An Abundance Mindset with Michelle Weinstein

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Alicia Katz Pollock: Hey, everybody, this is Alicia Pollock from royalties.com. And in this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, we're going to do something that's not exactly QuickBooks today. Um, I have been really paying attention to a lot of stuff that's happening in our economy. And there's some big underlying shifts in the world and in our industry. [00:00:30] And it's kind of like one of those, don't let the turkeys get you down kind of moments. And so I was thinking about scarcity versus abundance and how I really try and come into the world with, uh, with positivity. And so I thought to myself, well, how can we frame this in a, in an episode? And I thought about Michelle Weinstein from the Abundant accountant and I'm like, mm, maybe having her on as a guest would be a perfect opportunity. So Michelle, [00:01:00] welcome to the show.

Michelle Weinstein: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here. And I love talking about scarcity versus abundance, because I think in this profession with accounting, tax, bookkeeping, fractional CFO, firm owners, it's it's a struggle for many because many firm owners are people pleasers and you want to help everyone. And then you find yourself, you know, discounting, helping people, doing free work and all these other things that really take away from the abundance [00:01:30] that you want in your firm.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So for people who aren't familiar with you, what are the things people should know about you and your company before we get into the conversation?

Michelle Weinstein: Um, well, my name is Michelle Weinstein. I am a seasoned entrepreneur. I call myself a sales strategist and the founder of the Abundant Accountant, which I founded in 2018. And what I do is I help tax accounting, fractional CFO, and bookkeeping firm owners learn how to own their [00:02:00] value and confidently sell high value services without the pressure and the burnout that a lot of folks have when it comes to trying to sell their services. And to date, my clients have increased their firm revenue by over $38 million in additional revenue in their firms from when they met me, all without working more hours, without chasing more clients and doing anything they didn't really want to do, and having that life of abundance and finally going on vacations that [00:02:30] they only wish they could have done in the past.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, that definitely rings true for me in a big way. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. So, you know, as, as I said, I think there's a lot about profitability that isn't necessarily in numbers and routines that a lot of it is internal, like your own mindset. Um, I think about the laws of attraction and intentionality about how we use language. Yes.

Michelle Weinstein: I [00:03:00] am a big believer in all the laws of attraction and language, and the words that we use is actually having this conversation yesterday. I'm trying to remember who is with, but it was something about I need to choose my words in to make it. Oh, as a girlfriend of mine, um, she has a podcast about grief and, you know, loss and all these other things. And there's so much more to it than just grief as far as losing friends or family members [00:03:30] and stuff. Like there's loss in all areas of our life. And she goes, yeah, I'm going to be the number one podcast for that. And I said, yes, you are. Because when we put our words out and our attention out, that's what becomes our reality. And I think for many firm owners, we want to have work life balance. We want to have the firm we've always dreamt of. We want to have plenty of money put away for retirement. But we have to actually speak into those words and [00:04:00] speak into that language in order to have those laws of attraction actually work, right. Alicia. To, to actually create it. And I don't know if it was, you know, when you started your podcast, but when I started the Abundant Accountant podcast, my podcast, people thought I was crazy. They're like, oh, you don't, you know, you don't, you don't interview people. You've never done anything like that. How can you have a successful podcast? And I was like, oh, well, watch me. So I put the words [00:04:30] into action and you know, we're like number eight in the careers section on Apple podcast.

Michelle Weinstein: There's over, I think we just published our 200th episode and, and it's been great. You know, we have sponsors and I just put those words into action and said, I will have a very successful podcast. I don't know when, but I will. And I just did the actions that do it. So actually. Alicia, one of the things that I teach to firm owners, then maybe this will be helpful [00:05:00] to a lot of the bookkeeping firm owners. Listening is sometimes we have to be the person that you're not there yet to do the things that that person would do to have the result that you just don't have right now. And so what I mean by that is there is the podcast I was on back in the day with my last company called Entrepreneur on Fire with John Lee Dumas, who's actually a customer of mine with my last business, I did like healthy prepared meals. And I said, you know what? I want to have a successful podcast [00:05:30] like John. And I said, what do I need to do in order to have a podcast like John? So I had to be John in my head. I had to do the things that John would do in order to have the successful podcast that I have now today. And so I call that, and I'm sure you've heard it, I can't remember the person that coined the term be do have, but you be this person that maybe you're not today to do those actions that get you to what you want and get and have in the future.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. That you know, [00:06:00] the do.

