The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

110 ⎸ [NICHE] Hospitality with Tyler Otto

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 110

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In this NICHE series interview I chat with Tyler Otto, who specializes in the Hospitality industry — from his corporate days in Finance, he’s built a successful firm and is sharing some insights about growing a team and marketing his firm to get it off the ground.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • Tyler’s go-to market strategy to gain initial clients after he lost his corporate job during the pandemic
  • How he has attracted stellar team members & how his team is structured
  • How he’s been able to keep team morale up to retain talent

Resources mentioned in this episode:

About our Guest:
Tyler Otto is the owner of Specialty Bookkeeping, LLC, where he has developed a winning formula for an innovative, virtually based accounting and tax firm. His company leverages technology to simplify client’s financial processes, creating greater visibility into their financials and driving profit. He has extensive experience in the finance side of the hotel and tourism industry where he has also served as the Corporate Director of Finance with Imprint Hospitality in 2020.

Connect with Tyler:

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I think growing our team, you got to have the clients to support growing your team, and then you got to have the team to support growing your clients. And I think both of those have been greatly influenced by. Just the fact we've been willing to be ourselves. Like when we started, I was trying to be suit and tie, buttoned up, super professional guy. And at some point, I was just like, huh, the clients I enjoy working with more are the ones I goof off with anyways, the ones that we communicate, like 50% of our communication is in the form of gifts. And it made me realize, like, I want more of those clients. And that's where the dad jokes started coming out on our social media. That's where, taking pages from other people that have done amazing things and getting their company culture out there, which is like, we're a little bit goofy. We're a little bit off the wall. Now we're getting clients we love, but then also in our job postings and what we do in the bookkeeping Facebook groups. People want to work for us now. And not only that, because there's so much demand to work for us, like when we post a job, we get 400 applicants. All of a sudden, our staff, they love the culture. They're telling people they love the culture. And so more people want to work for us. And then it also makes our job more desirable that our staff realizes, like, this is a great place to be. And we have super low turnover. So I think, A, like identifying what your company culture is and marketing that out there both to clients and potential employees and getting a name for yourself around that. You're going to get people that gel well with you and the rest of your team, and it's going to make it easier to carry on that staff and attract both clients and employees that are just like you already. That's at least I feel like that's what's worked for us, but maybe it's dumb luck. Welcome back to the ambitious bookkeeper podcast. I'm your host, Serena Shoup. This is part of our niche series as part of this series, spanning July and August. You'll be listening in on interviews with niche, bookkeepers and accountants. I thought it would be really inspirational and super valuable to bring on bookkeepers and accountants who have built niche firms to take you behind the curtain of what it looks like to get to the point of serving in a specific niche. My hope is that you'll gain the inspiration and information that will help you hone in on your niche. Or if you already have one. Find different ways to help your clients. I'll be asking some similar questions of each of our guests, like what their minimum fee is, how they got into their niche and what their firm team structure looks like. I'm super excited to bring this to you. And I hope that you enjoy. If you're ready to hone in on your own niche and build a bookkeeping business that gives you the life that you want, check out the bookkeeping business accelerator by going to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/bba the link is also in the show notes. If finding a perfect fit client is something that you've needed. Check out my mini course, the bookkeeping client closer, go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/closer. All the links will be in the show notes. Now let's get into today's episode. Welcome back to the ambitious bookkeeper podcast. this is another one of our niche series interviews. And today I have Tyler Otto on. Welcome Tyler. Would you like to introduce yourself? what type of businesses you help your background, all that good stuff. Absolutely! Thanks for having me, Serena. So, my name's Tyler Otto. We're Specialty Bookkeepers and we focus primarily on the hospitality industry. We're a relatively young company, I feel two and a half years in, and we really are going after that hospitality space. So primarily hotels, but a lot of hotels have restaurants and retail and spas in them. So we also don't shy away from those clients. but yeah, we're a team of... I gotta keep track of this. It's 12 or 13. I honestly don't know at the moment. And yeah, we've really built our, our brand on just going after bigger ticket clients and having a lot of fun doing it. So no complaints here. So I didn't realize how quote unquote young your business was, and now I have a whole See, that's what I told you. I was like, I'm going to have questions from your intro. That's just always how it works. so since we're kind of talking about niches, niches on this podcast, and you're so new. You've scaled so quickly, so what was your secret? Was it going to market with the intention of serving this niche? No, I mean, I, I'm sure everyone can relate. When your back's against the wall, and I've told this story to people before I spoke on this at BKX, like, I lost my job in corporate finance because of the pandemic. Hotels and, and the pandemic didn't go well together. And when your back's against the wall, much like probably a lot of your listeners, you figure it out. So we definitely approached it from anyone that can pay the bill that we want to work with, we would absolutely go for them over time. We've