Have you seen those ads that offer bookkeeping for only $20 per hour? You might have been upset, or concerned, or just totally confused as to how that’s possible. And so today, I am going to demystify those cheap offers that get almost all bookkeepers quite frustrated and concerned (and rightly so). The bottom line is, those are probably just PRICE LEADERS. In today's read, allow me to clear up the confusion and give you clarity and control, so you can take a breath and decide whether you'd like to use a price leader yourself as a competitive advantage in your practice. So first of all, let's have a look at what a price leader is. I remember quite vividly my first exposure to a price leader. I was about 16 years old and my parents were back in the electrical retail game and I wanted to buy a shaver, and I noticed that we had one in the cabinet in the shop for $19.95. Now as you can imagine, because I was family as well as staff, if I wanted to buy something, I could buy it at a wholesale value, at a discount. And so I thought, it's 19.95 but I'll get it cheaper. So I asked my mother how much the shaver would cost me. To which she replied $20 – 5 cents more! She then went on to explain that this was a price leader, which does go by some other names, but that's the label I'm giving it. So a price leader in retail is a great product in its own right, but it is usually at the BOTTOM END of a particular category. And oftentimes, like in this case, it might be priced with little or no profit. The idea behind the price leader is that when prospective buyers see the PRICE LEADER (way back then, it might have been in a catalogue), they're going to come into the store. And while they may decide to buy the price leader, more often than not, they will buy a higher quality product in that category. And this isn't trickery. This is actually just a normal way for any business to be competitive. The product set as a price leader is already really great in its own right. But when the person has come to the store, they get to SELF-ASSESS whether they want to buy a product in that category that is of higher quality. In my case, I had the privilege of spending 5 cents more than the general public. And even though I wanted a particular color, my mother insisted that I get the color that wasn't selling. As I say in my book, they are the toughest bosses I ever had – but look at the lesson I learned that I am still able to use today, in a completely different business. Now, the way a price leader works in retail is a bit different as to how it works in bookkeeping. You know those websites that advertise bookkeeping from $20 an hour or bookkeeping from $20 a week or something like that? I often see bookkeepers on online forums distressed and concerned about these cheap offers, which is fair enough and rightly so. But guess what? They are really just price leaders. Just like with all sales and marketing, I do NOT advocate for leaving your values and ethics at the door, or for marketing that really does our industry damage on the whole. Read on and I'm going to explain how you can use a price leader in a really genuine way that will give you the OPPORTUNITY to talk to more people, which in turn will give you the opportunity to convert more prospective clients into actual clients, which all adds up to helping more people. You may have heard me say that bookkeepers are solvers more than sellers, and a price leader is yet another way to gain OPPORTUNITIES to SOLVE more problems – because sometimes it's about getting the opportunity to overcome an objection. It's about getting that opportunity to show someone your VALUE, rather than having them buy into these cheap offers from other bookkeepers and competitors, when you would like an opportunity to show your value. Now, having a price leader is not essential for you to win business, but they do work really well and they're definitely an option that I would like to educate you around. When I have used a price leader in my business and my advertising, it's always been a genuine offer because you know I always have my values intact. And frankly, many of the price leaders that you see may be genuine offers as well, which I'm going to explain now. One product that we offer from time to time usually to existing VIP clients is to handle a second accounting file, which might be something that's just has a holding entity. Like, a commercial premises that is charging the main trading business for rent. So almost nothing's happening in the file and they're a VIP client, so I might say: for that file, I'll just charge you a hundred dollars a month and we'll take care of things. It means that I'm not making tonnes of profit, but they're a VIP client who's paying me well for the other trading entities, so I'm going to offer them that. Now if I break down that product, which is a say $99 a month, that breaks down to roughly $23 a week. So if I was to advertise bookkeeping from $23 a week on my website, then I'm using the lowest value product in a category in my business as a price leader. So you can see, this is a category that I can use. I'll never advocate for lying, and I don't think you're going to see many people out there lying – people are intrinsically good. This is more about you understanding the nuts and bolts of SALES and MARKETING, and things like that. They are there to actually give you more opportunities to have more discussions, and to have the opportunity to SHOW YOUR VALUE so that your market and prospective clients can decide if they'd like to choose you over your competitors without price as a priority. So the price leaders that you've seen already probably work in a similar way. Now you're a bookkeeper, you can do the math. No practice is really going to be able to sustain bookkeeping at $20 an hour and make a profit. But, they may have a product in a category that they could charge $20 an hour for, which might be like an admin-related task. But overall, I do NOT advocate for advertising bookkeeping at $20 an hour. Okay? It's not something I've ever done as a price leader because to be honest, I think that really doesn't make sense, and I think it probably does our industry on the whole, damage. But, I'm not condoning all the price leaders used out there. I'm explaining what a price leader is and how you can use it with, once again, your values and your ethics intact to be competitive. Ultimately, just because one or two bad eggs are using price leaders in a way that's not particularly ethical (and probably damaging to our industry), doesn't mean that you can't use them in an ethical way to be COMPETITIVE. In fact, post-pandemic, I have identified that there is a need to make changes to our strategies around PRICING in order to avoid losing the opportunity to convey our value to prospective clients. While digesting post-pandemic behavioural changes in consumers in 2021-22, and educating myself around what had happened and how that impacts our industry in terms of sales and marketing, I had a light bulb moment where I strategised and adapted to all these changes that had happened so much more rapidly than ever before. I have then FUTURE PROOFED everything relating to, as I might call them, price wars coming through in the industry – which we can't bury our head in the sand with. We have got to look at how we can ADAPT once again with our values intact. And what I came up with was completely game changing. Simple, but game changing. And simple doesn't mean easy. Simple just means simple strategy. Now in terms of taking action, you can use price leaders in your marketing collateral and on your website and in your social media, based on the stories and examples I just shared. But, in The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program, I am unlocking an additional secret which came from that light bulb moment late in 2022. It is so GAME CHANGING in terms of competitive advantage, and still so simple to implement, hence I have decided to keep it in the vault for the members of my program. So while I share tonnes and tonnes of game changing strategies freely on my podcast, and you've even got my book to read and use as a how to guide, in the program, we go deeper and deeper. And so if you do elect to join my tribe as part of my Strategic Bookkeeper program, you'll unlock a VAULT of education, assets, strategies, incredible competitive advantage, and support. And when I did have that light bulb moment, it's kind of testament to how things are always changing and evolving, and we all are always changing and evolving. But what I do is, I look at what was working before versus what is working now, and the changing landscape of our industry. I am then able to take these fresh NEW STRATEGIES into the program because the program isn't static, it's a membership program. You're in there working with me – future proofing, adapting, doing better, and staying ahead of the pack, and being the most competitive in the pack. So, you can probably imagine my passion as I write this.. I have priced this program for every bookkeeper, and it comes with a 100% money back guarantee. But, hand on my heart, it's so easy to get your money back on that program in no time. Now, if you'd like to know more about the program or apply to join, just head to this LINK. But otherwise, you've got tonnes of stuff today that you can use to think about price leaders. I really hope that demystifying those cheap offers that you've seen gives you some comfort that nobody can actually offer bookkeeping in Australia for $20 an hour and really make a profit – they are using it as a way to lead people in. So think of that phrase, price leader – they're leading people into their brand sphere. Those people are then making an inquiry, and then they've got the opportunity to do the needs analysis and convey their value. And so, there is nothing wrong with you looking at that strategy for your business as well.

Today, I will share with you some insider tips and tricks of how I operate in Cloud 9 Strategic. We will fully dive into productising your services and then a touch on CONVERSION. But before we begin, here's what I would love you to do: I would love you to read this blog from beginning to end. And the reason I say that is because there might be points in this where you feel fear, you think, "Oh, this sounds complicated. This sounds like I can't do it..." First of all, courage and fear exist together – not separately. And that is the amazing Brené Brown that says that. And it is so true! So I'm going to ask you to muster up the courage right now to feel the fear, and finish reading anyway. Please remember what I say in my book: I would love nothing more than to make that glass ceiling your new floor. And if you stick with me, I might be able to do that. So if you are at a place where you're just doing basic bookkeeping and you want to focus on that, but stack the VALUE of what you're doing and understand why not everything is going right for you – why PRICE is a priority for clients and why you're not being valued the way that you should be, this blog is going to help you with that. By the end, I'm going to summarize with action steps and I promise, even though it might feel outside your comfort zone, I'm going to wrap it up by showing you how we can bring it back to exactly where you are at right now – so you can kick goals immediately, straight after reading this. So, productisation and conversion – these two are actually kind of mixed in. I'm writing this at a time where I am just about to send a client a proposal. So in this case, if I was to categorise this particular person in my network, they are technically a PAST CLIENT, meaning that they are not currently engaged in any month-to-month services. So absolutely in my bookkeeping practice Cloud 9 Strategic, we offer basic bookkeeping. It's the core of what we do and it's often what people reach out to us for first, and I call that what they want. And I always say, we will sell what they want, before we try selling them what they need. So, we do offer basic bookkeeping but we also offer numbers mastery. We can offer business mastery because I do have the Better in Business platform where I've got academy content – numerous courses and resources that I can chop that up in a million ways and offer up single sessions that include INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. I can even offer group programs! With intellectual property, the sky is the limit. And, if you join The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program, you actually get to become an affiliate of Better in Business. I can then train you on how to sell and bundle and use all that intellectual property, and you get the opportunity to get access to all of that too – to go through it and learn more and more about business yourself so that then you can actually teach it when you're ready. I know it's an ideology shift, and we're going to start at the beginning with basic bookkeeping and then numbers mastery, and then take it one step at a time. The whole reason that I set up the podcast under the Better in Business brand was with the long game in mind, which was to generate DEMAND and DESIRE for strategic bookkeepers. (and that is all starting to work now!) These days, I get business owners ring me and say, "Oh, Jeannie, can you recommend a bookkeeper?" – even though I have a bookkeeping practice myself. But because they're engaged in the Better in Business platform, which I've built to drive business to my tribe, that comes through my program. So back to the relevance of this to productisation and conversion: That particular past client, I kept in touch with him. If you've read my book, you're already familiar with keep-in-touch or KIT MARKETING. So, he gets a range of automated and non-automated messages from me. The automated is things like the Better in Business podcast that we do fortnightly – he gets that in his email. We also have email sequencing and messaging that's automated just to every now and then, in a value orientated way, we keep in touch so that they know that we're here – that they can always reach out, and that we're trying to help them do better in business generally. And then there's the non-automated way, which is just me with my manners sending a text message every now and then that says, "Hey, how's things?", and then there's sorts of welcome lines. So when a client becomes a past client, again, technically they're a prospective client. So for this particular past client, he's going to get served up our welcome lines. Now, all of these things are explained in the book, but please know they are also done for you digital assets and strategies that I serve up to you in The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program – your done-for-you bookkeeping practice. So, we give you all of the ASSETS, the STRATEGY, like the email sequencing, and then we actually show you how to implement it, and then we make sure that you are using it and we find out how you're going with it, and we make sure that we help you test, measure, tweak, change, practice, because we know that practice makes progress. So back to the client: Because they're a prospective client now, it's normal and it's automatic for them to be getting our WELCOME LINES. So one of the welcome lines that he has engaged in is a complimentary strategy session that we have. I did that on the phone with him yesterday – a lot of the time it's Zoom, occasionally it's in person, but in this case it was on the phone, and we had just a beautiful chat. We chatted for about an hour, and then I asked him, "What is your key takeaway from our strategy session today?" And what he said is,"You're the oracle, Jeannie." Part of the reason he said that is that I have known this person for years and I have helped him kick massive, massive, massive goals – well, I'm a very openhearted person! And so of course, it is natural that I know him and that I can get outside his square and sometimes see things that he's not seeing. This is what happens when you keep in touch with people, and when you SEEK TO UNDERSTAND your clients, your past clients, and your market. So anyway, he added, "Jeannie, really, I need more. I want some help." And we'd established during that session that he needs another strategy session. So in this case, it's a strategy session that I will propose and send thru my proposal software, which is Ignition, formerly known as Practice Ignition. If you're not using it, you should be. My only regret with Ignition is that I didn't start us using it sooner. So I'll put my hand on my heart and tell you that it is definitely a really great proposal software to use, and we get a big return on investment out of it. Yes, it costs money – but when I looked at other proposal software, it wasn't really any more expensive in comparison. But, it's built for our industry, and so it saves us a lot of time and money. Go ahead and see for yourself! Use this LINK and get 50% OFF on your subscription right off the bat. So anyway, I create and send the strategy session proposal in Ignition, but I also drop it into a Google document that sits in a folder inside The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program – all ready as a done-for-you asset when you join in. In terms of productisation, I serve you up all of the productised services that I am currently using in Cloud 9 Strategic, so then we're always testing, measuring, and updating them, and on a regular basis, you get notified on the updates. So, when I was on the phone with this past client/prospective client now, we did not talk price at all. We did not talk fee structure for the strategy session, because I very easily have my clients outcome focused, and so am I. The fee structure is the fee structure, but they do get up-to-date, accurate accounting records which is globally recognised as pillar one for the success of any business – that in its own right, the beautiful platinum level of service, the up-to-date, accurate accounting records that gives your clients peace of mind and more, that in its own right has a massive high value and you should be able to charge a premium. And I absolutely teach you how to do that and how to get prospective clients to say yes to you even though you are 20, 30, 40, 50% higher fee structure than others. But once they go beyond that, do you know what? The clients don't care what they pay me because they get a massive return on investment. Don't forget that even though the strategy may sound scary, two things: first, please, read my book. And second, I promise to slowly but surely introduce you to all the intellectual property that I have created that makes this doable and easy. I will never ask you to leap outside your comfort zone. Imagine you were learning to swim. I'm not going to throw you in a river and go, "Oh, I think you should learn to swim by just flailing around and feeling like you're drowning until a point where you manage to pull yourself to shore." I'm never going to do that. I'm going to put you in the swimming pool and I am going to teach you very, very, very slowly over time how to go from not being able to swim to like, "Ah, swimming is so easy and I love it." So back to this client: I go into Ignition and I'm creating a little bit of a bespoke strategy, productised service. I put together the proposal for the strategy session, but something I want to say about productising the service as well as the conversion process is, when I write up any service, I talk about what I'm going to deliver in say, a 90-minute strategy session. And this is where it's really important to move away from time to money and move into a world where we just talk about VALUE, OUTCOMES and intellectual property, because if I'm just thinking out loud right now in terms of what I'm going to give to this client... I'm going to give him my time and energy in terms of reviewing all the notes that I have on file, even if that's just the fact that all those notes, I've got them on file. Remember when I said that this client called me the Oracle? The amount that I know about him, his business, his hopes and his dreams, his family, there is a value to that. As I pull together the productised service for him, the things that he will be getting will be outlined so eloquently and I will be making sure he understands the things that are included are: one, my TIME to absolutely read, review and process my notes and my understanding of where he's at, and two, realistically speaking, is pre-work by me before we meet for 90 minutes. And then, he will get the 90-minute recorded Zoom strategy session where we will dive into A, B, C, D, E, F, which is the what, the features. Separate features and benefits – so it's like, based on our complimentary strategy session we did the other day, I'm going to make sure that we cover off these things. And then at the end of the session, you're going to get a document with all the notes that I've taken throughout that session, and you're going to get a link to the recorded Zoom, which I recommend that you use as an audio clip to listen on your phone when you're in the car, et cetera, so you can just keep digesting that amazing content, which is