How To Get Your First Bookkeeping Client

How do you get your first bookkeeping client?

This is the question I get more than any other, and it's also the biggest challenge for most new bookkeepers. The good news is you don't need years of experience, thousands of followers, or a huge marketing budget to land your first bookkeeping client.

In this video, I'll share the exact strategies I would use if I were starting a bookkeeping business from scratch today. You'll learn where to find potential clients, how to build relationships, and the daily marketing habits that can help you grow a successful bookkeeping business.

In this video you'll learn:

• How to get your first bookkeeping client
• The biggest myths about finding bookkeeping clients
• Where to find bookkeeping clients
• The best ways to market a bookkeeping business
• My daily marketing routine
• Why you should start marketing before you feel ready
• How to build confidence while growing your bookkeeping business

This is Week 3 of my 10-part series on how to start and grow a bookkeeping business. If you're just joining the series, be sure to watch the first two videos before continuing.

Whether you're looking to start a bookkeeping business, become a virtual bookkeeper, or grow your bookkeeping client base, this series will give you the step-by-step roadmap I wish I had when I was getting started.

Next week's video:
How To Set Up Your Bookkeeping Business

Subscribe so you don't miss future videos covering bookkeeping, QuickBooks, pricing, sales, client onboarding, monthly bookkeeping workflows, financial reports, and growing a profitable bookkeeping business.

