The Home Service Expert Podcast - How Knowing Your Data Can Help You Make Your First Million

Episode Date: May 5, 2020

Meaghan Likes is the founder of Bookkeeping Academy Online and owner of Likes Accounting. She uses her years of expertise and experience in helping small business owners do their bookkeeping correctly. An entrepreneur with five businesses in Northern California, Meaghan is a prominent figure in the window cleaning industry, and is the third fastest female window cleaner in the world. An active philanthropist since 2004, Meaghan devotes a considerable amount of her time to volunteering and traveling around the world for various charitable and caregiving advocacies. In this episode, we talked about accounting, payroll, bookkeeping, tax prep consulting...

four years ago, my husband couldn't tell you within $500,000 what his top line revenue was. He'd been in business almost 10 years. No judgment that this is how they, you know, they're really good at doing whatever it is that they do. Their skill set is really strong, but numbers, like they don't have any reference for how to figure out those numbers. Right. And so that's what I've done. Like, that's how I've kind of found my niche market is, well, you know, the easiest way to figure out your total income, assuming you run like a really ethical operation,

look at your total deposits into your bank. Let's start there. I mean, ideally, yes, they'd have bookkeeping system. Yes, they'd have other system. Yes, they'd have data to rely on. But when somebody comes in your office and they don't even know how much money they made last year, you got to start there.

And then you can work backwards. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello. And today I have a very special guest. Her name is Megan Lykes. She specialized in accounting, payroll, bookkeeping, tax prep, consulting. For small businesses, she also owns a window washing, power washing. I'll let her talk a little bit about that. She's got a bookkeeping academy online. She's the founder from 2017 till present. Likes accounting company from 2017 to present.

Jeff likes clean window and gutter owner from 2007 to now. Meg likes balanced books. She's the owner since 2004. A little bit about her. A small business accountant and consultant, speaker, teacher, and volunteer with nearly two decades worth of professional experience. Founded the Bookkeeping Academy, an institution that teaches small business owners how to use QuickBooks online to capture and organize their expenses so they can understand how the business is doing financially. Her claim to fame is that she can show any small business owner how to do their own bookkeeping correctly in less than one

hour per month using QuickBooks Online. A member of the Rotary International since 2004, devoting most of her effort to Kenya, and a respite caregiver at Citizens Who Care Incorporated since 2014. She owns five businesses in North Carolina. Her favorite is her window cleaning business. She's the third fastest female window cleaner in the world, and spends about 10 hours a week volunteering and 20 weeks a year traveling around the world. Megan, this is quite the resume. Sorry. I feel like that was a mouthful. Hi. Hi. You did great. You did great. Yeah. I've always got a lot going on. A lot of things, a lot of irons in the fire, if you will. I love small business. That's my passion. That's my life. That's what I love. And my favorite business on the record is my window cleaning business. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

That's kind of how we met is I was speaking at the Window, International Window Cleaning Association there in Savannah. And you had a couple of breakout sessions and we went to each other's. And you were talking about profit first, Michael Michalowicz. And that was something that I was talking about. It was just, we hit it off, connected a lot. And you are the real deal. You know your shit. You understand what most other business owners don't understand. And you understand the numbers. And I'm telling you right now, anybody who's listening, I was talking to one of my coaches the other day and he said,

what do you think the most important business lesson is? I'm like, understanding your balance sheet and how it affects everything from marketing to operations, to cogs, to understanding and knowing where those numbers should be, to know where your time should be spent on a daily basis in your business. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, it was what I loved about meeting you is it's very rare when I meet somebody who can like, he get about numbers the way I do. And not from an accounting perspective, like, yes, technically, I'm a CPA, but I could care less about the accounting. What I care about is the story that our numbers tell us about our business, and the levers that we can pull using our numbers to make really great decisions in

our business. And at that conference, I just remember thinking like, yeah, know your average ticket, know your conversion rate, like every metric that I look at for my home service business was a metric that you were talking about from the stage. And I just was smiling like the whole three days, like, yes, he gets it. Everybody needs to do this. And that's kind of become my mission is, is taking something that's really big and scary because most people are terrified of math. They're terrified of numbers. Bookkeeping is like way worse than dentists going to the dentist. You know, they hate it.

They avoid it. They put their head in the sand, but it truly is the answer, I think, to every small business. It can reduce stress. It can create financial freedom. It creates opportunities. But, you know, you're really just getting lucky

and shooting blind if you don't know your numbers, if you don't know where you're at and where you're really just getting lucky and shooting blind. If you don't know your numbers, if you don't know where you're at and where you're going. You know, that's the thing is numbers are scary. And I've been really focused on buying businesses out this past year. And I'm telling you, Megan, you have no idea how horrible, how terrifying people's books are. I mean, you do this for a living, but... I've been doing it for 16 years, Tommy. I know. I have had people give me every excuse under the sun to avoid coming to my office, to avoid talking to me, rescheduling their appointment.

I mean, they are hiding under the covers from their numbers every day. Oh, they don't go into their bank. They don't look at their credit card bills. So I had a guy come in here. He wants to sell to me in Portland. And he's like, yeah, I don't deal with that. My wife deals with all of that. I go, you don't know what you pay for this. You don't know what your payroll is. You don't know what your net is a year. Well, no, I know we're comfortable. And I understand there's times that I avoided looking in the bank. And the weird reality is when you start focusing, we have a certain amount of focus per day. People say I work 14 hours. You probably worked a half hour of true,

getting real stuff done out of that 14 hours. So what I think the balance sheet, the P&L, the income statement, and my top five KPIs do for me is it says, where does my time need to be spent? There's two levers that I feel like I'm in charge of as a CEO is I need really great guys to run calls and I need a lot of customers. So those are my two things. Yeah. How do I recruit? How do I train? How do I retain? How do I get them oriented? First of all, I had to build a marketing funnel for tech. Secondly, I need to make sure I get enough customers for these techs to stay busy. So me overall, those are my two things.

But there's so many things, marketing. If marketing was 28%, who cares how many calls I'm getting? It's impossible to make a profit. So understanding these numbers are just amazing. And I'd like to hear, you're so busy. All these businesses, you travel, And I'd like to hear, you're so busy, all these businesses, you travel, you donate your time to charity. Tell me about kind of where you came from and what your ideas are today and where you're going.

I don't know. I still like struggle. What do I want to be when I grow up? It could be anything. And I want to be a dog walker, a barista. No, just kidding. So when I was growing up, I grew up in a pretty conservative rural area in central California. And I wanted to be an arguer. Like since the age of five, I told everybody I was going to be an arguer. That was going to be my job. And the reality is the grownup version of that is an attorney. I wanted to be an attorney. And I went to school. I went to university and I worked in law firms. I paid my way through school. I worked in a lot of law firms in about two years and I never felt like I found my fit. I also have a horrible case of travel bug. Well, when I was younger, I don't do it so much now as

a quote unquote grownup, but I used to disappear for a year. I'd go abroad for a year and then I come back. So when I came back during one of my sabbaticals from university, one of my law firms said like, well, we don't have your position open anymore. You've been gone for a year, but our controllers out of maternity leave, would you like to fill in, help us keep the lights on, help keep everybody paid. We'll train you, you know, it's a job. And it was like my first introduction to QuickBooks. It was 2004, maybe 2005. And it was just like, all the angels and harpsichords and everything went off. And I was like, this is so fun. I get to deal with money every day, I get to make decisions, I feel so powerful, I feel so empowered. And I just kind of pivoted. And I started a bookkeeping

