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Hey, it’s Bill von Fumetti here with Booming Bookkeeping Business, and today I am with one of my successful students. This is Mark. Mark, thanks for taking some time today.
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You’re welcome. Cool. Glad to be here.
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Tell me a little bit about what you were doing before you started your bookkeeping business. You know, my entire life I’ve always, you know, been an entrepreneur, you know, started in the video business, and I’ve probably, I don’t know, had 15 different companies over the years, and gosh, everything from fitness industry to entertainment. And my wife and I both got out of brick and mortar a couple years back when we were looking for something different.
We were in the middle of getting out of that when we found you. Okay, cool. And so what made you want to start a bookkeeping business? What made you feel like this was the right thing for you? You know, we were looking for freedom.
Anybody that’s ever owned any kind of brick and mortar or, I mean, I don’t even care if it’s just an office. We work from home. So we have the freedom to come and go.
We just got back from 30 days in Taiwan and the Philippines. So you really can’t, it’s difficult to do that, I would say, with brick and mortar type businesses. And this just seemed like I could do this anywhere on the planet.
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Well, that’s true. That is true. When you started your bookkeeping business, most people have fears, concerns.
Can I learn this? Can I do this? Will I get clients? What kinds of concerns did you have? You know, all of the above, believe it or not, even with all of that experience of starting numerous companies, actually, my wife talked about this 10 years ago. Hey, we should start offering bookkeeping services and go down that path. I had no clue how to begin, how to get leads, how to price it, how to protect myself.
I knew nothing. I mean, could we do somebody’s books? Probably. I didn’t have extensive knowledge of QuickBooks Online.
I had some knowledge, had a lot of background in finances on my own. So yeah, I was looking for something. Well, I always say, I always tell my friends, this is almost like getting a franchise in a box without a franchise.
I mean, it’s all there. Just the tools for us, the pricing was there, the fundamentals. I’m super ADHD.
And I felt like if I could get through this course and get where we’ve gotten one year, anybody that I know, my friends would have this down pat, you know, because they can sit down and study. I just never was good at that. So you didn’t know how to do some of that, you know, a lot of that stuff.
So you had some concerns. Looking back, was there a reason to be concerned? Um, absolutely. I know that if we just started 10 years ago, we would have done what we knew.
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And that is everybody that ever charged me, I would either chose an hourly rate, because all the CPAs I worked for, you know, I mean, this was back in the 80s and 90s were charging me 100, 125, 150. And then I think the most I ever paid was two and a quarter. It would have been an hourly deal for bookkeeping, which wouldn’t be CPA fees.
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They would have had no idea how to do the engagements, any of that. So that’s where all the fear was coming from. And then not having a support team, you know, I’ve got answers on the Facebook group that has literally, I think, you know, we were talking about this, had a little under $10,000 cleanup engagement that was going south.
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They hadn’t disclosed certain things that turned into nearly 50,000. Had it not been for just that one piece of advice, I would have struggled through and probably got out of this business. Let’s talk numbers.
Give me an idea of where you are currently. Yeah. So, you know, I bought this course in the midst of having another company, took my time from January 1 to the end of the year.
We were a few dollars short of 200,000 in revenue. I think we were 198, 750 or something like that. And we would have actually hit that had we not taken 30 days off and gone traveling, but still was a pretty darn good year for a first year.
Right now we have recurring revenues that are breaking 10 a month, 10,000 a month. So what are your goals for this year? Our goal that we had set for this year is to break 750. And sounds like a lofty goal, but we met people out there doing it.
So we know it’s possible. And the only holdback for us is just stopping like we did, getting our systems in place and cleaning things up. Because we tried training somebody and we just didn’t have the systems in place.
And that’s just because we didn’t really apply all the things. I kind of haphazardly threw your stuff together and got started. I didn’t even have an entity.
I started with just my last name and I never done that in my life. I’ve always done full bore, but this time I thought I’m going to make money first. So we were at $150,000 for the year before we even formed an entity.