Michelle Weinstein: You know who that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Is? I don't know who it is either, but, you know, I think of the phrase be the world that you want to live in. Yeah. And not coming from fear that if you're coming from fear, you're creating and generating fear. But if you hold yourself as the you that you want to be, then you are.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah. And fear. My business partner, Denise, has an acronym for what FEAR stand for, but it's basically the concept of you're creating something that's [00:06:30] not even true. So we make up stories about what could possibly happen that aren't even true. But we've believed that it is true and that what's what. That's what creates our fear.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm.

Michelle Weinstein: Like it's not even real.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I say that to my kids all the time. Like they're like, they get they get scared about something that might happen. I'm like, well, don't react to it now as if it's actually happening because it's actually happening right now.

Michelle Weinstein: Yes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All [00:07:00] right. So so let's take that concept and kind of make it more practical. So for the listeners that are on of the show, we've got Cass practices, we've got accounting firms, we have small independent bookkeepers. Basically, the commonality that we all have is that we use QuickBooks. Yeah. But we all are in business. We're all business owners ranging from, you know, a solopreneur all the way up to, I think we've got some, some top 100 [00:07:30] firms listening as well. And so the way that I want to coach this conversation is in some of the practicalities of if you want your firm to grow and succeed, what's the practical things that you need to do in expressing your the things that your firm brings to the table to the public so that you gain clients.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah. Well, I think the number one thing we have to do is first stop [00:08:00] giving away free advice. Mhm. Stop discounting our services. Um, stop caving in and negotiating with clients on price. If we say the investment to work with me for a cleanup or to do the monthly books or whatever is X, we have to stand firm to that. Because one of the most important things, Alicia, is that and one of my missions is to what I call eradicate the under earning and overworking [00:08:30] disease that this industry has. And we can only do that one firm at a time, be it if you're a solopreneur or in your top 100 firms as the collective. And I think this is what we have to do first before we can enroll more clients, is we have to stand firm to the price that we want to receive from a client. And once that's out there, we don't negotiate. We don't give a discount. We don't give away free advice [00:09:00] because it ruins it for everybody.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So what if you're in the position where you like, you need more clients? What if you don't have enough clients in business and like, you just desperately want that client so that you can make your nut? How do you get there?

Michelle Weinstein: And that's a place of coming from scarcity versus abundance. So when you come from a place of desperation, which is many of the firm owners that I meet, right, you have incredible technical skills, but you have [00:09:30] zero, uh, process around your sales process. So many firm owners, Alicia, I find are losing thousands of dollars every month because they keep discounting, negotiating on price, doing free work just to get this client that they think they need versus creating a plan to create premium clients to get high paying clients. Because we're not owning our value, we're not commanding our value. And [00:10:00] it doesn't matter if you're brand new. We all started from zero. I started from zero. You started from zero. But I didn't go in and do my first podcast episode and, you know, just like winged it. I had a plan. I made an investment. Sometimes we have to make an investment in marketing or advertising or doing a webinar or being, um, you know, an educator to try to get quality [00:10:30] leads. So one of the first steps is to figure out, does this person qualify to work with me? Not because we just need to make our monthly nut or pay payroll or pay rent because we're coming from a different place. If you come from scarcity, you will end up overworked, burnt out at capacity, working a ton like 1418 hour days with no money to show for it in the bank. Wondering how do I fix that? And [00:11:00] that's when people meet me and then I have to fix it. Where you can actually do this the right way from the beginning and not have to deal with all that. But you will need to if you're going to start a business, you need to have a line of credit, you need to have credit cards, you need to have an investor. You need to be able to not come from desperation, but to come from abundance. So you never have to feel sleazy, aggressive, desperate, pushy, and all those other words [00:11:30] that make having to have a sales conversation difficult.

Alicia Katz Pollock: One of the things that you mentioned was having a sales plan or a system. So what does that look like if you don't have one, if you're just winging it and hoping somebody calls. Yeah. What kind of plan can you actually put into place?

