09 ⎸ Transitioning from Corporate to Entrepreneurship

In this Solo episode I chat about the 6 differences between working in corporate and running your own accounting business, plus some tips to ease the transition and set you up for success.

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09 - Transitioning from Corporate to Entrepreneurship

 [00:00:00]today, we're talking about how to transition from corporate, into running your own bookkeeping business. This one is near and dear to my heart because as a lot of you probably know, I.

Came from corporate. And my goal is to reach as many people in corporate that have the dream to start their own business  and help them start. Okay. I used to sit in my cubicle. I used to literally sit in my cubicle and in my [00:01:00] office when I finally got an office and just think to myself, like looking out the window, is this really it, like, I worked so hard through business school and got my CPA license just to basically be another like cog in the wheel or whatever they say.

, if that's you, if you. If you have those thoughts. I know right now, most people are probably still working at home, but maybe you're having to go back to your office at this point. And you're like, geez, I did not miss this. And you've, you've started to think about like maybe going out on my own. Maybe it would, maybe this is time.

I, I had those thoughts all the time, and I honestly wish that I had taken the leap a lot sooner than I did, but it's all, you know, it's all for a reason. So I gained a lot of good experience as I suffered through my court days. I loved my coworkers. I really did. I just didn't. The corporate grind, it [00:02:00] can kind of get to you lots of burnout.

 But after I left corporate to have more kids, my eyes really opened and my priorities had a massive shift. There's a bigger, I realized there was a bigger purpose out there for me. And I could have a greater impact by helping even just a handful of entrepreneurs, improve their profits, cut down the time they spend on their business and start realizing the dream that they had when they first started their business.

So you might be wondering how to make this happen. If you work in corporate or used to, and now you're home with your kids. That was me.  Or maybe you're still working on your accounting degree and starting to realize that the big four life isn't what you want.  Spoiler alert. You don't have to even go into the big four accounting firms.

Like there's a lots of other options with an accounting degree, but anyway, I did that. Today, I'm going to talk about the difference between corporate accounting and running a bookkeeping business. So [00:03:00] before I jump in, though, the intent here isn't to scare you off, but just to make sure you actually understand what it entails so that you can see that you're capable of doing this and stop delaying your dreams.

So with each difference, I'm also going to throw in some tips for making it easier to manage the difference. Okay. Number one, you'll get a lot of exposure to many different business structures and industries. It's sort of obvious, but unless you niche in an industry right away, that you've already worked in, you're likely to get exposure to lots of different industries than what you've previously worked in.

Don't let this scare you off. The gist of any business is pretty similar on the flip side. If you come from an accounting firm, you may have already been exposed to a few different businesses, but may not have been client facing or have been involved in as many aspects of the business as you will now.

Number two, you'll give advice that you may not get to implement [00:04:00] corporate. If you're lucky you get to take it upon yourself to implement processes that you see needing improvement when you're consulting other businesses, that might not always happen, especially if they can't afford to pay you to do it.

Or they just don't see the importance. So getting a couple, getting good at a couple of things will serve you quite well. And those are learning how to influence and persuade, not manipulate, just, you know, persuade in a good way and learning how to communicate the value of the process that you'd like to implement.

A great resource for tapping into these two things is a book called the trusted advisor. I highly recommend getting a copy and okay. Number three, I think we're a number three. Yeah. Number three. You'll have to learn how to manage your time a lot better than in corporate, since you'll be working with many different clients instead of just one company, it can cause a lot of context switching, which.

Which is what really happens when we multitask. [00:05:00] And this is honestly an efficiency killer. And now that you're in business for yourself, you want to be able to work as little as possible so that you can be as profitable as possible. And like, part of the reason you're working for yourself probably is more time.

Freedom. So  What has helped me tremendously, which I had to figure out the hard way was to designate specific days to work on specific clients, which right now, in this season of my life. Yeah. And of my business. I'm not doing much client work.  But my team does so they are responsible for designating specific days to work on specific clients, according to their schedule and to meet the deadlines.

And then I come in at month end, do a review and meet with clients.  And then designating specific days. I take appointments. I still do this. There's only two days a week that I have my acuity calendar open for client meetings.  This is super, super easy to do with tools like acuity or  [00:06:00] Dubsado

you can set your work, your schedule of when you have appointment availabilities. I know in acuity you can create different appointment types. So for instance, I have several different meeting types. I have a quarterly meeting. I have a monthly meet. And then I have  discovery calls and some other, yeah.

So discovery calls. I only allowed to be booked two days a week and I don't allow more than two appointments per day. So that prevents me from, I mean, I would never, at this point in my business, I would probably not ever have. More than one discovery call in a day.  Because I just don't have that many leads coming in, but what it does is it prevents me from getting, having, you know, a couple of client calls in one day and a discovery call.

So I'm an introvert. I get super exhausted if I'm in meetings all day.  So I have put those guard rails up around my energy to protect it. Okay. And then the other thing to do [00:07:00] to help with. The context, switching and productivity is batching similar tasks, some bookkeepers like to batch client tasks, like doing all the bankrupts for  for clients in one day.