business. And that's how I paid my rest of my schooling. I have really useful degrees for being a CPA, I have a degree in history and a degree in French, but I love small business. My dad owned a restaurant when I was growing up and that's a hard business to be in. And my step-mom owned a scrapbook store. It just was fun to watch. Well, not really fun then, but fun now to watch them, you know, make these decisions as employers and as leaders and as members and pillars of the community. And so, yeah, I ended up meeting a guy on one of my sabbaticals while I was a ski bum. That was one of my jobs. And I spent his summer doing window cleaning

and I still had a year left of school. So I moved back to school. He moved with me and he started a window cleaning business. And that was in 2007. So 13 years ago. And it's been our passion ever since. It's been so fun to build something, to create something from the ground up and just to kind of roll with the punches. It's been really amazing. And about 10 years after we started that window cleaning business,

my husband said, okay, it's time for you to be self-employed. So I came out of my fancy corporate CPA job and started likes accounting and then started bookkeeping academy. And I seem to stay busy and around it for a really long time. It's been business, small business. That's kind of who I am and what I do. Hey, it's great. I love that. What's cool is you barely rarely meet somebody that owns a small home service business, but is also into taxes and bookkeeping and understands it. So there's a couple of things here I want to unpack. Number one, talk to me about the small business and what you've really learned over 10 years. And then the second question to follow up is, I want to hear more about these bookkeeping

clients and just the shit that you see every day that you're just like, oh my gosh, like let's, let's give the audience a bunch of value on like where to start, what to do today. But first tell me about the home service side of things. Some of the mistakes, obviously we're going through rough times right now with this virus, but stuff, Y2K was happening. Very conservative. People thought the whole world was shutting down. Now, 9-11, the housing crisis of 2008. I've never been through something that has so much uncertainty, but this is not, I can't control it, so it's not scary to me.

But anyways, I want to hear kind of what your thoughts are on just this last, I guess it's been 13 years of the home service business. Yeah. I mean, we started in November, 2007. So 2008, 2009, that was the beginning for us, right? It was really funny about, well, maybe not funny, but kind of comical. Like seven or eight years ago, we started having like huge growth years. And I was thinking, gosh, what's changed?

Like what's happening? And I realized thinking, gosh, what's changed? Like what's happening? And I realized like, this was our economy coming back. And because we had started in 2007, 2008, 2009, we didn't really know what that felt like. And it was just, it's been amazing. It's been so interesting. It's also been really hard. My husband, he's a really good window cleaner. He's actually the fastest window cleaner in the world. He won the World Cup of Window Cleaning when we were in Savannah, Georgia. It was very exciting. He loves cleaning windows.

But that doesn't make you a good business owner, right? That doesn't make you a good boss. That doesn't make you a good trainer. That part doesn't come naturally to him. That part he's had to work really hard at. And we still work hard at every single day. But I've loved that. That's been what's kept it interesting. That's been the challenge. And my role within that company has changed so much over the years too. I mean,

I was HR for a long time. I was the insurance coordinator. I was the marketer. I was the advertiser. I was the one that helped mitigate any employee issues. I ran payroll. I've done so many things in that service business. And both of our roles have changed a lot over time. As far as like the past three weeks have been or month or this virus, you know, I did a class last night for some small business owners. And I said how to create certainty, financial certainty during uncertain times. And I feel like the word create is so important because we really can take control over what we can control, right? And I feel like we're positioned better than most because we know our numbers.

I know what I'm dealing with. I can do projections and forecasting for a variety of scenarios because I know what my hard costs are. I know what my hard costs are. I know what my fixed expenses are. I know what my non-negotiables are. So it's fun. Like it's still fun. Even 13 years later, I love it.

And the challenges, sometimes they're really hard. We've had some rough years. We've made some big mistakes. We operate out of California. So California is not the most employer-friendly state. And we've been through a lot of employee issues over the years. And we always come out of it stronger. We always come out of it better.

We look at it like every challenge is an opportunity. And I think right now we're just another one of those opportunity zones slash super challenging times. You know, in relation to California, I know Illinois is tough. I know New York's tough. I've heard Washington can be tough. I'm not in any of those states yet. I'm looking at a business in California and there's so many Americans leaving California,

just a really nasty place to own a business. It's like, I don't understand. Maybe you can explain this. I don't really want this to turn into a California bash fest because full disclosure, I'm born and raised Californian and I think it's the best place to live. I know offense to Arizona, but this is the best place to live. I live an hour from the beach and the mountains and I do all these activities. That's all good. But here's the thing. This is a little political, but people say they hate corporations. And I understand there's certain ones that shouldn't have got the bailout. But I'm looking at this. Literally, I want to be a 4,000 to 5,000 person company. Right now,

we're only over a couple hundred. But the point is is we take care of our employees count that you're over a couple hundred you are a major employer that that's something to celebrate not yeah and i'm not downplaying it but what i'm saying is i need help too through this like literally like we're gonna pay everybody two weeks of pto i mean look we're not bad i don't know what the stigma is about business is bad. And no, no, no, no. The government doesn't do anything better than private business. I mean, just going through this crisis, you look at the private companies stepping up

for everything. The government's not done anything right, in my opinion. So I just think by putting red tape in front of everything and making it impossible for us to function, I just don't know if certain states with the regulatory issues, if the juice is worth the squeeze, but I'm going to give it a shot. Well, here's my philosophy. I think that you are a good employer and I think you run a good business. I know that I'm a good employer and I run a good business. I also know that there are a lot of people out there who are not good employers, not running good businesses. And I could tell you war stories from my accounting times. And so I feel like California is really trying to look out for the employee. And their default state is the employer's wrong. And that makes it really

hard to navigate as an employer trying to do good and do right. But they're pretty transparent about their rules. So we've been through six lawsuits from employees over the 13 years that we've been in business. We've never lost one. And every time we've learned something, like some other way we could protect or document protecting our employees better. So it's a harder environment, but it's not an impossible environment. And I have to trust that the environment's created because there were people before us that were taking advantage of their staff, that were taking advantage of their employees who are not good employers and were not running good business. So if I can keep that mindset, like it's not about us, they're not trying to hurt us. They're trying to protect

our employees, which is something we're trying to do too. It helps. Like it helps make it a little less frustrating and painful to navigate all that red tape. But it's hard. I'm not going to joke you. It's hard. Well, that's fair enough. And I completely agree with that sentiment. The only thing I would say is my first job was when I was 12. So I've been an employer about 50-50, maybe a little less than that or more than that. But the point is, I think most of the employees that have a hard time have never been an employer. Most businesses fail. I mean, if you make it past the fifth year, you're in the single-digit percentiles. It's not easy. You lose friends. You lose relationships. The people that

are listening that are business owners, and we get roughly 20,000 downloads a month, so a lot of people are going to listen to this. You've done a great job. You're doing a great job. And you shouldn't be penalized for success. That's just not going to motivate anybody to grow. And I think unions existed for a reason. I mean, have you seen that show, The Men Who Made America? No, I'm sorry. It's this history show, but it talks about Carnegie.

Oh, is it like the Rockefellers? The Rockefeller, Carnegie. Yeah. Their story is so inspiring. Youers, the Rockefeller. Yeah. Their story is so inspiring. You know, the labor got dumped on, they worked too much, but you look at it and could have very well been my grandpa,

my great grandpa. And they're working in some of these places and they weren't safe for the employee. And, you know, stuff was born over time with the unions within monopolist i mean i'm i'm 33 and i've had 75 jobs for 60 employers oh my god i've done 75 different jobs and my husband he is the man that will roll up his sleeves no matter what right so we get it like it takes grit and i feel like that makes us better employers, right? And that makes us stronger small business owners.

