Episode #047 The Bookkeeping Project Part 11

Amy Hooke: Good morning. Thank you for joining me today. Guess what it is today? It's the bookkeeping project and we're up to month 11. It's the end of November. It's nearly Christmas. I have some exciting updates to share with you. Today we're going to be focusing right on the area of sales and marketing. And specifically, I'm going to talk about what I've been doing in the business to generate leads and also refining my sales process, which has really been quite interesting and also a bit challenging as well. So here's the update on what I've been doing with Off The Hook Bookkeeping.

Amy Hooke: So as you may or may not know, I work with my husband, so Will. He's been working with me since the beginning… No, not quite since the beginning of the business but since the beginning of starting Savvy anyway. He's been very much involved in the business since day one, since back in 2014 when I decided to start my own business for the first time. He has been around. He's heard all the ins and outs of the bookkeeping business. He's heard all of the ins and outs of running The Savvy Bookkeeper as well. And so he's just learned so much about our industry. He's spoken to heaps of bookkeepers on the phone. He's in the Facebook group posting helpful tips and things like that.

Amy Hooke: So basically, what's happened over all of this time is that I finally managed to brainwash him. So over all of these years of talking about all things bookkeeping and bookkeeping business and bookkeeping clients and anything you can think of that has bookkeeping on it, William has actually absorbed so much information from these conversations that we've had that he has now taken over completely our SEO. So he was traditionally doing the technical side of our website. So he managed our website and also all of our clients websites as well. And so he's been really getting into that. So he has much bigger capacity than I do for understanding the technical side of websites. Trust me, you don't want to go there.

Amy Hooke: I did actually do a helpful post about that a little while ago where I talked about understanding the technical side of websites. So if you want to read a not quite too serious article that keeps it kind of light-hearted and fun, you can learn a little bit about the technical side of websites and what all the jargon means. I also did a podcast episode on that as well. So I'll pop that in the link.

Amy Hooke: So over the last little while, I've been kind of trying to nudge William towards doing… At least getting to understand how the SEO works and to use this amazing platform that we use to manage all of our SEO, but he hadn't really shown an interest yet and sort of tended to stick more of the technical stuff. But then suddenly out of nowhere, I don't know how it happened. I think because we were in between staff members for a particular skillset and we just kind of needed help at that time. So I said to him… Oh, that's right. It was when our copywriter left. We sort of had a few gaps. The whole team had to absorb the copywriter role, which was no longer part of the business.

Amy Hooke: So what we do is we absorbed the copywriting roles across the team. One of them was the SEO keyword planning. So I said, “William, do you want to give this a go?” He's like, “Yeah, how do I do it?” So I'd already made some training videos. So I'd already sent the training videos to Meyer who's our client project coordinator. Then I sent it to William. So he just watched the videos and he just learned from my videos how to set up the SEO projects, how to research the keywords, and how to kind of check and monitor everything, research competitors and all sorts of things like that.

Amy Hooke: So that was really cool because he did those training videos and he was like, “Oh, wow. This is great.” So he started to actually really enjoy it. Now, it's quite funny, but I reckon he's actually better at that than me which is cool because I really love doing SEO. For me, it's a little bit like bookkeeping, but it's a bit more fun, a bit more dynamic in a sense. I'm not saying that bookkeeping is not fun and I don't love it. But one of the things that is really cool about it is that it is creative, and it's technical, and it's analytical, and it's competitive. So it's kind of ticking a lot of the boxes of things that I like. So I was really enjoying it but I just didn't have time. Obviously, running a little bookkeeping business and running a not-so-little other kind of business, I find myself a little bit busy to be able to really give the SEO the dedication that it needs.

Amy Hooke: So Will took over. Man did he take over. So what's happened in Off The Hook Bookkeeping is Will has been going through all of our existing blog posts, all of our existing landing pages. He's been optimising the pages. He's been optimising the blog posts. He's been writing new blog posts. One really cool thing is that he's writing the blog posts as himself. He's not writing them to publish them as though it's me writing them, which is also really great because it means that he can boast about how awesome his wife is at bookkeeping and convince people that they should work with me. So that's actually really cool as well. But what William has been doing is he puts together these really great blog posts. He does a bit of research obviously on different topics that are of interest to business owners when it comes to bookkeeping.

Amy Hooke: But also I'm starting to see how much information he's absorbed from me over all of these years just banging on about bookkeeping. So he's really become quite knowledgeable and he's written… I can't even count how many blog posts he's written. They haven't all been published yet. But what he then gets me to do is I go through and just add in any kind of technical things, or I just double-check what he's said just to make sure that it's accurate in terms of how bookkeeping works, or how the software works. I kind of throw a few little things in there. But honestly, I found I haven't even really been needing to change much of what he's doing. I'm absolutely amazed.

Amy Hooke: Take a breath Amy.

Amy Hooke: So basically, obviously, you can tell that I'm excited. The reason that I'm excited about this is because obviously, part of what he's been doing there is trialling out and improving his own skillset. So some of it has been trial and error. So he will try something and then he will check the reports and see what the results are within the next 24 hours. But the reality is when it comes to SEO, the superficial stats for SEO are what your rank is. So anyone can give you a list of keywords and say, “Hey, look at all these keywords that I've got you to rank for.” But not all keywords are created equal.

Amy Hooke: The other thing is the real number that you want to be looking at isn't actually your Google rank. It's how many leads you're getting, how many new prospects. How many people are coming through and getting proposals issued? How many of those people are becoming customers? How much income is that generating for you? So they are the real numbers like sales and new clients are the true statistic that you want to know from your website, from your SEO. So yeah, it's been really exciting to not only see William really take hold of something that he's now found a passion for, and realising that he's really good at it… Because I think that him ticking all those boxes is also important. I think he likes the competitiveness.

Amy Hooke: So William plays basketball on the weekend with a group of guys. So he really enjoys playing basketball. It is a social team that he's on, but he really works at his skill as well. So what he does is on his lunch break every day… Talk about lifestyle business. It's really funny. You always hear about dudes who say they go surfing on their lunch break. Well, William goes and plays basketball for an hour every lunch break. He goes down to the local basketball stadium which is really close to our house. He'll spend like an hour, hour and a half practising all the stuff that he learned the night before on YouTube videos about basketball. So he's been doing the same thing with the SEO. Obviously, he's found a little niche there for himself in what he enjoys to do.

