The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

111 ⎸ [NICHE] Property Management with Haley Bonczyk

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 111

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In this NICHE series episode, I chat with Haley Bonczyk, who specializes in the Property Management industry. She’s the owner of Thrive Bookkeeping and a mother of three, and has overcome many challenges on her journey to find the perfect balance between being a mom and running a successful bookkeeping business.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • Haley’s business model
  • Balancing motherhood with a bookkeeping business
  • Deciding when clients are worth the time and the off-boarding process

Resources mentioned in this episode:

About our Guest:

Haley started her business back in 2017 with the intention of creating a sustainable job that she could continue to do once she had children. Her oldest daughter was born in 2019 and she maintained a business that had no niche, few systems, and a couple of contractors for about a year before she became fed up with the cycle of stress it was causing her. Fast-forward to today, she has focused in on her niche, has two contractors, and is working hard on the business to create repeatable systems and processes.

Connect with Haley:

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honestly, I think the biggest thing that I've found is having And this sounds kind of like silly and easy, but having consistent childcare. So back when I had my first daughter, it was kind of sporadic. I didn't know if I even like wanted to have much childcare or not. And the bookkeeping became more of like a stress and a burden then. An enjoyable thing, which I had had enjoyed doing bookkeeping previously. And so that's kind of why I was almost like, do I even wanna do this? Should I just like hang on to the few clients that I have until the kids are off in school and then I'll like go back to it, you know? And it ended up being like, I had many, many times where I was like, should I just like offboard all my clients right now? I hate this . And then once I found a, you know, a sitter I trusted who could watch the kids consistently at least two times a week, you know, for several hours, immediately, like, it brought the joy back of, like, stretching my mind, you know, doing some, you know, problem solving, puzzling, things like that, and the enjoyment of bookkeeping. 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. All right. Welcome back to the ambitious bookkeeper podcast. And I should have asked you how to pronounce your last name before we went on air. So I'm just going to let you do that, but I have another special guest for part of our niche niche niche series slash niche series. I have Haley on today and, Haley, would you like to introduce yourself and your business and who you help? Hi, I'm Haley Bonczek. That's a Polish based last name. So I think probably originally it was pronounced Bonchick. But what are you going to do? Um, but yes, Haley Bonczek. I own Thrive Bookkeeping. I started my business back in 2017 and it was before we had kids. I was kind of trying to think of something that would allow me to do different things. flexibility to stay home with my kids if possible. So I started my business and I actually worked as a bookkeeper, on the payroll for a large real estate company for a while while getting my business started. Went to a bunch of chamber of commerce, BNI meetings, things like that. And once I was able to replace that, payroll income, I quit that job and was able to go do my own bookkeeping. Once we had kids, I actually kind of closed my book. So I'd had a couple of contractors and then I closed the books once we had kids. I think just part of, you know, having kids for the first time, you got to figure it out a little bit. So, in a way put the business on hold. And then we ended up moving, about two years ago. So kind of just recently I've been able to get consistent childcare. Two of my kids are now, starting to go to school and have been able to kind of rebuild my team, build out my systems a little bit better than they were and, continue to grow my business from here. Yeah, I did something similar. I had started my business, when I had a one year old and then I was pregnant with another one. And then once he was born, I was like, this a lot harder with two. Mm hmm. Two little ones. And so I did kind of took like a hiatus, I guess. I had, I think I had like one client that I kept on, but yeah, it's, it's a challenge running, like growing a business And having to, also manage little ones. So I totally relate to that and hopefully our listeners might, feel a little validated too if they're struggling to balance both. but yeah, okay. So how did you get into your specific niche? So yes, my niche is real estate bookkeeping. My husband and I have actually owned rental properties pretty much since we got married, which is about 10 years ago now. so we had a lot of experience with that. My husband had always wanted to Kind of have that be like his sort of retirement plan. And actually even since then, he's gotten into different types of real estate and things like