started to really narrow down our growth. But, yeah, the scaling has just been a product of, of really aggressively getting our name out there. Wow. Okay. So how are you getting your name out there? Have you been doing content marketing? Are you doing podcasts? Interviews? Well, so I'm gonna, you know, out your Serena here that before this podcast started recording, you said, like, you know, there, there could be things such as marketing from a long time ago, which is what you heard from prior speakers, is paying off now, today. I would almost argue that's what worked for us because my background was in corporate finance. My wife, had started doing bookkeeper launch and building the program, but with a background in corporate finance. I had a lot of people that knew me as the finance guy. So fast forward to, we start our business, getting the name out there. Tyler's doing this. We had an instant sense of credibility. I don't know if people could vouch for my financial acumen, but they liked working with me and said I had good puns. So they would refer me out to their friends and family, who were looking for a bookkeeper. And it turns out puns do a lot as a sales tactic. So at least that's what I'm attributing our success to. That's so punny. Wow. All right. We can be Okay. So my brother edits this podcast and we love puns also. So, and I told you like, if you're not listener, if you're not following Tyler on LinkedIn or maybe you put this on other social media platforms too, but it's on LinkedIn for sure. So follow him on LinkedIn every so often. But how often do you post them? Every Friday. Every Friday, I don't know what other content we give that's valuable, but you know, we take our dad jokes seriously. They're great. I love them. So thank you for that. And that's really awesome because I know we have a lot of listeners who are wanting to start a bookkeeping business or an accounting, some type of accounting consulting, that are currently in corporate. And I feel like for a lot of people, it's like a huge fear of like building this on the side while they're in their corporate jobs. And whatnot. So do you have tips For someone in that position to lay the groundwork and build their own brand, so to speak, while they're still in corporate, even if they're not currently seeking clients, like what would you suggest, they do? Yeah. So, it's gonna take a while, no matter how good you are, it's gonna take a while to get the firm off the ground. Like, it just, clients do not come overnight. we were lucky enough, to see the writing on the wall coming that like hotels are doing awful. We could see the assets for the company we work with are struggling. And so we knew like my job wasn't safe, but we started laying that groundwork of, Hey, we have a bookkeeping biz. And so, you know, it was the royal we, right? Cause you weren't selling the services of yourself. You're selling it of the firm. Cause one day when you have employees, you want to off source that, but it was several months of getting our name out there before we actually launched it to get it going. I, I think, you know, three, four months before the first client signed on that we were touting, Hey, we're going to be doing this, but we never actually a client, that I was working on. So I think a, just getting the name out there and there is going to be a point where you're going to have to make that leap and really commit because the transition is never smooth. It's never easy from corporate life to full time. And you're going to have to hustle at the beginning, you know, it's like, push starting a car essentially, like that car doesn't get going all of a sudden easily, you're going to have to make that thing move. But, I mean, it's a gamble but every time I gambled on our business and had to perform, it's worked out for us. And I think a lot of listeners like there's nothing special about me that's everybody when you really just put yourself in the spot that like, I've got to make this work you figure out a way. Yeah. So in that process of getting your name out there, what were you specifically doing? Were you like meeting with your corporate contacts like in person or, or zoom probably because it was COVID. Yeah, it was, you know, attending at the time, attending as many networking events, even if they were virtual, you know, everyone was so over that by end of 2020, but it was still attending virtual B and I groups. It was, getting out there and just sending messages to mild contacts on linked in that, you know, maybe I'd worked with them at a past hotel and now they were GM somewhere else. I say, Hey, yeah. Let me know if you ever need help with any of this, anything else. Almost none of them ever reached out to me, but occasionally some of them would then be talking to, you know, their brothers, mothers, best friends, cousins, lover at a family barbecue about their business. And they would say like, Oh, I'm looking for an accountant. And it clicks. And it's like, yes, Tyler mentioned that to me six months ago. And you just start laying those seeds and those seeds, like they will never pay off in the way you intended, right? You wanted to sell to that person you knew six months ago that run a hotel. They'll probably never buy your service, but you're in their mind. And so posting on social media, sending out, you know, messages, offering free value saying, Hey, reach out to me if you ever have any questions and deliver on that, where they can call you and you just answer their questions for five, 10 minutes. Like look to give as much as you can to those people in your network and those seeds you plant, they'll eventually pay off somehow. Yeah. So that is so true and that's the power of like the relationship marketing is that if you're not cold pitching people, which you're probably not, you're just kind of like trying to be top of mind, you're likely not going to get them as a client. But like you said, especially, and this is where really the power of the niche comes in, is like if you're specifically like, I help this type of business. When, you know, if they need a bookkeeper, they're going to automatically think of you first if they're referring, that type of business. So my next question is, at this point, when you first went out on your own, you were not dealing with hospitality because that industry was pretty much flatlined anyway. So, Well, or were mean, Well, so here's the thing. And I think most people look at my story and