The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

200 ⎸ What I Learned in 2024 & Q1 of 2025

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 200

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It’s the 200th episode of The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast and Serena pulls back the curtain on her bookkeeping firm's 2024 performance, sharing both the wins and challenges. She gets real about client churn, revenue growth, personal struggles with mold toxicity, and the hard lessons learned about communicating with clients who aren't taking crucial financial advice.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • Client management reality check - How one client's bankruptcy and fraud issues led to major communication style changes
  • Personal health struggles - Living in toxic mold for 2 years and how it affected business decisions and energy levels
  • 2025 strategy shifts - Moving away from high-ticket CFO services toward team-handled base packages for better work-life balance

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You are listening to episode 200 of the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. And here's the thing I've kind of been putting off recording this episode. I wanted to record this episode actually at the beginning of 2025. I've been compiling notes about what I've learned over the last year, and now here we are. Halfway through Q2 of 2025, and it felt like a really good place to kind of pause and reflect and talk about what I learned in 2024, what I've learned so far in 2025. What I'm focusing on and share the ups and the downs with you. As the 200th episode, I kept thinking like, what am I gonna do for this 200th episode? This is like a huge milestone. Mind you, I've recorded well over 200 episodes. Some of them are mini episodes, so they're not numbered. But today marks the 200th quote unquote. Episode of the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast, and that means I've been podcasting for several years now, every week, and I have missed a few podcasts here and there last week being one of them. If you, weren't aware last week I was speaking in Seattle with my biz bestie Alyssa, and I meant to record this episode before I left. To be honest, I was having a hard couple of weeks before that event and I had to get aggressive and cut things out of my calendar that just were not necessary, and the podcast ended up being one of them because I wanted to be able to pour a lot into this episode and. Due to that as well. I'm not recording on video today because when I record on video, it requires a different level of energy and I have a lot of notes I wanna read from. I'm not reading the podcast, but I have an outline and I, it's just a different beast. When you're recording on video, you're like all up in your head about where's my eye contact? Am I looking into the lens? Am I reading stuff too often? Do I look awkward? And I just. Didn't wanna have to deal with that looming over me while I'm delivering this podcast. So, don't worry, nothing crazy's gonna be announced in this podcast, but I am going to be sharing, like I said, the ups and the downs of 2024 and Q1 of 2025. What I'm focusing on, what I focused on last year. And, yeah, so if you wanna know all the details I'm gonna be talking about, You know, financial growth and personal growth and all of the things in between, because as a business owner, our lives are so intertwined with our businesses. So episode 200, here we are. I'm going to pull back the curtain. So if you are ready, sit down, have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, depending on what time of day you're listening to this. Drink some water. Take a deep breath, and. Let's dive in. Alright, so I'm looking at my notes and I don't even know how organized these are. I probably should have popped it in a chat GBT and asked for it to organize my notes a little bit better, and give me a little more to work with. But You know, sometimes I don't wanna use chat. GBTI wanna rely on my actual brain. And so here we are. I'm gonna start with talking about 2024 and how things went in my business and my life. If I can remember that far back, it seems so far away to be honest. And I wanna encourage. You as well. If you haven't done this exercise, I know it feels like it might be too late, but it's not. If you haven't done this exercise, reflecting back on last year and what went well and what didn't and the things you invested in and the things that you want to invest in and the future, things you invested in, did they bring you an ROI, I really wanna encourage you to do this exercise as well. Hopefully this gives you some inspiration. Just sit down and take a beat and think about these things as I'm talking through them. I'm mainly going to be focusing on my firm in this episode because I feel like that's gonna be more valuable to you. I'm also gonna talk about, things that happened with the ambitious bookkeeper and where we're headed this year as well, and decisions that I've made, on growing that and all that good stuff because both of my businesses are very intertwined. My team supports me in both of them. I have one team member that does not cross over both companies, but the rest of my team does. And so, It is mixed in there. So it, it is good to talk about. So if you have another business besides your firm, whether or not you commingle things or you know, crossover team or not, it's hopefully valuable for you to hear. How I do things, in case you are wanting to do something similar, or launch another business and figure out how to run both. Because it is possible. I'm living proof of it. Is it always easy? No, but the two businesses compliment each other and the fact that I can use team in both of them is so helpful because. you know, it feels safer. As