Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans. For today’s guest, we have Andrea Bell. 

Andrea is the founder and CEO of Profitability, a full-service accounting firm. She loves helping businesses scale and grow as a vehicle for time and financial freedom. She founded Thrive, a women’s business community that supports women entrepreneurs who must take their businesses to the next level while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. 

Andrea has over 20 years of experience in accounting and has helped hundreds of businesses scale and save millions of dollars in taxes. Andrea is an extracting American, and I’m glad she is on the show. Andrea, are you there?

I am sure I am. How’s it going?

And yeah, it’s so great to have you on the show. I know that you’re into business. You’re into taxes and accounting. Can you tell me the audience a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

Yeah, I would love to. I grew up just loving that. So, I naturally was driven to maybe pick a career in numbers. I loved the accounting field because I was obsessed with business from a young age. I loved all the business books on how to win friends and influence people and different things while others were reading novels; I was reading The Minute Manager, and I just loved business from an early age, so I picked a career that was good with numbers. But then, that would also be flexible. I wanted to be a mom and have something flexible and accounting. They allowed me to do that and grow and scale back as I was raising kids and stuff, but I always loved taxes and helping businesses.

So, tax is a perfect career to go into as far as flexibility is concerned as a mom, and working during the tax season is different. So, it gave me some flexibility with my time and allowed me to pursue the career I wanted. But in doing taxes, I realized how much I loved working with businesses. I just loved seeing the entrepreneurial spirit and the different things people were doing. 

And my husband just loves like, he’s always like, you’re such a dork. Like you always just say, you can make money doing anything. And so, whenever we see a unique business, he’s like, you can make money doing anything. I’m like, I know. Like I truly learned that the. We are just so blessed with these ideas and exciting things, and I am so inspired by business owners who take that leap and who take that leap to be business owners. 

So, what better way to help them than to help them save in taxes? Of course, that’s everybody’s biggest pain point. But then help them understand their numbers and use them to scale, grow, and do cool things with their business. I’m a numbers nerd, a self-proclaimed numbers nerd.

Andrea, there are so many questions to ask, especially our taxes, as we all want to know how to save as much money as possible regarding taxes. But I wanted to ask you what strategic goals and visions throughout your life led you to start an accounting firm versus anything else like any other business. Why is this direction?

Why the accounting direction again? Mostly, I looked at things that would work well with being a mom. I knew, first and foremost, that my biggest priority was my kids, especially after I had kids early in my career. I thought I was going to be working for the BIG4 corporate. I was just going to be a partner and all those big aspirations. 

And I had my daughter, and I was like, Nope, just kidding. None of that seems to matter as much, so I do. As an entrepreneur and a mom, I could structure my business how I wanted. 

Accounting just allowed me to do that. Accounting is very profitable and allows everybody to need it, so I have good job security. Everybody has to file their taxes. 

As you mentioned, it allowed me to be flexible, just time freedom. I just had the availability to do it when and how I wanted because of the nature of that business. Even before anyone was remote or doing anything like that, I was doing that at a very young age. Before, it was not popular because of the nature of accounting, which can be done at any time. So, it worked well for me.

So Andrea, like now, one of the things that many people wonder about is where the one percenters save a lot of money on taxes. And then there’s the 99% and the middle class that pay many taxes. 

So, from your perspective, what is the one thing that is? What are the few things that the 99% don’t know? About taxes and business that the 1% know and what can they do to change that?

The biggest myth I hear from most people is that I don’t make enough money to worry about tax strategy. And I see W2 earners that only make 30,000 when they start a side hustle and start that business and get those tax deductions that businesses are allowed, that a person is not, they see maximum benefits. 

The second thing I would say is the biggest, I think. It is not always just a tax strategy but a wealth-building strategy, too, to buy rental properties as early as possible. Because you’re building your assets, you get that huge depreciation expense, so it offsets all the income that you are making. If you do it smartly, I don’t recommend doing it just to do it, but if you can make money doing it as a great vehicle to make passive income and then push all those taxes off to the future and be able to potentially push them off indefinitely into the future with 1031 exchanges. So those are two cool vehicles for tax savings for even an ordinary person.

Andrea, can you elaborate more on the real estate strategy? I think many people are into getting houses at this point, and what can they do to maximize, like saving money and utilizing that to get gains when it comes to real estate?

The bigger properties, like loans and funding, are getting great for real estate because they’re less likely to default. But if you’re just buying a second home or a vacation home. A home that you just inherited from your family, and now you want to rent it out. Those are all cool things to do with real estate. The coolest thing about real estate is that depreciation expense is divided out over 30 years, and you divide it over the home’s life. But it’s a big enough amount because real estate is usually expensive. It’s a big enough amount to offset most of the income earned.

