The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

112 ⎸ [NICHE] Real Estate Professionals with Kelly Wigington

• Episode 112

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In this NICHE series episode, I talk with Kelly, owner of Summer Dove Bookkeeping, a niche firm specializing in bookkeeping for real estate professionals. She shares how she has noticed a common trend among many RE agents - they often treat their commission as a paycheck - and how she supports them in embracing a more business-oriented approach. She also opens up about her experience in the industry and how she got to where she is today.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • Tips on finding contractors & building a team, as well as creating a positive work culture
  • Challenges of managing client growth and increased volume
  • How Kelly implements scope reviews to ensure fair pricing

Resources mentioned in this episode:

About our guest:

Kelly is the owner of Summer Dove Bookkeeping, wife of a hobby enthusiast, and Mama to three wild little boys. She lives in the mountains of East Tennessee where she and her family go on lots of adventures. She runs on coffee, Jesus, and sarcasm, and she strives to help everyone around her feel at peace. 

Connect with Kelly:

  • Follow on IG @summerdovebookkeeping
  • Check out her DIY Profit Tracker - Perfect for RE Agents or other solopreneurs who need to track their finances but aren't ready for a bookkeeper yet!


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

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I'd say with real estate, you probably experience a lot more agents who treat their commission as their paycheck. Yeah. Because they don't they've not been told. It's not if that makes sense. And so they're paying for all these marketing expenses and advertising and coaching and continue education, MLS fees. A lot of them are paying out of their personal accounts because. To them, the commission is a paycheck. And so, that's, you know, something that even on discovery calls, I'm able to kind of educate and say, like, I understand this mentality because I had it. And this is how much more clarity you're going to have if we treat this like a business. Yeah. And if you're treating it like a business, a business at this level can afford this rate. 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 our niche series here on the ambitious bookkeeper podcast today. I have another guest Kelly. Welcome Kelly. I'm so excited to have you. I've been following you on social media for a while. So I feel like I know you really well, but would you like to introduce yourself who you help, and how you got here. Yeah, thanks for having me, Serena. I'm excited to get to chat with you today. My name is Kelly Wiggington. I am the owner of Summer Dove Bookkeeping, and my firm specializes in real estate bookkeeping. Primarily, we work with real estate agents. But a lot of agents are also investors, so we have some real estate investor clients as well. And because I started out without a niche, I still serve several clients who, don't fit into that category, who, are some of my beloveds. So I may not ever get rid of them, but they're all service based at this point. And it took a little while to get to where I knew that this is who I wanted to work with. I've been in business for about 2 years, I guess, 2 and a half. Now, I started right at the beginning of 2021, after kind of accidentally picking up a friend as a client and, that kind of snowballed, in 2021 when he just kind of suggested, hey, I think other people might would like your help with this too. So, I like to say that I accidentally became an entrepreneur because that was not on my radar at all. I just like helping people. I have an accounting background. I was doing the bookkeeping for my church and I feel like I just kind of tripped and fell into this and, and have, just loved learning how to do it along the way. Yeah, I, I think a lot of our listeners might resonate with that, like accidentally becoming an entrepreneur. I mean, there's like the camp where some of us knew maybe up from a young age, we wanted to be entrepreneurs because we grew up in a home of entrepreneurs or a family. But later got an accounting degree and then you have the other camp that got their accounting degree and always intended to like work in corporate or at a big four or an accounting firm. And then something like this happens. So which camp were you in? Like, So when I was, I guess I was a senior in, in college, that was in my fourth year, I interviewed with Ernst and Young and left that interview. Like, this is not it. I did not. I hope that it was as bad as I thought it was because I don't know what. I don't want the big four or bus life. I don't want the 70 hour tax week life. Like I just knew that I wanted to have a family and that I'm not a hustle person. Like I'm just, that's not really my vibe. And so, when I graduated, I had kind of written off using the accounting degree at all. I was like, well, this is a good thing to have on my back pocket. I went into the mortgage industry actually. And then, When I got married and had to relocate, I landed at a job at a preschool, which is really random, but it was like just something to do while I quote looked for another job, which and I got a real estate license, and sold real estate for a while, which is why that's kind of become my niche. A lot of my network around here