an accountant, we are a little less, risk tolerant or a little more risk averse, I guess is the other way to say it. And it feels a little safer to be able to lean on one business at times and then lean on the other at other times. Because all businesses are cyclical, but bookkeeping businesses are probably the least. Cyclical when it comes to revenue than I've ever seen. And the ambitious bookkeeper is very much reliant on launching. So if I'm not launching y'all, I'm not really making money in this business. To be honest. I'm not doing any private coaching right now. I will talk about, what I did do in 2024. And whatnot. I'm not gonna dive into real numbers on that side of things, but I am on the firm because I think that's gonna be the most valuable for you guys. Okay, so in 2024, I'm looking at my notes and I wanna start off with talking about client churn. So in 2024, we let go of one client that was not in our niche. This client I was actually working on myself and it just didn't fit the ideal client profile any longer, and so I made the decision to, release them into the wild. And so as I'm looking at this and as I have done like preparation for this episode, I. Went back and looked at my comparative financials. I pulled 2023 versus 2024. I looked at things at a, as a percentage of revenue and I looked at things as, a change in numbers percentage wise to glean some of the information I'm gonna share with you, and this is another piece of the exercise I think is so important because it reminded me of. Things that happened from a numbers perspective.'cause I made some decisions, not necessarily based on numbers, but I could see the effect of it when I was looking at my p and l. And so this was one of them because I was the one working on this client and it was like an hour of my time. That whole client fee pretty much was profit for me. And because I made the decision to cut that client. When we replaced them, I replaced them with a client that I did not take on myself. I gave it to the team. So later I'm gonna talk about how my wages increased, and this is one of the reasons why, because I was doing some of the work and then I spread the work amongst my team when we brought on different clients. So we let go of one client, not in the niche. One client closed her business. I've alluded to this story quite a few times on the podcast, and I keep promising like a whole entire case study on this podcast. And for some reason, every time I sit down to like outline it, I just have this major block about it for some reason. And. I don't know what's going on with that. Maybe it's just like, it's just not time to share. But long story short, hopefully, this client came to me because she wanted to, switch to zero from QuickBooks. She was convinced that she didn't have the right reporting and QuickBooks online, and it was hindering her from being profitable and growing her business 'cause she couldn't understand the reports. Well, I got in there and there she was actually running two different companies. it is a medical type company, so when you do medical billing. you have to bill under a certain EIN. So she had acquired two businesses that basically do the same thing, but they had different EINs and so they had different contracts with, medical insurance providers. And so technically since they were two different EINs, they needed to be in separate. Books. So that was one of the issues that we found is that you, we couldn't really tell which company was profitable because everything was commingled and it wasn't like they were using classes in QuickBooks, but it wasn't done very effectively. And so there was some reporting cleanup for sure. But what the bigger issue was is that she had fraud happening in her business. And I. Alerted her to issues as soon as I completed the migration and onboarding and started diving into the reports from the billing software because none of the actual revenue, like we're doing journal entries for revenue. And once I got an understanding of how the journal entries were booked from the previous CPA firm, then I was like, okay, I can, this is so easy. I can handle this. All I need are the reports from your billing system. Easy peasy. Well. Month after month, we continued to write off and write off and write off revenue because something was awry in the billing system. And so I put on my detective hat and started asking questions and said, okay, why are we writing things off? What are the possible culprits of this? Could it be that, the amount you're getting paid is not actually what you're billing, which is very typical in the medical industry. so when I brought that question, she was like, there's no way that should be happening because we have contracted rates. We know exactly what we're gonna be paid by these insurance providers because we're not billing out of network. We're in network with all of these. We should be getting paid exactly what we're contracted for. And so I was like, okay, well red flag number one, you're not. So who has control over changing that, amount that's billed and are you actually billing that amount to the insurance provider or is something getting changed after the fact?'cause I'm a highly skeptical person and. So I was like, let's start looking at actual samples. Let's look at EOBs and all of that, but I don't have access to this. So you, as the business owner, you are gonna have to go do this work. So she started going and doing this work and asking questions of her team, like, why doesn't this match what our contracted rate is? Then people started leaving obviously. So the, the main thing that was happening is. The sales team were able to manipulate the build amount so that they could get higher commissions, and then things would either not get paid at all, and so they would've already gotten commissions