CFO Chronicles: The Secrets Behind Success

Stop Building a Business That Steals Your Freedom - Jaime Rodriguez

• James Donovan • Season 3 • Episode 54

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He scheduled his wedding around payroll. That’s when he knew something had to change.

Jaime Rodriguez, CEO of Bookkeepers.com, has helped over 17,000 students turn their skill into a scalable business. In this episode, he shares the real lessons that most freelancers and early-stage business owners miss:

• The two personality types that sabotage their own growth
 • The SOP mistake that stalled his own firm
 • Why most freelancers chase the wrong kind of “rich”
 • How to build a business that gives back your freedom

This one’s part gut check, part blueprint and it might just save you years of wheel-spinning.

🔗 Learn more at: bookkeepers.com

📲 Find Jaime on LinkedIn & Facebook (@jaime.at.bookkeepers)

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Speaker 1:

Most people think bookkeeping is all about spreadsheets, reconciling receipts and staying buried in someone else's numbers, but today's guest is flipping that idea on its head. Jaime is the CEO of bookkeeperscom and he's helped over 17,000 students launch and scale their own bookkeeping businesses, not just to make money, but to build freedom on their own terms. In this conversation, we talk about what it really means to become a rich entrepreneur, how to avoid the traps that keep most freelancers stuck, and why your definition of success should have nothing to do with someone else's revenue goals. If you're ready to break out of the job mindset and actually build a business that works for you, this one's for you. Jaime, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you on here. We had a chance to meet at GrowCon a couple months ago. I'm pumped to have you on.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me on. It was a good time meeting you at GrowCon and I'm happy to be here.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, awesome. Well, look, let's get right into it. You've helped thousands of people step into bookkeeping. What made you fall in love with this industry in the first place?

Speaker 2:

I didn't love the industry actually, oh, okay, yeah, no, I jumped in the industry as an accountant because I thought like, hey, what is a job that's in demand that nobody else likes?

Speaker 2:

And I initially went to school as a marketing major, and, as much fun as I had in those marketing classes, the accounting classes were really tough and I was like, hey, you know what, let's make a smart decision here and let's find something that's going to be very difficult, that people just loathe, me included. And then I did it. But what got me into this space, into the education space, was, well, I actually took the course myself and it's been able to help me grow my bookkeeping firm. And then what I did is I started working part time with the company. I realized that the most fulfilling part was the teaching, finding people that actually that could, just seeing those light bulb moments you know when you're able to explain something to them. That was that's my favorite part of the industry, more so than the accounting and the numbers is being able to teach somebody how to essentially learn a whole new language.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love it. I love it and I got a comment real quick for those listening and not watching. I've never seen anyone with a cooler background, especially in the accounting bookkeeping world. I've seen some pretty wild ones with other marketers and you jump on different coaching calls but, hands down, you take the cake for anyone in the accounting industry with your background. This is amazing.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I am a basketball nut. I can't wait Basketball season, even the offseason, I'm keeping track of all of it and I have an abnormal amount of jerseys in my closet as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and the favorites, I'm guessing, hanging up on the wall. What motivated the ambient lighting.

Speaker 2:

So that's just me playing with the lighting, and I actually play with that all the time, aside from the basketball. I am a gamer. I do love to play. I have a gaming PC that I work with, and part of my space here is this. The office is not only where I work, it's where I game, and so I have to really enjoy my time here. I have to make it visibly appealing so that I don't hate coming in here, and this is where I spend hours. Right, hours of my life are being spent here, whether it's play or work, and so I don't know. It's just a way that, I guess, makes it easy on the eyes.

Speaker 1:

Nice, well, hey, 10 out of 10, the background's great and I love the lighting. I mean, what do most people get wrong when they try to turn bookkeeping into a business? There's so many, um, you know bookkeepers out there. They're great at at doing the bookkeeping they're great at. You know, they've got a couple of clients on their own. Maybe they're working for someone else and they're doing it on the side, but yeah, what? Where do people go wrong and what hurdles they run and run into when they try to actually run a business and do it on their own.

Speaker 2:

Right and so, and so I kind of like to compartmentalize that into two sections. So there's the one student that is just a brilliant bookkeeper. They're very detail oriented. What they're going to have problems with and this was me is marketing themselves, being able to sell themselves. Most people that have that personality that are so meticulous with numbers are typically not the same person that is very creative and outgoing and is able to really just sell themselves more than anything.