#BookkeepingBusiness #Bookkeeping #QuickBooks


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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is what everybody wants to know. This is the number one question every new bookkeeper always asks me. So, how do you get your first bookkeeping client? Everybody wants to know this. Everybody asks me how to do this because let's be honest, this is the hardest part about starting a bookkeeping business. So let's go over it. This video is going to be all about getting your first bookkeeping client. Let's start off by talking about some myths and some truths. Let's debunk those myths. If you're brand new here, this is a 10-week series where I am systematically going through how to start a bookkeeping business week by week by week. If you missed the first two videos, the first week was all about should I start a bookkeeping business? The second week was all about can I do this? Can I start a bookkeeping business with no experience? And once you've answered those first two questions, should you start a bookkeeping business? Yes. Can you start with no experience? Yes. Now, now that you've decided to start and you know you can do it, now, logically, how do you get your first client? This is the hardest part about starting a bookkeeping business. Okay, let's talk about it. Topic number one, myth number one. You need to be an expert in bookkeeping and QuickBooks before you start looking for your first client. That's simply not true. You should start marketing while you're still learning bookkeeping. This is the perfect time. It's so exciting to start a new business. Other people love to see your journey. So just be transparent, be honest, be open, be authentic, be genuine, and just share your story. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking, world-changing advertising and marketing. You can literally just talk about what you're doing. Make a post on LinkedIn. Hey everybody, just started taking intro to accounting at Penn State. Hey everybody, just started studying for my QuickBooks Online certified pro advisor. So excited to start learning bookkeeping and QuickBooks. Share your journey. Be authentic. This kind of stuff is great for spreading awareness. You're not telling people you're a bookkeeping expert because you aren't. You're not telling people you're a QuickBooks Online expert because you aren't. But instead, you're just being transparent, authentic, which is super relatable. People love to see a new beginnings. People love to see a success story. And it starts today with you just simply sharing what you're doing. You don't need to think about some brand new marketing strategy. Literally, just tell people what you're doing. It's so super simple, but I promise you it's incredibly effective. Okay, number two myth clients are going to magically find you. Not true. The truth is you have to proactively build relationships and go after people because reality check, nobody knows that you're starting a bookkeeping business. If you just decided yesterday to start a bookkeeping business, it doesn't matter if you create a website, it doesn't matter if you create a Facebook business page. Nobody knows that you are starting a bookkeeping business. So your priority, your job now, tell people. Okay, last myth: you need hundreds of followers on social media. Not true. As a matter of fact, when I got started, I had 300 Facebook friends. I got started in the fall of 2020, almost seven years ago. I literally had 300 Facebook friends. So you don't need a big following to get started. Of course, you're going to want to build your brand, build your online presence. You're going to want to build up your connections and your friends and your followers on social media, but you don't need to already have a thousand followers or 10,000 LinkedIn connections. You can get started with just two or three hundred friends or even fewer. You don't need a big following to get started. Okay, so who should your first client be? Keep it simple. I promise you, the more simple you keep this, the better it's going to be for you. Small local business owners. I always recommend start in your local geographical region. People are more likely to trust you. If I am in Pittsburgh and I want to hire a bookkeeper, naturally, I'm going to want to hire a bookkeeper who's located in Pittsburgh. If I'm in Houston, naturally, I probably would rather have a Houston bookkeeper over a Pittsburgh bookkeeper. Just kind of makes sense. Start small, start simple, start in your local geographical region. There are plenty of fish in the sea. You have not ex even if you're even if you're two years into your bookkeeping business, you have not exhausted all options. Promise you. If you are in a very small town, then look at your county. If you're in a really small county, look at the adjacent counties. And then you can slowly branch out from there, but start close and local first. Friends and family, perfect opportunity. You don't need to be annoying, just casually bring it up. Next time you're at a birthday party, next time you're at bowling with your friends, next time you're at a family reunion, casually bring it up. Hey, haven't seen you in a couple months. Guess what? I started a bookkeeping business. Pretty cool. Yeah, QuickBooks Online. Who would have thought? Pretty cool. If you know anybody who's a business owner, let me know. I'd love to see if I can help them with their QuickBooks. Keep it keep it short, keep it simple. Don't be annoying. Don't dominate the conversation with your new business, but for sure, don't keep it a secret. Do not, even if you're brand new, you don't need to tell people, I quit my job and I'm starting this new business and I'm gonna make millions of dollars. You can just be really casual. You can be really humble, you can be really low-key. Yeah, I'm I'm still working my full-time job. I guess you could call this a side hustle, maybe a little, a little weekend business where maybe a part-time business, like nothing crazy, but yeah, I'm learning QuickBooks. I'm studying intro to accounting, and yeah, I'm trying to get I'm trying to get three to five clients in the next two to three months. So yeah, it's pretty interesting. It's pretty cool. That's what you can tell your friends and family. And then existing business owners you already know. If you go to the pizza shop every single Saturday, or if you, I don't know, go play mini golf at the arcade once a month with your family and you know the business owner or you know somebody who works there, great opportunity. Strike up a conversation, you're going to have to tell people about your business. Spoiler alert: if you want to get clients, you gotta tell people