Ben Robinson, CPA: How to Make 7-Figures Selling Bookkeeping eCourses

Welcome to the Scaling Success Stories series!

If you’re new to this series, I ask online entrepreneurs questions regarding growing and scaling their business.

This is the series description:

You can get your fill of online business tips by reading the other interviews on the Scaling Success Stories page.

Interview with Ben Robinson from Bookkeeper Business Launch

It was my pleasure interviewing Ben Robinson from Bookkeeper Launch, a popular bookkeeping education program that has expanded with the podcast  I Love Bookkeeeping. Ben teaches everyday people how to become 21st-century bookkeepers and grow their online businesses. A former CPA, he closed his firms in 2014 to continue to do (in addition to accounting) what he had done in that position — train bookkeepers.

Check out what Ben had to say to my questions about growing his business!

1. Why did you start an online business and how does your passion still drive your business’ growth today?

In 2014, I sold my CPA firm.

I’d owned my own CPA firms for about 14 years, and I didn’t want to go back into that because I had been doing it for 14 years on my own and probably another five before that. So, it was time for a change.

One of the big things that we did in our CPA firm is that we did bookkeeping.

I trained at the time about 120 bookkeepers over the course of my career on how to do bookkeeping services and how to do them right. I didn’t plan on doing anything with bookkeeping or accounting or anything related to that when I first sold my firm, but my friend Kelly, she had lost her job.

She was a stay-at-home mom of three boys that had a good virtual job. She lost that job, and she was worried that she was going to have to go back to work.

I said, “No, you’re not going to have to go back to work in a real office type environment. Let’s start you a bookkeeping business.”

That kind of formed a genesis of Bookkeeper Launch.

It was all by necessity because it was something that she needed.

About a month into helping her, I was like…

“Hmm. I wonder if other people would enjoy having a virtual bookkeeping business.”

At this point, in early 2015, technology was just coming on that would allow people to do bookkeeping and do it virtually. It would kind of become more mainstream than the rogue type of stuff.

And the rest is history.

Since then, we have trained over 8,400 people how to start a bookkeeping business all because Kelly had lost her job.

My passion really now is seeing results  — the results that our students get. Going inside of our Facebook group and reading emails and having personal relationships and phone calls with people who are starting to live the life that they have dreamed up is amazing.

What we call the ‘and’ lifestyle around here, a life where you can have family, you can have finances, and you can have freedom and you never have to choose between all of them.

So, every day I get up.

One of my favorite things to do is to go into the Facebook group and look at the wins, look at how people are getting clients, how they’re starting to do crazy things for their family as a result of them starting a business.

Obviously, we all have a profit motive. We’re in business to make money.

But, more than that or as important as that is just seeing results, and more than just monetary results, seeing people really come outside their shell and realize that…

“Hey, I’m a pretty badass person.”

Growing a business is so much more than just growing a business — you’re growing personally as well.

That’s my passion. That’s what fuels me every day.

2. At what point did you realize that your business was “taking off” and that you could really make money from it?

At first, I was very introspective.

We started very slow.

I started with a pilot class in May of 2015 and 30 people were in it.

That’s what I wanted to take and I was focused on just delivering a great product.

That very first one was totally awful when it comes to looking at the technology, looking at the way we delivered it, and where we’ve come in the last four years, it’s amazing.

To realize where we’re taking off, I didn’t stop to smell the roses and think.

I had my nose down, and I think it was probably two years into it and just seeing the scope and the number of people who had gone through and the number of people that were getting results.

I was like…

“Okay. Wow. This is …”

Because when you first launch it, you are just excited to sell.

But, then you’re also realizing,

“Hey, to continue this, people have to get results.”

Somewhere along the path, I don’t know the exact date, but probably about two years in, we started to see people getting all of these results.

That’s where I was realizing that I had ‘made it’.

Although I don’t know where it is because I’m always striving for more.

So thoughts and emotions are how blessed I am to have a great team, to have a great product, and to have great students who are really out to do more than just start a business.

They’re out to change their lives, as we mentioned earlier.

3.  At what point did you realize you were living the life you wanted to?

That’s kind of an odd question for me because I’ve always felt like whatever life that you’re living is the one that you’re supposed to be living at that time.

Kind of zen.

But, at the same time, there was no point. I’ve always just been somebody that said…

“Hey, what’s happening is happening. I want to create the best life.”

I’ve been focused on my family, my kids for a long time, and so for me, I’ve always kind of lived the life that I wanted to.

It’s not been the greatest of circumstances, but it’s been what it is. And, it’s always been growing. So, my favorite day is today. I’m a little bit different on that one.

