How to Start a Bookkeeping Business in 30 Days (2026 Gu… — Transcript

What's up, everybody? My name is Jake Deine. Do you want to be an entrepreneur? Do you want to break free from being an employee? Do you want to own a business that serves you and that creates an asset for you and your family? Do you want to be around your family more? Do you want to make more money? Guys, in this video, I'm going to walk through everything you need to know to start a bookkeeping company. In 30 days, you should be able to start a bookkeeping company. I'm going to walk you through exactly how you can make the kind of money that I'm making now. I'm a bookkeeper. I make about 200—well, last year I made $225,000 in profit. And so, if I can do it, you can do it, too. I'll break down everything you need to know to get this started because you need to break free.

You need to get out of the hamster wheel of a life that you live. You need to break free from slavery. If you are an employee, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I used to be an employee. I know how bad it is, especially when you're an employee for five, six, seven, 10 years. It's time for you to get out. It's time for you to provide for your family in a different way so that you can really build true wealth. You're not going to build wealth as an employee. You're going to build wealth as a business owner. And if you have any itch to be an entrepreneur, then this is your path. And you need to—you need to do it. Okay? You just need to do it. You need to stop being afraid. You need to take this risk and you need to take the leap. That's what I did four years ago, guys. And I am so happy that I did that. My life, my career, my wealth has changed dramatically. I have so much more control over my life. I even have more confidence in my life. I have more confidence as a business owner. All of that grows over time, but I'm going to walk through everything you need to do and need to know in the beginning here. Okay? So, in 30 days, you should be able to start. I'm going to break it down: days 1 through 7, days 8 through 15, days 15 through 30, and at the end, I'm going to talk about how you can find clients, what software you should use, and basically, guys, you're going to know everything you need to know in order to get started. So, there's no excuses for you. If you want to get started, watch to the end of this video, and by the end, I want you to actually make steps forward to starting this thing, to breaking free from slavery, from your employee slavery life. So, let me jump right into it.

Okay, days one through seven. Right now, this is what you need to do. You need to become an LLC. You need to snag that name. You need to figure out your name. You need to become an LLC on your state registration page. So talk to ChatGPT about how to do this. It's typically about $150. That's the biggest purchase you're going to make in this whole process. The beginning is going to cost a tiny bit of money upfront. It's significantly less than any other business out there. It's almost—I think I broke down the cost. I'll break it down more later on, but it shouldn't cost you more than $250 or $300 for this business. $150 of that is going to be becoming an LLC. And that's important for a couple of reasons. One, you need to get a business bank account. Okay? So, once you become an LLC, you're able to get a business bank account. You can't get a business bank account without having your LLC.

And you also want to get your name. You want to lock in the bookkeeping business name you want. So, figure out your bookkeeping business name. I would recommend having the name include the word bookkeeping because if you're going to follow my path, you're going to exclusively do bookkeeping. You're not going to do anything else. You are going to be a bookkeeper. You're going to be an expert in QuickBooks Online. You're going to be the go-to bookkeeper in your area. And so, you want bookkeeping to be in the name. My business name is Winona Bookkeeping. Take a look at my website. Take a look at my Google Maps presence. I'm crushing it in my local area. I could be doing better than my competition, and that's all that matters. But in the first seven days, you need to take care of this legal stuff. You need to become an LLC. And then you need to get your EIN. The EIN is totally free. Again, talk to ChatGPT about it. I'm not going to give you step-by-step instructions on how to do it. You're smart. If you can't figure this out, then maybe you shouldn't be starting a business in the first place. You can do this. I believe in you. Again, if I can do it, you can do it, too. So, become an LLC or get your EIN so that you can get that number. Get your business bank account. Those are the things you should do in the first seven days. Okay? The LLC can happen instantly. You can do it right away. You don't have to wait. Everything is downloadable. Everything is emailed to you, so you have it. The next step is to get the business bank account. Go into the bank, get that account just so that when you do start making money, you have it all in one spot. Okay?

All right. So, that's days one through seven. That's the legal stuff. Days 8 through 15 is going to be your website and Google Maps. Okay? You need to create a website. It can be simple. Don't go overboard with it. Don't spend a ton of money. Do it yourself. I think it should be about a hundred bucks to make your website. I think if you can make it simple, if you can make it personable, if you can make it clear, that's what matters.