Michelle Weinstein: Well, that's like the difference. You kind of said two things in there, Alicia. You said, how do I get clients? Getting clients is marketing. There's a difference between what [00:12:00] marketing is and what sales is. So let's define the difference between the two of those. So marketing is getting someone interested in your service, right? So let's say you do um bookkeeping and cleanups. Well regular business owners like me don't really know what that means. But if you say, you know, I help you to make sure that all of your business numbers are in place, that you don't have double expenses and you can file your tax returns on [00:12:30] time every year, and your CPA is really happy and you never have to pay penalties and interest to the IRS because you're always on time and you know that you can get a loan from the bank at any time because you have clean books. That's what I help people with. Now, all of that are marketing lingo that you can put on, you know, Facebook, Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO, um, doing podcast interviews. This is a form of marketing. So I'm getting people interested [00:13:00] in what I do, right? The second someone reaches out to me and says, Michelle, I liked what you said, can we have a call to discuss? How do you help people? That now becomes the sales process. The first step in your sales process should be a qualification step. Does this person qualify to work with you, meet with you? Does it? Does. Are they worthy of your time? Alicia in your firm? Okay. That is step number one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Are they [00:13:30] worthy of your time?

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah. So for us, if you want to book a call with us and you like what I'm saying, you would go to the abundant call.com. Once you go there, you book a call and then you're going to see a link to our application. Very short, keeps me organized, but it shows me a few things. Number one, you're following a process. Number two, if you want to work with me, there's a lot of homework and there's a lot of things to do. So it shows that you can complete something. So what are the things that you need to do in your firm in order [00:14:00] to work with someone? I know for a fact that if you own a bookkeeping firm or a, you know, an accounting firm, or you like all the people that listen to this podcast, you need to be and have access to someone's books before you have a sales meeting, because you need to assess how bad it is. Do they need a clean up or do they just need a new bookkeeper? Right. How many times have you said, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just looked at these books. [00:14:30] It's like, I have to do like 2 or 3 years just to get this mess cleaned up.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Most of the time. Right. Exactly.

Michelle Weinstein: So what I call that step, Alicia, is when you go to the doctor for surgery, what do they make you do? You have to get X-rays. You have to get CT scans, you get to get blood work. You have to do all this stuff before you meet with a surgeon because they want to see, like, what's underneath, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm.

Michelle Weinstein: Same with bookkeeping or any accounting tax. [00:15:00] Anything that we do in this industry. It's the exact same.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. You need a diagnostic. You need to do. Exactly.

Michelle Weinstein: Yes. Or if you take your car to the mechanic and the mechanic and you're like, what's wrong with my car? And they're like, well, I don't know. You need to drop it off. We need to hook it up to the diagnostic machine and see what is going on with your car. So we'll let you know in about eight hours, right? And then the next day they call you and they say, okay, we need to fix this, this and this. Same like in our [00:15:30] firms, we need to do a diagnostic to see how big of a mess it is. So many firm owners, Alicia, are going into sales meetings without doing this, without an invoice, ready to go, without an engagement letter, and just winging it and wasting their time diagnosing on the spot. It's complete waste of time. And it's backwards, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I guess a lot of bookkeepers are coming into it from this is what I do, and this is about me. Instead of, here's where you're at [00:16:00] and this is what you we can solve for you.

Michelle Weinstein: Correct. Exactly. And that's the difference. So again, the marketing is all the stuff to get someone excited to talk to you. Like I'm doing marketing for the Abundant Accountant right now because I'm doing a podcast interview with you. Alicia. Right. So someone listening might say, oh, I want to talk to Michelle and her team. Great. Go to the abundant call.com. The second you go there and fill out the application is when my sales process starts. So the the [00:16:30] they go together. But the bridge that gets you over the hump is that first step, which is the application process or whatever. You know, you do an intake over the phone, you have one online. You get and capture the person's information at that moment. Now you have a lead. And that lead now goes through your sales process and a sales process. We would be here for a very long time talking about a lot of different things.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Sure. And I mean, part [00:17:00] of that diagnostic is also just going to disqualify some people because if they can't answer your questions, then it's not even that's just going to be emblematic of further problems down the line.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah. So there's plenty of people that will book a call with us, right? So they'll go the abundant call.com. They'll say, yes, I want to talk to Michelle. They book the call and then they forget to fill out the application that pops up right after. Okay. No problem. We send you an email and say, hey, please fill out the application no later than the end of day today. If we don't get it back, we'll [00:17:30] cancel your call. We'll cancel your call. There's plenty of times we cancel the call because they don't see the application done. The application shows me can you follow directions? Can you complete something? And we want people that you know, like step by step processes and likes, uh, different roadmaps and, and different ways of doing things. If you can't even do that step, I'm not going to be able to help you.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So that's kind of your qualifying round.