Amy Hooke: But the coolest thing is the number of leads that we've received this month. So not even this month. There was a couple of things that he did in the last couple of weeks that made a huge difference. Now, I didn't realise we'd gotten all these leads because we've set up a new CRM. So I set up HubSpot. I think we finished the set up in about August, but it's not completely set up. Your CRM is always a work in process, especially when you're doing like email campaigns and setting up automations and things like that. But the crux of the CRM is set up. We used to be on ActiveCampaign but it wasn't really going to be sustainable because of how much the business is growing.

Amy Hooke: So we set up HubSpot. We embedded the new HubSpot forms on to our website so that the potential clients can come on to the website and fill out a form. If they revisit the website, then the form's kind of pre-populated. So it will only offer up questions that they haven't already answered to us before. So if they go back to the website, that it doesn't re-ask them for their phone number and their email address and all that kind of thing. It will just ask for any extra information that we need. So that's really, really quite cool. But there is a user element there that actually caused an issue in that when I set up the form and linked it to the automation, what I did was I set it up so the customer goes to our website, they fill out the form, and then it triggers an email based on the selection that they… I've got four options on my form.

Amy Hooke: So you can go on my bookkeeping website and check it out. So my bookkeeping website is offthehookbookkeeping.com.au. If you go to the contact page… Or there's a few pages with a form on it. But if you go to the contact page, you'll see there there's a form. They fill out that form. There's four questions that I ask on there. So those questions are… Well, they're not questions. Sorry. It says, “How can we help you?” Then the four options are, “I'd like someone to call me. I'd like to schedule a consult. I just want a quote, or I have some questions.” There's a box where it says “Enter your questions here,” if they want to actually ask a question.

Amy Hooke: I don't mind if you copy me. You can go on the contact page. You can copy this, the opt in form if you want to. So what happens is if it says, “I would like someone to call me,” then it sends them an email and says, “Thanks for requesting a callback. We'll call you within the next 24 hours.” I think it gives them some information that might help them in the meantime and also gives them an option to book in a consultation. Even though I never ask that on the form, it just gives them that extra option. Once they fill out the form, the page also redirects to the initial consult form so they can fill that out if they have time.

Amy Hooke: The second one is, “I'd like to schedule a consult.” So that one redirects them to the booking page. It also sends them an email with the booking link and a link to the initial consult form. If they say, “I just want a quote,” then it redirects them to the initial consult form. It basically says, “If you want a quote, you need to fill out this form.” It sends them an email saying, “If you want a quote, you need to fill out this form.” Then if it says, “I have some questions,” then obviously, they will receive an email that says, “Thank you for your question. Someone will be in touch with you within 24 hours.” You get the picture.

Amy Hooke: So it's all connected in that way, but the thing I forgot to connect was the bit that tells me that somebody filled out a form. So I didn't realise that we had gotten a lot of leads this month. So in the past two weeks, we got almost 10 leads, I think. No, seven in the past fortnight and 10 in total for the whole month. I was like, “Oh, no.” So I had to actually get in contact with all of these people and try… I mean, imagine you inquired up to a bookkeeper about getting this services and they didn't contact you back after they emailed you and said that they'd be back in contact with you for 24 hours.

Amy Hooke: Now, that said, they did receive my email and they didn't go ahead to booking the meeting or fill out the form but then I discovered that the meeting link actually was broken. So they wouldn't have able to book that. So there was a bit of a shamozzle going on there with the CRM, but that's all good. So thankfully… I haven't spoken to all of them yet, but I called a lot of them yesterday and apologised. So I sent them an email first actually, and I said, “I'm so sorry. I don't know how I didn't get notified about your form. But I found it now. I'd love to chat to you if you're still looking for a bookkeeper.”

Amy Hooke: I mean, one of the people that I spoke to, she said, “Oh, well, my husband said, ‘Well, obviously, if they didn't reply back, then they're not going to be very reliable.'” I said, “Well, I'm hoping that I can win you back.” Yeah. I had a couple of good conversations and a couple of conversations that I didn't really enjoy that much, to be honest. Yeah. So that was really cool. So I got to do a couple of quotes. I've got a few more calls to do. I've had to book in a few people who were a bit busy. So we had to actually schedule in a time. So that was really cool. So obviously, that's brand new. I don't have clients out of that just yet.

Amy Hooke: Yeah. I mean, what I would estimate based on my experience, most people don't become… When you're doing your marketing online, I think the timeline is potentially a bit or quite a bit longer. So for example, if someone comes to you and they say, “Oh, my friend referred me or my accountant referred me,” that person's probably… They're already in that real action stage where they're like, “I am ready to hire a bookkeeper.” They're going to hire you quickly because they have that recommendation. Whereas when you meet someone online from your website, you've got a bit of a trust-building exercise that has to happen. So I'm finding at the moment that it's taking on average… This is going to sound a bit full on. It's actually taking on average I reckon close to six weeks for the person to make the decision. So that's actually a lot of time.

Amy Hooke: So when you think about lead generation, that's something that you can factor into your plan in that just because you're getting leads from your website, it doesn't mean that they're going to be customers instantly. Every person is at a different stage. Some of the clients, you'll need to have multiple conversations with them because they'll go away. They'll think about it. They'll be busy. They'll forget. Then they'll think about it again. Then you call them and then they'll remember. Then they'll say, “Oh, that's right. I had these questions.” So you're sort of in a consultation process for that period of time.

Amy Hooke: Yeah. So that's where we're at with those. So I'm thinking… I mean, at the moment, I reckon… Yeah. I mean, my conversion rate is about 25%. So I would say out of those 10 clients, we should get two clients from that. Just kind of going off rule of thumb. My estimate is that they're going to come on board in the new year. But you never know. Sometimes people are just like, “I am beyond ready.” It just really depends. Sometimes when they see the quote, “Oh, I don't want to pay you to do the catch-up work.” So they go and try and fix it themselves.

Amy Hooke: Honestly, I think they usually end up paying for us to do it anyway. But if that's what they want to try and do, then that's completely fine. We respect that. So yes. So that's it. A nice big batch of surprise leads, which was quite fun, except for the bit that wasn't fun but I might not go into that now. It could be another episode but I really… I don't know. Well, it was interesting. I will need to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it from a bagging the client kind of attitude because obviously, I want to practise what I preach. I try and share with you guys about having empathy and compassion for the clients. But also, I guess being… able to kind of stand your ground without sounding like a psycho. Not that you ever sound like a psycho when you stand your ground but sometimes, I don't know, I feel like I sound like one. But if I ever listen to a recording of myself, I probably sound completely normal but I feel… Your emotions kind of flare up or someone hits a nerve, you kind of think… You get a bit defensive.

