How This Bookkeeper Added $84,000 ARR In 30 Days

I opened my calendar up from basically 8 to 7, and. And I mean, if I was just slammed book, which is a great problem to have problem. Nonetheless, you gave me a lot of these tools that I didn't know about or that I would have had to learn about. What you kind of showed me was just allowed me to get over the hurdle of what I would have to look up and research on my own. But the other big thing that was really, really good for me is it was really helpful to have you guys help write the ad scripting and the copy and because, man, I'm just. I'm just not good at that. You are paying a lot of money for that time it takes for you to learn to do it yourself and to have the professionals that already know how to do it and know how to write the ads, know how to know how the funnels work and the split test and all that stuff. Just having them do it is just the greatest thing ever. Yeah. I'm Brock Hartzler, and I own Promover Accounting.

So what was it that made you realize that you needed to do something different with your marketing?

Yeah, you know, I knew that we had a awesome product, and I knew that we had great retention. Our customers liked us. We just weren't getting to people fast enough, you know, and it was my own issue. You know, I didn't know how to run ads. I didn't know how to. I didn't know how to get out there in front of our potential clients. Right. That was. That was my downfall.

And so, like, what was your. What was your growth plan before we started working together?

Repeat referral. Right. Um, I was focused on repeat referral and, and which. Which was great, but it's just a. It's a great way to grow. It's just a slow way to grow. And I knew that we had the team and the ability to really scale it in the product, to be able to scale it quick. Yeah.

And for. For context, just tell. Tell us a little bit about what your offer is and how. How it works.

Yeah. So we do bookkeeping and advisory services and tax services for local moving companies all over the US and so it's super, super niche being. And so again, great product, but in great price. But getting in front of the people is what's hard. Yeah.

So you're basically just growing based on referrals before we started working together. Talk to me a little bit about kind of where you were at before we, before we built out this system. Right. Like, how many clients did you have? How quickly Were you getting new clients? Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so we, we, we have been in business since. So for, for four years, going on five years, let's say, and say five years. And we had about 70 clients. About 70 clients. Roughly. Roughly. Doing. For bookkeeping. Roughly doing about 30. Little over 30,000amonth in just bookkeeping. Not advisory or tax, but just bookkeeping a lot. About 30,000amonth.

Cool, cool. And so now today we've had this system up and running for what, four or five weeks now. I think we've been running ads. I just checked. We've spent like in between like 4 to 5000 bucks total over the past month or so. And you just let me know you have closed. How much in new monthly recurring revenue?

I'm looking at it right now. A little over seven grand a month in monthly recurring revenue. Yeah, yeah.

And so assuming each of those clients stays, let's say only a year, which I think based on your numbers thus far is really conservative, we're looking at. I mean, dude, that's like a ridiculous return on your ad spend. That's like almost a 20x return.

You know, I, Yeah. So, I mean, when I, when I, when we first started, I was going to be happy if, like, if the recurring would kind of pay for the ads. And it's double paid for the ads indefinitely. So now we can literally run ads indefinitely. And basically our marketing's free. Right. So it's paid for itself in about two weeks. That's amazing.

So how long does the average client stick around, by the way, for, for your company?

Our churn is 1% per year. So we don't, yeah, we don't really lose clients. So, yeah, I'm, I mean, which is honestly, which is tough to calculate an ROI because if I heard somebody stay for five years, you know, at, at five to $7,000 a year, not counting tax and advisory services. Goodness gracious. You know, I can spend a lot of money on one customer to acquire one customer for it, you know, to be worth it, for sure. Yeah. And that's.

Well, that's what I love about your business model, man. Like, people are so sticky. And even if we just, if we just simple math, we expect someone's going to stay at least 12 months. Then we've got kind of a minimum ROI that we know we're getting. And even that is looking crazy right now, which is super exciting. So I guess how would you describe, like, the way you're thinking about growing the business now that we've kind of got the client acquisition stuff on lock, like, what's next?

100%. So, you know, the biggest thing of building a business is you always find out what, you always hit these roadblocks of what you need to learn, right? And so throughout the business, I've hit a roadblock. And then you learn it, you know, you hit a roadblock. You need to learn how to hire, and then you learn how to hire. My roadblock was, my next roadblock was customer acquisition. I need to figure out how to get customer acquisition. That's what I needed. I have staff to be able to perform more than what we're doing. So I need to be able to get customer acquisition. Now I have the customer acquisition, right? So now like it was, it was instantly, I figured it would take a while, but it instantly allowed me to get over that hurdle. And so then, now the next hurdle is, okay, how do I hire these higher level staff to be able to take on more work and service the work in a great way? So it was just that next progression of the business cycle, right?

Yeah, well, and this was a conversation we had just a couple of days ago. Now we're actually going to be like slowing down the ad spend so that you can have a little bit of time to now hire these people for onboarding and for the higher level accountant roles and stuff like that, which is absolutely incredible.

It is, it is. I had to, I opened my calendar up from, from 8, basically 8 to 7. And, and I mean, if I was just slammed book, you know, which is why, you know why I told you, like, hey, we're gonna have to slow it down a little bit, which is a great problem to have problem nonetheless. But yeah, absolutely.

So I guess, you know, looking back at the experience of, you know, building this funnel out over the past few months, like, how would you describe that experience?