that. But, so that had always been kind of, we'd been touching that in one way or the other. And then when I started my business, I didn't have a specific niche. I, I feel like most people don't niche immediately. You're kind of just like, I'll take whatever I can get. But in a way organically, it just kind of became that way, probably partly because of the network of friends that we had in the first place. As well as just, the way it kind of naturally fell. So actually currently, again, since I mentioned, we're still pretty small and kind of in that growth phase now, I'd say maybe a little over half of our clients are in real estate while several of my older kind of long term clients that I've had since the beginning are not in the real estate industry. Yeah, honestly, I like to talk about that and highlight that because even though you have chosen a niche and probably more of the clients you are now bringing on, like the newer clients are going to be in that niche, it's okay to have. A client base of others until it gets to the point that you're like, okay, I'm ready to just be a hundred percent in this. Right. So It can be a slow process. Have you gone through any iterations where you've intentionally let go of clients that weren't in the niche? So back when I did decide to take a little bit of a step back when we had our first daughter, I kept the business going. Like pretty heavily for about a year. And then I was like, I need to just take a break from this. And so when I offloaded my contractor, I also got rid of a few headache clients that yes, they also were not in my niche. Maybe one or two actually might've been honestly, at that point, it was kind of just, I was trying to decide if I even wanted to do bookkeeping. Which again, we could talk more about that, like being a mom and figuring out the balance of things, but yeah, so I did offload a couple of clients that were not in the niche. And I'm kind of currently in that place too now where as we're growing more, I have a couple of clients that they pay well, but they're kind of the pain in the booty clients and, but, and they're not in the niche, so it's like, at what point do I decide? You know, this 600 plus dollar a month client isn't in the niche. They're kind of annoying. They still bring in the money though. So it's like that tug of war between off boarding them for the sake of like my contractors and the company or keeping them on for, for the money that they provide, you know, Yeah, I think a lot of our listeners could probably relate to that. Like at what point do you decide, like, it's not worth the money anymore. Also because the time and energy that you're spending on serving that client to the degree that they need, right. Because typically they're like more needy client. Sometimes it helps to like, look at the actual data. So like, really time tracking your hours to see how much time you're really spending on this client, not how much time you think you are like getting real with those numbers. Sometimes that helps you make the decision because then you look at it and you're like, Oh, I'm actually not. Profitable on this client, or I'm getting close to not being profitable. And, in order to continue this, I would need to raise their price anyway. And then you get to asking yourself the question, like what amount of money is worth this client? And then the time that it would free up for you to take on a newer client. So if you already have clients that are coming to you and you have a wait list, like it might feel a little safer to let that client go, but if you don't. The way it works anyway is like, and it's hard to trust this process, but what I've experienced is even without clients lined up that are in your niche, letting go of that pain in the butt client. Sometimes just frees you up energetically that like within a couple days or maybe even the same day that you let that client go, you're going to get inquiries. That's what I've experienced, but I understand that's a lot like to trust that process. Yeah, absolutely. And actually speaking of that too, I do have a couple old time clients that are like, well below what I want to charge as well. And then that's a whole other type of struggle is like, I do actually like speaking to those clients, but they're so far below what I want to and need to charge now that it's that I need to do like an analysis like that. And we track their hours really well and things like that. So we should be able to kind of do that. that check maybe, you know, end of Q3 or Q4 and kind of make that decision. yeah. Also timing it with like project work too. So it's like, okay, so maybe, maybe I don't have a recurring client. Yet lined up to fill this spot, but I do have some project work that I could use to fill that spot. And then by the time that wraps up. You know, hopefully another client comes in also kind of forces you to like actively put yourself out there and seek new clients. Right? Because you're like, I know I have to fill this spot. So you said we, what is your team structure look like? Is it you and your husband? Is it you and a team? What does that look like? Yeah, I have two bookkeepers that work for me. They're both currently contractors, although