EP351: Shannon Lavender - How To Design The Bookkeeping Business You Want

Michael Palmer: There's so many shiny things out there in the internet, you know, webinars to do this, or, you know, I can help you get, you know, 6 figures. But at the end of the day, if it's not the life you want, why go after it? Go after the life you really want and the business you really want. Design it the way that you believe will make you the happiest. 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's show is going to be a fun one. Our guest is a small business owner, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and Pure Bookkeeping licensee who has 20 years of accounting experience. Shannon Lavender, welcome to the show. Hi there, thanks for having me. It's great to have you, and yeah, I'm looking forward to getting into this conversation with you about your business journey and where things have led. But before we get into all of that, please tell us a little bit about you and your career journey leading up to this point where you're doing what you're doing today.

Shannon Lavender (Mar 14): Okay. Well, I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I started working doing accounts receivable and payroll like 25 years ago, and I worked in basically in the real estate development industry for many years. And then I was doing this certified general accounting program, working on that. And then I moved from real estate development into investment industry, which is highly regulatory, and that became very challenging and sort of burnt me out. So about 2015, I was looking to change things up and do different things with my life. And I started learning about cloud bookkeeping, which was exciting, and working remotely, and it kind of just naturally fell into possibly having a bookkeeping business. And then a couple years ago, a bookkeeper who was retiring reached out and asked if I would take over her clients. And so I basically did that, and now I'm just sort of revamping her systems and modernizing things and growing my business right now. Wow, very cool, very cool. And what's it— and what's it like? What's it been like taking over that company? The transition went really