that you started a business because people are not going to magically find you. And then people in your community. So volunteering is a great way to get involved in your community, whether it's church or the local chamber of commerce or the rotary club or your kids' football team, baseball, little league, lacrosse, wrestling, swimming, soccer, volleyball, softball, whatever your kids are doing, whatever your family is doing, whatever you want to do in the community, volunteering, getting involved at the community is just a great way to build relationships. Getting bookkeeping clients is all about relationships and trust. You build trust by first establishing relationships, and you establish relationships by meeting new people. Right now, you might know a hundred people, but you need to know a thousand people in the next two years. And so the only way to accomplish that is to talk to people, create marketing content, get a website, get a Google My Business profile, maybe you pay for advertising, or maybe you hire a social media manager. I don't know what that looks like for you, but you gotta get your name out there. So volunteer in your local community, reach out to existing business owners you already know, tell friends and family what you're doing, keep it simple, focus on small local businesses. Okay, so that's kind of high-level big picture theory. Let's get super practical, let's get super tactical. Here is my five-step process for getting bookkeeping clients. I have been doing this for the past six years. I started doing it with Harrisburg Bookkeeping. I went from 10 clients in my first year to 20 clients in my second year, and then 40 clients, and then 80 clients per month in my fourth year of Harrisburg Bookkeeping. I was making $40,000 per month, monthly recurring revenue profit in Harrisburg Bookkeeping. And then I started my investment fund, Zip Capital. Guess what? I am implementing this exact same strategy in Zip Capital. And so this is my investment fund where I am targeting 8% up to 12% fixed returns to accredited investors, and I lend money to local Pennsylvania real estate investors. If you want to learn more about Zip Capital, there is a link in the description of this video. If you want to invest in Zip Capital, I would love to chat with you and see if you might be a good fit. The minimum to invest is $25,000. So if that sounds like you potentially, check out the link in the description of this video, zipcapitalfund.com. That's my website. You can go there, learn more, check out all the details. But I bring that up because this is not just some old antiquated technique that I did six years ago that doesn't work right now. As a matter of fact, I have been doing the same five-step process with Zip Capital, trying to raise money. And I started in January of 2025, and now we are halfway through 2026, and I have raised $6.5 million in 18 months by implementing this strategy. So let's go over this strategy. It still works today. I still literally do this every single day to raise money for zip capital, and I did it for getting bookkeeping clients, and you can do it today, also. Step number one, create content. Like I've been saying, you got to tell people, hey, look at me, I'm a bookkeeper. Let me know if you need help with your QuickBooks. That is high level the goal of your content. Now, of course, you cannot just repeat the same sentence over and over again. You're gonna have to mix it up, you're gonna have to get creative. So tell people who you are and what you're doing on social media. The cool thing is you can do it for free. You can do it for free from the comfort of your own home. You don't need to hire anybody, you don't need any fancy equipment. All you need is a cell phone and Facebook, which be willing to bet the almost all of you probably have a face uh have a cell phone or a computer. And if you don't have Facebook, guess what? It's free to download, it's free to sign up. Anyone can join Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, YouTube, whatever your social media platform preference is. It doesn't matter where you create content, it doesn't matter where you advertise, it doesn't matter where you do this, it just matters that you do it consistently every day for a long period of time. This is not a get rich quick scheme. You're not going to get rich in 30 days, you're not gonna get rich in 12 months, you're not gonna get rich in two years, it's gonna take you three or four years to really build this thing up. But if you stay consistent, you could potentially follow in my footsteps. 10 clients, 20 clients, 40 clients, 80 clients making $40,000 per month in four years. But you gotta be consistent and you gotta commit long term. Okay, so create content every day. So whenever you're creating content, there's four different ways to think about this. You can tell a large group of people that you already know. Okay, this is your Facebook friends. You can tell a large group of people that you already know by creating a Facebook post on social media, and there's already your Facebook friends, and they already know you because you're already connected with them. So you can tell a large group of people who already know you, or you can tell a large group of people who don't know you. Now, this is paid advertising. I've never done paid advertising, I don't know anything about it, I'm not the expert. I I don't teach people how to do it because I never did it. Everything that I teach is all everything based on what I've personally done. And so what I personally did is I told people who I already knew about what I was doing. So those are two options for telling a large group of people. The other option is you can tell one person who you already know, and that would be just reaching out to friends and family or contacts who you already know. One-to-one, you can send a message on Facebook to somebody who's your Facebook friend, and I also implement that strategy. One-to-one people you do know, I do that. I do that email, Facebook, LinkedIn, text message. I do that. The other option is one-to-one reaching out, people you don't know. So this would be cold calling, cold DMing. So maybe you get a lead, a list of leads, maybe you get a list of phone numbers or email addresses, and you send out one-to-one, maybe just a message. Hey, my name is Zach. I'm a bookkeeper. I just started a couple months ago, or I've been running my business and I'm trying to get five new bookkeeping clients in the next six months. If you ever need help with your QuickBooks, I would love a chance to chat and see if I can help you. So one-to-one people you do know, one-to-one people you don't know, that's cold calling. One to many that you do know, that's