Okay. Again, focus on bookkeeping. There should be three services you offer. It should be monthly bookkeeping. It should be cleanup and catch-ups, and it should be training and consulting. All within the bookkeeping umbrella. Don't venture into taxes. Don't venture into admin work like bill pay and collections. Don't do any of that. Don't be saving receipts for the business owners. You want to be a lean business. You want to be an efficient business. You don't want to offer everything. I have other videos on that. But in the beginning, you really want to be clear about exactly what services you offer and have that in your website. I even recommend having pricing on your website. Have ranges. Take a look at my website. In my website, I break it down. I have like a simple, medium, and complex range for what clients can expect to pay. I think it's really important. Transparency is gigantic. You have to earn the business owner's trust, especially right now. You don't have a lot of Google reviews. And so, you have to build that trust by being ultra transparent about your personal life, about your pricing, about what you offer.

So, you also want to have an About You section. Talk about—have a picture of you. Talk about your family. Talk about your hobbies. Talk about why you're passionate about bookkeeping. Have that on your website so that when somebody checks out your website, when somebody's interested in your bookkeeping services, they want to work with a real person. Okay? So, don't come off as this big corporate company. You want to basically put your name on it. You want to put your reputation on it. You want to, again, make it personable. And so, that's what's important about your website. Don't go overboard with it. It shouldn't be more than a hundred bucks for the website and then the domain name on a yearly basis.

Okay. The next thing is logo. Figure out your logo. Not super important, but just figure it out so you have it so that you can include it on your website. You'll do that. And then what you're also going to do, guys, is you're going to set up a QuickBooks accountant profile. So, you want to log in. QuickBooks is free for accountants. It's amazing. QuickBooks once QuickBooks works great.

life, my career, my wealth has changed dramatically. I have so much more control over my life. I even have more confidence in my life. I have more confidence. um as a business owner. All of that grows over time, but I'm going

to walk through everything you need to do need to know um in the beginning here. Okay? So, in 30 days, you should be able to start. Um I'm going to break it down days 1 through 7, days 8 through

15, days 15 through 30, and at the end, I'm going to talk about um how you can find clients, how what softwares you should use, and basically guys, you're going to know everything you need to know in order to get started. So,

there's no excuses for you. Um, if you want to get started, um, watch to the end of this video and by the end, I want you to actually make steps forward to to starting this thing to breaking free

from slavery, from your employee slavery life. So, let me jump right into it. Okay, days one through seven. Right now, this is what you need to do. You need to become an L. You need to snag that name.

You need to figure out your name. You need to become an LLC on your state registration um, page. So talk to ChatGpt about how to do this. It's typically about 150 bucks. That's the that's the biggest purchase you're going

to make in this whole process. The the beginning is going to cost a tiny bit of money upfront. It's significantly less than any other business out there. Um it's almost um I I think I bro I broke down the

cost. I'll break it down in more later on, but it shouldn't cost you more than $250 or $300 this business. 150 of that is going to be becoming an LLC. And that's important for a couple of reasons. one, um, you need to get a

business bank account. Okay? So, once you become an LLC, um, you you're able to get a business bank account. You can't get a business bank account without having your LLC.

Um, and you also want to get your name. You want to lock in the the bookkeeping business name you want. So, figure out your bookkeeping business name. I would recommend having the name um having the word bookkeeping in it because if you're

going to follow my path, you're going to exclusively do bookkeeping. You're not going to do anything else. You are going to be a bookkeeper. You're going to be an expert in QuickBooks Online. You're going to be the the go-to bookkeeper in

your area. And so, you want bookkeeping to be in the name. My business name is Winona Bookkeeping. Take a look at my website. Take a look at my Google Maps presence. I'm crushing it in my local area. I could be I could be doing better

than my competition, and that's all that matters. But in the first seven days, um you need to take care of this legal stuff. You need to become an And then you need to get your EIN. Um, the EIN is

totally free. Again, talk to ChatGpt about it. I'm not going to give you step-by-step instructions on how to do it. You're smart. If you can't figure this out, then maybe you shouldn't be starting a business in the first place.

You can do this. I believe in you. Um, again, if I can do it, you can do it, too. So, become an EI or get so that you can get that number. Get your business bank account. Those are the things you

should do in the first seven days. Okay. The LLC, it can happen instantly. you can do it right away. You don't have to wait for everything is downloadable.

Everything is emailed to you. So, you have it. The next step is to get the business bank account, go into the bank, get that account just so that when you do start making money, you have it all in one spot. Okay? All right. So, that's

days one through seven. That's the legal stuff. Days 8 through 15 um is going to be your website and Google Maps. Okay?

You need to create a website. It can be simple. Don't go overboard with it.

Don't spend a ton of money. Do it yourself. Um, I think it should be about a hundred bucks to make your website.

Um, I I think if you can make it simple, if you can make it personable, if you can make it clear, that's what matters.