on it or. They were just getting paid at a lower rate, which was the contracted rate. So people started leaving. They started taking her sales team, started taking customers and clients. From her, it was a whole thing, but she kept hanging on thinking that she could turn it around because this business actually could have been profitable if she had the right people in the right seats. And so she kept pouring her own money into the company for. This went on for like two years. I worked with her for two years and I was like, why are you still doing this? Something is still wrong. Things were still happening, and it was this one key employee that she trusted so much that hadn't left. But once she finally decided she was going to move to a different billing system, he lost his shit and. was like, this new system is so stupid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the reason was because he, his gravy train was over. He was no longer going to be able to, manipulate things because he was gonna lose access. He no longer had control over those things. And so his, like, his gravy train was absolutely over. So anyway, he actually ended up quitting. against my advice. I told her that she should fire him. He ended up quitting. She gave him like an extra two weeks to like stay on and I was like, what are you doing? Like remove all of his access before he does any more damage. It was a whole thing. Anyway, she tries to still turn this company around, bless her heart, she's a good woman, and then everyone there like just was not working. And she came into the office one day and. She was just like, why aren't any of you working? And she just, like, at that point she had, she just lost it. And she was like, all right, everybody go home. I'm closing the doors. And that was it. And, um, she's now pretty much finished with her bankruptcy. So all of this to say this one client ended up going through bankruptcy because, She did not heed the advice that I gave and so this actually caused There's a whole reason I'm telling this entire story right now. This actually caused me to have a deep reflection in my own, ability to bring issues to the forefront for my clients and make sure they understood the ramifications of. What I'm telling them. And it caused a huge confidence. What's the opposite of Boost? I don't even know. But you get what I'm saying. Like, it gouged my confidence so hard because I was like, I kept telling her. That there was issues and there was fraud. And like she let it go on so long. Like how am I gonna, like if I couldn't get her to listen to me, then like, how am I going to continue to like help my clients going forward? And so it caused me to really look at my own communication style, to be honest and try to understand, okay, what could I have done? And I know that you can, there are some clients, you can lead 'em to water, but you can't make 'em drink. But I felt. For some reason in this scenario, I felt like I wasn't outspoken enough for her to really understand and it broke my heart because this was not the first. A client of mine who had to close their business because they didn't take my advice. And so this was the second one in my career so far of a client having to close their business, going to bankruptcy. And I was like, this needs to stop. I don't know what it is about my style, but I don't know why these business owners aren't listening to me. And so. It was a lot of reflection and a lot of my own, okay, I've got to learn how to, be more upfront with my communication, less passive and more stern with these people so that they understand, and then I can feel confident that I actually did whatever I could. So, another client of mine. this past year was barely breaking even, and this was right around this whole thing happening with the one client that closed her doors. I. Was like, okay, this is not happening again. So I need to make sure that I am, because I'm not the one doing the bookkeeping anymore on all of our clients. I'm not even the one meeting with all of our clients or presenting their results. So I don't actually have a real great pulse. This is another thing that, came up for me is I don't have a great pulse on all of the clients that I'm not looking at. And I don't think I had given my team the confidence and the tools for them to be able to say, Hey, this client is barely breaking even , or This client is operating at a loss. We need to really alert them. So it caused kind of me to like reiterate to the entire team, Mike. If you see something, say something, loop me in. I know it's your job to talk to the clients and everything, but if like they're not responding to you, escalate it to me. So I took it upon myself to go through this other client and record a Loom video and have a heart to heart with her. And like I knew she hadn't watched the Loom videos, that my team were sending. She wasn't watching mine for like months. And so finally it was like. I emailed her and was like, there is zero judgment, but we need to have a talk about your numbers and you need to stop avoiding it. Because I let this happen with two other clients. They ended up closing their doors and going into bankruptcy, and I don't want this to happen to you. So all this to say this client was rescued. We came up with a plan together. Did I charge for this service? No, this was more about. Me feeling like this is why they hire us to keep an eye on these things. And yes, sometimes we go out above and beyond what we're actually engaged in because we care deeply as humans because there's a human behind that business running that business. And they might be way too afraid to ask for help. They might be willing to pay for it, but maybe they can't pay for it. And if you aren't the one to. Put your hand out and help them figure out a plan, then who will, okay, so now I'm off