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How long did it take you to get your first client? Our first client. So I bought your course in January, 2022, but did a little with it. I think it was until May that I got certified and just, again, didn’t really go after it until the end of 2022.
And then I got a client. I got my profile up. I got advanced certified, got that all optimized, got some help from you guys.
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And then a client rolled in. What was life for you and your wife like before you started this business and how has that changed? Yeah, that’s a good question because we came out of COVID. Our business was shut down like the rest of the world.
So we had outgo, but no income. And even with all the government programs, it just a drop in the bucket to the damage done because it just took so long to rebuild that business. We were actually selling the business, but got hung up on escrow for 17 months for these people.
And eventually where our lease was coming to expire, I just decided to stop, shut it all down, move on. And so we took a total loss in that building and that business. I had to start over again.
So I had nothing coming in. I was actually bleeding out from September, 2022 until we got this going, which was probably February. Well, we actually took on six clients middle of January in one week.
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So in terms of like what things were like personally, like forget professionally, like personally, what did things look like before you started your bookkeeping business? Yeah. I mean, as you can imagine, whenever you’re going through the loss of a company and I’m dealing with attorneys and everything else trying to get out of this escrow, it was just so stressful. And I didn’t have a clue how much that had affected me personally until we got completely out of that.
And it was probably even, I don’t know, probably took a year to just really unwind from going through that. Never fun going through the legal process of trying to get people to do something. These people had one minute sign to move forward and then the next sign to cancel and it was just back and forth.
So yeah, like I say, it was very, very stressful. And also the inability to be free to really to get up and go. How has the income and that freedom changed things for you and your wife? I think for the first time in a long time, I guess if I could compare the two, that’s a very finite business.
The business, the last business we were in, I didn’t get into the details, but it was kind of the equivalent of owning a hotel. We only had X number of slots we could fill in a day and that was it. So if you maxed it out, you could do real well, but nobody ever does that.
Not even in the hotel business. Everybody knows that there’s a vacancy rate. So in this business, there really is no upside.
I mean, as we build our team and grow this year, we’ll just keep growing it. So would you say that your success in this business met your expectations? Did it happen faster? Did it happen slower? Has this surprised you? If somebody had told either one of us in the midst of the chaos, when we first bought this course, and one thing I will say, when I bought it, I knew it was the right thing because one, I’m 62, I’ve been around, this is my first rodeo. So I knew when I saw this, that it was the real deal.
I mean, there was just a lot in there. And then the people, yourself, you answered emails for me that I was just blown away at your responses and your team and just an integrity of taking the time out. Didn’t have to do that, could have waited or whatever, but everybody was very prompt.
So again, if somebody would have said in 2022, this is where you’re going to be in one year, if you really get serious, I would have probably said, yeah, right. Because one, most of the time, everything I’ve ever done has been a huge investment. I mean, I was in the video business in the 80s.
It took about 60,000, 100,000 to open in the beginning, but at the last store I opened, it was close to a quarter million dollars invested before I ever made a penny. And then it was a year before I got enough clients. Here, you’re talking about a few bucks on some training, relatively speaking to a quarter million.
And you get to figure this out and build a huge business. And my big deal was just a little slow on implementation, probably the belief mode, not knowing in the beginning in 2022, was this really going to be the thing I want it to be? It’s beyond what we want it to be. That’s cool.
That’s cool. That’s awesome. Well, what can I say, Mark? I’m just ecstatic that hearing about all of your success.
And I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and speak with me today. You’re welcome, Bill. Anytime.
All right. We’ll talk to you soon. All right.
Bye-bye.
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Are you an entrepreneur feeling trapped by a brick-and-mortar business, or facing the stress of starting over? After losing his business and dealing with immense stress, lifelong entrepreneur Mark built a bookkeeping business that generated nearly $200,000 in its first year. He and his wife now have the freedom to travel the world for 30 days at a time. If you’re ready to build a business with unlimited potential and true freedom, visit our website to learn how you can start your Booming Bookkeeping Business today.