Ep 51 | Ask the Expert: Joselyn Martinez, Bookkeeper

Annie: I'm Annie.

Leah: And I'm Leah

Annie: And this is Lactation Business Coaching with Annie and Leah, where we talk about the smart way to create a compassionate and professional private practice.

Leah: Let's dive in.

Annie: Well, Hey there Leah.

Leah: Hey there, Annie. How are you today?

Annie: Well, at the time of this recording, it is March 11th and corporate tax returns here in the US are due on the 15th, so I'm a little bit tearing my hair out, just trying to make sure everything is correct cause I like to keep as much of my money as is ethically possible to keep, as I said on our last episode. How about you, Leah?

Leah: Well, I am definitely feeling the pressure of tax season on our backs and recognizing that I do not excel at bookkeeping in any way, shape or form. This is not my gift, but I know you have brought on a guest today that that is their gift and I am so excited about that.

Annie: That is right. So since last fall I've been working with Joselyn Martinez. Joselyn started out as an accounting clerk in a manufacturing plant, and today she owns a bookkeeping business supporting small business, where she's committed to building financial success for the company she serves while also creating cost cutting measures that improve cashflow and create opportunities for growth, and we are all about opportunities for growth on this podcast. She has a Masters in Accounting and we are so delighted to welcome her to the Lactation Business Coaching Podcast. Hi Joselyn.

Joselyn: Hi Annie. Hi Leah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Leah: We are so excited to have you. In our pre-talk, I was always already scouting out how do I sign up? Get me whatever paper I have to sign. I need help for sure. So I think it would be really helpful to just get to know you a little bit better and know if people aren't really aware of what specifically a bookkeeper does, cause I think a lot of people know like, oh, an accountant, they help you get your taxes done the end of the year. They can help you figure out what type of business structure, some of those kinds of things, but specifically how is a bookkeeper different and I'd love to know how you got to be a bookkeeper because I know you have your Masters in Accounting, but how did that turn into bookkeeping? Can you shed a little light on these things?

Joselyn: I definitely can. I definitely can. I am a self-proclaimed numbers nerd here. A bookkeeper for all intents and purposes, is someone that keeps your books. Keeps those finances in order, deals with all the transactional pieces of your business so that you can, as I told Leah, you don't have to be pulling your hair out and you don't have to be putting it to the side and talking about dealing with it later. A bookkeeper comes in and alleviates that frustration, that pain that you feel that you don't really want to deal with and helps you understand everything along the way. I got my start quite some time ago, about 20 plus years ago. My son, my oldest is 23 so that's how I started. And like Annie said, I started as an accounting clerk for a manufacturing company, a really, really small company, and I worked my way up to be a controller, which was awesome. I learned all sorts of realms of accounting. However, the company got really large and it went from a small business to a corporate company. And as we all know, when you get that corporate feel, it doesn't exactly trend well for some people or it didn't for me. I like to have a hand in making a difference for the owner. The owner was someone I didn't know by the time I left to the company. So from there, I started my own company four years ago - Balance Financial Solutions - and I decided I wanted to work with small business owners. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help them understand their books. I wanted to be able to create that difference and that change for them.

Annie: That's awesome. I mean, it's definitely made a difference for me because I think I do a pretty good job of understanding my money and I always want to know where every penny is. And then when I started working with you and you were like, these are some reports in QuickBooks and I'm like, I have never looked at that report before. I don't know what it means. And you would ask me questions like why is this here? And I would be like, I have no idea. And so having that expert in there, like we always tell our clients and tell each other, you don't know what you don't know, so there's always a reason to reach out to that person who actually does know. That's why Leah and I have our monthly Deeper Dives where you can spend one month talking to somebody who knows a lot more about a topic than you do, or has a different take on private practice than you do. If you're interested in learning more about our Deeper Dives, you can go to our website at lactationbusinesscoaching.com. We just finished one with Nichelle Clark. That recording is already available. And next month we've got Rachel O'Brien, MA IBCLC from Boston. She's actually coming back for a second time by popular demand because she's just so fun, and she's actually how I found out about Joselyn. So that was a great referral from somebody whose business acumen I really admire. So Joselyn, I know what you do for clients so far in what we've been doing together, but it's only been a few months. Can you kind of give a big picture of what you typically do for your clients, and how that relationship grows and develops over the time that you work with them?

