The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → This is the second and final part of Michael Palmer's conversation with Andrew Seguin, founder of Seguin Financial. If you want a candid look at how a bookkeeping firm doubles revenue without a big advertising budget, this episode delivers. Andrew walks through the real levers he pulls: a four-day workweek that keeps his team loyal, a disciplined approach to scope creep, and a referral engine built entirely on great service. Chapters [00:00] Introduction and Episode Recap [01:18] Four-Day Workweek Announcement [03:30] Andrew's Fridays: A Work in Progress [05:30] Scope Creep: How to Catch and Address It [09:30] Time Tracking as a Profitability Tool [12:00] How the Firm Doubled Revenue [15:00] Partnerships and Referral Strategy [18:00] Service as the Real Differentiator [21:30] Going Virtual Across Ontario [24:30] Final Advice: Start With Something The Four-Day Workweek in Practice Andrew made the switch to a Monday–Thursday, 36-hour week — with no pay cut for his team. "Working one hour extra per day doesn't feel as a big burden, but you get a whole day off every week, all year long," he explains. The response from clients has been overwhelmingly positive, and the retention impact has been real. For Andrew himself, it has gradually freed up his Fridays too — without the guilt of stepping away while his team is still at their desks. Catching Scope Creep Before It Costs You Andrew's approach to scope creep starts with the team: coach them to flag anything that feels different from the usual work, then back it up with time tracking so the numbers tell the story. Rather than hitting a client with a hard "that's out of scope," his firm offers two paths — "we can show you how to do it yourself, or we can have a conversation about a monthly increase to accommodate this." That framing keeps the conversation collaborative, not combative, and gets results either way. Partnerships and Referrals as a Growth Engine Seguin Financial grew from around a million dollars to double that in roughly 2.5 years — without meaningful advertising spend. The fuel? Strategic partnerships with fractional CFOs, outreach to franchise head offices, and a deliberate focus on asking the firm's best clients for referrals. "Our easiest client to take on is a referral," Andrew says, "because they've done probably so much work behind the scenes that at that point it's almost inevitable that they're going to become a client." Referrals arrive pre-sold — and they rarely price-shop. Service Is What Clients Can Actually See Andrew draws a clear line between quality of work and quality of service — and argues that for most clients, only one of those is visible. "Business owners are probably not going to always look at our reports. They might not really care a lot about the quality of the work. But the service they can see." Being responsive — not available at 8 PM, but back within 24 hours with an action plan — has moved Seguin Financial into a different tier in the eyes of their clients and made referrals far more frequent. Start With Something, Then Let the Data Lead Andrew's parting advice is straightforward: start tracking, even if it's just two spreadsheets. "Without time tracking, you're blind. You're honestly blind to which clients are doing very well for you and doing pretty poorly for you." He reviews his firm's analytics every month, makes a video for the team, calls out wins, and flags what to watch. That monthly discipline is what keeps the firm's profitability from quietly eroding — and what surfaces the clients worth doubling down on. Links Mentioned The Successful Bookkeeper PureBookkeeping Seguin Financial — find Andrew on LinkedIn About the Guest Andrew Seguin is the founder of Seguin Financial, a virtual bookkeeping firm based in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. With over eight years in the business, Andrew has grown his firm to serve clients across Ontario, with a focus on e-commerce and owner-operated businesses. He is known in the bookkeeping community for his data-driven approach to profitability and his commitment to building a firm culture that keeps great people around for the long haul. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Andrew Seguin was already running a strong bookkeeping firm when he last appeared on this podcast — at $1 million in revenue with a team of eight. Two and a half years later, he's back with a $2 million firm and a team of fifteen. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Andrew walks through the real work behind that growth: the systems he built, the delegation habits he had to form, and the profitability metrics that changed how he runs everything. Chapters [00:00] Opening quote on delegation [00:42] Introducing Andrew Seguin [02:30] From $1M to $2M: the story [05:30] Getting out of the weeds [09:00] Building training systems that scale [13:00] Managing change without overwhelming the team [17:00] Introducing the effective hourly rate [23:00] Building the profitability dashboard [28:00] Time tracking: getting team buy-in [34:00] Pricing strategy and the 3-month clause Getting Out of the Weeds Even after hitting $1 million, Andrew was still deep in the day-to-day — doing bookkeeping, managing clients directly, and holding too much tax knowledge himself. The path to $2 million required him to deliberately reduce his own workload. "I was probably still doing a lot of day-to-day work," he says. "I knew I had some goals for '24 and '25, which was to reduce my own workload." That meant hiring a dedicated payroll team, bringing on a tax specialist, and doubling down on the pod structure — senior and junior team members working together as a unit. Delegation Starts With Systems, Not Just Trust One of