was realtors from my little scent of selling real estate, but as soon as I could be a stay at home mom. I jumped on that. And, I got to be home full time for a year, before I picked up a part time bookkeeping job at my church, and that was mostly to just get out of the house, if I'm being honest. I, Yeah, that's, that's awesome. I love, I love hearing how people got into like where they're at. And so did you start out college wanting to be in accounting and doing the big four thing, or I didn't really know. I, I knew that I wanted to do something in the finance accounting world, just because math was kind of my thing. And, all my parents and several of my family members were engineers and I wasn't excited about engineering either. So this seemed like the next best numbers thing to do. I went to an engineering school, which is kind of random, but got an you're like, I'm going to compromise with you parents. I'll go to an engineering school, but I'm going to go for something else. That was kind of what happened. Oh, that's too funny. but yeah, so I wasn't entirely sure. And then when I took my first accounting class, I was like, well, this is it. I like this. but again, once I realized what all that entailed after you graduated and like what it required to get a CPA. And I was in a little, like, I guess aside there as I was an out of state student. And so when I needed a fifth year to get my CPA, my mom basically said, you can either come home and do it in state or you can pay for it yourself. And I was like, well, nope, just going to go work Yeah. and find a job. Yeah. I feel like maybe it's not talked. I'm sure it's talked about enough now, but back. then, like probably around the time you and I were graduating college. I don't even know when you graduated. I'm assuming it was around the same time as me, but maybe I'm older. So, no one really ever said, like, you can actually just do your fifth year at community college taking art classes. If you've already fulfilled all your accounting requirements, which most degree plans do set you up for having fulfilled all the accounting requirements. It's just, you need more credit hours. So that's what I did. I just enrolled in a community college and took like Excel classes and art classes. Yeah, I feel like there wasn't a lot of conversation about options. It felt like this one track. Like, you get your accounting degree, and then you obviously get a master's, whether it's a Mac or an MBA, and then you go sit for the CPA, and then, and then you go for the big 4. And that seemed like the only thing people talked about. It didn't even occur to me that there were like, other accounting jobs that weren't just like, go to a big tax firm until, much more out there and it's crazy. I think it really depends on the school that you go to accounting for, how they push that. I feel like they probably want to see a high, like. They want to be able to tell like our placement rate at a big four is this, but I went to a small university and we didn't even have a big four firm in our area. It was all local firms. and the instructors in our accounting programs were a local firm owner. depending on where you went to school, I think that has a lot to do with it, but. Yeah, there's so much out there. And I remember in corporate, I had a, I think he started out in my AP department and then he was kind of like moving into junior accounting, but he was working on his accounting degree. And he was like, yeah, when I graduate, I'm going to go work for, you know, CBS, which is a regional firm and, San Diego. And, and he's like, or I want to work, you know, at one of the big four. And I was like, no, you don't like if you've been working here and you like having the flexibility that you currently have, you are going to hate it. I was like, there's so many better options out there. I was like, you could literally work for me in my accounting department at this company and have a way better life and probably make the same amount of money. I don't think it occurred to me that there were like, other ways that I could use my degree until that job opened up at my church. And it just kind of hit me like, well, this isn't, a high paying job, but like, this is what I went to school for to an extent. And oddly enough, like the one qualifying thing that I had that none of the other applicants had was that I had used QuickBooks before, but I had only used QuickBooks because I was the finance vice president of my sorority. And I was like, I could have gotten that experience without the degree. Well, I guess I still have to go to college to be in the sorority, but still, Yeah. That's, that's but I like pointing that out to people. Now, I get to be an advisor for that sorority here at the local chapter of it. And, nobody wants to be finance vice president, and I like to stand up and tell the girls like, Hey, like this landed me a job and now I own a business, literally because of this position here in this already so that's super important to be able to like, Show that other people that there's a different path, which is honestly like why we're having this podcast as well of like, there's so many different ways to get your business to where you want it or get your honestly your life or your career where you want it. And it's not always the mainstream way. So you touched briefly earlier on how you got into. The real estate niche because you have the experience. And that's one of the things that I teach