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The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast

The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast

著者： Michael Palmer
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The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast is a weekly show to help increase your confidence, work smarter and build a business you love. Each week you'll listen to inspiring guests who will share their success secrets, so you can take your bookkeeping enterprise and life to another level. Some of them include New York Times Best-Selling Author of E-Myth, Michael E. Gerber, Pure Bookkeeping Co-Founder, Debbie Roberts, the host of The Productive Woman podcast, Laura McClellan and the author of *I Know How She Does It*, Laura Vanderkam. If you're a bookkeeping business owner who is looking for an uplifting, entertaining and informative podcast exclusively for YOU then you have arrived at the right place! Get ready because your journey towards success begins — now. Your Host Michael Palmer is an acclaimed business coach who has helped hundreds of bookkeepers across the world push through their fears and exponentially grow their businesses and achieve the quality of life they've always wanted.Copyright © The Successful Bookkeeper マネジメント マネジメント・リーダーシップ マーケティング マーケティング・セールス 経済学
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  • EP533: Sammy Mattingly & Fred Ott - From Porta Potties To Bookkeeping: How Networking Built Their Firm Fast - Part 1

    EP533: Sammy Mattingly & Fred Ott - From Porta Potties To Bookkeeping: How Networking Built Their Firm Fast - Part 1
    2026/05/26
    See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Sammy Mattingly and Fred Ott co-founded Mattingly & Ott Financial Accounting in their mid-twenties, with backgrounds in Big Four auditing and investment management — and a brief, memorable detour into portable sanitation. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, they walk through the early decisions that shaped their firm: getting certified, landing first clients, and discovering that digital ads were no substitute for showing up in person. Chapters [00:00] Cold open and intro[01:18] Sammy's listener origin story[03:15] Backgrounds before bookkeeping[06:30] The porta potty adventure[11:00] Finding bookkeeping on YouTube[13:00] Five-week plan and first clients[16:00] Why paid ads flopped[18:30] Discovering networking as a strategy[21:00] Building one-to-one meeting habits[24:30] Shifting to strategic partnerships From Porta Potties to ProAdvisor Before bookkeeping, Sammy and Fred tried their hand at entrepreneurship the hard way — buying 20 used porta potties off a site called Crapper King, shipping them across the country on a semi-truck, and eventually moving them on Facebook Marketplace after a good pressure wash. The experience wasn't profitable, but it was formative. As Michael notes on the show, it gave them a layer of genuine empathy for clients: "They don't have all the answers, they're making mistakes, they're trying to figure it out." After a few more ideas, a YouTube video on starting a bookkeeping firm was all the spark Sammy needed. "I watched it, and I was like, well, if this guy can do it, Fred and I can do this." The Five-Week Launch Plan Once they committed to bookkeeping, Sammy and Fred moved fast. They built a five-week plan: get QuickBooks certified, become ProAdvisors, and land one client. Two large cleanup projects came through the QuickBooks ProAdvisor directory almost immediately — enough to justify going full-time. Fred describes those first weeks as equal parts doing the work and learning on the fly: "We were certified in QuickBooks, but it's like — we've got to figure out how this works. We've never done a QuickBooks cleanup for this type of company before." Why Paid Ads Weren't the Answer With their first projects underway, they turned to paid social media ads hoping to fill the pipeline. Six weeks and 15 or 16 leads later, the results were discouraging — contacts who were hard to reach and nowhere near ready to hire a bookkeeper. "We were finding they were all super unqualified," Fred says. That dead end turned out to be the pivot point. A conversation with a local small business attorney introduced a word they'd barely considered: networking. Networking as a Growth Engine Neither Sammy nor Fred would describe themselves as natural networkers — both lean introverted. But they committed fully, spending two to three months filling their days with open networking events and one-to-one coffee meetings. The accountability of working as a team made the difference: knowing the other person was putting in the effort kept each of them showing up. Fred's father, a career salesman, gave them the frame they needed: "Unseen, unheard, unsold." They tracked weekly one-to-one meeting goals, walked up to strangers, shook hands, and asked people to coffee — regardless of whether an obvious business connection was visible. Strategic Relationships Over Volume Over time, the approach evolved from broad networking to targeted relationship-building. Sammy describes the shift as following the data: "We took a step back and we were like, okay, what percentage of our referrals is coming from CPAs or whoever? And it's like, okay, well, if 80, 90% of our referrals are coming from these types of people, we need to go to rooms where there are these types of people." Tax preparers, business brokers, and other professionals who rarely attend networking events became the focus — making Mattingly & Ott's presence at those events even more valuable. Links mentioned Pure Bookkeeping — the system Sammy and Fred found through the podcastPixie — practice management tool they discovered through The Successful Bookkeeperthesuccessfulbookkeeper.com — resources, episode search, and Ask the Show feature About the guests Sammy Mattingly and Fred Ott are co-founders of Mattingly & Ott Financial Accounting, LLC. High school friends turned business partners, they launched their bookkeeping firm roughly a year and a half ago and went full-time within the first few months. Sammy brings a background in Big Four audit; Fred comes from investment management. Together they serve small, service-based businesses and have built their client base almost entirely through in-person networking and strategic referral relationships. Part 2 of their conversation covers how those relationships translate into referral systems and scalable growth. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder...
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    30 分
  • EP532: Natalia Zacharin - Price It And Zip It: How Confident Pricing Funds Real Growth - Part 2