Speaker 2:

What I did, and I think what most students that are in that seat that I was in we get so focused on the little details where I can't launch my business until my website is perfect. I can't do this until my business card is perfect. I can't do this until I buy another course and I have this course, but maybe I just need this other certificate, I need the QuickBooks certificate, and I need the advanced certificate, and now I need the payroll certificate, and then you're just chasing these milestones that don't really mean anything, because at the end of the day, you could be the most wonderful bookkeeper, but that's all you're going to be as a bookkeeper. You're not going to be a business owner, because you have the knowledge but you don't have the clients. And then the other side of this is the total opposite.

Speaker 2:

The person that's an incredible salesperson. They have a great personality, they're very creative, they're easy to talk to. That person typically struggles with the attention to detail. They're usually a little bit messier, right. It feels like we all, we all, we all like when you're if you're listening to this, you're probably thinking of somebody right now where you're like oh yeah, they're super creative, everything they touch just looks amazing, but then their closet is a mess, right, like it. I don't know why that is, but that's just how it seems to work. That person typically struggles with the bookkeeping side and, um, I don't think that one or the other is better. Each of them have their strengths and their weaknesses and I think it's just a matter of knowing what that strength and weakness is so that you can build that, build your firm accordingly. But those are the two biggest things where the mistake of just being too detail oriented or just not having enough knowledge of the space.

Speaker 1:

What do you say to the students and the business owners you're speaking to, who are getting hung up on? Well, as soon as I get my website and as soon as I get my business card and as soon as my logo and the font and I'm curious to hear what you say to them I got an answer myself, but I'd love to hear your take on that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I think we've all heard. You know, done is better than perfect, right, and I think that's that's what I try to live by now. Uh, I've made the mistake with my booking being business, I've had like three websites, a bunch of different business cards, uh, and through bookkeeperscom, what we? It's funny because we get a lot of students that will come in and ask those questions like what if I want to change my name later? And then we just say, hey, so be it. If you want to change your name later, just launch your business and you can switch this thing later, don't worry about it. And I like to use bookkeeperscom as an example. We weren't always bookkeeperscom. We started as Bookkeeping Business Academy, bookkeeper Business Launch and then bookkeeper launch and now bookkeeperscom. Like we, we've been all over the place. If we can change our name, you can too. You're not McDonald's or Starbucks, right? Like your name, isn't that? Uh, it doesn't hold the presence that something like a McDonald's or a Starbucks has.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's so good. You haven't put multi-million dollars, if not billions of dollars, into your branding. Just change it and move on and worry about getting paid and doing the work and growing a list of clients Also at the end of the day, your clients. They're not choosing to work with you because of your business name.

Speaker 2:

Not at all. No, they couldn't care less.

Speaker 1:

They really couldn't Aimee. You've helped 17,000 students. What's the repeatable path you see for people who actually succeed?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I think the number one thing the best, the most successful students are those that will work, that will try to create workflows for themselves right from the start. And if that it seems so, it seems easier said than done. But when you're in there and you only have one client as you're starting out, you think why the heck do I need workflows? I got this, I can remember this. You get two clients, you can still do it. Three clients, four clients, five still, it's still pretty manageable. And then after that it starts to get a little bit busier. You're like, oh shoot, I forgot to reconcile this account or I forgot to call this client then and then.

Speaker 2:

So what you see a lot of people do is you start with a to do list and your to do list is a good start, but they're not workflows. A good workflow in a student that really excels is someone that is not only has a checklist, but for each task on that checklist there's a how to, how to do this. Why does that matter? Because when you're ready to scale, and when you're ready to scale and you hire somebody, you can literally just say, hey, here's the template, here's my to-do list, here's what you're going to handle this client, and this is what we do every single month, every single week. This is how we do it, and if you're really doing things the way that we suggest, not only are you giving them a list and instructions, you're doing a video of it, of you doing it, you're doing a transcript of the video and you're doing a checklist that says not just this is how you do it, but here are the five major points in this task. If you can knock all these five out, you've done the task correctly.

Speaker 1:

I love it. Yeah, and if you haven't fallen back on that safety net, you don't have the checklist task isn't done, so just kind of loop back and go down the list. I think business owners and just people in general they make things so much more difficult than it needs to be.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, Record what you're doing. I'm in the middle of reading Buy Back your Time by Dan Martell right now, and it's about the point in the book where, yeah, just record yourself, have the checklist what to fall back on and you know, it just makes life a lot easier.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, your future self will thank you. And it's so hard to think about that future self because you think I don't have time for this. I'll do this later. I don't really need it now, but your future self needs it badly and they're going to wish that you did do it.

