How Much Money I Actually Made Last Year [2025] as a Bookkeeper Will Surprise You

In this video, I’m sharing full transparency on exactly how much money I made in 2025 as an entrepreneur.

No fluff. No fake numbers. Just real business breakdowns.

Here’s what I cover:

My total income across bookkeeping, education, and real estate lending
How I made $550,000 from bookkeeping, $150,000 from education, and $400,000 from lending
Why I believe all three could become $1,000,000 businesses
And the real reason I’m choosing to focus on building a $10,000,000 investment fund

I also break down something most people don’t talk about:
👉 Time vs money

When you compare bookkeeping clients to private money lending deals, the difference is massive. The lending business is significantly more scalable and requires far less time per dollar earned.

This video is also a behind-the-scenes look at how I’m thinking about:

Scaling ZIP Capital
Potentially exiting or restructuring my bookkeeping business
Building a team and growing from $7M to $10M+ in assets under management
What it actually takes to go from a $1M business to a $10M business

If you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or business owner trying to grow, this will give you a real, honest look at what’s working right now.

📈 My goal: Build a $10M+ business through real estate lending
🏡 Focus: Funding deals and scaling ZIP Capital
💡 Strategy: Less complexity, more leverage, higher return on time

*Learn more about my investment fund targeting 8% to 12% fixed returns*
https://www.zipcapitalfund.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Full transparency. How much money I made in 2025 last year as a solo entrepreneur. Let's just jump right into it. My name is Zach Pascarello. I started my bookkeeping business six years ago. I started my investment fund two years ago. Let me break down the numbers exactly how much money I made in 2025. And then I'm going to talk about my future plans. What do I plan on doing in the next two to five years? It was about$1 million, a little bit more, maybe$1.1 million. Let's round and keep it simple. Bookkeeping last year. So I have three different types of businesses. It's really only two separate companies, but I do three different things: bookkeeping, education, lending. So bookkeeping. I do bookkeeping for small business owners, record transactions, reconcile accounts, generate financial reports. That's what I've been doing since the beginning for the past six years. Last year, and this is profit. This is not top line revenue. This is revenue minus expenses. This is straight up profit, what I paid taxes on about$1.1 million last year. Here's the breakdown: Bookkeeping,$550,000. Education,$150,000. So I do a lot of things. I sell a course. I have weekly group meetings every Monday at 3 p.m. with other aspiring bookkeeping business owners, and I make money on YouTube. So overall, about$150,000 from the education portion of my business, which is about 10% of my total income. And then lending, zip capital, real estate lending, hard money lending,$400,000 from zip capital. So the crazy thing is, zip capital and lending almost was the same as my bookkeeping business. But I started bookkeeping six years ago and I started lending two years ago. Pretty crazy. The growth has been explosive. Now, here's where the video gets interesting. I think all three, all three businesses could be a$1 million business for sure. No questions asked. But I want to build a$10 million business. I already made a million dollars last year, already on pace to make a million dollars this year. I'm going to build a$10 million business. So in order to do that, I have to start thinking differently. To do that, I need to focus 100% on one thing. I cannot be distracted by anything else: education, bookkeeping, lending, whatever I decide to go all in on, I have to focus 100%. And I'll need to grow a proper business. I was able to kind of fall into a million-dollar profit, kind of by accident, kind of by hustling for six years by myself, grinding organic social media marketing. That's great. Love it. Really, really profitable, very thin mark, very, very good margins, very few expenses. But if I want to get to$10 million, I'm going to have to grow a proper business. I don't know too many solo entrepreneurs. I know there are probably out there, but I don't really know too many solo entrepreneurs who are making$10 million profit per year. Now, of course they're out there, but I would probably be willing to bet. I don't know this for sure, but I would be willing to bet statistically, I would say there are probably, if you looked at every single entrepreneur who was profiting$10 million per year, I would be willing to bet the majority of them have employees. I would be willing to bet. I don't know. I could be wrong, but that's just what my gut is telling me. If I want to get to$10 million of profit, I'm going to need help. And maybe not employees, maybe it's independent contractors, but I'm going to need to leverage other people's labor. I can't do it all myself. And I don't even want to say necessarily that one business is better than the other, but I like zip capital the most. I like my investment fund, real estate lending, hard money lending, zip capital. I like that the most. And I don't necessarily think that it's a better business. I mean, if you look at Dave Ramsey, he has primarily an education business and he makes millions, if