Andrew's clearest lessons: delegation without a proper training system is just dumping work on people. He invested heavily in building a training package so that new hires could learn the firm's tools, standards, and workflows without having to figure things out from scratch. "You spend a little bit of time upfront — it's always hard because you have to find time to do it. But once you get over that hump, that's where things really start cascading into a really strong effect." He also cautions against piling on too much change in a single year, aiming instead for one meaningful improvement goal per year so the team isn't overwhelmed. The Effective Hourly Rate: A Metric That Changed Everything The single biggest profitability driver Andrew introduced was tracking each client's effective hourly rate (EHR) — revenue divided by hours worked on that file. His firm uses ClickUp for time tracking and QuickBooks Online for revenue data, feeding into a custom-built dashboard that shows the team exactly where they stand, client by client. "We essentially cut about 10% of our clients and then priced up about 40% of our clients to a rate that we wanted internally." The target range is $125–$150 per hour, minimum. Before this system, the firm's average was around $106–$108 per hour. After 18 months of using the data, it's closer to $250. Transparent Data, Aligned Teams Andrew doesn't hide this metric from his staff. The management team sees it. The bookkeepers who work on those files are aware of it. When a client's EHR falls short, the conversation isn't about poor performance — it's about scope creep, underestimated complexity, or pricing that needs revisiting. He also ties compensation growth directly to hitting those rates, so the team has a real reason to track their time accurately. "I'm very transparent — you guys wouldn't have these increases the way you have been getting for the last 3 years if we didn't have this data." Pricing, Minimums, and the 3-Month Revisit Clause Andrew's pricing approach is a hybrid of fixed and value-based: estimate the hours, multiply by the target EHR, then add complexity factors like multi-currency, e-commerce, or payroll. The firm's minimum for monthly engagements is $1,000, with an average around $1,600. Critically, every new engagement includes a clause allowing the firm to revisit pricing after three months — when actual time and complexity data is in hand. "We've had to do that a few times because there is no perfect system. A questionnaire and a quick conversation isn't going to tell you enough about the complexities and the volume of the file." Links Mentioned PureBookkeeping — episode sponsor The Successful Bookkeeper — resources and episode archive ClickUp — project and time-tracking tool used by Seguin Financial About the Guest Andrew Seguin is the founder of Seguin Financial, a virtual bookkeeping firm based in Canada with a team of fifteen full-time staff. Over eight and a half years, Andrew grew his firm from a solo side practice to a $2 million business, built around strong systems, transparent team culture, and data-driven client management. He is a frequent speaker and educator in the bookkeeping community. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Amanda McKinney is back, and this conversation picks up right where the field is most uncomfortable: the place where your own capability quietly becomes the ceiling on your growth. If you've ever thought "it's faster if I just do it myself," this episode was made for you. Amanda brings her accountability coaching lens to the real-world pressures bookkeepers face — the revolving door of client work, the resistance to delegation, and the habits that quietly drain capacity before burnout ever arrives. Chapters [00:00] The 3-Times System Rule [01:18] Welcome and Guest Introduction [03:30] Amanda's Journey Since 2023 [08:30] Working With Teams Long-Term [13:00] When Capability Becomes an Obstacle [17:00] Warning Signs of Unsustainable Pace [21:00] The Case for Hobbies [25:00] Building Systems to Delegate [29:00] SOPs in Practice: Quarterly Taxes [32:30] Amanda's Podcast Pause The Highly Capable Trap Being good at your work is a genuine asset — right up until it isn't. Amanda explains that capability creates capacity, and capacity gets filled. "The problem with being capable is that it opens up more capacity. And when you have more capacity, you get more work. Either it's given to you or you give it to yourself." For bookkeepers, where the work never truly stops, this cycle can accelerate fast. Recognizing the pattern is the first step out of it. Warning Signs Worth Watching Amanda walks through the early signals that something needs to change — before burnout forces the issue. Physical heaviness when someone asks how you're doing, or the moment you realize your only answer to "what do you do for fun?" is your work. She shared that in 2024, that was her own reality. "I realized, oh my gosh, I have no hobbies. I don't have anything that I do just for fun." Intentionally adding even 15 minutes of something non-work-related a week can start shifting that. The 3-Times Rule for Systems This is the practical core of the episode. Amanda's rule of thumb: if you do something more than 3 times, it needs a system. She uses invoicing as a quick gut-check — if you can't describe your process fast, you're spending unnecessary brainpower every single time. The fix is straightforward: the next time you do that task, record yourself walking through it using a screen recorder like Loom or Neato (free). That recording becomes your SOP, and that SOP becomes your delegation tool. She applied this to her own quarterly tax payments: "I did it in like 15 minutes. Whereas that would have taken me an hour or two if I didn't have those steps