a lot of, like when people are like, what kind of businesses should I help and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. I'm like, always start with like, what lights you up. And, or if you have experience in that industry, just as a start, it doesn't mean you have to stay there, but, so from the very beginning though, did you have any real estate clients or like, what was your initial client base? Like, Actually, no, most of my first clients were not real estate agents. And, and kind of the funny thing is when I was a real estate agent, bookkeeping wasn't really on my radar, except for the sake of like home budget, like. husband was like, how much are you spending on this? And so I kept a spreadsheet, but it wasn't until I filed my taxes. That 1st time that I was like, oh, so glad I was checking this because it. Even with the accounting degree, like, this feels so embarrassing to say, but in the real estate world, that's not something that's talked about it. Tell you to, like, track your mileage. For whatever reason, that's a huge deal. When you get started this, like, make sure you track your mileage and, otherwise all of the training and education is like the legality side for transactions when you're selling homes and then, marketing all the education opportunities that I had were about marketing and sales and I can't say that I retained very much of it. That's my strong suit in my business. Well, your business has grown, so I wouldn't discount that. Um, I guess I didn't ever realize that I could have benefited from a bookkeeper or from having my financials in the type of condition that I now keep my clients in until like looking at it backwards. Like in hindsight, I'm like, wow, I wish I would have known what I know now because I would have made a lot of different decisions. and I would understood what my bottom line actually was, how well I was actually doing, like, And so because of that experience, I feel like now I'm able to educate on social media and in my network, Hey, this isn't something that real estate agents often talk about, but it is extremely necessary, especially if you're considering. investing or growing a team or, getting your broker's license and opening your own agency that like, this is an extremely important part of running this real estate business is understanding you run a business that you're not an employee of your brokerage. And I think that's a connection I didn't make when I was doing it. And so now I feel like I've really been able to help people help some of my clients, like, understand, where they stand in their business. Yeah. So that brings me to a question of, are you using that as a marketing tool to like go speak to groups of, real estate agents or are you going to networking events and doing a spiel about it? Like I'm very curious because it seems like a really great opportunity for growing your business and just the growing the overall awareness in that industry. Yeah, so that's been 1 of my goals for this year is to get some of those lined up. I will, for the 1st time, this fall have all 3 of my kids in school, so I haven't been able to do a lot of in person anything. since I started my business, my youngest is 4. So he was itty bitty when I first got started. and then the niche is relatively new. So, I guess about a year and a half ago, I released a little digital product. It's very similar to others that are floating around out there, but, you know, to be able to track your books. In a spreadsheet that's pre formatted for you. And, as I was building it, I was like, this is what I could have used. So that was kind of what, inspired me to do it. Like, this is what I would have liked to see when I was a real estate agent. And at first I was kind of marketing it to everybody, but that's also become something to give away to real estate agents, or give them like a low cost way of getting started on tracking their finances. And so I've used that as kind of a springboard in some ways to kind of say, hey, this is something you need to be doing and it's not hard to do. And here's how you can get started and here's how I can help you when you're ready for that. definitely like, even if you can't do anything in person, like a lot of what I try to tell people is like, do whatever you can virtually, honestly, you'll have a wider reach than an in person event for one, but like go on podcasts, go guest teach in programs that are teaching other real estate professionals, maybe even other topics, like do a bonus in there. Like maybe their course or program is. About marketing, right? And you can be like, Hey, I'd love to offer this bonus training that I have specific to real estate agents, on getting their finances in order and da da da da da and you already have connections in the industry. So yeah, Most of what I've done in that realm is also in the virtual capacity for the same reasons, like it's hard to travel, I have little ones, I have like a very sporadic schedule and it's like, yeah, there's plenty of opportunities to do, to do virtual things like that to build your authority. So, Absolutely. It's a great ideas for sure. Yeah. So, we talked about how you got into your niche. One of the other things I want to make sure I cover on all of these niche podcasts is, like how many clients are you currently supporting in, and outside of your niche? Because I think it matters, for like the holistic picture. Cause you did say There are a few clients that are not