EP314: Michael Eckstein - Understanding The Value Of Having A Bookkeeping Niche

Michael Palmer: when you're building your own business and your own practice, your firm, whatever you call it, at the end of the day, even though you look to other people for advice, you will sometimes disagree with them and have to kind of plot your own course. And for me, in the very beginning of my practice, that was a very big aha moment. 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'm your host, Michael Palmer, and today Today's show is going to be a great one. Our guest is an award-winning accountant and business advisor who works with marketing agencies, consultants, and freelancers. Michael Eckstein, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to have you and looking forward to this conversation. And I would like to start off with helping our listener understand a little bit more about you and your career journey leading up to this point. Yeah, okay. So I guess I have the typical journey— went to college, got an accounting degree, came out, did tax prep for a while, right? And at a certain point, like everyone, I kind of figured, let me go out on my own, start picking up my own clients. And at first I did mainly tax prep, and as time has gone on, I've shifted more towards the consulting and accounting for marketing agencies side of things. Very cool, very cool. So what had you— what was the initial point that you decided to do this on your own?

For me, it's a little bit, I guess, of an unusual story where I was working for my dad at the time, right? And his accounting practice had hit critical mass, and he was just like, I'm not interested in taking more clients. And he was like, if you want to take more clients, take them on your own, but I don't want to be involved. And I was like, all right, that's fair. And, uh, honestly, like, back then it's just started as a little bit of an experiment, and it kind of grew and grew, and here I am on this podcast. Beautiful, beautiful. And so along the way, uh, in starting your own business, were there any obstacles? Did it just sort of flow? In a way, it flowed. I mean, it's the same obstacle everyone kind of faces, the 'you