We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Vanessa Butler a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Vanessa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s jump into the story of starting your own firm – what should we know?
The decision to start our firm was an easy one. When I was pregnant with my oldest child, my husband and I knew we wanted to homeschool him once he became of age. The only way to successfully do that was for one of us to be home full-time. We decided that I would be the one to stay home, but I wasn’t satisfied with just that; I wanted to contribute to our household monetarily as well. That’s when Butler CFO & Tax, LLC was birthed.
A challenge we ran into when starting our firm was networking. Networking is something that pushed us out of our comfort zone (and continues to do so), but it is something that is crucial to building a business. A lesson I learned from networking and marketing is to stay consistent. If you want to make sales, people need to know who you are. They won’t know who you are if you’re not showing up.
Advice I have for others considering starting their own firm is if you started this business for it to replace your income, treat it as such. Talk to as many people as you can about what you do and make offers to work with you daily. Also, don’t be afraid to pay yourself! You work hard for the money you earn and you should enjoy it.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Butler CFO & Tax, LLC is a husband/wife owned accounting firm. Since she was young, Vanessa has always been into numbers. She attended Pennsylvania State University and will be going back to pursue her Masters in Accountancy in 2024. Terrance has been a quality assurance professional for the last decade. He has first-hand been able to see the impact of culture and processes in his role running multi-million dollar critical infrastructure projects, which has allowed him to expand his knowledge and help others.
Services we provide: Bookkeeping, payroll, CFO services such as financial analysis, cash flow projections, budgeting, and tax services such as monthly/quarterly tax advisory and annual tax preparation and filing.
What sets us apart: Our mission is to create a business we would want to work for and with. Therefore, culture is important to us. It is also important to us that our clients are in the know when it comes to their business’ financial health. It does the client no good if we are the only ones who know what’s going on in their business. We make it a point to meet with each client to ensure they understand what they are looking at so that together, we can grow their business.
We are most proud of the feeling of relief we give our clients when they know they’re being taken care of.
We want potential clients to know that choosing to work with us will be one of the best business investments you’ll ever make.
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
Each new client received a welcome mug with their logo on it. We celebrate business anniversaries and client birthdays as well. We communicate with each of our clients at minimum twice per month. It is important to us to maintain a connection.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
Our best source of new clients are referrals. We have a referral program that pays (one-time) $75 each for the first 5 referrals and $100 for every referral thereafter.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://butler-cfotax.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/butler_cfotax/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/butlercfotax
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/butlercfotax/