in the niche, which I also want to highlight like that is 100% okay when people are like, well, I have to fire all these clients or let these clients go or not accept other clients that aren't in the niche. No, it's just, it's just going to make your marketing efforts a lot easier to be targeting one. Specific industry or niche. And if the actual process of doing the bookkeeping isn't that different, which it shouldn't be, if you're working with other just service providers, then it's not really going to put too much of a wrench in your process either. But so all that to say, how many clients are you currently supporting? Currently, I have 22 clients. Okay. So the second question, oh, go ahead. no, I was going to say, I think I was going to answer your second question. About 12 of those are in the real estate Okay. All right. Yeah. And that many clients, I have to assume you have some sort of team member helping you, so do you wanna elaborate on what your team looks like? Yeah. Yeah. So, you were a little bit of inspiration on when to hire. I will say that because on paper, it didn't make sense probably to hire when I did. But again, my youngest was two when I started this. So, as soon as I felt like. I don't even remember how many clients I had, but it probably wasn't more than 6 or 7. I hired a part time contractor and since then, she has since moved on to not even do an accounting. She's doing something completely different, which is great. But, I now have a part time employee assistant and 4 contract bookkeepers. All of them are working for me as like their side job. All of them are either full time moms or work full time somewhere else. And so, they don't work a ton of hours, which is why I have such quantity, but that does, I feel like that helps me, to spread things out. Like each of them handle a certain number of clients. And if one of them. As letting me know, like, Hey, this is too much. It's not hard to shift one client to another contractor, Yeah. Or, you know, take it on myself while I find somebody else to take it on. So anyways, that set up was worked really well for me. So far and and learning to run a, that's probably been like the trickiest part of learning to run a business is learning how to run a team, especially since I don't have any real corporate experience. And when I was a real estate agent, I was just, you know, as an independent contractor. And, so that's been, that's been probably the biggest learning experience for me so far. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people can identify with that and kudos for just going out there and doing it, even though you might have been a little hesitant to, like, lead a team, but, like, the upside is that you are providing Extra income or a job to all of these women, I'm assuming, and, I've got a one man on my team. okay. Women and men, people and like, that's number one. And number two is like, you are setting your business up to where like. You are not the one having to deliver everything to the clients and you have the capacity to be able to take on one of the clients if needed and to help with the transition. And that's really important too, because if your team is at capacity and you're at capacity, then if something happens. Then everything falls on you to, right. And that could be a lot. So, but yeah, that is definitely one of the more challenging aspects of running a business is learning how to run a team. But would you like to like share one of the things that have, been like the biggest game changer or resources that you've. Used to get better at leading your team, like anything for our listener who might be like, I want to hire, but I'm like scared AF. Yeah. Yeah, so, the 1st contractor I ever took on approached me, which I thought was interesting. She found me on social media and she, you know, expressed interest in just like, wanting to learn how to do it. So. I, you know, an offer and she was like, I'll be cheap labor and I have a couple I still have a couple of my like, very 1st clients have really, really simple books. And so that was a good segue into me, like, being able to, like. Learn how to train a contractor and like talk to a contractor and like navigate those waters before I started actually building. So, I'm sure you weren't fishing for a plug, but working with Mariah was a huge game changer for me. I honestly like I was like, I feel like you've done the leadership calls with Mariah, but I wasn't 100% sure. Oh, yeah, her leadership blueprint was huge because I just didn't, aside from that one contractor, I had no idea where to start as far as, like, finding the contractors myself, finding the team myself, or identifying, like, what a company culture is, or, like, how often am I supposed to talk to them? How often? Are we supposed to, cause one of the weird things about like this type of business is we have all these clients that don't really have anything to do with each other. So none of my contractors actually have to collaborate. They could, they could exist without ever knowing the others existed, but I really wanted to create a team culture. Where people could ask for help. People could pass off tasks, which is something that doesn't really happen very often. And I didn't necessarily want to, like, cultivate friendships, but I did want to create an easygoing culture where nobody felt like. They were worried about their, you know, some, their performance or what was happening with with our