Joselyn: Absolutely. Typically, at the start - I think everybody kind of knows this - foundationally a bookkeeper will work with their clients and do the transactional piece of it that happens every single month. They'll make sure that those expenses are in the right places, the sales are in the right places. That's typical of most bookkeepers. That's what they do. That's what I do. That's how we start our relationship. I usually have quite a bit of conversation within the month as I was telling you for the first couple of months, just so I start to understand what the business is about. I want to understand my small business client. I want to understand what their dream is about. What are they doing to get there? What kind of expenses do you have? This helps me understand what your costs are. Are they needed? Are they real? What can I do for you? In the event that in the future you come to me and say I need to cut costs, where can I do that? So, what I do at the beginning, while it may seem more informational than anything else, it's actually helping me to understand where I can help you in the future. So a bookkeeper will do the transactional piece, the reconciliation piece every single month, your bank statements, credit card statements, all of that. And then typically some bookkeepers will go a step further. Because of my background where I have a Masters in Accounting and I've worked in corporate accounting; my knowledge goes a lot further than bookkeeping and I can help my clients go that much further if we work together on that scale.

Leah: So in that, can you describe, like for an example, you're getting to know a little bit more about the lactation private practice business. Can you give us an example of something that you could do from that advisory standpoint for a practice like ours the way we do business? What are some of the things that you might be able to guide us on or help us figure out that would kind of pertain to the way, now that you've worked with some lactation consultants, kind of know how we do business and some of the behind the scenes.

Joselyn: Absolutely. What I found between both of the lactation consultants that I've worked with is that you guys usually have multiple streams of income. And so it's very important that when you have... I encourage multiple streams of income, but I also encourage to understand whether those multiple streams are actually creating a profit. When you create multiple streams of income, it's all going to look like it's one, and then when you create all those expenses, it's all going to roll into one in QuickBooks, if you're not really well-versed in what you're looking at, so at the end of the day, you're looking at the bottom-line thinking, Oh, I'm making money. The reality is that you have to actually piece it all apart, and I know that that sounds like it's more work, but it's actually not. It's just making sure that every stream of income that you have, whether it be like this podcast, whether it'd be the services revenue, whether you're writing a book or speaking, all of those types of things have to go individually, and the expenses have to go towards them so that you know that you're actually creating a profit and you're not actually spinning your wheels on some of these multiple streams of income, I want to say.

Leah: That's so helpful to think about because I like .... that was very eye-opening because I definitely know Annie and I get like this too. We're like, Ooh, let's do that. Oh, that would be so much fun. And we're like, oh yeah, we could probably make some money, whatever. But we're like, but it sounds like so much fun. Let's just do it. And then we dump thousands of dollars into something because it just sounds like fun. And then we're like, oh wait. Are we making...? Yeah, you got to think about that when you're venturing into a new realm of income. Is it going to actually be positive for your bottom line? That's such an important thing to think about because our business can be so fluctuating in private practice, so we really love those more steady streams of income for sure. But that's such a good point and something I hadn't even really considered.

Annie: Along with that, like what Leah's saying, I also love that it ties into time management and productivity because I've certainly found myself in the place where I do these projects, you know, shiny objects syndrome, Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that, like Leah was saying, and then realizing that the number of hours that I'm spending on this project don't make sense with the amount of money that it's bringing in. And I've definitely realized, oh my gosh, I'm killing myself to do something that is costing me money. Why am I doing this? So that's part of getting that guidance to really actually see that in the numbers because I have a hard time seeing it in the numbers, and a lot of times I need somebody else to tell me that I should stop doing something.

Leah: Yeah. I need that person too, and it probably helps too that Joselyn can then present the evidence. Here's the evidence, cause if somebody just says you really shouldn't be doing that, you're probably not making any money, I'm probably not going to listen to them. But if they're like, here's the evidence in front of you. Is this really worth you paying to do this or something like that, that's such a good point for sure. And I think, you know, Joselyn, I'm sure that for every industry that you work with some very different things that you're seeing could be helpful, but is there anything that you do that somebody might not even know that bookkeepers can do, or are doing that people just don't even realize is happening behind the scenes?

Joselyn: I think that the biggest thing is what you alluded to earlier before was that I go that one step further. I take that monthly call and I help explain what it is that you're looking at. In some ways I'm forcing you to look at those reports. I'm forcing you to understand something that you're like, ah, yeah, but many bookkeepers do that. Our trade and our background, our education or our experience goes much further than just transactional. We can help you understand those reports. We can help you build and grow. I usually poke holes, like for example when I was sitting with Annie, it was like, why do you do that? Where does that come from? How can we make that better? Let's just make this process a little easier. And those are the thoughts that are going through my head when I'm trying to get more information, and that all comes from that call that I have with each one of my clients once a month. I set aside an hour, it could be a 10-minute call because we got everything on point, or it could be the whole hour and I'm helping you understand and you're asking me questions and we're moving forward. I think a lot of people don't see that it goes beyond just the, Oh, you reconciled my bank statement. We're ready to go to the next month.