written out." Delegation Without the Dread Most bookkeepers resist handing work off because training someone else feels slower than doing it themselves. Amanda reframes this: a documented system removes most of that training burden. The SOP does the heavy lifting, and the person you're delegating to — whether human or software — gets a clear path to follow your standards. As Michael put it during the conversation, "SOPs are the pathway to profitability." Sustainable Growth Requires a Pause Amanda recently did something that surprised her own audience: she intentionally paused her podcast after eight straight years of weekly content. The flood of concerned emails she received made her realize how rarely people pause before something forces them to. The message for bookkeepers is the same — growth that lasts has to be built on something sustainable. Waiting for a crisis to rest isn't a strategy. "You don't have to be burnt out before you make a decision to change something." Links Mentioned Loom — screen and voice recording tool for creating SOPs Neeto — free alternative screen recording tool (used by The Successful Bookkeeper team) purebookkeeping.com — episode sponsor; system to grow your bookkeeping business thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com — show resources and guest info Accountable podcast by Amanda McKinney (300+ episodes available; currently on intentional pause) About the Guest Amanda McKinney is an accountability coach, speaker, and the host of the Accountable podcast (formerly The Unapologetic Entrepreneur). She works primarily with driven entrepreneurs and leadership teams to help them follow through on goals that keep getting pushed to the back burner — without burning out in the process. She has been coaching since 2017 and now leads engagements ranging from 90-day individual programs to 9–12 month team partnerships. You can find her through her podcast archive of 300+ episodes or by reaching out directly through her website. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Your clients' financials tell one story. What your clients think about their business tells another. In this episode, fractional CFO, course creator, and speaker Debra Angilletta returns to show how closing that gap — through simple, curiosity-driven conversations — is the most direct path to selling advisory services. No complicated sales process required. Chapters [00:00] Opening Quote and Intro [01:35] Meet Debra Angilletta [03:30] Why Bookkeepers Struggle to Sell Advisory [06:10] The "Curious" Question Technique [09:20] Staying Human in a Digital World [11:50] Finding Your First Five Clients [14:30] The Advisory Transformation [17:30] What 100 Business Owners Said [20:30] About the Book: Hidden Profits [22:40] Rapid Fire: Steps to Take Now The Missing Half of the Story Numbers give you the facts; your client's perspective gives you the context. Debra frames advisory as the natural result of putting those two pieces together: "When you put those two pieces of information together, that's where the magic happens, and that's where you can fill the gap." The good news is you already have one half. You just need to ask for the other. One Word That Changes Everything If you're not sure how to start a probing question without sounding nosy or accusatory, Debra has a single practical fix: lead with "curious." Saying "Curious — I noticed this in your books, can you tell me more?" removes any sense of blame, gives your client permission to explore rather than defend, and opens the conversation rather than closing it down. It's a small shift with a big effect on how clients respond. Finding Your First Five You don't need to overhaul your entire practice to get started. Debra's advice is to scan your client list, pick five people who seem most open to a deeper conversation, and book a 30-minute call — framed simply as "I saw some interesting things in your books that might be of value." That's it. The goal isn't to pitch advisory on the spot; it's to practice having the conversation. "There's nothing complicated here," Debra says. "I don't want to make it complicated for your audience at all." Business Owners Are Waiting for You to Ask Debra interviewed 100 small business owners while writing her book Hidden Profits, and the finding stopped her in her tracks. When she asked what they wished their bookkeeper did that they weren't doing, the answer was overwhelming: more strategic advisory. "I wish they would give me information that I can use to drive my business forward." Most business owners operate in isolation, with no one to think out loud with — and your existing financial relationship puts you closer to that trusted-advisor seat than you might realize. The Transformation on the Other Side Bookkeepers who start having these conversations consistently go through a noticeable shift. Debra sees it regularly: once they experience what advisory conversations feel like, they want more of them. More importantly, the relationship with the client changes. "It actually uplevels you to partnership level... they're going to see you as that trusted advisor." The compliance work stays valuable — but it's no longer the ceiling on what the relationship can be. Links Mentioned Hidden Profits: Stop Chasing Cash, Predictable Profit in 90 Days by Debra Angilletta — findmyhiddenprofits.com (free download of first 3 chapters) or search "Hidden Profits" on Amazon MasterMySales.com — Debra's sales training for financial professionals PureBookkeeping.com — episode sponsor thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com — show resources and guest links About the Guest Debra Angilletta is a fractional CFO, course creator, and speaker at MasterMySales.com who specializes in helping bookkeepers, accountants, and financial professionals sell and deliver advisory services with confidence. She works primarily with small business owners in the $500K–$3M revenue range and is the author of Hidden Profits: Stop Chasing Cash, Predictable Profit in 90 Days. Debra is a returning speaker at The Successful Bookkeeper Summit and a consistent audience favourite. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Dr. Sabrina Starling has spent over 20 years helping small business owners build profitable, sustainable companies without burning themselves out. In this episode, she brings her business psychology background directly to bookkeepers — walking through her $10,000-an-hour framework, the mindset shift that changed everything for her, and the practical steps you can take right now to stop trading hours for dollars and start building a business that works without you. Chapters [00:00] Opening and guest introduction [01:35] Burnout and starting a business [04:40] The E-Myth epiphany [08:10] The $10,000-an-hour framework [12:40] First hire and finding A-players [17:00] Time audits and glass ceilings [19:10] What has and hasn't changed in 20 years [22:40] AI and the human advantage [25:30] Serving your top clients and micro-innovation [28:50] The free download and closing thoughts From Burnout to 25 Hours a Week Sabrina started her business fresh out of a gruelling career as a psychologist in community mental health — working 40- to 50-hour weeks, taking on-call shifts, and running on empty. When she launched her coaching practice and started a family at the same time, she made what she calls a "very naive declaration": she would only work 25 hours a week. What felt like an impossible constraint turned out to be one of the best decisions she ever made. "Limits force innovation and creativity," she explains. That boundary forced her to be ruthlessly focused on only the work that moved the business forward. The $10,000-an-Hour Framework The turning point came when Sabrina started categorising every task in her business by its dollar-per-hour value — $10, $100, $1,000, or $10,000. She printed the chart and put it behind her monitor so she'd see it constantly. "Inevitably, I would be nose down working on something for a client, and then I would look up and say, oh my gosh, I've just spent 4 hours in $10 and $100 an hour activity." Blocking her highest-value work on the calendar first — before checking email, before firefighting — is what made the difference. She's made the chart available as a free download at tapthepotential.com/10k, along with two podcast episodes walking through how to use it for yourself and with your team. Hiring A-Players Into the Right Seats Sabrina's first hire was a virtual assistant — and the thinking she put into that hire became the seed of her How to Hire the Best book series. Rather than hiring fast out of desperation, she asked: what strengths does this role actually require to deliver results day in and day out? Her original VA, hired for her people skills and attention to detail, is still with the company 20 years later. "One A-player in the right seat working from their strengths will be 900% to 1,200% more productive than a warm body team member." For bookkeepers, payroll is already the biggest profit leak — and it's usually not optimised with A-players. AI, Adaptability, and the Human Advantage AI is reshaping bookkeeping, and Sabrina doesn't sidestep that. But her take is direct: when you offload $10-an-hour busywork to AI, you free yourself to do the work that actually can't be automated — deeply understanding your best clients, spotting problems they can't see in their own numbers, and delivering insight that goes far beyond the books. "When we convey to our team members that we want them doing $10,000 an hour work and we're going to show them how, they get so excited and they are relieved because they know they have job security at that point." The bookkeepers who will thrive are the ones having real conversations with their top clients and continuously innovating around their needs. Working From Your Sweet Spot Sabrina encourages bookkeepers to identify the 20% of clients driving 80% of revenue — and then narrow that further to the ones who are also a genuine joy to work with. Those are the relationships worth doubling down on. Use your natural detail orientation to tune in to what those clients are worried about, what's keeping them up at night, and where you can remove friction for them. She calls the result "micro-innovation" — small, consistent improvements that compound over time and make you genuinely irreplaceable. "Small steps forward taken in a consistent direction lead to big change over time." Links Mentioned Free $10,000-an-hour activity chart + bonus podcast episodes: tapthepotential.com/10k The E-Myth by Michael Gerber How to Hire the Best book series by Dr. Sabrina Starling Profit by Design Podcast (Tap the Potential) thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com About the Guest Dr. Sabrina Starling is a business psychologist, speaker, and author, and the founder of Tap the Potential LLC. She helps entrepreneurs build profitable, sustainably run companies by hiring A-players, building strong systems, and designing businesses that support their lives — not the other way around. Her entire team works 25 hours a week, and she has personally worked down to about 10. She is the author of the How to Hire the Best series and hosts the Profit by Design podcast. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Sammy Mattingly and Fred Ott are back for the finale of their two-part conversation with host Michael Palmer. Where Part 1 covered the leap into bookkeeping entrepreneurship, Part 2 gets into the gritty, practical work of making a young firm sustainable — documenting processes, surviving the first real growth wave, hiring employee number one, and deciding what kind of business they actually want to build. Chapters [00:00] Introduction and Episode Recap [01:18] What Makes This Partnership Work [04:30] Growth Wave Exposes System Gaps [07:00] Hiring the First Employee [09:00] Fixing Onboarding the Right Way [12:00] Joining Pure Bookkeeping and Freedom Gateway [15:30] Walls Hit and Lessons Learned [18:30] Long-Term Vision and the Journey [21:30] The 'How to Make a Few Thousand Dollars' Podcast The Partnership Advantage One of the quieter themes running through this episode is just how much the partnership itself has been a growth tool. Sammy puts it plainly: "Fred is the only one of my friends that I could do this with — and it's mostly down to that accountability piece and the amount of work that each of us is going to put into this." For bookkeepers considering a partner arrangement, this episode is a useful reality check on what makes it work — shared drive, mutual trust, and complementary skill sets — and what makes it hard. When Clients Arrive Faster Than Your Systems The real test of any process is live clients. Sammy and Fred thought their systems were solid after months of heavy networking. Then the referrals started rolling in, and the cracks showed fast. "We quickly realized our systems and our processes are not what we need to be able to support the growth that we have now and that we want in the future," Fred says. Their response was to pull back from networking temporarily, sit down together, and map out standard operating procedures from scratch — building workflows, identifying automation opportunities, and stress-testing everything against real client volume. Onboarding: Break It, Fix It, Repeat Onboarding was the first thing to crack under pressure. Rather than patching it on the fly, Sammy and Fred blocked a Saturday, mapped every pain point, and rebuilt it. When the next wave of clients came through a month later, the process was smooth — but it surfaced a new set of smaller issues. "There's always something rolling onto the pocket of like, okay, here's an issue with our process," Sammy says. "Now we need to set aside time to work together to map out how to fix that and how to implement it." That cycle of deliberate improvement is now a permanent feature of how they run the business. Pure Bookkeeping and the Freedom Gateway Sammy credits early podcast listening for pointing him toward Pure Bookkeeping, and describes the decision to join as straightforward once the need for a real system became obvious. What stood out most was the access to experienced guidance: "Having an hour with Lisa Campbell a week, someone who's done it, who's built a very successful firm — she was great in just helping us learn and develop and how to work on the business." They also appreciated that the system is customizable — their Pure and Pixie setup reflects their firm, not a template. Building Toward Something (Without Telling Everyone What It Is) When Michael asks about the long-term vision, neither Sammy nor Fred throws out a revenue number — and Michael approves. Fred frames it well: "Like we want to grow and do all these things, but ultimately the day-to-day — we want the day-to-day to be enjoyable. We like challenging ourselves, we're curious people, and we like learning." They're also currently working through Traction by Gino Wickman and have launched their own podcast, How to Make a Few Thousand Dollars, which earned an early shoutout from the entrepreneur who inspired the name. Links Mentioned Mattingly & Ott Financial Accounting How to Make a Few Thousand Dollars — Sammy and Fred's podcast (search on your podcast app) Pure Bookkeeping — the system referenced throughout the episode Traction by Gino Wickman — EOS framework book Sammy and Fred are currently implementing How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs — inspiration for their podcast name The Successful Bookkeeper Episode featuring Theresa Slack — referenced by Michael as a model partnership story About the Guests Fred Ott and Sammy Mattingly are co-founders of Mattingly & Ott Financial Accounting, LLC, a growing bookkeeping firm built on referral-driven networking, deliberate systems work, and a commitment to serving small business owners in their community. Friends since high school, they made the jump from W-2 employment to entrepreneurship together and are now navigating their first year of real scale — with their first employee, a growing client roster, and a podcast of their own. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Sammy Mattingly and Fred Ott co-founded Mattingly & Ott Financial Accounting in their mid-twenties, with backgrounds in Big Four auditing and investment management — and a brief, memorable detour into portable sanitation. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, they walk through the early decisions that shaped their firm: getting certified, landing first clients, and discovering that digital ads were no substitute for showing up in person. Chapters [00:00] Cold open and intro [01:18] Sammy's listener origin story [03:15] Backgrounds before bookkeeping [06:30] The porta potty adventure [11:00] Finding bookkeeping on YouTube [13:00] Five-week plan and first clients [16:00] Why paid ads flopped [18:30] Discovering networking as a strategy [21:00] Building one-to-one meeting habits [24:30] Shifting to strategic partnerships From Porta Potties to ProAdvisor Before bookkeeping, Sammy and Fred tried their hand at entrepreneurship the hard way — buying 20 used porta potties off a site called Crapper King, shipping them across the country on a semi-truck, and eventually moving them on Facebook Marketplace after a good pressure wash. The experience