Jessica Fox, founder, and owner of Florida Virtual Bookkeeper, didn’t have time to generate new content each week to grow her practice. That’s when she wrote a new book and now has a resource for new clients and referrals.

She had never written a book before nor got it out into the marketplace. That’s why I decided to chat with her today.

In this episode of the Growing Your Firm Podcast, David Cristello and Jessica Fox dive into:

• How to start writing your new book from scratch
• Where to draw inspiration for each chapter
• The results she’s seen from having her own book in the marketplace

ADDITIONAL LINKS: 

• Florida Virtual Bookkeeper – Jessica’s firm
• LINKEDIN – Jessica Fox
• Bookkeeping Basics for Entrepreneurs  (book)

From Freelancer to Bookkeeper Firm Owner to Author: 

Jessica Fox was a freelancing bookkeeper for 18 years before she realized that the gig was up. Meaning, it was time for her to actually build a business and stop the ‘gig’ economy lifestyle. That’s when she created Florida Virtual Bookkeeper. 

She typically works with small businesses, especially new business owners who just opened their business within the past five years. Jessica enjoys this niche because these business owners are learning the ropes of entrepreneurship and she can help guide them to profitability and growth beyond just the tax filing.

Jessica likes to keep tax accounting and bookkeeping separate and so she doesn’t do taxes. Instead, she’s built up a network of contacts that she send referrals to and perhaps get a few back to her. Pretty smart to do if you aren’t doing it yet.

Back to her firm. She started Florida Virtual Bookkeeper and realized she needed to market herself someway while also serving her clients. Jessica didn’t have time to write content all the time, post to social media, attend networking events and other typical marketing routes. She read a few experts who recommended writing a book.

With a book, you can release it, and it could gather a fanbase of its own passively thus freeing you from the grind of producing content.

This was November 2017. Her original goal was to simply create a short book, post to a landing page and capture email addresses. Luckily, it’s expanded beyond that which we will look at in a bit.

First, how did she start the actual writing process of a new book especially as she didn’t write a book previously?

How to Start Writing Your New Book from Scratch: 

Jessica’s best tip is to start with an outline of your new book.

For her book — Bookkeeping Basics for Entrepreneurs — Some pieces wrote themselves, others took some mulling. The key is to keep hiking up the mountain. You won’t always feel like writing, but it’s important to get the ideas flowing.

A big mistake new authors make is they don’t write with their target audience in mind. If you plan to use your new book as a marketing piece to get new clients, you must produce content that talks about their pain points.

You can get this data from onboarding conversations, prospecting discussions, research, talking with your current clients…the areas to find are limitless. The important piece, again, is to write something your target audience needs.

With her audience of entrepreneurs, they typically wanted to know “How to prepare myself to start a business?” “How do I juggle finances with actually running the business?”

Jessica knew these new business owners had little time to read so she wrote a short and sweet book that is zero fluff. It’s straight to the point with actionable tips.
For her book, click here. 

Her chapters and outline all addressed the needs of the new owner:

• What is bookkeeping and why is it important?
• What does a bookkeeper actually do (Jessica got this question all the time. She was surprised).
• A glossary of common accounting terms like “accrual” “P&L” “M&E”
• What key reports to know and understand to make profitable decisions?
• How to hire a bookkeeper without going broke
• What software do you need?
• and much more

The idea is to take the reader through a transformation. They go from being ignorant about the topics to knowing just enough to be dangerous.

Her main selling point: Save yourself thousands in fees from your books needing to be cleaned up at the end of the year. 
That right there will turn some heads.

The Response to her New Book: 

So far, the reaction has been “amazing” according to Jessica. She’s able to have a marketing tool to give to everyone.

Whenever a new prospect isn’t going to hire her, she’s able to give the book to them so she can stay top of mind down the line. She’s given it to friends and she was shocked to hear feedback. Some of her friends said she inspired them to start their own business because she helped remove some of the financial risks. There’s that transformation piece she touched on.

DAVID’S TIP:A new book is a great referral piece to share with clients. Even if your book isn’t relevant to them now as they are more advanced, they can be your sales force. Also, have copies to give away at marketing events, conferences, meetups and more. Books = authority. Authority in the accounting space goes a long way to inking the deal.

For Jessica, she plans to give the book away to her clients as a Christmas gift. Then, she plans to set up a landing page and capture email addresses.

A new book for your firm can go a long way to keeping you top of mind in your prospect and client’s head. It’s very powerful.

As a last tip from Jessica, she got the book cover done using Canva, Pixabay and a freelancer on Fiverr. After that, she was able to get it uploaded to Amazon where she can sell it, collect reviews, and make a few bucks on top of it.

If you’re interested in reaching out to Jessica Fox, she would love to hear from you. Email jessica@floridavirtualbookkeeper.com

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Katie Lilly, Owner, and President of Lillyfield Accounting Solutions has grown her bookkeeping firm from herself to a band of seven in under two years. One of her powerful secrets is knowing where to get highly qualified referrals.

Well, today, she will pull back the curtain on how she’s grown so fast (and expanding soon).