business. And so, Mariah gave me some tips there on just like. Keeping keeping the team involved with one another, without them necessarily having to collaborate. If that makes sense. Yeah. That's a big one that comes up when I'm working with, mentoring other bookkeepers and accountants is like, Number 1, a lot of people wait till they're so, so slammed to hire that they cannot dedicate the amount of effort and time and be methodical and really consider who they're hiring. They're just so desperate that they end up hiring quote unquote bad hires, but it's not necessarily the hire. That's bad. The employee or the contractor it's. That they're so behind and, strapped for time that they can't properly cultivate the culture and cultivate the training and, properly on board. So that person is not set up for success. So 1 of the things I want to point out to the listener is that you mentioned you hired way early on, which I did the same thing and you're able to really work out some kinks on like your hiring process. and also just like your internal process with the clients so that, it's a lot easier to onboard the second and third employee once you've done the first. So if you have, and you're able to have more time figuring out like, okay, what is it exactly that I want that person to do and how am I going to train them? And I'm not stressed out with time because I. still have capacity and that's the biggest thing. Like you still had some capacity probably to take on a few clients on your own, but if you had done that and then waited to hire, then you wouldn't have had the capacity to train. Right. Well, and I wasn't, I think without the corporate experience, I'm going to blame it on corporate experience, but that might just have been some imposter syndrome. I wasn't sure what expectations to put on anyone because I've never led a team before and I didn't really know what it's supposed to look like. And then communicating those expectations became tricky for me because I've never been one to volunteer for a leadership role, because I don't want to be the one managing expectations typically, but turns out that's what you have to do when you own the business. Yeah. So, I will say that like my second hire was actually a VA that I found on Upwork and like she and I got along fantastically, but I had not figured out what I really wanted out of her. And so, I mean, we spent several months together that felt really disconnected. And like you said, it wasn't because she was doing anything wrong or there was anything wrong with her. Or that I was doing anything wrong. I just didn't know how to effectively communicate what it is that I needed her to be doing. Yeah. And so, I felt like the second time around after working with Mariah and just kind of being able to write down what do I want this to look like? What is my vision for all of this? What is the mission of my business that I want these employees or contractors to support? Like I had never thought of that before. I just. Was like, well, I just need help. mean, these tasks done, Yeah, I just need tasks done, but you have to identify what they are. So another game changer at my business was also the Kickoff of Asana I do that a I'm like writing down. Okay. I got to link that. We will link it all the resources in the show notes, by the way. Yeah, the, you know, once I had the contractor, I had to be able to give her tasks, but then, it wasn't until I had that assistant because I mean, the bookkeeping tasks are kind of the same across the board. You do bookkeeping tasks. And even though your workflow might be different than mine, they're all probably about the same as far as like, monthly tasks go like, those were pretty easy to say. Here's what we do every month for every single client. Here's your list. but when it came to an assistant, it was like, man, these tests are all over the board and they need to be, they need, they need to be organized somehow. So, learning to navigate my workflow software was a huge deal when it came to passing off those tasks. But then my 2nd time around when I hired my W2 employee, that that just went that was so much better than than the 1st time because I had a plan in place. I had a list of expectations. I had my workflows in place and, she's. She's been fantastic at identifying more places where I needed some organization help. Yeah. And that's when you have, that's when, you know, you have a rockstar too, when they're not afraid and you honestly have to set that tone as well. Right. You have to set the tone of like, please don't be afraid to tell me that like this needs to be improved, but just know if you bring that to my attention, it's probably going to get put on your plate. To fix it. Right. Like, but that's when, you know, you have a rock star. So if someone's willing to do that, when you have that conversation, it's like, yes, that's Yes, and as an example, because this has recently happened since I, when I first brought her on, and she's not an accountant, I was just kind of showing her the ropes and what we do and and why we do it. And 1 of the questions she asked me was, okay, so what do you do to make sure all these people who are paying you this rate? Should still be paying you this rate? Like, are you looking at their accounts? Do you decide that every month? Like I stopped and was so embarrassed because I was just like, I don't, I don't know. It just feels like they're not paying me enough. I guess I wait till I get