And so for everybody listening, just like keep it up. Keep up the hard work. It takes grit. But if you're doing it for the right reasons, if you know your why, you can make it through anything, I think. Yeah. And the why, like I put in my book, the why shouldn't be because you don't want to work for someone else.

You're right. Your husband's great at window washing, but I'm sure it took him years. I mean, probably still to this day, he's reading, learning new things about business because we're either learning or not. You've got the chance to see behind the doors of so many businesses. And this is super exciting for me because I was exactly the guy that you talk about 10 years ago. You know, I kept some of the cash, all the metal that I turned in that probably didn't make it through the bank. It wasn't ridiculous, but I'm covering my ears as you're saying this. You can't see that it's happening. Well, listen, you know, it's crazy.

It's like 10 years ago when I got my CPA, we decided we're going to build this business and there's not going to be anything behind any closed doors. When I was one guy out there running calls here and there, it was different. And then all of a sudden I said, no, no, no, I'm going to build a business that works for me, not a business that I work for. So that meant every time I go to the scrapyard, every time I get cash, every time there's inventory, it's got to make it through the system. And it's good because the businesses I buy now are like, oh, I've got two set of books. You know how that works. And I'm like, well, can I trust your second set of books? And like, what are we talking here? Why is there such a profound difference? I've had people tell me they're

like, oh, you're from California. You don't understand how things work in Florida or New Jersey. And I'm like, no, I feel like business is business, right? Like it should not be different. Like, because you live in another state that allow like, what? No, that makes no sense. I agree. I don't even know what it is about myself back in the day that just, I wanted to refrain from dealing with it. And now you talk a lot about profit first and Michael Michalowicz, which I want to dive into as well. But talk to me a little bit about just what you see out there and just what in the mindset, where is the paradigm that says, I don't want to look at money. I don't want to know my business is healthy. I don't want to know my EBITDA. I don't want to know my cost of

marketing. I don't understand my calls. What happens with small business owners that causes this? It's like going, like you said, to the dentist. Well, they're afraid. And I have to remember that I have a different perspective. And my perspective is my husband, Jeff. He didn't go to college. He barely graduated high school. He grew up wanting to be a professional state boarder.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But the reality is he doesn't have any confidence as a business owner because he was afraid of money, right? He didn't know how to manage money. He didn't know how to do math. He thought it was big and scary math. And I think that's true for everybody. I have so many clients to this day who have a lot of anxiety around money. Maybe it's because they were audited at some point. Maybe it's because they had a controlling spouse. Maybe it was because they came from a household that was really in debt or went through bankruptcy. We never know what people's stories are, like how they're coming to the table. But the fear usually has to do with confidence. And so what I have done, what I

figured out how to do is how can I empower these small business owners to not be afraid of it anymore? Like, how can I give them enough information that they can start building confidence? Right? And how can I make it accessible? Like, I don't want it to be scary. I do not believe in like, my hourly rate is $300 an hour. I don't believe in charging them extra money just so that I can keep making money, right? Like, my goal is I want them to be successful. So I'm going to give them all the secrets that they need to be successful. And then we get karma points, right?

Like, then they are going to employ more people and they're going to help the schools and they're going to help the community. And this is not hard. Bookkeeping is not hard. Understanding how much money you're making or how much money you're going to make should not be complicated. Getting a handle on your expenses should not be scary. And what happened with Jeff is when we made that shift, and it was probably only three or four years ago because there was a huge disconnect. Like he was out there selling window cleaning and managing staff, but I was still paying the bills. And if there's a disconnect between those two sides, like, you know, you're talking about your business owners that you go into buy,

they don't understand what their expenses are. They can't make informed decisions about how much money they're going to make or how, when they're going to make it, or, you know, how many crews they're going to run or what they're going to pay their staff. And so I just, I've been working really hard over the past couple of years to figure out how to show people that it's not scary and then show them how. And I did that two years ago. I figured that out. And it has been the most amazing transformation with hundreds of thousands of business owners. I think the number that I impacted last year was like 2,850 small business owners that I was able to teach them how to know their numbers. That's incredible, right?

Think about all the lives that are impacted there. That's exciting. I mean, you're really well spoken the way you teach the class. And there were so many good takeaways. You talk about the whole concept of profit first is revenue minus profit equals expenses. And there's a thing called Parkinson's law that I discussed quite a bit that just says, you're going to use what's there. It's kind of like, if it's on my plate, I eat it. Even if I'm like, I just got to give myself smaller helpings. So that's kind of the trick. So talk to me a little bit about this whole concept of purpose is law and profit first.

And really, I think it's genius, different accounts. You said a minimum of seven, I think. I don't have my notes in front of me, But the point is, I want to go through this because I'm not going to say it won't work for me. But at this point, for a business that does revenue and has as many things going on, we just need to be good at bookkeeping. If I had that many accounts, I think you need maybe four. But let's go through this because you're so good at this.

So you want to do this? You want the crash course to profit first right now? Yeah, let's go through this with, cause you're so good at this. So you want to do this? You want, you want the crash course to profit first right now? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Well, so first of all, this is not my theory. This is not my idea. I actually was given the profit first book by Mike Michalowicz at an accounting conference. And Mike doesn't know this. Mike and I have actually never met, but that book and that accounting conference changed my entire life.

So he handed me this book after hearing him speak about Profit First. And I was at a conference where I think I got five books. Now I read a lot. I average about 50 books a year, but sometimes I prefer to read fiction than business books. So it maybe got put on the shelf for a little bit, but his talk stuck with me.

He's like one of those speakers that they just resonate with you, right? You just are like, yes, that's good decision-making, right? So I'm going to tell you the personal story and then I'll give you the crash course. The personal story is finally listened to the book with my husband on a road trip. We go on a lot of road trips because we're both self-employed. Like road trips seem to be like our most best time together because we're kind of unplugged we're usually in a national park and that's when we listen to business books and so we listened to profit first and it was really well done on audible if you haven't listened to it i highly highly recommend it and my first reaction was like nope won't work

for me like there's no way i'm a book I'm an accountant. I am not opening seven bank accounts. That is just seven times more work. No, thank you. But we listened to it again, and we kind of sat on it for a couple months. And I started to think about this Parkinson's laws idea. And you talk about it a lot more than I do, because I've had a hard time, like, putting it into plain English. Like, I've had a hard time, like, conceptualizing that for my students. So I loved hearing you speak time like conceptualizing that for my students. So I loved hearing you speak and I loved you describing it to people.

But it's true. The reality is I have met hundreds of small business owners in my office who work their butts off every single day and they're not paying themselves. There's nothing left to show for it. They have paid everybody else. They have paid all the things.

And when I do their tax return and I say, you made this much money last year, they call me a liar because they don't have it in the bank anymore. It's not there any longer. Right. And so I started thinking about that. And I started thinking about our window cleaning business. We've been running a good operation, right? We had been doing everything right. You talk about you 10 years ago. I lied to my husband. I don't do that very often, but I told him he would go to jail if any cash ended up in his pocket, like the police would come and take him to jail. And he believed me. Like I put the fear into him

that he could not hide cash. Now I'm a CPA in the state of California. So we have to do everything squeaky clean. And I feel like I'm a good person, like ethically, we got to do everything squeaky clean. But I started thinking about our window cleaning business and how we were working really hard, but I didn't think we were making as much money as we should. And so I thought, you know, well, maybe it's worth a shot. Maybe like this profit first thing, maybe what can it hurt? Right? So we love our bank, we bank at a local bank that we can see from my office window. And, and so we went in and I felt so silly. I was like, I need to open this many accounts and I need you to name them this.