in the future I'd love to kind of explore. Going towards employees instead, just because I love the idea of having a, more involved company culture as well as like more team meetings. And honestly, they're, fantastic already with, going to team meetings when I ask for them and stuff like that. But, yeah, so I have two bookkeepers currently, they are. They do the bookkeeping. I think, both of them have the potential to become like account managers, in the future as our team grows, which is super great to be able to see the, potential that there is in them. But yeah, so, and they also both do a little subcontracting for other people as well, but, are ready to continue to grow with the team. So again, speaking about wanting to continue to add to the business in order to provide opportunities for them as well, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So you have a couple of part time bookkeepers and what is your time look like in the business? Are you working on clients or are you, mainly working on business building activities and mentoring the team? I think right now it's about 50 50. I'd honestly would love to get less and less. I'm not one of those people that has too much of a problem with like releasing the task. In fact, I love reassigning a task in Asana to someone else. I'll do that as much as I can. So yeah, it's about 50 50. I, I've had pretty good process documentation from the start of my business. And then since adding the contractors there, you know, you kind of see the holes that are in the processes that you may have. So I do spend some time kind of refining those processes. And just, yeah, building out like their, their Asana projects for each. We use Asana for project management, for each client and things like that. Right now we're kind of in the, we're really working on refining our end of month process. I just feel like it's been a little bit rocky. So working on doing that. But yeah, so it's about 50, 50 definitely could be less and less of me working. In the clients. And I think, I mean, any new client we've added since having my bookkeepers on has gone to them. But a lot of them are like the older clients that like, you know, do weird stuff with their logins. So it's only me that can handle it or, you know, stuff like that. That again, kind of applies to, should they still be a client or not, you know? Yeah. It's interesting like the things that you will allow earlier on in your business when it's just you, because it doesn't really matter. You're like, Oh, the client trusts me. That's fine. Like, we'll do this. But as you do start to build out your team, you realize systems and processes that really are necessary to stick to and have in place are like, just different, right? Like one of the things now that I require when someone. Onboards with us that I didn't require before is we need our own bank login because we're having the teamwork on it. And I don't want to be the one responsible for pulling bank statements because right? So things like that, that, if you're listening and you're new, like, just start off that way. Don't make exceptions. 100%. We've been like any new client has to use our support email to create the login and use like our Google voice number as like the verification code one. But we have like yesterday even I spent probably 45 minutes just like doing verification codes for various logins for one of my bookkeepers and I was like this is not something that I want to be wasting my time on at all. Yeah. Yeah. It's absolutely. So you've got a team, you have your niche. Now what is your pricing structure look like? Is it flat fee? Are you doing hourly? Yeah, so we do flat fee. again, over the years, like I still have a couple of clients that, you know, I used my own pricing calculator and then still knocked off more money than I should have. but yeah, so I, I have like a pretty detailed pricing calculator that I've worked to build out kind of for my niche even, you know, cause there are a lot of nuances to the pricing for someone who say does flips or rentals and things like that. But yes, we do flat rate. Currently, our base is 400. And if I, I just did the, calculation for like the average and my average client is at 400, which I mean is, is good that they meet that criteria, but I would prefer honestly that they'd be more because in general, we almost now and now that we're pricing 400 as the minimum. There's almost never anyone that's in the actual, you know, 400 range, especially with the nuances of the real estate industry. There are so many factors that play into, you know, the volume of the transactions that there are. So, so yes, that's something we're working on improving upon. Even though I've been in business for like six plus years, it's still sometimes really hard to like, give someone a price for something. yeah. so how has that, I mean, you kind of answered the part two of my question is how has your pricing kind of, changed or morphed as you've gotten more deeply into the niche and I think you kind of answered that is that you have a specific calculation that you do. You've got your base price set, which I always recommend, like having a baseline where you're never going to go below