Okay. Again, focus on bookkeeping. There should be three services you offer. It should be monthly bookkeeping. It should be cleanup and catch-ups, and it should be training and consulting. All within the bookkeeping umbrella. Don't venture into taxes. Don't venture into admin

work like bill pay um and collections. Don't do any of that. Don't be saving receipts for your um for the for the business owners. You want to be a lean business. You want to be an efficient business. You don't want to offer

everything. I have other videos on that. But in the beginning, you really want to be clear about exactly what services you offer and have that in your website. I even recommend having pricing in your website. Have ranges. Take a take a look

at my website. In my website, I break it down. I have like a simple, medium, and you know, a complex um ranges for what clients can expect to to pay. I think it's really important. Transparency is gigantic. You have to earn the business

owner's trust, especially right now. You don't have a lot of Google reviews. Um, and so you have to build that trust by being ultra transparent about your personal life, about your tr about your um your pricing, about what you offer.

So you also want to have an about you section. Talk about have a picture of you. Talk about your family. Talk about your hobbies. Talk about why you're passionate about bookkeeping. Have that in your website so that when somebody um

checks out your website, when somebody's interested in your bookkeeping services, they want to they they want to work with a real person. Okay? So, don't come off as this big corporate company. Um, you you want to basically put your name on

it. You want to put your reputation on it. You want to um again, you want it to be personable. And so, that's what's important about your website. Don't go overboard with it. Shouldn't be more than a hundred bucks for the website and

then the domain name on a yearly basis. Okay. Um, the next thing is logo. Figure out your logo. Not super important, but just figure it out so you have it so that you can include it on your website.

You'll do that. And then what you're also going to do guys is you're going to set up a QuickBooks accountant profile.

So you want to log in QuickBooks is free for accountants. It's amazing. QuickBooks once QuickBooks works great for accountants. And so you're going to set up your own profile as a QuickBooks accountant. And in here there there are

proadvisor trainings. And so I would recommend becoming certified advisor. It's not required, but it can't hurt to to learn everything that is needed to know about QuickBooks.

And then that's also where you're going to ac future clients. And so when somebody calls you, they're going to invite you to their QuickBooks and they're going to do it through the accountant subscription that you created. And so the email that's

attached to that, you want to um you want to set up a login um with that and get QuickBooks. Um connect your business bank account to QuickBooks so you own books and just play around with it and have fun with it and learn QuickBooks as

soon as you can. um because that's where you're going to be making the money. Um and then also create that email address.

Um again, you don't need to make you don't need to pay any money. In the beginning, my email address wasabookkeepinggmail.com.

Once I got to like five to 10 clients, I upgraded to have my own domain name. Um so was jakewinonabk.com.

You can change that later. I wouldn't try to I wouldn't spend a lot of money in the beginning. Focus on me keeping it lean because what if it doesn't work out? You don't want to put a lot of

money out there in the beginning. You want the business to pay for itself. So, there's a lot of softwares I'll talk about at the end that you're going to want, but that you don't need in the beginning. Okay? So, in the beginning,

guys, it's going to be the LLC for 150. It's going to be the website for 100.

And that's really all you need to pay for in the beginning to get started. Um, that's all you need. Don't go overboard with this stuff. Um, so days 8 through 15 is going to be the website. It's going to be the QuickBooks accountant

profile. It's going to be um the Google the email address with Google. And then also, you want to get signed up with Google Maps. Okay? It takes a couple weeks for this to all work out, but you want to um you want to show up on

Google. You want to show up on Google Maps. And so, you need to register your business with Google. They'll send you a postcard. And once you get the postcard, you can verify your physical address. Um I recommend you just use your personal

address. If you don't feel comfortable with that, um, it's going to hurt you long term. Um, because I I'm sure you don't have an office you can use, but I was fine with using my personal address.

That way when some for you on Google, you show up as a local business. Um, and so once you get that Google profile set up, you want to start getting Google reviews. I know you don't you might not

have any clients yet, but get Google reviews. It might be from friends. It might be from family. They can be character reviews, but the more reviews you have, the better. If you and you don't even need quality reviews. You

just need in the beginning, you need just a little bit more than your competition. If you look on Google Maps at your competitionized how pathetic these websites are, how pathetic the Google review, um, Google is your way of showing up as

a as a legitimate company, as an active company. I can't tell you how many businesses are out there that look inactive because they have zero reviews.

as as somebody um who who has hired other people Google like a plumber or an HVAC company, I look for um the Google reviews and I don't read all of them, but 63 reviews, five stars, that's all I

need to know. And five reviews, five stars, that's all people need to know. So get on Google. That will um that'll build trust with um potential clients.

