10 ⎸ Pushing Past the Fear to Start Your Bookkeeping Business

In this solo episode, I talk about pushing aside the fear of starting your bookkeeping business, by countering some of the common fears I see come up (including my own). 

This episode is for you if you’re in the dreaming stage and you’re listening along each week here trying to learn as much as possible but you still haven’t really taken much action on starting your business.

Sign up for The Bookkeeping Biz Workshops August 22-26

Thanks for listening. For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:

Visit our website: ambitiousbookkeeper.com

Follow the Blog: ambitiousbookkeeper.com/blog

Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/ambitiousbookkeeper

Connect on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/SerenaShoup

Connect of Facebook: Facebook.com/serenashoupcpa

Transcript

10 - Pushing Fear Aside to Start Your Bookkeeping Business

[00:00:00] 

This episode is for you. If you're in the dreaming stage and you're listening along each week here, trying to learn as much as possible, but you still haven't really taken much action and starting your business. I want to talk about some things that might be holding you back and helping to push that fear aside to finally start your bookkeeping business.

So one of the things. That I feel comes up a lot is the question. [00:01:00] Isn't the market saturated, like the bookkeeping market are there too many bookkeepers. Uh, short answer is no, but if it were market saturation is just going to mean that you have to be intentional about the way that you position yourself.

The market, the business owners are more savvy. They want bookkeepers who actually help them understand the numbers, not just data entry. Okay. The next question I see a lot is can you make enough money to quit your job? I've actually created a quit my job calculator for my BBA students. And, um, every situation is a little different, but I can tell you that to replace a $50,000 salary with benefits is more than feasible.

If you price correctly. No, this kind of goes back to the last question about the market being savvy and not wanting just data [00:02:00] entry, bookkeepers while you've got to price accordingly. So there are businesses who are willing and able to pay for a bookkeeper who knows what they're doing, and that can actually help them move their business forward, which brings us to am I to inexperience?

Well, I know what to do with the clients. Once I land them, this is something that I also help with inside of BBA. But also if you have your accounting degree or experience working as a bookkeeper in a business, chances are, you know, what needs to be done. I'm no stranger to feeling this. I felt this a lot when I started thinking about going out on my own.

And even when I finally did, and I was looking for clients every time I, you know, apply to a new job on Upwork or was about to meet with a new potential client on a discovery call. I always had that nagging like, oh my gosh, do I actually even know what I'm doing? I've got major imposter syndrome. [00:03:00] All of that.

Um, even with 12 years of corporate experience, Not something that is going to really go away at the beginning. Now a few years in, I don't really have that. I was just looking at my calendar and saw that I have a discovery call coming up next week. And I'm like, dang. I remember what it felt like to be like super nervous about this, but I'm excited.

I love getting on discovery calls. Now. I love meeting new business owners, whether or not I can help them. And it just gives me more area to practice my sales skills. So. Don't worry. I can get you there too. Uh, but 910 times when you feel like you don't know what you're doing, it's because you're missing information from the client.

And I know talked about this before, but I S you know, I sometimes come across that too, where I'm like, ah, do I even know what I'm doing? And it turns out. I do know what I'm doing, but I'm missing a crucial piece of information. Like maybe a bank statement [00:04:00] or, um, you know, information about a loan that the client has.

And, uh, the, you know, the recipe to deal with that is to just ask more questions. Okay. The next one is what if I don't want to do insert whatever service here, AP a R tax. My answer to you is then don't, you don't have to offer services that don't let you up, that you don't enjoy. Um, Um, I'm assuming that if you want to open a bookkeeping business that you actually do, like some of the accounting work, you don't have to like all of it.

There's going to be some things that you have to do that you may not enjoy. But for the most part, I'm, I'm assuming you enjoy a little bit of bookkeeping. Um, but yeah, you don't have to offer accounts payable. You don't have to offer AR or collections. You [00:05:00] can set parameters where those things, your client either has done in house, or they do themselves as far as tax goes.

No, you do not have to offer tax. If you have your CPA license, if you don't either way, uh, if you don't enjoy it, don't do it. It's your business next? Am I cut out for entrepreneurship? Honestly, I ask myself this daily, but I'm still here because the alternate and it is corporate, and I've already made a deal with myself not to go back.

So you do have to be okay with it, some risk for the reward and the reward is owning your time. Getting to take off when you want, not having to ask for permission. I mean, there's just a whole slew of benefits and rewards for owning your own business. It isn't for everyone. So go back to last week's episode and listen to the major differences and, um, shifts you're going to have to make as an entrepreneur.

[00:06:00] Uh there's times when it's hard. And, uh, but also like there's times when corporate life is really hard too. So it's like pick your heart, right? Okay. Fear that you don't know enough to run your own bookkeeping business. Now this is a little bit different than like. Do I know enough to help my clients, but do you own, do you know enough to actually own running a business?

There's probably a lot that, you know, better than most people going into running your own business. Since you do have an accounting background. Again, I'm making that assumption that most of my listeners here are, um, accounting students, bookkeepers, um, CPAs, people working in corporate. But you don't have to know everything possible about running a business.

Um, one thing I found is the more that I learned, the more I realized that I don't actually know. So there's a lot of trial and error. Okay. You've got to be willing to make those [00:07:00] mistakes and move past them and grow. Okay, another one is, am I too young or too old? Right. What matters is experience here? Not age, if you're willing to do what it takes to bring your best to serving the clients, then why?