it. So, you know, at least every client you bring on is going to be at that base and, and, you know, how many clients you would need at that base price to achieve your revenue goal. Like, that's starting point. Right? But, yeah. So it sounds like your pricing has. Developed because of the niche that you have. So if they're doing flips, it's more and depending on the level of involvement, right, that you have, if they're a rental, and how many rentals they have and how many entities and all that. Yeah, exactly. yeah, How many clients are you currently supporting in total, like including non niche clients? Currently we have 15 monthly clients. I will say one of them is hourly. It was like a friend who we did hourly. It's not one that I enjoy doing bookkeeping for every month, partly because they're hourly. And I didn't factor like them in as part of my calculation. But yeah, so we have 15 currently, and are, you know, like I said, continuing to grow from there. We're kind of in that growth phase right now. Yeah. So when it comes to pricing, I have found that once you have kind of a niche and you also have a team that is mainly going to be doing the work. Like if you've done the work to figure out like what your minimum needs to be to reach your goals and to support the team that you have, it does become easier to stick with that pricing calculator that you've got. Right. Because you know, you're like, I cannot go below this. I'm paying a team to help, like all those factors really do help hold you accountable to the pricing you want to achieve. So another benefit, Yeah, I definitely agree with you in that, that for the last, yearish that we've had contractors. I've definitely been much, it's been much easier to stick to what the pricing says. And if like a client can take it or leave it. yeah, yeah. And you become more confident in what you're charging because you're so confident in what the work entails with a. Specific niche, right? If you're taking on clients in all sorts of different industries and you don't yet know what their nuances are and how complex things can get, that's usually when you end up in trouble with how you've priced because you didn't take certain things into account. So there's just a level of confidence that you're able to portray when you price things as well and have the conversation with the client. And at the same time, it's actually setting you apart as, As kind of authority or an expert in that industry, because you've asked certain questions about their business that someone wouldn't know if they didn't understand the industry. Yeah, absolutely. I agree a hundred percent. And yeah, in terms of pricing, I do feel so much more confident knowing, cause I do know the ins and outs of real estate bookkeeping. I've been doing it long enough and like I can confidently say to a potential client, you don't want someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Doing this for your books, you know, you have a specific type of business. And so you need someone who can handle that. yeah, absolutely. So, especially in the real estate industry. I'm like, that's one of those industries that when I, when I mentor new bookkeepers entering the space or, maybe even like experienced accountants, but They don't have experience in certain industries. One of the industries that I say, like, don't touch it unless you understand the industry and have experience in it is real estate, And it requires you to really, you need to know your balance sheet well, which is for any bookkeeper should, but you know, you cannot get away with not understanding your balance sheet with real estate bookkeeping at all. Right. Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we kind of touched on early on in the episode and kind of, I feel like it ended up as kind of a teaser that I feel like we need to circle back on is balancing the motherhood side of, running your business and all that. So what have you found has been helpful in creating that balance or integration or harmony between motherhood and building your business? That's a great question. Yeah, honestly, I think the biggest thing that I've found is having And this sounds kind of like silly and easy, but having consistent childcare. So back when I had my first daughter, it was kind of sporadic. I didn't know if I even like wanted to have much childcare or not. And the bookkeeping became more of like a stress and a burden then. An enjoyable thing, which I had had enjoyed doing bookkeeping previously. And so that's kind of why I was almost like, do I even wanna do this? Should I just like hang on to the few clients that I have until the kids are off in school and then I'll like go back to it, you know? And it ended up being like, I had many, many times where I was like, should I just like offboard all my clients right now? I hate this . And then once I found a, you know, a sitter I trusted who could watch the kids consistently at least two times a week, you know, for several hours, immediately, like, it brought the joy back of, like, stretching my mind, you know, doing some, you know, problem solving, puzzling, things like that, and the enjoyment of bookkeeping. And I'm so glad that I stuck it out as long