EP251: Kerri Bouffard - Part 1 - How To Overcome Obstacles When Starting Your Bookkeeping Business

Michael Palmer: It's been quite a journey. It was something I'd never really thought about, but working in the camping industry, it taught me a lot about collaboration and education and more working together than competition, that you could achieve more things together than you could kind of beat out other businesses. 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 Welcome to the Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today we have a special two-part episode series with Carrie Bouffard, who is the owner of Advantage Bookkeeping and a Xero expert. If you want to know a thing or two about Xero and the benefits of having systems in your business, here's part one of our chat. Carrie Bouffard, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Michael. Happy to be here. It's great to have you. I'm excited to hear about your journey and share with our listeners where you've been, where you are, and where you're going. So, Carrie, before we get into all of that, tell us a little bit about you and your career journey leading up to this point.

Kerri Bouffard: Well, it hasn't been without its challenges, that's for sure. I originally started out at a relatively young age working for— as the business manager for a children's summer camp, and that's where I really got my start with bookkeeping. I was kind of required to take care of the office. It was a family-run business and it was wonderful people, and we would move our entire office up to camp, which was out by Algonquin Park. So I really had the best of both worlds, and I worked there for 12 years, and I had never even thought about, you know, transitioning into being a entrepreneur or starting my own business. And it was when the owner of the camp decided, okay, it's time for me to retire. I've built this wonderful thing, now I'm gonna relax a little bit. And he said, Carrie, you know what, you are really good at bookkeeping. This is what you need to do. You need to open your own business and I will be your first client. And that is exactly what I did. And that was back in 2003, and that was when Advantage Bookkeeping got started. Wow. So it's, it's been quite a