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Originally Posted by Cajundaddy
I have been self employed all my life. Sometimes it was really hard and sometimes there were pretty extraordinary windfalls. At 59 I don't get super excited every morning about going out and doing it again after 40 years but I know this work really well and it is pretty easy to manage at this point. I have a crew of 5 who do most of the routine daily stuff and that frees me to focus on things that require knowledge and experience both in terms of technical issues and client relations.
I expect I will do this for a while longer as my retirement is pretty solid but I have this expensive habit called racing tires that must be fed. For now it meets my needs and I can ramp it up or ramp it down to suit my lifestyle needs. There is a reason work is a four letter word and that is ok. It beats mining coal.
If I were in your shoes at 50, I would probably apply the same approach to book keeping and accounting. Hire a few qualified people to handle routine daily stuff, train them well and pay them in a way that leaves 20% of everything they generate to you so you can focus on building the business and helping your clients to run lean and mean with their business. If your clients see you improving their bottom line and your people feel like part of a team, it can go places without working 80 hr weeks getting there. Keep overhead super low, provide good service, and reward your people for doing it right. This sounds more interesting than phone sales but it does commit you to a regular schedule.
It suits my style but maybe not yours at this point. Food for thought at least.
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I was heading down that path, but the problem with bookkeeping is that there's no real barrier to entry to the profession. No license. No test. Any of you could post an ad tomorrow claiming to be a bookkeeper and be up and running. One of my clients actually did this for a while. When one of my client businesses was sold, the operations manager, who had learned QuickBooks mostly from me, started working as a bookkeeper! I never would have known except she started calling me to ask questions!
If I'm charging a client $35/hour and paying someone $20 to do the work, the person I'm paying obviously has all the skills necessary to be charging $35 themselves.... the same path I took. There are also some relatively unskilled folks charging less. These are people I wouldn't even want touching a set of books I was responsible for. BUT, a small business owner doesn't know the difference. They just look at their cost/hour. $20 vs $35. Big difference, but they don't know that at the end of the year their CPA is going to reject the $20/hour set of books and recommend that they call me in to fix things. CPA referrals were a big part of my business. But, unless someone has their books reviewed along the way, they're not going to know how wrong they really are.
I'm very comfortable walking away from actual bookkeeping. This year I had a natural attrition (businesses sold, businesses closed, family members taking over) that dropped me down to a handful of clients. I had to decide whether or not to work to replace those clients or let things wind down. After 10 years, it just felt like a good stopping point.