as I did to just kind of figure out what worked for me. So that I could like rediscover the joy of bookkeeping and even like networking and things like that, which I thought was maybe just like I was like, I'm just meant to be a stay at home mom, I guess, which looking back is silly because I love working and I love being a mom and I think, you know, anyone can find the right balance for them. And so now being at the point where we're growing my business, I have my contractors knowing that. There is still a balance I want to hold, you know, I'm not going to go to 40 hour working 40 hours a week because then, then again, I think I would lose the joy of bookkeeping because I'd be missing out on another joy in life. So, being able to continually find that balance as the business grows as I have more contractors more work all those kinds of things. And yeah, I think, you know, as a mom it sometimes takes time to find that I think it probably took. Three or four years to really like settle in on what that balance looked like. But you can get there, you know, Oh, I love that. It's such a good piece of advice is the consistent childcare and then just like allowing yourself to test out different things and, and yeah, like not overdoing it on one side and missing out on the joy on the other and allowing yourself to, to enjoy both sides of it. Like, it's okay to enjoy being a stay at home mom and also enjoy working and. What you're able to create with a bookkeeping business is a full time income without working full time. It is possible. so I just love that you're modeling that as well. The more of us women modeling that the better, because it gives permission to the next one to say, Oh, okay. Like, yeah, it may not happen overnight. You may not get to that full time salary overnight. You probably won't. In fact, and it's going to require a lot of intention around how you're spending your time. And being very clear on, what you're willing to do versus not and, and things like that. So how many hours do you typically work per week? Or maybe, cause I know with bookkeeping, it's like front loaded, right? It's like a lot more work at the beginning of the month, but then you have like a couple weeks, what is your flow look like? are you working a consistent number of hours a week or is it more flexible than that? And, and how much are you working? Cause I like to share those things with people. yeah. So I have, well, so I have a sitter come for about eight hours a week, give or take. She can be flexible and the kids will be going back to school pretty soon. So that'll change as well. So I have those eight hours, which never feels like enough. Like I really get focused in on that. I would say honestly, right now, if I looked at my, reports, the average would be 15 to 20 a week. Which is, I guess. More than I'd want to do. But a lot of that right now is kind of some fun stuff that I do enjoy doing. So, not all of that is like the busy work of like verifying accounts for my bookkeepers are answering their questions. A lot of it is like still working on building out those systems for them, doing some networking and meeting with potential clients, things like that, that I enjoy doing. And a lot of the stuff that I don't necessarily have to do, I could have like one of my bookkeepers do it or hire an administrative assistant, but I, I like doing that within the business. So I almost wouldn't count, you know, maybe three to five hours of that every week. But yeah, and I'd love to get it down to 10 to 15 as the average, but right now, like, like I said, it's in like a decent sweet spot so I do need to continue to build the systems to maintain that sweet spot, especially as we add clients every now and again. And, potentially add bookkeepers in the future and stuff like that to just maintain, like, I wouldn't want to go over what I currently I'm at for sure. Yeah. I, that's so beautiful. And I know like I've been doing the like 20 hours or less a week for a while. I mean, there's seasons where it's a little bit more, but, I love sharing that that's possible. So thank you. And my other question is, if you only have childcare for eight hours a week, what are the other pockets of time that you're working? Well, so thankfully my two older girls, are getting to the age now where they can play by themselves. So a lot of times they'll just like go and, you know, hang out in the backyard for an hour. And so I'll, you know, either work on like building out some SOPs or listen to a podcast or things like that, that I consider like. Kind of fun work. occasionally when they go to sleep at night, I am reluctant, but like, I'm careful about adding those times in because that was part of what. made me like dislike the bookkeeping was that I was nap time and when they went to bed I was just like constantly trying to catch up on stuff and it felt like I never had any moment for myself. which again is the beauty of that a decent amount of the stuff that I do extra is things that I actually want to do. But yeah, so it's just kind of in little pockets here and there. My girls to now know like if mom sits down at the desk, I just have, you know, a little bit of work to do and they're fine with it. And