wasn't profitable, but it was formative. As Michael notes on the show, it gave them a layer of genuine empathy for clients: "They don't have all the answers, they're making mistakes, they're trying to figure it out." After a few more ideas, a YouTube video on starting a bookkeeping firm was all the spark Sammy needed. "I watched it, and I was like, well, if this guy can do it, Fred and I can do this." The Five-Week Launch Plan Once they committed to bookkeeping, Sammy and Fred moved fast. They built a five-week plan: get QuickBooks certified, become ProAdvisors, and land one client. Two large cleanup projects came through the QuickBooks ProAdvisor directory almost immediately — enough to justify going full-time. Fred describes those first weeks as equal parts doing the work and learning on the fly: "We were certified in QuickBooks, but it's like — we've got to figure out how this works. We've never done a QuickBooks cleanup for this type of company before." Why Paid Ads Weren't the Answer With their first projects underway, they turned to paid social media ads hoping to fill the pipeline. Six weeks and 15 or 16 leads later, the results were discouraging — contacts who were hard to reach and nowhere near ready to hire a bookkeeper. "We were finding they were all super unqualified," Fred says. That dead end turned out to be the pivot point. A conversation with a local small business attorney introduced a word they'd barely considered: networking. Networking as a Growth Engine Neither Sammy nor Fred would describe themselves as natural networkers — both lean introverted. But they committed fully, spending two to three months filling their days with open networking events and one-to-one coffee meetings. The accountability of working as a team made the difference: knowing the other person was putting in the effort kept each of them showing up. Fred's father, a career salesman, gave them the frame they needed: "Unseen, unheard, unsold." They tracked weekly one-to-one meeting goals, walked up to strangers, shook hands, and asked people to coffee — regardless of whether an obvious business connection was visible. Strategic Relationships Over Volume Over time, the approach evolved from broad networking to targeted relationship-building. Sammy describes the shift as following the data: "We took a step back and we were like, okay, what percentage of our referrals is coming from CPAs or whoever? And it's like, okay, well, if 80, 90% of our referrals are coming from these types of people, we need to go to rooms where there are these types of people." Tax preparers, business brokers, and other professionals who rarely attend networking events became the focus — making Mattingly & Ott's presence at those events even more valuable. Links mentioned Pure Bookkeeping — the system Sammy and Fred found through the podcast Pixie — practice management tool they discovered through The Successful Bookkeeper thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com — resources, episode search, and Ask the Show feature About the guests Sammy Mattingly and Fred Ott are co-founders of Mattingly & Ott Financial Accounting, LLC. High school friends turned business partners, they launched their bookkeeping firm roughly a year and a half ago and went full-time within the first few months. Sammy brings a background in Big Four audit; Fred comes from investment management. Together they serve small, service-based businesses and have built their client base almost entirely through in-person networking and strategic referral relationships. Part 2 of their conversation covers how those relationships translate into referral systems and scalable growth. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → If you've ever quoted a price, panicked at the silence, and then talked yourself into a discount before the prospect even responded — this episode is for you. In the finale of this two-part series, Natalia Zacharin, Founder and Principal of Zacharin Consulting, picks up where she left off: taking a firm from underpriced and overworked to a multi-million-dollar operation built on confident pricing, high-caliber hires, and fractional CFO services that change businesses from the inside out. Chapters [00:00] Cold open and episode intro [01:37] Non-negotiables and self-care [04:48] The hiring formula and pricing shift [08:00] Price it and zip it [11:00] Joining a mastermind, betting on herself [13:30] Building referrals and CFO services [17:30] What fractional CFO work really looks like [23:00] AI, pricing pressure, and quality [26:30] Hiring up and scaling out of production [29:00] Final advice and where to find Natalia The Moment She Stopped Underselling For a long time, Natalia was closing deals she immediately regretted. She'd set a minimum of $500 a month, get on the sales call, hit silence — and before the prospect could say a word, she'd already dropped the number. "I would get off the call and then be mad at myself because I did it again," she says. The fix was deceptively simple: state the price and stop talking. That uncomfortable pause exists for the client to process, ask questions, or push back — and it's not your job to fill it. Learning to sit in that silence was the turning point that finally gave her room to hire. The Hiring Formula Behind the Growth Natalia uses a straightforward formula: between $200,000 and $300,000 in gross revenue per employee. She was at $300,000 and wanted to hire — but the numbers said she needed to be closer to $500,000 first. So she raised her prices, created the margin, and then hired. Her early lesson: the first hire was underqualified, which meant she spent more time training than delegating. "Looking back, I should have hired someone with a lot more experience that was more expensive, maybe even