The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

239 ⎸ How to Serve Real Estate Investor Clients & Market Your Bookkeeping Business as an Introvert with Max Emory

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 239

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This episode is a behind-the-scenes conversation with Max Emory.

We get into the nitty gritty of what it actually takes to serve REI clients, how he built his team, the new community he's launching for bookkeepers who want to level up their marketing and sales game, and how he manages it all with two boys under two at home.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • Why real estate investing is one of the most complex niches a bookkeeper can serve
  • How overcomplicated entity structures are hurting real estate investors
  • The behind-the-scenes of Time Capital University and GoPro Bookkeeping community
  • How Max runs a lean, profitable firm with strong boundaries around his time

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Meet Max Emory

Max Emory is the founder of Time Capital Bookkeeping and Time Capital University, a bookkeeper-turned-real-estate-expert who went from Marine Corps officer and mechanical engineer to building a thriving virtual bookkeeping firm that specializes in real estate investors and he has two boys under two at home!

Connect with Max Emory

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me @ambitiousbookkeeper

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This week on the podcast and here on YouTube, I'm taking you behind the scenes into my paid community to watch a guest workshop I had, I brought in Max Emery, the founder and CEO of Time Capital Bookkeeping Services, which is a real estate investment bookkeeping. Firm, and we're not only diving into talking about the real estate investment niche for bookkeepers, but we're going so much further into different ways to run your practice and how you can. Land clients as an introvert and how Max is helping people do that these days. In addition to coaching for real estate investment, bookkeeping. So whether or not you're interested in diving into the real estate niche or you're just here to glean whatever you can as a bookkeeper, become a better bookkeeper. We are gonna be talking about any and all of the above. So, if you're ready for it, let's go. welcome everybody. This is our wonderful guest, max. He's here to just offer another perspective of how to run a business, in bookkeeping, especially with a niche. max is a real estate investing father, veteran, all the things. so we're just gonna go ahead and start there, and I'm gonna let Max take it away and give kind of his background and how he got to where he's at, and then I'll probably, it's you guys are kind of getting like a behind the scenes podcast interview, so Yeah. This is very interesting. Thank you so much, Serena. Appreciate it. Yeah, we brought Serena in to talk to our group, our bookkeeping for REI group, and yeah, they, they really enjoyed that and I know people are still watching the recording from that, so thanks again for doing that. But yeah, so I'm 32 now. I, I completely basically started over professionally when I was 28, so just like four years ago. I think I'm coming up on five years as far as like full-time entrepreneurship goes. and so kind of backing off of that, I've had a few different career changes that happened prior to that as well. think I'm sticking with this one. it seems to be going okay, but prior to that, so straight outta college. Mechanical engineering. Um, I did that for a little bit. I got bored of that very, very fast. Like, I think after like three months or something. Um, it just wasn't, wasn't the right fit for me, the office environment and all that stuff. And so I was like, all right, I'm gonna join the Marine Corps. I, I've always had this kind of like, itch to serve and so I was like, okay, cool. This sounds like, I mean, my, my parents hated that idea, but it, it seemed like a good time to try that. and so quit the engineering job commissioned into the Marine Corps long pipeline to, to get in. And about midway through there, I started investing in real estate. You know, I read Rich Dad, poor Dad. I'm sure all of you have heard of that book, um, iconic book. So that kind of like, you know, I didn't grow up around stuff like that. I'm from a very, like, small rural, poor town in South Carolina. never even heard of real estate investing, anything to do with any of that. and so that like blew my mind. I think four months I was deployed at the time, but once I got back to the states, four months later, I purchased my first duplex and was kind of off to the races with the, the real estate investing stuff on the side. And so I still had, I guess a couple years left in my Marine Corps time. so continued to invest, um, built up. Probably within a year after being outta the Marine Corps, built up to like a 25 unit, portfolio of rentals just on the side. Wow. Um, mostly long-term rentals. I toyed with like, short-term rental, midterm rental, uh, model as as well, but mostly just long-term rentals. Um, I did the strategy if anybody here is, you know, familiar with different real estate strategies. so I got outta the Marine Corps. I'm kind of going all, all over the place, so I gave myself a year. So I got outta the Marine Corps, went back to engineering, gave myself a year'cause I didn't wanna do engineering. Right. And I was like, okay, I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do. I had always nerded out on personal finance. I was networking with a ton of other investors at kind of like a similar level and maybe even ahead of me, and it just clicked like, oh wow. Like all these people. Seem to be having issues that kind of root back to like this lack of financial clarity. Like not really, really knowing their numbers, um, at, at like an intimate level to be able to make decisions. and I was like, I'll, I'll try this bookkeeping thing. And so I don't know if you guys have heard of Bookkeeper Launch, but that's the program that I went through. I was doing it kind of at night. I was working my engineering job. I was doing that at night, still doing the real estate. I was doing a little bit of Turo. I was driving my wife nuts and doing all this stuff and I was like, okay, cool. I, I think I got my first, so I still had the engineering job. But I was coming up to the date that I said I was gonna quit. Um, it was December 17th, 2021. And so I got my first client in October. It was a firearm shop, not real estate. Mm-hmm. Um, just to kind of get going and then quit the job, didn't have any other clients. Um, and then January came and I think I secured like three real estate clients, maybe just, just through some, some networking groups that I was in. so full-time entrepreneurship January 1st, 2022, forward, you know, doing this bookkeeping business full-time and been doing it ever since. Awesome. I love hearing everyone's stories of how they get into accounting. It's like very rare for someone to answer the question. Like, I've just always known I was gonna be an accountant. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Most of us accidentally end up here, one way or another. And it's always really fascinating to hear like, what brought people in? And it's refreshing too to understand, to like, know that more of us are passionate about, about this career than, than not, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Like, it's really just fun to hear. And I think whenever we do come across stories like this, it's like. It feels like, yeah, there is actually the ability to have passion in passion in accounting, which sounds super nerdy, but like there really is. But yeah. So thank you for sharing that with us. Definitely. Um, yeah, so. We want this to be, you know, kind of casual, conversational but in the meantime, I had my own kind of, not necessarily selfish questions, but things that I, I think people would wanna know but might be afraid to ask because a lot of our community may or may not have a niche. Some people are exploring going into the real estate niche, and this is obviously one of those niches that is more complex and you can easily get in over your head if you don't know what to look out for. So with that, I would love if you could kind of highlight some of the areas within the overarching real estate. I mean, I know there's so many different avenues that you can go into. Maybe that's one thing that we talk about. But some of the things that you've seen people struggle with or feel like they're in over their head around? Yeah. I think it starts with just understanding the industry. you know, within my community, I just come across it a lot where someone says they wanna learn, you know, how to do bookkeeping for real estate people, but, but what they're talking about is like a real estate agent, because that, that's all they know, you know? Um, and that's like, honestly, that's a hard niche to serve because they, it's just so simple, you know? It's like they can a lot of, a lot, they can automate a lot of that. what we're talking about is real estate investors who have, like, they typically get sold into these like. Crazy entity structures that they don't really need and like mm-hmm. You know, that infuses a ton of complexity on the bookkeeping side, on the tax side, even on the legal side.' cause they never run 'em right because they don't mm-hmm.'cause they're not this massive corporation that has a team dedicated to making sure everything flows the way it's supposed to flow, you know? so yeah, I think it starts with understanding like, what is real estate investing? Um, what are all the different activities within real estate investing? Like, what's the language like we have, this like REI lingo, like a worksheet guide thing, you know?'cause it's like you're gonna hear a lot of words that you've just never heard before because it, it really has its own language. Um, I think more, so, much more so than, than other niches out there.'cause we've, served a ton of other types of companies as well. Um, mostly service based, um. And man, none of them have been as complex or, or had like kind of their own language, like the REI industry does. So, yeah, that's really where it starts. so understanding, I mean, obviously that's one of the, the things you can do when going into any niche, but it seems like it's extra important in this one to understand the industry. Not only, the language, but like you were saying, there's all these entity structures that tend to happen. So like, can you go into that for anyone who hasn't come across this issue yet? Like, give us an example. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so the most common one we see, which like, this is fine, this is fairly simple, you know, it's like a holding company, so like an LLC, hopefully single member. If it's something else, then it's gonna, I, you're gonna immediately have some complexity there. But a single member holding, you know, holding company LLC at the top, and then kind of like a, you know, if you guys have heard of like series LLCs, um, there's like a bunch of subsidiaries that kind of tie to the holding company. And, you know, they'll, if we're just talking about a landlord who owns a bunch of rentals, you know, they'll have a few rentals per LLC. Like, that's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. But some investors, and they, they usually do this way too prematurely, they create a property management company that doesn't own any assets, it just manages the assets. But they are the manager, right? Like this isn't a legit company. And then they have a bunch of LLCs that own the assets. And they never flow transactions the way they're supposed to.'cause they're just not big enough and they don't, yeah, they don't understand. But they got sold into that by an attorney who wasn't thinking about the operational. Daily part of it, you know, they're just thinking of like, oh, maximum liability protection. This is great. You know, operations over here, ownership over here, they're separate. That's great. But on the, on the bookkeeping side, that creates instantly a lot of complexity. And then we have to charge them more. Their tax pro has to charge them more. So like, it creates all this stuff that they don't really want. And then at the end of the day, they don't have the liability protection'cause they're not flowing things the way they should typically. and then the PM company may file as an S corp or something, or it may be a partnership and then the other entities may be something different. They may have a C corp floating up here for like payroll, but like, they're not at the level that they should be to like capture that benefit of mm-hmm. You know, the tax. Yeah. It just like I've, we see so many of these like. Investors with a few properties and they're, it's good. They're thinking ahead into the future to where it's like, okay, you know, once I, once I have a thousand rentals, this is what I, how I, you know, how things need to be. And, and they're implementing it at like five rentals, which is a big issue. that's a, a balance of having the vision and building the correct systems for that grand vision, but there's gotta be a happy medium. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I tell 'em like, let's just focus on making money right now. Um, yeah. And then, you know, kind of once, once you have like really good cash flow coming in, and then once you have, you know, some, some decent equity there, like something to protect then okay, go to the, go to the fancy attorneys and, you know, have them put something together for you. But, but right now we just need to focus on making money. Yeah. What is, when you come across that in your firm where people have created these structures, do you ever have situations where you're able to get them to kind of like, unwind that? Or do you just deal with what you have and they just end up having to pay more for your help? Yeah. Yeah. That, yeah. A, a specific client who we signed last fall, like immediately popped in my head. I actually did a breakdown for him where it's like. You know, here is what your attorney told you to do, and that's fine, and here is what it costs for us to service that structure. And it's like, you know, he only had a few rentals and it's like over $2,000 of what we have to charge him, which is ridiculous. Like, yeah. It, it just doesn't make sense. and then so if you wouldn't have done that, and if you would've gone with like this structure instead, and then we can grow into that, elevated structure eventually, but if, if you would've just started with this, then we could charge you like 600 bucks a month. you know, so it's like two over 2K versus 600 with like the, all the subscription costs and our bookkeeping fees and all that stuff. And so I try to give them something tangible that, you know, gets their brain to start thinking about how, what their attorney does and their CPA does and whoever does affects, like everything else, you know, like day-to-day operations as well as bookkeeping, you know, service fees, subscription costs, like,'cause they're not thinking about that. They're just thinking