this intellectual property. So when you give someone just some time, that's it – it's gone, there's nothing after that. But when you give someone your TIME, and then you leave them with a bundled-in INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (like a recorded Zoom session that they can listen to a hundred times), the VALUE skyrockets – their ability to get outcomes skyrockets, their ability to get impact from what you've delivered skyrockets, and their ability to get a return on investment gets deeper and deeper and deeper. So for this particular client, for 90 minutes of my time, plus the intellectual property and the value that I bring to it, that will be a thousand dollars. And I know for a lot of you, you think, "A thousand dollars for 90 minutes of your time? That sounds unachievable"... My two main core values are courage and honesty, and very closely followed behind is authenticity and kindness. I don't leave my values at the door, and my expectation is that my clients will get so much value out of what I do. Now on the basic bookkeeping side, when we use our PRICING CALCULATOR which is a done-for-you asset in the program, I tend to be calculating our basic bookkeeping services at about $90 an hour because you got to meet the market there. And basic bookkeeping will always be seen as a cost, but once you go beyond that... We go into numbers mastery, which we're calculating at $200 an hour up, and the clients are just building a shrine to us in their houses. Once we are in a space where we're just shining a light on their numbers and asking powerful questions, the value skyrockets. Accountants are charging more like $500 an hour for that, but that said, we always say: we charge for outcomes, not hours. So one of the reasons charging a premium (like a thousand dollars for a 90-minute strategy session) is great, is because that way I've got a lot of space and time and room for the quick query. So when I charge a thousand dollars, I know that that client can call me before the strategy session anytime because I love talking to him. He can even call me after the strategy session. I just do not sell time for money, and I don't want you to either one day. Once I put you in the swimming pool and I teach you to swim slowly, I want you to one day get to this point where you're able to serve your clients in a way that money doesn't matter anymore because you're focused on giving them values, outcome, impact, and return on investment. And so to touch on the conversion process: It's really important to remember that conversion process is always really, really important. Even when I'm working with a client that knows me really, really well, I have VIDEO SALES LETTERS, which is also a done-for-you asset in The Strategic Bookkeeper program. I help you to create your own and we can give you templates and done-for-you, but I make sure you nail a really nice set of basic video sales letters. So when I send the proposal, there's a really tight process and the video sales letter covers off everything that you'll find in the conversion chapter of my book. So it goes through my profile, my reputation, all of the different moving parts – what's really important is that I don't just serve up the what. The client has every opportunity to receive the what from anyone, but the productised service along with the why. So a version to remember, "Well, this is our profile, so this is who we are and this is why you should choose us because we've also got this amazing reputation. Here are the results that we get for clients. Here is our vision for you, and then here's our mission and how we achieve it in terms of the customer journey. Your proposal today fits into this section of the customer journey, and these are the outcomes we expect from the customer journey." And then, I'll talk about my CAPACITY which creates more urgency, but again, I'm always honest about that – I'm not going to lie about my capacity, and I will never recommend telling porky pies. So my conversion process will still exist for a client that has the know-like-trust factor already. So my lovelies, I want to wrap up with key takeaways and maybe some action that you can take because you know I'm all about you taking action. So number one, I really did want you to know what's included in the program, because productisation of your services is so powerful that it can be something that can take you a while to do, test, and measure before you get it right. And so I want you to know that if you want to fast track all that, it's there in the The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program. And, I wanted you to know that I'm literally at my computer all the time putting assets into this vault that you get access to once you join in. If you are not going to join the program, I just wanted you to understand what I do. I wanted to give you a look under the hood of what I do in terms of productising a service, for example. The next thing is I didn't want to overwhelm you with the idea of delivering strategy services, so I hope I haven't. And so that swimming analogy, because conveying your value is just as much around you as a bookkeeper doing basic bookkeeping as it is anything else. If all you were ever going to do was basic bookkeeping, that's okay. I would say that when you move slowly into numbers mastery, that's when price starts to look a little more irrelevant, but when it's just basic bookkeeping, I can show you how to make price secondary and not a priority through my podcast, which comes with heaps of free content to help you, along with the book. But as I've said, price starts to become more irrelevant in the strategy space when you're leveraging the Better in Business Academy content and that kind of thing. So I'd call that very much phase three. So phase one, nail being valuable in the basic bookkeeping space. Phase two, learn to swim in the numbers mastery phase. And then once that's all sorted and you feel like, "Wow, this is just autopilot, I just love swimming. I can swim like a ninja. People are dropping flowers at my door for my swimming." Then you look and, oh, I might dip my toe in the water of phase three, and let's call that an ocean swim. And so when you get to phase three with the Better in Business Academy content – where you're just helping business owners do better in business in a different way – price has become completely irrelevant. The clients that get referred to me or find me in terms of needing business strategies through betterinbusiness.global, to them, fee is completely irrelevant. They are focused on the outcomes that they will get. So in terms of action, it depends on where you're at with your bookkeeping practice. So if you're at the basic bookkeeping place but you want to productise your services so that you can stack the value of what you do and make price very much secondary and win work, even though your fee may be 20, 30, 40, 50% more than someone else, then the action that you should do is to listen to a lot of my podcasts because a lot of them cover that off. And, read the book end to end and use it as a how-to guide. And then your other alternative is to jump on and register on our waitlist for the program, so that you can fast track your results. All the stuff that we give you, so the assets and the strategy, absolutely rockets your results ahead and you've got all the very tailored support in that space.

I quite regularly meet highly skilled, great bookkeepers and accountants who tell me that they are too busy – too busy to do this and that, too busy to work on their business. But, what I often find is that they are busy, busy, busy, but not actually achieving the INCOME or LIFESTYLE that they want and deserve. In fact, they just might be too busy to prioritise their health, and to enjoy the things that should come through building a thriving practice, which gives us the privilege of our dream on our terms – which is the income and lifestyle. Now, being too busy is absolutely one of the key excuses that I'll get for "Why I can't." "This is why, Jeannie, I can't read your book or listen to your audiobook." "I'm too busy for that Jeannie, and it's why I can't join your program yet because I'm too busy with all these clients and this client work." If you are a busy bookkeeper that can't find one hour in your day to go for a walk and listen to my audiobook (which is only an hour a day for less than a week), then you need this more than anyone. By the end of today's read, what I really want is to have convinced the busy bookkeeper that just BEING BUSY is not the pathway to the income, lifestyle, and the thriving practice that you want and deserve. Start with the end in mind. What is the income and lifestyle that you want? How many hours do you want to work? What is the income? The first thing I want to share with you is just a quick one on MINDSET. I am going to direct you to the podcast on pricing because that explores this a bit more. Basically, the busy bookkeeper versus the thriving strategic bookkeeper mindset is around the employee versus business owner mindset. Now, I was once a busy bookkeeper. When I started my journey in my own bookkeeping practice, If I reflect and I'm honest with myself, I feel like I definitely had an employee mindset at the beginning. The employee mindset versus the business owner is a little bit like this: When we first go into business for ourselves, often we have been an employee in the past, right? So we start out kind of with this mindset around, "Okay, well I'm going to charge a higher hourly rate than I was being paid as an employee." And often it's significantly higher, maybe it's 50% higher or more, but that's more like you act when you're an employee. Your boss gives you work to do at an hourly rate, and off you go and you do the work. And there's this idea that, "Okay, the rate's good and the work is there, and therefore that'll all equal income, lifestyle," – it's just not that simple. Just listen to that other podcast, okay? I see bookkeepers and accountants stuck in this mindset for the entirety of their bookkeeping practice journey, scratching their heads as to why it feels more like a job at the end of the day and they don't feel like they're having the IMPACT, and they certainly don't feel super valued. Or, it just doesn't feel like they thought it would feel. And I really believe that this employee mindset versus business owner mindset is a big part of it. So once again, just start by listening to the podcast after this read. So the next thing I want to raise is if you are the busy bookkeeper, "I'm too busy. It's lucky you've even got me reading this. I'm too busy," I want to ask you, have you got the income and lifestyle that you want and deserve? Don't just say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm busy, of course I've got the income and lifestyle. I'm busy. I'm busy." Pause for a minute and be honest with yourself, okay? Have the courage to be honest and know that courage and fear exists together, not separately. Acknowledge that busy, busy, busy, it does not reflect INCOME and LIFESTYLE. And I'm living proof of that. If you've heard my story, you know that I've had times in my practice where I didn't have to work very much, and the income is still the same and the lifestyle is there. So please do ask yourself right now, are you really achieving the income and lifestyle? And not, "Well, I'm going to get it next week or next month or in three months or six months or a year because I'm busy and I know that busy will lead to that." Right now, if you are too busy to work on your business with me, have you got the income and lifestyle that you want and deserve? Now, if those two end game pieces of the puzzle – income and lifestyle – are not there yet, what do you think is going to get you there? Do you think it's bringing on more clients and getting busier? Because I would suggest that it is definitely not. A bookkeeper I spoke to the other day said she's too busy to find new clients and therefore is too busy to work with me, listen to any of my podcast, or read my book. And I thought, "Oh my goodness. This is not just about finding new clients. This is about building a thriving practice, and the two are very different!" Finding new clients is simply a piece of the puzzle. It's a piece of the build a thriving practice, delight your clients and then live your dream on your terms. But it is not the thing that is going to give you the income and lifestyle all by itself. So please, please do know that. In fact, in many cases, what's going to give you the prize is squeezing more juice out of the orange. So it's about what you are doing with the wonderful VIP clients that you've got right now. It's about when you do find a new client, what do you do? Do you do the strategic things? I really want you to be honest with yourself and ask yourself, are you achieving the income and lifestyle that you want and deserve? Because it is rare that I meet the busy, busy, busy bookkeeper who is loving it, right? Maybe they are making okay MONEY, but if you are that busy, that doesn't spell LIFESTYLE to me. So now, let's look at the opportunities that exist to move from busy to thriving strategic bookkeeper. I'll use some examples and some stories, but we'll look at the opportunities that exist if you're a busy bookkeeper, and the little things that you can and could do in order to free up TIME and increase PROFITABILITY. The first thing I'm going to talk about in terms of opportunities is when you do meet new clients, or just think about your existing clients – let's review three things: the TERMS upon which you are working, your productized SERVICES, and your PRICING SYSTEMS. I have done a podcast on knowing your terms and backing yourself, so I really recommend you listen to that one. I also want to share with you the kind of minimum charges on jobs, and a couple of stories. So first off, some years ago, I was already doing very well in this space around knowing my terms and having a lot of this stuff nailed, which actually speaks to the fact that once you get all these moving parts in place, you don't just stop and it's perfect and it's finished. You're always learning and expanding your mind and refining and improving so that your practice continues to thrive. So yeah, it was some years ago and I was thinking about the ONE-OFF JOBS we get. So a catch up job or a rectification job of an accounting file is a one-off job. That catch up job may turn into ongoing bookkeeping, and look, we find most of the time it does, but it may not either. So consider that catch up job a one-off job. Training someone in how to use their software, be it Xero software, MYOB software, QuickBooks Online software, whatever it is, a training job is a one-off job. And then you've got your regular or what I call RECURRING JOBS. So they are where you are doing either bookkeeping – so end-to-end bookkeeping for a business and you take care of that weekly and maybe charge them monthly – or we have another one in-house which is helping DIY bookkeepers. With DIY bookkeepers, it is a great opportunity to help people that are doing their own bookkeeping. For this job, we're available to them throughout the month by phone and email, and we're making sure their file is in order. We're pointing out if they're not doing the bookkeeping properly themselves, and we're offering up training at additional cost. We're also doing all the heavy lifting like payroll, new starters and terminations and the lodgement of all their taxation lodgements, that kind of thing. So back to the one-off job – years ago, I realized at the time I was charging out about $395 for a really nice little productized training pack. This was around seven years ago. It might have been up to three hours of training, with up to three months of support by email and phone on the subjects covered way back then. (These days, my minimum charge out is more like a thousand dollars.) So way back then, I was doing that kind of work and slowly but surely would always increase those fees. So before long, it was $495 and $695, et cetera. But the other kind of one-off jobs that we would get requested, I would think, "Well, that job potentially might only take me 15 minutes." The employee mindset would go: "Oh, I think that job might be 15 minutes. So 15 minutes times my charge out rate. Let's say a charge out rate's $100 an hour, well then I'll charge you $25," right? Oh goodness, that is not a viable term upon which to trade, let alone a viable product type service or outcome billing model. I realized that for these tiny little jobs, I had a choice to either just don't do them at all, because they were going to make me busy but definitely not going to contribute to me building a thriving practice, delighting my clients, and getting the income and lifestyle that I went into this for. I realized that the little $395 amount that I was charging out training clients at the time was a bit of a sweet spot for the minimum that I should charge anyone. And so I thought, "I'm more than happy to help these business owners that come to me that need a little micro job that might be 15 minutes, but I need to let them know that the fee for service here is $395." In fact, the smaller the one-off job, let's say you've got a one-off job and it's only going to take you 5, 15 minutes, half an hour – you still need to talk to that prospective client beforehand. There's admin involved in terms of billing and collecting the payment. There will be times where that client, once they become a client, has a question after you finish the job. There may be times when you have to speak to the accountant for some reason after that. With these one-off jobs versus your recurring jobs, there is a LOT of unknowns in place – the thriving strategic bookkeeper takes the time to actually understand this in the scope of running a viable BUSINESS MODEL. And a viable business model in terms of a bookkeeping practice contains my seven step methodology. In terms of the terms upon which you trade, have you sat down and really thought about that? Because if someone's calling you for a one-off job, for example, and you are using that methodology of, "Well, 15 minutes times my charge out rate," even if you're doubling that, that's what I want you to really consider not doing and consider that that's more the busy bookkeeper employee mindset. The other thing that I want to mention here about system strategy and terms – it's not about riffing anyone off, okay? In fact, what I noticed is that when I came up with this beautiful productized service, the clients that I was serving were happier than ever. And part of that is when you listen to my podcast around knowing your terms and backing yourself. When you operate like this, when you operate as a professional business owner with these professional terms that make a viable business, you actually have the room to service and even over service the client. I remember quite vividly the first time I did that kind of job. Somebody needed some help on the spot. It was like, "Help me. You've got a great reputation. I know you can do this job. Can you just do it?" And I said, "Yes, I can take care of that for you for $395," and I took care of it, but I was able to slow down and take the time to make sure that the client understood what was happening. "Is there anything else you need?" Et cetera. Even if that job only took me 15 minutes, that client was a raving fan that knew he got the outcome that he wanted and needed, and he knew that I had his back. So this comes back to selling OUTCOMES, not hours. And selling an outcome over an hour is more than just, "I've fixed price billing", because too many busy bookkeepers I meet are using a math equation to calculate that fixed price billing rather than a set of strategic systems and processes, which include the terms upon which you trade. So now, I want to give you an example so you can reflect on how you are acting in your own practice. So let's say a prospective client comes to you and they are doing their own bookkeeping. And it can also from time to time, be a full service client who wants to transition to DIY bookkeeping, okay? There's nothing wrong with that. In this day and age, there's always a good opportunity with the accounting software for business owners to do it themselves if they want. It's not something I recommend, but we absolutely have DIY bookkeepers who we help and support. Now, if you are the busy bookkeeper with the math equation as your pricing strategy, when someone like that comes to you, once again, you're probably going to be thinking, "How long is this going to take me weekly, monthly, or quarterly times what I think is a decent hourly rate?" Cue the employee mindset. And then you're going to simply give them a fee structure that reflects time for money. So even if you fix price it, you're still in the employee mindset using a math equation and trading hours for the service, okay? Whereas the thriving strategic bookkeeper has a beautiful PRODUCTIZED SERVICE, and the other thing that he or she does is takes CONTROL. So when we do the needs analysis, the busy bookkeeper sometimes lets it be very much a combined decision – allows the business owner to take control and tell them what they want. For example, if I get someone come to me and say, "I want you to take my books and do the quarterly," no, that's not what we do. I don't do quarterly work. The thriving strategic bookkeeper has very solid TERMS and is in control, and makes his or her recommendations and is valued by the client. So in this case, it would be a DIY bookkeeping package that provides the business owner with outcomes, and those outcomes would be: I'm available by phone and email throughout the month, I can even jump on the Zoom with you, I'm going to check your file and make sure that it's on track. I'm going to do the heavy lifting. I won't go into too much of what that is, but a heavy lifting that they just can't do, lodge your compliance, et cetera. And the fee attached to that service for the month is X. Maybe 250, 350, whatever it is. But if you are just calculating the time, let's say the fee attached to that service was $300 a month, that would be your absolute minimum charge out rate for a recurring service. So this is a client that needs no bookkeeping as such – a client that just needs the support to be a DIY bookkeeper. So oftentimes, you spend a lot less time on that job as such. But to make it a viable productized service in your professional bookkeeping business, you need a minimum charge out RATE. Hopefully, that's getting you thinking about the terms upon which you trade, your productized services, your pricing model, and how it relates to moving from being a busy bookkeeper to being a thriving strategic bookkeeper. The next thing I want to mention before I wrap up with action steps is that, the busy bookkeeper is often doing this: A prospective client reaches out and they say, "I need some help." Maybe they've been referred to you, then you have a chat with them about what they need. You then think in your head, "Well, I think this will take this amount of time," and you just quote a fee and the person says, "Yes, that's great" and then you move ahead. And you think, "Gosh, I'm so busy and I'm constantly bringing on these clients." Then the busy bookkeeper tends to have a mix of this kind of work. So maybe they've got quarterly work, which only takes an hour or so, and they're only charging out the equivalent of their hourly rate, let's call it $100 an hour times the time it takes, even if that's fixed price. So it's a very low charge out rate and they'll be charging out some quarterly work, and then they'll have the ad hoc clients who say, "I'll just call you when I need you." The kind of work they're doing, it's a real mixed bag, all right? And I'll try and frame this up as what they're NOT doing – The busy bookkeeper often doesn't start out with understanding for themselves the kind of clients and work that they WANT. It tends to be they're taking on whatever work that comes in the door, and they're doing whatever they're kind of asked to do. When you move to being THRIVING and STRATEGIC, you could be taking on LESS WORK that you normally take on, but getting BETTER OUTCOMES for your clients and yourself. The thriving strategic bookkeeper is taking on the right kind of clients and helping them say yes to the right kind of productized service that leads to good, viable profit margins, but also raving fan, happy clients. So what I want you to be very aware of is that increasing your rates and productizing your services will not lead to clients that are less happy – it'll lead to clients that are quite happier. Many times, prospective clients reach out to me that have been let down by the busy bookkeeper – because the busy bookkeeper has got so busy that he/she started to drop the ball on deadlines and tasks. We never dropped the ball on deadline and task, and part of that is just because we run such a professional business, but the only way we can do that is with lots of strategy and SYSTEMS and processes, and we manage CAPACITY very carefully too. There is so much more I could share but right now, I really want to wrap this up with action steps. So if you have read through this, you've done really well to make that time. If you would love to move from being a busy bookkeeper to a strategic bookkeeper, let's talk about your next lap around the sun. Step one, take the audiobook challenge. Please listen to my audiobook for an hour a day over less than a week, and then you'll have learned what you need to learn. Please also listen to the podcast that I pointed you to on pricing and knowing your terms. And then, join my waitlist for The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program. And when the door is open, please do jump in, okay? I've done podcast episode 6 to explain everything you need to know about the transformation program. Ultimately, what I'd love to do is hold your hand for a year. So rather than "We've got to do it all in two seconds," – you are busy, I get that, but let me hold your hand for a year and slowly but surely help you make the transformation from bookkeeper to strategic bookkeeper. That transformation is going to lead to you being a smiling bookkeeper and so much more, but let's take it one step at a time 😉

Allow me to walk you through the 8 ways to SCALE your bookkeeping practice – not just grow, but truly scale. By the end of this read, I am going to wrap up with a free course for you, so you can take action step by step in order to increase your revenue, reduce your costs, increase your profit, and all those wonderful things that lead to a thriving practice. So, the 8 ways to scale your bookkeeping practice are: find new clients, improve conversion rates, improve client retention times, increase prices and review/improve your pricing systems, reduce cost of sales, reduce your operating costs, sell succession products, and sell intellectual properties These are the 8 ways to scale your practice, which I have created for you. Before we discuss each one, let's just touch on scale versus grow. GROWING is more about growing revenue, which is not scaling. SCALING is about growing your PROFIT and your TIME – it's increase in gross profit, net profit, and also in time wealth. Growing solely your revenue does not guarantee growing your gross profit or your net profit. Here's an example where growing doesn't lead to additional profit: (this one's just going to be of a client of mine outside the bookkeeping world, which is important because scale versus growth is so relevant to every single client you serve) So, I was working with a client once, and let's call him John for privacy. He was making about $4 million in revenue, and his focus was on constantly increasing revenue because he thought it would fix the problems in his business. But, he had various problems in his business. So some things were going right, and some things were going drastically wrong. And what it was leading to was he was not making any profit. The more sales he made did not translate into any profit – he was actually losing money. So within about six months, I had facilitated and helped him by offering him succession services (number 7 on the list), which primarily was investigating the numbers, and some strategy and coaching through our Better in Business Academy. From $4 million in turnover, zero profit, or actually losing money, to over a six-month period – I helped him get to about 80 grand a month profit, which he sustained most of to this day. And in fact, back in 2015 when I decided to use these 8 ways – particularly number 4, pricing systems – I was able to double my net profits without really impacting my revenue over a period of 12 months. I simply went from hourly billing to outcome-based fixed price billing. So in order to SCALE your business, in order to build a THRIVING practice, you don't always have to focus on revenue. It is one piece of the puzzle. It is not the holy grail. Now, the next thing I want to tell you is just how you're going to take action before we dive into one of the 8 ways at a time. I have created the free course for you, and I absolutely want you to jump on and use that, but I do also need you to use my book. The 8 Ways to Scale are made so that you can use them forever. I have. I do. And they actually do relate to other businesses as well! That's going to be great in terms of your acumen and what you can take to clients, particularly in your succession services. But those 8 ways, they can be used very, very separately. Choose your own adventure, I like to call it. So you can look at them, and wherever you are in business now, if you've been a bookkeeper in practice for five minutes, five years, 15 years, you can pick and choose from these 8 ways in order to do better in your practice. My book on the other hand, while you can use each one separately to some extent, it's a secret sauce recipe because it works best when all the ingredients are combined. And as we cover off the eight ways today, along with the course, my book will also help you. So the two combined are going to work the best. Now, because I cover a lot of this off in the course, I'm not going to rinse and repeat everything. Today, I'm going to pick out things to tell you about each category that I think are really impactful. Starting with... 1. Finding new clients So in terms of finding new clients, you can listen to my podcast and check out my book for chapters on that but right now, what I really want you to think about is around my top tip: What are you going to do once you do find that new client? That is the main thing I want you to think about right now. And you might be thinking, "But I want you to tell me exactly how I find new clients." That's covered off in the course. Heaps of my other podcast deal with that. My book deals with that. The thing is, I see bookkeepers all the time that are saying, "I need to find new clients." when the truth is, they have actually found clients before. So why don't they have a thriving practice yet? And the reason is often linked to the fact that they don't really know what to do with that new client when they get them. I meet a lot of bookkeepers who complain about cost focused clients who watch the clock and don't value them. When you meet a prospective client, you need to have a way to get them outcome focused from the get-go, a way to retain them as a forever client without price as a priority. If you are just going to go out and find new clients and you haven't got that nailed, it's not going to be fun, and it's not going to lead to a thriving practice. So it's not just about finding a new client – it's about finding a new client and turning them into a raving fan; a delighted client who will stay with you for the life of their business. The takeaway here is that I really want you to think about the fact that it's not all about finding new clients. I want you to reflect and really think about the fact that it is really, really important to understand what you are going to do when you get that new client. You're not going to sell an hour, you're going to SELL AN OUTCOME. You're going to have the marketing X factor nailed, you're going to have a whole lot of stuff in place, but, I cannot hammer home this concept enough of setting yourself up to treat that new client like a seed that you plant in fertile ground, and nurture to a brilliant oak tree. 2. Improving conversion rates Number two on the list is improving conversion rates. I know that's a salesy language, all right? But this is about converting more prospective clients into actual clients, which is about having a way to help them SELF-ASSESS the need to use you and to choose you over your competitors without price as a priority. Sounds pretty cool, right? In terms of converting more clients, the main thing that I want you to get right now is that you need to have a process in place. So by process, I don't mean that you go from doing the needs analysis, and then you give your list of services with a price attached – that is not a conversion process. That is a way to set your client up to be cost focused, and choose someone that's a dollar cheaper. What you need to improve your conversion rates is a process, and that process is going to outline your profile, your reputation, and your MENU – which highlights your customer journey, your client's problems, and the payoffs and the outcomes, and any guarantees you offer. How you do it, you can dive deeper into in the book. 3. Improving client retention So absolutely when you bring on a client, you need to aim for the forever client. And the forever client is the client that stays with you for the life of their business. What I see with bookkeepers is them struggling with retention, or they think good retention is having the client for six months, or a year, or two years. But if that client leaves after a year or two years, why are they leaving? Was somebody else cheaper? Were they unhappy with your service for whatever reason? Aiming for the forever client is about having a deep understanding of what your clients want. Sell the outcome, not the hour. The key concept here I'd like you to grasp is actually the marketing X factor, and the marketing X factor is TRUST. And trust looks like: I'll do what I said I'd do in the timeframe I said I'd do it. You need to have a zero tolerance policy about trust. Your client engagement is your promise. So you do a client engagement that outlines exactly what you're going to deliver in the timeframes you're going to deliver it, and then that is your promise. You need to work your bum off to keep that promise, and not to make excuses as to why you weren't on time or why you didn't send that report that you said you'd send, but to actually just do it. But if you do drop the ball, or even if the client has a perception that you drop the ball (because that happens as well), then explain yourself and investigate what happened. But ultimately, try to never let it happen in the first place. But occasionally, if and when the ball gets dropped, don't glaze over it. If the client says, "It's okay," they're lying to you, it's not okay, all right? Don't let it be okay. Explain yourself. Explain how you're going to make sure it never happens again. 4. Increasing price and reviewing your pricing system This is where I'll say again, "Sell an outcome not an hour." We want to SELL AN OUTCOME. If you are still billing by the hour, you need to stop and you need to move to outcome based billing. I have a separate podcast on pricing to help you, so I suggest you have a listen to that. Your outcome based billing is your pricing strategy, or your pricing system. In terms of price increases, my top tip there is like Nike says, "Just do it." You need to be increasing your pricing year-on-year. We do ours around new financial year, even if it's only a small percentage. And if you don't want to do that because of limiting beliefs and you are scared of losing clients, I would suggest the problem is bigger. If you're scared of losing clients over increasing their fee commiserate with inflation, and it only tends to equate to a few dollars here and there, then it sounds like you're worried you've got cost focused clients. So are you outcome billing? Are you making sure that they're focused on value? Lots of other things that you can really get more into in my book, covered off a bit in the course, but use the two resources together, please. 5. Reducing cost of sales Some years ago, I decided to really narrowly focus on cost of sales. I decided I was going to improve my cost of sales. I thought if the industry standard is X, I want to get to higher. So I went about all the different things that I could do to decrease my cost of sales and increase my gross profit. One of the big ones was SUCCESSION SERVICES, but it was also amazing technology, turnkey systems, and the right people in the right jobs. If I really do a forensics on our cost of sales, succession services is massive, but the other players there are the tech, the systems, and the right people, right jobs. With regards to those, I would direct you to the last two chapters of my book on systems and team. Lean into being a great leader and a manager, because it makes the world of difference. 6. Reducing your operating costs The key takeaway here is to INVESTIGATE your own numbers. So when you read about succession services in my book, you'll discover all the benefit of them to the clients. But what about the benefit to you? Your clients should be sitting down and paying attention to their numbers on a monthly basis, and I hope you are too. And all you need to do is pay attention to your numbers, your revenue, your revenue trends, your gross profit, your cost of sales, your operating costs that we're talking about right now, and you will make decisions that will incrementally reduce your operating costs, just like I always have. 7. Selling succession products I like to say products because I sell outcomes – I don't sell time, I don't sell an hour. And when you move from selling time to an outcome, you are PRODUCTIZING what you're selling. We can also say we're going to sell a bundle of services, and when we bundle it up, it's a product, because we give it a name. So when you give a range of services a name, we've productized our service. So, succession products: succession means "what's next?, what's NEXT on the menu for your VIP clients. This is not just about solving problems for prospective clients. When someone first comes to see you, you will generally sell them the bookkeeping or the catch-up bookkeeping. Once they become a wonderful VIP, it doesn't stop there. Go beyond numbers 101 in order to solve more problems. Now, the easiest one is investigating the numbers. Because when you move from just numbers 101 to anything else where you solve bigger and more problems, the outcomes are amazing, and the value which you deliver becomes even more amazing. In terms of your numbers 101 services, they tend to be capped at what the market will bear. We are all kind of in the same competitive space. You can't go to market significantly more expensive and win business for a particular narrow service. But, in terms of these succession products that you sell, whether that's investigating the numbers, software setups and training, whether that's recruitment, cash flow forecasting, whatever's in your suite that you are comfortable with delivering – what you can charge for that, well, you're in another space, you're in another market. I've got a whole chapter on that in my book, and it's in the course as well. 8. Selling intellectual property This last one is completely linked to succession, because to sell intellectual property by nature is a succession product. I recommend that you read the Succession chapter in my book as this is a big subject. So there's something I heard, which is so true, and it's this idea that something can be simple but not easy. Selling intellectual property, it is actually a really simple subject. It doesn't mean it's easy. The hardest part about it as a bookkeeper and bundling intellectual property into your products is actually the ideology shift. I think it was a couple of years ago when I started my journey of creating intellectual property, to BUNDLE IN with the other things that I was selling in succession. And now, I have an online academy: the Better in Business Academy, which is available to bookkeepers primarily through my program. (That's where I show you how you can become an affiliate and use it.) The point here is, what I did is through succession – I was delivering some productised services, but I was also doing some nice workshops which were really, really high value. What I did is I took those workshops, and I turned them into really great ONLINE COURSES. And what I found is, firstly, I could deliver so much value in a course because I wasn't restrained by time, and secondly, I was able to pack all this great information in there and give them intellectual property that I wasn't going to just deliver once, but they could watch, read, listen, do it as much as they wanted to. And then because I was bundling it in with my services, I could make it a part of what I was delivering. I could say, "Okay, for this particular succession service or product, you're going to get these online courses as well as the time with me." The value skyrocketed, and the feedback from the clients was great. What they were prepared to pay for the bundle of services in that package that included my intellectual property was much, much higher, because they were getting so much more. Where I would previously have been trying to get through a workshop with them within one, two or three hours, and then we had to try and catch up again, they were able to do all of this stuff online and then catch up with me. So the ideology shift around this is the hardest part, but the journey of a 1,000 miles starts with a single step, and that is the key takeaway for selling intellectual property. So there you have it. That is the 8 ways to scale your practice. You do have the course, and you've got the book to use as a companion. But hey, I would love to hear how you go with the 8 Ways course so feel free to drop me an email or post your thoughts at The Strategic Bookkeeper's Way.