Amy Hooke: So yes. All right. So the leads have come through and now… Because I've got a nice big batch of leads in one go. So in the past, our website has always generated leads. So back when I created it in 2015 when I first started the bookkeeping business in my first year, I brought in about $100k in 12 months of annual recurring income from the website. So that was cool. Or actually, it was $11000… At the highest point of my income, which was at the end, my highest income was about $11000 a month. Those leads pretty much… There was a couple that came from the counter, but most of them came from the website.

Amy Hooke: So from there, I guess at that point in time, we're probably getting a lead like every other month, something like that. It just really depends. Sometimes it's a bit up and down. You might get one lead, and then one month, you might not get one. So it sort of goes up and down with the algorithms of Google. Then what happens is so over time, your site becomes more credible. So it's sort of a time thing. It's sort of an interaction with the website thing. When Google can say that people are landing on your site and they're not leaving straightaway, they know that your site's not dodgy. So Google's not a human, so they can't actually tell what your site is. They just kind of have to go off algorithms. So the algorithms look for patterns and things like that.

Amy Hooke: Once those patterns are confirmed, then Google can see, “Okay, this is a legitimate business. There are legitimate people coming to the site. They're not just hitting on the site, but they're also looking around and then reading stuff.” That is a process that takes time, but it also requires work. So there's a few different things that you can do to influence how that works. So as that improves, you will find… So for example, a brand new site, it will be difficult to generate leads. You're not going to put your site up and start getting leads the next day. That's just not going to happen unless you're… I mean, unless you're in an area that's highly not competitive.

Amy Hooke: Whereas if you're going for something more competitive like, obviously, we're working on keywords like bookkeeper Melbourne, and things like that. Yeah. So we've seen over time, an increase but a fluctuation of leads I'd say my second year. Second year of having the website, when I'd closed down the bookkeeping business. I did still get about… I'm guessing I had about 14 leads in that year, which I passed on to another bookkeeper of mine who's in the local area. Then from there, the site's just been kind of consistent. So just putting out, I would say, a lead. Yeah. Then it started to increase.

Amy Hooke: So as I did a bit more work on the site and the blog, I'd say we're looking at more like one lead per week, which is actually really good because if you're not wanting to… It might sound like a lot. But as I said, if one in four or less of those come on board, and then from date of contact, they take about six weeks to become a customer, then you've got a bit of time delay there. Also, not everyone's going to come on board. So if you've got 10 leads or 12 leads coming from your site every year, you should get like two or three, maybe four new clients in a year. So that's really good because… I mean, I'm finding at the moment the average size of the jobs that are coming through, there's sort of two sizes.

Amy Hooke: So there's kind of the one that's around the $1200 a month market, which is for half a day a week. Then there's the monthly clients. So the monthly clients, they're smaller. They're around the $300 a month. I guess that's probably more… They're sort of quarterly clients but we do the processing monthly. So they're the two ones that I'm finding are coming through on my site. Whereas the sites that we do for other bookkeepers I find like some of them will get much bigger jobs coming through, or maybe lots of tiny little ones and one-off jobs, which I haven't really gotten that many of those on mine. Yeah. I've had a few actually recently, but not heaps.

Amy Hooke: So it's going to be different for everyone depending on your branding, your target market, your area, and the different keywords that you're targeting and things like that. But that's what's happening at Off the Hook Bookkeeping at the moment. For me, the ideal client is that $1200 a month client that's half a day a week. That's a great client for me. The other one is actually an ideal client as well, to be honest, because it's fairly low maintenance. It's just recording the transactions after the fact and launching the bus. Whereas these weekly one is something where you can really build that deep relationship with the client and you can start to offer other services there. So that's pretty cool. So I'm pretty stoked about that.

Amy Hooke: Just really the quality of the leads. As I said, yeah, there was one conversation I had yesterday and I just thought… Actually, there was two that I felt that a little bit, one more than the other, but for two different reasons. So this is where I can start to talk to you about my sales process. I can actually explain to you now what actually happened with this client without going into a lot of detail. I felt that it was… You'll know this client. We've all had them. It only takes me half an hour, just click a few buttons, and it's done. So he was offended by the price of my quote. So that was his defensive response. I felt really defensive on the call. But I got off the call, and I reflected on it afterwards. I thought, “Well, do you know what I did? I cut my own corner.”

Amy Hooke: So my sales process looks like this. So the initial call comes in. So it's either an initial call, or an initial email, either way, initial contact. Then from there, after they've made the initial contact, what I want to do is book in an initial consult. So if they call me on the phone straightaway, I'll just say, “Do you have 15, 20 minutes?” I do the consult right on the spot. Otherwise, I schedule them in for a specific time. That's normally what I do. If they email, I call them and book in the time, or I call them and try and do it on the spot. So basically, you've got… The first stage is the initial consult. Sorry, initial contact. The next stage is the initial consult. I've got it set up like this in my CRM so I can see which stage people are at.

Amy Hooke: Once I've done the initial consult, the next step from there is the health check. So the health check gets done. I let them know during the consult, they have to give me access to the Xero file and then I do a health check. Then from there, the next step is health check completed. So it's time to prepare the quote. So I prepare the quote and I put the health check into the quote. Then I send the quote through to the client. Then I enter my follow-up process which is to call them back, book another time with them to chat about any questions that they have. Exchanging emails with them, answering questions, and that kind of thing. Then from there, the deal is either won, so they become a client. It's lost, rejected by us if they're not a good fit, and rejected by them if they don't find that we're a good fit for them.

Amy Hooke: Then the other stage I also have in there is called on hold. So this is someone who says, “I'm really keen to do this, but I have a few things to sort out first.” I'll let that sit in on hold for a couple of months kind of thing. Otherwise, I'll just mark it as lost. So that's basically the way that I've set up my sales process. I find that really helpful and having it in the CRM gives me a visual. I can drag and drop them across the columns and I can see exactly who's at which stage of the sales process or sales pipeline, whatever you want to call it.

Amy Hooke: So guess what I did? I didn't do my sales process in the order that I've designed it to be done in. The reason I've designed it in that way is because it works really well. The only problem is it's a little…. The way I've designed it is a little bit time consuming. So I've been thinking, “Oh, how am I going to get around this? Am I going to charge for my initial health checks? How will I work this out?” I'm sort of a bit conflicted about how to do this. So what I did was because… So this week, I found those secret 10 leads discovered, but in that particular week, I also received other leads through other methods. So I actually had a guy just call me from the website. I had a friend who's got a client that she doesn't want anymore because she's going to employment and a couple of other things.