like, oh, I'm starting to acquire assets. I need to protect those assets. and that's really all they're thinking about. Yeah. And the attorneys and, and everyone usually aren't. Educating clients.'cause I see this with just the simple Scorp collection. Mm-hmm. Like, they're usually not educating clients on what it actually entails on a day-to-day or a year to year level. For the bookkeeping or just logistics of like moving money around. Like you can't just, especially if there's multiple S-corp owners, you can't just take a draw. The, the other owners need to have the e equal draws basically. Yes. So, yeah. Yeah. I personally got sold into that one way too early. Yeah. It was like the second year I was in business or something. CPA was like, let's do an S corp. Yeah. I was like, okay. And it really like, you know, with the, but the QBI deduction now, it doesn't really make sense for a lot of businesses, so. Mm. That's interesting. Um, so anyways, side note on that, Leslie said, just to confirm, are you speaking mostly to investors who focus on single family rentals and smaller multifamily rentals? Um, like duplexes, quads, and small unit number properties that are sole owners and investors? That's a great question. Yeah. Yeah. We actually, I know I've talked about rentals a lot. We actually really focus on flippers and wholesalers. so like the more transactional side of real estate, we do an audit each year of like, who are our top clients that we just love to work with? They love to work with us. It just like feels easy and it's also profitable. Mm-hmm. Um, and every time it's majority flippers and wholesalers. So that's, that's what, that's who we market to and that's who we go after. Now, a lot of them, they are also landlords, right? Yeah. They have the, the side portfolio that they're building over time. we actually do have quite a few clients as well that are just pure landlords. but we kind of have to answer your question, Leslie. We kind of have everything in between. So we have like, you know, the person who has the W2 who has like three to five Airbnbs, and they don't, they just don't wanna deal with it, right? And, and they, they want a smooth tax season. So we have that person, and then we have like the fund, like the real estate fund that purchases 40 new rental properties a month, you know, and then, and then we have syndicators and we, we have a lot of different asset, you know, classes. And so yeah, that's, I guess that's kind of our range now, like our. You know, most transaction heavy client is gonna be that fund that purchases a ton of properties. and then we have a few Airbnb clients as well that just, you know, they just have a few on the side. Yeah. So, I know a lot of the industry knowledge that you've gained was from actually being in this industry on a personal level with your own investments and things. So how have you gone about transferring that knowledge to your team? Because you're not the only one supporting your clients, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't, I guess for contacts, like I don't do any operational day-to-day stuff. Um, I don't do any bookkeeping. I don't do any you know, like, like the only like advisory that we do is just like reviewing and interpreting someone's financials for them. You know, like we don't, we don't do any true advisory or anything. So, but yeah, our, our, our team handles all that stuff and so. We have a pretty extensive training program. And so, and that training program starts with like, this is what real estate investing is. You know, like here's the language. Like here's, here's what these people care about. Here's what they're looking for, you know, from their financials, all that sorts of stuff. And so they get an intro to it for that. and that was super duper helpful whenever we were hiring people who had no prior experience, you know, in that industry. Yeah. Now we try to only hire people who have a little bit of experience in the, in the industry and also have just like a lot of just bookkeeping experience. but it, it's still helpful for those people too, because like one of our most recent hires. She has extensive like property management experience, like bookkeeping for property management companies. Mm-hmm. Very similar to what we do, but it's also different. but with her knowledge, we can quickly kinda convert her over to what we do because she's already familiar with properties and what types of transactions they see and all that stuff. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, it's really that training course. And then, you know, with, with investors and how complex the industry is. Something new pops up every week that, you know, our people just haven't seen. And so, Thomas, our operations manager, he's our SOP creator, you know, so he's like, oh, what is this new thing? You know, let's figure it out and then we'll create an SOP around it. And something going off the rails and I'll, I'll stop it after this, but, something cool that we're doing now is we're creating kind of like this AI thing for our team. this is like our second or third iteration of it now, to where, it catches all of our SOPs and, transcripts from videos and stuff like that. And so now someone can go to that thing, ask a specific question, and then it'll spit out hopefully an accurate answer. It's like, you know, sometimes it's hit or miss, so like you got at least a good starting point. Yeah. You just have to sanity check it. but yeah. So that's something else that's helpful for that person coming into the team. Yeah. Instead of like bothering someone else with their questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. that's awesome actually. You're giving me so many ideas of things to implement in my firm too. I'm like, oh yeah, I do have a training for onboarding people, but I think I need to revamp like the training around our specific niche and just talk more to that because you take that knowledge for granted of like, oh, I mean, you can just come in here and obviously see these things, but it just, it's not second nature to someone who hasn't been in the industry. yeah, we, we really, really stress, like for our client facing people, like you have to inspire confidence in our clients. Like when they talk to you, there, there needs to be no question in their mind that you are an expert. Yeah. And so like anytime, like I got a text a couple of weeks ago from one of our newer clients, You know, saying, Hey, we hopped on the onboarding call and you know, the onboarding specialist didn't seem to know like what we do. and I was like, oh, that's weird because I did a very warm handoff with them and, you know, broke it down, but may maybe I made a mistake. And so mm-hmm. And it turns out I did, you know, it turns out I was just missing one word that told them that, you know, they thought they did something different than what they act, what the investor actually does. And so, you know, obviously we quick, quickly, corrected that. Yeah. Um, but we're, we're just always doubling down that like, you know, how you come across to your clients like really, really matters. And you need to always inspire confidence. So if there's ever any sort of education or training gap, like we try to squash that as quickly as possible. Yeah. On that note, do you send, your team or bring your team along to industry events? So we have yet to attend an event as a team. I, I would like to do that. I, myself right now, don't go to a whole lot of events. Like I, I did in the very, in the first few years, I went to a lot of in-person stuff. but then things started developing in my personal