Your Biggest Payday Ever: Selling Your Bookkeeping Biz with Tanya Hirschy

Tanya grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to Chicago for school. It was there that she met her husband and decided to settle down. Dealing with the chaos of having six children and a thriving business has been a challenge, but Tanya manages every day.

[3:00] When looking for an online source of income Tanya didn’t look at too many opportunities before learning about Bookkeeper Business Launch and deciding to jump in. She had no prior bookkeeping experience and it was quite a learning curve, but staying consistent every single day was the key.

[5:20] Perseverance is crucial to success in business. If you need to know for sure whether or not something will work, you shouldn’t consider going into business for yourself. There is always an inherent risk which you must have the determination to push through.

[6:05] The flexibility of the bookkeeping business is Tanya’s favorite part. Being able to set her own schedule around her family makes being a bookkeeper her dream job.

[7:15] The flipside of being an entrepreneur is the stress that comes with bearing the weight of the business on your shoulders. Being able to recover from the bad days and preventing the stress of being a business owner from creeping into other areas of her life is Tanya’s biggest challenge.

[8:35] Tanya currently serves 18 clients, a bunch of which came from an interview she had with a major vendor that generated 20 consultations all at once. The clients themselves are from all over the US, not just the local area.

[10:50] When Tanya started the business, there was just a short-term vision for what it could be, but now that she’s surpassed that she’s thinking about potentially selling her business in the future or turning it into a more passive endeavor.

[12:35] There are a lot of benefits to building a business to sell, even if you don’t intend to sell it. Most people never think about the value of their bookkeeping business, but if you build the business right, selling it will be the biggest payday you ever see. The good thing about building a business to sell is that it can come with you throughout the different seasons of your life.

[14:45] At this point, Tanya no longer handles the day-to-day work. She focuses mainly on supervising and management, while bringing on new clients. The less your business requires you or your time, the more valuable and sellable your business is. As a rule of thumb, a bookkeeping business sells for 0.5x to 1.5x the gross revenue. The less work that you put into the business each month, the more valuable it becomes.

[18:30] The main question that Tanya should be thinking about is, “How can I remove myself from this business? The day to day and the month to month.” Take the task in increments. If you are currently spending eight hours onboarding a client, how can you reduce that to five hours?

[20:35] Break the work down by doing a task audit. Reduce all your work to the tasks that you believe are only inside your head. As you delegate to other team members, they will become better and more capable of taking on more complex work. Even work that you believe only you can do can be delegated, you just have to groom the team member correctly.

[23:35] When you streamline who your clients are, you reduce the amount of variance in the work and that simplifies everything about your business. Since Tanya is at the point in her business where she can be more choosey with who she works with, she can really hone in on her ideal client.

[25:45] Make it a habit to go through your daily todo list and ask yourself about each task whether or not you are the only one who can handle that.

[26:30] There is no formula that will let you know that it’s the right time to bring someone on to start replacing yourself. It’s a gradual process of finding the right person and helping them along the path while also building in redundancies.

[28:30] The last thing on your todo list that should be there every single day is brainstorming ways to work on your business. Sometimes nothing makes sense but sometimes you discover a gold nugget that can completely change things.

[29:45] A good exercise is to consider what you would need to change about your business for you to take 90 days off without the wheels falling off. The best way to test your plan is to put through a trial run. Take 30 days off and commit to it, see what breaks, and then fix it for the next time.

[33:10] Most people who start a service-based business don’t own a business, they own a job. There are a number of things we can learn that will change our mindset and allow us to become owners.

[35:00] For Tanya, one of the mental obstacles is giving up the control of the business and the relationships that she’s built with her clients. One tip is for her to keep the plan in mind with new clients and setting the tone from the very beginning of that relationship.

[38:05] Tanya’s first action item is to break down her onboarding process and look for parts that can be offloaded to other team members.

Mentioned in this episode: Tidy Books