EP284: Mark Wickersham - How An Entrepreneurial Mindset Can Change Your Bookkeeping Business For The Better

Michael Palmer: I once heard someone say a really interesting phrase, which was, "You cannot cut your way to greatness." And what they meant is that you can't build a successful, profitable business by just cutting costs. And one of the things that we need to understand better is the difference between a cost that is just a cost and a cost that's an investment. 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 great one. Our returning guest always provides amazing value every time he joins me. He's a value pricing expert, chartered accountant, public speaker, author of various books, and the founder of the Profitable Bookkeeping Conference. Mark Wickersham, welcome back to the show. Well, thank you, Michael. It's great to be back on the show. I really enjoy this one. Yes, absolutely love having you. So, you know, we're not going to get into tell us about you because I think our whole listenership already knows you so well and they absolutely love you. And, uh, and so we're going to get right into it. So every bookkeeping business owner listening wants to know how they can gain more profit, I'm sure. What, what actually drives profit?

Mark Wickersham: Well, that's it. Yeah, that's a great question, Michael, because I think every business, every business, not just bookkeeping businesses, they want to make more money, they want to make more profit. And, and the question is, well, how do you do that? And the simple answer is, is you can't manage profit because profit is really just the end result. It's what we have to understand in business is what's the business model, what, what are the things that drive profit, because we can— when we can unpick that and understand it, then we can work on, on the things that, that then will result in higher profit. So if we take it to a really simplistic level, and if we think about a set of financial statements, then, then profit is arrived at by taking sales minus costs. So at a very simplistic level, the two things that drive profit are sales and cost. If we want to make more money, more profit,