This story illustrates a real life story of how I doubled my fees, how my prospective client was aware that I doubled my fee structure, how and why he could see the value and was outcome focused, and therefore was happy to proceed. What I'd really love is for you to read on and allow a seed to be planted that will help you to make a paradigm shift, which will add up to FUTURE PROOFING your practice as well as allowing you to truly THRIVE, to have an incredible impact on your clients, and eventually the privilege of living your dream on your terms. Some of you might to think to yourself, "I can't do this. This isn't for me." These are your limiting beliefs. I have built this system, the system I share in my book – I've built this for you, for bookkeepers, not for anyone else. Educate yourself slowly and play the long game, because playing the long game is where you'll find success. So recently, a client was referred to me by one of my VIPs, and if you know what my VIPs are, that means all my clients – very important people. That VIP is engaged in all my succession products, and in terms of basic bookkeeping, we provide him with what we call DIY bookkeeping support. So they actually handle the day-to-day themselves, and we have a really great package called DIY Bookkeeper Support where we are available by phone, by email, we check the file, we do their lodgements – we do what I call the heavy lifting like payroll support, things like that. Now interestingly, this VIP that is engaged in succession products. But when I first introduced him to succession products, he did not pick them up. The first time that I got together with him and showed him what I could do and what was next on the menu, he said, "Thanks, but no thanks". And then it was about a year or so later, and I offered up the same welcome line, in this case that was an annual planning and strategy session. And at that time, a year or so later, he finally decided, "You know what? I can see the value. I can see I need this and I'm ready to jump in to succession products." Now, if I reflect on the first time versus the second time I introduced that welcome line, I feel like the two key elements are: One, that I had learned to use the VALUE tool. I talk about that in my book extensively in the attraction chapter. That was game changing. Secondly, I had better ASSETS. Also known as collateral. Think of sales and marketing collateral, think of brochures, digital brochures, actual brochures, any collateral that helps you to speak client and convey your value. It was these two things. I feel like I was using the value tool and I had better collateral, and that helped that client self-assess his need and desire to engage in our succession products. Because as you know, I always say – as bookkeepers, we are not sellers, we are solvers. I don't like anything salesy and high pressure. I like to help clients and prospective clients see my VALUE, be outcome focused, and then self-assess whether we are right for each other. And so this VIP has been so thrilled with the impact of working together for the last couple of years in the succession product space that when a business buddy asked him how he freed up so much time in his business, he said, "Just one lady, Jeannie Savage," which led to the referral. Now, you probably already know that when a client is referred to you, price is far less likely to be a priority, but it is not the be all and end all. It's just one piece of the puzzle. Making sure that PRICE takes a backseat to OUTCOMES and VALUE is more like a jigsaw puzzle, and a referral being the lead source is just one very small piece of that puzzle. When this prospective client came through, they were obviously able to check me out online and start digesting all my content and getting to know, like, and trust me. If you haven't, do read my book or tune into any of my podcasts to understand more of this. Now, at the time of getting this referral, I wasn't particularly hungry for the work. My focus was steadfastly on The Strategic Bookkeeper business while my practice, Cloud 9, primarily was taking care of itself. The fact is I really did have a very limited capacity, and I did consider, "Do I really want to take on any more work in this space?" Because I was really solidly involved in my passion project, my legacy project, which is The Strategic Bookkeeper. But, I decided to explore working with this client probably based on gut feel as well. I conducted a needs analysis, and from the needs analysis, I decided I was interested in proposing services to this client. So from there, I moved on to the CONVERSION process that I have for conveying my value, and helping my prospective client to be outcome focused rather than price focused. And both of those things are all covered off in the conversion chapter of my book. Now, because my capacity was incredibly tight, I had decided if I'm going to take this client on, I was going to be full. Because of that, and because I value the heck out of myself and because I sell outcomes, not hours, I decided that my fee for services at this time was going to double, right? And I gave that some consideration. I thought about the value – I thought about all the results I get for clients. I thought about the fact that this is clearly an INVESTMENT. To be crystal clear, this was not an effort to price gouge. I do not leave my values and ethics at the door ever. And actually, my expectation with succession services is that my clients will make far more money than they spend on me, which makes it an investment and not a cost. I also offer no lock-in contract. I work month to month because I want my clients to work with me because they love me and they continue to see value, not because I lock them into a contract. Lock-in contracts are fine if you want to use them – I simply don't. And in 13 years, it hasn't been a problem for me. It's one of the things I use in my value proposition, my selling points, and my unique selling proposition and guarantee that I offer to clients: we have no lock-in contracts. Now, at that time, I was unsure whether my VIP had shared his rate with my prospective client, but to some extent that was irrelevant, right? Because, what's relevant here? What's relevant is the OUTCOME. For example, if I charge someone say $10,000 for something, but then from that they make an extra hundred thousand dollars, well, that's like investing in shares or property, right? I wasn't sure if my VIP had shared his rate with a prospective client, but regardless, I decided that if I was going to help this client, as I said a minute ago, the rate was going to be commiserate with my capacity, as well as outcomes. Now, if you have read my book, you'll know that I'm really big on starting work with a new client by engaging them first in some kind of welcome line. A WELCOME LINE is a no-cost or low-cost product, which is also known as a service that allows the prospective client to get started with me in a way that is lower cost, lower risk, and lets them feel and experience the value even more. And it's like welcoming them through the door, without them feeling so committed. In this case, I proposed an initial piece of work that was about a thousand dollars, and I still consider that a welcome line because it's the initial phase. The client has the opportunity to do that piece of work with me, and then beyond that, they can decide to go on to the month to month engagement. The welcome line came first, and then I made it clear that beyond the welcome line – where we are going to do some really high value work and he was going to get really great value and outcomes – the fee structure was going to be $2,000 a month. In this case, to be clear, he actually already had a bookkeeper doing the basic bookkeeping. We didn't need to do any of that. All he wanted from us was our succession services, or as I like to call them, SUCCESSION PRODUCTS, which is explained more in the book. The succession products that he wanted to pick up was what I call the Full Monty. He needed everything – he needed the numbers strategy, and he needed the business strategy through our Better in Business academy. I'm not going to go into the nuts and bolts of the academy, however, I will tell you that the Better in Business academy is a done for you academy and is a lead generation that I provide to the paying members of The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program. I go into that a little bit more in the succession chapter of my book, and I will do a podcast about the Better in Business program, academy, all that jazz as well. If you've got any questions, just email me. But I digress. It turns out that my VIP had shared his pricing structure with the prospective client, but regardless, the prospective client pressed go on the initial phase of works. And then he simply asked me to just clarify why his rate was twice what his business buddy's rate was. I was very honest with him. I told him that the VIP was on old pricing, which is the truth, and that he was going on the new pricing. I also told him that my capacity for this kind of work was very, very tight, and that in fact, after he pressed go and came on board that I'd be closing my books for that section of our work. I told him that there are no lock-in contracts, and my expectation was that he would make a lot more than we charged in fees. And because he was so outcome focused, all of that made total sense and it was totally up to him to self-assess, right? I knew that the idea that I had doubled my fee structure there, he had the right to find that acceptable or unacceptable. He. found. that. acceptable. Why did he find that acceptable? Because he's focused on outcomes, and so am I. Now, one thing I want to point out that at no time in our conversation did I use the word cost because I consider it a dirty word in our industry. Our services, your services, should be an INVESTMENT, not a cost. I would just love you to adopt that as well. Now, what I was also doing is I was regulating capacity with price. I wasn't super hungry for the work. I certainly wasn't desperate. I don't think anyone should act out of desperation for work. I think you should know your terms, back yourself, and go for it. And there's a podcast on that you can listen to. Now, in terms of the time that I will spend with that client and that my colleague will spend with that client to achieve outcomes, we don't set a fixed amount of time because we do put a hand on our heart and we want to sell outcomes. Let's say that in two hours in one month, we can get incredible results and it's two hours. Let's say that we need to spend four hours or six hours, month to month the time will change. I've got clients I work with in this space that need to give me a call about an important project and spend an hour with me at that particular time. The time that we spend is a little bit irrelevant. I always have an idea of minimum and maximum time that will be invested in a client, but my focus is on outcomes. I've also learned that just spending more time with a client is not a gift. It's not beneficial. It's not the thing that helps them. In fact, the less time you spend with your clients is the gift, because it's giving them time back. This client actually said to me, "I really want to get more time back." – it's not about the time that I spend with him, it's about the IMPACT that I have on his business. So if you feel like you've got clock watching clients, that is something to really think about here. The key here, and what I've learned over time, is that when I can reduce the time required to get an outcome, that is valuable to a client. My clients don't watch the clock because I've structured everything so that they don't need to watch the clock – what they watch is the outcomes. If we're talking outcomes, then it all comes back to my vision for my clients, which is in the brand section of my book. My vision for my clients is optimal business performance, prosperity, and peace of mind. We are all focused on getting those outcomes, whether that takes an hour or a hundred hours, that's what we're focused on. And we use diagnostic tools, which is all included in the program, to measure where they are at the beginning and how they're progressing along the way in terms of profit, cash, and time, because they are the three primary things that most business owners want to pull out of their business. The three key takeaways from this story are: the power of succession products, which is what's next on the menu after basic bookkeeping; regulating capacity with price; and when and why price becomes either irrelevant or takes a real backseat to outcomes and value. I recently did a podcast called Know your terms, Back yourself, and Value the heck out of your VIP Clients and I'd like to tie this story a little bit to that story. On the very same day that this prospect pressed go and accepted my fee structure, became a VIP client, paying rates that I once thought impossible, I once had a limiting belief around this. On that very same day, another VIP client asked if he could press pause on services for a few weeks due to capital raising problems, to which I responded by giving him one month free bookkeeping plus two and a half thousand dollars of complimentary succession services. And actually, I thought nothing of it. The opportunity to get to give back to the VIP clients who support me every single day in my practice is amazing to me. And, I think it's manners. If you listen to that other podcast, you'll hear the story of when I did this with another client, and I'm telling you this to illustrate that. As I said earlier, this is not about price gouging. This is not about, "Oh, how much can I charge?" This is about turning profit and making money into a byproduct of your impact, and doing something remarkably. I am so happy to tell you that the client whose story I shared in that other podcast is now absolutely thriving. We gave them months of complimentary bookkeeping. We gave them tonnes of strategy. They had been with us 13 years. They went from thinking they were going to have to close the business to actually getting through it – just getting a bit of clarity, getting back in control, and now absolutely thriving. Did we do all of that? No, we didn't. We were there to shine a light and support them. We were part of the journey. And that to me is just phenomenal and so exciting. Now, I'm all about helping you take action. I feel like from this read, you might have more questions than you have answers. Here's what I'm going to suggest: Jump on and join our private Facebook group called The Strategic Bookkeeper's Way, and in there ask all your questions. If you think that the emperor has no clothes on, shout out, "The emperor looks naked to me!" Sometimes, when someone tells you something in our industry, you just nod because you don't want to feel or look silly, but you think, "I have no idea what you're talking about." That is okay. Ask questions, my friends. This is a safe space with all of us beautiful bookkeepers there to support one another. Secondly, depending on where you are at in your bookkeeping practice journey, I recommend that you simply digest the content that I've provided here, even if that means listening tuning into the podcasts two or three times. Then, think about how you can move the needle in your practice with succession products or with regulating capacity with price rises, and by using my end-to-end conversion process – which is completely explained in the book – to convey your value and make your prospective clients and your clients outcome focused rather than price focused. So there you have it, ask questions, commit to being educated and take incremental action in the direction of success, and you are sure to get there. And, I'll be on the podcast and online helping you and redirecting you just in case you get a little lost along the way, which I have definitely done myself and which is all part of the journey. Lastly, a lot of this stuff is done for you in The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program, okay? Feel free to find out more about that through thestrategicbookkeeper.global.

