Editor’s Note: In the continual pursuit of business as usual in the aftermath of the recent pandemic, there have been myriad lessons learned. To see how some of the industry’s leading professionals handled the situation, we asked our Top 100 ProAdvisors to share some of their insights. Following is another in a series of our conversations with them. Here's Lauretta Finis, Quick Bizness Bookkeeping Solutions Aus:
What has/have been the most impactful change(s) you’ve made in your firm over the last 18 months?
Changes in the business have been made largely due to the changing ideals of business owners doing their own books, but not understanding the full concept of accounting/bookkeeping.
I am now taking care of business owners, where they need the support either ad hoc or on a regular basis. It also may be a client who understands their financials, and looks at their financials and they just don't look right, but they don’t know how to fix the issue.
How have these changes impacted your overall business?
Due to health reasons, I have had to take time out of the business, and this new business model allows me to do this. I will slowly move to a three-day week.
The services I provide are high-end consults and, of course, the service fee I charge is more than normal bookkeeping, so this will allow me the work/life balance I need to take care of my health.
What were the most challenging aspects of implementing these changes? How did you overcome them?
First up, I had to reduce my client list, as some of the clients needed a lot of handholding and did not meet my profit margin. Once this slowly happened, and I was able to find clients who fit my margin. I can take care of their business with one other staff member.
The main issue I had was my website. I needed help with website changes. Getting the website SEO working for the new services, I reached out to a few different professionals and finally found the right fit for me.
In our industry a lot of SEO people are great, but they don’t fully understand what it is we do, so with the company I found I have a mixture of both of us doing certain jobs. It is now coming to fruition.
Sometimes, we have to take a step back to take a step forward.
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