Your team is stinking awesome, which is really, really nice. And I had so much confidence in them and, and confidence in them and which was fantastic. But my biggest thing is like, I knew, I knew social media marketing would work and these ads would, would work. I, I conceptually I did, but I just, I just felt like, I felt like every single thing had to be perfect and lined up and it had to be, it had to be, you know, it had to be different than what I anticipated. It had to be. And in reality, all you have to do is, is get in front of that person you're trying to get in front of with the message you're trying to convey, and the rest kind of works itself out, right? So I wish, I wish I had known that a year or six months before at least, because I would have pulled the trigger a lot quicker and I would have the results a lot faster. You know, we would have an additional six months. Instead, I lost six months. Right. Because I waited too long. So I wish I would have jumped on earlier and realized whatever kinks I think I'm gonna have, they're gonna get worked out and your team helps work them out, which is fantastic. But it, I should just die quicker. Right.

So that's great. Well, I guess. Was there anything specific or like, were there any specific aspects or moments of, of the service that like, really stood out to you?

You gave me a lot of videos kind of walking through how the funnel works and, and I love how the CRM works and you know, it's, it's. I know a lot of software and, and such around the accounting industry, but you're a professional in the, in the marketing industry. And so you gave me a lot of these tools that I didn't know about or that I would have had to learn about and, and just didn't have the time to learn. So one, what you kind of showed me was just allowed me to get over the hurdle of what I would have to look up and research on my own. It was you wealth of knowledge and that stuff. So that was super helpful. But the other big thing that was really, really good for me is because I'm so numbers orient oriented and logical and such, it was really helpful to have you guys help write the, the ad scripting and the copy because, man, I'm just, I'm just not good at that. And I tried the whole chat GPT route. You know, I tried to have Chad GBT to it and it just, it just doesn't do it. There's nothing like someone who is good in language to convey what you're trying to get across. So like everything from going, from going, you know, Kristen going through like asking a bunch of questions and trying to get to know my business and what my customers are actually looking for and whatever. She went through all that and then was able to through, through language convey what I wanted to convey. So she gave me the script and all I had to do was, you know, read the script and sound like a human while I do it and, and the rest kind of took care of itself. Yeah.

There was a message you sent us, I think right after we delivered the brand blueprint that I just, I had to forward it to Kristen just to give her kudos because you were like, man, guys, you know our ideal client better than I, even, than I do. And that was just really encouraging to hear. Like, really proud of the team on that one.

And that's something I have to say too is you guys created the avatar and so now we're, I'm even thinking, like, when we're looking to create a product, is that avatar, would that avatar buy this product? Right? Because we kind of created our perfect customer. Now we can kind of consult with this perfect customer and see, like, is it actually a valuable service or not?

Yeah, it makes it really easy to get in their head from a sales perspective, from a product perspective. Like you're talking about, even if you're working with, like, we've got some clients who work with other providers for types of marketing that we don't, we don't touch, you know, outreach or cold email or things like that. And it's, I mean, you can consult it for that and make sure that your ads are on the same page as your outreach and stuff like that. So it's, it's, it's a really useful tool, even just internally like that. So I guess how do you feel like overall this approach is, is helping you just grow more effectively into the future?

Man, you know what? There's, well, one, obviously it's, it's, it has been a steady in inflow of leads, which is really, really nice when you can kind of count on this lead, even though it's only been a month or two, you know, two months, however long you can count on this steady lead coming in. What's really, what's really hard when you don't have that steady lead coming in is like, okay, when do I go higher? The next person? Because I, you know, when I pay them, it's coming out of my wage. So I have to have so much extra to be able to, to knock that down a certain amount, you know, because I don't have all these leads flowing in. And so, you know, you really have to time it right. Well now with these leads coming in, I know that whatever I do, in six months, that person's going to be fully loaded. And so it's much easier to kind of estimate, estimate when I can bring the next person on and when they're gonna recoup, recoup the cost of their, their cost. Right. So that's been just so nice. But, but the, the unmeasurables, I'll say is it's really allowed me to become kind of dominant in the sector and I, you know, I didn't I didn't launch ads to do that. But. But I've had. I don't even know if you know this, but I've had four different people reach out for me to be on podcasts talking about moving specific things. Yeah. Because they've seen the ads and let alone does it, you know, allow you to bring in sales, it kind of allows you to establish a foothold as a professional in the space. And so, you know, that will also pay dividends down the road.

Yeah, that's absolutely awesome. Man. I didn't even know about that. Yeah.

Glad to hear that. Yeah.

So wrap it all up. You know, what would you say to another business owner who's kind of in the same position you were in before, and they're. They're thinking about maybe working with us, but they're kind of on the fence. Like, what would you say to that.

Person if you haven't done social media marketing? Definitely. If you've never done social media marketing, it works better than you think it works. You just need to find the people like Peter or Peter's firm and the people involved that know how to make it work and also know how to eliminate the variables. You know, while. While you can, while you can try to figure it out yourself. It's. You are paying a lot of money for that time it takes for you to learn to do it yourself and to have the professionals that already know how to do it and know how to write the ads, know how to know how the funnels work and the split test and all that stuff, just having them do it is just the greatest thing ever. So I just, I, again, I wish I would have done it quicker and that. So that would be my, My one recommendation is if you think you're going to do it, you just gotta. You gotta try it and see how it works, see how it works and, you know, go from there.