In this episode of the Growing Your Firm Podcast, David Cristello and Katie Lilly dive into:

• How Katie Lilly made the jump from self-employed bookkeeper to full-blown firm owner
• Katie’s unheard of strategy to find the best bookkeepers to work in her firm
• The #1 place to locate highly qualified referrals

ADDITIONAL LINKS: 

• Lillyfield Solutions
• LINKEDIN – Katie Lilly
• How to get acquired in under 36 months (interview with Blake Oliver)
• E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

From Self-Employed Bookkeeper to Firm Owner: 

Katie Lilly, once a sole practitioner, found herself overrun in her Tallahassee, Florida. She was overrun with more and more clients. Katie loves doing ‘clean-up’ work for businesses, meaning she gets client’s books ready for tax returns.

She couldn’t do all the work alone. She raised three kids and found her time was stretched with her current client base. Her work was consistent each month and systematized. Katie had it done but realized she needed to grow or businesses couldn’t get the help they needed.

But that wasn’t the biggest reason she made the shift to firm owner.

She read “E-MYTH REVISITED” by Michael Gerber. In that book, Katie read that if she kept up her current workload, she’d burn out. Instead, in the book, it recommends working “on” your business and not “in” the business. Katie needed to find bookkeepers to take the day-to-day work off her plate.

That’s when she hired her first bookkeeper.

The Unique Way to Find Top-Notch Bookkeepers:

Katie’s bookkeeping team (now six working under her) work on maintaining clients’ books. They all work from home and interestingly only work 30 hours max per week. Katie believes in family-time and doesn’t want to be like other firms who tout ‘family-friendly’ firm only for the employees to work 70-80 hour weeks.
She also caters the work around what the bookkeeper wants and not vice versa.

The ideal client for her firm is a service-based business. (no retail or contractors). The firm has tiny clients and large ones. Bookkeepers get to choose their own adventure in terms of workload and time commitment. It’s one of the most flexible firms I’ve ever heard of.

But that’s not what’s the most unique thing surprisingly. The most unique thing is how Katie hires new bookkeepers. According to her, hiring is actually ongoing. Interviews happen at any time even if there is no position open.

Whenever Katie hears about someone who is organized, detail-orientated and interested in accounting, she introduces herself and gauges interest. Again, there might not be a job open but if the person keeps in touch with Katie, she knows they are truly interested.

To get them tested as a suitable member of the team, she then gives them a trial run of work.

DAVID’S TIP:If you give a trial project, make sure the project is as close to the work they’d be doing on a regular basis as a member of the team. That gives you a full picture of their skills with no gray area.

As part of her commitment to following Michael Gerber’s advice, recently she promoted one of her bookkeepers to “Quickbooks Manager.” This person is now doing the managerial reviews of the books that Katie used to do. This frees Katie up to do other things.

Being the owner, she makes it a point to touch base with each team member at least monthly. She also has monthly calls with her new QB manager and the business manager to go through ‘big picture’ projects and the future. Finally, around 3X per year, the entire team meets together in one place for 4-5 hours. They typically go through some training, have lunch and catch up on firm business.

Her most recent training ties into her secret strategy to bringing in highly qualified referrals. That’s what we will go into now.

How to Bring in Highly Qualified Referrals into Your Bookkeeping Firm: 

Back to her recent training. Their last one focused on the “Chart of Accounts” in Quickbooks. As it turned out, each of the bookkeepers used different terms for different items on the P&L and Balance Sheet. This would cause coding inconsistencies.

So, in their latest meeting, the entire team will go through each line item and classify each. It will bring up the best practices for each bookkeeper to follow.
Here’s the kicker — they will align the Chart of Accounts as close to a Schedule C on the tax return as possible. 

This makes it much, much easier for the tax accountant doing the tax return to file the return. Katie and her team do this so well, they are getting referrals from tax accountants hand over fist. They love the work Lillyfield Solutions does because they keep the tax accountant top of mind. 

What an easy source of highly qualified referrals for your bookkeeping firm! Keep the potential referrers top of mind and if you make another business’ life easier, that’s a win-win that will pay dividends.

Due to this growth and the referrals, Katie expects to grow her firm out of her Tallahassee town and into the Panhandle of Florida.

Right now she admits she only spends about 7% of her time on business development. It’s recommended for the partners to spend around 60%. Katie is pushing to get more ‘high level’ in the firm and out of the weeds as Michael Gerber recommends.

The big thing holding her back === FEAR. The fear her oldest and most reliable clients will buck this new trend and not want to work with another bookkeeper in her firm. However, Katie realizes if she wants to make the complete shift from ‘freelance bookkeeper’ to ‘firm owner’, she’ll need to make that shift.

If you have any questions, want to thank Katie or offer your thoughts, email her at katie @ lillyfieldsolutions.com

HOW DO YOU GET HIGHLY QUALIFIED REFERRALS RIGHT NOW?

RELATED ARTICLES:

1. How to Ask a Client for Referrals (Without Feeling Uncomfortable)

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