resentful. And then I tell them they're getting a price increase. So she actually helped me implement these like scope reviews. And created tasks for all of my current clients. In all of their projects, to do by annual scope reviews, to determine whether or not they've fallen out of their scope and. Even if they haven't, whether our prices still match theirs, and then we kind of collaborate and evaluate whether or not that's a client we're going to choose to do that with. but that is, yeah, that's not something I had even, I guess I had thought about it, but I hadn't encountered that situation quite yet. Beyond obvious scope changes, like when an investor client bought a new property to me, obviously, that required a price increase. but when it came to, like, clients whose businesses had just grown, like, they're just, they're just growing and their transactions went up, then. it hadn't occurred to me that I was, I was getting to do anything with that until, she asked that question. So yes, to the Rockstar employee, that is definitely a game changer. Yeah. And like just always having a... not always, but having a fresh set of eyes on things like that to bring up those questions is super valuable. So, sometimes we get so far in the weeds and then also if you're not the one working on all those clients, you may not even realize that they've grown to that extent or the volume has increased. and so implementing A communication checkpoint with the team that's working on those clients to be like, please keep an eye on this. Like, what we do is we, we paste our scope of work into the overview of the Asana project for all of the clients. So anyone on the team can go and look and see. If this client asks for something, is this within the scope? And they always, everyone knows how much each client pays us from that too as well. So, I'm huge on transparency. I know maybe other people wouldn't run their firm that way, but if I want my team to work toward the goals that I have as well, like, and be bought in, they need to know, More of what's going on, if that makes sense. So, empowering them to see like, is this in scope? Can I say no to this? Or like, you don't want them to assume to just like do everything for the client. Cause that gets out of hand too. Yeah. Yeah. all right. So. You're you're building a team, you have some great pieces of advice. So thank you for that. As far as your pricing, as we're kind of talking about scope and pricing, do you, charge then a flat fee for all of your clients? I have kind of a base fee at this point, and, you know, it covers a certain number of transactions and reconciliations and actually do very nerdy. I don't my pricing and a spreadsheet that is built out for me to put in, you know, an estimated number of transactions number of banking credit card accounts that need to be reconciled. We also reconcile a lot of mortgage and escrow accounts for investors. So those are, it's like, each of those have a certain cost associated with them. And so, so, yeah, the basis 350. and that pretty much covers two bank or credit card accounts and up to 50 transactions. And so as those numbers increase, so does the price. Yeah, I like that. I like hearing the way that different people price things. And this is where I say, like, I have a pretty, now like a pretty good feeling on price and the way that I've set my pricing up, I know works for me and my niche and the software that I use, but that's like, it's been years of getting to that point of being able to say, With confidence, like, yep. If you're at this level in business, like this is the price. This is what is included. And it, it just makes it so much easier and you can be more objective, in your pricing. So another plug for figuring out an edge. Yeah, is helpful because it took me a long time to narrow down the pricing. And because I was working in lots of different industries, I had several very small startup clients. I still have them. And so I offered quarterly bookkeeping for a while. And that was a much lower price point, mean, I did that to, have an opportunity for new startups or like, again, with the real estate agents when I was a real estate agent, I wouldn't have been able to afford me now, but I probably could have afforded that quarterly rate. So, that was why I offered it for a while. At this point, we've just grown to the to the size where it doesn't make sense financially to take the quarterly, which is another reason that digital product is something that I've been trying to push. But, the fact that they're all in, you know, now that we're marketing directly to real estate agents, and I should say, specifically we try to work with real estate agents who are making about 200, 000 in commission or more, which translates to like 7, 000, 000 in sales in the real estate garb or the real estate verbiage because I don't know if you follow any agents, they talk about how many millions in sales they have, and they're referring to the price point of the properties, not Yeah. It's a vanity metric. Every a very different metric. Um, but that is, you know, a language that I know how to speak. So, but at that level, they, I'm able to say, like, at this level, you should be able to afford my services if you are budgeting other things well. If you don't know if you can afford my services, well, here's what we're where we need to start. Yeah. I do see and I know this is this way in a lot of industries and a lot of industries, business