creating content on Facebook, on social media, or one to many, one to a lot of people that you don't know, that's paid ads. So those are four different ways that you can kind of create content or do advertising and marketing. And so I only do one to many that I do know, and one to one that I do know. That's all, that's all I've ever done. Okay, so create content. Doesn't matter where you create it, Facebook, LinkedIn, doesn't matter where you do it. It could be a billboard, it could be a blog on your website, you could be optimizing your website for SEO, it could be a TV commercial, or maybe it's a flyer in the mail, direct mail flyer. Doesn't maybe you put your business cards up on the bulletin board at all the local buildings and restaurants and community spaces. Doesn't matter what you do. You just gotta create some sort of content and get your name out there on Facebook, on LinkedIn, every day for free, from the comfort of your own home, in your pajamas, laying in bed, sitting on the couch, any time of day, create content, get your name out there, do it every day. Keep it simple enough that you can repeat the process daily without getting burnt out. If it's taking you two hours to create your content, you're gonna burn out in three days. 15, 20, maybe 30 minutes in the beginning while you're getting started to create content. It can just be a text, just like one sentence, or a short story, or a long story, blog post, or it can be a short video, or it can be a picture with a caption, or it can be a flyer infographic. Recommend checking out canva.com to help you create graphics and edit pictures. Really helpful. Also, recommend follow me on Facebook, follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, all of my social media channels are linked down below. Follow me to see what I'm doing, follow other creators, other bookkeepers, other entrepreneurs, other influencers. Follow them and research, see what they're doing, see what they're talking about, analyze the style of posts. Literally analyze the format of their images. And don't no sense in reinventing the wheel. I'm not recommending that you copy word for word what other people are doing or what I'm doing, but but pick up on styles and trends, see what other people are doing, and adapt your style and trend to keep up with what is trending on social media right now. So create content. Create content. The most important thing you can do, you're spreading awareness. People don't know who you are. You got to tell them and you got to build trust and build relationships. And you do that by consistently showing up. Okay, so right now you're creating content, but the problem is people are not connected with you on Facebook and LinkedIn. So step number one, create content. Step number two, find prospective clients. LinkedIn makes it super simple. You can literally search for people based on where they live, where they work, the company they work out, the title and their name, where they went to college. LinkedIn makes it simple to search for people. Facebook makes it a little bit more difficult. I recommend join local business groups and then sort through the members in those groups. By doing so, you can be relatively confident that these people are probably local because they're in a local business group. And you can look at their job title on their Facebook profile, and you can figure out who's an entrepreneur, investor, founder, president, CEO, self-employed, owner. Look for those keywords in their job titles, and then you can potentially figure out who are these local business owners. Find prospective clients. Step number two, connect with them. Step number three, connect, send friend requests, send LinkedIn connections. Right now on LinkedIn, I'm sending 30 connection requests six days a week, Monday through Saturday, every day but Sunday. I'm sending out 30 connection requests to people who I think would be a good fit for zip capital. You can do the same thing on LinkedIn, Facebook send out friend requests and connection requests every day. LinkedIn makes it simple. Facebook a little bit more challenging. You want to be careful. I don't want your account to get dinged for spam. So don't send too many friend requests on Facebook too quickly. Space it out. Maybe start with one per hour. Maybe every hour send out one new Facebook friend request. Maybe do five per day. And then you can maybe slowly build up. Send a Facebook friend request to people who have mutual friends with you. That's really important because Facebook wants to see that you're actually connecting with people who are actually potentially your real friend. So if I have a hundred mutual friends with somebody, very strong likelihood they are actually my friend. Create content, find prospective clients, connect with prospective clients. Number four, engage with your new community on Facebook, on LinkedIn. This is so simple, but it's so underrated. So many people don't do this. You got to comment. First, reply to people's comments on your content. I'll be honest, I don't do a great job of this, but to be fair, I get quite a few comments per day across all four or five of my social media platforms. I don't I don't reply to every comment. But when I was getting started, absolutely. When you're just getting two or three comments per day at most, absolutely respond to every comment. Shoot, if somebody commented on my Facebook post, send them a DM right away. Like, hey John, noticed you just commented on my post. Thanks so much. What kind of business do you run? Do you need help with your bookkeeping? Strike up a conversation. If somebody comments on your post and you're brand new, absolutely reply to their comment, maybe even send them a DM, strike up a conversation, go to their page, maybe call them, just strike up a conversation, see what's up, see if you can help, build that relationship, build trust. You never know. You never know. It just takes one conversation to lead to a potential client. So engage with your community, reply to comments on your posts, but then also super simple, comment on your friends' posts. I think it does two things. One, we all know about this mythical algorithm. I do think potentially, I'm not an algorithm expert, but I do think it helps boost your page when you're active. So, right after you make a post, I think you should then go ahead and comment on 10 of your friends' posts and keep it simple. Hey, John, this looks awesome. Hey, John, keep up the great work. Hey, Sam, this looks really cool. Or this is awesome. Or I hope you, I hope you, you know, keep crushing it. Keep up the good work. Keep it short, keep it simple. It doesn't have to be a long paragraph, one sentence, follow the three P's, polite, positive, professional, and you'll do great. It does two things. It boosts your algorithm, I think. Not sure, think. Number two, if you are constantly commenting on John's post, John the Landscaper, if you're constantly commenting on his post, after about two or three weeks, he's gonna be like, Who is this guy? Who is this Zach person? I don't know who he is. Let me go check out his profile. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I remember he sent me a friend request a few weeks ago. Oh, he just made a video. Let me watch this video, or let me check his about me section, or I wonder what he does, or let me look at his profile picture, or let me scroll down his news feed and let me see what kind of stuff he's talking about. So if you comment on people's posts, they're more likely to click on your profile and go see your content. You see here, it's such an easy way to just get more exposure and potentially build more relationships with other business owners. So that's step number four. Step number five, can't forget about the last step. Send messages. This is what I was talking about. One to many people you do know, that's creating content in step one. One to one people you do know, send messages. But here's the really important part wait 30 days. Don't send a connection request to somebody on Facebook today and they accept your friend request, and then you immediately send them a pitch. Hey, thanks for accepting my friend request. Let me know if you need help with your bookkeeping. Don't do that because we're skipping the first four steps of our sales and marketing strategy. So don't do that because I want them to see my content. There's nothing more powerful than a DM sent to a Facebook friend or a LinkedIn connection and they reply and say, Hey Zach, yeah, I know who you are. I've seen your content, really good stuff. Don't need a bookkeeper right now, but definitely gonna reach out when I do. That's so powerful. That's so convincing. You already have the relationship built, you've already got some trust built up because you waited. Please wait a month, wait at least 30 days before you send a DM to any of your connections. But then absolutely, after 30 days, fair game, send them one message. Hey John, my name's Zach. I'm a bookkeeper. Let me know if you ever need help with your QuickBooks. For me, right now, every day on LinkedIn, I'm sending DMs to people who I connected with 30 days ago. So today is June 30th. You best believe this morning I sent messages to my LinkedIn connections from May 30th, who I became connections with on LinkedIn. Hey Lauren, my name's Zach. I've got an investment fund, Zip Capital, where I'm targeting 8% to 12% fixed returns to accredited investors. If you're interested, would love to chat. Let me know. Thanks. Super short, super simple. Get your name out there, spread awareness, build relationships. That's my five-step sales and marketing process. It's not it's not complicated, it's super simple, but it's incredibly hard. It's not hard to do it one day. Think about this. If you want to train for a marathon and you start running a mile every day, not super hard, or no, sorry, not complicated, but also not super hard today. Go out and run one mile, sure. My seven-year-old could go out and run one mile, but it gets hard because you got to do it tomorrow. And you got to do it the next day. And guess what? Next week, same thing. Every day, you gotta run a mile, and then you gotta start running two miles, and then three miles, and then four miles, and that consistency, that long-term commitment is really simple. Go out and run. Go out and run every day. Really simple, but really hard because you gotta be consistent, you gotta show up every day, especially when you're not motivated to show up. That's why it gets hard because you're not gonna be you're gonna be motivated in the beginning. In the beginning, it's easy, it's fun, it's exciting, it's new. In the beginning, starting a business is so fun, so exciting. Everything's new, but the excitement and the newness very quickly wears off, and you realize, oh shoot, I just spent two hours working on this today, and I gotta wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. That is that is soul crushing. So you can't rely on motivation, you gotta be disciplined. That's really important. You got to be disciplined every day because there's no boss, there's no team members, there's no coworkers holding you accountable, there's no manager checking your work, it's just you. As an entrepreneur, it's just you, and you got to be disciplined. You got to manage your time, you got to show up every day, be consistent, and commit long term. This is a four-year process. It took me four years to build up to 80 clients. I went from 10, 20, 40, 80, and now I've got six and a half million dollars raised in zip capital. It took me six years to get to this point. You gotta be consistent and commit long term. All right, that's it for the video. Let's end here. Myth. I'll start marketing after I'm certified. But the truth is the best time to start marketing is now. Start building relationships now. Start today. If you're watching this video and you're brand new, start studying for the QBO certified pro advisor. Start learning bookkeeping fundamentals and simultaneously start creating social media marketing content. Trust me, it's gonna take you 30 to 60 days to get your first client. By the time your marketing content actually works, you're already gonna be a certified pro advisor. You're already gonna understand bookkeeping fundamentals and accounting concepts. Don't wait. Start today. That's it for the video. So, week one, if you didn't if you didn't see it, check it out. Should I start a bookkeeping business? Week two, can I do it with no experience? Now, week three, how do I get my first client? I hope this was helpful. Subscribe to my channel because I'm doing a 10-week series where I'm walking you through step by step how to start a bookkeeping business. Check out zipcapitalfund.com linked down below. And stay tuned for next week. I'm gonna talk about how to set up your bookkeeping business. Now that you have, now that you know you can do it, you want to do it, you know how to get your first client. I'm gonna talk about LLC, business bank account, email, insurance, and everything else that you need to know how to set up your bookkeeping business. So let me know down below. I am actually reading every comment and I'm taking all of your comments into consideration when I'm deciding what to talk about in my next upcoming videos. So please comment down below, ask me questions, give me feedback, let me know what you think of this series. I'll see you all next week.