my soapbox went a little off track there, but I felt like that message needed to come through. So two other clients paused their services, basically disengaged. And what they had in common were, they were. under. I wanna say under 150 K in revenue. And the other piece that they had in common was commingling, business and personal. And they really refused to stop. So from that learning, what we did, what we put in place at the end of 2024, is in our engagement letter, we put in an agreement for people to stop commingling funds. That's actually in our interest form as well. I make people check a box that's like, I'm commingling, but I promise to stop. And then we also updated our engagement letters to surcharge, for each month that that continues to go on. And, implementing a year-end cleanup fee for any outstanding items, that come about from this commingling. And then we also. Are implemented a after three months of the commingling still not stopping. Even if they're paying the surcharge. We reserve the right to just disengage and everything is always like we reserve the right. Doesn't mean that we are going to, but it's got that little clause in there to help them understand how important that is and that we don't wanna mess around with clients who are commingling for their own good. so that's how we, lost all in all, four clients in 2024. And I'll get into my actual numbers regardless, like of that happening. Revenue was still higher than the previous year, because we also brought on new clients and actually I didn't even look to see how many new clients we brought on. But it was more than four because we replaced that revenue and then some. Alright. And then. How we gained clients was through threads. There was, I did a podcast episode about it a while back. It's also up on YouTube, talking about how I went all in on threads for like a month and it really paid off. I still kind of hang out there. I'm more of a lurker these days and I, join in on conversations, but I'm still on threads, referrals. Always a huge source and podcast interviews, which I ended up booking a lot of those through threads. And I also, talk about that on that podcast episode. I will link it in the show notes. so let's talk numbers. Okay? I'm not gonna give actual dollar amounts, but I'm gonna give percentages so that you can understand. how things can shake out. And I wanna preface this if you're a new listener. My team are, myself, I do very little of any client work. I meet with, one client and have them in like a CFO engagement, but I don't do any of the bookkeeping except on one client and it's not that one. So I have two bookkeepers and an account manager just for little lay of the land of what the team looks like because I don't think that it is meaningful to talk numbers and percentages and profitability without understanding the actual behind the scenes of what makes up the business. and also, Like I said, I have two businesses. This one is not the only one that supports me, but is the one that is consistent, so I know I can always rely on it if I need to. Okay, so growth year over year. I'm gonna be comparing 24 to 2023. I am not talking any numbers for 2025 in this episode. I will probably do that in a future episode. at this rate, it'll probably be Q2 of 2026 when that happens. Okay. Growth year over year. My revenue for my firm was up 31%, so despite losing four clients, we replaced and then some we still grew. So if you are feeling like, oh my gosh, I keep losing clients, They're there. You can replace them. It's gonna be okay. People are still hiring bookkeepers. Okay. Profitability, actually, let me talk. Cost of goods sold first. So I have a cost of sales, in my cost of sales. This is, I think this is also important to talk about. I have client software, so that's things like a two x zero, tax jar, things that we use to actually deliver the work that goes in COGS as well as wages and contractors, because I have contractors directly related to delivering the bookkeeping work. So my cost of goods sold. went from 35% of revenue to 43% of revenue, and that was mainly due to, a slight increase in client software because as we grow, that line item increases as client. Acquisition increases, right? When you bring on more clients, we have more software costs associated, so that's typical as well as contractors and wages increase because we're bringing on more clients, there's more work to do. When I look at these numbers, I'm really unpacking this. What it means for me is, 2023. I don't think I necessarily priced better, but we had more clients that were paying higher fees , and paying for more quote unquote, valuable service than in 2024. What happened in 2024 was I decided consciously and made a conscious. Decision to not promote my CFO level services because of things going on in my life and my personal availability and my headspace for those types of engagements. So while our revenue grew by 31%, our cost of goods sold also went up because there was less involvement for me and the fees. There was just a smaller margin, right? Like we're still profitable on all of our lower margin stuff, but it's a lower margin. We're not getting paid thousands of dollars a month from a client when it's just basic bookkeeping and financial reports and. I'm okay with that. It's not like it's, I'm still not, on a race to the bottom as far as pricing goes, we're still providing valuable services. We're just not doing high ticket stuff right now. And that was a conscious decision. And let me tell you, it did kind of bring up some stuff for me in selling Elevate, because, you know, I do teach people how to, learn budgeting, forecasting. The higher level services, CFO level services. And because of that, my sales for Elevate were lower last year as well, because I felt a disconnect in promoting that