    EP532: Natalia Zacharin - Price It And Zip It: How Confident Pricing Funds Real Growth - Part 2
    2026/05/19
    See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → If you've ever quoted a price, panicked at the silence, and then talked yourself into a discount before the prospect even responded — this episode is for you. In the finale of this two-part series, Natalia Zacharin, Founder and Principal of Zacharin Consulting, picks up where she left off: taking a firm from underpriced and overworked to a multi-million-dollar operation built on confident pricing, high-caliber hires, and fractional CFO services that change businesses from the inside out. Chapters [00:00] Cold open and episode intro[01:37] Non-negotiables and self-care[04:48] The hiring formula and pricing shift[08:00] Price it and zip it[11:00] Joining a mastermind, betting on herself[13:30] Building referrals and CFO services[17:30] What fractional CFO work really looks like[23:00] AI, pricing pressure, and quality[26:30] Hiring up and scaling out of production[29:00] Final advice and where to find Natalia The Moment She Stopped Underselling For a long time, Natalia was closing deals she immediately regretted. She'd set a minimum of $500 a month, get on the sales call, hit silence — and before the prospect could say a word, she'd already dropped the number. "I would get off the call and then be mad at myself because I did it again," she says. The fix was deceptively simple: state the price and stop talking. That uncomfortable pause exists for the client to process, ask questions, or push back — and it's not your job to fill it. Learning to sit in that silence was the turning point that finally gave her room to hire. The Hiring Formula Behind the Growth Natalia uses a straightforward formula: between $200,000 and $300,000 in gross revenue per employee. She was at $300,000 and wanted to hire — but the numbers said she needed to be closer to $500,000 first. So she raised her prices, created the margin, and then hired. Her early lesson: the first hire was underqualified, which meant she spent more time training than delegating. "Looking back, I should have hired someone with a lot more experience that was more expensive, maybe even a manager level." Hiring up — paying well, offering full benefits, building a team that can run without you — is the model she's stayed with ever since. Fractional CFO Services: Already Doing It for Free The expansion into fractional CFO work didn't start with a strategy — it started with Natalia noticing she was already answering CFO-level questions at the end of every bookkeeping sales call. Clients kept asking: how do I get more profitable? How much cash do I actually need? When should I hire? "If you're already giving advice, you're already doing that for free unless you're charging for it." She formalized those conversations into a monthly engagement built around projections, accountability, and the kind of honest focus that keeps business owners from avoiding the hard work that actually moves the needle. AI, Pricing Pressure, and Leaning the Right Direction With AI tools multiplying and overseas competitors undercutting on price, Natalia's response is deliberate: go the other direction. "Don't feel the pressure of constantly lowering your pricing. That's going in the wrong direction. You need to actually be even better." Her firm uses AI to work faster and more accurately, but every file is reviewed by an in-house controller regardless of client size. The value isn't in the tool — it's in the trained eye that knows where to look and what the numbers mean for that specific business. Scaling Yourself Out of the Business Getting out of day-to-day production takes longer than most people expect. Natalia spent four years trying to hand off payroll before she finally found a payroll-only specialist with decades of experience — not a generalist bookkeeper. The message for anyone building a firm: don't give up when a hire doesn't stick. Keep looking for the right person. "It took me four years to get out of payroll… I'd be on vacation, walking the beach, running someone's payroll on my phone because it kept coming back to me." The same patience applies to every role you want to transition out of. Links Mentioned Zacharin Consulting website: zacharynconsulting.comLinkedIn: Grow Your Bottom LineInstagram: Grow Your Bottom LinePure Bookkeeping: purebookkeeping.comThe Successful Bookkeeper resources: thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com About the Guest Natalia Zacharin is the Founder and Principal of Zacharin Consulting, a full-service bookkeeping and fractional CFO firm she built from the ground up as a single mother. Starting with cold LinkedIn outreach and clients at $75 a month, she scaled the firm to multi-million-dollar revenue by combining confident pricing, strategic hiring, and advisory services that help business owners understand and act on their numbers. She is based in the United States and serves clients across industries including logistics, IT, and professional services. About the ...
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    41 分
  • EP531: Natalia Zacharin - Zero Experience, Millions Earned: From Clerk To Inc. 5000 Firm Owner