 Or not client tasks, but batching like the actual type of task. But I actually prefer batching for just internal tasks, like content creation or email responses. When I do client work, I prefer to start at the beginning. And go through all of the stuff that I can get done.  So that if I hit a roadblock, like we're missing a piece of information from a client, I, I can stop right where I'm at, because I can't go any further and then ask for the information.

And then I move on to the next client.  For me that has worked better. I would be afraid that if I batched all the bank recs  or like batched categorizing all the transactions for, you know, all the clients in [00:08:00] like a two hour period, like what if I didn't get to the point in the work where like I was missing information, so I didn't know to ask for it yet.

And then it would just set things behind further. So that's my whole reasoning behind that.  But I know that other bookkeepers.  That probably have larger client loads  batch similar tasks. Okay.  The other thing is time blocking. I don't really time block at the stage of my life because I have little ones at home.

 Unless I am in. Office space outside of my house. So  when I'm working at home, I pretty much squeeze the work in when I can and get interrupted a lot.  But if you can manage it time-blocking is pretty amazing.  One thing that I started implementing. You can go back to the podcast that I talked about  planning out your week.

But I think, I, I think in that podcast, I talked about Pomodoro sessions, which I actually learned from going through the screw, the nine to fives programs. So they do [00:09:00] co-working sessions and they'll set a Pomodoro timer. And this is actually how I run our co-working sessions inside the bookkeeping business accelerator.

I set a timer for 25. We all have decided on a certain task that we are going to aim to complete in that 25 minutes. And then when the twenty-five minutes is up, we  we unmute, we get up, we go, we chit chat. We go to the bathroom when you get drinks of water or whatever for five minutes. And then we get back on it for another twenty-five minutes sprint.

 So. To me is it's a little different than time-blocking.  It, it works better for me because I have tasks and I prioritize my tasks or my projects. And then when I have twenty-five minutes, I sit down and I try to be okay.  We're at number 1, 2, 3, 4. So this one, this one's really  This one's a struggle for a lot of people, I think.

So you're gonna have to learn to let go of perfection.  [00:10:00] Many of us accountants are complete perfectionist, but when it comes to working with clients, sometimes we have to let go of things being perfect. For example, you're highly likely to get a client that needs a cleanup done, but only once you clean up current year and not touch prior years, or yeah, you'll have a client that doesn't save all the receipts, but you know, it's a business.

So you book the expense anyway and move on.  You might have like a heart to heart with them and talk about like the importance of keeping receipts, but ultimately it's up to them. So you, you know, you can ask them, do you want me to categorize the expense? And if you ever get audited and you can't provide proof, you might, it might get denied or like, do you want to call it?

Owner's draws. There's things like that. You just have to. Learn how to talk about it with the client and also just let go of perfection because most of the time they don't really care either.  And perhaps the biggest piece of advice I have for you regarding letting go of perfection is to just really just get started.

Don't worry about having your business card or your [00:11:00] website. Perfect. Imperfect action is the name of the game done is better than perfect.  Let me see if I can think of any other  Sayings and cliches, but seriously done is better than perfect. Has been like a motto I've been living by for the past five years and it's served me well.

I don't think I would have created my podcast ever if I had been holding onto perfectionism.  I don't think I would've ever created my blog. I wouldn't have written my first email to my email list. I would, there's so many things that I've done in the past few years that I would never have done if I hadn't adopted.

That mantra of done is better than perfect. Okay. You'll number five. I don't even know number we're on anyway. You'll have to get comfortable with putting yourself out there. Okay. This is totally not something that you have to really do in corporate, other than when you're going to a job interview. And when you're in the like interview circuit, like you just kind of [00:12:00] get used to it and  then you don't ever have to do it again until you look for another job, which is usually not very often for most people.

 Especially if you're a rock star. So. You're going to have to get comfortable with putting yourself out there. And this might be the biggest block that some of us have about starting a business, because like I've mentioned before by nature, I think most accountants are introverts and prefer to work behind the scenes, but that isn't going to work.

If you want to get clients. The good news is, and it's a lot easier to get clients as an introvert, virtually and online, then people used to have to do it like going into like in-person networking. But a few things will still really help you be more successful in putting yourself out there and getting clients like getting comfortable on camera.

 There's just no way around it. Everyone has been forced to meet via zoom in the past few.  Several, I don't know how many years now. It's not been more than a year. Has it? Yeah, it's been more than a year. So almost [00:13:00] two years now people have been having to meet by, by zoom. So hopefully this one won't be so scary to you now, but there's always room for improvement.

 One of my coaches. Heather Sager taught me to actually just record myself with my webcam, talking to myself, just to get more comfortable, seeing myself on the screen. And it really does help.  Most of us aren't used to seeing our reflection talk back to us. So another hot tip is to start an Instagram and start showing up in your stories on video.