You know, banks, they love opening bank accounts. They thought it was great. They're like, yeah, sure. No problem. We got you. No worries. And that first week when we could actually see the cash like accruing in a bank account, because the main goal of Profit First is you

separate your income from your expenses. So you cannot spend any money unconsciously using the Profit First method. And I think that's why it works so well. Because psychologically, you have to physically move your hard-earned cash in order to be able to spend it. There's no hands reaching into your bank account anymore. And when there's no hands reaching into your bank account anymore, the coolest thing happens. Cash starts accumulating, like income starts piling up. And then psychologically, there's this shift where you're like, I worked my butt off for that money. I'm not going to spend it frivolously. I'm not going to let it just filter through my fingers, which is, I think, what you talk about when you talk about Parkinson's law.

If we manage our businesses based on our bank account balance, then we just spend whatever's in the bank, right? But if you have to physically transfer money in order to be able to spend it, there's this, like, visceral gut reaction that happens with, like, oh, heck no, wait a minute, that's not happening. Like, I'm not going to just waste that money away. I worked too hard for it. And after a couple of short months, we just started like accumulating cash. It became this really fun thing in our marriage where I'd come home from work and I'd be like, hey, can I see the bank accounts? Can I just look at them? Because we've never been able to hoard cash to that extent before. And all we did was change the psychology of our spending, which made us much more conscious of our spending.

And it was amazing and miraculous. And back to the personal story, Mike Michalowicz handed me that book. We read the book. We implemented it. We loved it. I called Profit First people and I said, how do I become a Profit First professional? Because they have this license thing where you can be one. And I had a really good conversation with Mike's partner.

And Mike's partner told me about the huge convention. I had never even heard of the huge convention before. And it was a window cleaning. It was a convention just for window cleaners that happened once a year. And it was going to be in Atlanta, Georgia. And that's kind of what pivoted the entire window cleaning business to be as efficient as it is now, because that's where we found all this technology. And we found a tribe of fellow window cleaners and power washers. And I think I heard a rumor that maybe we're going to have a

really cool MC this year. Yeah, I'm supposed to be the keynote if this thing still happens, but we'll see. We can cross our fingers. Anyway, so yeah, Profit First is amazing. If you haven't heard of it, I highly recommend going to get a copy or listening to it on Audible. And then don't be one of those, I can't, or it won't work for me, or one of those naysayers. Give it a shot. It's not going to hurt. It's not going to hurt. So first of all, there's no one that's listening that's going to say, I like to steal cash from the IRS. Or there's no one listening that everybody has done something in their life. And in my book, I write it. It's called creative justification. For example, I get a free Liftmaster. When I ordered a Liftmaster at a certain time of the year, they're called 267s. They come with an extra remote and a keypad. Well, we take inventory

on that stuff. But I know at one point, there had to be a guy that said, these come free when Tommy buys these. I should be able to take one from my house for all the hard work I do for Tommy. I doubt he would even care, but I'm just going to do it. And in their mind, they created the justification. So I call it creative justification. And there's not a person around that says, you know what, if they're going to do Medicare and they're not even that hurt, then why shouldn't I do it too? Or why shouldn't my mom be on it too? So what we do as human beings is we got this thing called creative justification and everybody does it. It's to a certain extent of how much you do it.

You say, look, I worked out all week. It's time to go out and have a fudge brown, you know, whatever it looks like. People create the justification within their minds and they condone it. So I wanted to just share that thought with you. And then the gratification of what you talked about, seeing the money in the bank, you see, that's why I sell financing and credit because you don't feel the pain as when you got to go to the ATM and pull out cash to your balance, because that mental pain stops people from making buying decisions. So financing and credit, although it's manipulative, it works. And that's why we have better sales.

And that's why we fix things better when we're out at the home. So those of you that don't do financing or credit, it's delayed. That pain is delayed and it's spread out over time. So it's easier to sell things. And then you told the crowd that you don't really spend any money in marketing right now, which is great. I didn't tell this crowd, but thanks. Now you've given away all my money. Usually people throw tomatoes when I say that. Go ahead.

Throw your tomatoes. Well, the thing that I've learned is when I know my average ticket, you see, what I always do, and the crowd has probably heard me say this before, the listeners, I work backwards on how much I should be spending in marketing. So you take simply, I want to make a million dollars. I'm at 20%. That's $5 million. $5 million divided by my average ticket of $500. Then I go my conversion rate face-to-face, my call booking rate, and then I back into my amount per acquisition.

You realize how unusual you are because you know every single one of those metrics, which is just the most empowering thing, right? You can pull those levers because you have good data. And that's amazing. That's something that I think every small business owner should aspire to is being able to pull all those KPIs that you just mentioned and kind of rolled off the tongue. They have to find the ones that are important to them and figure out how to calculate them. And then they have to watch them. And I think most people aren't starting there, right? Like we have to go back 10 steps

so they can start there, if that makes sense. Well, here's the goal. I put a quarter in, I get a quarter and a nickel out. And that's where I know, that's where I'm at. I get 20% back. So the goal should be, in my mind, the first problem I see with businesses, they say, well, I think I'm at this. I said, this isn't, this isn't a thinking test. This is an exact number. The number one thing you need to do as

a business owner when you start is be able to rely on your numbers a hundred percent. Because if I evaluate your numbers and they don't make sense, there's no point in even looking at them. Booking rate is the first one in businesses that I'm like, you are failing. You do not need to do more marketing. You don't even book the calls you have. Your Google internet site says you close at 4 p.m. Well, yeah, we like to have dinner as a family. Then why do you have a business? If you can't figure out how to be open. That's where I'm coming from, right? In my defense about the marketing is I believe in squeezing the cottage cheese. And I feel like I don't have any business wasting money on marketing until I can dial in all my other systems and metrics, right? Until I know that everything is

optimized. And I think I heard you say, and I'm going to quote you back, but you know, I want to nail it and then I'm going to scale it, right? Like I need it dialed in before I'm going to throw any money at marketing. I feel like marketing is a very, very, very important tool in business, but I feel like it's irresponsible for me to be spending that money until I've got everything else dialed in and optimized. And we're doing just fine. We're growing by 30% a year. It's slower, but I feel like my bottom line is keeping up, which is good. Well, the only thing I'd say to the marketing is there's certain things that I don't... There's considered marketing, but in my opinion, they're absolutely 100% musts. And here they are. Number one, you wrap the vehicles no matter what.

That's like the big no-no for me. Don't get little lettering on the side. Don't make it very complicated. Put something that screams out, we're professional, we're good, and people know you. They'll start seeing your trucks, number one. Number two is Google. Get all your citation sites done. Make sure you're getting reviews on your Google page.

Make sure that you're getting reviews on yelp and angelus and home advisor and the bbb and next door like Do search engine build a really nice website now that's considered marketing dollars But get a lot of content on there go through the 20 top questions. How much does it cost for this? Put great videos which is marketing expense. But those ones to me, I don't care if you're just all straight referral. I want to hear a little bit about you. What do you guys even do?

Can I find out more about you? Yeah, we have a great website. Obviously, you can see it as a side of the trucks, what we offer. Those are things that I still throw in the marketing where I would be like, okay, at least 3%. If I'm doing $800,000 a year, I can afford a few thousand bucks a month. Literally, it's $2,000 a month. I can afford $2,000 to make sure my SEO, my citation sites, I've got a review software. The review software, in my opinion, is a marketing expense.