4. One of the biggest fears of outsourcing is trusting the people you hire to run your business the way you would. How did you overcome this and where did you find the right freelancers and employees to help you grow your business?

I challenge this. I don’t know.

I don’t have a fear of trusting people when outsourcing.

I’m the type of person that I trust you and you have to prove otherwise because I believe we attract what we are and who we are.

So, if I have fear, that’s what I’m going to attract, the very thing I fear is going to happen to me.

For me, it wasn’t hard.

I started, though, with the aforementioned Kelly. She was growing her business, and at one point, I was getting too busy.

Probably about six months in, I was like…

“Kelly, you got to help me because I can’t do all of this anymore. I can’t answer emails, can’t record videos. I can’t do support and build a website.”

At first, I did everything.

So, I went with somebody that was close to me. I’d hired people a lot of times. I have a good trusting feeling for people.

Typically, trusting my gut has served me very well, and the times I’ve made mistakes, there were warning signs looking back on it.

If you fear trusting people, that’s a bigger problem than running your business.

You got to get over that.

Obviously, we have accountability, we have safeguards, and we have all these different things that we place in our business.

But, if you have a phobia of trusting people, then you need to stay a one-person shop. I started small. I started with offboarding certain tasks to Kelly and more and more and more.

And over time, it built up to what it is today, where she is now the Chief Operating Officer of our company.

5. A common myth is that as you grow and scale your business, you have to sell your soul to make money, especially when you venture into paid advertising. How do you debunk this myth in your business?

I don’t know if I totally debunk it because at first, you got to work your ass off.

I mean, anybody who tells you you can build a business on five hours a week and no money is a damn fool.

You’ve got to bust your tail to build a business.

It’s a short-term sacrifice for a lifetime of benefit.

But, what you need to do is to realize that everything you’re doing now is going to yield results in the future. It’s like a newborn.

Business is a lot like that.

At the very beginning, you have to care for it night and day. But as that child gets older, as your business progresses and matures the way that it should, you can ease off of that. But, it takes a heck of a lot of momentum at first for you to build up this business.

Long-term, if you’re trying to build what we talked about earlier, that ‘and’ lifestyle, you should build your business around your life and not your life around your business.

The way to do that is to be intentional and to plan out your life first and make your business fit into it rather than what most business owners do is that they just leave the leftovers to life and living that.

That’s not the way to do it. So, it’s all about intentionality there.

6. Why do you think most people fail to grow their businesses and what advice would you offer them to keep pushing, despite all the setbacks?

I could elaborate on this for a long time.

Number one: I think that people misjudge how much work it takes to start a business.

Just like we all when we had children misjudged how much work they were. We saw other people and we heard them. We’re like…

“Ah, whatever. It’s not going to be for me.”

It is going to be for you. It takes a heck of a lot of work to start your business. So, number one is underestimating that and getting overwhelmed because they were ready for it.

Number two: I believe it’s because they don’t have a product that the market wants.

We may have a product the market needs, but the market doesn’t care.

You’ve got to give people what they want in order to deliver what they need.

Instead of going from a supply side saying…

“Hey, I’m going to sell widgets.”

First thing you’ve got to do is figure out what is the market asking for.

Is it…

• Widgets?
• Toothbrushes?
• Bookkeeping services?

We got to approach it from a consumer or a demand angle instead of approaching it from a supply one.

Number three: I would say they’re not capitalizing.

They don’t have enough money. They think that they can start it on a shoestring budget, which you can but if you don’t have a little bit of money and dependent on your situation.

If you’re trying to do this on top of a job, it’s going to take a lot of time and commitment. But I would just say number three would be undercapitalization and not having enough money.

7. How important has niching down been (no matter how hard it hurts) to your business’ growth and profitability?

It’s probably one of the big levers that you can pull in a business.

There are certain things that you can do that give you incremental growth, incremental improvement, and efficiency, but picking a niche is all about effectiveness and it’s a huge lever.

For example, we’ve helped people start bookkeeping businesses and tax businesses.

If we were just trying to help people to start businesses, we probably would not have this success that we have today.

One of the things that we encourage our students to do, regardless of what business vein that they’re in, is to pick a niche.

Now, a niche doesn’t just have to be an industry. It could also be demographics. It can be the type of person. There’s a whole host of things. The world needs people who are specialized in certain areas.

There’s this thing that you should be a well-rounded individual, which is a bunch of crap, especially when it comes to running your business. Instead of going wide and trying to serve tons of markets and tons of people, if you focus on a niche, it’s like digging down.