Amy Hooke: Oh, that's right. Then I got one from Airtasker and then I go one from Upwork as well. So last week, I had a bunch of quotes and health checks to do as well. I got one of my team members to do the initial consult, which was cool. I wanted to test out that process and see if my process is good enough to get someone else who's not me, another bookkeeping expert, to actually do that initial consult. Probably need to iron out a couple of things there. There were a few things on the form that when they came back, I was like, “Oh, what did they mean by this?” Or an option was ticked where I thought, “Really? Did they tick that? It seems like in this situation, they should have ticked this.” So there's a few things that need to get refined in there, maybe a bit of training. But overall, I could easily possibly get someone to do the initial consult.

Amy Hooke: When I say possibly, the reason I'm saying possibly is because of this experience I've had with this particular client because I've skipped my process. So because I've had in my mind from last week, look, it took me 90 minutes per client. So that's 45 minutes to do the health check, give or take, and then 45 minutes through the quote, give or take. Sometimes the quote's quicker, can be 30 minutes. Sometimes the health check's a bit longer. But sort of rule of thumb, it's going to take you about 90 minutes altogether, especially if you're still mastering the process.

Amy Hooke: So I'll actually drop in a link because I did turn this into a training. So I actually took my… I've got this process that I use. I give this to my staff to train them on how to do health checks. I will actually share the link with you as well if you want to check out that training to learn how to do a health check and scope a job and prepare the proposal from there. So anyway, that's the process that I follow. Takes about 90 minutes, just the same as the training that I did took 90 minutes. From there, obviously, it was taking me on average 90 minutes to do the quotes, health checks, and proposal for these clients. So it got me thinking about what I said before, should I be charging for this time? I started to think, “Oh, I don't want to spend 90 minutes doing all these proposals.”

Amy Hooke: So I was looking for a shortcut. So what I did was I took a shortcut. Guess what I did? I decided to skip the initial consult. Now, I've already sort of had an opportunity to do this because what I'm doing is I'm sending the initial consult to the clients. Thankfully, not many people actually fill it out. It tends to happen on the call. But I've been telling you guys, I even said this in the bookkeeping project videos that I did. Don't send them the form. Actually call them and fill the form out on the phone together.

Amy Hooke: I didn't do that with this person. I called him. This is what I did. I called him and I said, “Hey, just calling to chat about your bookkeeping.” He said, “I am just a bit busy right now. Can we speak at three o'clock?” So I said, “Yeah, that'd be great. Can you please fill out this form before we meet?” Big mistake. So I got on the phone to the guy. So what I did was I looked at the form, got the answers, put the quote together. Now, I'm not saying don't do a quote before you've done the health check. I often do draught up the quote before doing a health check. If they haven't given me access to their Xero file, I will put in the quote that is pending the Xero health check. That will give them an idea of what the quote is going to be. But in that instance, I've done the consult with them on the phone already. I've already started to build that rapport with them.

Amy Hooke: Well, I skipped that process. So all I had was a guy. So I put myself in his shoes last night and I thought, “Yeah.” Because I felt he was really rude to me. Yeah. A bit painful. I was like, “Okay. Imagine I'm him.” So imagine you're this client. So I go to a website. I'm looking for a bookkeeper. I fill out a form saying I would like someone to call me. A week later, they haven't gotten back to me. So I go back to the website… Because he filled out the form twice. I resubmit the form saying, “I need to speak to someone about the bookkeeping.” So there you go, strike one. The guy hasn't been responded to quickly. He's received an email saying he would be and he hasn't been responded to. Okay?

Amy Hooke: So put yourself in this guy's shoes. Contacts a bookkeeper. She doesn't reply to him. Okay. So then from there, he's going about his day and he's in the middle of something. That bookkeeper calls and says, “Hey, do you have time to do this initial consult?” So he's like, “Oh, I'm actually busy right now. Can we do it at three o'clock?” Okay, cool. I call back, actually mixed up the time. He was in Brisbane and I'm in Melbourne. So I said, “You're an hour behind me. So if you could call at three o'clock your time, that'd be great because three o'clock my time, I'm going to a meeting.”

Amy Hooke: Well, he didn't. He called me at two o'clock his time, which was three o'clock my time. So I missed him. Okay? So picture this. He's now tried to call at the time that he thought he was meant to call and there's no answer. Then an hour and a bit later when I'm waiting for him to call me at four o'clock, didn't hear anything. So 15 minutes later, I'm like, “Oh, maybe he's thinking I'm going to call him because I thought he was calling me.” He had but I didn't know because I'd been in a meeting and my staff took the call. Yeah. So there you go.

Amy Hooke: Okay. So this guy has called at the time he thinks is right. No answer. An hour and 15 minutes later, he gets a call back from the bookkeeper. This is what I said to him… I'm kicking myself. Why did I say this? I said to him, “I've drafted up the quote for you. I need to do a health check to confirm the quote, but what I was thinking of doing is before I do the health check, I thought I'd just let you know what the price is so that you can decide whether that's what you're expecting. Then if you're okay with that, I'll go on and do the health check. Then that way, I don't have to do the health check unless we're in your budget.”

Amy Hooke: He said, “Okay, great. How much is it?” I said, “$595 per month.” He said, “Right.” He said, “Wow, that's really expensive.” No, he said, “Wow, that is a lot more than what I was expecting.” I was like… So I didn't realise or even think at the time that I had skipped something in my sales process. I just thought I was doing my normal process. I just wasn't really paying attention. So there you go. So he was like, “Oh, wow.” So obviously, when someone says that, you're just like, “Ah, I hate that. I seriously hate it when someone says that it's expensive.”

Amy Hooke: He said, “Why is it so much?” I said, “Well, it's not really that much, but I've just gone through and I've picked the items off your initial consult that you said that you wanted. So what we can do is if you want to have a look at the quote, you can just let me know if there's anything on there… Because I may have included something that you don't want. Or maybe there's something that you need that I haven't included. So you need to have a look at the quote and then we can review it together.” He said, “So.”

Amy Hooke: Then he started to go into like a lot of detail. He started asking me like, “What's your hourly rate? Are you going to give me the…” No. He said, “What have you included in the quote?” Then everything that I told him, he asked a lot of questions like, “What's the hourly rate behind that? Are you going to give me a breakdown? Why is that included? Why do you charge this much for this?” He really picked it apart. I was just like, “Oh my God.” I wasn't prepared for it. I just wasn't mentally prepared for it. I was just sort of thinking… I was in my little la di dah land of… When I call… It's not really la di dah land, but it sort of is.

