How I started my Bookkeeping Business

Hey, this is Veronica Wasek with the first episode of BK Biz: How I started my Bookkeeping Business.

I’m Veronica Wasek, CEO and Founder of VM Wasek, a successful cloud-based accounting and bookkeeping business, serving clients throughout the United States and Canada. I’m also the lead blogger at the 5MinuteBookkeeping.com blog. 

I created this series, BK Biz, to share my experience of what it’s been like to grow my own cloud accounting and bookkeeping business, and, to hopefully help you in your journey and maybe cut months and years of figuring stuff out.

First, I wanted to tell you about how I started my bookkeeping business. Actually, I did not start a bookkeeping business. I actually started a CPA firm with the intent of being an outsourced controller CFO, and possibly doing consulting for other CPA’s. But, because I didn’t really know how to market myself, I started to try to find ways to do that. Then, I pretty much landed on QuickBooks and realized that the way to really speak to potential clients was to say that I knew QuickBooks. And so, I decided to become a QuickBooks expert. In doing so, I branded myself and marketed myself as a QuickBooks trainer and QuickBooks coach.

That’s pretty much how I started was becoming a QuickBooks Online (and QuickBooks Desktop) trainer and coach for small business owners in my suburb here outside of Houston, Texas. Along the way, I trained many business owners and their staff. Then, they started to ask for additional help so could I clean up their books and help them with ongoing services? I started to review their books and do some clean up. But, I really didn’t want to go into bookkeeping itself because it wasn’t necessarily an area that I was very passionate about.

What I started realizing was that as clients needed more and more help, I saw the opportunity for providing recurring services. It was then that I realized I could hire other people to provide the bookkeeping services and that I could just train them and review their work. About three to four years into my business, I made the transition, and became very deliberate in marketing bookkeeping services, and not just locally. I saw the opportunity to then market my business throughout the United States. And, that is what I have been doing ever since. I have branded myself now as a QuickBooks online expert, focused on outsourced cloud accounting for service-based companies. That’s how I started my bookkeeping business; I didn’t really start a bookkeeping business, but that’s what it evolved into. I have to tell you, I really love what I do.