You’re going to find more and more treasure the farther down that you go. I think it’s critically important to have a niche.

8. What do you attribute your success to and how do you explain it? Do you think the same strategies will help you reach your next monetization goals? Why or why not?

Number one: Have a starving audience. 

I believe Gary Halbert was asked one time if I had a hamburger stand, what would I want? The best meat, the best buns, the quickest service.

And, the answer is no, you would want a starving audience.

That’s first and foremost what we have, and kind of going back to don’t approach it from what the market needs, what they want. I listen to that and I knew that. That right there was a big thing. Just so there’s a lot of room for error there.

Number two: Overdelivering and underselling.

Giving people a lot more than they bargained for, regardless if they’re paying you a dollar or $10,000…

Just give them a heck of a lot more than they bargained for.

Number three: One of the biggest things for us or, actually, the biggest thing for us was developing a team.

Finding people who compliment my weaknesses is important because the older I get, the more I realize that I had weaknesses all along. But, finding others who compliment that and trusting them and allowing them to play to their strengths is crucial.

All those things together have been a recipe for success for us.

Do I think the same strategies will help me to reach the next monetization goals?

Yeah, absolutely.

We continue to serve the market and listen to our market.

Most of our new ideas come from our existing students and our existing customers. We’ll always keep a pulse on that. If we don’t, then we’re going to be out of business very damn quick.

So yeah, I believe the same thing. It’s blocking and tackling. The best football teams in the world are best at blocking and the best at tackling. They’ll have the best trick plays.

We believe the same thing.

9. To scale, you really need to have a systemized business. What steps have you taken to build those systems and how do you optimize them?

First, I’ll just make an observation.

This is a shooted question.

So this means whoever’s asking it is gearing me towards the answer that they want. I’m onto you, Robert Cialdini, if this is you asking this question.

But, I agree.

You do need to have systems and processes built into your business.

It’s one of the levers, not as much as a niche, but it’s right up there.

What steps have you take to build those systems and how do you optimize them?

To be honest, I hate doing that sort of thing even though I know that it needs to be done.

That’s an initiative that we’ve been intentional about lately is creating these systems and documenting them. And, not only just documenting them but understanding how we can improve them.

How do we go back and make sure that they’re current and make sure that we’re not just getting stuck in the…

“Hey, we’re doing this the same ole way because that’s the same ole way we’ve always been doing it.”

So to optimize them, again, it’s about being intentional.

It’s about every single system or process having an owner, and that owner not being me for most of them.

There’s a few that I am the owner of, but somebody who is accountable and responsible for each of those systems, for making sure that they’re documented, that they’re being worked and that they’re being improved and reviewed with frequency.

10.  If you could speak face-to-face with yourself when you first started your business, what pearls of wisdom would you impart?

The biggest one would probably be…

“Haters are going to hate.”

I’m a people pleaser. I used to be like a real people pleaser. I still want to please people, but I don’t believe I’m a pleaser anymore.

At first, I think I would get shocked by people — nuts, trolls, whatever on the internet — that would say or scam or something like that. Which I know to be bullshit, and everybody who has half a brain knows to be as well.

Having thick skin, being able to take those blows, and realizing that they’re just blowhards that are saying it would be the biggest thing that I would say.

I’ve gotten over it.

Not that it doesn’t sting a little bit when we get those with rare exception. But there are nuts out there. It’s easy for somebody to be a big person behind an email or a post.

But that’s kind of the biggest thing I’d tell myself.

So pearls of wisdom? You got to have thick skin. You got to realize that not everybody’s going to like you. You try your best to do your best and to offer up the best, as we mentioned earlier.

But some people just have tight underwear and aren’t very nice.

About Ben Robinson

Ben Robinson is the founder and chief teacher of Bookkeeper Launch and the podcast, I Love Bookkeeping. We help people start and grow successful bookkeeping businesses. In my capacity as teacher and leader of students, I am rewarded every day through success stories of people — who had no previous experience with bookkeeping — who have launched prosperous businesses from their own home or anywhere else they choose to conduct business.

Conclusion

Thanks for participating in my series, Ben!

As you can tell, it’s NOT EASY growing and scaling an online business, but there are some things you can do to aid you in the process.

Inspired by Ben?

Now, it’s your turn!

I assembled the Scaling Blueprint to show you how to…

• Outsource Effectively
• Systemize Your Business
• Shatter Your Revenue Goals

After working with six-figure and seven-figure clients, I know the difference between how they function.

Let me help you start scaling successfully.

Get My FREE Blueprint!

Cheers to future success!