Okay. All right. All right. So then days 15 through through 30, guys, at the end here, once you've set up the legal stuff, once you've taken care of the website and your QuickBooks accountant profile, the next step is uh finding

clients and learning Quick accounting. Okay? Now, I don't know if you have QuickBooks or accounting experience before you had before you listened to this video, but if you don't have experience, then you need to learn your butt off. You need to get to work. You

need to put your head in the books. You need to talk to ChatBT. You need to set up quizzes for yourself on Chat TPT. You need to play around with QuickBooks a little bit more. You definitely need to

become a pro adviser. It's going to be a lot more work for you if you don't have experience. Um, you're going to have to um push yourself and be disciplined about becoming the expert in QuickBooks Online and accounting.

QuickBooks on online and accounting are two different things you need to learn. QuickBooks Online applies the accounting. Accounting is just the base, the foundational things you need to know about a profit and loss, a balance sheet, journal entries, debits, credits,

um, and basically what things are supposed to look like and how to get them there. You need to understand it.

You need to get your head around it. And you need to understand from a QuickBooks perspective how what buttons to click, um how to add transactions from the bank feed, how to reconcile things to the bank statements, and just all the nuts and bolts about

QuickBooks. There's a lot that is on QuickBooks. I know it's overwhelming, but get comfortable with each of those features and and you will um you you will get to a good spot. If you do have accounting experience, if you do have qu

do have QuickBooks experience, then you can hit the ground running right away. You'll have a little bit more confidence than than the person who doesn't have experience. Um, and so during this stage, guys, you need to find clients.

You need that. That is the name of the game. If you can find monthly bookkeeping clients, you will be set.

Okay? And I talk about pricing in my other videos, so I'm not going to get into it, but you need to charge fixed pricing. So, you're looking for a $300 per month client. And if you can get a

couple of those clients, that will be huge. Not only will it be nice to have that supplemental income on top of your full-time job, but as you start building those clients, you're going to gain experience and you're g you're going to gain

confidence. And those are two things that are um you can't put a price tag on those things. If you can get that experience and confidence, that will serve you um tremendously down the road.

And so for me guys, when I started my business, I my goal was to get to 20 to 25 clients. I wanted to be able to replace my full-time income. I was current I was making $75,000 when I

started my business from my full-time job. And within about 18 months, I was able to quit my full-time job. It takes a long time. And so, you need to be patient. Don't expect a client in the first month. Don't expect a client in

the second month. I would start to expect clients in in months three through five. If you're not getting clients by then, you are doing something wrong. You're either um not showing up on Google, you don't have a great

website, you don't have a great personality. I mean, that's a thing. Um maybe you don't have a great personality and and entrepreneurship is just not your thing, or you're too you're too afraid to put yourself out there. You're

too afraid to risk it. And so, you need to start finding clients. Um in the beginning, it's going to be tough, but you need to be patient and you can't give up. Okay. So, how do you find the

clients? Um, I'm going to give you five different things. Um, let's see. One, two, three, four. Four different areas, four different ways you can find clients. Okay. Number one is social media. You have to put yourself out there on social media. You have to go

public with this this thing. If you need to block your employer and your co-workers, do it. I blocked everybody I could think of that might have a negative reaction to my business. Um, I have a LinkedIn post about it that, um,

I think might be helpful. It talks about um how to block um looking at your employee handbook, making sure that you're allowed to do it. You don't want to necessarily do anything illegal. Um like if it's against the rules of your

business, of the um full-time job you have, then you might have to get a little bit creative about how you make this thing happen. Um you might have to have an honest conversation with your employer and tell them like what's going

on. Um that might be the hardest conversation of your entire life. I had to do that. It was terrifying, but I'm so glad I had the guts to to do that.

Um, I was again, I was terrified. Very difficult conversation, but if I didn't have it, I never would have got started on my journey here. Um, so number one is social media. LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you are, wherever your

following is, that's where you need to be. If you can if you can find clients in your friends and family friend zones, then that will be huge because you've already built the trust with them in your during high school, during college.

You've already built the trust and so you don't need to validate that. All you need to validate are your skills and that comes after the fact. Um the second thing is um you know like social gatherings when you're at your kids'

birthday parties, when you're um when you're hanging out with friends and family, talk about your business wherever you are. Get excited about it.

Talk about it with your barber. Talk about it with the plumber that comes over. Talk about it um with your neighbors. Talk about it with everybody.

