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Hey, it’s Bill Von Fametti here with Booming Bookkeeping Business, and today I’m joined by one of my successful students, and this is Melinda. Melinda, thanks for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Bill.
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So let’s just kind of get into what life looked like for you before you started your bookkeeping business. Great question. I was working at a bank as a part-time banker.
I am a mama for little ones. I had a little one that was sick, and I was juggling banking life and home life as a mom, and I was looking for something I could do remotely from home. I have been a business owner since 2006.
This was my first working in an environment, not being the owner, being a banker. I loved it. I love customer service, so I started searching.
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I was desperate to be able to go back home because every day I went to work, and I come home, I noticed my little girl was worse. So I began to look for what I can do from home that would allow me to be home with her during the day. So you were just kind of done being away from family.
Why bookkeeping? When I owned my own businesses, that was the number one struggle I had, was taking care of my own bookkeeping. I would take my receipts and my bank statements to my CPA at the end of the tax year, and I would always end up owing thousands in taxes, and no one could tell me why. So I had always struggled with that myself in my own businesses, and when I was in the bank, I noticed the same thing.
Businesses would walk into the bank on a weekly basis with their ledger saying, I don’t know if I can make payroll. I need a loan. Where’s your P&L balance sheet? I don’t have one.
Do you have a bookkeeper? No. Do you know of one? No. We can’t refer anyone.
This was a repeated week after week after week problem, and a light bulb went on. I had this problem as a business owner. I mucked my way through it.
I trained myself quick with desktop to learn how to do my own books eventually, and this light bulb went off. This is a common problem across the board for businesses. I’m going to do something about it.
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Most people start any business, but specifically a bookkeeping business, they have fears. There are some fears that they face. What are some of the fears that you had, potentially around whether or not I can learn this in terms of learning how to do this, in terms of getting clients? What were some of those? What ended up being the reality? The fear was, yes, I don’t know enough about this.
I have no accounting background. I have no bookkeeping background. The only background I have is owning my own business.
I, in turn, was what a lot of businesses are that are coming to me for help. I understood that side of it, but the fear on this side of producing the service was, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to do this.
If they figure out I don’t know how to do this, nobody’s going to hire me. I really faced that. That was a huge fear.
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The reality of it was, I didn’t really know what I was doing, Bill. Without finding a program to walk me through it, I didn’t stand much of a chance to be successful in doing this. How about that fear of getting clients when you’re new? That’s a common fear.
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Did you have that? Then what was the reality? I had a lot of the fear because I didn’t think that, I thought if they only knew what I didn’t know, they were not going to trust me with their bookkeeping. It ended up, I knew a lot more than what they knew, so we were in good hands. I continued to just dig into the program that you offered and to gain that confidence.
95% of it is a confidence issue. I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t believe I could do it.
I didn’t care how many times you told me I could do it. I didn’t believe it. It’s something that I had to wrestle with myself to say, Bill says I can do it.
Bill has provided me with a program to do it. For goodness sake, just go out and do it. Once I started shifting that mentality of saying, you know what? I can do it.
I would get on the phone with a consultation and say, yes, what are your pain points? I can help you. Then if I didn’t know the answers, I secretly went and found them because Bill offered it. It took a while.
It took a while, but it’s definitely, it was a confidence issue for me. It’s something that I had to convince myself that I could do this. Let’s talk a little bit about, you started, obviously, you started your bookkeeping business at zero.
Where are you at now in terms of revenue? I, um, I just closed 2023 at $330,000. Well, that’s not even like, we don’t even have an award for that. That’s why I didn’t reach out to you.
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How does that make you feel? It kind of amazes me, honestly, because I didn’t start out wanting to do $300,000 in revenue first full year in business. I didn’t start out with that. I just wanted to make enough to replace my banking income so I could come home.
And then one person began to tell another person, began to tell another person, and I’m a little bit, I love customer service, as I mentioned. So the better customer service I provided, more people told people about me. And before I knew it, I’m sitting in February of 2024, and I can’t keep up with the leads that are coming in from people telling people I’m not running any advertisements.
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This is just people telling people the services that we’ve already provided. You talked about your husband, you talked about your daughter. What do they think of this, this thing that you’ve done? Very supportive of me.
