We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nancy Benet. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nancy below.

Nancy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us a story about a time you failed?

When I first started Fix-It Accounting, I had already had 5 failed businesses, was a divorced, single-mother of 4 small children, had $650,000 in debt from all of the failures and had no income because I had lost my job. I had sworn off business ownership, but was approached by an older gentleman who had a small tax return preparation company who wanted to sell me his business. I didn’t have any job prospects because of the recession, so I accepted. It was actually a pretty great opportunity because he was going to finance it for me.

We worked together for a while in his basement office, but soon it was time for me to go out on my own. I found a wonderful office with beautiful executive furniture included and signed a 3-year lease. The day after I signed that lease, the “gentleman” backed out of our contract and gave the business to his daughter.

Understandably, I was devastated! I crawled under my new desk and cried. However, because of all of the previous failures and no other prospects at present, I dug my heels in and decided to make it work.

It was hard! There were many, many times that I wasn’t sure we would make it. But I doggedly kept plugging along.

We are an accounting firm in a very small town. There wasn’t a lot of new business around and most businesses already had their accountant. I had to think of a way to make it work that was pretty non-traditional, so we started marketing to taxpayers who had tax liens filed with our county Clerk of Court. That worked pretty well. Pretty soon we expanded to surrounding counties and then to the entire State of Florida. It worked!

When I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to fail, the most miraculous things started happening. Great ideas came. Wonderful people helped. Every week when it was time to pay my employees, somehow, someway, the money would show up. I learned to trust that what we needed would come when we needed it.

Today, our firm has clients all over the country. If the gentleman hadn’t backed out of our agreement, we would be a very small tax prep practice in a very small town. I’m thankful for that failure and have learned to look for the benefit in every disaster.

Nancy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born an entrepreneur. The desire to be my own boss was there from the time I was a child. My mother’s friend was a CPA and seemed to have a prosperous life. He also knew about business, so I decided to follow his path and be a CPA. I accomplished this in my late twenties. I thought it would make me happy. It didn’t!

My first business was started while in college. It seemed to me that just the fact that I was in business school guaranteed success. Unfortunately, it was a complete failure. I knew absolutely nothing!

The first job out of college was for a CPA firm, where I learned a lot and got my CPA license in the State of South Carolina, but it wasn’t fulfilling. The next job was as Corporate Controller of a $10M manufacturing company. Again, it wasn’t the bliss it was expected to be. This is when I again delved into the world of entrepreneurship and started the series of failed businesses.

– Screen Printer
– Multi-Level Marketer
– Real Estate Investor
– Used Auto Dealer

It never really occurred to me that I could start an Accounting Firm. That seemed much too complex and I surely didn’t know enough. Plus, I hadn’t liked working in the CPA firm anyway.

But here I am, many years later, happily running a successful Accounting Firm that serves clients all over the US. The difference is that I own it and make the decisions. This is the heart of entrepreneurship!

We have 3 different departments:

– Accounting which offers anything from a several year project to catch the accounting work up to quarterly, monthly, controllership and remote CFO services.
– Tax Preparation which offers business and individual tax return prep.
– IRS Problem Resolution which helps clients deal with tax debt issues.

The IRS Resolution helps us do a much better job for our accounting and tax clients because we know exactly how to present information to the Agency, what they accept and what they don’t, and how to navigate the complex systems of the IRS.

What makes us different is that we have built our brand to be approachable. Accountants and accounting offices can be very intimidating for small business owners. That’s why we have a casual atmosphere and a few office dogs to keep things light.

Our marketing is different too. From the beginning we invested in SEO by adding website content every month. This is what has given us a national presence.

Today, I have a great team at Fix-It Accounting. They allow me to follow other entrepreneurial dreams.

– I’m back in real estate investing, which has always been a passion. We own the office complex that our office is housed in and are actively looking for an apartment complex to purchase.
– I’m a speaker and business coach helping other business owners.
– We’re launching our first course under the “Success Your Way” brand on how to start the business of your dreams.
– We’re franchising the Fix-It Accounting brand to help other accountants start their own successful practices.

My dream life? This is it!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As entrepreneurs, the most important trait we can embody is resilience. I’ve had to call on mine and learn to build that muscle time and time again. Each time, it gets easier.

When I started Fix-It Accounting, our primary revenue stream was from marketing to taxpayers with tax liens. Several times over the years, the IRS stopped sending liens.

There was a congressional budget dispute that sent all government employees home. Once we recovered from that, there were several hurricanes that impacted the entire State of Florida. Once an area is declared a Disaster Area, the IRS stops contacting any taxpayers in that specific area. These things almost shut us down.

However, I learned some very important lessons from those financial disasters and have diversified our offerings. Today, most of our revenue is from recurring services. We are financially stable. The contracts we have with our clients also makes the business much more valuable.

These hardships have given me much more confidence in myself and my ability to handle whatever comes along.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

The biggest thing that helped us build our reputation was simply asking our clients for Google reviews. Somehow this is overlooked in the accounting world but it has made a huge difference for us. We get calls every day and the client says they found us on Google. Many say they won’t work with anyone else because other accountants don’t have any online reviews.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fixitaccounting.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FixItAccounting/ 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nancybenet/

Image Credits
Canovas Photography