How BABs Helped MY Business Coach Start Her Own Bookkeeping Biz

 

Katie Ferro: So, you’re a mom of three now, right? Isn’t that where this process started, when you were pregnant with your third?

 

Katie Fleming: Yes! It was a couple months before my third baby was born…actually, it started on my birthday, funnily enough. I sat down with my husband at breakfast and said, “You know what? I think I want to go buy a bookkeeping business.” And he just said, “Yeah, sure. Do it.”

 

For context, prior to this, I was doing coaching and consulting. I was pretty maxed out as far as hours go, since you really have to be actively engaged in the work at all times as a coach.

 

I'm really good at what I do. So my clients would grow pretty huge businesses, they saw a lot of success, and it was really exciting to watch. But I sat back one day and looked at my husband and went, “Man, I love what I do. I love coaching…but I don't have equity in any of these companies I’m helping to grow. I think we should look into acquisitions.”

 

By March of 2023, we’d acquired our first company. So this wasn’t coming out of nowhere.

 

Now, typically, if you're going to buy a business (what they call an asset sale), you're going to start your own LLC first.

 

So that day I told my husband, I decided I would just go ahead and start the LLC, since I knew I was going to try and acquire a bookkeeping business. But as I went through that process, I pretty quickly came to the realization that I could just build a bookkeeping business myself instead.

 

Why did I need to buy somebody else's bookkeeping business, where I may or may not like their clients or their vibe or what they've done previously, when I could do it my way from the get-go?

 

I was very picky with what I wanted, so building it myself made the most sense.

 

I had my baby that May. Then in August 2024, I finally “turned on my open sign,” which is something you love to talk about.

 

I knew I was ready to take on clients, and it was actually incredible how fast it blew up.

 

Katie Ferro: So Katie has a background in accounting, and I think that helped her appreciate my bookkeeping business from the beginning. And then she loved what it did for me in my life, which led to her helping me with all my thoughts around turning that into a coaching business. And eventually it led to her starting her own!

 

But Katie, you mentioned that it took a little bit for you to actually “turn on” your open sign. How did BABs help with that?

 

Katie Fleming: So, I had set up the books for a lot of my companies—I just then passed them off to someone else to do. So the knowledge of bookkeeping was there, but it really wasn't until I went through BABs that I was able to gain real confidence in my skills.

 

Become a Bookkeeper made it very clear that I knew what I was doing. And that was very needed, because I think a lot of us type-A, perfectionistic, analytical women tend to discount ourselves. We don't think we know enough until we get into situations where we have to use what we know, and we see we actually did know what we were doing all along.

 

We have to be able to prove it to ourselves. And BABs gives you a safe space to do that without risking taking on clients before you’re ready.

 

I'm the biggest BABs fan, in case you couldn’t tell. It closed the gaps I had and gave me the confidence to actually start signing clients, and everything exploded in the best way.

 

Even if you have the training and the education, if you don’t believe that you have what it takes, you don’t—because your “open sign” doesn’t stay on if you aren’t confident about taking clients.

 

Katie is a business coach and an account—heck, she’s my coach—and she still needed BABs to give her that final boost she needed. And when she got it, her business just kept growing and growing.

 

BABs just officially relaunched after a spectacular revamp…which means it’s even better than when Katie first went through. So if you’re looking at your qualifications, think you have the skills, but just can’t take the leap…BABs is here for you!

 

Sick of imposter syndrome keeping you stuck? Join the new + improved BECOME A BOOKKEEPER now: https://www.katieferro.com/become 

 

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Want a peek behind the curtain into LIBBY, my program all about what it really takes to have a simple and scalable (and successful) bookkeeping business? Get access to my free, on-demand four-part series, 6 Secrets to a Simple, Scalable Bookkeeping Business: www.katieferro.com/6-secrets

 

Learn how to take your bookkeeping skills and turn them into a business that allows you to replace (or surpass) your corporate salary, be present for your life, and profoundly impact your clients without selling your life in the process by joining Life by the Books (LIBBY): https://www.katieferro.com/life

 

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