what I was going for.
[00:23:21] Serena: And it like anyone who is an entrepreneur probably understands sort of what a CFO is. They know it has something to do with finance and then you add that extra layer of Personal CFO, and then you can delve into, I help you manage the finances of your business and your CFO. And however it is that you present that I know it's going to be awesome.
[00:23:44] Penny: Thank you.
[00:23:45] Serena: Yeah. Huh. All right. Well so for anyone listening, where can people connect with you if they want to get to know you more, whether it's another bookkeeper or someone who needs this personal CFO service?
[00:24:06] Penny: So I am active on Instagram and it's B I O personal CFO. And I'm also active on LinkedIn and it's Penny Rose CPA.
[00:24:22] Serena: Awesome. Thank you so much, Penny, for allowing me to uncover and help you with some things in your business today. I truly appreciate you. I love having you in the community and I'm gonna miss seeing you this summer on hot seat calls. As we take a break. But I'm so glad that I've met you and you're here. So thank you.
[00:24:45] Penny: Thank you so much. I love being in BBA. It's been an amazing experience for me.
[00:24:52] Serena: Great. So glad to hear. Thank you so much. And we will talk to you soon.
[00:24:59] Penny: Okay. Bye-bye.
[00:25:02]