a manager level." Hiring up — paying well, offering full benefits, building a team that can run without you — is the model she's stayed with ever since. Fractional CFO Services: Already Doing It for Free The expansion into fractional CFO work didn't start with a strategy — it started with Natalia noticing she was already answering CFO-level questions at the end of every bookkeeping sales call. Clients kept asking: how do I get more profitable? How much cash do I actually need? When should I hire? "If you're already giving advice, you're already doing that for free unless you're charging for it." She formalized those conversations into a monthly engagement built around projections, accountability, and the kind of honest focus that keeps business owners from avoiding the hard work that actually moves the needle. AI, Pricing Pressure, and Leaning the Right Direction With AI tools multiplying and overseas competitors undercutting on price, Natalia's response is deliberate: go the other direction. "Don't feel the pressure of constantly lowering your pricing. That's going in the wrong direction. You need to actually be even better." Her firm uses AI to work faster and more accurately, but every file is reviewed by an in-house controller regardless of client size. The value isn't in the tool — it's in the trained eye that knows where to look and what the numbers mean for that specific business. Scaling Yourself Out of the Business Getting out of day-to-day production takes longer than most people expect. Natalia spent four years trying to hand off payroll before she finally found a payroll-only specialist with decades of experience — not a generalist bookkeeper. The message for anyone building a firm: don't give up when a hire doesn't stick. Keep looking for the right person. "It took me four years to get out of payroll… I'd be on vacation, walking the beach, running someone's payroll on my phone because it kept coming back to me." The same patience applies to every role you want to transition out of. Links Mentioned Zacharin Consulting website: zacharynconsulting.com LinkedIn: Grow Your Bottom Line Instagram: Grow Your Bottom Line Pure Bookkeeping: purebookkeeping.com The Successful Bookkeeper resources: thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com About the Guest Natalia Zacharin is the Founder and Principal of Zacharin Consulting, a full-service bookkeeping and fractional CFO firm she built from the ground up as a single mother. Starting with cold LinkedIn outreach and clients at $75 a month, she scaled the firm to multi-million-dollar revenue by combining confident pricing, strategic hiring, and advisory services that help business owners understand and act on their numbers. She is based in the United States and serves clients across industries including logistics, IT, and professional services. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Natalia Zacharin had no bookkeeping background, no clients, and no safety net when she started Zacharin Consulting in January 2019. She was 49, a single mom, and her invoicing clerk job was being phased out. In part one of this two-part conversation, Natalia lays out exactly how she went from that starting point to building a firm that now employs 16 people, targets $4 million in revenue, and landed at number 802 on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list. Chapters [00:00] Cold open: asking the right questions [00:52] Introducing Natalia Zacharin [03:00] From invoicing clerk to business owner [07:00] Where the firm stands today [10:00] First client via LinkedIn [13:00] Self-teaching bookkeeping on YouTube [16:30] Hiring a CPA manager — lessons learned [19:00] Building the pipeline: 4 clients to 12 [23:00] Doubling down and working 7 days a week [26:00] COVID, the PPP pivot, and early burnout Starting From Zero — And Meaning It Natalia's entry into bookkeeping wasn't a career pivot she planned. Her fiancé suggested it over coffee when she couldn't find another job. She enrolled in an online course, started messaging business owners on LinkedIn in January 2019, and landed her first client on January 29th of that year — a landscaping company owner in California who is still a client today. Her prior experience as an invoicing clerk in Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite gave her attention to detail, but she had never opened QuickBooks. YouTube as a Training Program When Natalia got into her first client's books, she found the revenue hadn't been recorded — showing a negative $2 million on the P&L. Rather than walking away, she cleaned it up herself using YouTube, watching videos second by second and refreshing the balance sheet after every change to see what happened. "That was how I learned," she says. "I taught myself how to read financials, not how to do just data entry." It was slow, it was self-directed, and it worked. The Formula for Getting Clients Early On Natalia built her first pipeline through two channels: LinkedIn outreach and a local women's business group. Her LinkedIn approach was simple — start genuine conversations, never lead with a pitch, and ask questions. "No one likes it when you just come out with a full three paragraphs of what you do. No one cares." At in-person events, she set a clear intention before walking in: she was there to get a client, not just to have lunch. By August 2019 she had 4 clients and quit her day job. By November she had 12 — enough to cover her bills. Doubling Down on What Works After quitting her job, Natalia worked 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, iterating constantly on what was generating new business. Her core principle: if something moves the needle, do more of it faster. She avoided prescriptive networking formats like BNI in favour of methods