It's not an operational expense. It's to get reviews, which is marketing. And that's really good clarification, actually. I feel like I sometimes even still get confused between marketing and advertising. And so the reality is we do have a marketing budget. We don't have really an advertising budget, if that makes sense. And I tend to break those out in our books. I watch really carefully. What do we spend on website? What do we spend on branding? But I

hadn't really put them under the marketing umbrella. So I'm glad you clarified. And I think that's true. I think that we need to be out there. We need to be visible. We need to be top of mind. We need to make it so that our clients miss us in between visits. And you're right. That's marketing. So I take it back. I was wrong. Well, you know, the deal is I'm really impressed. 30% a year is absolutely incredible. You know, what happens is typically the higher you get in revenue, the harder it is to make big gains. But I think the smartest thing we've ever done is, number one, set a huge goal. I have two goals every year. Some people do three.

I have, this is our budget of where we want to do. But here's our, we land on the moon type goal. But then you got to work backwards. And it all comes back to, if you could visualize it, if you could get the tunnel vision that I have to build, it's like, I could do this in any business. But a lot of people, you just hear, I can only imagine when people sit down with you, you say, well, how much revenue do you want to do this year? They go, well, 2 million would be nice. They have no clue on how to get there, how many employees it takes, how they got, how many people. Well, you have to start with how

much revenue did you do last year? And I would say 90% of my clients can't tell you. Four years ago, my husband couldn't tell you within $500,000 what his top line revenue was. He'd been in business almost 10 years. No judgment that this is how they, you know, they're really good at doing whatever it is that they do. Their skill set is really strong, but numbers, like they don't have any reference for how to figure out those numbers, right? And so that's what I've done. Like, that's how I've kind of found my niche market is, well, you know, the easiest way to figure out your total income, assuming you run like a really ethical operation, look at your total deposits in your bank. Let's start there. I mean, ideally, yes,

they'd have bookkeeping system. Yes, they'd have other system. Yes, they'd have data to rely on. But when somebody comes to your office, and they don't even know how much money they made last year, you got to start there. And then you can work backwards. Yeah. And I think if I was to walk in, I'd be like, let's take everything you have, throw it all out. Let's start from scratch. What are our metrics? How are we going to calculate this, this, this, this, this? Look, I know it's a mess. I know we're in March, but let's just start today because there's no better time than now. Let's not start next week. Let's not start on April 1st. Let's start now. And let's not go backwards. Let's start today, right? Like how much money are you going to make tomorrow? I absolutely agree. And I say for every

client meeting that I ever do, or every student that signs up for one of my courses or anybody, any business that I'm ever consulting with, I say no homework. There's going to be no pre-work. I just want you to show up to the meeting. That's my goal. And we'll figure everything else out together because they have so much fear and anxiety. Like I just need them to show up and then we'll sort it out. Like then I can take that all away. Right. We can do it together. I can hold their hand through it. But yeah, I love that you say you clean and organize because we've run a paperless business, a field service business since day one. And it's kind of our rock star, has been remote for eight years, completely remote, 100%. Don't even, we see her once a year. But having good systems and keeping a really clean house, and by house, I mean business, it takes away all the distractions, right? It takes away all the noise and it helps you focus a lot.

You mentioned earlier that you guys stay lean. And there's a couple of good books about really being lean. There's a book called The Toyota Way. There's a lot of good books I've read about being lean. And being lean means, do I have the ability? There was a time where I used to buy a thousand widgets because I got a better deal on them. And those widgets would expire because the batteries went bad in the summer. It'd be theft. I'd have to have camera systems. I'd have to have a warehouse guy. I'd have to have a warehouse truck, a warehouse trailer, separate insurance. Basically, what I've learned is let my suppliers

handle my inventory. Let the marketers do what they do best, although we have some in house. I used to think, man, if I could do it for cheaper, why wouldn't I? I got an offer on my building for an extra million dollars. This was two months after we moved in. The realtor said, hey, listen, you're going to think I'm crazy, but I've got a customer that they're 100% in. They love your building. I know you just moved in, but it's an extra million. And trust me, that was like, whoa, I can make a million dollars. I mean, how do you not pause at that, right? Oh, yeah. Well, I was like, okay. And then me and Adam started talking. What's the opportunity cost? We're close to getting up to a million dollars a week. Now, if I got to shift the whole business and move into another location, how much does that cost us? So we came back at a counter for 2 million more. They didn't

do it. But the point was, I've realized I'm a specialist at certain things. And the more we take on, our attitude used to be, well, this person could wear 10 hats. I want one person with one hat with one list of KPIs, no more than more than five and they're responsible so you can't say well i'm doing all this stuff Of course, I dropped the ball on this Like I think that's the biggest mistake that i've carried up to the medium-sized business that I became Was I said well we'll just put this person in charge and this person will do that too And then there was no accountability That's the main thing that

we've created. Last year was all about accountability. This year is all about recruiting. It's about building great human beings to run the jobs because if they're running the jobs right, conversion rates right, average ticket's where it needs to be, I can spend a ton of money on marketing. And money as a percentage of marketing, I mean, if we do a hundred million bucks just for the sake of numbers and I'm at a 10% marketing, $10 million will buy me a lot of calls. It will. And you'll be responsible about it because you know exactly what that $10 million is going to get you, right? Like, you know, that equation, you know, all of the variables and you know what your output is going to be. And I feel like the reason you know that is because you know your numbers. I don't know how many of your listeners can relate to a hundred

million, but take it to a hundred thousand then, right? Or take it to a million, take it to 500,000. But if you know your numbers and you can put those variables into your formulas, then why wouldn't you meet your goals, right? Like why wouldn't your pie in the sky or what did you call it? Land on the moon goal. Why isn't that your reality? But that all comes from data. And when I heard you say you had three people cleaning your data, I was drooling, like literally drooling. I would love three people to clean my data. My least favorite activity is data scrubbing. My office manager from likes accounting for the first two years, she was getting a master's degree in data science like data is where it's at and for me as a small business owner my data is mostly my numbers they tell us everything they tell all the stories when the numbers see what i like about so we're using power bi so we transfer the numbers from our crm straight into power. What I love the most is I'm a visual graphic person. I like graphs

because I could see my top performer that sells the most struts or maybe a top grade window wash, and I can see the least. So I can say, hey guys, look at this. What if you did this? Here's how much money he made on this. What if I told you you could make six figures this year by driving with him for a week? And here's the story. This one piece of paper says everything. And then this, those were struts. Now, what if you were able to every window cleaning job to do the gutters? Now, this is the best guy at doing this. I have over 100 technicians. So I've got the greatest thing in the world where I can literally find the best guy at each thing. And, you know, there's a mindset. They say, well, that's easy.

All I do is give them this analogy. Would you ever go down the highway at 80 miles an hour with your emergency brake on? Oh, that's crazy. Well, those are like what your rollers are doing right now. They're stopping and going and it's making everything work harder. I'm sorry, but your system's been compromised. No, it's true. And employee

metrics are really interesting. That's something we've only gotten into in the past two years. But the idea of having transparency and being able to show our staff, you know, the feedback they're getting, the training they're getting, where they are in the system, what our expectations are. I mean, that's really taken our leadership skills to the next level and challenged us too. But it's been really, really transformative to use metrics when it comes to people too, right? Because now they know what the game is. They know what the rules are.