when I was like, well, I'm not even really promoting that service in my firm, should I be promoting it? The answer is yes, because I really do believe that program teaches people really well how to do budgeting and forecasting. And just because I'm choosing not to promote those services right now in my own firm doesn't mean that I don't know how to do them. And also I am still doing them for a couple clients. It's not that we completely did away from it, and it's not that I completely. don't believe in that level of service. I full heartedly believe in, in offering that level of service if you are in the space, in the head space and the mental and physical capacity to do so. 2024, I was not. So I made the conscious decision to bring on more clients that my team could handle 100%. So that's why wages increased and contractors increased. Something else that it might mean is that maybe I wasn't paying enough in 2023. I haven't really delved too far into that, but, I've given raises since then. So, that's another reason for the increase. Okay. So. Then regular operating expenses in 2023 were 16% of revenue. And in 2024, they slightly increased to 17 ish percent of revenue. So not a huge jump. But when you look at that in compared to an increase of revenue of 30%, then yeah, the expenses. Increased along with that, and one of the biggest operating expenses that we had in 2024 that was huge increase from 2023 was travel, and that was for zero con. We spent about. Almost $10,000 to take the entire team to zero con, and I don't regret it one bit. Was there a direct ROI? No, but the indirect ROI of bringing the whole entire team together in a physical location for an amazing event and an experience. Was so worth it. And, I'm glad that there's only one zero con every other year in the US because it's a big 10. K is a lot of money, you know, like that's 10 KI could have had in my own pocket, but I didn't because I, I felt like team building was so important for all of us to meet in person. We had never, none of us had ever met in person before. I have one team member who's been with me for like six or seven years at this point. near the beginning of my business and we had never met in person until then. So was it worth it? Yes. Did we work it? Yes. Okay. So, I. Other big expenses, like I talked about, this is in cogs, but wages and contractors were up 80%. That's 31% of revenue in 2024, whereas in 2023 wages and contractors were only 20% of revenue. So that's a big jump. And I already went through that, so I'm not going to like dive into that one again. Other notable things that happen in the expense, operating expenses and expense line items are, we have another line item for operating software. So this is anything that's, like Asana and back office, things that run the business. This is only 2% of our revenue, but I wanted to talk about it because what happened in 2024 is I saved 20% in software by converting to annual software fees. So instead of paying monthly on most of our software, we converted everything to annual at the end of 24. And cut a few small things that we weren't really even using. And It was just like 10 to $20 a month. But the big savings were really from converting everything to annual. So if you have the cashflow to do so or if you have a credit card, might be worth it. Then the other thing is client software, which I talked about before. That is 10% of our revenue and that includes a two x zero export. My data, anything like tax jar, things that are directly related to delivering the client work. I had a few investments that. It didn't really pay off in 2024, actually, mainly just one in 2024. I was really, really discerning with, not joining programs, not joining memberships. I think I was a part of Two networking groups, one local and one online. So I was very, very discerning about this. However, I did get sucked into joining the Better Business Bureau and anyone can come at me and. Shoot me down for this, but I, that was a waste of $65 a month and it doesn't seem like a lot until you start looking at it adding up over multiple years. And I was like, why are we paying for this? This is ridiculous. I don't work with local businesses. I don't think a lot of online businesses really even give better Business Bureau that much credibility. So it didn't help us gain clients. And so I decided to cut that one. But I would love to know if anyone actually benefits from that, to be honest. Please shoot me a message on Instagram or LinkedIn. I wanna know. And then, so that's pretty much the numbers of things, the number side of things I. And like I said, if you haven't done this exercise yet, I highly encourage you to look at things year over year, look at the percentage increase or decrease, look at things as a percentage of revenue and see where things are changing and why. And you might find that you see the effects of decisions that you've made and then you can take that information and go forward with it. In the newer, you know, in now, instead of flying blindly, like this is what we do for our clients. So. Do this for yourself. It will, you'll glean a lot of information or clarity or just, confirmation of things that you felt anyway. Events that I attended in 2024, like I said, zero Con. That one was a, a big expense because I took the whole team. I also attended a podcast, the Podcasting Moms Conference, in 2024. I, I attended it again in 2025. I actually sponsored it this year. So I'll talk about that in a little bit. It. I also attended, something called BBD Live. I am a part of James Wedmore's Business by Design program and he puts on a live event for his students only, each year and the past two years I've attended it and it's been life changing. in life, not business like it's a business event. But I always, every time I go there, I get something that I