life. And like right now I just don't do that. Right. And to be honest, I've never gotten a whole lot of clients, like, I guess like if you're looking at it from an ROI perspective, right? I've never gotten enough from like, in-person stuff. And so I really don't do a whole lot of that. if we're talking like bookkeeping industry events, uh, that is something I would like to do in the future, just to get around other people in the industry and, you know, see what's out there. But, but no, we haven't done that yet. I, I would, at a minimum, so. Probably a month ago, I told our team, like, Hey, if we hit these big goals that we have for this year, you guys just let me know what you want to do. Like, it'll be on the company's dime. Like we, we could do a kind of like a, you know, vacation. Like we're all remote, right? We're all over the country. Um, we have a few offshore personnel as well, so that this would be tough, but I'm like, you know, we could do like a short trip altogether. or, you know, you guys can just get bigger bonuses or whatever. So I'm, I'm, I'm trying, trying to start, you know, getting us together in person, but we just haven't done that. it's definitely a challenge and it, it's hard to do every year, but, we usually tie ours along with Zero Con. Oh, okay. Okay. We go to Zero Con.'cause we use just zero for our, our clients. But that makes sense. Um. But yeah, I've been toying with the idea of not just accounting industry events, but like niche specific events just for an education point. So that like, it might give more of an ROI, to your point, like, 'cause when I go to, like you said, when I go to. My niche industry events, I rarely ever land clients. The only ones that I've landed clients for are ones that I'm speaking at. Yeah, yeah. That, that makes sense. Yeah. So, but as like networking, but also I'm not the best person to like do a lot of networking 'cause I'm very introverted. I'm not either. So. That's kind of on me. I've never gotten that direct ROI, even from sponsoring events, but it seems like you might get a more, a better ROI from the perspective of if you look at it as let's take the whole team and we all just absorb as much as we can from conversations with potential, like people in that industry, whether they're educators in the industry or other real estate investors, just to understand their problems and be in the room with that whole thing. I think, like, in my mind, that seems like a higher ROI thing because then the whole team understands more about the industry. Obviously that requires everyone being really open to absorbing things. Mm-hmm. Not everybody likes to participate and stuff like that, but yeah. Yeah. I, I think that's an excellent idea. Even, um, even us going to some sort of big real estate conference, and everyone has a task of like. You have to ask this question to 10 people today. Yeah. And so come back. We're gonna, we're gonna have dinner together at the end, end of the day, each person is gonna say, yes, I did it. No, I didn't do it. And then we're just gonna talk about kind of our experiences from the day. I think that would be huge. Or just even like the task of like talk to. Person who is a, you know, at any stage in their real estate investing or whatever, and find out one pain point or mm-hmm. One thing, like, one of the things that I love asking people, like on my podcast when I interview other business owners that aren't bookkeepers or accountants, is like, what is something that if you have a bookkeeper you really love that they do or wish that they did? Mm-hmm. So it's like, that's good. You can gain a lot of insights and then honestly, it ends up being a lot of the same answers. So it's like, okay, if everyone's saying that same thing, we need to make sure we really double down on that. Mm-hmm. If we're already doing it or implement it in our firm. Yep. That, that's so good. Yeah. I, If I'm, you know, if I'm speaking like on a discovery call with a prospective client, and, and I know they've had prior experience with bookkeepers, I always ask them like, what did you like about them? What didn't you like about them? Mm-hmm. And the, the didn't is always communication. It's always communication. It's like, well, they just kind of dropped off and like, now I don't know what's going on. You know, or Yeah, they said they were gonna do this by a certain time it didn't get done. And, you know, they're not communicating with me the way I want them to. Like it's always something centering around communication. Yeah, absolutely. something on the personal level for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Their personality, personal touch, communication, whatever. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So this one's a little back, a little bit of a backtrack, but we were talking about, the training that you give your team about the industry. And Becky asked, can anyone take that? Or is that an internal training? so my bookkeeping firm is called Time Capital Bookkeeping. but there's also a Time Capital University. And so that came out of, so going back to Bookkeeper Launch, you know, I'm still in that Facebook group. I'm still participate. And so I posted, this was back in probably April of 2023, I posted a job posting in the Bookkeeper Launch group and like a few other groups, but I, I always love pulling from bookkeeper launch. And so I think I needed a cleanup, a cleanup person. And so, um, I didn't get a whole lot of applications to be honest with you, but like. Uh, right around a hundred people. Either dmd me or commented on that post and asking for mentorship around the real estate investing industry. So like, basically, Hey, I wanna learn what you guys do at Time Capital Bookkeeping, and I want to do it for myself. Like, I don't wanna work for Time Capital bookkeeping. I wanna, I wanna do it myself. Yeah. And so I funneled all those people into a Facebook group. It's called Bookkeeping for Real Estate Investors. That's what the Facebook group is and, uh, good. SEO. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, I'm not gonna complicate this. Like, this is what it is. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, I think that group's got like 4,900 people or something in it now. Wow. and I don't advertise it, you know, it just, it just kind of mm-hmm. Grew organically. But, so yeah, I just started answering all their questions and they were like, you know, the, the thing that kept popping up is like a training course. And I was like, man, I don't have time for this. Like, I'm, I'm trying to grow my own firm. Like, I'm, I think we're like getting ahead of ourselves, you know? but I was like, all right. It, it kept coming up. And so I was like, okay, just give me like four to six months and I'll, I'll kind of knock it out in my off time and mm-hmm. And we'll see what we can do. And so I actually, you know, I had a whole bunch of Loom videos for my internal team, that was, you know, kind of poorly organized, but, you know, SEO they were searchable, um, so they could find what they needed. so I was like, okay, cool. I'll take a lot of those videos, make sure there's no sensitive client information in those videos, and then I'll just kind of form a course. That'll be my baseline, and then I'll just. Whatever pops in my head, I'll just add it to it, you know, and I'll make sure it's organized as far as kind of like the life cycle of a client that you're gonna see starting from scratch. And so, mm-hmm. So yeah, that's what I created and. I used to just sell it as one off and I will still sell it as a one off, like lifetime access type of deal. but now we have a community, a school community, if, if anybody's heard of school, S-K-O-O-L. And so you can go there seven day free trial, you get access to the entire course for a full seven days and all. There's also a multi six figure bookkeeper playbook course that's more like the business side of a bookkeeping firm. Mm-hmm. So you get access to that full course for that seven days as well. And then if you decide you wanna stick around, it's $47 a month. there's a whole bunch of templates, guides, tons of marketing stuff.'cause my executive assistant is like really big on marketing. So there's tons of that stuff in there. we have live calls, every now and then and, we do. We kind of change up what we do throughout the year, uh, but sometimes we'll do challenges and stuff like that too. But, but yeah, to answer your question in a super long-winded way, Becky Yes. That, that training course is, is in there. It's called the Nuts and Bolts course. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Which, speaking of marketing, aren't you guys doing something special around that? Yes. Yes. Well, thank you, Serena. Yeah, that was, that was, that was a great, a great plug. Yeah. So, um, for, for context on this, so we've had the paid community now, the bookkeeping for REI, I'll, I'll, I'll link it. we've had that community now for coming up on a year in June, and so it's got like 160 members in it. And so. What we've constantly been asking them, like, what is it that you need? And we also ask a lot of prompting questions to try to like root out like what is it that they actually need? And the thing that kept popping up is like, how to get their first client or how to get their next client. Like that's what everyone is struggling with, right? And so we've kind of been over the past, you know, six months and then we're really gonna get intentional over the next three months. so we're actually building a second community that it's not associated with any niche. Like all niches are welcome. Or if you don't have a niche, like it doesn't matter. you know, good marketing and sales info applies to pretty much any business, any niche. You know, it doesn't really matter. So, yeah, everyone's welcome. But, but yeah, it's gonna be called GoPro Bookkeeping. and how I came up with that is I was like, I feel like, like some people in our community, they're so good with the technical stuff, but they're still working from, for someone else, they haven't really like gone pro yet, like in the bookkeeping space and like, started their own business. And like, that's the difference. They, they can't attract leads and convert those leads into clients. So they're subcontracting or they're an employee for someone else's firm. And there's nothing wrong with that, but like, all these people want to start their own business. So I'm like, I think that's the difference between people who go pro in bookkeeping. It's, you know, it's that, um, at least in the beginning, that's what it is. While, while it's just you. Mm-hmm. And so, so yeah, it's basically gonna be like. Marketing and sales for introverted bookkeepers. So like, yeah. Yeah. So it's like how, because I don't, I don't do really anything in person. You know, I'm not, I'm not out there doing like super salesy stuff. I'm not cold calling people. Um, yeah. I don't, I don't like DMing. I've never had luck with DMing. And so, you know, that's kind of all the extroverted stuff that we're pretty uncomfortable doing, and so, mm-hmm. But I've had a lot of luck with the other stuff that doesn't require that. Right. And so that's what, same, that's what we're gonna cover in this group, and we'll have like, live calls and stuff too, so. Perfect. Yeah. I'm so glad you answered these calls of like, it's when, when people come to you asking for help and like, you're like, okay, I guess. I guess I need to do this. It's not, it's born out of actual, like service instead of like looking at dollar signs. And same thing with like the question of, and the struggle of people needing to find their first or next client. That's one of those things that comes up a lot in our community too. And I sometimes I feel like a broken record, it comes up on almost all of our q and a calls. Mm-hmm. With new people in the community. And, yeah. The truth is there's so many ways to do it. one way, might work for one type of specific bookkeeper versus another, and one way might work for like attracting a certain kind of client. So it's like there's so many options. Everything works. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Everything works if you work it. Yeah. But. It's gonna depend on your personality for like what you want to work. Yes, exactly. So yeah. So we kind of have to get to that. And then it's like, it's like, okay, we have a solution like in the lane that you kind of wanna stick to. And that's a big thing too, in the beginning with all the marketing and sales stuff. It's like, let's just focus on one channel, you know? Yeah. And like go really hard at that one channel until it's producing fruit. Let's create a system around that. Make it predictable. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, if we want to entertain a second thing, then cool. You know, let's stabilize the first, it's predictable and now let's go tackle the second thing. Or just double down on the first thing, which I'm a really big fan of if, if something's working, just like triple down on it instead of doing something new, you know? So, yeah. Yeah, it gets easier that way unless mm-hmm you don't actually like that methodology, or it's not bringing, then it's not really working if it's not bringing the right type of people in. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, but I think one of the biggest challenges with that is people have, they don't have enough patience to allow the time for it to work. That's a huge thing because like the majority of what I've done is online marketing. You know, whether it's social media or like, you know, SEO website stuff. Google, Google business listing stuff. Mostly social media, to be honest with you. That's been a, a big hit with us, but. But yeah, it's like all of that stuff takes a while to get going. Like even if you're just gonna do some sort of strategic affiliate program mm-hmm. To where it's like, I'm only doing this, like, I'm cold calling CPAs or what, you know, cold emailing CPAs all day. Like, even something like that takes a few months to like bear some fruit, you know? Yeah. So I, I think that's huge. I, I've seen a lot of that in our community where it's like, I did your Facebook blueprint and it's been 90 days and it's not working. I'm like, I mean, I don't think social media produced anything for me until like over a year, you know? So like Yeah. You just have to stick with it. Yeah. You really do. And, and the other aspect is the, the line of work that we're in is something that requires so much trust. So the length of time it requires to convert somebody is longer when you're starting with something cold, right? Like social media rather than a warm introduction as a referral. That life cycle of converting a client is a lot shorter in general because they've got built in trust. Mm-hmm. So that's something to consider too when you go the online marketing route, like you are building trust that entire time. So Yeah. Yeah. You have to be crazy consistent. Um, consistency is gonna be, you know, kind of like your intensity with all the online stuff. You just have to be incredibly consistent. Yeah, Awesome. so when do you guys kick that off and is that gonna be linked at Time Capital University or