 Welcome back to Geeks are sexy. I am Jason Ladoot taken over from Michelle Davis on the fourth Thursday of the month We're here with Sarah binger She's our next guest from dream builder bookkeeper and Sarah's mission is to help small and medium-sized business owners Make the world a better place for their customers loved ones themselves by offering cloud-based Digital bookkeeping services, but she's also a money coach who helps you figure out how your financial decisions impact your business Your family and those that you care about so it's not just give me your receipts And I'll do your bookkeeping. It's how can we make you successful? How can we help you understand that the how to make the choices that are meet your priorities with your business? Your family your friends and your loved ones, so Welcome Sarah. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it It's a pleasure. So you're relatively new to Las Vegas. Maybe eight months now over a year Yeah goes by so fast. So how did you come to be here in Vegas? And how did you get involved with doing this kind of bookkeeping? Funny story, so I actually had a job with a non-profit doing some marketing with them and that Did not pan out the way I wanted it to and so I called up a college roommate of mine from Thousand years ago and said hey, this is your chance to tell me I can't live with you if I show up at your doorstep, which I did And so I took about three months to road trip out here Just give myself some time in space and came out and now I'm in Vegas hit the ground running and Really like it Vegas is great on me. Yeah, great We had a couple really cold days a couple days ago, but today is like perfect January Vegas weather This is like sit by the pool and call all your friends like I call my friends were back in Boston And like what do you do? What are you doing? I'm sitting by the pool and they grumble something about shoveling snow when they hate me and Then next year I do it all over again So so what are some of the standard bookkeeping services you offer and what are the common things you're helping business owners with? so What I tend to do on a monthly basis is reconcile the books so look at their bank statements look at their credit card statements I'm helping to make sure that everything is going into the right buckets or accounts and Making sure that things are compliant But also in an organized fashion so that they can take a look at their finances Understand where they are as a business and know where to go and how to grow from from where they are from a financial standpoint So that's what I like to do one of the things that kind of differentiates me from a lot of bookkeepers Is that I do sit down with my clients once a month whether that's through a video call or phone call or in person and Actually say hey here are your financial reports. Let's talk about them What do you understand? What don't you understand with questions and then hey, what are your business goals? Where do you want to go from here cool? Yeah, cuz financial statements financial reports can be very Counter-intuitive if you if you aren't really trained lines under Numbers, but if you're not trained to understand what certain things mean it can be really counterintuitive, right? So what are some of those things with those financial statements? How do you help people interpret those what or put another way? What are some other common things you find with business owners that you need to educate them on so sometimes I see things where Because I have a kind of a coaching background actually I'm a certified life coach as well So one of the things that I like to do is say hey you've got a lot of expenses in this area Mm-hmm is that normal for your industry or sometimes? I know if it's normal for the industry and I can say maybe we should take a look at this Maybe there's ways that you can pair back save a little bit of money There's other things that I can do look at the income and say hey this Avenue of income is a great Avenue stream for you Why don't we focus more on that we as if you know, I like to be We is and the I'm gonna have the idea and you're gonna go do the work Yeah, that it's your business so you can take ownership of that as you wish and you know take some of those ideas and It basically gives you a playground to say hey now It's the time for me to to vision out because most of the time We're just so stuck in the moment by moment Oh gosh I got to do this email and I got to put this presentation together and I got to fix this person's thing or whatever it is that you do As a business and you we don't take the time to actually look at how do I want to? How do I want to grow my business? Who do I want to be in my business? Yeah, that that all requires really strategic thinking and and one strategic thinking is a skill that needs to be developed over time It's not something most people Start their business income pre-programmed with unless they're very fortunate, but it's also learning it Developing that strategy looking at your numbers and using your numbers to inform that strategy And that's that's really where it sounds like you're helping people with is well I've got some ideas on how you can adjust your strategy or even develop one because I see the same thing a lot of business owners getting to the This is the day-to-day. I'm out there. I'm doing sales Delivering product. I'm doing customer service. I'm doing all the things that are very important that business owners and businesses have to do Yeah, but it's hard to grow without some strategic thought about what can I do better or different? Definitely in order to make things in order to make things change. Yeah, absolutely and I think that One of the things that I like to do is is the bookkeeping has a very Concrete side to it, you know, here's the number here's the street receipt put it together all of that But then there's the coaching side that I like to marry the two together to say Here's the finances, but