Leah: That sounds both awesome and terrifying because as I was telling Joselyn before, my bookkeeping strategy is try not to look at it for as long as possible with lots of prayers involved that everything is probably just fine, and then having a 48 hour pull your hair out festival of, oh my gosh, why didn't I look at this sooner? Yeah so I'm getting the sense that maybe that's not the best strategy. And beyond that, there's probably a much better, less stressful it sounds like way to approach bookkeeping. I think for small business owners, especially those that are venturing into this new, it might seem like is that even an expense that would be worth it. Is there anything that you can speak to that like if somebody new and they're like, no, I already am paying for my EHR system and my secure messaging system and I'm having all these expenses. When does it make sense to bring in the expense of a bookkeeper? What would you say to that, because I can hear a lot of people and me too thinking, yeah well, it's nice to have somebody to talk about your money with and can look at all these things and keep it all straight but is that a justifiable expense? What would be your response to that as you guide a newer business owner?

Joselyn: My biggest thing is what I say is when you buy a house, you have to buy insurance so you can't have one without the other. Your books, your finances are one of the pillars of your business so if you don't have books and you don't have finances, you don't have the cash, your business does not exist. Finance is one of the main causes of businesses failing. Not staying on top of them, not having enough cashflow, so with all of that information, I could say you need someone when you first start your business. Do you need someone every single month when you first start your business? No. It's the reason why I have different solutions for different clients. Some are really, really small and they're starting out, so I only do the books at once a quarter. It's easier to do them. Some are larger like Annie and I do them every single month and some are even larger than that and it requires a lot more. So, every business is different, but do you need someone right away? For me, yes because you don't buy the house without the insurance, so you don't start the business without having your books in order.

Leah: That's such a good point. Thank you. From the mouth of a number’s nerd, it needs to happen. You said it.

Joselyn: I did!

Leah: We need to pay attention to it, for sure.

Annie: It just makes so much sense because when you get to this time of year and you have to do your taxes and they're asking you all kinds of questions and you're like, I don't know the answer to them. What I'm learning from Joselyn as my bookkeeper is that there actually are answers to these questions. I just don't know how to create them, and I need somebody who can, because the better my books are, the less I'm going to pay on taxes. I don't want to miss anything. I don't want anybody else to have any money that's supposed to be mine. And when I think about it that way, and I think about the mistakes that I could make, the costly errors that I could make, that I have made through doing it myself, the money that I've let slip through my fingers, because I thought I could do this myself. It's never too early to start. I really agree with that. And then finding the right fit for you and finding something that you can afford can really be an investment to save you in the long-term. We talk a lot about money stuff in our monthly Deeper Dives into Private Practice. I know I talked about them earlier in the episode, but we do also have we've got some podcast episodes about it. Not just the one we did last week, but earlier in our archive. We would love for you to just explore past content. And if you like it, consider supporting us. Help us keep doing this podcast so that Joselyn doesn't come to me and say, Annie, why are you putting so much of your time and money into this podcast because it doesn't really seem to make sense? And then I would be like, you will take this podcast from me out of my dead hands. I will never give up this podcast because I love it, but it has to make sense from a business perspective.

Leah: It definitely has expenses that are involved, for sure It's really important to us that we get to continue this with you, and it's important to our bookkeeper too.

Joselyn: Yes.

Annie: Well, Joselyn, this has been so fun to talk to you. I think we have our monthly call tomorrow, which I think hopefully will be just as much fun, but I'm okay if it's not. I can hear hard things. It's all good, but we really appreciate you taking the time to be on our podcast. If you want to learn more about Joselyn and her bookkeeping services, you can visit her website https://www.balancefinancial.solutions and we're going to put that link in the show notes so you can check her out and you can find her on Facebook too at Balance Financial Consulting. So Joselyn, thank you.

Leah: Yes, thank you so much Joselyn. We're so happy to have you.

Joselyn: Thank you so much for having me. It was a lot of fun. It was exciting. Always talking about what I do is a lot of fun. I know people are going to be like numbers? Really? But it is my passion, but definitely, thank you for having me.

Annie: Well until next time. Bye, Leah.

Leah: Bye, Annie.