Are you curious about how The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program can help you create a thriving bookkeeping practice so you can live your dream life? In this post, we'll share everything you need to know about the program. Why did I create this program? I've been in practice for about 13 years and prior to that, I was in heavy-duty business operations, as in, I helped grow our family business from 10 million to 100 million in turnover. To this day, I am pretty sure if I asked my father what I did there, he'd go scratch his head and say, "I'm not quite sure." I had the equivalent of a giant broom behind him, and I tidied up, cleaned up every department as I went, and systemised. The point there being that prior to starting my practice, I had a really great background in systemising and SCALING businesses, and I was also raised by iconic Australian entrepreneurs and world-class in the sales and marketing space as well. My top two human needs are growth and contribution. When I started out in my practice, I started out little. I was having a baby, and I wanted something flexible, but very soon after, I got an itch to do something a little more, and within a short time, I knew that one day I wanted to take the intellectual property that I was building and help others – it was a desire that was sparked early on. Within five years of starting my bookkeeping practice, I had successfully scaled it into a beautiful little boutique lifestyle practice. What that means is, I had created the SYSTEMS, the TEAM, and the beautiful pipeline, in terms of SALES and MARKETING where enquiries would just come through. I'd say over the years it's gone from good to great, but five years in, I scaled to a LIFESTYLE BUSINESS. From there, I took a massive sabbatical. I won't go into details here, but that trip heightened my desire to help everyone. But specifically, I'm a woman. So I had this burning desire to help women globally achieve true financial independence for themselves. The next thing is, early on in my journey, I did actually opt into a system built for bookkeepers and I was really excited and I thought, "Yes, I'm going to use this." And at the time, someone within that organisation said, "If you don't fill up your books within a year, then you're not worth your salt. You're not a good bookkeeper." While I did quite well with sales and marketing within the first year of getting that system, it was despite their system, not because of it. What that person said was, and could be, very damaging. It frightened me – not as much as it did for every other bookkeeper on the planet, but it did. I realised that their marketing systems were just terrible. The standard operating procedures were good, but the marketing systems were terrible. I think that sparked a desire to actually give bookkeepers the real message. And this is globally recognised – The skills and experience required to run a successful business are very different to those required to be a great technical bookkeeper. How can the program help? I've been in practice for 13 years, so over the last 13 years I have built a lot of great systems, a lot of great assets, and if you've read my book, you'll know that I called the first five years the f*ck-up years. Opting into the program is really about helping you to avoid more and more f*ck-ups. I've been speaking to bookkeepers lately and they tell me where they're at and things they're doing, and then I give them some information and some help, and they're like, "Holy cow, I just did not know this." And that is part of the program. It is helping you to FAST TRACK your results by: telling you what you NEED to know, by helping you IMPLEMENT what you learn, and by giving you done for you ASSETS, so you don't have to build them yourself. Three years ago, I made the decision to invest a whole lot more money in testing, measuring, and refining assets with the knowledge that I would do this, that I would launch The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program to benefit many. That is a big thing to know because what I did is, I invested far more time and money than it would be viable for you to do yourself. If you are using my book and podcast, you'll absolutely kick goals, get gains, and get massive value. I would love to hear about it too. I would love for you to tell me how you're going with all of that. But, it is not viable for you to go out and recruit the team that I have recruited to do the things that I have done, and I would not have done it for just my practice. I started this journey three years ago of my 13-year journey because I knew that I was doing it for the many. So that's a bit of my story as it relates to how I would like to help you. Next, I would like to let you know that this is NOT a static course or set of manuals. I want you to know that The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program is a live and evolving program. When you get in there, you're going to get the STRATEGIES and the ASSETS. I always like to remind you that these are two big keys. The strategies that you need are really robust detailed strategies, but also the assets, meaning all the collateral. Think marketing collateral. If you've read my book, you're going to get it done for your brand. You're going to get done for you menu, you're going to get done for you product. That comes into the attraction step of my seven-step method. The takeaway here is that the program is not static. It's EVOLVING. While you get all that stuff, you can expect me to be there evolving with you. New strategies and assets, updated strategy and assets – designed not to overwhelm, but with carefully released version control. Who's the program for? The program is for BOOKKEEPERS and ACCOUNTANTS in practice, It's that simple. Bookkeepers and accountants in practice, that are either established or just starting out. It will suit either. Basically, no matter what stage of business you're in, the program will suit you. I've worked my bum off to structure it so that it would suit everyone, depending on whether you are a startup or 10 years in. I'm telling you, if you're 10 years in, I'm still going to give you massive, massive value. I've structured the program so you can use it as a bit of a choose your own adventure. You've got your seven principles. Let's say you are five years in, and have heaps of clients, but you're like, "I need to squeeze more juice out of the orange." And you might say, "Jeannie, I'm just burning with desire, ready for the advisory part." – which is succession. Then, I can help you with how you choose that adventure. Let's say you are earlier on and the word advisory makes you freeze up like a deer in headlights. Don't worry, I've been there. You are going to get the support to tackle what's going on for you. That's just an example of tailoring the program. I've built it so I can help everyone in a way that allows you to choose your own adventure, get tailored support, and you're going to play the long game with me. We're going to go on a lap around the sun together. The problems that the program seeks to solve If you walked up to me at a restaurant or something or a party and you said, "What do you do?" I might say, "I help bookkeepers with SALES, MARKETING, and SYSTEMS." That's what I might say, and I hope that's helpful for you as an overview of what I'm helping you with. The problems that it seeks to solve are: how to find new clients, how to onboard new clients, and how to retain them without price as a priority – which is the heart of your viable business. And the last problem it really seeks to solve is around FUTURE-PROOFING. Again, some of you might go, "Oh, yeah, future proofing, the emperor has no clothes. What the hell does that mean?" Future-proofing is really just about adapting to the economic, tech, and business landscape. As it evolves, your business, your services, and your productised services need to evolve as well. A good example of that is you think, 13 years ago, we did a lot more grunt work that now technology does. Over 13 years, we've adapted and evolved our productised services to that changing tech landscape. Now, advisory is a piece of that puzzle, and I would love to help you to move into that space but I am not going to throw you in the deep end. If you come into the program and say, "Jeannie, I never want to do advisory." I can still help you, but I'm probably going to keep tapping you on the shoulder and seeing if I can get you to put your toe in the water, but no deep end. I'm not going to throw you in the deep end. But this word advisory is a yucky word that has lots of mystery and fear around it. I'm going to demystify it because I've built a system. This is an advisory system built by a bookkeeper for bookkeepers. If you come in and you trust me and you let me hold your hand a little, I'm going to be able to get you to practice some of it to a point where you're comfortable to actually try it with a client. But basically, those are the three problems that the program seeks to solve. Now, everything else that it seeks to solve is more of a symptom of you not solving that problem. For example, "Jeanie, I need to fix price." That's a symptom of something. Why do you need to fix price? This kind of thing. I could play the why game on that, but we'll move on. As I said, this is about sales, marketing, and systems, and I have given you a full-package solution. The next thing I would like to talk to you about, briefly, is your COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE, and everyone needs a competitive advantage. In fact, I would suggest that you are retaining the clients that you have now because of your selling points and your competitive advantage. You might just not really have dived into what they are because they can be quite vast, but when you come into the program, I certify you as a strategic bookkeeper, and you get a badge, and you become a strategic bookkeeper in the eyes of your clients with a set of strategies and assets. That alone becomes an amazing competitive advantage. We actually list you in a directory as well, but I'm not going to get into that here because, as I said, I want to avoid overwhelm. We are also going to give you other things that give you a massive competitive advantage, which are strategies and assets that you can use and then display – PLUG-AND-PLAY ASSETS. What that means is that you're going to be able to take the assets that I give you and you're going to be able to plug them into your digital ecosystem. For example, your digital ecosystem is your website and your social media profiles primarily. You're going to be able to plug them in, and then I'll give you the strategy on how to use them and go to market with them. All of this is going to give you a massive competitive advantage, selling points, unique selling proposition, which means you have the opportunity to never lose an opportunity to a cheaper competitor ever again. Now, there's actually ONE strategy that I developed only this year or late last year because I was looking at the business landscape and going, "Wow." Over a few changes. I reflected on my 50 years in business from when my father opened when I was one year old, and there's an old-school strategy that he had, and I never thought that I would renovate it to use in our industry, and yet I did because of the changing business landscape. I've created this strategy, and I actually cannot tell you what it is because it's in the vault for the members of the program. But, this one is such a powerful, incredible competitive advantage – completely transformational that I've made a decision to keep it just for the members of the program, but to rinse and repeat, it will allow you to never lose an opportunity to a cheaper competitor ever again, unless you decide that prospective client is not right for you. Imagine that a cheaper competitor goes, "I'm cheaper." And that often you face, "This person's cheaper, and it's just bookkeeping. It's a grudge purchase. I'll go with them." I'm giving you strategies and assets to make sure that person comes back to you, values you, and has another conversation with you. The program structure The next thing I would like to tell you about, it's more into the details of what and the structure. I am a trainer and assessor. I have a real passion for delivering adult learning. So you will notice if you've met me or you've seen me speak, even on my podcast, you might notice, I can get a bit teachery when you see me face-to-face in events. I am looking and I'm testing to see if you are absorbing knowledge. The what is the SEVEN STEPS: Brand, menu, attraction, conversion, succession, systems, and team. I've got a file system. As you can imagine, you might call it a server, and it contains all the strategies and the assets. We've got all that there, and it's ready to provide to you to plug-and-play. It's a 12-month program that is largely SELF-PACED. So there's a structure, and I'll be in there with you. You'll get the course material, and then I'll be in there every fortnight with you doing COACHING and IMPLEMENTATION SESSIONS and making it all work. Because it's one thing to give people knowledge or throw them in a Facebook group, but it's another to actually get results. My program also comes with a MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. Join the program waitlist and you'll get to know more about it, obligation-free. You'll get all the details, no strings attached. So, the program – you'll move through it super fast. But even if you move through it super fast, here's one thing I will tell you: Any transformation in business or even in your personal life, normally takes a lap around the sun – a year. It's almost cosmic. When you set a big goal, here's what I see happening: I might set a personal goal, just like a business goal. Often, I kick that goal pretty quick because I come up with a goal action steps and I swing into action. Before you know it, I'm doing really well, but here's what I know: I know that once I've kicked the goal, there's the practice makes perfect or practice makes progress, and there's the bedding that habit down. You've achieved something, but it's about achieving it daily in our lives and actually making it something that's PERMANENT. I really know this with all my heart, and I also know that when I work with my clients, when I get them to have this mindset of the LAP AROUND THE SUN, what happens is on day one, when everything seems like, "Wow, here's where I am now." And you've got questions and all these things, then a year later, after we've worked together consistently, I actually have to remind you where you were because you can't even remember. Now, that doesn't happen after a week, a month, or three months. It does take a lap around the sun to make that transformation, I guess, from caterpillar to butterfly. It really does take that lap around the sun. Can you move through the program quickly and get results? Yes, as I have structured both the program and the fee – I've structured it so that you'll get a return on investment and kick goals incrementally throughout the year. To get the fee structure, hop on to the waitlist, but definitely, I imagine that within six months you're like, "Yeah, I've got this." And then the last six months is really a lot of just that refinement, tweaking, and testing. After a year, I consider that you have graduated, just like you've graduated school. There are five things that I believe make this program work in a holistic way to get you results. They are education, assets, implementation, team, and support. EDUCATION: You need to know what you need to know first. I speak to bookkeepers, and they tell me what they know and I go, "No, can I tell you what I do?" And they're like, "What? I could do that." I'm like, "Yeah, you could." And the impact on your business and life would be massive. I'm going to educate you. I'm going to tell you what you need to know. How am I going to do that? You're going to have access to online course material, and then every fortnight (at this stage), as part of that education, you've got sessions with me – group sessions where I am coaching you, and supporting you, and helping you to implement what you learn. ASSETS: You're going to get a suite of assets. You'll get the assets, but then what do you do? IMPLEMENTATION: We're going to teach you what you need to know, give you the assets, and then we are going to show you in both live sessions and in the course material how to implement the assets and use the strategy. That's really important, and that's a big part of that lap around the sun because we want to keep helping you. After you've implemented, it's about the practice makes progress, practice makes perfect. After that lap around the sun, you can't even remember the time that you didn't get it quite right because it's working now. TEAM: Remember earlier I said that three years ago I made the decision to invest a lot of time and money into a team to help me refine, build, and bed down all of the assets and strategies that I'm now giving you? I have a team that a bookkeeping practice could not conceivably recruit and make viable. What I mean by that is, you could absolutely go out and recruit them, even if you've got, say, 10 on your team. You could go out and recruit them, but the investment in that team – you would struggle as one bookkeeper to get the return needed to make it viable. SUPPORT: When you join the transformation program, you get my team, and you get them in this way. First of all, you've got me as a bookkeeper coaching you, someone that's been there, done that, and I'm in there in those live sessions coaching you, and I have provided you with all of that education in the course material, but you get me. You also get my world-class marketing strategist. She was the last person that I onboarded into the team, and what I called the missing link. I looked in every country in the world. I recruited globally, and I only got a handful of applicants. That's how specialty her skill is as a marketing strategist. So you'll get me, along with a world-class marketing strategist, and then you've got our branding and graphics person behind the scenes there, building out and updating a lot of your assets. You've also got someone behind the scenes who's narrowly focused on standard operating procedures and team, as I see systems and team as standalone. With systems and team, I have got a dedicated person that will treat that separately and help you to implement the done-for-you standard operating procedures, recruit, and manage winning teams, and she's extraordinary. You get the entire team there to support you. I've already mentioned the money-back guarantee, and I do think it's better that I give you the details of that when you join the waitlist, but it's pretty simple. Basically, the fee structure for the program – the investment – is so easy to get the return on. In fact, I know that if you onboard just one new client, it'll pay for itself. Or if you onboard one and upgrade one, then it will not only pay for itself, the profit margin fully under managed with the team, it would pay for itself. All you've got to do is achieve that. I know that you've got your money back. If you can't achieve your return and investment, money-back guarantee. There is so much more I could go into, but I feel like I've given you a really good overview. I do have some FOUNDATION MEMBERS special offers to celebrate the launch of the program. I'm going to do a separate explanation for this but right now, I just want to really encourage you to jump on the waitlist for The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program, because that does not oblige you to join. What it does is it SECURES your place in the queue, so you don't miss out. I would love nothing more than to help you become a strategic bookkeeper and thrive in practice, to achieve your dream on your terms through my transformation program. See you soon.

If you've ever tried business networking and it hasn't worked for you, I'd suggest it's because no one has shown you how to make it work – the strategies and the detail. So if you've got limiting beliefs like, "I'm not good at business networking." Or, "I'm too introverted." Or, "I'm not comfortable with that.", then I'm here to help you smash through those limiting beliefs that are not serving you. Okay, so business networking – IT DOES WORK. I have proven it. I've done it myself, and it can be really enjoyable. It can be lots of personal growth. And today, my aim is to help you with the strategies to do exactly that. My book will definitely give you more information, and The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program will turbocharge that help. Because business networking can be very powerful, we go into that in more depth in the program. We educate you, then we give you done for your assets around menu and other strategies that are really important to take with you to business networking. And then, we help you implement everything and then we continually support you to make it all work. Because as I like to say, the world never stops spinning. So your strategies cannot be static. As the economic and tech landscape changes, we are there to change with you in the program. Click HERE to know more. So, most bookkeepers that I meet don't enjoy networking and they struggle to make it work. By the end of this read, I want you to be educated around WHAT makes it work, and I want you to be able to implement what you learn. Because if you do join a formal networking group or maybe you've already joined one, I want to make sure that actually first and foremost, you enjoy it and then you also make it work for you. You generate revenue and profit and delighted clients, and eventually, the privilege to live your dream on your terms. That's what it's all about. If you've tried networking and it hasn't worked for you or you haven't enjoyed it, why? Now, you will already have decided why, but I want you to think about that right now. Was it because you think you are not built for networking? Or because you are not an extrovert? Do you think that networking works way better for extroverts? Maybe you thought the pressure of the structure was too much, or maybe you just blame the fact that people simply didn't refer to you. But then why does networking work for some bookkeepers and not others? I'd like to sum that up in three words for today, and that is CLARITY, STRATEGY, and CONSISTENCY. And we are going to look at those individually but before we do, I want to circle back to the extrovert one. Business networking does not work better for extroverts than introverts. I would say it may sometimes appear that it does in the short term because extroverts are generally better at the hustle, at getting out there and hustling and tap dancing and getting some runs on the board. But, that is not the key to success for the long term. It's not the key to a profitable practice, and it's not the key to profit generally. It's often the key to some quick sales and some quick revenue, but whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, that doesn't change. What makes business networking work are the strategies, clarity, consistency, and strategy. In fact, the grandfather of business networking, Ivan Misner, founder of BNI, is an introvert! So let's just get rid of that myth right now. I built my bookkeeping practice in the early days using business networking. In one year, I generated over $100,000 in revenue from business networking alone. So it can and it will work for you, but first, we really need to reset your thinking and give you the strategies around how it's going to work. Let's start on clarity. In terms of this, I'm going to tell you what doesn't work first. So if you are a really great skilled bookkeeper, so you're super, super skilled and you know exactly what you're doing and you're one of the top tier, top 20% bookkeepers, that is great. But if you go along to a networking event with just that... we'll call her Rebecca. I'm Rebecca, and I'm a great bookkeeper, and I'm going to turn up. And if somebody needs a bookkeeper, I'm in the networking group, they'll ask me what I do and I'll say, "Oh, I do bookkeeping and I do it really well." And then that will all work for me. That is what doesn't work, because it lacks the clarity and the strategy. You might be able to get the consistency piece where you turn up every week on time, looking professional, looking awake, not tired, you're playing the long game, all of those kind of things. You might be prepared for consistency, but I would suggest that you're lacking clarity and strategy because when you turn up to that networking event, the clarity you need is around WHO you serve and WHAT problem you solve. And that clarity comes from nailing your brand and developing your menu. Those two chapters of my book, so you can just read those chapters along with the playbooks to allow you to actually develop your brand and develop your menu. And as I mentioned earlier, that's also all done for you in the program if that's what you'd rather have done for you. So when attending your networking group, here's what's going to make all the difference: Showing up with a clear brand and the ability to talk to your business buddies about the BENEFITS of what you do, rather than the features Being great at what you do is different to the skills and experience required to run a successful business. You need sales and marketing acumen in order to run a successful bookkeeping practice. But the great news is you don't need to become a salesperson. I have given you exactly what you need in terms of sales and marketing for bookkeeping. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, you are really a solver, not a seller. But in terms of sales and marketing, you need to be able to convey your unique SELLING PROPOSITION and the benefits of what you do, in order to be competitive and stand out, and to help business owners self-assess their need to work with you and choose you over your competitors without price as a priority. And your brand and your menu is the first steps to doing that. So you need to nail those and be taking them into the networking group with you. That is the clarity piece, and it's moving into the strategy piece. Strategy. In terms of strategy, let's first talk COLLATERAL. You don't want to go into a networking event without collateral, and by collateral I mean the idea of brochures and things like that. But I don't advocate for going out and creating six-page glossy brochures. You can do that, but these days people's attention spans are short. So the first piece of collateral that you need to create is your MENU, because it is nice and simple. You've got a one-page solution on there, which is very graphical, and then it just incorporates your vision and your mission. So it's your why, your how, and then your menu kind of illustrates your what, but it's translated into a language that business owners understand and that helps them to self-assess their need to use you without price as first priority, and to choose you over your competitors. That really nice simple piece of collateral is the best place to start. If it's the only thing that you ever had in terms of collateral, it would still probably have the biggest impact. You absolutely want to have that with you, but not only to just show to people. I wouldn't be just giving my menu to someone – this is like a translator. We've talked about collateral, let's now talk about LANGUAGE. At a networking event, it's great to have your menu in hard copy. So then you are able to actually sit down with people one on one or even in a group setting. You're able to look at that menu yourself and rather than rely on hustle and habit, because good habits are hard to form. And if you're a bookkeeper that's used to talking about what like all of us are, forming the habit of talking about why can be near on impossible. Your menu's actually going to remind you to do it, which is so exciting. So then when you talk about what you do, this will translate it into why. And the language is so important because as I've said in my podcasts, people won't buy what you do, they will buy WHY you do it. And if you talk about what, they're going to think price, cost. When you talk about why, they're going to think outcome, benefit, yay, I'm not price-focused anymore. So the third one is ATTENDING the networking event. When you go to the event, you're not going to find one client at a time. Your may do and that's great, but your primary focus should be to find a partner that has your database. So for example, you are going to meet business to business business buddies, like say a social media business, a digital marketing business, an accountant. And they are going to have all the clients that could use your services. So you go to a business event to meet a partner. Now, in terms of how to make PARTNERSHIPS work, there is absolutely a deep strategy there, and I'm not going to go into that now because I've already gone into it and I'll point you to those resources. So number one, the book. So when you get to the attraction chapter, in there, I'll talk about evergreen advocacy partnerships, and then you'll have a checklist in the playbook that's in there. And there is also podcast episode one, where I talk a little about that as well. And the program, of course, turbocharges that. We've talked clarity, we've talked strategy, let's talk consistency. So the first part of consistency is just turning up every week or every fortnight and COMMITTING to the long game. So I've said it before and I'll say it again: Success is found in the long game, not in the short game. If you are going to join a structured business networking group, please see it as laps around the sun. So your first year will be where you get your foot in the market, and then year-on-year, it will just get easier. So consistency first thing, turn up. Second thing around consistency is manners and etiquette and professionalism. So we are going to turn up looking professional. That doesn't mean you have to have a suit on. Whatever you want to be in terms of on brand for you, work that out and just make sure you turn up looking neat and tidy. And make sure that you turn up on time or early, and make sure that you have got manners and etiquette and make sure that you are professional. I've always kind of liked to say that when I go to work, when I go to my business, and whenever I have worked in all of my career, there's two Jeannie's. So there's one that turns up at work because that Jeannie is professional. And that's actually for me, that's about respect. It's about respecting my clients because with my clients, I have a professional relationship. There's an exchange of money, and I need to respect that with professionalism. So that's a really important subject to understand and to really work on your professionalism. We don't treat our clients and our business buddies like friends at the local restaurant that we're having lunch with. So then there's the personal Jeannie that loves to Latin dance and goes to restaurants with her friends. And even though I'm the same person, I don't have to be professional in my personal life. I can be silly and ridiculous. I can even say things that are really challenging to my friends. Now, I think that is just something I see bookkeepers struggle with. I see them let that professional edge slip away in their client relationships and they think it's okay. But I can tell you I've spoken to those business owners and they say, "You know what? I really didn't like that my bookkeeper did X, Y, Z." Even though they told their bookkeeper it was okay. I can tell you right now, err on the side of caution and be professional, really professional, which is really, really easy when you learn just to put that business owner hat on. Don't put the casual Jeannie hat on if I'm using my name. Or let's say your name is Rebecca, don't put the casual friendship hat on. Put the professional work hat on. That's a part of consistency. Manners and etiquette and play the long game. So it's about turning up, listening, seeking to understand others before seeking to be understood, which is about introducing yourself, shaking someone's hand, looking them in the eye, seeking to understand, listening. All of these things that are actually quite easy will help you win the game of business networking, and win hearts and minds. I'll jump back a moment to the strategy and the collateral piece – so, having your menu is absolutely number one as I said, but having your welcome lines ready is going to be really powerful as well. I walk through developing your welcome lines in the book, and I've also done a podcast on Product Ladder. Listen to that podcast to make more sense of it. What I would suggest right now in terms of taking action: absolutely nail your BRAND and develop your MENU, but don't wait until you've developed your entire PRODUCT LADDER. In the podcast I talk about making sure you've got your file health check. And you can have that ready in an hour or less if you focus on progress over perfection. Prolific not perfect. You know how to do a file health check. You're a bookkeeper. It doesn't have to be perfect or totally structured. You're going to do your laps around the sun. You are going to refine you, and you're going to get better every single month. Just work on nailing your perfect version one of your brand. But again, progress over perfection. Same with the menu, progress over perfection. Just get whatever you can get out as fast as you can. Get to that networking event and practice it, practice the heck out of it at the networking event. There is nothing like refining in the market itself, rather than back at the office behind your computer and your keyboard where everything feels safe. Now, if you would rather all of that done for you, we serve you up a done for you brand, and a done for you menu, and done for you product ladder, and lots more in the program. And I would love nothing more than for you to become a strategic bookkeeper by joining my program. You can know more about it HERE. To finish up, I guess I would also just reiterate that business networking can and does work. I've proven it. It's the strategies. It's the consistency. It is the clarity. I have met lifelong friends, lifelong business buddies, and lifelong clients through business networking. So it's worked for me, it can work for you. I have built this system for you as a bookkeeper, not for anyone else. Because I see too much stuff out there that's built for business owners generally and accountants, like advisory built for accountants. And I wanted to build something just for you as a bookkeeper and go deep into bookkeeper psychology, which is what I have done. This is built for you. So if you think, "I can't do this," that is not true. I want to help you smash through that limiting belief because I've built this for you and I continue to refine it just for you.

Today, allow me to share with you the massive power around knowing your terms, backing yourself, and then valuing the heck out of your VIP clients. This is like one of those 5% activities that will make 95% DIFFERENCE to not only your business, but also your life. I am so passionate about this, and I really, really encourage you to tune in so I can help you do better in your business through this powerful subject. So, do you ever feel like you want to share something, and you're right inside your square? Because I feel like this journey of knowing my terms is a journey that I have been on for so long. It's something that I got pretty right, pretty early on, and then I was able to improve on the whole idea of knowing your TERMS, which I want to talk about today, and backing yourself. Look, I have long been a very confident person, but confidence even for me, for anyone, I love to say, confidence does not fall ass first out of the sky, right? It is like anything. It takes work and commitment and effort, and it does take confidence to back yourself. And valuing the heck out of your VIP clients, well, when you know your terms, the terms upon which you uniquely want to work, and you back yourself, then you set yourself up to be able to VALUE your clients a lot more than you ever could have. And so to start, I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to set us up with a story, and stay with me, and I'll make sense of it all. So I'm going to change the names for privacy. So Josh and Amanda had been clients that joined me in the very early days of my practice, so that's about 12 or so, 13 years ago. Their business was hit particularly hard by COVID-19, the pandemic, but they got through it. So we all got through it. In the early days of the pandemic, just like all of our VIP clients, they saw us give and give and give, until it literally hurt. We really gave back to our clients during that time. During the pandemic, I say we closed ranks, and I closed ranks and I took care of my VIP clients like a she-wolf protecting her cubs. Internally, our mantra was that when a client said, "I need help," I said to the team, "Just say yes. Don't worry about what they need. We'll figure that out later." If somebody says, "I need help," say, "Yep, I can help you." And it was great. It was a really nice time to show the clients how much we valued them, because I already valued the heck out of them, and I was always going to be there for them through thick and thin, but you don't always have the opportunities to show them that, right? And COVID gave us that opportunity. So a few years after COVID hit, so not too long ago, Josh and Samantha were still trying to cord their way out of what had been a really difficult time, because they were in the entertainment industry, and it hit them really hard. Until one day they contacted me and they said, "You know what, we think we are going to actually have to cancel the bookkeeping. We are so stressed out, we don't feel like we can afford it. We actually think we might have to shut up shop completely and get jobs". Now, most small business owners are mums and dads, and so are Josh and Samantha. They've got three beautiful children. And so I said to them, "Right, no problem. We would like to continue your bookkeeping, with your permission, at no cost for the next two months, and also give you a suite of complimentary strategy services, so that we can investigate the numbers with you and help you navigate this difficult time at no cost." So what I guess I wanted to do was just take the pressure off immediately, but I didn't want to leave them in the lurch. These are wonderful VIP clients who had genuinely come to me in trouble. And so I just wanted to say, "Do you know what? Don't worry about it. We'll just keep taking care of the bookkeeping for a couple of months while you figure out what the heck is going on, but let us figure out that with you." So they hadn't opted into succession services yet, and I said, "Look, can I just give you some complimentary? Can we just help you?" Okay? Now of course they were grateful because it just allowed them to take a breath, and then we swung into action. So what happened was that within a couple of months, and through investigating the numbers, we were able to help them see a path forward and also their revenue and profit improved by the end of the two months that we'd agreed to give them complimentary services. The business looked like it was getting back on track and that they would be able to move forward. But we got to the end of that couple of months, and I didn't want to put them under pressure to make a decision. So I said to them, "Just letting you know, I'd really like to give you the third month complimentary." It was at the beginning of the third month. I needed just for them to make a decision as to whether they'd like us to continue with the bookkeeping, and I'd love to talk to them about continuing to investigate the numbers with succession services. And I suggested that they keep working with us during that third month investigating the numbers so we could actually help them make that decision, okay? Because the figures don't lie. I don't have any problem in talking to a client about those, having the difficult conversations around the viability of their business. So basically, allow us to be in there with you looking at the numbers, while you make the decision. And Samantha got back to me and she said that they had got to a point where they realized that they would be able to continue the business in a way that it was viable, and thank you so much. And they would love to continue with the bookkeeping, and they would love to also just get a proposal to take up the succession services around the investigation of the numbers, and also look at a few other things as well. So the moral of that story, there's lots of morals to that story. One, it's really nice to help people, but valuing the heck out of your VIP clients is... It is so first and foremost what we need to do in the sales and marketing space. It's the first thing we need to do, not to go out and razzle-dazzle and hustle, and find new clients. The first thing we need to do is make sure that we understand the value of a VIP client, and make sure we know how to take care of them. Now, you might be thinking, "I can't afford to do free bookkeeping," and I don't advocate for doing free bookkeeping. I wouldn't consider what we did free bookkeeping. This is a client that's been with us for about 13 years. I would consider what we did manners, and I love to use the phrase manners marketing. I just think this is the diamonds at your feet. The diamonds at your feet that you may not be seeing, okay? So taking care of your existing VIP clients by talking to them, and seeking to understand them, and offering them succession services, and valuing them, and understanding the value that they have to your business. The longer a client is with you, the more loyal they have been, and the higher the value that they are to your business. Work out how long have you had a client times X that they spend with you, that is the value that they've had in money terms. Add on that they've told people in the market that you're great, they're also your PR. So look, I could go on and on about this. I think the key takeaway here is the diamonds at your feet, and valuing the heck out of your VIP clients as a sales and marketing tool, as just a general good values and ethics thing as well. But if we are talking about building a thriving practice, it is such a hidden diamonds at your feet, sales and marketing tool. Circling back to know your terms and back yourself, because I said I would start with the story and then I'll connect the dots... Knowing my terms and backing myself has absolutely been key to building a thriving practice with delighted, raving fan clients, and having that lifestyle business, which is my dream on my terms. Many of you will know that I'm the mum of a special needs child, or as I like to say, he's not ordinary, he's extraordinary. But no matter how I paint that picture, my dream on my terms has been very important in terms of me, and my journey as a mother, and what I have needed to keep stress levels low. Now when I say know your terms, absolutely know your general terms of trade, okay? So that's really general stuff. So how you'll get paid, all of those kind of things. But when I say know your terms, I actually am more referring to design the business, the productized services, design the way that you are going to trade, to suit you as an individual, and the life that you lead. There are absolutely some rules of the game when it comes to how we operate as bookkeepers in practice, and how we work with our clients, and communicate with our clients. But, there are lots of stuff that is choice and individual. The simplest example, and there are many more things other than this, but the simplest example is the choice to offer onsite work or not to offer onsite work. And the simplest example of not knowing and setting your terms, or not setting your terms, is saying yes to onsite work when you really don't want to do it. And if you don't want to do onsite work, it actually doesn't matter why. The point is that we are just... With that one as an example, we're at a time in our industry where you don't have to do onsite work to run a thriving practice. Now, some people love onsite work because they enjoy the variety, they enjoy going onsite. I know really amazing, successful bookkeepers who do a lot of onsite work, onsite training, and they thrive on it. I hate it. I don't do it, and I won't do it, but there was a time eons ago where I did do it and I really enjoyed it. So things can be a moving target as well. The ideology shift and the mindset shift that I want you to make here and understand, the key to how I built my thriving practice in terms of my terms, is that there is not a one size fits all approach, and it is about architecting the way that you want to trade that fits you first, not your clients. You will not do your clients a disservice just by working out what suits you. Another example, that you want to work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and you don't want to work Monday, Friday. As long as you get the outcomes that you need for your ideal clients, and you're not trying to please all the people all the time, you don't want to work with everyone, you want to work with your people. As long as you get the outcomes that you need, then that's what matters. And I met a bookkeeper years ago, fabulous, great bookkeeper, and I remember she said when she takes on new clients, they have to change their payroll calendar or their payday to suit her. And some bookkeepers would think, "Oh my goodness, you can't dictate terms like that." Yes, she can. It suited her. There is a no one size fits all approach. There are rules of the game, and some basic, obvious things that we all need to do, but there is lots of things that you can do to choose your own adventure, choose how you want to trade. Another thing I decided early on is that whenever I spoke to a prospective client, my process would be that I did the needs analysis, I went away and I had time to digest that. I worked out what kind of product or service they needed, and then I created a proposal with all of that in it, including my trading terms, and then I had an opportunity to walk them through it. So if I had a prospective client that said, "I want to know your rate," and I would say, "Actually, well, here's the way I work. So I find out what you need. And then I digest that and I put that into a proposal." Now, if somebody said, "I don't like that," or they said, "I don't like that you want to get paid in front, I don't want to do that,"... I simply didn't do business with them. So I worked out the terms upon which I wanted to trade, and then I backed myself. So that's where I segue into backing yourself. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I hear a lot of bookkeepers complain about cost focused clients that don't value them, or clients that they're working with that just aren't their kind of people. I would suggest that you don't know your terms and you're not backing yourself. And knowing your terms and backing yourself, going, "You know what? These are my rules and I'm not going to break them. I've created these rules to create a safe space for me and my family, for my health, for my mental, spiritual, and physical health. I've created these rules. I've created a fence, and I'm going to stay inside that fence, and I'm not going to let anyone dictate to me that I have to create new rules." When you back yourself like that, it allows you to have this foundation, to build this thriving practice, but also to delight your clients because you end up by default working with the right kind of people. This leads to a better foundation for a profitable practice, which leads to the ability, the time, the space, the money, to actually value the heck out of your VIP clients. So when you are a bit more flexible on your terms, when you're not, "Oh, I don't really don't know what my terms are, I think my clients tell me they need this, I don't know, just say yes, aren't they in charge?" No. Right? When you do that, when you don't back yourself, what happens is you get busy with the wrong kind of clients. You get terrible profit leakage because you're working with the wrong kind of clients. You get distressed and stressed. Your mental, physical, and spiritual health suffers because of all the stuff going on, and your wonderful VIP clients actually suffer. You don't have the time, the money, the energy, to value them and take care of them. So now let's talk taking action. Firstly, I hope I've conveyed the synergy, okay? So starting with that story, around my ability to value the heck out of that wonderful VIP client – I didn't know if she was going to trade out of it. I didn't know if she was going to stay with us. The point is, I had set myself up to be able to value the heck out of her, which is, it gives me so much joy. And your bookkeeping practice should give you joy. If it's not bringing you joy, pause. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So first off, I'm really hoping you can see the synergy that when you do the work, in order to know your terms, the terms upon which you as an individual want and need to trade to put yourself first, and then you back yourself. So when someone tries to shake your cage and get you to relent, and we've all been there, and we've all made that mistake, but when someone tries to shake your cage, you say, actually, even if you only say it in your head, "Actually, these are the terms upon which I trade, and I've learnt from experience. If I break my own rules, things don't go so well, and it's a domino effect, and everybody gets hurt if we break the rules." So if you back yourself, actually, you will set yourself up to value the heck out of your VIP clients. So that part will come easily, because you will free up the time, the money, and just the space, the mental space, the mental, physical, and spiritual space, actually. So that's the first thing. The second thing in terms of taking action is I really do suggest that you sit down, and it might be over a period of weeks, and you just do that work, that personal growth around, "Okay, what do I need? So what do I ultimately want in the future?" "Where am I now, and where do I want to be?" Let's say right now you're working Monday to Friday and you really want to take Fridays off, work out what your 10 out of 10 look like, I like to say. So you know, score your bookkeeping practice in your life right now. You might say, "Oh, if I was to score my practice, now I'm a six, or I'm a five, or I'm a four, or whatever." Then say, "What does 10 out of 10 look like?" And you say, "Well, 10 out of 10, I'm working four days a week. I'm working three days a week. I'm working four hours a week." You can absolutely scale into that lifestyle practice, but definitely as that action item, sit down and work out your terms and know that there's not really a major wrong or right. Like I said, there's the obvious things that we have to do. But beyond that, like I said, for example about onsite work versus offsite work, and there's lots of other things like that. You work out how you want to turn, how you want to trade. What days do you want to work? What hours do you want to work? Are you okay taking after hours phone calls? Do you know what? I actually don't mind hearing from my clients after hours or on weekends. I've had great convos on a Sunday. I connect deeply with my clients, but that doesn't mean somebody else should. And if I had a boundary where I didn't take a call from a client after hours or on a weekend, they wouldn't mind. It's about me setting my terms. I do it because I actually love it. I really enjoy it. From the outset, I remember texting a client back and forth at 10 o'clock at night over a payroll. That's me. I love it. My terms. My dream, my terms. Your dream, your terms. Your trading terms. Please sit down and work them out. I promise this is the 5% activity that will make 95% of the difference. Once you've got that in place, some of it will need to go in writing, and some of it will be just something in your heart and your head. And so the second step is to back yourself. So then practice. Practice makes perfect, okay? And it's a mistake the first time, and a choice the second. I've said that one before. Now, I'm the first to say, "I've made lots of bad choices then," right? It's okay to fall over a few times. Remember, it's either a win or a learn. So if you don't win, you learn. When I've broken my own rules before and then it bites me in the ass, I say, "Well, Jeannie, you broke your own rule. What did you expect to happen? Next time back yourself, Jeannie." So sit down, even if it takes you a matter of weeks. And remember, this is a moving target. When something in your life changes, when anything that you want changes, when you change, change your terms. As long as you're working with the right people for you, and you're getting the outcomes that they want, it is all good. So they are your action items. Work out those terms, and then practice backing yourself. Practice standing your ground, and then watch the beautiful mental, spiritual, and physical space that it frees up, that gives you the time to actually take your breath and value the heck out of your VIP clients, and give back, and talk to them, and jump in and read my book, because that helps – educating yourself helps your clients. And some of the bookkeepers out there, they will tell me, "I'm too busy. I'm too busy all the time." Well, too busy is usually a product of something, and too busy doesn't usually mean too successful. In fact, the ability to free up time often means more successful. So when you are able to breathe and you've got more time because you've done these things, you'll be able to do activities that bring more wonderful things to your clients, even if that's just getting yourself mentally, spiritually, and physically healthier. Because when we're better for ourselves, we're better for everyone.