Amy Hooke: When I call bookkeepers to talk to them about my services from Savvy, everyone is happy to speak to me. I've never had… I'm sure you guys maybe think, “Gee, Amy, your services are way too expensive,” but you guys would never say that to my face so I'm kind of used to not being pulled up on that kind of thing. And so I was like, oh my gosh. And I said to him, “Well actually, you know, the hourly rates that I use to create the packages are actually under the industry average, which is $65 an hour for bookkeeping.” Anyway, he wasn't happy. He was actually offended.

Amy Hooke: He sort of did the whole, “I just do this and I don't understand why it's that much because I just do this and click this button and it shouldn't really take that long.” Oh my gosh. And so I think from there, I kind of rambled a little bit because I sort of got… It threw me off and so I got a bit nervous, but I talked about… That's right. Because one of the comments that he said was, “Well actually, I haven't done my due diligence yet and I haven't compared to what other people are charging,” and I was like oh my gosh. I really don't like it when people say that. It just makes you feel like a commodity.

Amy Hooke: I know that I said in other episodes that it is a smart business owner who looks for the best price, but there's a way to go about it. You don't have to put it right in the first person's face. You know what I mean? I understand where he was coming from now because I reflected on it and I was like, okay if I was in his position. And so that's when I identified… I woke up this morning. I was like, “Oh my gosh. I've got it. I know why it happened.” Because I skipped my sales process.

Amy Hooke: Look, I'm not saying it definitely would have been different. Oh that's right. I'll tell you this in a second. The reason I'm saying it would have been different is that doing the initial consult on the phone, I get to build rapport with him for 20 minutes. So he's hearing my voice, I'm getting to chat to him, he's learning little bits and pieces about what I offer, my expertise, personality, all that sort of stuff. And so he's able to build a connection with me or not. And so from there, then I… Once I've done that, it's easier for me to ask for access to the data file because I've built some trust with him. Whereas if I call someone out of the blue, and I'm like, “Hey, give me adviser access to you Xero file,” well, you know they might think, “I don't even know who you are. I'm not going to give you access to my Xero files.” So obviously, going about it that way kind of stuffed me up.

Amy Hooke: The second stuff up was by doing it that way and putting the quote together and then telling him the price because I was trying to save myself time on the health check process, I had no defence when he told me that my package was way too expensive. And it was really funny. Because what we did is I told him, “I shouldn't have done this.” I actually went through… I don't normally show the clients the breakdown unless they ask for it. I'm not against doing it, but I kind of… I don't want them sitting there overthinking and going, “Oh they're charging this much an hour and this is this and this is this.” But that's he did. He picked it apart.

Amy Hooke: And so what we did is we removed it. I said, “Well what if you still do your own payroll?” He's like, “Oh yeah it only takes like five seconds to do it.” I was like okay. And so the thing that he said he wanted out of all of this was his time back. So I was like, okay. I said, “Well if you did your own payroll and if you didn't need custom reports from us, then your price would be more like $425 a month.” And he's like, “Oh that's still really expensive and yeah.”

Amy Hooke: So the problem was, once we reached that point in the discussion, I had no comeback for anything because guess what? I haven't done the health check. So this is what he said to me. So on his form, he said that he wanted his time back. That was his main goal of getting a bookkeeper. He said, “How many hours have you based this quote on? How many hours have you included?” And I said, “Four hours per month.” And he was like, right okay. He didn't like that. That it was going to take so long.

Amy Hooke: I went further into the discussion. I did have a bit of courage to probe him about a couple of things and I said, “How much time do you spend on bookkeeping at the moment?” Anyway, as we started to talk through that, he spends four hours a week doing his bookkeeping. So I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, I really need to do the health check because he's telling me it's just this quick little thing. And he's told me on the form it's only X amount of transactions.” Had I done the health check, I would have been able to see really what was going on in the file. The other thing was I quoted him for four hours a month and he was saying that it's taking him four hours a week. And so he was saying that it's too expensive and that I'm going to be spending too long.

Amy Hooke: And I'm like, “Right. So you want me to do in under four hours in a month what you normally spend four hours a week doing, 16 hours a month. And so I'm quoting you $595 a month to do that.” And then I said to him, “What's your hourly rate?” He said, “Oh well I don't have an hourly rate.” And I was like oh my gosh. Everybody has an hourly rate. You can work out your hourly rate by taking the profit and dividing it by how many hours you work if you don't pay yourself a salary. Anyway, he said, “Well I guess if I had an hourly rate, it'd be the average tradesman rate.” I said, “What's that?” And he said, “$80 an hour.”

Amy Hooke: And so I didn't send this, but after I got off the call, I wanted to send him an email and say, “Did you know that your bookkeeping is costing you $1300 a month?” You know what I mean? And so, yeah. I thought all of this through and I'm like, oh my gosh, because I didn't do the health check… Had I done the health check, I could have actually had something to back up the fact that he might not necessarily be doing a good job. He has no idea whether he's doing a good job or not, because when I said, “Oh you spend four hours a week doing it? And I've just quoted you for four hours a month and you're saying that's a lot.”

Amy Hooke: He said, “Oh, well…” and I said, “Well what are you…” He said, “Well it's not all, you know bookkeeping.” And I was like, “Okay. Well what do you do during those four hours?” And he said, “Oh, you know, I just kind of get on the computer and I look around at different reports and look at different numbers. And you know pay some bills.” He said, “But the bookkeeping bit, the reconciling bit, that's so easy. All you do is kind of click a few buttons and then it's done. I don't understand why you want to charge me four hours a month for that.”

Amy Hooke: And I said, “Well how long do you spend doing that?” And he said, “It takes me like 30 minutes to do it each week.” And I said, “Okay. So 30 minutes… You're saying it takes you two hours a month. And so I guess what you don't realise is that you've got all the paperwork there in your office or maybe in your head. Whereas you're wanting to outsource it to me as a bookkeeper and I need to make sure that you've got all the paperwork. So you might know that you have the paperwork, but if you ever get audited, how are you going to easily and quickly retrieve that paperwork? So if you're going to be asking me to do your bookkeeping, I need to check your tax invoices to see… to make sure that you've got those tax invoices and I need to make sure that they're filed in order.”

