We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maya Weinreb a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Maya, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Our Mission Statement is “Perfect and Complete financial records for your peace of mind.” My personal purpose is helping business owners succeed. Every single person who started a business, whether its an artist or a doctor, did so because they wanted to be an artist or a doctor. They didn’t start it so they could do piles of paperwork every day, get scary letters from the IRS, or figure out their numbers on an excel sheet.
That’s where we come in. We handle the books so the business owner can do their job. We have several artists, actors, and influencers and I definitely specialize in making this stuff easy for them. We also have doctors and lawyers, and honestly, this kind of paperwork is hard and not fun for almost all of them. Even the ones that mostly know how to do it don’t have the time for it as a business owner. Their time is gold. It is worth tens of thousands of dollars in potential sales and expansion in the time they were trying to fill out one form.
We will get their books in perfect shape, ready for the CPA, and ready for the business owner to make the tough financial decisions because they have all the info they need to do that. We send them reports every month, and any time they need additional data, we will send it. We can handle all their payroll needs, pay their bills, give them their budget for the week/month, etc., and fill out those pesky end-of-year reports for the state and IRS.
One of the things that set us apart is that we are a fully remote bookkeeping firm. My bookkeepers are all over the country, and so are my clients. In order to do that, we have had to work out technology and systems to keep track of everything. We are constantly meeting clients on zoom, tracking recurring projects and one-time tickets, onboarding new employees and clients fully online, etc. We are basically a tech company but our tech is bookkeeping.
The other thing I find that sets us apart is that we have strict communication policies. We reply to all communication within one business day. I have many new clients come to me and tell me that their bookkeeper took 2 to 3 weeks to reply to them and they never receive reports and they have no idea what the bookkeeper is doing. I find that completely unacceptable in an internet age. It might be a lot of work to do the work and answer emails as well, but if you don’t, you will lose clients. We except fast communication these days. I know I do, and if I do, so do my clients.
We really strive to be there for the client and help with anything we can. We will schedule a zoom call and go over their financials if they don’t understand or have questions. We will translate for the CPA. We will make sure they are compliant in all their forms and corporate structures. I think because we really care. I really care about our clients and that makes up a big part of our corporate culture.
Maya, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I started doing Bookkeeping straight out of high school. It was fun, it was challenging, and it paid better than the other entry-level positions. I did Bookkeeping for several different companies for almost 15 years. I moved up the “Corporate ladder” inside small businesses and had many different positions starting at an accounting assistant and moving up AR Manager, Treasury Manager, and finally CFO. During this time, I had started taking freelance clients as my side hustle. I got to the point where my clients were paying me more hourly than my boss was. I decided to risk it all and quit my job to start my own Bookkeeping Firm.
I am now in my fifth year of running a business, and I love it. Not because I work less, nope, I work twice as much, not because of all the money. Nope, most of it goes back into the business, but because I am building my own company and creating my own destiny.
We do full service bookkeeping, meaning AP, AR, payroll, payroll taxes, sales tax, 1099’s, tracking financial transactions and basically anything a business owner needs to handle their company finances. We also partner with CPAs and tax preparers so that our clients are covered in those areas as well.
We use exclusively Quickbooks Online as we have found that to be the best fit for remote bookkeeping and for all of our clients.
We help small business owners in service based industries as well as eCommerce. Some of our current clients include doctors, lawyers, marketing companies, influencers, Youtubers, real estate investors, actors, event production companies, amazon sellers, etc.
We help companies that are generally in the $150,000 to 5 million annual revenue range. We have some companies in the 15 million range that we do full service bookkeeping for.
We also do consultations for smaller companies as well as QuickBooks Online training.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
When I was working as an inhouse bookkeeper for different companies, I always thought that I could do so much better if I was running that business. I thought the business owners were often unreliable, saying they would do things and then not following through, that they could come in to the office whenever they wanted, that they often didn’t seem to know what they were doing…. I wasn’t impressed.
Now that I am a business owner myself, I have so much more respect for business owners. I understand why they seem unreliable… they have everyone needing things from them all the time and they are constantly having to prioritize and be in crises management mode. They come in whenever they want because they stayed up all night solving problems and generally work at least twice as many hours as their employees… they don’t always know what they are doing because its not taught anywhere – they have to always figure it out and are constantly running into new challenges…
Having done both roles, employee and employer, I respect everyone more because I can understand them more. I understand the problems that my employees can face and I work hard to help them through them. I understand the problems that my clients face (they are all business owners) and I work hard to help them navigate them.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I first started my company and just had a few clients, I was super stressed about money. I had taken a small loan to help me get on my feet and help mitigate the risk of going off on my own. I had just about used up the loan and still didn’t have enough clients to pay my personal bills.
One day I was so stressed out, I just kept giving myself a pep talk about the face that I just needed to sell one more. Always one more. I am good at sales, I can do this. I had to block all the negative self talk, but it was hard.
Then I got a phone call, there was a company that wanted to hire me as an employee, and was willing to pay me more than double what I had ever made before as a bookkeeper! And that was probably over 3 times what I was currently making in my new company.
I was in shock. I curled up in a ball in bed and hid under my blanket. Then I called all my friends and asked their advice. They all thought I should take the job. It was the safer option.
I knew that I had the potential to make way more money than the job offer, but didn’t know how long it would take. I found myself telling my friends why I shouldn’t take the job.
I realized I already knew the answer and what I wanted to do. So I didn’t take the job. It took 3 years to make the kind of money that the job offered me. But it was so worth it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://solvencynow.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solvencynow_bookkeeping/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/solvencynow
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maya-weinreb-05012b4b/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrddILpwqG96-BECYqIQ0-g
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/solvency-now-tampa
Image Credits
Hunter Valentino