A product ladder is a smart strategic way to grow your bookkeeping practice, and so I would love to show you exactly what it is, and how you can use it in order to thrive. So first off, I am wondering if you have heard of a product ladder before. Even though the concept of a product ladder might be new to you, it's actually not a new marketing strategy, which is awesome because it is simple and it is proven. You can get started using a product ladder in your practice really quickly, which is what I'd like to show you today. So, I would not recommend Googling product ladder because it goes by many different names, including ascending transaction model, ascension model, value ladder, and lots of different things. Plus, what you find on Google is going to be really general, whereas what I'm going to share with you is going to be specifically built for bookkeepers, which I expand on in my book, The Strategic Bookkeeper. A product ladder has four rungs on the ladder and is absolutely ascending – from step one up to step four. Step one is content. And I heard recently from one of the mentors that I follow, he framed up step one as your platforms as well. It's the content that you offer up on various platforms in order to allow people to find out about you online. And it is valuable content, okay? I like to think of step one as your content, but also, think of that first rung on your product ladder as your platforms' as well, a literal platform. Like imagine, somebody gave you a platform and they said, "okay, please get on that platform", and you've got an audience in front of you. What would you talk to the audience about something that you know, that they'll get VALUE from? That is step one. And honestly, you don't know the mountain of value you are standing on. Primarily, bookkeepers just do not. They've got far more skill and confidence, and I promise you, you're standing on a mountain of value. So, step one is your content, put it out there on your platforms! Step two is what I call your welcome line. So, these are low cost or no cost ways for your prospective clients to get a feel for your value and try you before they buy you. All right? An example of some welcome lines that I use in my practice is we have a nice little e-book called the 7 Deadly Cash Flow Sins, which if you join my program, is a done-for-you step two asset that we co-author with you. But basically, it's a little e-book. Right? Somebody can read that and they can improve their cash flow and they think, wow! This girl can really help me. And another one is simply a county file health check. So, that's just a couple of examples. Step three is your product ladder. You've all got that – that's your core products and services. Step three is simply the bookkeeping and the whatever else you have on the menu to solve problems. All right? I could say sell as well, but I like to say solve problems. I definitely believe as bookkeepers, we are solvers more than we are sellers. (But, it's still important to get comfortable with sales and marketing lingo!) So, step three is those core products and services. Maybe if you haven't heard of product ladder before, the step one and the step two, the way that I've framed them up might be new to you and you might think, oh yeah, I'll do a file health check now. Great, you've got a step two welcome line! This is just about educating so you can pull it all together, and maybe use it a bit more strategically. Step four, drum roll please: Succession products. Absolutely love them. Succession, meaning what's next. What's next on the menu that will serve and solve problems for your existing VIP clients – these wonderful people that pay you on a regular basis to help them do better in their business. Because that's what bookkeeping is, to help people do better in business. Succession products are ultimately things that you should really have on the menu for existing clients, and it is really important for when prospective clients come to you as well for you to be able to sell them what they WANT rather than try and sell them what they NEED. That's a concept that I've talked about before, but if you're hearing it for the first time, it can be quite game changing. If you try and constantly sell what people need, you'll lose them. You need to give people what they want. So, when they first come to you, what they want is a bookkeeping done. But then as you start to work with them, you might be able to help them see, or you definitely will be able to help them see that to really get results, they might like to work with you on investigating the numbers, or maybe you've got some other secret skills like recruiting or setting up software, or anything else that's really going to deepen the results that you can get for them. Now, product ladders are all around you. You are moving through them all the time as you browse in shops and as you shop online. Okay? And I'd love you to start noticing them now when I tell you some examples. Here's one: I decided to buy myself a cruiser bike. I wanted a pretty good one. I did my research online, and eventually, I found a reputable bike store. So, that was step one. They're platforms. Right? They're a website, they're social media, that kind of thing. So, I went through step one of their product ladder, I found them online. Now, their content was really useful because I was able to build no lack in trust by seeing their reputation, like their Google reviews. And seeing that they look like an established company, they had a professional online presence, all these kind of things. You can read more on this on the The Strategic Bookkeeper, where I talk about attraction and profile. But step one – the content that I found on their various platforms. So from there, I was able to see that this bike store had some really nice cruisers. They look like good quality. They fitted my budget – and that was step two on the ladder. These were actually welcome lines because they were a little lower cost, still really great value like any welcome line. So I thought, you know what? That looks like the bike for me. I'll go into the store and I'll get it. Again, step two on the product ladder. And so I went into the store and I told the assistant about the bike I was looking for, and he showed it to me. Then he told me about a bike that was twice as expensive, but was he assured me 10 times as good. Okay? Step three on the product ladder, he's leading me into more of their core products. After I bought the bike, he made sure I was on the mailing list and that I booked a service. Ta-da! He actually began to engage me in what will be my succession products, going back to the store, getting a service, anything like that, what's next on the menu for someone who's already a client. So, your favorite stores are using product ladders every day to attract and convert you. All right? This is not a bad thing. It's not a sleazy thing. If you're able to find and buy what you want and get value from, it's a great thing. That bike, that upgrade of that bike from that lovely assistant who used the VALUE approach – meaning, if I give you VALUE in order to try and genuinely help you in business, or in this case, life, then you'll probably either buy something off me, or you'll tell everyone how awesome I was. Cue, word of mouth marketing. Right? So, sales and marketing has a bad rep with bookkeepers. They don't like it, and often, they think it's icky, it's yucky, but it doesn't have to be. Sales and marketing, you could give it the meaning. As I say, we are more solvers than we are sellers, and that's exactly what this young man in this bike shop did. He was seeking to SOLVE my problem, which is I don't have a bike and I need a bike. And he quickly, through just listening to me, could see that I wanted a decent bike that was going to allow me to have hours and hours of joy riding next to the beach here on the Gold Coast. So, hopefully from that example, you can see how simply a product ladder works, and that it works in every kind of business. So now, let's look at how to make them work in your bookkeeping practice. If you've got my book or you're picking up my book (because as mentioned, this blog and my podcast is a companion to the book), I start to reference product ladder in the attraction chapter because that's where the benefits of product ladder begin. Good strategic content and welcome lines being steps one and two on the product ladder are designed to help you ATTRACT and convert more clients. So, your content helps them verify you and starts to build the know, like, and trust factor, which is like what I mentioned earlier, exactly what I did with the bike store. The know, like, and trust, three massive keys on anyone deciding to do business with you, and you can build that online easily. All right? So, you've got a profile around your qualifications, your skills and experience, you might be registered with certain professional bodies, et cetera, et cetera. All of this is actually outlined in my book. And, there's a resource within the resource, which is the attraction playbook. It's going to give you a checklist for those items that will allow your market to build know, like and trust with you easily. Right? So, I've done it step by step for you. Now, your welcome lines go one step further. So, someone finds you online. You're up there on your platform saying here's me and here's all about me. The next step is, okay, well, I'll take up one of your welcome lines. All right? So, then your prospective clients can go a bit deeper, get a bit more value. Ideal welcome lines include, as I mentioned earlier, e-books, which ideally would be a how-to guide. So if you do the exercise around your market's problems, then you can come up with ways to create a nice how-to guide, which is ultimately a bit like a long blog turned into just a little electronic book that they can grab online, you could create an audio file with that. The sky's the limit. The other ones are the diagnostic tools – a way to diagnose problems, and file health checks and various forms of consultations. Okay? So, results calls, strategy sessions, free consultations, these are all really great welcome lines that you can attach a small fee to, or you can also give away for free. There's no real wrong or right, there, it does depend on a lot of factors. Okay? So, how busy you are, we're always going to regulate capacity with price and a lot of other factors. It's interesting to know that research shows that your prospective clients will digest, on average, seven hours of your content, including welcome lines... So, that can be step one and step two... Over four platforms in 11 different forms before they actually decide to do business with you. So when I first learned that, I was really surprised. But since then, I've made an effort to observe it. I've observed prospective clients who've told me, they've followed me for a year on social media before reaching out. So now, post-pandemic, more than ever, content is king. Okay? And we say engagement is queen. Now, if you are thinking of joining my transformation program, please know, a lot of this will be done for you. You get the e-book and we do the diagnostic tools and we give you all the consultations you should and could be using, and more really robust intellectual property around your health checks. So rather than race off and do it yourself, if you are thinking of joining, just make sure that you check the program out thoroughly rather than invest the time, energy, money in doing it yourself, if you're just going to end up with it all done beautifully for you. So now, let's move on to how you can take action. I do recommend that you use a pen and paper to sketch up your product ladder. If today's read is the first time you've ever heard of product ladder, more important than ever that you go through a process of really just wrapping your head around this. Use a pen and paper, and you can literally draw a ladder so that the concept sinks in. All right? So next, absolutely use my book. Use it as the how-to guide, because that's going to take this subject deeper and walk you through all of it. Now in terms of quick wins, let's start with welcome lines. So, the easiest one for all bookkeepers is a file health check. I think of welcome lines as me saying, "Rebecca, would you like to come through the door?", welcoming them through the door for some cheese and crackers. And then step three is the main course. Right? I think of the product ladder like that. The great thing about a health check is it's completely in line with what you do as a bookkeeper, with your core services. So when people first come to you or they're online and they're looking for you, think about the problems that they're having. They're either doing their own bookkeeping and they hate it, or they're making mistakes they probably don't even know about, or somebody else has let them down. They're feeling like they're behind on the bookkeeping, they're in the dark about their numbers, they're struggling to understand it all. Their gut feel is they should really be across all this stuff, and they're not. They're starting to get a really good correct gut feel that if they're across their numbers and they were actually strategic about their numbers, they would be able to do better in business. So all of these things that they're thinking, and they're thinking, I think maybe I need one of these professional bookkeepers to help me out. Well, a file health check is the first logical place to start, and it's actually tapping into those problems because you're saying, well, you're feeling in the dark, I'm going to give you CLARITY. A file health check is definitely one of the most powerful welcome lines that you could ever offer up. If you're not offering that now, you need to do it. You can price it anywhere between zero and a $100. I would recommend that you always have it. Ours, at the time of writing, is $99 plus GST. Now, the other thing about a welcome line is you're not going to make any profit out of that. I don't care if it takes you an hour and you're telling me, well, my rate is whatever – a profitable VIP client is paying you monthly over the year. Anything is a one-off. Even if you charge a $1,000 for 10 hours of catch up, if they never do anything else with you, really, how much did you make out of that? Your core products are about serving clients over the long term, anything else is more of a welcome line. I actually even think of my primary catch up services as welcome lines because I'm still welcoming them in. When they become a progress bookkeeping client, an ongoing bookkeeping client, then, hey, we're into core products. This is all just education and food for thought for you. All right? So you start to get more strategic about exactly what you're doing and how you're serving people. So in terms of action, that's definitely where I'd recommend you start: the file health check. But I just want to give you a couple more tips. My hot tip here is that to take your bookkeeper hat off a bit and try and put your sales and marketing hat on, somewhat. And the reason for that is that the gap that exists between the client and you in terms of knowledge is so big. And I've seen bookkeepers go into too much detail in it when they do a health check, and they start going all through the file and the issues. I recommend that you keep the detail brief and that you really keep it more high level, and that way, you can tailor it. So, let's say, I said, "okay, on a scale of one to 10, one being a perfect file, 10 being, oh my goodness! Brace yourself, your file is a three, and the main areas are that there's some items that sit unreconciled on the bank statement, et cetera, et cetera." And that way, you can ask, do you have any other questions about that section of your file? What you'll find is that business owners on the whole are more... They're not so detail orientated, you are detail orientated. Start with the end in mind. The end game with a file health check is to allow them to feel your VALUE, so that they say, "you know what? I'd like you to actually help me". Because the file health check is not where you'll help them the most – it's the best starting place. We start with a file health check every single time. In fact, when we finish a catch up, we internally do a file health check. They're critical, they're so important and they're very high value, but it's not where you'll get the biggest results. So, start with the end in mind. And the end game is, "okay, we've assessed your file. Do you want us to help you?" That's just about it. Please don't spend more than 10 minutes maximum on the bookkeeping detail, keep it very high level, very summary, and then answer detail for the detail orientated people. Very occasionally, I've had clients with the health debrief that are more savvy, say, oh, can you tell me about this, that, and the other thing? Can you explain the out of balance in the payroll? And I'm like, hell yeah, I love this stuff. But on the whole, people want to know how... On a scale of one to 10, how good or bad is my file? And then what exactly do I need to do to get it in shape? They want to see your menu so they understand the journey. They want to understand the customer journey and how you're going to move them from pain to prize, more than they want to know about the transactional stuff. It's an art, practice, practice, practice, but you really need to learn to speak client. All right? And you do need to have your sales and marketing hat on in this process, which as I've mentioned before, is not icky. This is about solving problems and about helping people choose you over your competitors because if they don't choose you, they're going to go somewhere else.