needed personally. And this year, I don't know if I actually talked about this yet on the podcast, but this year when I attended, I always go to these things like just. I'm gonna receive whatever it is that I need to receive. I'm gonna be in the room with the right conversations. I'm gonna end up meeting the right people. And this year did not disappoint. When I got there, I had been deep in, living in mold toxicity in the house that I had, been renting for the past two years. And I ended up at lunch with someone. Who is a nutritionist who I now work with, and talking to her about these mycotoxin test results that I had just gotten back and I had no idea what to do with them. I just knew that I needed them because I knew I was living in a mold. And so she read the results for everything that I had gotten back at lunch and was like, I can totally help you with this and we can get you operating. Back to what you should be. And so I met her and then I also met this woman. Both of these ladies are based in Phoenix, which is crazy because people come from all over the world to these events. It was hosted in Phoenix this year, but I just thought it was weird that the two most, impactful people that I met were also locals. This other woman I met, worked works for a law firm that. Specializes in helping people with, mold stuff basically. So they helped me get out of my lease. And we're, I'm still working with them. It's a really long process, just like an accident attorney, basically. Like they don't get paid unless you get a settlement. So, that's, I know that's gonna be a long process, but I had to basically. now we're just diving right into the personal section. This I was gonna save for the end of the episode, but I'm, we're here so we're, we're committed. I. Ended up discovering, that I was living in toxic mold, which wasn't black mold. Contrary to a lot what a lot of people believe, black mold is not the only mold that is bad. There is other molds that are very naturally occurring in our environments, but in high concentrations, they're toxic. One of them is. Penicillium, which, the antibiotic penicillin is derived from. And I'm allergic to that. And I was living in toxic levels of that in my air quality in the house I was in for two years, which, explains a lot. It explains a lot. I was sick all the time. I was depressed and my kids were sick. My kids were depressed. Like it was bad you guys. So if you have the. Little nudge or inkling that you might be living in a moldy environment. I highly suggest you get, either your environment tested or your body. both can be done. But one thing about mold is once you've been exposed to it and lived in it, for any real amount of time, especially black mold, but also other molds, it stays in your body until you detox it. So You could have lived in a place at some point and been exposed to it, not knowing it, and you're still suffering the, effects of it. So one of the biggest telltale signs for me was, like I said, I was always sick. I ended up with bronchitis in the middle of the summer, which now makes total sense because it was actually in our HVAC system. And so once I started running that thing every day, it just, it just wiped me out. I was breathing in these mold spo spores day after day, and I ended up with bronchitis. I was in bed for an entire week with a fever, and then after that ended, I lost. Two thirds of my hair. Um, I know you might not be able to tell if you look at it in pictures, but I can tell and I could tell every time I brushed my hair, ran my fingers through my hair. Clumps were coming out. It was so bad. So. Anyway, that was what I was dealing with in 2023 and 2024. And, I had major, major brain fog. Even still, I have difficulty recalling words and, just talking as well-spoken as I used to be. So podcasting has honestly been a little bit of a challenge, and that's part of why, like I've skipped some episodes and things like that. Those were some of the biggest symptoms for me. And then just actual like general fatigue. When I like, would go volunteer at the school to do a field trip with the kids. Like any type of outing, if I do something all day physically, like it's not even that strenuous, but like, just being out all day, I need like two or three days to recover. So like if you live with chronic illness, you probably know what I'm talking about. That was not something that, was normal for me. And so I started looking into things and, listening to my intuition, and then I discovered what I was actually living in. So I'm happy to talk to anybody who wants. to talk about this and the dms just shoot me a message. but I'm gonna leave it at that for now. this episode is getting so long. I may have to do two, two episodes, but, anyways, , I'm gonna keep moving along. So that was the personal stuff that I was going through in 2024, some of it anyway. The other thing that I had been going through for a couple years, I'm gonna keep to myself, and I'm gonna take this moment to acknowledge anyone who gets triggered like I do. When, when we see people sharing online about their personal life, The internet is a great thing. Social media is a great thing, but you don't have to overshare about what you're going through personally in order for people to connect with you. So this is your permission slip to be on social media and to share that you like coffee, share that you like, paddle boarding, share that you quit drinking or whatever, whatever it is for you. But you don't have to go deep into your personal life in order for people to connect with you. So. I was recently at the Wave Seattle event that Erin Pohan put on, and she said to me in the after party, she was like, I, because I opened up a little bit at the event with a few people and she said, I knew something was going on. I kept waiting for you to talk