They know how they can win and you're setting them up for success. It's been really, really helpful. That's absolutely right. You know, one of the other things I see and you you work with a lot of these businesses, is the first thing they want. You know, they said, I started a business. I've worked hard. I get to play hard.

I'm buying that RV. I'm going to buy that snowmobile I've always wanted. We're going to get the big house. And the more money they make, the more debt they get into. And they just think, I've worked hard. I deserve this. You know, all my money to grow as fast as I have has gone back into the business, minus my retirement account. I mean, literally, I give my managers a lot of credit, right?

The team that we built around us is just absolutely phenomenal. But if I was to take out every penny instead of reinvesting it, it would have stuttered our growth so much. And the way that I see it is the more money that stays in here, I look at it as like a chess game. I've got all my chips. I've got the queen running around, taking my opponents, everything, because I'm putting all my chips back in. It's just like a poker game. Who has the most chips? I can bluff all I want to because I don't know if that's the best analogy, but my point is you got to reinvest in the business. Like, I want to like, I'm just going to tell you to be careful for just a second. So after we met, I called you and I said, why,

like, what is your why? Right. And I think every small business owner is going to have a different why they're going to have a different motivator. They're going to have a different motivator. They're going to have a different end goal. And I think it's amazing because you know, you knew exactly, you didn't even pause. You knew exactly what you were trying to do and where you were going and how you're headed and like what your purpose is. And I think that's what we have to figure out as small business owners. It's like, why are we doing this?

What's our goal? You know, I talk a lot about financial freedom and financial freedom metrics. And my husband and I were not particularly financially motivated. Like, he grew up incredibly poor. I grew up pretty average middle class, right? I don't even have a car. Well, I have a car. It doesn't work. I'm trying to fix it. I'm restoring a British sports car. I've been restoring it for a year. I drive a Vespa to work. We have a small house. We don't buy into that consumerism, right? But for us, financial freedom means a lifestyle. And our lifestyle means that we travel a lot and that we have a lot of wonderful experiences, right? And I think for some people, the financial freedom metric is whatever it is. It's like paying you know, paying for kids college or taking epic family vacations or being able to have an awesome Christmas party for their staff or whatever motivates you. I feel like that's how you make those decisions. And if the motivator is to grow a really big business, then absolutely.

You should be reinvesting. You should be doing it really thoughtfully. The only thing I say is, even if your why is to have nice dirt bikes, the first five years of business are so critical. I'm just saying that the fact is, if you are pouring out so much cash so you could afford that stuff, but to go in and get yourself into more loans, which 99% of business owners are not paying straight cash, their loanability goes up because now they've got a much higher income. And I talked to this guy, he's got a couple hundred million dollar business. And he goes, Tommy, the best things I could invest in, way better than the stock market, way better than anything else, is businesses that I know how to, like the home

service industry. You can't beat when you can pour money back in because I know if I pour a dollar in, I can get more out. I'm investing in myself. And the only thing I say is, tell me if I'm wrong, Megan, but the main goal of financial freedom, whether it's lifestyle money, whatever it might be, is that you don't have to show up there to work every single day. It's called being rich versus having wealth. Wealth means when I'm sleeping, I'm making money. Wealth means that if I'm not in the office the next month, there's still money going into my bank account. And I don't think there's anybody that wakes up, but I could be wrong. There might've been somebody that said, I want to work 75 hours a week. And I want to make sure that if I'm not there, that the business fails. Now I could name people that do that, right? That exists. There are people

that are so passionate about what they do. They live and breathe what they do. They absolutely don't want to do anything else, right? And there's a little bit of an ego thing where that needs to revolve entirely around them. So no judgment if that's where you're at, right? I feel like everybody does their own thing. But that's the beauty of a financial freedom metric is it's going to be a different answer for every single listener. It's going to be a different answer for every single family. It's going to be a different answer for every single small business. And I think that's the beauty of being an entrepreneur, right? Is you get to choose. Like you get to set your own goals. You get to do it however you want. Now, I totally

agree in the beginning of business. In the very early years, like two years after we started the window cleaning business, we hired my brother. Now, I know we've all done this, right? You hire a family member. It seems like a genius idea. My brother, fresh out of college with his art degree from a private university, you know, he's just green, green, green. And he lives with us while he works for us, right? And that year, you know, we've made all the mistakes. I'm still laughing that year my brother

made more than jeff and i did put together working for us while living rent-free in our house while we fed him and did his laundry right like that doesn't make sense but what we were doing was we were investing in our systems we were investing in a training program we were investing in how to like make a manager position we were investing in marketing training program. We were investing in how to like make a manager position. We were investing in marketing. Once you fill up your schedule because you have enough technicians and they're well trained. Like, so it was a learning year. We still joke about it.

We love my brother. We still have a really good relationship, but yeah, you've got to invest. And sometimes it's got to, well, as a business owner, a lot of times it's going to come from you, right? Either you leave those profits in or you take them out, but the choice is yours and you're going to have to invest. You know, I think that there's so many things we could take out of this. I'll tell you this.

I got a guy that came on about a year ago and his name's Ross and he's in our financial department and he came from a $420 million company where he was the controller. He came in and he's been where I want to go, which was smart to hire somebody. I'm not this guy that says, I'm just going to train somebody. And there's certain key roles and one of them is your books. And to know, we have what's called a financial quick check. It's in my book. It's every Friday where we go over and we dig deep into the numbers into each and every market. We look at our P&L. We look at how much money is in the bank, how much we paid off to certain things, how much our enterprise bill is. It's amazing when I know the problems in the company, how quick I can fix them.

And the hard part is most people don't want to hear the problems, right? I think people don't want to hear bad news. It's enough to have to go to work and get yelled at by your employees and have a customer. And that's what your business looks like right now. That's not mine. I love my life, but that at one point it was, it was chaos. And my point about this whole thing is that you got to look it dead in the eyes and you got to say, this is a huge hole in the ship. I always say if my boat was sinking, first thing you do is find the big hole and patch it. And I'm telling you what, if you were to sit down with Megan, it's not that hard. Listen, by the way, all disclaimers, Megan's not paying me if you want to use her. I think she's great

at what she does. But the fact is you need to find someone that can look deep into the books and point out and say, dude, your payroll is 60% of your revenue. Your overtime is out of control. There's so many things that you uncover when you flip these rocks over. And it's like, let's put it this way. If you keep going down the road you're going and expecting things to change, it's not going to. So I love finding out. I found out some crazy things about a month ago.

We were paying for this extra insurance and all this stuff. It was like we found all this money that was being spent. And I don't know how we uncovered it or what happened. Or it was like a credit card on an Amex or autopay or something. And I was really upset the first five minutes. And then I said, you know what? We fixed it. Like that's free money. That's newfound money now, right? Absolutely. And I give a talk. It's my favorite talk. It's like expense saving hacks, like how to save tens of thousands of dollars in your business in one hour. You know, I feel like the only way you can do it is if you do that financial health check.

Right. And you have to do it regularly and you have to be able to rely on the data that you're looking at. But once you do, you can get back control and you can start making informed decisions like you can create certainty when it feels like there is no certainty because you can rely on your data and you can use that data to move forward. And we all have to start somewhere. So maybe you're not starting with clean books. Maybe you don't have a bookkeeper. Maybe you know your numbers once a year when your tax guy tells you what they are. But you have to start somewhere. Start with one metric.

Like, Tommy, if you could choose one metric, what would it be? Your booking rate? Is that what you choose? Oh, man. Oh, God. One? You only get one. You only get one.