Michelle Weinstein: It's, it's one of them, right? We you want to have a few different [00:18:00] ones. So for firm owners, the next qualifying round after they fill out your application would be requesting access to their books or getting any documents that you might need, maybe a tax return. Previous panels, uh, balance sheets, uh, owners, you know, list of ownership, all those things that you might need from a business owner, you would have them upload that to the portal or email you and grant you access to their QuickBooks online. Then you can [00:18:30] view things if they don't get you that Alicia within let's say, 24 to 48 hours, whatever the request is that you had mentioned or requested. Guess what? They're probably going to be a pet client. Have you ever had one of those?

Alicia Katz Pollock: All the time. I actually specialize in them. I take your pet clients. See?

Michelle Weinstein: You specialize. That's a good niche for you. Yeah, I love it. So if you're sick of people not getting you documents in time, turning in things late, dealing with 1099 [00:19:00] late and w-9, all those other things that you guys have to deal with all the time, all the month end stuff, not showing up to your meetings. This is a great way to eliminate pet client.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, yeah. And for those of you who don't know what pet is, pain in the ass. There you go.

Michelle Weinstein: Pain in the.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Ass. All right. So. So let's take it to the the next jump forward. So you've qualified them. You've decided that you're going to work if you're going to [00:19:30] have abundance, and if you're going to be successful and make money, you have to really pay attention to your pricing.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah, you have to.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Talk to me about that.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah. Well, your pricing is has to be based on the value you provide. Well, Michelle, what is value? Well the value is how big the problem is and what it's going to cost to solve that problem. It's not about how long it's going to take you. It's not [00:20:00] about have you been in business for one year versus the other bookkeeping firm owner who's been in business 20 years. You have to do a self assessment and what I call an inventory check. Okay. And I have a little template spreadsheet if you want to give it out to the listeners. I think it's the abundant accountant.com/values, VALUES. If you want to go to it and double check, um.

Alicia Katz Pollock: We'll make sure that we put the link in the show notes for sure.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah, [00:20:30] so it's like, imagine a spreadsheet Because in our world, your value is right here, right? Alicia. In your head.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm.

Michelle Weinstein: It's about all the mistakes you've made, all the education you've had. Maybe you have an undergraduate degree. Some people have master's degrees. Some people are CPAs, some people are IAS. You have to do an assessment of everything that you've invested in yourself, in your career that determines your value. Very similarly [00:21:00] to if you had a business client like my old business, we had a food manufacturing business, so I had inventory in my fridge, inventory on the shelves, inventory in our retail stores, inventory in Costco. And we had inventory everywhere. So that created the value on the balance sheet. So in our world, for a service based business owner, our values right here in our head, we have to extract that. And that's how you price. So you price based on what are you, what do you feel [00:21:30] you're worth and, and what you've done and how many, um, you know, the school of hard knocks. How many mistakes have you learned from and what are those mistakes cost you? All that has to be added up to your value. That's part one. Part two is the surgery you're going to perform on. Uh, you, you perform a lot of very high value surgeries, right? Alicia. Yeah. Pet a client's cleanups, two, three year back cleanups. Like those are big projects. The value of those is [00:22:00] my guess, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 worth of your knowledge.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly. Yes.

Michelle Weinstein: Right. Okay. Notice how it's not your time. If you become proficient in it and you get better and better and better and it decreases in time, the price still stays the same. Yes. What? Because that's just your efficiency at work.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And efficiency has value.

Michelle Weinstein: A lot of it. Yes. So as you can see, pricing has [00:22:30] a lot of elements. Um, so I touched on like three of them. There's more, but we'll be, we'd be here for the next eight weeks.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so.

Michelle Weinstein: Oh, one other thing I want to add. Yeah. Before you show up to a sales meeting, you need to have your invoice ready to go and ask for the payment at the sales meeting and have an engagement letter ready to sign. You don't make up a price on the fly. You have to assess all this while you're [00:23:00] doing your diagnosis. At the same time, when you go to surgery, they tell you in advance what you're going to pay. They don't tell you after the fact or when you show up for your surgery, right? No, they do it in advance. So do we as firm owners.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So after the diagnostic um, but sometimes sometimes you're not ready to give that number during the meeting you I mean you might have to follow up with the.