about it. And I, I just. Like was just waiting 'cause I could just tell something was going on. So if you were in the audience watching me struggle through life the past couple years, yes shit was happening. I was li I was dealing with living in toxic mold while also going through some horrendous personal stuff. And I'm gonna leave it at that because it is not just my story to share, it affects other people in my family and much love to you all who share online. But that is just not for me. So thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Okay. Let's talk about what's on the horizon. What I'm leaning into in 2025, what I've been doing so far. Marketing, I am. A part of the Prescott area, young professionals. I actually took the position of treasurer this year and so we have monthly meetings, we have monthly mixers. It's been a really great way to meet other people in my community who are also entrepreneurs who are trying to live a different type of life. And I'm not doing it to get clients, I'm doing it to have a personal network of people who. Get it. So if I get clients through it, wonderful. If not, I've met some really amazing people, made some great friends through it, and that's what I needed. so let things be for you personally. It doesn't always have to be for business, but it's a write off, so darn toot, and I'm gonna take it. And then in, April I sponsored the Moms and Podcasting conference. I was the Coffee Break sponsor. They did an amazing job highlighting sponsors at this event. It was, it was great. They had like a huge board with my logo and my QR code on it and all sorts of good stuff. Did lots of shout outs throughout the event. That was just a one day event. I'm loving what they're calling micro conferences. This was one of 'em. Wave Seattle was one of 'em. They're the best for people like me who cannot do more than one day physically. I also joined a large online. Mastermind where lots of ideal referrals and clients are participating and I've been making an effort to participate in the things that are happening in there. I've also pouring more into my other networking group that's online. So all in all, that's like three networking groups. Two of 'em virtual, one of 'em in person. And that feels like enough for me. And, there's lots of opportunities that come and go within, the mastermind that I'm in. And so I jump on those. One of them was the opportunity to speak in a summit on ai. It's called AI Unlocked. By the time you hear this episode, it will be happening. So I will drop my link in the show notes if you want to attend. There's like 50 plus speakers. My session is on using, AI as your bookkeeper and financial sidekick. So I hope this doesn't trigger any of you, but, I'm sure it will. If you can't beat 'em, join him. Just kidding. Uh, So I am actually just showcasing. How AI is already built into Xero and Hubdoc. And then how to use chat GPT to help you along your way if you're DIYing your books. This is not meant to be a replacement for bookkeepers, but there are people who need that extra support. So I am sharing how to use it. And then I'm also participating in like bundles and things like that that are happening within that, that networking group. What I'm leaning into operationally is, within the firm. My team are taking some amazing, initiatives . One of them being, using Airtable for lots of things, but we are building out a results tracker database. So we have one. Being built out for the ambitious bookkeeper side and we are working on building one out for inside of the firm for our clients. Basically tracking, you know, their successes and their financial successes so that they can see tangible results of working with us. And then the other thing operationally is I'm still, personally, I'm still coming out of this mold toxicity and adrenal fatigue that I've been living in for the past probably eight years and working with my nutritionist. And so I'm still working on not taking clients myself and passing that work onto the team. Bringing on clients that they can service 100% without much of my help and oversight. And then I'm also pouring into my DIY books offer. I am thinking about doing a behind the scenes. Private podcast of this as I am continuing to build it out and market it and all of that, to share with anyone who is interested. It's like a big giant , fun experiment for me. So I've built out a courses, an educational and digital content for the ambitious bookkeeper and I am basically gonna start doing the same thing for my firm, because. Because I want to, because it's fun. It's a creative outlet and there's so many clients that end up, like I said earlier, having to pause their services. They're not profitable enough. They could be doing things on their own. They really can. it doesn't really make sense for them to pay 450 to $500 a month for our minimum level of service when like they just don't have that much movement in their business and they can absolutely handle it on their own. So, that's the other thing that I'm working on, building out for my firm. I also would love to plan an annual team retreat for those years that we are not doing zero con. But this year feels like it's almost halfway over already, so I don't know if it's gonna happen this year. And so yeah, that's pretty much the, like what's going to, what's happening going forward in my firm. I want you to know that if you're also feeling like. It's too much pressure to offer advisory services because you're going through it personally. Like maybe you have a chronic ill illness. Maybe you are trying to conceive, maybe you have conceived and you're trying to go on maternity leave, but you like don't know how to sustain the business without you. The solution is not advisory. In this case, that is not the most scalable offer. So this is your permission