He’s like, do it. He says, you can do it, do it. He was working his own job, doing his own thing.
He has since taken on the challenge of learning taxes, adding tax certification to his load so that he can come in and join us and he can do the tax side of the business. We offer no taxes. We are just strictly bookkeeping.
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So he’s going to be joining me in about a month or so. He’s going to be joining me. My children are very, very proud of me because of this deal.
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My background, I don’t have more than a seventh grade education. I got taken out of school when I was in seventh grade, and I never had a chance to go back. I never got to go to finish middle school.
I never got to go to high school, and I never got to go to college. So that was another reason that I confidence when I started this. So this past summer for myself, I enrolled in business, Harvard online for my accounting and finance degree, not because I needed it to do this business, but because I needed it for myself.
I needed it for my daughters. I wanted to show them that you can do anything you set your mind to, no matter where you come from. I went back and I got my accounting and finance certification from Harvard Business School online.
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And again, it hasn’t changed anything with what I do in the bookkeeping because what I’m doing, I learned from you. What I’m doing, I learned from that program and then just getting out there and doing it. But it does make me feel a little better about what I’m doing.
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Wow. What a story. On that topic, if I were someone that was considering starting a bookkeeping business, and my main fear was, can I do this based on you and your schooling only through seventh grade, what would you tell me if I was unsure about whether or not I could learn how to do this? I would go get myself an accounting one-on-one training in some way, kind of shape or form.
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I would learn how to read a balance sheet and a P&L, know what goes on it and what doesn’t, what belongs there and what doesn’t. I would be probably twice as far as I am, had I known that from the get go. So I would highly recommend that.
And there are free courses all over the internet, different colleges are offering it. It’s a six to eight week program. Go learn what the P&L balance sheet looks like and then get your software training, whether it’s QuickBooks Online or Xero, whatever you’re going to do, go get that training.
The rest is in your mind. How has your life changed since, you know, from before to after? Like how has just life changed? I have a lot more time with my family. I can go to all of my children’s events at school.
I have four children in school, four girls in school. I have middle schoolers and elementary schoolers. And, you know, around all the holidays, everybody has Thanksgiving feast and they have a Christmas party and now they’re having Valentine’s.
I can go to all of them. If I was clocking into a 95 job, I couldn’t. Even when I owned the other businesses, Bill, I’ve never had this kind of freedom.
My retail business before COVID was over a million a year in revenue. I didn’t have this kind of freedom. That one was awful.
Like I was, it was worse than having a job because it’s 365 days a week. And if you don’t open, you get fined. So that one was like, I’ve never had the type of freedom that this provides me because I can do this from anywhere.
What would you say to somebody who’s considering starting a bookkeeping business outside of my program? You know, outside of like assuming that they’re willing to put in work with no matter what they choose, what would you say to someone who’s thinking about starting a bookkeeping business? Network, network, network. You can spend all of your money in leads. You can go out and talk to people, local businesses, like I said, payroll companies, insurance agents, business brokers, local in your community.
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Get to know those type of people. They will give you all the leads that you can hope for. And secondly is just, if you have all of your training, even if you don’t have all of your training, even if you don’t know what you’re doing, one step at a time, how do you eat an elephant meal? One bite at a time.
How do you build a business? One step at a time, one person at a time. And you just step out and you just do it. The point is your story is inspirational.
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People need to hear your story, you know, where you came from, where you are now and how you got there. You didn’t just get there by being a marketing guru or being a real salesy, slick salesperson or anything like that. You just got there by being authentic and genuine and reaching out and building relationships.
So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming on here and talking with me. This means a lot to me. I appreciate it.
Like I said, you changed my life. So the least I can do is come in and tell you what that looks like. Speaking of which, I won’t take up any more of your time.
I really appreciate it, Melinda. It was my pleasure, Bill. Have a wonderful evening.
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You too. Thanks so much. Take care.
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Are you a parent desperate to work from home but worried you don’t have the right background? With only a 7th-grade education and no accounting experience, Melinda built a bookkeeping business that generated $330,000 in its first full year, all so she could be home with her sick child. Her success is proof that you can do it too. If you’re ready to build a life of freedom and incredible income, visit our website to learn how you can start your Booming Bookkeeping Business.