different website? Oh, you know what, let me, let me scroll through. I'm glad you asked that 'cause I've, I've already forgot. So we have a wait list link. Um, lemme see. GoPro Bookkeeping. Yeah. This is not on our web. Like I. You guys are the first group I'm even mentioning this to. Awesome. I feel so special. Yeah. This is lovely. Yeah, we, I mean, we have nothing like I, I created this wait list form that's super quick for you guys to fill out. Created it like two days ago, you know, it's like we have nothing right now. when we will launch, it's probably gonna be, I'm thinking early August right now. You know, e even if you guys are like, yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna sign up. You can just get on the wait list and then that way you'll get information about it. You know, we'll, we'll send you a few emails here and there, just so you have the information. But I'm thinking early August, maybe like the first week in August is gonna be a good time. Awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're excited about it. So yeah, I'm super excited to see how that goes. And yeah, that's something that, It's funny the way that, this has happened to me multiple times throughout my time in business of like, where I'll have like an idea of like seeing a need in the market. Mm-hmm. Like I see the same questions come up as you're saying with your community. And it's like, I know this is a need. Like I know other people are also doing it, but people are still asking. So something about the way that that person's doing it doesn't jive. So it's a need. And then I'll just like sit on the idea for a long time because it's not something that I really wanna do. Yeah. And then someone else, like, you'll come along and be like, I'm gonna do this thing. And I'm like, yes, I don't have to do this then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, to your point, like. I invite you to this community. Now, the way school works, you have to be a member of the community to have like a referral link, right? And so then it's like, now, now you can still benefit even financially from that thing that you didn't necessarily want to create, which is really neat. Yeah. For me it mostly comes down to like making sure that like my community has the tools that they need, whether I'm the one that creates it or someone else. It's like my, my goal is for people to just get the resources that they need. Yes. Um, from people with integrity. That's the other piece. Yeah. Yeah. You have to do a good bit of vetting. Yeah. That's huge. I, I, I find that far less in the bookkeeping community. I feel like everyone is just kinda, they just kind of have that because you're not gonna last in this industry if you don't have that. Um, I agree. And other industries I've dabbled in that it's not there to the degree that it is there within our industry. Yeah, it's really instilled upon us, especially for anyone who's gone through accounting classes. I think during my first accounting class, my professor was like, if you don't have a conscience, get out. Like just leave the room right now if you're willing to commit fraud or anything like that. Like if you have that bone in your body, you do not belong in this industry. And I was like, dang. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah.'cause everything we touch is so sensitive and there's a lot of room for error. And then there's also a lot of room for like. Fraud. There's so much room for fraud. It's very easy to accidentally commit fraud. Like that's, that's the nuts thing. Yeah. It and, and more so these days with all the, you know, scams and everything. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Becky's follow up question, I just wanna make sure we attack this. Yes. Um, the time Capital and REI are two different items. Correct. And the wait list, we dropped that. So I'll let you kind of talk about the differences. yeah. Two different items. Yes. so there's Time Capital bookkeeping, and then the way I, you know, we serve real estate investors. We do bookkeeping for real estate investors. And the way I think about it this time, capital University is like a sister company. Like it is a legit separate company. But it's like a sister company that basically. Teaches bookkeepers how to do what we do at Time Capital Bookkeeping. So it's like, here's our internal playbook, here's all my best practices for the technical stuff, the business stuff. And so, you know, time Capital University is kind of the umbrella for, we have the bookkeeping for REI school community, and then we're gonna have the GoPro bookkeeping school community. Perfect. Great explanation. Yeah, so it's very similar to the way that I've structured. I have my firm, which is not the same name, ambitious Bookkeeper, but similar like in the Ambitious Bookkeeper. I basically give you how I run my firm. yeah. And, and that makes total sense. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, we've already created the resources and other people need the same, you know, need the support, so. Mm-hmm. yeah. Cool. Perfect. So what are you doing on a personal level in with your life right now in addition to all of these things and how do you find time to do so? Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Have, I've always had a lot going on personally. you know, some things just happen to you and then other things you, you initiate yourself and so I'm, I I'm no different in that, you know, we've, we've had a lot of, trials and tribulations with my wife's family, medical stuff with my wife as well recently. and we also have two boys under two. So we're like, you know, like, oh, you know, we're, hooking and jabbing with them. they're amazing. Lots of stuff going on personally. And then, so I don't, I don't, invest in real estate actively anymore. Like I, I still, I think I still have one rental. I do a little bit of private lending to other investors that, that I found out is much more passive than actually owning, yeah, owning the, the asset. So, if you guys have a lot of extra cash flow or cash sitting around, you know, that might be something for you to look into. I have resources around that as well that I've used. and so on the business side, you guys know about the firm, the university, like the firm is 95% of my work week. The university is the other 5%. and so I have an executive assistant, Lindsay, she's amazing. she runs the majority of the university. And then. My operations manager, Thomas, is also amazing. I hope he never leaves me. He, um, he basically runs the, the bookkeeping firm. and so I don't know if you guys have heard of the book, 10 x is easier than two x. Um, if not, I highly recommend reading it. I'm at the tail end of it now. I should have read it much, much sooner. But to answer your question, I'm constantly identifying. Like what my 20% is. So it's like, what, what's my, you know, what are the top highest leverage activities of how I can spend my time? Because I do have reduced work days now, you know? Yeah. Um, I used to work, you know, 12, 14 hour days, consistently work on the weekends as well to just do everything. But now I don't have the option to do that if I want to be a good husband and a good father. Right. And so it's mm-hmm. I have very strong boundaries around my work now. Like I, I get into the office around nine 30, I leave at five 30, and then outside of that, you know, husband, dad, um, I, I no longer work weekends, and so I basically had to become a master delegator. Yeah. And it's like, like, what, what is my unique ability? What are like, I like to do, I tell our team to like just do the