Amy Hooke: And that was really all that I could say to him because unfortunately, I hadn't done the health check, so I didn't have any idea about the quality of his work. I was kicking myself. I was like, “Oh Amy!” Anyway, it might still be redeemable. But honestly… I think even if I'd ticked all the boxes with this client, I have the feeling… If someone's willing to speak to somebody like that, I feel kind of like the word I've got about that is contempt. So sort of like talking… down to me or sort of being quite dismissive of you know, what a bookkeeper can actually do.

Amy Hooke: But then I've been flicking back and forth between well it is our job to educate the clients and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, I sort of got the feeling that regardless, even if I'd done the sales process perfectly, he probably would have acted the same way. But that's okay. I just said to him, “Well, that's great. You should go out there and do some due diligence. Have a look at what's out there. I think our prices are very affordable. And also, our team is highly skilled. So when you're looking for a bookkeeper, make sure that they're a registered BAS agent because there's a lot of things that only a BAS agent is allowed to do. I'll send you some information.” I haven't sent him anything yet, but I'll send him… There's a link on the Tax Practitioner's Board which has got a checklist of what a BAS agent can do and what a bookkeeper who's not a BAS agent can do.

Amy Hooke: So there you go. I'm going to send that as a follow up. But lesson learned. Because even for my own peace of mind, I would love to be able to get in that guy's data file now and have a look at what he's doing. Because I think… I'm not saying that business owners can't do a good job of their bookkeeping, but you know… I've seen it. Over and over and over again. Eight or nine out of ten new client jobs is often has something level of catch-up work or fix-up work to be done. It's very rare. I would say one or two in ten where you see a nice, neat set of accounts. So yeah, I really doubt it. And also, in the quote… I wasn't just doing bank reconciliations. He wanted me to follow up his debtors and provide custom reports and stuff like that. So I was just like, “Oh okay. This guy doesn't have any idea. But I guess it's my job to educate him.”

Amy Hooke: So guess what I did from this morning? I woke up nice and early at 4:40 am with a little bit of inspiration to… wake up because I'll be honest with you, this guy was bobbling around in my head. When I woke up in the morning, I was thinking about it. I was ticked off last night. I was really annoyed and I kept thinking about… It's like his words were going over and over in my head and same when I woke up this morning, it was going round and round in my head.

Amy Hooke: So I just kind of listened to the rubbish go around in my head for a while until I got quite frustrated, and then I actually cried. Which is something that I try and remember to do if something's frustrating me like this. I don't know why for some reason I forget to do it. But I just thought… I was just like, “Oh my gosh God. Please help me. I don't know why this man's voice is going around in my head and I don't know why it's affecting me so much.” It really had a grip on me. And I thought what do I actually do about this? How can I get this guy's voice out of my head and also can you help me to understand why it's affected me so much?

Amy Hooke: And so, I just sort of lept out of bed. I thought, “Well I'm not going to lie here and keep thinking about it.” Often I'll do that. I'll lie there for like two hours and I'll be like, “I should have just got up.” So I got up. I went into my office with a cup of tea. I grabbed out my Bible because I guess, usually when I pray, I hope that God will say something back and this verse actually popped into my head.

Amy Hooke: It's Psalm 123. I love it. Psalm 1-2-3, nice and easy to remember. Now I know we're not a religious podcast here, but I'm going to read it to you because this is really inspiring to me. This is what it says. Psalm 123. So it's called Our eyes look to the Lord our God. So it says, “To You I lift up my eyes, oh You who are enthroned in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their master and the eyes of the maidservant to the hand of the mistress. So our eyes look to the Lord our God, until He has mercy upon us.” I was like, “Oh my gosh, mercy. Okay what's that?”

Amy Hooke: “Have mercy upon us, Lord. Have mercy upon us for we have had more than enough of…” Wait for it. “Contempt. Our could has had more than enough of the scorn of those who are ease and of the contempt of the proud.” I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is it.” And so I sat in my office and I actually just read it out loud. I just read it out loud and as I read those last two verses, “Have mercy upon us oh Lord. Have mercy upon us for we have had more than enough of contempt.” So basically what it's saying… Well what I think it's saying is… It was me asking, just saying, “God, can You please help me? Because of contempt and the way that it's affecting me and the way that I feel that I've been exposed to a lot of it.”

Amy Hooke: And then it says, “Our soul has had more than enough.” And so what has it had more than enough of? Well, “the scorn of those who are at ease and the contempt of the proud.” And I was like, okay, well your soul is made up of your mind and your heart and your spirit… I think. I don't know. I'm not really an expert on this stuff. But I think your soul incorporates your mind and your heart. So that's like your thinking and your emotions. So if I wake up in the morning and my thinking my emotions are totally hanging onto this man's words which were really hurting me, I was thinking what was it that was hurting me? It's the contempt of the proud.

Amy Hooke: And I was like, “That is it. I've hit the nail on the head.” I'll tell you what contempt means. And you can tell me whether you think it's relevant. This is what the dictionary says. “The feeling that a person or thing is worthless or beneath consideration. Disregard for something that should be considered.” I think they're the two relevant ones. The other words for it would be, “Scorn, disdain, disrespect, deprecation.” Yeah. So I definitely feel like some of that kind of really fits in there with what I've experienced and why that kind of offended me.

Amy Hooke: And so obviously, I finished talking about the sales process there, but I'm really just want to really briefly touch on how the conversations went with the clients. Obviously if you need to go, you can jump off now. I got to the key points. But what I'm going to talk about now is just quickly the contempt that I experienced in that call and then I'll quickly talk to you about another call from a client that… yeah. I feel like… It troubled me, the experience that this person had had with a bookkeeping practise inside their accounting firm.

Amy Hooke: And I won't go on and on about it, I promise. But if you do need to go now, feel free to go please. Jump on the podcast, stop right now. I know you've got it in your hand. You're still listening to this right now. So click on there and give me five stars and leave me a review. That would be rad. Yeah.

Amy Hooke: So Wikipedia says that, “Contempt is a pattern of attitudes and behaviour, often toward an individual or group, but sometimes towards an ideology, which has the characteristics of disgust and anger.” Well, yes. So I really felt when I spoke to this person that he was offended by what I said about the price. He was disgusted about it. He picked everything apart with disdain, and I guess this is the reason why I think that even if I'd done it perfectly, I feel like this client is not a good fit for my business. So that was good. That was a nice step forward. But realising that that's what it is. I thought, “Yeah, this is what bookkeepers go through. This is one of the things, the major hurdles, that we need to overcome is the contempt of the proud.”