say, like, oh, you know, how did you even get into hospitality? Because you were growing a firm when they were all suffering. What it really did is it shook up the entire market. Because. There was, there was two elements there. Yes, there were people like the company I worked for that were just selling off assets. But what that also meant where there were ones that were poised to survive, but they needed to cut expenses and maybe they had a 60, 000 a year accountant in house. They wanted to figure out how to outsource that for 24 grand. Oh, All of a sudden you just had a huge shakeup where yes, some of the less prosperous ones were about to die off, but others were looking to make changes to reduce expenses. And here we are sitting pretty as an outsourced option at half the cost. so you were still targeting that industry Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I want to say in our first five clients, two of which were hotel based, and they were past connections that I knew that when they heard we were doing an outsourced firm, they're like, Oh, yes, like, that's something we need. So, love when people look at economic downturn is like a sign of end times and their business is going to go under. No, that's the time that if you're ready, there's going to be people looking to make a change. if you just stand out the most, if you're the most enticing, whether it's price, whether it's personality, whether it's offering, there's something to be gained there. yeah, that's such a good point. And they, and that's, if you're of the optimistic mind, when you see the economy changing or, or a downturn that, you know, there's always going to be more opportunity. In some way with that, because it, it forces innovation. absolutely. It folks, it forces companies that have always had, this is the way we've always done it to rethink. A lot of companies are like, no, we would never outsource our accounting. And then all of a sudden when that CFO is. tasked with, okay, how do we cut expenses? I've got to find a way to do this. Now they're thinking outside the box. Now you're an option. So yeah, downturn, it's not the end times. It's really actually a prime time as long as you're ready. Yeah. And I'm thinking back right now to my corporate days and I'm like, Oh yeah, we could have eliminated like three heads. If we do something like bill. com. We were hand keying invoices into a great play. And I was manually printing out the stack of papers and reviewing the coding ticking and tying everything. And then it moved on to the CFO's desk. Like processes in corporate are so archaic. And we were a biotech company, like, technically we were like A startup brand new, like we should have been more tech forward. I'm right there with you. I think, of one of the hotels we worked at, our accounting team payroll was probably around 1. 2 million, like between the director of finance, assistant director, accounting managers, payroll clerk, cash clerk, accounts manager. And yeah, those teams, they need to find ways to innovate. And so, yeah, if you know, the tech as well, man, there's room to consult in this space. There's room to advise there's room to take over the work. Oh, I love it. Oh, you're, you're giving me so many ideas now. I'm like, maybe I'm in the wrong niche. Serena Shoup tech advisor starts out after this podcast. I look forward to seeing, uh, Helps biotech companies revamp their accounting department. I think there's room for that. Yeah, for sure. Actually. So, okay. I'm looking at your bio and you actually also provide tax. We do. Okay. Is that like income tax or sales tax or all of the above? Yes, I mean, in the hotel space, sales and occupancy tax is a huge thing, which is a nice little moat for us because most people don't want to cross that. So it eliminates competition. But we also do income tax and that's a funny story because as much as I've tried to grow the tax side of our business. Just never scaled it well. I feel like, you know, us doing taxes like Google, trying to do a social media network, right? Google Plus just crash and burned after all the effort they put in for us. We put in a lot of effort, but we just don't seem to grow as quickly as we do on the bookkeeping side. So, but it's fun to try new things. Yeah. So your tax clientele, are you servicing your bookkeeping clients at year end for tax or have you found that a lot of your clients already had existing firms that they're working with? Yeah, I would say about 30% of our clients. We're doing the taxes ourselves. But, you know, it's one of those things when a lot of our clients come to us, they, they like their tax person. They want to stay with them and we're not going to be like, Oh, no, ditch them and we'll take care of it. We say, cool, we'll partner up. We'll get them the reports they need. And it's almost like that security blanket of like, now they have someone that, you know, can do a lot of the work. But meanwhile, they can still have that continuity. Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's not bad because that tax person is now a potential referral partner, right? If they're impressed with our work, now you have someone that may hand it out, because how many of us have worked with tax preparers that do not offer bookkeeping, and some of them don't even know how to do it. So, you know, we're not necessarily scared off by people that, want to keep their tax with their current person. Yeah, so what's your team structure look like? Are you the one doing taxes? Do you have someone specifically on the team that handles all the tax and sales tax? What does that look like? So sales and occupancy tax, we treat that all as just part of monthly bookkeeping. That's our team. But on the income tax side, you know, year one, I did a couple of returns just because I could year two. We just finished up, you know, this was our second year of being able to offer taxes. And I was really dead set on building that side of our practice. We tried getting the name out there. We tried doing a lot and just people And our space weren't hungry to switch tax repairs at the moment. so at this point, it's still all me with a little help from my team. My assistant primarily just managing stuff, but yeah, it's, it's not an exciting facet of our business yet, but we're hoping the seeds we planted this year are definitely going to pay off in years to come. Who Yeah, and as you bring on new clients, you can bundle it all together and Mm