Okay? And practice talking about it. Practice talking about um your services. Practice the um you know, practice talking about what you do. It shouldn't be confusing. You should be able to explain what you do to a 5-year-old. If you can't do that, then

you need to work on learning how to explain it. Um you do bookkeeping. You record transactions for businesses so that they know where their money's going. Okay, that's about as simple as it gets. And so, um, that's number two.

Number three, you need to hit the ground running on cold emails and cold calls.

Okay? Um, reach out to businesses, make personalized emails to each business. I picked an industry in my area and I um I found their email addresses and I created a list of all wanted to reach out to and I sent personalized emails to

every single business in my area. It actually worked. I got a few businesses this way as as clients and in the beginning every client is um now I started my business before um AI and chatbt so it might be harder now I don't

know but it can't hurt and so do it get started with that call pick up the phone and call businesses you know and and just so you know guys your ideal business is a small business that can't afford an in-house accountant um and

it's also a business that has outgrown the business owner U most businesses that are like three to four years into their business um are big enough where the business owner they know where they're most valuable and they are

starting to get worn out by the bookkeeping tasks. And so that's when you want to reach out to them. And that's your ideal client that's growing the business that um that that really can afford to hire a $300 to $400 per

month bookkeeper to handle this stuff. Um because you want um you want to take this off their plate. And then guys, the last thing, the last tip I'll give you is maybe the the best tip I have is

reaching out to local CPAs in your area. You want to find the local solo CPA.

Type on Google Maps CPA and you'll see tons of CPAs. You'll see the CPAs that work out of their houses. You'll see the CPAs that that don't even have staff.

They just they only do taxes at the beginning of the year. Those are the people you want to reach out to. You want to maybe call them. You want to maybe re reach out via email. You might even want to show up to their front door

um with some of your literature. You want to you want to be friends with the CPAs because you want to um this this is a really good place to find clients because CPAs are tax work. They don't have time for bookkeeping. They might

offer book, but it's more of a necessary evil. They don't want to actually do it. They want to do tax work and that's their business model. And so if you can take the bookkeeping work off of their shoulders,

if you can um give them clean financials at the end of the year so that they can just do the taxes, that will that will take a huge weight off their shoulders.

And so you need to reach out to them. And um and you also one other thing I'll say too, guys, is if you are doing tax word tax work on the side, if you're dabbling in it, if you're offering a

little bit of everything in that way, then you're going to be the CPA's competition. You don't want to do that.

You want to be exclusively focused on bookkeeping so that the CPA isn't worried about you taking their tax work. You want to be ultra clear that you only do bookkeeping. You're not trying to get their tax work. And if you can do that,

if you can explain that, then the CPAs will not worry as much about you taking over, you know, their client list. Um, and so that's a really important point.

So that's how you find clients, guys. Um, and then like I said, it shouldn't be more than $250 to start this thing, but there's a few things you should know. One is insurance. Don't don't don't buy insurance yet. You might need

Right now, I pay for errors and emissions insurance. It's ENO insurance. I pay like 30 bucks a month for it. Um, but you don't need it in the beginning.

I would wait until you have five to 10 clients before you pay for insurance.

It's just not worth it. Um, other softwares, um, you want to look into paying for Google Drive eventually to get your own domain name. um you know ju just so that you can have a Google Drive where you store everything um a Google

email address that's that looks professional eventually once you get to five to 10 clients I would pay for um Google I think it's like 10 to 15 bucks a month it's not bad um I would recommend getting Calendarly Calendarly

is awesome it's a way to automatically like to to schedule um meetings out connects to your um your work email and it's just really easy to um work with business owners that way and then the last software I would recommend in the

beginning is Dropbox Sign. Now, it does cost money. It's $15 per month, but Dropbox Sign is awesome because it's a way for business owners to electronically sign documents. And so, you when you when you onboard a client, you're going to send

them a contract and you're going to send them an AC automatic withdrawal form. The AC, by the way, the AC automatic withdrawal form um I have for sale in my store. So, if you go to the links, you'll see um that form there. But

Dropbox Sign is great because it allows them to be from their phone and you want to make that process so smooth. You want to make it easy. You want to make it easy to get paid. And so you want the

automatic withdrawal form, the the contract to be filled out as soon as possible. Um, and so it's $15 a month, but I think it's worth it um in order for you to get paid. So guys, that's kind of to know in a nutshell on how to

get started with this bookkeeping business. You can do this. It will be worth it. It will change your life forever and you need to get started as soon as possible. Thanks guys and um please subscribe to this channel if you

are um interested in this content. You want to learn more. I'm going to be putting out videos at least on a weekly basis if not more. And like this video if you like this video. Um and I'll talk

to you guys next time. Thank you.