exercise of like. If somebody has a gun to your head, you only have two hours a day to work, but you still have to get everything done. Like how are you gonna do it? You know, just like do that mental exercise and it's like, oh, a lot of what I'm currently doing could probably be automated. If there's like a safe way to do that. some of what I'm doing doesn't even yield the results I'm going for, so let's just stop doing it. Yeah, let's cut it. Yeah. And then like, you know, maybe I need a person for this like last little bucket. Cool, let's hire a good person, maybe part-time person, or hourly person or whatever, and delegate that. And then now I'm just left with like my core unique ability, top 20% activities that really drive the needle forward. But you constantly have to be chasing that because it changes as you continue to grow. Um, and so, yeah. So I don't know if I'm doing that well, but that's what I'm doing. That's what you're figuring out right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a constant. That's a really good exercise to just consistently do, whether even if you are like solo in your firm right now, to just like do that exercise because you're gonna end up eliminating things. Like do you need to be spending three hours making Canva graphics? Maybe not. Probably not. Yeah, probably not. Um, and, and you don't need to update your website one more time. No, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah, I'm constantly, I'm in a similar boat where I, my days are actually even shorter, so I know they are, I'm actually jealous. Well, you're like, I've tried to be on your calendar. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I really, I pretty much work from like 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM on the, on the weeks that I have my kids. I have them every other week at this point. Mm-hmm. So, um, and even when I don't have them, I still try to stick with that schedule. Sometimes I'll, I'll bleed into more towards 5:00 PM but in the grand scheme of things, that's still not a full work week, especially as an entrepreneur. I mean, that's like, that's a very tight schedule for an entrepreneur. Yeah. Yeah. But with that, I still allow myself to do like. CEO level type stuff on weekends, like if the kids are occupied and we're just chilling at home, I will brainstorm some stuff. Like, so that's still work, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, it's just not me working at my desk on client work, it's me. Mm-hmm. Like mapping out the revamp of Elevate or whatever, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, which I've been doing a lot of lately, so. That's awesome. Um, yeah, I've, I, I've noticed you, you seem to have really good discipline around things like it, it seems like you respond to things at certain times and like you're not, I think that's huge, especially for us who have crunched schedules. Um, yeah. Like, yeah, like not having all the platforms open, you know, all day, every day, where it's like you just get lost in this constant, like replying to people, you know, cycle. And so, yeah. I think it, it does once you kind of get it ironed out of what works. The, the hard part is like having discipline. Yeah. I, like, I let go of a lot of, like, I rarely even log into LinkedIn anymore. Every so often I'll check messages there, but turns out it's mostly just spam. Mm-hmm. Um, a lot of like, my email, I don't try to keep it managed really. I just like check it in the morning, check it in the afternoon or evening, and. I don't remember if I responded to you when I actually responded to you or scheduled the email, but I know I wrote that email at night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so that happens sometimes, but, I kind of figure like if someone really needs to get a hold of me, like they, they can find a way with other, like not going through social media. Like, don't send me important messages through social media.'cause that's at the bottom of the barrel. Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's really good for me to know.'cause I keep, I keep hitting you through Facebook. Oh, that's a little different.'cause that to me is like a messaging app on my phone. So it's not like I don't have to be logged into Facebook to get my messages, which is great. I used to hate that change that they made, but I love it now. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It allows that discipline. I'm on Facebook app. Yeah, yeah. Same. Yeah. Yeah. I I have that one on my phone too.'cause I get prospects through that channel. You know, they hit me up. But I don't have to like. Do any scrolling, which is great. Yeah, that's really beneficial. So, I mean, it's taken me years to really build up the discipline and, and there's been times where, like my inbox, I have I have an email program called Spark and it sorts, I've heard of that. Emails versus like, it sorts newsletters versus notifications versus emails from actual people. Hmm. And so I really only monitor the emails from actual people and the rest of them, maybe once a week I'll go through and like open it up the newsletters and just skim it to make sure nothing got accidentally like in that folder. And then I archive pretty much everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, if I delete something or archive something that was important, they'll come, they'll come back around. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and so can spark unsubscribe to things for you? what you can do is block. Senders, um, through Spark, but it doesn't have that unsubscribed feature like Gmail does natively. Mm-hmm. And so that's one of the only things I don't really like. But occasionally I do go through the newsletters and just like do the unsubscribe thing every so often. Mm-hmm. But, um, at least it like groups them separately so I don't have to look at them. And now there's like an AI feature built in that you can ask it to like skim my email and make sure there's no deadlines approaching or whatever. Perfect. Like, that's kind of cool. That's so funny. I was just about, you know, I don't know how far off the rails we're going, we're going with this part of the conversation, but I was gonna bring up ai. I mean, we are doing a lot with ai. Um, I was very. Weary of it and hesitant. And I'm not a techie guy, so despite being an engineer, I'm not a techie guy. So I'm just like, I don't wanna deal with that. But probably six months ago, maybe even a year ago at this point, I was like, okay, we gotta get on it. So now we're heavy into it. Been messing with Claude Cowork lately. Mm-hmm. And it can really, it's really, really powerful. It, it, it can do some really, really good stuff like. The way I think it does have a chat feature, but the way I think about it is it's kind of like a chat GPT that can actually do stuff. So like it accesses your browser and you see the mouse moving, clicking on things. Oh, wow. And it's like, it's a, it's when it, when it hits some sort of roadblock, it figures it out. It brings in whatever it needs to bring in to get around the roadblock. Like, it's so smart. Yesterday I had it doing just some admin stuff for me. Like I needed to get information in this Google sheet into this sheet. They have two totally different formats. I need everything to be uniform. And you know, it knocks that out in like five minutes and it's, wow. It's like, whoa. That just saved me probably, I don't know, two hours, 20 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe like a few hours, maybe 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, um, yeah, it's really good for stuff like that. And, It can e you have to be careful what you give it access to and never give it access to like client stuff. Um, at least not yet, but yeah, it's super powerful. So definitely check that out. I, uh, with the unsubscribing to the emails, I was thinking like, oh, I. If you want to give access to your email, it, it can definitely do that. You can be like, Hey, everything in this folder just unsubscribe and it, it would do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I still like to see, like, there's some things that I'm purposely subscribed to because I wanna like stay up to date on things, but I don't really need to read the emails. I can just kind of like skim to see what the subject is if I wanna open it, but I don't necessarily wanna unsubscribe. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But occasionally I do go through and clean house for sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But that's one of those things that, you know, depending on your personality, like a lot of people feel like very, like, I need a clean inbox, I need inbox zero, and I really strive for that at the beginning. Um, but then there comes a time when that really, that's one of those things that can be scratched off the list because it doesn't move the needle. Mm. Mm-hmm. Like I said, like you can delete emails, you can archive email. I just put everything in the archive. I don't even try to file things away in folders anymore. Mm-hmm. That was a corp that was corporate Serena entrepreneurs. Serena doesn't have, isn't paid by, isn't paid to come into the office and sit at a desk for eight hours. She's paid to actually produce. So I don't have time to sit and organize my inbox, nor do I wanna necessarily pay someone to do that because it again, doesn't, that doesn't bring in revenue, that doesn't bring in clients. I monitor it enough to know if we're getting client inquiries, obviously, but like I really encourage people to like, let go of that corporate mindset and perfectionism because like. That really does, if it doesn't move the needle, like it doesn't belong on the list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most or yeah, most organizing activities actually don't, you know, move the needle. It depends on what your goals are, but, right. yeah, it's like, what, what is the highest and best use of your time? You know, like chasing that 20%. And then the 2.0 of that is like, well, I just handed off this task that I deem pointless to someone else who I'm paying. Like, what is the highest and best use of their time? Like now? Now I'm starting to see things like that where it's like, yeah. It's like, oh, like so and so shouldn't even be doing that. Like, I, if I thought it was pointless, then why am I paying her to do that? You know? So like, let's get that off of her list and, and let's elevate her activities and try to chase her 20%. And so, um, yeah, I, I, I think that's super powerful of just asking that. I do like a, I schedule everything on my calendar. I'm a big like time blocker. Me too. And it's very specific. And so I'm like, I look at my calendar every day and try to project out and I'm like, you know, sometimes I'm like, why is that even on my calendar? Like that, that doesn't matter. And so we can remove that block or give that block to somebody else or whatever. Yeah. I sit down at the beginning of every week and I look at like what's on my appointments for the week. And sometimes I end up canceling things because I'm like that actually, I don't really have time to sit in that. Kind of a call or maybe we move it forward because there's more pressing issues like this week. but yeah, that's, that's a good use of time to sit down for 30 minutes and figure out what you're doing for the week. A percent, yes.' cause it sets you up for just like feeling more organized and Yes, at the beginning, like five minutes at the beginning of each workday as well. And then five minutes at the end. Just do like a very quick audit of like, what I set out to do today. Did I actually do it? Like, is it stuff that matters? Did I actually do it? If I didn't do it, what took my time? And it's probably stuff that like, just doesn't move the needle. You answered emails. You spent way too much time in Slack like you. You know, you were addressing things that maybe like weren't important and they also weren't urgent, but they were like, easy on your brain, so you just did it. Mm-hmm. Like, it's probably stuff like that. Yeah. And, you know, there's time, time of day where that's appropriate sometimes. Definitely. Yes. Yeah. For me that's towards the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, let me just look at my email right now and Yeah. Yeah. Knock out what I can, but Awesome. Well, we are about at, we're at, we're at time and I wanna be, cognizant of everybody's calendars. So, I'm going to say if you guys have any lingering questions, please pop them in the chat now. Mm-hmm. Or unmute and ask if that works too. I'll pop my email in there too. And yeah, if you'd like to connect with Max, please, do that and go get on that wait list for that. Is it like a challenge that you guys are, is it. Structured kinda like a challenge or, so it, it's, it's gonna be an extensive marketing video based course, an extensive sales video based course. and then we're gonna do calls similar to this, you know, we'll have like office hours and stuff like that q and as. and then, yeah, we'll probably have a, right now I'm thinking we'll have probably a deep dive call on topics that are relevant every other week. We'll, we'll, we'll see if people are into that. And. And then other than that, we'll just have really valuable conversations in the, you know, kind of the forum section of school. So like, in our existing community, like honestly that's what people get the most value out of. It's like communicating with each other in that forum style. and answering, getting your questions answered super quick, whether it's me or another member or whoever. but yeah, we'll have the courses, we'll have templates and tools and scripts and all that stuff. And then we'll have, you know, calls and different types of calls we'll develop over time. But, but yeah, we're just gonna keep it super simple. Everything is gonna be best practice based of like what I've actually done and seen success with. And then if there is anything outside of that that I think is also valuable, I'll bring it in with the context of like, I didn't have success with this, but so and so had a lot of success with this, so I just want to get it in front of you. Yeah. There's a lot of that that happens in my community.'cause people ask, well, did you do this? And I'm like, I haven't, but I know other people have and have had success. Yeah. And it really comes down to A, the bookkeeper's personality, and B, the industry that they're targeting because a hundred percent that mix can just totally change. Mm-hmm. Everything. Mm-hmm. So, yep. Awesome. Well, I super appreciate you making the time to come into the community. And, thank you everyone who decided to show up live and participate. I appreciate you guys too. Yes. Um, I know it's a Friday afternoon for a lot of people, so Oh, yeah. Um, yeah. Thank you again so much Max, and, um, we'll talk to you all soon. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, this was awesome, Serena. Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, we'll, we'll keep chatting. We, we got a lot of good stuff going on. Yep. All right. I love it. Bye. All right, y'all have a good one. Bye.

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