not billions, of dollars. Bookkeeping, accounting, consulting, professional services. You can make billions of dollars doing that. But for some reason, real estate lending, my investment fund, I like that a little bit more. As I was thinking about this video, making my notes, I actually went through a very simple math calculation to come up with the logic behind why I felt this way. I'm gonna explain that in a minute, but it's gonna make a lot of sense. So I'm not even sure why I like zip capital more than bookkeeping. Maybe it's because it's new. I hope not. I hope that I'm just not falling victim to the shiny object, to the woman in the red dress. I hope I'm not falling victim to just falling in love with the new thing. It's not super new. I've been doing it for two or three years. So not super new, but it's definitely newer than bookkeeping. But let me just explain this math equation because it definitely is fastest growing. If I look at my profit from last year, lending crushed education and lending almost caught up to bookkeeping. So it was the fastest growing and the most profitable, the fastest. So I did not make$400,000 in bookkeeping in year two, but I did make$400,000 in lending in year two. Okay, so let's talk about the simple math equation. Here's what it all comes down to. Let's compare the amount of time required to service one client. So bookkeeping, right? Stick with me. Hopefully, hopefully this makes sense. Bookkeeping on average,$500 per month, about two hours per month required to service on average, give or take, roughly, about two hours per month required to service a$500 per month client. Now that's six thousand dollars per year, twenty fours per year, not a bad hourly rate. Pretty good, two hundred and fifty dollars per hour, really good. Now, so that's six thousand dollars of profit in one year. If I'm doing the work myself, pretty straightforward. Now, in order for me to make six thousand dollars per year in zip capital, let me break this down for you. So I make about a ten percent spread on my money. So if I have a million dollars of other people's money in zip capital, I can make about a hundred thousand dollars per year because I pay my investors eight, nine, ten-ish percent per year. It all depends on how much they invest. Right now, my average cost of capital is nine point five percent. I've got some investors who make 10%, some 11%, some eight, some nine, but on average, about nine point five percent is what I pay to my investors. I have 31 investors and six million dollars of other people's money raised in zip capital. So 10% is my profit per year. Now let's look at a six-month time period because my loans are six months. My loans are short-term loans to local Pennsylvania real estate investors. So I can make five percent in six months, ten percent per year, five percent in six months. So if I do a$120,000 loan, which is about my average loan size, right now, my average loan size is$135,000. So it's even a little bit smaller than my average loan size. If I do one loan,$120,000, six months, five percent, that's six thousand dollars. So I can profit six thousand dollars in six months. But here's the thing: four hours of work from start to finish, four hours of work, and that's honestly probably being generous. That's probably it's probably a little bit less than four hours now that I have my process dialed in, but let's keep it simple. Four hours of work to do one loan to make six thousand dollars. You can do the math, you're all smart people. That means zip capital is six times less work to make the same amount of money. Whenever I really realized that and understood what that meant for my earning capacity, it kind of changed everything, and that's a big reason why I want to spend a hundred percent of my focus and attention on growing zip capital, my investment fund. Now, that is a very basic breakdown. That is a very simple look at the two different businesses. Of course, there are hundreds of other variables that go into this, but that's a very simple breakdown of the amount of time required to service one client and make six thousand dollars of profit. Not too bad, working four hours in Zip Capital and profiting six thousand dollars. So I'm making this video, I don't know why, because it's like a journal for me, it actually helps me organize and process my thoughts. So I don't really have a clear purpose and direction for my YouTube channel. I've got 50,000 subscribers to this week's video is more so just kind of a life update. Let me just give you an insider look into what's going on in my head and where I've come over the past six years and where I want to be in the next two years. I've got no idea. Two years ago, I was selling a course. Last year, I was selling a course on how to start a bookkeeping business. I'm not really I'm not really promoting that anymore. I used to be trying to get bookkeeping clients. I'm done doing that. I'm not even taking on new bookkeeping clients. As a matter of fact, just today, I just fired two bookkeeping clients because it just wasn't a good fit. I'm going all in on zip capital. So I don't really know what that looks like for the next two years. I don't even really know what I'm going to do with Harrisburg bookkeeping. I don't necessarily want to sell a hundred percent of my business. I I would hate to lose like the name, the Google profile, the website, the brand. I like Harrisburg bookkeeping. I don't want to sell it. Maybe I could get$300,000,$400,000 if I sold Harrisburg Bookkeeping. I don't know. Not to say that that's not a lot of money because it is, but in the grand scheme of things, not really a lot of money. At least for where I am right now with Zip Capital and Harrisburg Bookkeeping.