she could control and test. "Selling is psychological, it's not intuitive," she says. "I just didn't give up. I didn't feel like I had other options, so I just kept going." COVID, the PPP, and a Hard Lesson About Burnout In January 2020, Natalia called her mother — who had been helping her financially — to say she no longer needed the support. Three months later, COVID hit and her clients' revenues collapsed. She pivoted immediately to helping clients apply for PPP and EIDL loans, achieving near-perfect approval and forgiveness rates. But by August 2020, working alone under enormous pressure, she stopped exercising and started running out of energy. Part two of this series picks up there — with hard-won lessons on burnout, pricing, and scaling a team. Links Mentioned Zacharin Consulting: zacharinconsulting.com Pure Bookkeeping: purebookkeeping.com The Successful Bookkeeper: thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com About the Guest Natalia Zacharin is the Founder and Principal of Zacharin Consulting, a full-service accounting firm based in Maryland that offers bookkeeping, accounting, and fractional CFO services. She started the firm in 2019 with no formal bookkeeping training and grew it to a 16-person team tracking over $3 million in annual revenue. In 2025, Zacharin Consulting was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the United States, ranking number 802. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.

See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Ashley Jocic started Florida Keys Bookkeeping at one of the most turbulent moments imaginable: a separation, COVID shutdowns, and a career pivot — all at once. What followed was five years of growing a fully virtual bookkeeping firm while navigating a new marriage, a daughter, an international move to Serbia, and twins. This episode is a masterclass in building something real when life refuses to slow down. Chapters [00:00] Life chaos that sparked the business [04:18] Early career and Bookkeeper Launch [07:04] Finding the first clients [10:40] Newborn, new marriage, slow growth [13:28] Twins force a systemization sprint [18:35] Running a US firm from Serbia [25:11] Building referral relationships [32:10] Plans for intentional growth [40:55] Protecting your work time Starting From a Real Moment Ashley's path into bookkeeping started with her dad. She'd been handling his books and noticed something: "I remember seeing the relief on his face when he knew his bookkeeping and his bills were handled." That moment made her realize bookkeeping is more than data entry — it lifts a genuine mental burden from business owners. Combined with a background in government accounting and a timely refresh through the Bookkeeper Launch course, she had what she needed to start. Growing Slowly — On Purpose Ashley's early client growth was deliberate and unhurried, mostly driven by a professional website and a referral from her father's network. "If someone called me and wanted a bookkeeper, I ended up doing their bookkeeping," she says. There was no aggressive outreach strategy at first — and that was fine. Her constraints as a new stay-at-home mom meant slow, steady growth was the only kind that fit. She and her husband aimed for 20 hours of work per week. Sometimes she hit it. Sometimes she didn't. A Hard Deadline Forces the Right Decisions When Ashley found out she was pregnant with twins, she faced a clear choice: systemize fast or shut down. She chose to systemize. She leaned heavily on Pure Bookkeeping to document and standardize her processes, hired a team member in Serbia she could train before going on leave, and brought on a second person to review that work while she was away. "I did a lot of things a lot quicker than I would have normally because of that constraint, because of that timeline." The firm didn't just survive her maternity leave — it ran smoothly. Virtual-Only as a Filter, Not a Limitation Living in Serbia with a six-hour time difference from the US East Coast might sound like a recipe for client friction. Ashley sees it differently. Being unable to visit offices or meet for coffee filters out clients who aren't ready for fully virtual work — and those tend to be the wrong clients anyway. The right clients, she's found, don't need her physically present. They need her reliable. A CPA who works with one of her clients has since referred additional business to her, which she considers a strong signal: "He liked my work enough to refer me to someone else he was doing taxes for." Protecting Your Work Time Looking back, the one thing Ashley wishes she'd done sooner is treat her work hours as non-negotiable. "I would too easily say, 'Well, okay, I'll work later,'" she reflects. "I had to treat it like a business and not just something that fits in the in-between moments." That mindset shift — from flexible freelancer to firm owner — is something she says took time but made a real difference in how the business runs today. Now, with systems in place and a small team, she's turning her attention to intentional growth: more cleanups that convert to monthly clients, and deeper relationships with accountants who can send referrals. Links mentioned Florida Keys Bookkeeping Pure Bookkeeping The Successful Bookkeeper About the guest Ashley Jocic is the owner of Florida Keys Bookkeeping, a fully virtual firm she launched during the COVID shutdowns. With a background in government accounting and a passion for helping small business owners feel confident in their finances, she now runs her practice remotely from Serbia while raising three young children. She specializes in bookkeeping cleanups and monthly services for service-based businesses across the United States. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.