owners don't have a handle on where their money is going, but I'd say with real estate, you probably experience a lot more agents who treat their commission as their paycheck. Yeah. Because they don't they've not been told. It's not if that makes sense. And so they're paying for all these marketing expenses and advertising and coaching and continue education, MLS fees. A lot of them are paying out of their personal accounts because. To them, the commission is a paycheck. And so, that's, you know, something that even on discovery calls, I'm able to kind of educate and say, like, I understand this mentality because I had it. And this is how much more clarity you're going to have if we treat this like a business. Yeah. And if you're treating it like a business, a business at this level can afford this rate. Yeah. I think that's a really important piece because a lot of times I'll work with people on, on their pricing. And. And they'll be like, well, I want to make this amount every year. and then I have the, conversation of, okay, well, how much time do you want to spend on that? And how many clients do you want to support? And then it comes out to being like this monthly fee that they have to get to that. They're like, my clients aren't going to pay that. And it's like, well, you might need to target a different audience then, because it all has to come into alignment. You can't. be like, I only want to have 10 clients, but I only want to support startups, because they can't afford it. Right. Okay. So I feel like we've pretty much tackled all of the questions that I have. So you're like two plus years in business, right? Mm hmm. Okay. So if you went back to year one, like when you started, and I don't even know, I'm not a hundred percent sure on your journey. Like when you started, did you enroll in a course? Did you try to bootstrap things and figure out everything on your own? Let me know. I enrolled in a course and it's not one that I'll name drop because I've since found probably six more I would have rather taken. but it did get me started so Yeah. I can't complain too much. Yeah, there's value in that too, right? It's like, I'm sure it, it fast tracked some of what you needed to have fast tracked. So, if you can, if you can swing it, like, Yeah, I think that's always a good, at least look into what the options are. And there's plenty of options these days, but if you had a piece of advice for someone like that back then in your shoes, or if you had to start over again, now, you know, which course you would have taken, but other than that, do you have a piece of advice for someone just starting out? That's like, I know I want to do this. I just don't really, you know, I don't know where to begin where I'm struggling with like some mindset stuff. What would you say? I guess my biggest piece of advice would be to write everything down as you go, or at least record it like looms my favorite thing ever. I just record myself doing all kinds of crap at this point because it's easier than writing it down. But, When you have 1 or 2 clients, it's so easy to just do it all by memory. You can just like, it all lives in your brain and it feels like that's fine. And you might even be able to teach 1 or 1 person how to do those couple sets of books. But, if you have a client roster of 2, just plan on having 1 of 10 and treat it like that, you know, plan on having 1 of 20 and treat it like that. And so, even if it feels silly or overkill to document and have. You know, a client roster with different information on it, like takes forever to go back and do it when you have 5, 6, 7 clients and you're growing and you're training someone and you're like, I, I don't have any of this written down that that's a struggle. Yeah, Yeah. One thing I've been practicing a lot lately, and this goes for life too, is to take the steps that like you would take if you are already like at that point. So for instance, with this, it's like even if you maybe don't envision having a huge book of business, even if you just envision having 10 and you only have one or zero right now, take the actions that someone at 10 clients or 20 would be doing and like take that step. So maybe you don't have any clients yet, like still sign up for Asana, it's free or whatever workflow system and set up what you think the workflow is going to look like, like bare bones base level. So that you're like, you're inviting that client in to your world, basically like you're setting up your system so that when that client comes to you, you're ready. And it just kind of like signals the universe or whatever, like you're ready. So Yeah, even I think that one of the hardest things to, get in place once I had so many clients was my onboarding process. I just had been kind of a hodgepodge of like, okay, now we need to sign this and now I need this for you and I need this review. And, it took. One, like having a sauna set up and also working with that first virtual assistant. That was the 1st time anybody else had asked, like, what do I need to do to onboard this person? And I had again, had to stop in my tracks and be like, I don't, I don't really know what the order is here. I just been kind of winging it. And so now I have, like, a legit onboarding process. A lot of it is automated. I feel really good about it. But I mean, that didn't happen on the front end and I feel like I probably would have avoided a lot of headache and and kind of, I would say like sloppy