hmm. Interesting. Yeah. adding taxes, something that I've like had in my mind for a while, but the thing I struggle with is like, I'm not going to do the taxes, even though I'm a CPA, that's not my background. I would need a dedicated like tax expert on staff. And then part of me is like, oh, I can acquire a tax practice, but then I'm going to end up with a bunch of clients that aren't in the niche that I serve. So that's one option, but there would be a lot of attrition. The other option is to organically build it up from our current client base. But like you said, like that's slow, right? Because a lot of them have tax preparers that they don't want to leave dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so it's like, and then I wouldn't be able to support a tax person on the team. So it's like a catch 22. Chicken and egg. Yeah. Which one do you do? Do you invest in the team first and hope the clients come? Do you figure it all out? But like, that's where we're out. Is it, it ate up so much of my time this year. Was it really worth it? I don't know. Yeah. To be determined. Yes. Hopefully we're talking another year and you're like, hey, congratulations on the booming tax practice. Yeah. And then I'll be like, what did you do? So I can duplicate it. But yeah, I have lost one client that moved over to a different firm that offered tax and bookkeeping. yeah, it's not necessary, but that's why you want to offer it, right? For those people that want the all in one package. Yeah. And I could see the benefit of you know, the same team working on the client and offering that advanced strategy and everything and the communication being all in one place. but yeah, who knows? Yeah, no, it's it's a tough nut to crack. But I think with all things, you know, you see a lot of our firms trying to find ways to diversify. So first we tackle bookkeeping, then we tackle tax and then advisory and then HR and then taxidermy because why not? But yeah, I think the diversification is is incredibly important to help you attract more clients as you grow. Yeah. So speaking of more clients. How many I don't remember if I asked you this already, but how many clients do you currently have? And what is your team structure look like to support that? Yeah. So we have 30 ish clients, which I know sounds absurd. You know, we just got back from BKX, and it's, you know, interesting talking with people that they were cresting 100 and we're not even close. We've definitely focused on going the route of... Size of client over volume of client. And so, you know, we're somewhere between 2000 and 2200 or somewhere in there per client is our average monthly fee. I'd have to run the math again, but like, we're going after big ticket ones. And that's allowed us to scale. and grow a lot quicker. The way we're servicing them right now is we're doing everything in teams of three, right? Like we want to keep that pipeline of staff going. And so the way to do that is you have an account manager, someone that's more seasoned, someone that, you know, knows the ins and outs and they're overseeing a lot of the client and the work. But they're letting the, the lead bookkeeper, the one that does a lot of the heavy lifting, that middle of the team, they're doing, a lot of the accruals, a lot of the payroll entries, reconciliations, like they're doing a lot of the more complicated stuff. And then we've got our entry level person on the team that's doing a lot of, you know, receipt capture. bank feed coding and learning recons learning that process. And the goal is you're always moving up, right? We hire in that entry level person. We want them to be elite lead bookkeeper in 6 to 12 months. And we want that person that's a lead bookkeeper to be an account manager, you know, 6 to 12 months after that. And so that pipeline a allows us to keep adding staff, which. Man, staff is so crucial for growth, like having that continuity, which we could talk for hours on how to keep the staff and how to attract them. But getting the staff in there is huge. And getting that pipeline going. And then what it also does having that team of three is say one of them leaves, there's still two people in that, pod that know that client. So it's not like the client's like, oh, now I have a brand new person I'm working with. No, like, yes, Alyssa left, but Serena and Tyler are still here. I still recognize the people emailing me. And so we've really liked that. You know, we're only Great. Formally two pods. They're both a little bloated and at 14 members now getting ready for whatever that is, mitosis, they're going to split, and make more pods, uh, have pod babies, whatever. All right. I shouldn't be allowed on podcasts, but, we're getting close to that point and it's working well for us right now. Awesome. It's really interesting because, like, through this series, this is 1 of the questions that I've been asking about team structure and there's the pod model, which is what. We have to, although I only have one pod, It's fair. because I have even fewer clients than you. And it's funny, cause you're like, it doesn't seem like a lot. And I'm like, it's a lot to me, but it's all perspective. Right. And it's, it just varies by, you know, how much you want to work and what your pricing is like and how big of a team you want to build and, how deep you want to go with clients too. So, but yeah, there's the pod model. And then who did I have on before you? Dan Luthi, he was talking about their model is more, I don't know if he had a name for it, but it's not a pod model. So you'll have to listen to that episode. It'll air before yours in a couple of weeks. But yeah, it was very fascinating to hear how he'd, started out with a pod model and they switched it up and they've had massive growth and been able to have good coverage over all the client work and manage the capacity. So people aren't over capacity cause they're more assigned to a group of tasks instead of a group of clients. Basically. I think any model that helps really continue on the, the, it keeps the continuity of the team strong, right? Because if you're constantly turning over staff every 3 to 6 months, and they're having to learn new accounts, that's tough. If you find a way to keep the longevity there, and the average tenure of your staff gets longer and longer, like, you've only got room to grow. Because... that institutional knowledge as much as you try to capture it. Like that's what's crucial for these firms to