Yeah, actually, I guess it would be the number one problem I see in all the companies. The huge one is their call booking rate. And that call, if your average ticket's $700, you missed three calls. You lost $2,100 that day for the girl or the guy that you're paying $13, $14 for. So you pay your text great, but you pay this other person $12, $14. They don't book six calls that day with an average ticket of $700. That's $4,200 down the drain. And you're going, you're mad at the technician for walking away with a

$200 ticket when you actually just lost $4,200 because you didn't train your CSR to do her job right. Anyways, yeah, that would be my metric. I would say average ticket. So it's funny. If you take both of our metrics, I feel like that's all you need. Average ticket, booking rate rate start there, right? And then go forward. But the biggest mistake is for some reason, there's not as much pain when I say we didn't book, we booked seven out of 10. But then when I hear the pain of a guy that let's say our average ticket average is $700 for the company. And I had a guy at 300 that day. I'm pissed. I'm going, dude, you were $400 less on every one of your calls. But yet I lost, let's just say it's a hundred calls and I lost 30 because I'm at 70%. Seven out of 10 doesn't the same, but you see what I'm saying? The pain of not booking a call is not the same as leaving money on the table when you're at the customer's house for some reason.

So in my mind, it's just as strong. In my mind, it's like, whoa, holy cow. We had someone call us up because our marketing is working and we didn't book it. We couldn't even get out to their house. That's important. I mean, I love, I just love talking to people that get it. I know. I distinctly remember meeting you and I was like, I want to be your friend. We it. I know that's I like, I distinctly remember meeting and I was like,

I want to be your friend. We think the same. Let's hang out. You know, like it's fun to geek out about business and it's fun when you know the game, right? Like when you know that it doesn't matter your industry, it doesn't matter which home service you have. You can find commonalities and we can help each other. And we can kick ideas around and it makes it fun. Absolutely. So let's just talk about a few more things that I'll wrap us up.

So as far as you're concerned, when you bring out a new client, what does that first month look like? Usually what is your onboarding process? What are some of the things you go through with that? For bookkeeping or are you taking on any clients i mean how does that look so for likes accounting yes we're taking on bookkeeping clients we are not taking on tax clients i'm a small business too a little less than three years old i've been through three different business plans i've hit capacity every single year i've scaled each direction and now

we're like new game. So no more tax plans is the current new game, except for the ones I have, which I love dearly and I promise to keep forever. But for bookkeeping, how that usually works is you book a call and you come as you are. And we just talk about your business and we talk about what you feel like your stress points are, what are your pain points. And we just talk about your business. And we talk about what you feel like your stress points are, what are your pain points. And then we start giving you some information, right? We start getting you some data about your business. And then we can start making informed decisions together. And the beauty of that is, you essentially get like an accounting team, an entire accounting team for your small business that's rooting for you at a fraction of the price.

And I own a small home service business. I always tell people like, I'm sorry, I can't turn off my CPA brain, but I also can't turn off my Jeff likes clean windows brain, the same brain. So you get both. And yeah, that's how that works. Yeah. I love it. I think it's incredible. And I love the fact just you're passionate. I think people ask me the number one thing of a business owner and hands down. And Megan, I've coached a lot of people. And when I don't hear them wide up about their business, I'm always like, man, I don't need to work with anybody in the back of my mind. And I try not to just push people away that want help. But I'm like, God, this is so much work for you. Why did you

even start this? Like for me, I used to do garage doors. Now I'm a technology company that just happens to do garage doors. I'm never in a garage anymore. I consider us the most advanced technology company in the home service space. It's data driven. Data is what gives me my output. Input the data and output is my decision-making, right? Here's my theory. When you're coaching these people and you don't see their eyes light up, or you don't hear the passion in their voice, help them find their passion. Because they had to have started it for a reason. And I feel like what happens with small businesses is they get away from their reason, right? They lost their why. And if you can help them find their why again,

then they'll be successful. But when I have clients come into my office and I don't see the passion, I don't see their eyes light up, it seems to be money-driven, I say, I think you should try again. I think you need to try something else. And I'm not afraid to say it because the reality is being a small business owner is hard and it takes everything you've got. And if you aren't all in, it's never going to work. It's always going to be hard. But if you're all in, you're going to find the joy. You're going to find the passion. You're going to find the pleasure.

I mean, it can be fun. It's not always going to be fun. You know this. We all know this. It's not always rainbows and kitty cats, but it can be fun. If you're following your passion, if you're following your why, if you're why driven, absolutely. What's this bookkeeping academy all about? The bookkeeping academy came out of those first few months with likes accounting when I hit

capacity. Like I had no idea what the market, I mean, I'd done the research. I did the business plan. I left my fancy CPA job. I felt like I knew what the opportunity was in my market, but I completely underestimated it. And I was getting dozens of calls a day. I think I did like, I onboarded 200 new clients in like the first two weeks. I mean, it was just insane. And when I hit capacity in the first three months, you know, I'd already made two, I was supposed to be a one woman show and I was just going to have this little shingle out and do taxes. And, uh, I had already hired what two, four, like four staff in those first three months. And now I was like a manager and a leader. And I was building all these systems from scratch and

I had all these clients and it was just a mess. And so that first month after tax season, when I could finally like breathe and see straight, I was like, okay, this isn't working. This is not scalable. I might die if I continue to scale at this rate. So what else can I do? Right. And a likes accounting from day one has serviced only small business owners. That was its mission, right? Was I was going to help the Jeffs of the world or, you know, when my dad had the restaurant that was failing, I was going to help those entrepreneurs that were struggling. That was the mission. And when I really started to think about it, I realized that the reality is, and I know

every small business owner wants to think about their business as special and their baby and as original. And that's true. Like the difference between your business and the next one is you. I believe that's true. Like the difference between your business and the next one is you. I believe that. Absolutely. But in terms of like business principles and rules and systems, there are a lot of things that are the same, especially when we're specific to home service, which I've also been specific to service in general and really with an emphasis in home service because of my window cleaning experience. And when I started to take all of these commonalities and put them together, I realized I was onto something. And my dad is no longer, he no longer owns a restaurant. He's a teacher.

And my mom is also a teacher. She's a curriculum designer. So she teaches teachers how to teach more efficiently. I know she doesn't teach a lot. Sorry. But she helped me figure out how to take all these things I'd learned from all these small business owners over the past, you know, at that point, it was like 13, 14 years, and put them together into a curriculum. And then I could start teaching like, now me as one person,

instead of teaching one on one in my office, like helping one small business owner through their problem. Now I could teach 30. And then after we were teaching 30 at a time, we kind of scaled it and then it was 100. And then it was 200. And the idea was I could find principles that would apply in any home service business and they could have their own takeaway that they could implement right away to make a difference and make a financial impact for their business and their family. And so that's how Bookkeeping Academy started. And unfortunately, I know it's not sexy. I know it's not fun, but the root of it all is bookkeeping. The root of it all is data. And I don't particularly care if you hire me to do your bookkeeping or you do your own. My preference is usually that you start doing your own because you feel that spending, like you're

forced to look at that balance sheet that you're talking about. I want you to at least try and start doing your own so that you have an understanding and appreciation. But at the root of all why it's called bookkeeping academy is because it totally is dependent on knowing your numbers, knowing your finances. Yep. I mean, that's what I think the number one thing. And it's the least thing that I like, even though I've got a master's degree in business, which was accounting and financing and all the crap. And I actually like it, but I didn't like that I was studying annual reports of public traded companies.