Michelle Weinstein: Might, but 99.9% of the [00:23:30] time, you know your price before you go into a sales meeting. There should be no surprises. Okay. If you've done your upfront work, correct. Because remember, if we want better quality clients, we have a sales process to enroll them. And we're following all of our steps to make sure that we are so prepared.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And if we're talking about your level of expertise, this is one of those places where having a niche comes into play because that adds to your value.

Michelle Weinstein: Having a niche. Oh yeah. I worked with [00:24:00] one client and she only worked with restaurants. Most people avoid restaurants. The tips, the toast machines, the multiple locations, the raw food inventory, cooked inventory. I mean, it's complex. Yeah, yeah. But she got so good at her craft with bookkeeping and working just with restaurants that it it elevates the value. So guess what? You can actually charge a premium [00:24:30] for that, right? Because you're so good at it. And not only that, you charge a premium. And it doesn't take her very long because she's so proficient at it. So it's very high margin, right? And this is how you can work with high margin clients who actually respect you in your time.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. All right. So let's say you're listening to this podcast and you're one of the people who you've been undervaluing yourself and under billing and you know that, okay, wait, it's time for me to [00:25:00] get what I actually am worth. And you might be looking at your prices going, well, shoot, there's a big discrepancy between what I have been charging and what I should be charging and what I want to be charging.

Michelle Weinstein: This is what I do for a living. Alicia. That's exactly what we solve.

Alicia Katz Pollock: How do you get from I mean, in five minutes, how do you get from charging too little to rightsizing your pricing?

Michelle Weinstein: I can't do it in five minutes, but we can do it in a one on one call in an hour [00:25:30] with me and my team and assess it and diagnose it. Right. We have to lay out a roadmap and understand what you've done, what hasn't worked, and how do we turn this, what I call many firms that get to this point, um, Alicia, have glorified jobs. And how do you turn that into like a real asset so we can go through the current sales process that you have or lack of? We identify the, what I call leaks in your firm. I call them money leaks [00:26:00] because there's lots of leaks in your boat that are leaking out money. And then we develop like a tailored plan to how do we solve those problems? Because every person listening has something unique going on, you know? So we do that at the abundant call.com.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. And I'd imagine that some of it is moving forward with new clients where you can make leaps and some of it is right sizing your existing contract.

Michelle Weinstein: We focus 100% on your current clients first, [00:26:30] because if you were to put new clients in a mess, you're going to have double the mess. Where that's the problem is that many firm owners think that I just need more clients. I just need more leads. Well, we can't do any of that until we fix the past and we have to fix the current situation. So you can put a line in that, draw a line in the sand and say, okay, no more of the way I've been doing things. I'm going to change it. Now, sometimes you might not be able to increase the fees too much on your current clients because you're [00:27:00] terrified of them leaving you, which I totally get. I actually have a client like that right now. She has 12 monthly bookkeeping clients. And I said, you know what? She's created her sales process. She's worked with me, graduated my program. Now moving forward with every new client, you can do it differently. So to gain the confidence to change those 12, I said, your next lead, you're going to do the new process, your new pricing, everything. Once that person engages your firm, then I want you to go [00:27:30] to one client who you've had for a while and have a reenrollment meeting, because the challenge that many firm owners have is that we're so scared to increase the fees or make these big changes to our current client base, because you have a fear that everyone's going to leave you.

Michelle Weinstein: Even though I've been doing this since 2018, I've never seen that happen. Um, I have so many testimonials on my website that you can watch and see of bookkeeping accounting firm owners that have increased prices across the board to their monthly clients. [00:28:00] And they've all said, you're so valuable. I would never leave. Thank you so much. I knew I was getting a good deal for a really long time. Most people are going to tell you that because they're never going to say, hey, you know what, Alicia? I've been getting a good deal for the last couple of years. You should really raise my fees. No one's ever going to tell you that. You have to take ownership of your own worth, your own value, to make a change in your firm. So, um, with my one client who's continuing on with me. That's what we're doing to raise her confidence. So every new client, she enrolls [00:28:30] at her new fees, the new prices, she's going to go back, have a re enrollment meeting to establish the new engagement on the monthly bookkeeping with an old client at her new fees.