grow. I'm a big believer in that. Yeah. So where have you found the most success in recruiting and, training and, growing your team? I mean, first of all, I think growing our team, you got to have the clients to support growing your team, and then you got to have the team to support growing your clients. And I think both of those have been greatly influenced by. Just the fact we've been willing to be ourselves. Like when we started, I was trying to be suit and tie, buttoned up, super professional guy. And at some point, I was just like, huh, the clients I enjoy working with more are the ones I goof off with anyways, the ones that we communicate, like 50% of our communication is in the form of gifts. And it made me realize, like, I want more of those clients. And that's where the dad jokes started coming out on our social media. That's where, taking pages from other people that have done amazing things and getting their company culture out there, which is like, we're a little bit goofy. We're a little bit off the wall. Now we're getting clients we love, but then also in our job postings and what we do in the bookkeeping Facebook groups. People want to work for us now. And not only that, because there's so much demand to work for us, like when we post a job, we get 400 applicants. All of a sudden, our staff, they love the culture. They're telling people they love the culture. And so more people want to work for us. And then it also makes our job more desirable that our staff realizes, like, this is a great place to be. And we have super low turnover. So I think, A, like identifying what your company culture is and marketing that out there both to clients and potential employees and getting a name for yourself around that. You're going to get people that gel well with you and the rest of your team, and it's going to make it easier to carry on that staff and attract both clients and employees that are just like you already. That's at least I feel like that's what's worked for us, but maybe it's dumb luck. I agree with that, honestly, because that was like an accidental byproduct of the marketing that I was doing for, you know, outward facing for clients, for students and stuff like that. That's how I've gotten my best teammates too, is they were watching what was happening online. They were seeing the culture being marketed inadvertently. Right. I wasn't doing it purposely. I wasn't doing it for that purpose, but that's how important your marketing can be. Like you never know who's watching and you build a presence. You, showcase your, culture and people will come to you wanting to work for you. Yeah, one of my top managers, , we posted a job in one of the communities on Facebook and she made it to the final round of interviews and I actually didn't select her and I said, hey, like, it was fantastic meeting you. I'd love to keep you in mind. And a couple months later. Fast forward, she still wanted to work for our company. She saw what we were putting out there. She saw our vibe, how we were contributing in the community. She reached out to me proactively and just said like, hey, I know it's only been two months, but just curious if you guys have any opportunities coming up. And I was like, actually. Yeah, we do. We brought her on and she's been a freaking rock star. Like I am so lucky she followed up with me. Cause I can't imagine not of hiring her. Like that would have been the biggest mistake of my career. And it was all because she actively wanted to work here. And you're like, it was one of those things I never thought of it. That was not the goal I went out there with. It was an accidental by product. And so, you know, had I known that back then, man, I would have leaned into that harder. Cause it's a great recruiting and sales tool. Yeah, I mean, clients want to work with business owners that have happy teams, especially if they know a team is going to be servicing them. That is so true. Man, I wonder if like we can get like our, net promoter scores. I know we do the questions like it. Maybe that is something we can include like in our sales thing of like, Hey, this is our average tenure. This is our average net promoter score. Like, are you sick and tired of having a firm that, you know, has this. That could be a great sales tool. I don't know. Maybe we try that. Yeah. I think that, I mean, cause I, I've definitely heard clients complain about being handed off to bookkeeper after bookkeeper, especially if they work with like QuickBooks live. It's like, you never know who you're going to get. Yup. Yeah. A I think that's a great marketing tool. Yeah. Serena helping us come up with good ideas here. You're going to start a new business. I'm going to start a new sales tactic. I like this. Yeah. I'm an idea person. I have lots of ideas. That's why I have a podcast so that I can share them and let other people execute. It's good though that so straight from traction, you're the visionary that that's exactly where you need to be. I love it. Or not Traction, Rocket fuel Yeah. But same author. Yeah. So that is what I do. Like, I have tons of ideas in the business and I have to like reel myself in and be like, okay, what's actually the priority right now. And my team has to do too. It's like, well, you told us that we were going to launch this by that time. So which one is it? but so can I turn this on you and ask you the question of, let's say we're taking that book, Rocket Fuel, Gino Wickman, for everyone who's not familiar, We'll link it in the show notes. Yes. But going from you started your business, just you to now you get to be the visionary and let other people execute. Like how has that transition gone for you? Cause I feel like that is not spoken about enough and how hard that is to going from doing all the work to coming up with the ideas, but letting people execute on it. Yeah. So. I mean, it started in my career. obviously like for most of us to get to a point in our career where we are like upper level management or directors or whatever, you usually work your way up. So I used to be really good at doing the tasks. I say that, but at the same time, after I got things. Rolling in a process created. I'd always gotten bored. Like, I'm not the person that should be doing the monthly accounting entries. Like, I can do it very well, but it takes a lot of energy to stay Crushes your soul a little. And so, like, I did great going into environments where things were a disaster and things needed to