EP280: Janet Mercredi - Overcoming Your Fears By Planning For Success

Michael Palmer: I said, "We as bookkeepers, we are the shields from our clients between the clients and the government, between the CRA and the IRS." I said, "We are their Captain America because if we did not do the work that we do, they would be, could be sometimes in trouble with those governments." And I said, "So we are their shield and we are their protectors." And I fully believe that and the work that we do is so much more than just entering receipts. 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 to the Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a fantastic one. Our guest is the CEO of JKM Strategies Inc. She's also a Pure Bookkeeping licensee, and she is a member of the Accelerate to Advisor team, which is super exciting. Janet McCurdy, welcome to the show. Thank you, Michael. This is going to be fun. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Yes, absolutely. I absolutely love having an opportunity to delve into the business journey of bookkeepers and to hear where you've been, where you are, where you're going. So let's maybe kick it off and tell us a little bit about your career journey leading up to this point.

Janet Mercredi: So as a— I became a bookkeeper about 7 years ago, and it was kind of by fluke. My brother was running a DJ company at the time, and he had absolutely no idea what numbers were, how to record anything. And so he just asked me, One day he's like, do you want to do my books? And I'm like, okay, I can learn to do books. So it kind of from there spiraled into owning my own bookkeeping business because I realized that going through the processes and procedures of doing the books and being a bookkeeper really satisfied my personality of the practical and the doing the routine for for him. And so then from there, I realized that I kind of developed a passion for helping him by doing books. And I'm like, I think I can do this for other people. So I went— I started small, just like a lot of bookkeepers do, you know, you're working full time. And I started this kind of as a side hustle. And within a couple of years, it grew from there. And I decided to go