Michelle Weinstein: And she'll be less detached from the outcome because she sees, well, I see it's possible with new people. And you know what? If someone's not willing to pay you what you think you deserve, now guess what? They're not worth it to be your client anymore. And that's the difference between abundance and scarcity, is that we need to have a plan [00:29:00] and a strategy to go through it. And every person's plan and strategy is different. And that's why I recommend that we have chats, um, one on one with me and my team. So there's myself, Jane, and Denise. You're in good hands with all three of us. And we can, you know, assess with what's going on because you can choose what to implement, what we share in our one hour meeting. But some people, Alicia, might want their handheld and the accountability, um, to, to move to those next steps. [00:29:30] And again, there's no hard feelings. We do these calls actually complimentary because the only thing that I believe, Alicia, that holds people back is indecision. Indecision is what I think firm owners struggle with the most. So the best thing is just to take a step forward and work on your business versus in your business.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, when you are gaining these new levels of confidence and recognizing your value, then the way that you articulate that to your [00:30:00] existing clients, they see that value because you have changed.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah. And, and let me tell you something, when you're in an enrollment meeting, people buy certainty and confidence. Those are what people actually buy. They don't buy bookkeeping and they don't buy cleanup. They buy the outcome to a problem, but they actually buy from someone who has a significant amount of certainty and a significant amount of confidence.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So when you enter that conversation, it's really how you put your [00:30:30] foot forward.

Michelle Weinstein: Yes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Nice.

Michelle Weinstein: And and that's really when clients have worked with me. They're like, oh, well, I actually like the sales thing. I'm like, I know you don't really have to sell. You know, I'm not asking you to change who you are. It's just following a step by step process to get a different outcome that you want to have that abundance in your life, to have vacations, to have money for retirement, to sell your practice for a high multiple. Like there's always so many things that you can do [00:31:00] and never have to be up against a deadline. You know, it's, it's amazing what's possible.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Now you just mentioned the, the exit strategy of selling your firm. And in today's world, one of the things that's happening right now is infinite numbers of mergers and sales, where even micro bookkeeping firms are getting purchased by CAS practices. There's a lot of PE in the in the industry, and there's a lot [00:31:30] of consolidation happening now. So let's say that you're thinking, huh, I don't just want the one vacation. I'm actually coming up towards my retirement. Yeah.

Michelle Weinstein: You want to sell for a high multiple though.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So what are some of the things that we need to consider when we're trying to increase our multiple and when we say multiple, by the way, what we're talking about is taking a look at your PNL and your net profit on your bottom line. And generally the valuation of a company is based on a multiple [00:32:00] of that dollar amount. And sometimes it's just, what do you make for a year that might be your sales price. And sometimes it might be three times that dollar amount. So where does all that conversation happen?

Michelle Weinstein: It all stems in your sales process and what you do today because a PE firm, a cath company, anyone who's going to acquire you is going to look at your books and your financials and the quality of your clients, right? So if everyone's on annual engagements or subscriptions [00:32:30] and everyone is paying a very high price, and the investment they're paying you has also shown that the profitability is very high, you're going to have a higher multiple. So that means we have to stop undercharging. We have to stop giving away free advice. We have to build the firm of profitability and high premium quality clients. We can't just create a job for ourself. We need to be operating and working in our business maybe 50% of the time, 50% out. So creating a processes [00:33:00] and standard operating procedures, SOPs and being able to do all of that. But it really stems from having a legit sales process because what sales top line revenue on your PNL? So I'm about helping you make a lot of money and having it be profitable. You know, as far as being efficient, that's where you come in, Alicia. Because if they can do the books and become more proficient in QuickBooks than other things, then you increase profitability [00:33:30] that way. But you have to do all those things that we've talked about today, um, in order to create a high multiple, you know, we have to stop undercharging. We have to lead every sales conversation with confidence. We have to charge what we're worth, we have to work with the right clients and not just take on anybody and anybody. You need to be selective. You need to have your qualification process in place, and you can do all this, and you never have to sacrifice the weekend or time with your family ever while doing this. [00:34:00] And I that I can promise.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, that's really inspirational because it really does come from looking at your exit strategy. We all got into this because we enjoyed doing it and we're good at it. But you got to take a look at your end game because you don't just want to just like, stop one day and that's it. You want to have turned this the whole endeavor into something that has value. So your exit strategy and how you're going to sell your firm to somebody else as part of that [00:34:30] sales process, not just incoming, but outgoing as well. Yeah.