be cleaned up. Processes needed to be created. We needed to, create the reconciliation process, create the socks process, all these things. Right? I did great with that. But then once everything was running, like a well oiled machine, once I'd hired the people to take the things over and whatever, I would just get so bored. That's fair. That's when I, you know, that's when I started like building out the accounting team and getting better at like, okay, I still have the thing that I have to do every month, which is review, but I would procrastinate on that. And anyway, so that's always been a part of my personality. Like that's one of the things that When I tell people I can't do math in my head, they're like, but you're an accountant, like you're a numbers person. And I'm like, actually not really. Like I'm very detail oriented and meticulous with things. And I think that's my strength. And that's why accounting worked out for me and being able to go into an environment where things were a mess and fix it and then hand it over. Like that's my strength. So I've always had that, like, visionary personality, like, the creative side, basically, like, I identify as a creative, not a numbers person. And so I love coming up with ideas. I love thinking outside of the box. I love taking things from other industries or other business models and experimenting to see if they'll work for us in our industry. And so I guess the transition hasn't been that hard because I also hired help very early on in my business, because I knew this about myself. I was like, I don't want to be doing a monthly bookkeeping. I don't want to do the monthly reconciliations. so I hired pretty early on. I only had like five clients when I hired help. And, she's been with me pretty much since then and helped me grow the business. Service the clients and we've added other team. And, and so it's like, if you're resonating with that, you're definitely an entrepreneur. Yep. And here's your permission to hire early on. No, but good on you for recognizing that and getting it early because so many of the people I talked to in this space that are starting their bookkeeping and accounting firms, they need that full time income and they're trying to get there and they're so used to doing the tasks themselves and convincing themselves to "A", hire someone great, but then eventually trust them to hand off to do the tasks. That's one thing. And then you get to a point where you're big enough that you need to tell people, hey, we need to develop a process around that, you have to trust them to develop the process, follow through and actually just do the task. And then, so you're not recording the video and building the SOP. You're saying, hey, someone needs to build the SOP. Like, that is hard for a lot of these firm owners to get over that hurdle of you just got to have the ideas and let someone fully execute on even designing it and building it. So good on you for getting in that early. Yeah. And you know what? Like that just brought something to mind of, there are a lot of bookkeeping firm owners that started the business because they wanted to work from home, have their full time income, and then they've kind of blown up and they need the help and they're super intimidated about the hiring process, how to trust somebody to do that handoff and, It's a process. Like I probably wouldn't have been able to hire that early on if I was of that mindset, but I came from corporate where I had already built a team and had to rely on other people to get **** done. Yeah. But I always had the final review to make sure that everything that was coming across, the financials was to my standard. So that for me has been the part where I have gotten stuck of, transferring that knowledge, and the ability to review at the level that I would review, to make sure that everything that leaves the door is up to my standards. Oh, I, it sounds like you, you hit the nail perfectly on the head. I heard it said once and I don't remember where I heard it from. So I'm probably plagiarizing something. It was not me. I'll go Google it after, but it was someone talking about, you know, we call this often a side hustle, right? When people start it, it's a side hustle. And it's the hustler mentality like to get these off the ground. As I said earlier, you're going to have to push start this car. It takes someone to hustle and then to hit that next level to really build the empire. You can't hustle if you're the one constantly getting in there and doing and doing. It actually is counterintuitive and counterproductive to building a self sustaining system with you sitting on top of it as the president. And so learning how to go from being the hustler that just figures out how to gets to done to stepping back and not doing anything. I think that's, that's the true when you see a lot of these firm owners really start to thrive is when they can learn to turn off the hustler. And it's hard And let things go because 100% of the work is not going to leave the door at my standards and you have to be okay with that. Yep. And you have to, oh, man, people learn by getting burned. So you're going to tell people, you know, don't touch this. Don't do that. Like, yeah, don't touch it. It's hot. And they're still going to do it. Yep. And it's so hard to watch that. And then you can't even get mad. You're going to be like, and that's why I told you, what did we learn? Help coach them through that. Even though you just want to scream like I told you that I stepped in that landmine myself and I told you not to step on it like. It's just, it's the hardest thing, but as you grow, those are the skills to turn to master. None of that do you ever think like, those are the skills I'm going to work on creating a bookkeeping business. You think I'm going to learn reconciliations, hash reconciliations, and square clearing, and like maybe the tech side, but that emotional intelligence, that I'm sure I've never had in my life. Like that's the side of this bookkeeping business that I don't think it's talked about enough and really fun to dive into with people that are growing those empires. Yeah. Oh, so good. And like, I've said this before, but when you start a business, you start like getting books on like, okay, well, how do I like grow this? And there's always like this massive mindset component. And then it's like, this is actually a self development book. And then you start going down the rabbit hole of