Amy Hooke: So what is the proud? Well it means people who are prideful? And what is prideful? Well, prideful people are unteachable because they think they know everything. So a person who's prideful, they think they know everything. They think they're better than you. They think that they, you know… I guess sort of like an arrogance you could say. But how's this right? Obviously, you can always go to the dictionary if you want to define a word, but when you're reading the Bible, there's this thing called Strong's Concordance where… So the one that I've got is actually on my iPad.

Amy Hooke: So when I'm reading a Scripture, I can click on the word… So all the different words will… It'll be a slightly different colour if it's a link. And I can click on it and it will actually bring up… So the Scripture will bring up… That word will come up. And it's called the Strong's Dictionary. So Strong was the person who made it, obviously. It's a concordance is a dictionary of the original underlying paper or great words of the Bible or Aramaic. Basically, here. This is what the word contempt means in the Strong's Concordance.

Amy Hooke: I love the fact that I can look up today's definition on the website. But what I can do here is I can click on the word and see what did they actually mean? What did that word mean back then when the Scripture was written before it was translated into English. So the word contempt actually means, “Disrespect, despised or shamed,” and it is, “contempt, springing from evil, springing from prosperity or springing from judgement .” And I was like, “Oh that's so cool.” So there are the different instances where someone might show contempt for somebody else.

Amy Hooke: It's either that they're doing something evil that they don't want to be found out for. It could be that they're prosperous, so they might be rich and they see the person as beneath them. So for example… I'm not saying that all rich people are like that, but somebody who is very wealthy may be protected from the real life of everyday people or even poor people and to look on those people with contempt. And then the third one is about springing from judgement . So obviously, judgement is when somebody makes kind of a black and white call about something. They've kind of got this fixed view of what they think that something is. And if someone disagrees with them, that will result in contempt.

Amy Hooke: And I reckon this is so applicable because evil… When contempt springs from evil… Now obviously, we're probably not used to talking about the word evil, especially when it comes to bookkeeping, but when you've got someone who is for example, purposefully incorrectly paying their staff. That person is actually… Whether you want to call it… Whatever you want to call it. They're potentially doing something evil. I guess it depends on the motivation. They may be ignorant of it, but you'll find out if what they're doing is evil or ignorance.

Amy Hooke: So what will happen is when you tell them, “Okay, this is actually what the law says,” you'll know because if they're doing something evil, they will heap contempt on you. They will say… And their contempt will be, “Well my accountant said I could do it this way.” Or, “That's what everybody in the industry does. Oh well that's what I've always been doing.” They'll give this defensiveness because they're trying to protect the fact that they have no intention of wanting to change. Whereas if the person was doing it out of ignorance and you told them, “This is what the law says,” they would say, “Oh really? Oh okay. I had no idea. How can we fix this?” So you can see the difference in the two.

Amy Hooke: Springing from prosperity, I guess… I don't know. Maybe we experience this in our industry. Obviously, we deal with people at different levels. I think, you know, on some level we are professionals and so business owners, whether they're wealthy or not wealthy, they will see us as… They might feel contempt for us seeing us as sort of like underlings for them. But it can work in the other way as well. If contempt springs from prosperity, you could probably say it works the other way around. So for example, you could have people who are poor or not wealthy, and they might show contempt for wealthy people. An example of that might be, “Well all rich people are greedy,” for example. You're showing contempt for… you're disgusted by rich people.

Amy Hooke: So that's just an example there. You could have somebody… a client who doesn't have very much money and they show contempt for you because they believe that you're somehow disgusting for charging a price that they can't afford. So there's an example there. And then the other one springing from judgement , well, you know. That comes down to… Let's say a person has decided that bookkeeping is just easy, clicking a few buttons. Then from there is going to arise a judgement so when you say, “Well this is the price,” they're going to then judge that. And then, you know, they may or may not listen to you if you try and explain what's actually involved and what's required. And you'll be able to discern which side of the fence that it falls on. If it's judgement , you'll know if it's judgement because they will not be willing to change what they believe. To listen to what you have to say. They'll find any reason to make you wrong in the situation.

Amy Hooke: Anyway, hopefully that's been helpful. Because so even though I kind of… Well, in a way… I don't know if I went off track. I guess you'll be the judge of that. But I feel that this is really relevant to me because… I'll be honest with you. Yesterday, after that phone call with this guy, I actually found myself thinking, “I don't know if I want a bookkeeping business.” I want to stay in my comfort zone because I really love working with bookkeepers because they don't subject me to this kind of crap. Even if they have those opinions about me internally, they don't kind of lay it on me sort of thing.

Amy Hooke: I've had a small handful off bookkeepers do that, but nowhere near as many as the business owners. I said to my husband, “I don't want a bookkeeping business anymore. I don't want to go through this.” I just remembered… I said to him, “I don't want to deal with business owners. I just like dealing with bookkeepers. They're so much nicer and easier to work with.” And he said, “Amy.” He realises that I really struggled the first time around running my business and I've grown so much as a business owner since running Savvy and then going back into the bookkeeping business. I'm applying and learning from all of my mistakes, which has just been… It's been really great overall.

Amy Hooke: William just pointed out to me. He said, “You don't want to lose touch. What you're experiencing is what bookkeepers experience and although it's painful and uncomfortable, and sometimes not very nice, the reality is that being involved in that helps you to relate to your peers. You don't want to find yourself in five or ten years that you've become irrelevant. If you're going to be a leader, you have to be in amongst it in a way.” I'm not saying that you can't help bookkeepers if you're not still a bookkeeper, but I think there's definitely a level of depth that has come to how I've been able to help my clients through running the bookkeeping business.

Amy Hooke: And I can tell you what one of them is! I'm so excited. So after I read that Scripture this morning, do you know what? I thought, “Oh my gosh. Am I going to have to sit here and pray for the next hour or so?” And I didn't. I read it out and as soon as I read it out, I just felt the weight lift from my spirit and the words of this man kind of alleviated from me and what was there in its place was an understanding for him and his situation. So regardless of whether there's contempt there or judgement or whatever is going on for him. Regardless of that, I suddenly was able to zoom out and see from his perspective. And the other cool thing that I saw is like instantly, all of the content from my email series just flooded down from heaven into my mind and I have my email sequence campaign of what I'm going to actually be delivering to people once they join my database now.

