EP461: Lou Clarke - Money, Mindset & Mastery: Unlocking Business Success

Lou Clarke (February 25, 2025): I'm charging like $15 an hour and all proud and excited. And then I get these invoices coming through and I'd see what they would charge. And I would divide that amount by like my hours and go, they're charging me $80 an hour. Wow. And I'm doing all the work. Yeah. Well, this isn't how this is supposed to go. You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com, the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back. Welcome back to the Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a fun one. Our guest is the president of the CFO Boutique, Lou Clark. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. This is going to be fun. Absolutely. And, you know, I've heard about you and Lisa talks about you often, Lisa Campbell. And, you know, your, your website's very like, I don't know, beyond this world, big, big. And, and, and so I didn't— I was like, looking forward to meeting you because it's just, yeah, you've got so much to share with us, I'm sure, today. Absolutely. And I'm like, I'm excited. That's why I said it was going to be fun because I always look forward to interesting stories. And before we even got started, I could tell this was going to be one of those podcasts. So before I'm giving it all away, of course, let's get into learning about you. Where did it all start? How did you end up doing what you're doing today?

Ad Read: Oh goodness. Okay. So I'm third generation something finance. Um, my grandmother was an accountant/bookkeeper. My, uh, parent was a bookkeeper/accountant. So you come out, you go into high school and they're like, what do you want to be? You know, you're 15 years old. You're sitting in grade 10. We do it to our kids now. Okay. It's time to choose grade 10. What are you going to be? And I was like, I don't know. I'm good at math. It runs throughout my, it runs through my veins. Let's go into bookkeeping. And that's literally how I started. And, um, my, uh, parent at the time, they worked at an accounting firm. And so they were saying, why don't you come in and run tax season with us? So at 15 years old, I first came into my first tax season and my job was to file and photocopy paperwork. And