Speaker 1:

And you're already doing the work. So just jump on zoom, record yourself on the screen and then at least store that doc so the next time someone comes in at the bare bones, you have a rough video of you just walking through it and you're just talking, talking through the things that you clicked on. You speak a lot about becoming rich in your own terms. What does that mean and how do you help people define it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so the reason this is really important for me is because when I wanted to start my business for the first time, I saw being rich as it was totally off, totally different than what I think of it as now and to me it was being able to buy whatever I wanted, to wear fancy clothes, wear a suit, to work, go to the office. And that's what I kind of define as success. And, oddly enough, I thought being busy was successful, like I always thought that the most successful people, if you talk to them, they were just like oh, I'm too busy for that, I'm too busy for this, right. So there's some weird mindset shift that I made. I don't know if weird is the right term, but I definitely had a mindset where I thought busy equals high status, it means rich, it means that's what I want. Now I've kind of broken it down into a four-piece framework which is totally different than it was before. That's faith, freedom, flexibility and fulfillment. When I think of being rich, I think of those four things. Number one faith, like what is something that I can fall back on, that gives me purpose for this job, for this business that I'm creating. Freedom is just the ability to be able to choose and spend time on whatever it is I want to do.

Speaker 2:

And then the flexibility part of it. This one's probably my favorite, because we think, when we start a business, that we have to follow the norms, the nine to five, monday through Friday. Who made that up? Like that's? If you, if you think, if you know yourself and you're like I just hate Mondays. I'm so not very resourceful on a Monday. Instead, you know what. I'm going to take Mondays off. I'm going to work Saturdays. I don't know if that's the best idea, but you can't. Nobody is telling you. You have to follow these norms that we have created for ourselves. In fact, if you want to work seven days a week and just work eight to 12, you could do that. You're the business owner. That's what flexibility is about Just being able to maneuver your schedule.

Speaker 2:

I'll use me as an example just to add a little bit more to the flexibility part. From noon till about 5 pm, I'm useless, and like my brain is useless, and and like my brain is useless and we're recording here after in the afternoon. This is the exact kind of thing that I can do from noon to five to noon to six. Things that really require my brain. Uh, I need to schedule in the morning or late at night. And so if I ever have one of those days where I'm like, is this going to be a very busy day, a very brain heavy day, I may decide, hey, I'm going to take off from 12 to five. I'm not doing anything, I'm just because I'm going to be useless anyways, and whatever I do decide to accomplish is probably going to be crappy. So I, you know, I just it's about knowing yourself and being able to just be flexible with it.

Speaker 2:

And the last thing is fulfillment. Just what fulfills you? Right, and maybe in our industry we might not think, hey, this isn't the most fulfilling industry, but it can be. Whenever you speak to a client, if you're a CFO, a tax preparer or a tax advisor or a bookkeeper, if you can really get your clients to buy in and you're able to explain the ups, the downs and give some good advice, not only do you become their bookkeeper, their accountant, their tax preparer, whatever. You become their friend, you become somebody that they enjoy speaking to and that should fulfill you. And if that doesn't fulfill you, you just need to find what it is that is going to fulfill you and give you more purpose for your business. So, when it comes to being rich, I think thinking about those four things in mind will make you and allow you to realize that you are rich.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. The big piece of what you're saying there really stood out on the flexibility and just knowing when you're productive. I don't know how many times I've sat behind the computer with that mindset of well, it's Wednesday, it's the middle of the week, I should be and I'm, you're not, I'm not accomplishing anything life changing, but you could check it off at the end of the day, cause I go. I was clocked in from the nine to five, so I'm I'm trying to be a lot more cognizant of that lately myself and identify when, when am I on, when am I not, and when I'm not. Go do something that I'm going to get way more enjoyment out of, rather than sitting there and you're just moving your mouse around thinking, okay, well, I'm working, well, no, you're just kind of wasting your time and and, like you said, the work you do produce, it's not to the quality you actually want it at.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, absolutely. And when you're working on a nine to five, when you're getting paid hourly, knock the clock right, Do it. I'm not advocating for stealing from your job at all, but I work in an office where I was an employee and that's what we did. Hang out by the water cooler. Hang out, go get coffee when I don't really need another cup of coffee, but it just gave me a break. But as a business owner, you're in charge of your time, so make the best of it. Yeah, as a business owner, you're in charge of your time, so make the best of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I think we've all been there the nine to five just looking. How do I, how do I get through the last hour of the day, or whatever that is, but different, different side of the fence when you're the owner? Oh yeah, let's talk about AI for a sec.

Speaker 2:

You've said humans are the biggest threat to AI. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I love that, so I just I think about, like AI. It's such a buzzword now, right, and we use it too. We have an AI bookkeeping course as well. It is a necessary I wouldn't even say necessarily evil. It's not an evil. I think it's a necessary good. But the biggest threat to AI is our people, because I think that AI is going to always need us. I think there's never going to be to use a bookkeeper as an example.