again, I think it's good for them to see me being able to be present with them, you know, but then also work. And accomplish, you know, other things as well for myself. so yeah, that is still potentially a balance, but thankfully with the sitter, I can get like the majority of the must do work done when she's there. And, you know, there's the occasional thing here and there that I have to fit in outside of that. but a lot of it is just, you know, if I have extra time, I can enjoy doing something that I like. Yeah. So do you, the eight hours that you have the sitter, do you, dedicate that time to like discovery calls, meeting with clients and like actual client work? I do, sometimes I would, I would like to get it down to like a specific single day that I do client calls because a lot of times it'll like my entire schedule will get filled up between like if I had like a networking event and then a meeting with someone from that networking group and then a client meeting and, and so by the time that I have had nothing, no time to actually do it. What I like real work, so to speak. deep work. yeah, exactly. but it's kind of a mix right now. Like, I mean, this time of the month, I do have like a decent amount of client meetings scheduled, like for next week, for example, um, is pretty full up, but then. Like lately, especially with the bookkeepers, the last week of the month is almost completely free, which is great for me to drill down on any questions that they had creating any new SOPs or again, doing like some of that enjoyable fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's always nice to hear. I personally sometimes struggle with like the motivation of wanting to do the client work when I do have the child care and I can get like easily distracted. So I want other people to know that, like, I think that's normal. And, yeah, sometimes It happens. And then you're catching up later after they go to bed. I will say when I have my time at the computer, honestly, like, like I'm part of a coaching group and they have a specific day and time they meet every week and I miss it like half the time. Because I'm just so focused on whatever work that I am doing. So I don't usually have a problem with like drilling down and focusing in on whatever is on, like, if it's on the to do list, I love, you know, checking off those things and I can thankfully be pretty focused and maybe motherhood has kind of helped with that Yeah. And having had that period where I just had to like focus when I had the moments of time. So, yeah. Yeah, that definitely adds to it. And it is helpful if you are doing stuff that you do truly enjoy. So Mm hmm. Mm hmm. All right. So I think we've covered like a lot of the questions that I had. I'm looking at my list to make sure we didn't, miss anything, but yeah. So what was your, before you started your bookkeeping business before you Had kids. What was your background? Well, kind of funny. I mean, I went to school. I have an associate's degree in business. you know, went to school not really knowing for sure what I wanted to do. And I, you know, started engineering and kind of switched all over the place. And ended with an associate's degree again, kind of just being like, I'm just going to table this until I figure out what I want to do. And honestly, when I was in high school, I. Just love doing like, like calculus such a nerd, but like I would have just sat and done like math problems all day and that would have been like my favorite thing to do. And so that's what I started going to engineering thinking like oh math and you don't get to just do math problems all day in Yeah. Um, so much. so I spent a couple I worked on a vegetable farm for several years. And then got a job as a bookkeeper and I also, did bookkeeper business launch or I think it's just bl now. I can never remember what the acronym. Yeah. Back then it was like B3 or BBL or something. but I discovered that and, bookkeeping is that like puzzle that I love about it. You know, doing math problems. So, I've never gone back to school since, and honestly, I don't see any reason to any need to. But yeah, so that's kind of my background there was, you know, a little bit back and forth and then just kind of discovering bookkeeping and realizing that that's kind of fit the bill, the criteria of the things that Oh, I love that. I'm always very interested to hear like how people ended up in bookkeeping and, yeah, I'm a huge believer that. It can be learned not in college. My very first mentor in bookkeeping slash accounting did not have a degree and she taught me so much. So, yeah, I, I truly believe that it can be self taught and, and learned on the job very well. So, I like to highlight that too. So thank you for sharing. Um, Yeah. So you've now been in business for what, six years, you said? I yeah, six Okay. Yeah. We started around the same time then. So if, if you can think back so far, six years ago when you first started, what piece of advice would you have to somebody starting out right now? Mm hmm. Well, it kind of depends on where, where someone wants to go, right? So like, if I'm thinking of like myself, how I wanted to have this be something that worked for me to be