    EP531: Natalia Zacharin - Zero Experience, Millions Earned: From Clerk To Inc. 5000 Firm Owner
    2026/05/12
    See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Natalia Zacharin had no bookkeeping background, no clients, and no safety net when she started Zacharin Consulting in January 2019. She was 49, a single mom, and her invoicing clerk job was being phased out. In part one of this two-part conversation, Natalia lays out exactly how she went from that starting point to building a firm that now employs 16 people, targets $4 million in revenue, and landed at number 802 on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list. Chapters [00:00] Cold open: asking the right questions[00:52] Introducing Natalia Zacharin[03:00] From invoicing clerk to business owner[07:00] Where the firm stands today[10:00] First client via LinkedIn[13:00] Self-teaching bookkeeping on YouTube[16:30] Hiring a CPA manager — lessons learned[19:00] Building the pipeline: 4 clients to 12[23:00] Doubling down and working 7 days a week[26:00] COVID, the PPP pivot, and early burnout Starting From Zero — And Meaning It Natalia's entry into bookkeeping wasn't a career pivot she planned. Her fiancé suggested it over coffee when she couldn't find another job. She enrolled in an online course, started messaging business owners on LinkedIn in January 2019, and landed her first client on January 29th of that year — a landscaping company owner in California who is still a client today. Her prior experience as an invoicing clerk in Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite gave her attention to detail, but she had never opened QuickBooks. YouTube as a Training Program When Natalia got into her first client's books, she found the revenue hadn't been recorded — showing a negative $2 million on the P&L. Rather than walking away, she cleaned it up herself using YouTube, watching videos second by second and refreshing the balance sheet after every change to see what happened. "That was how I learned," she says. "I taught myself how to read financials, not how to do just data entry." It was slow, it was self-directed, and it worked. The Formula for Getting Clients Early On Natalia built her first pipeline through two channels: LinkedIn outreach and a local women's business group. Her LinkedIn approach was simple — start genuine conversations, never lead with a pitch, and ask questions. "No one likes it when you just come out with a full three paragraphs of what you do. No one cares." At in-person events, she set a clear intention before walking in: she was there to get a client, not just to have lunch. By August 2019 she had 4 clients and quit her day job. By November she had 12 — enough to cover her bills. Doubling Down on What Works After quitting her job, Natalia worked 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, iterating constantly on what was generating new business. Her core principle: if something moves the needle, do more of it faster. She avoided prescriptive networking formats like BNI in favour of methods she could control and test. "Selling is psychological, it's not intuitive," she says. "I just didn't give up. I didn't feel like I had other options, so I just kept going." COVID, the PPP, and a Hard Lesson About Burnout In January 2020, Natalia called her mother — who had been helping her financially — to say she no longer needed the support. Three months later, COVID hit and her clients' revenues collapsed. She pivoted immediately to helping clients apply for PPP and EIDL loans, achieving near-perfect approval and forgiveness rates. But by August 2020, working alone under enormous pressure, she stopped exercising and started running out of energy. Part two of this series picks up there — with hard-won lessons on burnout, pricing, and scaling a team. Links Mentioned Zacharin Consulting: zacharinconsulting.comPure Bookkeeping: purebookkeeping.comThe Successful Bookkeeper: thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com About the Guest Natalia Zacharin is the Founder and Principal of Zacharin Consulting, a full-service accounting firm based in Maryland that offers bookkeeping, accounting, and fractional CFO services. She started the firm in 2019 with no formal bookkeeping training and grew it to a 16-person team tracking over $3 million in annual revenue. In 2025, Zacharin Consulting was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the United States, ranking number 802. About the hostMichael PalmerMichael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast and co-founder of Pure Bookkeeping and The Successful Bookkeeper. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.
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    26 分
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