Even if you don't have any followers, trust me, this is how I started.  Some of my earlier stories are super duper cringey, and I had them saved in my highlights.  Recently I just went through and like deleted a bunch of them. Cause I was like, holy crap. I've come so far from when I first was like super awkward holding the camera, like way too close to my face on stories.

Yeah. Everyone will get everyone. I'll start there. It's fine. I won't judge you, but it's a good place to sit.  Okay. Also getting comfortable talking about money, which is sort of [00:14:00] ironic, but some, some accountants seem to have the hardest time talking about money. Actually, probably most of us do, honestly, especially when it comes to our own prices and just like getting comfortable on camera when you know it, it helps to practice.

So don't let the first time you talk about your prices beyond your first discovery call, please. Get comfortable saying your prices out loud with confidence, whether it's to yourself in front of a camera, recording yourself. So like a two for one, you get to practice talking on camera and talking about your prices.

I think it's just like a win-win there. Okay. Also you have to, this is the third little sub tip of this. Getting comfortable with putting yourself out there is getting comfortable selling. Ooh, this is this one is the one that held me back from starting my business for so long. And once I finally started doing it, I [00:15:00] realized it wasn't much different from interviewing in corporate.

And I actually love this part of running my business. Now it's crazy. So stick around with me. I'll get you there too. Also going is, is asking questions, sharing knowledge, and making offers. That's it simple. I know in our line of business, we call our sales calls, discovery calls, and on those discovery calls, you are just making discoveries about the client by asking questions, sharing a little knowledge, and then making an offer at the end to work together.

I'm going to, I'm going to say this again, so you don't have to rewind it. All selling is, is asking questions, sharing knowledge, and making offers. Okay. Okay. Number six, I think we're number six. I don't know. You'll have to make the shift from technician to entrepreneur. Along the same lines of getting comfortable, putting yourself out there.

You will now be [00:16:00] required to think like an entrepreneur, not just the technician though, for a while, you'll still be both.  But the goal should be to elevate that owner elevate to that owner visionary role and build your team to do the technician work. So this means. One making time to grow your business and expand your knowledge.

So dedicate time each day or week to focus on things that aren't client work. But please don't get stuck here before you even start your business. I'm talking like after you have a few clients. Okay. And number two, thinking in terms of scaling. If you listened a couple episodes back when I talked to Alyssa, the workflow queen, and even the, the episode that I talked about  hiring and stuff with Katie Farrow, everything you do from day one, you should think about how to scale that service.

How can you systematize or standardize this? A systematized, even a word. I don't even know. What would it look like to have someone else [00:17:00] do this? And how could it set up? How could you set it up? That it's easy to hand it off.  So like I said, I think in terms of scaling, right from the beginning, number three, think about outsourcing tasks that you don't love or are low value tasks, again, not right away.

But the sooner that you start thinking about this, the faster your business will grow. I started outsourcing some of the data entry bookkeeping when I hit only five. And I talked about this before in that episode with Alyssa, because I wanted to keep growing, but I didn't want to work more than 10 to 15 hours a week, which sounds really bougie, but I was mainly trying to be a stay-at-home mom  and working kind of in the crevices of the day.

So 10 to 15 hours is, you know, really all I had. There's no magic number of clients or revenue number for this. So just do it when it's time for. But the sooner that you start setting yourself up for that, the better. Okay.  Where else? I think that was [00:18:00] it. That's pretty much it, the five things I'm going to run through them again, real quick, just as a recap and a reminder, but these are some of the differences from corporate accounting  and assisting entrepreneurs through their journey.

Really isn't for everyone. So if you do have an entrepreneurial heart, I say, go for it.  If you've ever wondered, if you could start your own business, I'm willing to bet that you can, okay. Let's run through those five points of differences, five differences. Okay. Number one, you'll get exposure to many different business structures and industries.

Number two, you'll give advice that you may not get to. Number three, you'll have to learn how to manage your time. Much better. Number four, you'll learn to let go of perfection. Number five, you'll have to get comfortable with putting yourself out.  And number six, I guess there was [00:19:00] six points. Yeah. Six you'll have to make the shift from technician to entrepreneur.

And like I said, entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, but if you've had the inkling or the desire for more than a month, It's it's probably for you.  So let's do this. If you  want to join my workshops of bookkeeping, biz workshops coming up here at the end of August.  We start pre-party  August 22nd, I believe.

Is that a Sunday?  Yeah, August 22nd is the pre party. So if you're listening to this, when it goes live, You, we are in open registration for the bookkeeping workshops and in those workshops, I'm going to help you figure out what exactly it takes to run a bookkeeping business. If you're still kind of on the fence, the tech that you need and  how to set your business up as a business and not a job.

And then in the fourth day is the [00:20:00] bonus masterclass, which is super exciting. This kind of circles back to putting yourself out there. Learning how to sell. We're going to talk about selling without the sleaze. So just that workshop alone is worth just totally worth it. And the workshops are only 37 bucks.

So you really don't have much to lose. I would love to see you there. So make sure you hit the link in the show notes or head to BK workshops.online to join. And  that is it for today. My friends, I will talk to you next week. Bye.