Amy Hooke: So before, I was like… I was really struggling to be honest. I was like, “Okay. Lead generation is really my thing. I have no problem with getting leads. Converting the leads into clients, yep. I can do it really quite well.” But one of the things I was thinking is, “How can I improve that? And also, what should I email people about?” I was like, “What do business owners want to hear? They don't really want to hear that much about bookkeeping.” Not the kind of stuff that we talk to each other about as bookkeeping. So I was like… anyway. This whole email sequence literally downloaded into my mind after I read that Scripture.

Amy Hooke: Just downloaded into my mind and I was like, “Yes. Put that in Dropbox.” So basically, I drafted that up this morning. And I'm going to share it with you. Not yet though. I've just got to get it ready and also, I'd like to test it on my audience first so that I make sure that it's good. And that I make sure it's actually working and helping… I'll be able to measure it. Let's say if you give me a couple of months, to finish it and roll it out and test it out on my clients, then I'm actually going to share it with you guys. And you have to pay for it. I'm not giving it to you for free because this… Yeah. This is good. I think that… Yeah. Look, I'll give you some samples for free and I'll give you a bit of an outline if you want to put your own together. But I think, yeah. I finally realise. I'm like, okay yes. I actually got it and I know how. It's basically about education. And you're going to hear me talk about this next week.

Amy Hooke: Next week, I'm interviewing Lielette Calleja. Sorry, oh my gosh. Lielette Calleja. I pronounced her name incorrectly. So next week, I'm interviewing Lielette Calleja from All That Counts. She's a Sydney bookkeeper and she's a really cool lady. We actually talk about educating clients. More from the perspective of the kind of… I don't know if I want to say battle. But sort of the tension that goes on between accountants and bookkeepers. So you'll be able to hear about that next week on Friday. I'll be talking about that. So I actually recorded that with her this week and it'll be going live next week because this week was The Bookkeeping Project. So I needed to get this recording out first. So yeah, there you go.

Amy Hooke: Now I was going to tell you about this other client, but basically… I won't go into it now to be honest. I think… I guess the takeaway from that is that just really learning to understand clients that are a good fit and following the process. I sort of semi didn't do the process properly with her as well. And also, I noticed during the process with two of these, these two people, that I did have that gut feeling and yeah. So I guess for me, learning how to recognise that and to trust myself in that. And to be able to go, “Okay, yeah, I don't think this client's in the right place at the moment. But they're in my database now, so they're going to get an education campaign from me.” Which is really exciting.

Amy Hooke: So that's what I'm going to work on right now. I'm going to get off this episode, and I'm going to be finishing that off. And then once I've given it a bit of a test run, I will share it with you and if you want to… I guess you can download a sample of it and if you'd like to actually pay me some money for it, I think that would be great. Because yeah, I don't know. It's actually quite funny. But you would be surprised…

Amy Hooke: I guess it doesn't always get said to me, but there is a little bit of a sentiment out there in the industry that people who help bookkeepers shouldn't charge for their services. That they should do it for free. As if they're an association or something like that. So I'm not an association. I'm a highly skilled bookkeeper who's been bookkeeping for over 20 years. Technically close to 25 years if you count the fact that I used to work for my dad as a teenager in his business on school holidays doing bank recs and calling debtors and all that sort of stuff. So I guess technically I do have 25 years experience.

Amy Hooke: I've got a truckload of experience from the last five years in the two businesses that I've run. I've run an unsuccessful business in some senses and I've run successful businesses. So I've just learned a lot from that. And so I guess the things that I developed… I give a lot of stuff away to you guys for free. But I think what I provide is really valuable and it comes from real life experience and trying things out. So I reckon this is gold. But you know, obviously, I like to not just go off a gut feeling. I like to back it up with some statistics and to be able to show you the numbers and then to be able to offer you that. Exchange value for value. If I can help you to increase the number of clients that come onboard for you, then I'll do that.

Amy Hooke: Now the other very exciting thing… I know I mentioned SEO at the start. Next month… Oh no. Not next month. Next month's December. Oh gosh. December. Exciting. Not next month, but the month after in January. I think around the 17th. I don't know. Anyway. Around that time, I will be interviewing the very lady who I can give most of the credit for to who taught me everything I know about SEO, the lovely Kate Toon. She's going to be joining me on the podcast. She's going to be talking to me about SEO and copywriting, which is an absolute passion of hers. So yeah.

Amy Hooke: That's really really exciting. To be able to kind of go full circle and come back to a very awesome business woman, highly skilled technician as well who has turned her technical skill into a great business and to be able to come back. I remember my first day learning about SEO and she was one of the ones who sparked it. The other one was James Gatward, who I interviewed on a different podcast episode. He was actually the first person I did SEO with. I did a little mini day course with him and that's what sparked my, “Oh wow. Yeah. I really want to learn about this.” And so then I'd been thinking about doing Kate's course. And so I was like, okay. I did her programme and it was yeah. It was really great. So I contacted her and said, “Do you want to come on my podcast?” And so she's booked in for January. So definitely look forward to that. Make sure that you don't miss it because she is an absolute legend. Yeah. So anyway, that's exciting.

Amy Hooke: So obviously, we're getting close to the end of the year. We're also getting close to the last episode of the The Bookkeeping Project. So guess what? Next month might be the last ever episode of The Bookkeeping Project. Is that sad? Do you feel sad? I… I sort of do. And I sort of… don't. I don't know. I don't know. It's been really fun sharing with you about what I'm doing in my business. I reckon I'll probably keep doing it. But just maybe not officially as The Bookkeeping Project. But maybe I will.

Amy Hooke: You know, you should let me know. My email address is . If you want me to keep going with The Bookkeeping Project, if you like hearing the really inside, nitty-gritty details about how I'm doing business and what I'm doing at Off The Hook and learning about all of that, please let me know. If you don't let me know, I'll probably stop doing it because I might think that you're not interested or maybe I'll keep doing it because I'm sometimes a little bit oblivious to what people want. So if you guys tell me what you want, it'll be a lot better for you. Let's just put it that way.

Amy Hooke: If you don't like listening to me rambling, then you got to tell me what you want. Okay? All right, awesome. Anyway, I thank you so much for you time and your attention. And if you made it all the way through to the end of the episode, you are an absolute legend. You have the concentration and focus skills of a champion that it takes to be a great and dedicated bookkeeper. But anyway, I'll catch up with you next Friday when you join me, myself and the lovely Lielette Calleja to talk about how to get the most value out of the relationship between accountants and bookkeepers. I'll see you then.

Amy Hooke: Bye bye. Have a great weekend.