slip to. Take a step back, promote your lower ticket, offer your base package and let your team handle it a hundred percent. maybe it doesn't bring as much per dollar, but for me, that service is more profitable because I am not involved in it at all. If not involved in the delivery at all. Okay, so what is on the horizon for the ambitious bookkeeper? more in person and event sponsorships, which have already happened by the time this has been recording. I co-hosted a retreat with Alyssa Lang, the Workflow Queen in, end of March, I think early April. I can't even remember at this point. It's all a blur. I co-sponsored the Wave Seattle event that just took place, that Aaron put on. and um. As far as that goes, that'll probably be my last physical in-person event for the rest of the year related to the ambitious bookkeeper. And to be honest, pretty much everything for the rest of the year. The only other business travel that I have planned is to attend the retreat for the mastermind that I'm in. I am doing personal travel. I may host a small like two hour meetup in Dallas, the Dallas area, near Lewisville because I will be there for my brothers. Well, Lima in July. So if you are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and you are interested in meeting up for, it's just a very casual, like coffee or something. I don't know, it's gonna be so hot at that point, but, shoot me a DM so that I have your name and I can shoot you a message. I will probably put out a mass email as well, so make sure you're on my email list. hopefully it won't be so big that I can't handle it. I'm not really like a host, I'm not a hostess. That's not really my thing. hosting thing stresses me out, so it's gonna be very low key. And, if you feel the same way you are, absolutely. You belong there, then you belong in the room with me. We can be really awkward and antisocial together. Another thing coming up is launching a private podcast with Kendra Courtney. She's my partner in crime when it comes to Dubsado. She's the Dips Dubsado specialist that I partnered with on creating Dubsado Decoded. We are launching a private podcast that dives into all things dsto and onboarding and all that kind of stuff. Expect that in June. And I'm also, I've launched the Mastermind again for Elevate. So if you were unaware there is a secret, not so secret now. Mastermind on four folks who have been through Elevate or who are a part of it and want extra support. It's, very low key. This is a theme for me this year, low key. It's one call a month and, a Voxer channel, a group, Voxer channel, to just dive deeper into the concepts that are in Elevate and to share wisdom amongst each other. It truly is a mastermind. I do facilitate it, but everyone's input is encouraged and welcome. It's small. We've capped it at 20 people, so. When I open it again around, November-ish, I think, you'll know if you're in Elevate. If you're not in Elevate, you won't even know about it because it's not available for everybody. The purpose of this mastermind is for going deeper and getting support around offering advisory so that we keep things on topic. That's why it is the way that it is. So that will open again in November. we will be launching the Bookkeeping Biz Workshops one time this year. I used to do it two times a year until this year, and January was just a lot. I bought a house. I normally launch in January and there was just no way I was gonna be able to like, go through leaving the old mold ridden rental. I was living in, buying a house. I had to replace all my furniture. It was just so hectic you guys. Get junk removal to come in and remove everything. I had to get out of a lease that they weren't gonna let me out of, even though it was an unsafe environment and they had tried to remediate and they made it worse. It was just crazy. So we did not launch in January, and my apologies if you were expecting that, but we will be opening, , the bookkeeping VI workshops again in August. so watch for that. It's going to be shorter. I'm shortening it to three days instead of five. I'm bringing it back to doing it in the evenings, which I used to do back in the day. I did the workshops in the evenings. For those of you who work day jobs or you have kids and you only have support at home during the evenings, maybe in so time zones, your kids might even be asleep. So I'm really excited to bring back this format. I have gotten feedback over the years from people that. They wish that it was not during the day, and I agree, I wish it wasn't too. So we're bringing it back to the evenings. and that's pretty much it. Thank you for hanging on this long. If you've been listening to this entire episode, from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you so much. I, you have no idea how honored I am to have been able to bring you over 200 episodes at this point into your earbuds. And if you're a brand new listener, then. Please go back and binge. There's a lot of great content, and if you are a longtime listener, please, please rate and review the show. That means so much to me. I love reading your guys' reviews. Anytime I feel like I should cancel the podcast or take a break, I read those reviews and I'm like, no, I can't. People need me. And then when I meet y'all in person at these events and you tell me how much the podcast has changed your life. Oh my gosh. It's like a huge honor. Which, by the way, we did record a live q and a podcast, Alyssa and I and Erin on stage at Wave Seattle. And so be on the lookout for that. It's, it's on video and it's gonna be on audio, so at some point we will launch that to the world so y'all can hear it. And I'm so excited and honored to be here with you each and every week. And thank you again for tuning in, and we'll talk to you next week.

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