like, entrepreneurship is just a giant, personal development journey. Because you do have to learn these things of like learning to let go, learning to not be a perfectionist and learning all these things. Because if you don't, you will stunt your growth or you will be the one always doing it. And then you're going to get burnt out and just close your doors. No, I, I love it. You mentioned reading all those books because I can think of several books I read early on that everyone raved about and I'm just like, all right, like, it's cool theory, but like, I don't know what else it's just a book. And then you get into the thick of it, this thick of what we're talking about of learning to grow develop handoff trust. And all of a sudden, it's like the e myth all of a sudden makes sense to me now, like, I get what they are going at. And so, yes, like, I think this whole journey and just, like, you coaching people through it with Ambitious Bookkeeper, like, so many people can resonate with it, because it's hard and it's not talked about enough. Yeah. Oh, so good. Okay. The other thing that I haven't asked you yet is what is your pricing model? Do you do package pricing, menu pricing hourly? Like, what does that look like? And do you have a minimum fee and like, or a size of client that you have, you know, they have to be at before they work with you? Yeah. like many early on, I was anyone that could fog a mirror, and I realized relatively quickly that is not sustainable, like, If you have one client at 3000 a month or clients at 300 a month, a lot of people view that as like, either way, great, you got to 3000 a month, but I'll tell you. Every client takes up a little bit of mental bandwidth, a little bit of emotional bandwidth of remembering, oh, this is how their business operates, but how this one is. And so we focused very early on, I'm like, let's go after big fish. We get told no a lot. But at the same point, when we do finally land one, like it's, it's a big deal and a big source of income. And so for that reason, like, yes, we do now have a minimum 9. 95 a month per client. Right now we kind of just do package pricing. So we go through what your needs are. We look at your books historically. If you have them, if you don't have them, we'll look at bank accounts, transactions, whether you need AP, whether you want us filing sales and occupancy tax. But there's other things we do where we just say, like, no, this is the standard, you know. I'm sure you can relate back from the corporate world, like the balance sheet reconciliations that are done just, you know, in QuickBooks right now. Like that's, that's not actually what you did in the corporate world. You had full recons and that's what we do for our clients. And you know, some of them are like, well, we don't need that. We just need the bare minimum. It's like, great, go find the bare minimum. We're going to do this. Like you are poised to be a 10, 12, 15 million a year company in the next year or two. And that's allowed us to find a lot of great clients. And so it also is training my staff up to be stellar accountants, because they're getting the same sort of exposure you would have gotten in a corporate environment. So yes, to that being said, you know, we developed the package price right now that all goes through me. And I'm sure like many of your listeners, uh, we do have a PETA fee that if I feel like the client is going to be a little extra taxing, you know, we have a small multiplier we can put in there. but yeah, it really is just based on their needs and we put it all as one package. And then, you know, if they do want to add on tax, we'll do that in the end of the year. But, you know, honestly, I don't think looking at what we've done, I don't think we've hit our perfect thing. I keep looking at firms that do tiered pricing like gold, silver, bronze, you know, and here's what it includes. And here's what we commit to. I do think there's things in there that we might start be playing with in the next year. That could be helpful. So, yeah, I should probably go listen to more of your podcasts and find out what other people are doing and steal their ideas. Yeah. Well, this series, I talk about it with everybody and it's interesting. Everybody's kind of handling it in a little bit of a different way. Although, what is actually been common is doing the like. Kind of evaluating what the client's needs are and doing more of a custom proposal, which is not what I do. But, I struggled to get to the point where I was, but once I honed in on my niche and really learned like what these clients, these specific clients need and where our sweet spot is and what's the most profitable engagement for us where I'm not involved, it's actually like our lower tier. Engagements, quote unquote, because I don't have to be involved. And so they're more profitable. Right. So when you start thinking about it like that, like what is the most scalable package we have or the scale of most scalable service offerings we have then package that into like, this is our most common package. And like, we know that all hospitality businesses are going to need x, y, and z. This is the, you know, whatever software systems that you use. Once you really hone in on those processes. And if you get strict with your clients about like, we only work with QuickBooks or we only work with Xero or we only work with these add on softwares or payment processors or whatever, right? Then you really have a better idea of what it takes to get the work done and can do those package pricing. And for you, like the tier could be like, okay, basic is for I don't know what your actual like minimum revenue for clients is, but say it's like 500, 000 well if they're at that level, they probably don't have someone in house filing their occupancy tax. So it's like, we know you're going to need this, so we're going to add this to this package. And like, we know that companies at your level usually have about five bank accounts or whatever, you know what I mean? Like you start to learn the industry and the trends across your clients, and then you can start to kind of package things together if you want to go that route. But I think the menu pricing works as well, where the clients kind of get to choose like, yes, I need this. I don't need this because I've got that handled. And, You know, whatnot, but I hear, you know, what you're thinking there just with the tiers and, and, you know, there are definitely