able to both be a mom and be able to work. I would say getting prepared to grow and like we've talked about make room for the both of the things you love is really important so I know you've talked about like you hired your first contractor when you only had maybe five clients. Like I only have 15 right now and I hired two contractors. In the past I had a contractor when I had maybe eight to 10 clients I would think. And so hiring kind of not necessarily before you need it, but like understanding when you're going to need it would be key as well as, um, one thing I'm glad that I did over the years was I did build out like my SOPs and my processes for things, which then served me really well, with bringing on contractors where it was like almost a completely seamless process for them to just hop right in. So sometimes that can take a little extra time But if you're starting your business and have that extra time while you're trying to gain clients utilize it to Create the foundation to, to grow it in order to then still be able to have both feet in like the two in the worlds that you want to be in. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's such a good piece of advice. Now, my other question is for someone who is a few years in and they're trying to, I mean, your answer is probably going to be the same, honestly, is like, if they're trying to figure out which direction they want to go, what was something that helped you really get clear on that whole piece? Like, do I want to grow or do I want to stay where I'm at? That's a great question. Well, one thing for me, you know, I held on to the bookkeeping because I was like, I know I do like doing this and I know I'm good at doing it. And also like, I was like, I know my kids are going to go off to school someday. And looking at the people around me, like my mom, cleaned houses when we went off to school. And I was like, I don't think I necessarily want to go clean houses. You know, I, what can I do? And so bookkeeping was, was there, which is why I never fully. Let it go. So I don't know to answer your question. Just it's okay to Stick it out and it not be like The best part of your day for a while. And it's okay to, you know, like the world kind of talks about like living your dream or things like that. And I think that's a great thing to strive for, but like we were talking about earlier, like making all that income, like a full time income on a part time hours, is not going to happen overnight and neither is figuring out the balance, like that will not happen overnight, but like you can't give up on it either in the meantime, you know, Yeah. That's so true. That's, that's something that sometimes like, and I know this happens to our listeners too, is like, sometimes you question, you're like, should I just go back and get a full time job? But then it's like, I don't think I could ever work for someone ever again, having the flexibility. Yes. There's things that loom over my head because I'm a business owner, but the trade off is being able to pretty much work whenever I want. And you can't really do that with other industries. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. And that, that was like a huge thing that I held on to. And I think, especially with bookkeeping, like you said, like that, this is an industry where you can't, you, it is completely a hundred percent possible to find that balance, whatever that looks like, you know, you can make a lot of money for very few hours. If you. Find that sweet spot, you know, set up your processes, get the right team, figure out your hours, your child care, all those like there are, it seems like a lot of things you have to figure out maybe, but it is entirely possible to find that good balance within this industry. Yeah, I would agree. And just like giving yourself grace of like, yeah, it's not going to be rainbows and butterflies every day. There's going to be days that you're kind of dreading it or days that you procrastinate on things or days where it's like, do I really want to do this? But don't we all have that feeling about regular jobs too? Oh, yeah, exactly. Mm hmm. So it's just like choosing your hard, like Mm hmm. It, this is, it's a challenge, right? It's not always going to be easy, but there's the upsides are so much greater than being in a job that you hate every day. For sure. Yeah, I agree 100%. So, well, thank you so much for sharing your experience on the podcast. If someone wants to connect with you, where is the best place for them to do that? Sure. So we have our website thrivebookkeepingllc. com. that's a great place to, like, book a discovery call, for example. We also are on Instagram and Facebook. I believe the handle is thrivebookkeepingllc on Instagram. And that's, you know, DMing me is a decent way to connect as well. So I can give you the links for those Yeah, we'll definitely put those in the show notes. And, yeah, thank you so much. Once again, it was a pleasure and I hope that our listener found a ton of inspiration, especially if you're a mom, this'll be a great episode. So, thank you again. And we'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much.

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