where's your vision and how can we put the two together now? When when people come to you to be a client do they come to you for the coaching or is that something they come to? Appreciate later on. That's they come to appreciate that later on Primarily and first and foremost a bookkeeper, but because I have this other background I wanted to bring that in and have a side to my business that goes with that. I I'm not a coach I am not a person who is going to tell you what to do and you do a B and C I am someone who's going to give you questions suggestions and ideas And then you can take take the bull by the horns and do what you wish with it as someone who does coaching myself. How How do you? I'm trying to think how to phrase this without offending the entire audience How do you can just to him? How do you convince? Your your clients aren't coming to you for the extra Are they receptive to that or does that you know, how do you how do you get them over saying look? I just want to have a conversation, right? How do you how do you get them to appreciate that conversation? well I think that humans in general and in our society we so often don't get the opportunity to be heard and That's one thing that I hear a lot from my customer my clients as well as even people who don't eventually hire me You know, hey, that it's they say hey you listened you heard me. It was like I was important and That's just not something that's real common in today's society Anywhere and so I think that when I say hey, yeah, you want a bookkeeper great Let's talk and then I sit down with you and I actually say well Where do you want to go with your business? Tell me about you know your vision for this or tell me where you want to go Then hey, then they're like sold on that idea and I can move in that direction But when we first start out, yeah It's a lot more of the basic bookkeeping because a I got to learn your business be you got to get to trust me too Yeah, I think that's great advice that that advice about listening and asking those questions of where do you want to take your business? I think that's great advice no matter what your business is if you're doing B2B sales You know unless your product is really cut and dried and everybody wants it right now If you're providing a service, that's probably a really great place to start no matter What your business is is where do you where do you my client want to take your business? So now you also help people? Business owners can often be really good at the business side of finance Yeah, they aren't always great on the personal side of finance So tell us a little about that and how you help so I am working through a certification process right now called the money guide And it is kind of like a money coach. I think that might actually be trademarked already so I call money guide and It is a service that It's a coaching service Oh, and it's a program that you will can go through a 90-day program that clients can go through who it's geared towards business-oriented people business owners It doesn't have to be just that but really it's to take take Control of your personal finances because there's a lot of people and this is something I hear a story I heard from a CPA Came out of college with an accounting degree got the CPA exam ace the whole thing ended up half a million dollars in debt and He was like I know better than this but yet he needed that personal guide to help him through the process to get him out of debt and Or to get your expenses under control or to even look hey, how do I spend my money? What is my relationship with money and that's kind of what the money guide is okay cool So it sounds like you help people well one we could do we could do a whole couple of hours talk on people's relationship with money Absolutely the different kinds of relationships that are out there with money But just that how do you know help people set their priorities, right? What's important if being had if being half a million dollars in debt isn't isn't some of the bothers you that's great but if it's a priority to get that debt down there's ways that you can help that can be so stressful to people and That we know that that just degrades well-being and healthy relationships with other people and so hey if we can help with that Why not absolutely so who are you looking to connect with in 2019? Good question Jason. I Absolutely would love to connect a this is a little bit of a surprise, but non-profit organizations They also need accounting and bookkeeping just as well Yeah, absolutely. I would love to work with nonprofits, but again just small and medium-sized business owners people who are looking to Give value back to the community. They don't have to be nonprofits But you know people who are looking to make the world a better place Then also who see the value of taking control of their finances personally Professionally and looking forward to seeing that value grow. Okay, so all you evil businesses you need not apply But if you're not an evil business and you're looking for accounting bookkeeping or money help Talk to Sarah and how can our audience connect with you if they're not evil if you're not evil connect with me Or if you just want to recover from being evil What's the best way to connect with me? You can go to my website. It's a pretty good one dreambuilder bookkeeper calm Can you should I give my phone number? Can I give that out? You can do whatever you want This is the internet. Hey, this is the internet My phone number is on the website anyways five four one five two five zero three eight zero or there's a connect form through The website as well dreambuilder bookkeeper calm where you build the dream and I'll keep the books Oh good tagline. So all right. Well, thank you for being here today Sarah We're gonna have you back in just a little bit for our panel discussion and all of you Thank you for being here stick with us. We have Sean Willis coming up next from 5 a.m. Global stay here