$300,000, probably not life-changing money for where I'm trying to go. I'm trying to go$10 million,$20 million,$50 million,$100 million. So$300,000, not really gonna change my life at this point. I don't really want to just sell my clients. Like I said, maybe I can make$300,000, but is it really worth it? And there's clawbacks if clients leave. So it's probably not actually gonna be$300,000 over the course of 12 months. Here's what I'm thinking: I'm just gonna keep my good clients. It's mostly on autopilot anyway, and cash flow$20,000,$30,000 per month for the next 12 months. That's not too bad. I would rather do that than sell my clients because I want to get rid of the clients who are not a good fit, and I want to keep my good clients. So I don't want to sell the clients who are not a good fit to somebody else because they might not be a good fit for them. And so I just want to keep my really good clients. Like I said, cash flow$20,000,$30,000 per month. It's gonna run basically on autopilot. I'll spend some time working on it and then focus my energy and attention on zip capital. I don't really want to outsource the bookkeeping either. I don't want to hire a team because, like I said, I'm focused on my$10 million plan. That requires extreme focus and precise execution. I'm not just gonna stumble into a$10 million profit, kind of like I stumbled into a$1 million profit. I kind of fumbled my way around and kind of figured it out all on my own and ended up making a million dollars last year. And like I said, probably gonna do it again this year. But seriously,$10 million is the new goal. So if I want to do that, I can't continue to run Harrisburg Bookkeeping. I can't continue to grow Harrisburg Bookkeeping and Zip Capital at the same time. I could certainly keep them both and make a million dollars, and that would be amazing. But$10 million is my goal.$10 million of profit is my goal. So Zip Capital currently at$7 million. The goal for this year is to get to$10 million in 2026, which honestly probably gonna happen before September. So then what?$20 million,$50 million in zip capital,$100 million in zip capital. I will for sure need a team. I'll need a team of two to five people once I hit$20 million. I can manage$10 million, maybe even$15 million on my own. Because right now I'm running Harrisburg Bookkeeping and Zip Capital. If I woke up tomorrow with$15 million in zip capital, I would get rid of Harrisburg Bookkeeping and just focus 100% starting tomorrow on zip capital because I would need to manage$15 million. Once I get to$20,$50 million, I'll need a team of two to five people. And I might even need an office building. I'm not really sure. I'm not really sure what that's going to look like. And I'm not really sure if I want to manage employees or independent contractors, but I do want to get to$10 million. I do think I'm ready for the next phase. The first six years were amazing. They taught me how to do marketing and sales and onboarding. They taught me bookkeeping and finances and accounting and taxes. I feel like everything I learned over the past six years has perfectly positioned me to grow Zip Capital into the next level, to get those two to five employees local, in-house, have an office, and who knows, get to 20 to 50 million dollars in Zip Capital. That'd be pretty cool. So who am I gonna hire? Maybe probably a loan processor, a loan closer. That's probably who I'm going to hire first. Somebody to help me collect documents from real estate investors. I'm collecting tax returns and bank statements and financial reports and driver's license, LLC articles of organization, real estate sales agreement, scope of work, interior, exterior pictures, draw agreement, ACH authorization, property insurance, title insurance, wiring instructions, the HUD document. There's a lot of documents that I have to collect to process a real estate loan. So probably I'm gonna get an office somewhere in south central Pennsylvania, hire probably two employees to get started to help me process loans. Who knows? I don't know what's gonna happen. I like I said, I make these videos because it's fun for me. I enjoy sharing, it's kind of like a journal, and it just helps me process my thoughts because there's a lot going on, there's a lot of options, but I think at this point I'm focused 100% on zip capital. So I'll end the video with this. If you're interested in joining Zip Capital, I'm offering, I'm targeting 8% up to 12% fixed returns to accredited investors, and then I use your money to lend to local Pennsylvania real estate investors. I do all the analyzing, underwriting, risk mitigation. I look at all the documents that I previously mentioned. I make sure that they are a qualified borrower, I make sure that the property is a good investment, and then I lend money and then I pay my investors. Really straightforward, pretty simple process. Happy to be here. Love zip capital, excited for the future, currently at$6 million, hoping to get to$10 million. There's a link down below in the description of the video if you want to learn more about zip capital. Thank you all so much for watching. God bless you. I hope you have a great week.