Like, why even think about how old you are, how young you are. If you're battling with that here, you're probably already battling with, with that in your corporate or your nine to five job. I know I did. I always was like, I'm too young to like be a controller. I'm too young. I guess I was always the youngest person in my department.

And every job that I had, I was the youngest youngest person. And I always struggled with that. So, I don't really have any advice on that, but just like, you're going to struggle with that no matter where you're at, I think, okay. Do you need your CPA license to run a bookkeeping business? I'm actually going to do a whole episode on this [00:08:00] because I have a lot to say about it, but a short answer is no, you don't need a CPA license to run.

Your bookkeeping business next week, I'm going to go into, or, you know, in a future episode, I don't know when I might record it next week, but I don't know when it's going to air. Um, I'm going to go into like my whole, what I think about, you know, having a CPA license versus not, and how to help you make the decision on whether or not you should get one, um, maybe another fear or issue that you have, that's holding you back.

Not speaking from experience or anything, but maybe you don't feel like you're a math whiz. Um, I am totally not a math guru. I can't really do math in my head. I use my fingers to count, but I can operate a tenancy. Like nobody's business and [00:09:00] I can fiddle with Excel and I can use bookkeeping software and I'm really good with strategy.

So I say like, having really good math skills is not, it's like adding and subtracting. Okay. Like, and we use calculators. The numbers are too big to do in your head anyways, at least for me. So if that's you solidarity. Um, the next one is maybe you're feeling like a little too shy or introverted, and you're afraid to put yourself out there.

This was a big one for me. I've talked about it before. I'm going to continue to talk about this, but like I just said a few minutes ago, I looked at my calendar and I was actually excited to have a discovery call. How crazy is that? Like putting myself out there and doing sales calls. One of the biggest reasons why I was like, I can't, I can't go out on my own.

I can't get my own clients. Like I'm used to being behind the scenes, behind my computer, in my cubicle, in my office, crunching numbers, telling people what the [00:10:00] numbers mean from behind my desk. Okay. But now. I just really enjoy it. It's, it's super fun. Meeting new business owners, asking them questions about their businesses jamming out on strategy.

So those are some of the, the big ones that I see. Maybe you're relating to one or two of these things that are holding you back. I would love to invite you to join the bookkeeping business workshops. At the time of this airing, we are open for registration. We do this about three times a year. So if you're watching or watching, if you're listening to this later on, you can still go to the same website.

It's BK workshops.online. If we're not open for registration, you will. Be asked to put in your information for the waitlist. And I always give a special little treat to anyone who's on the wait list when we do open registration, but any who [00:11:00] we are open for registration right now, they start August 22nd and run through August 26th.

It's a one hour workshop every evening, 2:00 PM, Pacific 5:00 PM Eastern and. What we're going to do is the first day we're going to talk about what it actually takes to run a bookkeeping business. The second day is all about the tech. So I know, you know, people really struggle with analysis paralysis and figuring out what tech they should use and breaking that all down for you, helping you make the decision.

So that's not an excuse anymore. On day three, we're going to talk about building a business and not a job. So we're going to go over some. Big things like finding the right clients so that you enjoy the work that you're doing. And, um, and day four is our bonus masterclass where I actually delve into teaching you how to sell without the sleaze, without you feeling sleazy, without it [00:12:00] feeling like inauthentic and all that good.

Um, and then on the Friday I actually open it up for Q and a, and I'm an open book. So if you've been in my world for a while, like you can DM you on Instagram. I will answer you in the workshops. It's even better because you can ask really pointed questions. You can ask my experience on anything. And if I have experience with it, I will say my, what?

I'll tell you what my experience. Whether, whatever you're asking. Um, so that's the deal. The workshops are open for registration. I love it. If you join, if you resonated with this episode and you have some fears that you'd like to push aside, um, so maybe you are ready to start and you don't really need convincing, but you are stalling out on things like.

Tech, um, like software to use invoicing, maybe like how do I get paid pricing, all that good stuff. So I have [00:13:00] some, um, stuff in the pipeline for you. If you're not ready to join the workshops, if you are obviously are going to go over tech, um, in a future episode on the podcast, and I'm going to talk about how to get paid by your clients and, um, Uh, uh, quickly upcoming episode is going to be on pricing.

I have an interview with Lauren Caselli and she's actually going to also be teaching inside my program. So we'll be diving deep into pricing and raising your rates. So watch out for that episode. 

 I want to ask how your life would be different. If you could take time off when you wanted to, without asking permission, if you could work from home when your kids are sick and be there for them, if you could work only with clients that you liked working with, and if you could decide when you were ready for it.

These are all the things that you get to [00:14:00] embrace as an entrepreneur. So have a sit and think about how your life would be different with all of those things and those fears, those pesky little fears that are holding you back. They're not serving you like you're done too young. That's not serving you.

You're too old. That's definitely not serving you. Um, you're not a math whiz. Not serving you, disempowering thoughts, not serving you. Okay. I'm not going to go through the whole list again. I'm pretty sure that if you listen to this whole episode, you might have some fears of your own. We don't need to really talk about it other than the fact that I don't think those thoughts are really serving you and I'd love to help you through them.

So again, join the workshops. They start August 22nd. Go to BK workshops.online, and I will see you in the next episode. [00:15:00]