And now, you know, the sad part is if I went back and did the program again or get another master's degree, which I've debated, I think I'll be way more engaged now that I understand how it applies to my life. If it wasn't applicable before, and now I'm making more investments, I'm well versed in the stock market. I check the Dow Jones 10 times a day. I'm like, I'm a different person than I was. And I kind of think before you go to school, you should go live a little bit and understand how this stuff applies to your life. Yeah. I mean, I think you're better qualified.

I don't have a master's degree. I don't have an MBA. And I've always thought, like, I wonder what would happen if I went back and did that. Like, oh, I'd probably be annoying. You know, like, I'd be like, no, but in real life, this is where we're at. Like, in the real world, this is what happens. Yeah. What I loved about your passion not only for

numbers but is how you're really good at sales and you're really good at sales systems and you're really good at marketing and i can tell when you speak like your eyes light up and you happen to also be good at math so it's kind of fun because we all have our things right like we all have our passions and as business owners we can build things around that. So you can build a garage door repair company around technology and be really good at that technology. Have really good data, really good systems. It's awesome. Yeah, it's all about having fun. And that's what it's all about.

So if someone wants to get a hold of you, Megan, what's the best couple ways to reach out? I put together a little website, likesaccounting.com forward slash Tommy. I put together some links for you guys on that website. And on the website, there's like a tax savings guide. So we're doing this during tax time. So six tax saving strategies for small businesses is there. I've got a 15 minute consult that I put together. So I'm happy for any listeners to take a quick review, for small businesses is there. I've got a 15 minute consult that I put together.

So I'm happy for any listeners to take a quick review, 15 minutes at your QuickBooks file or at your bookkeeping file or to talk about your pain points. There's a link to my calendar there. And I have a group, an accountability group that meets monthly. And we do one business lesson a month. And then we do just accountability check-ins

to make sure we're not getting behind on our numbers. And we're, you know, we have somebody that's making sure that you've got like a month. And then we do just accountability check-ins to make sure we're not getting behind on our numbers. And we're, you know, we have somebody that's making sure that you've got like a coach. I've had to be really careful about my one-on-one time, even though I've scaled, I scaled to a team of 10. I just,

I need to be careful about the one-on-one time. So this group coaching has been really fun and really great. And we geek out about numbers, business numbers. That's it. Yeah. So that's probably the best way. Life's accounting.com forward slash Tommy.

Cool. Well, that's going to be great. I always ask every person, what's the top three books that you'd recommend? Profit First is probably one of them. Yeah, it should be. For our work week, I freaking love that. We listened to that on a road trip in Iceland and it was amazing. One Minute Manager. I know it's an old one, but it's a good one, right? It's a good one. It applies every single day to my life, my husband's life. Yeah. Can I give you one more?

Yes, please. Finding your why. Is that the simon sinek yeah so i think his first one is start with why and then a second one is finding your why and i really feel like you have to be a purpose-driven business until you know your purpose it's just harder and that that really helped me kind of create like a framework for how i was going to operate and we run five businesses and each of them has their own why, right? They each have their own part that they contribute to our lives. So. I love it. Well, finally, you know, there's a lot, I mean, I feel like me and you could go for 10 hours on this stuff. It's just fun. You know, the thing is, is I give everything I know on this

podcast. Like every time I'm switching something or doing anything, I mention it. I don't care that my competitors listen and they know. It's like, look, we're elevating the whole industry and hopefully the whole home service space. And I'm not afraid to charge customers a good amount of money. I don't plan on being the cheapest. And I see people say, I got it done cheaper because I ordered it off Amazon. And I'm like, good.

You know, if that's your prerogative. Yeah, you do too. Like no judgment. You do what's best for you. And I agree. No secrets. Like we're all in this to help each other. I'm as transparent as I can possibly be.

Some people are like, doesn't your husband get annoyed that you're constantly bashing him? I'm like, no, because he's the guy. He is your typical small business owner, right? It's so stereotypical. He's probably worse at math than most people. And he still to this day doesn't use a computer. His entire business has been run on tablets and cell phones. But no secrets.

Like I'm totally transparent and I'm super passionate about helping other people succeed and doing it however they want to do it. And I think you are too, which is why I love talking with you. Well, you know, the best way to describe it as simple as I tell people, this is my claim to fame. I say this all the time, but there's so many diets out there. There's so many special George Foremans and these special slicers and dicers and juicers. And people are looking for this fountain of youth and how do I get in shape? And I'm like, what if I told you, work out half an hour of cardio, half an hour of weights

each day and be intense about it. Drink way more water, quit drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes so much and get a good night's sleep. And Hey, by the way, here's some supplements that I'd be taking. Just do that and eat properly. And you're going to be in the best shape of your life in 120 days. Do you know that nine and a half out of 10 will never do that? And when you tell them how to run a business, start measuring your numbers, start setting goals, start adjusting your numbers properly and running off of percentages instead of running off of what you think and let the numbers dictate the output. They don't do it. They don't do it.

And I'm saying it's proof that it works. But they say, you know what? It's the same people that say, well, I'm just unhappy because I'm getting fat. Well, when's the last time you worked out? When's the last time you drank a big glass of water? When's the last time you got a good night's sleep? You know what I mean? Yeah, well, and then with small business owners,

it's so often like I can't or so-and-so's doing this thing or sometimes I have a hard time working with small business owners who don't want to be transparent, who don't want to share with others. And I'm like, all you can control is being the best you. Like you can't worry about your competitors.

I have no energy to think about what other people around me are doing because I am so focused on doing the best I can with my team, with my community, with my family, right? Like that's what I can control. I can't control what these outside things are doing or how they're happening. And when the small business owners, like, I feel like you just gotta try, give it a shot, fail, just give it your all. I think. I agree. So I'll, I'll give you kind of this last few minutes to kind of close out and give the audience, maybe your last final thoughts. It can be about anything you want. Okay. Well, here's the thing. Tommy and I talked a lot, a lot, a lot about knowing your numbers and your data. And it's probably feeling a little overwhelming. Like I don't even

know where to start. And that's normal. That's like a really normal sensation. If you're a little behind, if you're a little disorganized, if you've had your head in the sand, all of those are normal feelings. And I want you to know that you can change it. You can drink the glass of water. You can go work out. You can do the advice that Tommy's telling you. And I'm here to help. Like, I've been building this online learning platform for two years for you. And it's there and teach you how to do your own bookkeeping in less than one hour a month. And I mean that for real. I've cut out all the fluff, all the crap, all the accounting jargon. We're not going to talk about journal entries and depreciation. I'm not going to scare you. I built it for you because you don't have that much time. I know you don't like it, but it's necessary and you can't avoid it forever. You know, and if it's not my class, if it's something else, if it's YouTube or whatever, but you need to start today. You need to choose a metric to start measuring. You need to start looking at your numbers. And I promise you, once you do, you will feel better. You won't feel worse. You will get breathing room. You will find certainty, even when things feel really uncertain because your numbers tell a story. And once you know the

story, even if it's not pretty, you can start fixing it. You can start changing it. So there's hope and I'd love to help. And I'm so grateful to Tommy that he's got an awesome brain and he's here to help too. So yeah, you're not alone and just start somewhere. That is great advice. Megan, you are an awesome person that I plan on hanging out with a lot in the future. So thank you for coming on today. And we're going to do this again soon because I think this felt like 15 minutes. Yeah, I could seriously do this all day, but I mean, I kind of knew that the first day I met you, I was like, no, that guy, we're going to be friends. We're going to hang out. So I'm looking

forward to it. Absolutely. Well, appreciate you being on. Yeah. Thank you, Tommy. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, why it's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person

coming on. All the pros I have on here, I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.