As a bookkeeper, building a thriving practice is a dream that can be challenging to achieve. It requires strategic planning, execution, and a secret sauce recipe that works for you and your bookkeeping business. After many years of building and growing my own bookkeeping practice, I have discovered seven key ingredients that have helped me achieve my dream on my terms, and become The Strategic Bookkeeper. Let me share them with you. 1. Brand The first ingredient in my secret sauce recipe to a thriving bookkeeping practice is your organisation's personality. It's your vibe. Your vibe which attracts your tribe. Your brand is not a brand asset – a brand asset is a logo, a brochure or a website. Your brand is your "why". Why do you exist, which is the ultimate outcome you want for a client. Your brand is why you exist, and it's backed up by how and what. So, how do you achieve your "why" for your clients and what you do (which is your services)? I dig deep into this through my book – The Strategic Bookkeeper, but for now, let me give you the three key benefits to brand, which are: client attraction connection competitive advantage You absolutely need to attract clients to your bookkeeping practice. When you are in buying mode or in research mode, you want to connect with the person or the brand, and brand is about competitive advantage. I know you don't want to compete on price. You want to compete on value, and outcomes, and more, and so brand is absolutely about competitive advantage. This is about your organisation's vibe attracting your ideal tribe. It's about connection. 2. Menu It may sound a bit strange – menu in a bookkeeping practice – but please do not think about a restaurant menu. Think of a day spa menu with beautiful images, which quickly relaxes you and connects you to why you're in the day spa. Your menu is actually a key digital brand asset, like a multipurpose brochure. Your menu is how you start with "why" when you're talking to prospective clients about what they need and want. Bookkeepers naturally lead with "what" – they talk about the features, the functions, and the tasks, "I do bookkeeping. I can catch you up on your books". I'm a bookkeeper, but I have a powerful menu that I use in my process to prevent me from starting with "what" and to help me start with "why" every single time. People don't actually buy what you do, and they certainly don't want to pay a premium for the what. They buy why you do it, why you exist. Meaning, they buy benefits, not features. So to give you an example, here are three possible benefits that can come from bookkeeping: clarity peace of mind a thriving business Your menu should be built to talk to your prospective clients and your clients in this language. If I was to summarise the benefits of the menu in one short sentence, it would be to improve conversion without a focus on price, conversion of prospects into clients, and conversion of basic bookkeeping clients into strategic bookkeeping clients with outcomes, and value, and benefits as priority rather than price. 3. Attraction As I mention in my book, I could write an entire separate book on client attraction alone. But to keep it digestible, you can absolutely find tons of information in the Attraction chapter of my book, and then you'll find a playbook to further help you with that information. Bookkeepers need to understand that simply finding new clients or generating leads on its own does not build a thriving practice. The ability to convert more leads into high-paying clients and turn those clients into raving fans, sell succession services, and retain them forever is where the transformation happens – not when you find a new client. If you are struggling to make client attraction strategies work for you when they seem to be working for other bookkeepers, I would suggest that it is definitely because you don't have all the other pieces of the puzzle in place. Being great at what you do doesn't necessarily mean you have the skills and experience to run a successful business, which is why getting all the pieces of the puzzle in place is what makes everything work. So start with brand and get that right, then get your menu in place that it is just so incredibly powerful, and then that will lead to your client attraction strategies working so much better, which is why it's the third step. I call these steps and ingredients, because they do work in order. You need your brand in place, and you need your menu in place, then client attraction is going to work better, but they're also a recipe because when you combine all the seven ingredients in harmony, they work. Back to client attraction – the key strategies that work for this is no big secret. The secret lies in how you make them work. So the ones that work really, really well are business networking. Getting out there, meeting people and building relationships. And then, nurturing your database. Once you are in practice and you start to meet people and build relationships, you are building a database. So investing in that database, and segmenting it, and keeping in touch with everyone is one of the very powerful strategies. Definitely, relationships, referrals, and partnerships is where it's at, but getting everything into your database and nurturing that database, keeping in touch with everyone is really important too. In my book, I go into all the different strategies and I also go into the paid strategies like SEO and Google AdWords, and I help you with how to make them work. 4. Conversion If the word "conversion" sounds salesy, well, I did it on purpose because I know bookkeepers hate sales. If you're feeling that way, I want you to pause, and take a breath, and know that I'm not going anywhere in terms of your limiting beliefs. I want to help make your current ceiling your new floor. When I say conversion, I really mean a way to help prospective clients self-assess their need – their desire to work with you. I've seen extraordinary bookkeepers that can't convert prospective clients not because they're not amazing, but because they don't have a way to help that prospective client. I also call them PCs just because they don't have a way to convey their value. This is about conveying your value, but the word "conversion" is there to also help you step up, step out of your comfort zone, and get a little bit comfortable with some sales and marketing terminology. Conversion is a process, it is most certainly not going from needs analysis to your proposed solution. That is a recipe for a cost-focused client. So if you are doing that, going from doing the needs analysis to presenting your services and their attached fee, then there is a lot of room for improvement, room to learn how to use a strategic end-to-end conversion process that conveys your value and removes price as an objection. The resources in my book will walk you through all of that. 5. Succession Now, when I say succession, I mean what's next. So what's next on the journey? What else is on the menu for your existing VIP clients? I call all your clients, your regular clients that are paying you on a monthly basis and trusting you, VIPs – Very Important People. Succession is where you go beyond basic bookkeeping and solve problems for your clients, not just your prospective clients. When you bring on a new client, it doesn't stop there. We start by selling them what they want, and then we eventually give them what they need. Succession products can be anything from investigating the numbers to any number of your secret skills productised to benefit your clients. Succession alone has the power to transform your business and your life. The clients in my practice who have opted into succession services where we have either been investigating the numbers alone as a service or offered business strategy service, have turned out to be the happiest raving fan clients who saw their cost become an investment that, in their own words, they couldn't do without. Succession products are absolutely the future of our bookkeeping industry. They are how you future-proof, adapt to automation, AI and robotics, and avoid having to compete with cheap overseas labor, up your value, and have more fun. Just like every element of the seven-ingredient secret sauce, start slow, and I promise to be there to keep educating you along the way. 6. Systems I tend to think of the last two ingredients – systems and team – as almost like one ingredient, but I'll break them down a little right now. You're a bookkeeper, you get systems, what and why they're important. What I'd like to remind you of right now is the primary reason they exist: They exist so you can keep your promises to your clients, and there is nothing more important than keeping your promises to your clients. People are polite. They will say it's okay. If you break promises, if you're less than professional, they'll say, "It's okay." Behind the scenes, they will not find it okay, and they will probably look elsewhere. And so, I'm going to give you great sales, marketing, systems, and strategies, and we can put them into your systems. We have done-for-you systems in our program, but it is so critically important to understand this concept of promises kept, and there is so much data out there on organisations that focused on that and how they saw a doubling and a tripling of their revenues and their profits from focusing solely on promises kept. If you cannot keep your promises to your clients, everything else will not have the impact that it should have, so please focus on that one and understand it's the primary reason why systems are important. 7. Team The very last ingredient is team. What I would like to tell you is about the two hats that you must wear, and must wear well. They are the leader and manager. You can do all the other stuff required to make a thriving team, but if you can't step up as a leader and a manager, you'll find yourself and your clients in a world of pain. You'll hear other short thought leadership around team, around building a culture, and all of these other things. But please don't get caught up in trying to be like a corporate when you've got one, or two, or three on your team. You're a very small business, you shouldn't need layers and layers of management, and you shouldn't have anyone on the team winging or breaking their promises. The key to all of this is really clear leadership, really clear management, and of course, systems. A manager has five key areas of focus: to plan, organize, staff, direct, and control. When you put your manager hat on, you need to be prepared to do those five things and to have those five key areas of focus in an uncompromising way. Those key five areas are to ensure that your team delivers on your promise to your clients, and that it’s done in a productive, profitable way. I know all this because I've learned the hard way. I've been a people-pleasing manager. I've expected team members to just do their job without the need for tight controls or for control generally, and what I've learned is that there is no avoiding managing, true managing. As for the leader hat: A leader sets and shares the organisation's vision. That's your why – your brand – and then provides high-level direction. You need to invest in being a great leader and manager. These skills do not fall ass-first out of the sky. They're built like everything else, and you'll find more about that in my book. So there you have it, the seven key ingredients to a thriving bookkeeping practice.

With every blog post that I write, every podcast episode that I record, there is always an outcome that I want for you – and today that outcome is to help you to ASSESS whether from time to time, or at times, you may be holding yourself back from building your thriving practice. To start, let's begin with a riddle: Who am I? I am your constant companion, so I am your greatest help or heaviest burden. I will push you onward, or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command. Half of the things you do, you might as well just turn over to me and I will do them quickly and correctly. I am easily managed – you must merely be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done, and after a few lessons, I will do it automatically. I am the servant of all great men and women, and alas, of all failures as well. Those who are great, I have made great. Those who are failures, I have made failures. I am not a machine, though I work with the precision of a machine and repetition of a machine, plus the intelligence of a human. You may run me for profit or run me for ruin – it makes no difference to me. Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you. Who am I? I want you to think and pause for a second before you continue reading. So, who am I? I am habit. Whether you've heard that riddle or not, I'm sure that, just like me, you love it or you loved it. A great habit will make us and a bad habit will break us. Good habits must be formed; bad habits, when they're formed, are hard to break. We all have good and bad habits, and this is linked to CHANGE. And change is really what I want to talk about today because when we resist change, when we resist breaking bad habits, when we resist forming new habits, we are holding. ourselves. back. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This is also about the victor or victim mentality: it's either you're a VICTOR, or you're the VICTIM. The victim is complaining about their circumstances, and I get that sometimes we are all there, but the victor very quickly finds a way to change their circumstances. When we take responsibility for what's happening in our business, then we have all the POWER to change. If we externalise the problems, if we blame our clients or the economy or whatever it is (even if there's a valid reason to blame an external force) – if we do blame an external force, we give away our power to change and we can't change anyone except for ourselves. I remember when I first learned that, I was told, "Jeannie, when you take accountability for anything, something, you have all the power. When you blame, you give all your power away." And so, now, even when something might not technically be my fault, I say, "Hey, I'm accountable. This is my business. I'm 100% accountable," and now I have the power to influence change – small change, big change, whatever it is. In terms of victor and victim, each has a BED and OAR. So with the victor, we say she uses her "oar" to row herself to success. OAR stands stands for Ownership, Accountability, and Responsibility. With the victim, we say they're lying in their "bed", and B-E-D stands for Blame, Excuses, and Denial. And in terms of making change in your business, I want to tell you that there's three A's to change. First is Awareness. You need to become aware that change is required, right? Then there's Acceptance – you need to accept that change is required. So, you might become aware of the problem, but you need to accept that change is required. And then there's Action. I was working with a business owner a while ago in the succession product area of what I do, and I introduced him to the three A's really early on. He identified immediately that he was always sitting in awareness, but never really moving to acceptance. Through really understanding those three A's, he was able to realise, "Okay, I'm aware and sometimes I even accept it, but then I don't take action." And so, I held him accountable to taking action. He actually said that the most impactful thing of the succession services that I delivered to him was the accountability piece. That is just showing up, jumping on the Zoom with him and saying, "Right, you said that you were going to do this. These are your goals, and you said you were going to, did you do it?" over and over and over, and just keeping him focused on that. But, moving from awareness to acceptance to action revolutionized his business, and it can yours as well. Now, this might all be sounding a bit ethereal, so let's put it into practice. I want to give you an example. So we're going to have a bookkeeper, and I'm going to call her Sarah, okay? So, Sarah is a great bookkeeper and she has a chapter of clients, like a list of clients, and she works very diligently, but she's not really pulling the INCOME and the LIFESTYLE that she really wants out of her bookkeeping practice. Her bug bears are that she often doesn't FEEL VALUED, and in fact, she has one particular client who she goes onsite with. This client insists she goes onsite when she doesn't really need and want to do onsite work, but he said, "I want you to come onsite." So, she goes onsite and she's frustrated and complaining that she doesn't want to go onsite, and she also tells me that this client watches the clock and questions her bill, and she goes, "He doesn't value me. He questions my bill, rather than appreciating all the hard work I do, and he doesn't even know that after hours I do some things as well, and I don't bill him for the phone calls that he makes, but all he sees is the clock." If I was to say to Sarah that she has found herself working onsite because she's failed to TAKE CONTROL, and that the client doesn't value her because she's failed to CONVEY VALUE – then I'm making her very much aware of the problems, okay? It might be a bitter pill to swallow, but the problems are the problems. It's not offensive to make a mistake or to get something wrong. Like I've said before, it's a win or a learn. So, if I'm to make Sarah aware of those two things, then the awareness piece is there. Now she's at a fork in the road, which is the acceptance piece. Her choices are she can sit in the problem and refuse to accept the truth of the situation, or swallow the bitter pill. She can blame the client for those things. She can use blame, excuses, denial, but if she does that, she won't be able to change. Or, she can simply take ownership, accountability, and responsibility and say, "Oh, okay, so I'm working onsite because I didn't take control. I don't quite understand that yet, but that seems to make sense." If she's someone who wants to just take responsibility and take all the power and says, "Oh, I'm not conveying my value. Well, how do I do that?" – she's already taking back her power. So, if we pull back on that blame piece and we say, "I'm going to take accountability for anything and everything that's going wrong in my business," you've just given yourself all the power to change and build your thriving practice. From there, Sarah can sit down and do the work around knowing her own TERMS. I have made a separate podcast around setting your terms and it's called Know Your Terms, Back Yourself, and then Value the Heck Out of Your VIP Client – do listen to that. And then in terms of Sarah going down a road where she learns to convey her value, I'll point you to a resource now. I would recommend that you read my book for that, okay? A lot of my podcasts deal with that subject as well, so absolutely listen to the podcast. To rinse and repeat, that story was about the fork in the road, right? So, the three A's to change: Awareness, Acceptance, Action. You cannot make change if you're just aware but you don't take action, or you're aware and you accept it, but you don't take action. If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, that's not change. This is about taking back the power. If you've heard yourself complaining about a problem multiple times and you're not doing what you need to fix that problem, take back your power. Take ownership, accountability, and responsibility of everything in your business, the wins, the losses, the successes, the failures, or as I like to say, the win or the lesson. The triumphs are yours to celebrate, but the losses are yours to take on board as well – and when you do that, you take all the POWER to build your dream business and life. Change starts with mindset. So, take some time to just digest this concept of the three A's to change. If this blog spoke to you and you think, "That was a hard read, I feel like I might be struggling with that", then I suggest you re-read this 10 times. Keep absorbing it. Everything starts with a mindset. Everything starts with the right way of thinking and education. For example, in The Strategic Bookkeeper Transformation Program, I'm so passionate about the formula we use – starting with EDUCATION. We need to teach you what you need to know, and then we need to give you the assets and help you implement everything you've learnt and everything that you've been given, and then we need to help you practice all of that and continually support you. This is no different. If you need to improve in these areas of the three A's to change the victim into victor, then you need to educate yourself and improve your mindset, and then you need to implement what you've learned, and keep practicing what you've learned. If this is a big change for you, make it a lap around the sun. You may have heard me say that before. I believe major changes take a year – a lap around the sun. It's how I approach major changes with my clients who are engaged in succession products, because it really takes the pressure off and allows you to really consider how change can be TRANSFORMATIONAL. We don't make a transformation in a week. Any big change in your business or life, give yourself a year. But, start with education. Start with mindset. Just digest what you've read today, and then practice.