Speaker 2:

If you are a client in the market for a bookkeeper, you have the option of picking somebody that is just completely AI, right, it's somebody that is that you, I don't know somehow connected to your bank account and it produces financials at the end of the month and it sends them to you, you as a business owner. Most business owners are not going to look at that report and be like, oh wow, this did an incredible job, even if there is a summary, an explanation of it. Most business owners just don't care. Don't do that. However, if you are a person, if you are a human bookkeeper, you're facing against this AI bot, right, and you have that relationship with the business owner, and I think that's what the core of the message is that this industry is so so relationship heavy, right, and I like to compare it to like a marriage. Whenever you're dating around looking for a client or a client's looking for you, it is like dating. And when you start working together, it is very much like a marriage. You spend a lot of time together. You as the bookkeeper or the tax preparer, you get to know so much of that business owner just by looking at their bank account sometimes more than we want to know and you're able to spend those at least monthly, if not quarterly.

Speaker 2:

Spend some time with them explaining financials to them. Sometimes it forces that client to understand the financials and understand where their business lies. And I can tell you from experience from clients that I've had when we haven't met and they're like, hey, I can't make it this month. Can you just record a video of explaining the financials? They don't watch it. They just don't watch it because it's even that like takes away from the human element. They want a live person they can chat with, they can ask questions about. So when I say humans are the biggest threat to AI, I mean that AI is not coming for our jobs. I think AI is going to be here. It's here to stay. I don't think it's going anywhere. I think it's only going to get better. And I think those bookkeepers, accountants, cfos, tax repairers, everybody in the the industry, if you're not using it, uh, maybe you could probably get away with it now, but I think in a year, uh, two, three years from now, if you're not using it, you're going to be left behind 100, yeah, and it's also.

Speaker 1:

It's only as. It's only as good as the prompt the human gives it as well. I mean, depending on what platforms are talking about. I use a lot of chat, gpt, so that's anyone can use it, but how, how good is it? It's the prompt you give it. But I really like what you're saying about the, the human element to things. Um, I don't know about you, but personally I've been a part of a lot of masterminds, a lot of different groups. I rarely ever watch the recordings, even if it's the most amazing thing that was covered. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm missing this, but I'll go back and watch it. Never do.

Speaker 3:

But if you're live on that.

Speaker 1:

Recording it, it feels different. I like a lot of sports as well. I'm a big hockey guy. I find it insane when people are like, oh, I'm gonna record the game and watch it later. It's not happening, I want to watch it live. So that live element, like you said, it just makes it adds a lot of value in relationships to the clients, which, at the end of the day, it's all about relationships. So really solid point there. Where do you see even experienced bookkeepers getting stuck as they try to grow or scale?

Speaker 2:

So I think it's. It is like the processes. I think this is what happened with me with my bookkeeping business, which I'm not actually actively growing anymore. But I got to the point where I needed the help. I knew that I needed help I was capped. I got to the point where I needed the help. I knew that I needed help. I was capped. I had too many clients, not enough time. I needed somebody to come in and help me, whether that was a bookkeeper or a virtual assistant, to take some of these tasks off of my plate.

Speaker 2:

The issue was that it was a catch-22. In order to have that help, I needed to have processes and I didn't have those and all of this happened. I hired a bookkeeper big mistake, not because of the bookkeeper, but because of me as a business owner completely failed her by not having things in place. So what happened is I hire somebody and they're not doing things the way that I want because I didn't tell them how I wanted it done. I didn't have any procedures, any processes, and I think that's the biggest, the biggest issue with established bookkeepers that they just they're at a catch 22 where they need time. They need their time back to to grow, to continue to grow their firm. But in order to do that, they need a, they need help. But in order to do that, they need help. But in order to get help, they need time to create these processes. I think that's the biggest hurdle for someone that's been in business for a couple of years.

Speaker 1:

Interesting. So, going back to what we spoke about earlier, just start recording what you're doing, regardless what it is. Record the thing that you need to get off your plate the most, a couple of variations of it, put it in a Google Drive and that next hire at the bare minimum. They can just watch exactly what you've done as you spoke through it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and James, I'll add to that something that you mentioned earlier. I really love what you said because it doesn't have to be this complex thing. You can use the free version of zoom. That's like doesn't have to be this complex thing. You can use the free version of zoom. That's like I think it caps you out at 40 minutes. You don't need a 40 minute process. You record a 10 minute process, save it to Google drive. Uh, and that's really, if that's all you have, that's more than I had before. That's that you're setting somebody up for success right there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And and it's you know I I've guilty in the past and obviously it's nice to have really detailed SOPs and show someone with an arrow in a box like this exactly click. That's amazing, until the next version of that software changes and all of a sudden that button in that box is moved and all that times out the window versus. Here's the framework, like you said. Here's the checklist is have the five things been done? If yes, move on to the next thing. If not, go back to number one. So just simplifying what you're doing. That that's awesome. If someone's listening in a, or for those listening, not if someone's listening for our listeners and they feel, you know, called to start something of their own. They want to get out, they want to start their own firm. What's the first move you'd tell them to make today?