services I can look at that like, well, we could eliminate that. And, you know, those are our most time intensive things we do for you. So, great. If you want to save money, you're going to take on, you know, we're not going to do that part of it. And even, you know, getting into the space of, okay, they can't afford us, you know, because at 12 grand a year. We're too expensive, even at our minimum. Great. Here's a $4,000 course we've put together that you can get up and running. And that way, when you do come to us, you're not paying for a 10 grand cleanup because it's a dumpster fire. At least you can do the bare minimum and make sure everything looks good. I don't know. Like, I see a lot of appeal of having to sell down options from what we currently offer. Especially to your point, as you get bigger, And you can hand off the work to team members. So it's less of the owner's time, less of the accounting manager's time. I absolutely see the appeal there. So we're definitely a work in progress. I'm not saying we've got this figured out, but I think most firms, you know, it's a, it's a story of being willing to try new things and not just say, well, that's the way we've done it since day one. So let's stay with yeah, yeah, I'm constantly reevaluating things to like, as we bring on more clients, it's like, okay, like, I always go back to the team and I'm like. Which clients are your favorite and why, and how can we get more of those? And that's how we decided like, Oh, it's that actually our base package that is the favorite of everybody. and if that one doesn't involve any of my time and our team has capacity for more of those types of clients, why not? Like, but if I'm signing more like CFO engagement clients, then that's more of my time it. We've run into the same hurdle. And I love that you brought up asking your team what clients they like.'cause like I know Melissa Hoan talked about this, that they got rid of a large chunk of clients that were killing staff morale. I look back to May, we fired two clients that combined were four grand a month in income. And all I heard was how much my staff was in love with our company. Even more like, I don't know if we could have done something better for employee retention.'cause when we ask our team every month in the survey, like, how do you feel about the client? How does the client feel about us? One is like, I dread seeing their name come across my caller ID or email. We fired those two clients and like, my staff was celebrating for like a week on end. I swear. You're like, cool. Now go get us another client so that I can continue to pay you. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there is that element, but it's like, hey, those 2 steps backward. We're definitely I feel like in other realms, 3 steps forward. So, no, I love that. You're asking your team that because I think that's 1 of the biggest unlocks for us. And then, yes, it does help us focus on getting clients in that we like to work with that are going to be continuity and keep staff around. Oh, I love it. Yeah, it's such, I mean, as you get into building a team, it's a whole different level of considerations and another shift that you have to make. So like if you're leaving corporate, you start a business, you have to make a shift into maybe doing all the work yourself for a while, and then you have to shift into teaching someone else the work and mentoring them. And now most of my time in the business is spent not on client work or meet even meeting with clients. But. Meeting with the team and making sure that they have the tools that they need. And that's a big shift for people to like, they're like, I feel like I'm not working or they feel like they can never get anything done because they haven't offloaded enough to be able to make the time to offer that kind of support to their team. And it does the team a disservice to like, they need to feel like they have the tools and the support because that's going to keep them around longer. And the job just keeps changing as an entrepreneur. it's never the same every step you move up. And the hardest part is you will feel like your business is crashing down around you because once you get to a high enough level, your team only comes to you when there's a problem. So everything could be going well, the things that are going great with all your clients, like they're just going to take care of it. They think they're doing their job, but they are doing their job. They're keeping that out of your brain space. They're running everything. But as you grow, you'll start to feel like you're losing control because all you see are the issues because that's all that gets brought up to you. And that's success. And it's so hard to reconcile that that is success when all you see are the problems. Oh, that was a mic drop moment. Like we're going to have to sound clip that one. Note to editor Yeah, because that is so true. And I never really even thought about that. And what a great way to end our interview because we're almost at time. That's fair. That's fair. Okay. So what do you have going on in your world? Did you use, you said you spoke at BKX. Correct. Awesome. How did that go? it went well. No, was second year speaking at BKX, fun group. And then beyond that, you know, we're gonna be on Keepers, catch up with Keeper, I think at the end of this month. So for those of you fans with Keeper, we'll be there and. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'll send you something else before this publicizes and, uh, it'll be in the show notes. Yeah, definitely. Definitely do that. If someone wants to connect with you, where's the best place that they can do that? I mean, if you just want dad jokes, we're on Instagram, and we also post accounting info, but no one seems to care about that. It's all there for the puns, but also on LinkedIn, I love connecting with people, and for those of you that are LinkedIn fans, like, message me. Let's talk. Let's go through whatever. Like, I'm a big fan, so find me on there. Tyler Otto, hard to miss. Goofy looking white guy. Well, thank you, Tyler. it was a pleasure getting to finally talk with you face to face. I see you online everywhere. It's like your name is all over the place, but, yeah, such an honor. So thank you for taking the time to podcast and share your experience and inspire folks. Thanks a bunch, Serena. All right. Talk to you soon.

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