engagements. If I had had something, just even written down just an order of operations there. Yeah. And the list of things that you're going to need from every client, even if you don't think that that client has it, or they're not going to be a one to give it to you. Or like I've, I've gotten that feedback from like other bookkeepers. When I share my list of like, these are the things we ask every client for. They're like, why do you ask for three years of tax returns? And I'm like, cause you never know, you might need it. Yeah. them in our file. I don't do taxes, but I want those in my file because inevitably when we're working with that client, there's going to be a piece of information on that tax return that we need to fill out some other piece of paperwork or to... who knows? Right? To figure out if their books are even tying out to their tax return. That's the number one reason. But, yeah, and don't just assume your clients aren't going to be willing to give you bank access or be willing to give you their prior tax returns. Like they're willing to work with a bookkeeper. They should be willing to like open all of that up to you. Cause you're going to need it at some point, but it's kind of funny, like just even having that list of things, like maybe not every client's going to have it, or you're not going to need it from every client, but just ask for all of it up front. Right, So is there a specific system or software that you use for onboarding? Besides Asana, you have your workflows in that, but do you, what do you use for your, like engagement letters and proposals and things like that? I'm using Dubsado at this point. Um, yeah, it took a while to build Yeah. that would Did you DIY it or did you hire it another piece of advice for newbies starting out. When you start out, you do do a lot of it yourself. And, you know, there will be a point where it makes sense to invest in things, or invest in somebody else helping you do things. But when, when you're doing it alone, just, I guess, as a piece of encouragement, like, don't get discouraged when you don't know how to do something and, like, just be aware that like a lot of learning happens when your tech stack grows. Yeah. Because I mean, I often joke that like, I don't have room to learn anymore. I think that's a very common phrase that comes out of women, mothers especially. I'm like, I have weight. The brain fog is too heavy for that. I've just, I've, I, in two years, my tech stack went from like Gmail and QuickBooks online to a list of like nine softwares I have to onboard all of my contractors into. And then sometimes I step back and I'm like, is this too much? No, I need all of it. I need every single bit of it and it's going to take them a while to learn and it just like, it took me a while to learn, but like that's part of the process and, like, you're not behind if you're still, like, baby stepping through some new software that seems like somebody else just threw down 6, 000 dollars to have somebody else set it up for him. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that my encouragement is just like, that doesn't mean you're not doing it. Right? Yeah. My other thing with like Dubsado too, is like, you can look at other people's systems and it's like, so perfectly beautifully set up. But even if you just take the bare minimum of like the way that Dubsado is supposed to function as at least this is how I started out with it is I was like the biggest pain point for me was getting the proposal, the engagement letter, and my first invoice page. So that is the only thing I focused on. I was like, those are just the three forms that I need to set up and make sure that before I start working on a client, I get my paperwork signed and I get paid first. So it's like, and then you build out from there, you don't have to. Feel so overwhelmed about having like your intake form in there and your some email automations and all that kind of stuff. Like you can do the real basics in the system and then build it out as you go. Right. So, all right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your experience. where is the best place for people to connect with you if they want to connect with you? Yeah, I spend most of my time on Instagram at summer bookkeeping. I'm also everything goes over to Facebook, but I'm mostly on Instagram and I'm also on LinkedIn here and there. Do you find LinkedIn intimidating because I certainly do. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to be there more and honestly, too like not professional enough for LinkedIn some days. you know, I think it just depends on like, Who you follow on LinkedIn. I've definitely curated my feed now that feels a lot less professional and more like social media platform. there's hope. And for the listener a while back, I did a, an interview with one of my clients and we, we went deep into LinkedIn stuff. So we'll link that in the show notes as well. but basically like, I don't stress about posting on LinkedIn. Like if I'm inspired to post, I do, but for the most part, I just go on there and engage with other people. Yeah. Yeah. that's what I can handle right now. So that's what I do. All right. Well, thank you again so much. Please, if you're listening, take a screenshot of this episode and tag me and Kelly, and we will see you or talk to you on the next episode. Thanks so much. Good to talk to you. Thank you.

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