Michelle Weinstein: Because your sales process has a direct reflection on your PNL and the types of clients you have. If you think about it, your sales process, saying yes to these clients and no to those, your sales process is saying, yes, my revenue is 2 million versus 5 million or 100,000 versus 25,000. Like that's all a reflection of your sales process. And then, you know, you, [00:35:00] you get a multiple of your revenue or you get a multiple of your net income and, you know, you trim your workweek. Now you're working 3 or 4 days a week, then you go to 2 to 3 days a week. You have your weekends back, you have work life balance. A buyer is looking at all those things, you're not stuck working 16, 18 hour days up against deadlines and you know, about to pull your hair out. That's not you. That's not what a a PE firm is going to want to buy.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, all of those are fabulous [00:35:30] considerations. And wrapping it all the way back to where we started, we were, you know, we started with talking about the fact that like our economy is in flux and our industry is in flux. And so it's more important than ever that we craft a work that we love doing a not just a job, but a career that we love, a business that thrives so that you have happy clients, which adds positivity to the world, attracts money to [00:36:00] you, and attracts a buyer so that you can end on a, on a permanent vacation.

Michelle Weinstein: Yeah. And have a firm that feels fun again. You know, so many of my clients tell me, oh my gosh, I, I have that spark again from my firm. I'm loving it again. It's fun. It's joyful. That's why you started it. And having it be profitable and in alignment with the life that you actually want. That's what it's about. You can have that. It's possible.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Well, thank you so much [00:36:30] for joining me in this conversation. It's so nice to have like this, this positive, uplifting, inspirational approach anytime.

Michelle Weinstein: Alicia, this was super fun. Yeah. No, I think what you do and everybody listening, it is the most crucial thing that any business owner needs. It is the most crucial thing. So you should be the top paid person.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh thank you. Yeah. All right. So at the end of every episode, we end with a what's going on in your world. So [00:37:00] what's going on in your world? Michelle.

Michelle Weinstein: Well, I think I just talked about it for however long we've been talking. But, you know, it's, it's about really changing the lives of firm owners and eradicating the under earning and overworking disease that the accounting, tax and bookkeeping industry have. And as a collective, we can change this one firm owner at a time. Because if you stay firm to your price and what you're getting paid, someone else isn't going to go to the next firm owner and said, oh, well, I'm going to get a discount here. [00:37:30] Can you match their price? This is not Amazon. Okay. So, you know, um, for those of you that want to explore what that kind of freedom could look like for you in your firm, I highly encourage you to schedule a call with me and my team. We can explore what that would look like. And you can do that at the abundant call.com. It is a free complimentary call. Just make sure you fill out your application after you book and you know, we'll break down your current setup. We'll go through the gaps that you might have in your revenue, what's what you've tried, what hasn't worked, and [00:38:00] map out a clear path so you have a good exit strategy in place and know what your exact next step should be. So that's what that's what I have going on. What do you have going on, Alicia.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, as we're heading into fall, I'm heading into my conference. Uh, conferences. So I'm going to be at Intuit Connect. And we actually have a booth in the exhibit hall, booth number 60. So everybody go into an Intuit connect should come find me at booth 60 in the exhibit hall. We're going to be [00:38:30] at reframe actually as a participant instead of a instead of a thought leader, I get to actually go and listen for once. And we are going into our fall curriculum. We are going to be highlighting the QuickBooks workforce and payroll with QuickBooks time and the change. There's been a lot of changes in the payroll software. So we've got classes about that coming up in November. Um, we have Marriott. Martinez is coming in and doing an eight series, an eight session series [00:39:00] on the accounting lifecycle. So for beginning bookkeepers who know that they're supposed to be doing something but aren't necessarily sure what it all is. This is a great time to formalize your SOPs so that you have your deadlines in line and your end, and being able to put your best foot forward with your clients so that you can price with confidence.

Michelle Weinstein: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So if you enjoyed today's episode, please like, please subscribe [00:39:30] and please, please, please share it with your friends. Also, be sure to click the links for our sponsors. Um, when they know that you're listening, they can support the work that we're doing. And also don't forget to head over to earmark.me to get your CPE for listening to today's episode.

Michelle Weinstein: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So this is Alicia Pollock of royal.com.

Michelle Weinstein: And I'm Michelle from the Abundant Accountant. And thank you so much for having me here today. Lisa. It was great.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Absolutely. And we will [00:40:00] see you in the next one.