Speaker 2:

So I would say, get educated, like find a course and whether that's something like what we have at bookkeeperscom. I don't think we're the end all be all. There's courses in the CFO space and the tax space. Don't think we're the end all be all. There's courses in the CFO space and the tax space. Even if you think you know you, you're going to be pleasantly surprised at how little you do and and and again. I'm just using myself as an example.

Speaker 2:

I come from, I have an accounting degree and although I thought I knew most of this stuff, I purchased a course through bookkeeperscom as a student. I bought this and I said, okay, let's see what I can learn here and I thought I don't need to learn the bookkeeping, I just need to learn how to be a business owner. I had to relearn the bookkeeping because I realized I was a pretty crappy one to begin with and I had to relearn a lot of that. So I think the first step is get educated. Find somebody you can trust, somebody that I don't know, somebody that has been vouched for, that has a legitimate course that can teach you to be a business owner and, of course, teach you about the industry as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, awesome. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's a good one. So the best piece of advice and this kind of goes back to being flexible and being and getting your freedom back. I'll tailor with. I'll tie in a story here.

Speaker 2:

Believe it or not, I, when I got married, I scheduled my wedding around payroll, and this is a very practical advice. Somebody said you just need to stop doing payroll, and that was the best advice I have ever received, because I got my freedom back. I scheduled my wedding around payroll because every other week we have to run payroll for a number of clients, and I said, okay, there's no way I can get married that week because I'm going to be super busy. And you would think that that would have been enough to be like all right, I need something needs to change. No, two, three years later, I was like planning vacations around it and I thought this stinks.

Speaker 2:

And finally, what did it for me was having to run payroll, or having to have payroll ready on Christmas Eve when I could have been spending that time with my family. That was the deal breaker. That's when I said holy crap, what am I doing here? This isn't why I started this business, and so I know that's the first thing that comes to mind the best piece of advice, because I think that's the one that gave me my freedom back. I think that was the biggest hurdle that I had. As simple as it may seem, it really killed me to have to do that.

Speaker 1:

I love it. That's great, jaime. For those who want to get in touch with you, continue the conversation. Learn a little bit more about bookkeeperscom, maybe pick up a course. What's the best way they can get in touch with you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can visit our site at bookkeeperscom. You know the word bookkeeper is the only word in the English language with the three double letters letters, so double L, double K, double E. But yeah, bookkeeperscom, you can visit our YouTube channel as well. Youtube forward slash bookkeeperscom spelled out D, o, tc, o, m, and you can find me on LinkedIn and Facebook as well Facebookcom forward slash Jaime. At bookkeepers.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. I'm never going to unsee bookkeepers now with the three double letters.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, sharing that.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, I may. Thank you so much for coming on. We'll make sure the links are in the show notes, the description, so people can get in touch with you. I highly recommend they do. We had an awesome conversation in Utah a couple months ago. I'm excited to see you in the future, whatever event that may be, and I know we got some fun stuff planned, so everyone stay on the lookout for that in the future. Jaime, thanks again for coming on.

Speaker 2:

James, thank you so much for having me. I had a ton of fun.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning into this episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. I hope you found value in today's conversation. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. If you enjoyed today's discussion, please rate and review the show. It helps others discover the insights we share here. Second, if you're ready to take your business to the next level and attract the high-end clients you deserve, head over to accountingleadsnowcom or click the link in the show notes to book your strategy. Call it's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need. And don't forget you can connect with me on LinkedIn to stay up to date on what's happening in the world of accounting and financial growth. We've got exciting topics coming up, so stay tuned for the next episode of CFO Chronicles. Until then, keep pushing forward.

Speaker 3:

Your growth is just one strategic move away. Thanks for listening to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. We hope today's episode provided valuable strategies to help you attract more high paying clients. Be sure to subscribe, follow and share with fellow professionals. Connect with us on LinkedIn and leave a review or comment to join the conversation. Your feedback helps us bring you the best insights in finance and marketing. Until next time, keep striving for success and unlocking your business's potential.