So, it’s just a cool strategy. That way, if you start small, you know many people rent out their basements, and many people are doing VRBO and seeing even bigger profits from doing it that way in the short term—rentals and just seeing some cool things that they can do with their houses or second homes.

So, I would say, as a continuation of all the questions I’m asking, What does the rich know about tax strategy that the middle class and the other classes would not know when, or would people under six figures or six figures not know, from your perspective?

The biggest thing I can see that I notice people don’t know, which is why I started a full-service accounting firm, was that tax was great for me because it worked with my schedule. But when clients came to me at the end of the year, and we’re like crap, I owe all this tax now. And I was like, there’s nothing we can do about it. Anymore, like it’s after the fact. 

They were shocked by it, and it was heartbreaking to see business owners who had put their hearts and souls into it. Businesses with no cash flow left at the end of the year got to the end of the year, and then they owed a big tax bill because they did not make income. They just spent it and used it to survive for that year. And so that was heartbreaking to me. 

And my answer to that was to be able to start early. If you start early in the year and you are strategic about how you spend and being strategic about setting aside the money. Or if you do have taxes, you know, just being more strategic, there are things we can do throughout the year to minimize that tax liability without having to, you know, just get to the end of the year and be like, oh, it is what it is. I got to pay for it. 

There are different things we can do, the things we do, and the strategies we use. It all depends on your financial position, so there are some that everybody applies for, as well as others. Aggressive ones are those that only you know the top elite need, but everyone can benefit from tax strategies to be more proactive, ask questions, and learn what you need to learn to save and set things up correctly. So, you minimize that risk for sure.

So, Andrew, what are you telling me that they’re actually? People out there make all this money, and then they realize I have to pay taxes, and then a lot of them don’t have the money to do that, so that would create a complete panic mode. 

Right? How would these businesses get out of that?

Most of the time, they end up having to put it in debt, and that’s what we want to not recommend and discourage people from doing that. The biggest thing that I’ve noticed with those situations is that if they had been better about their accounting and were more up on top of it, they really could have managed that cash flow and should have managed that. Cash flow is done in a different way to be able to know things like hey, I am going to owe some taxes; I want to Decrease it as much as legally possible, but I will owe taxes. I need to be prepared for that and not just. 

But it’s hard when you’re the business owner. We talk a lot about being the architect of your business—looking down and managing it, not just being in it and just being the cog in the wheel. That just helps everything. Keep going. We have to step back and be able to look at our business from a different light. 

And suppose you have good bookkeeping, good numbers, and good financials. In that case, you can look at those things and be a more educated business owner so that you don’t get yourself in those situations because I don’t think people do it intentionally. They just have this great idea. They go in; they’re good at doing the business. They’re just not great at running the business. 

And so sometimes it’s just beneficial if you know that about yourself to bring in a third party, bring in a professional to help you, to help you get those books and keep those things in order, so you don’t lose track of where you’re at with your business and get in bad situations.

No, it’s all about planning and organizing in advance, right? And it requires thinking of, you know, just a systematic approach. 

But Andrea, one of the things I want to know is what the biggest lesson or revelation you had during all these years that you were accounting for all these businesses is. What did you understand about the business owners and business and all of that during this time?

So the biggest revelation working with business owners is that I just geek out when they need me to help them, like find bigger tax strategies and different ways to save money. So, the biggest revelation is just that, and not that I had to rebuild that, but I don’t know everything you know, and tax laws are constantly changing. 

Changing and different things are being promoted by the government. They want us to act differently, so they’ll incentivize us with tax incentives. And if we use those and. Structure our business in a way that takes advantage of the tax strategies that are out there. We can greatly impact our businesses and the money we keep for ourselves.

So, I think constant learning is key. Each business is different and unique, and one of the things I love the most about my profession is that it’s always fun. It’s always something I have to dig into and could potentially learn more about. So, I need to constantly learn and educate myself and help my clients in the best way possible.

I mean, yeah, there’s always something we have to learn. And when it comes to taxes, it’s huge. It’s like a book, right? And it just keeps changing. And as you said, it can get confusing for many people. 

But Andrea, what is the biggest challenge business owners face when understanding how to maximize theirs? Income while saving money about taxes. And what do you think they can do to overcome this?

The biggest challenge, I think, is cash flow, cash flow, and the more I’m becoming associated with business lenders, the more they see the same things they know if you’re under leverage, like it is tricky to run a good business. 

So, be prepared when you start that business, ensuring you have the cash flow. The funds and different things help your business as they take dips and dives and don’t just wipe you out. It is so sad that so many businesses go out of business in that first year, and most of the time, it’s a cash flow issue; they didn’t have enough money to cover all the stuff they needed. They needed to do or needed to survive to provide for their families.

I see. So, Andrea, we’re going to ask a personal question. You’re the mom of three, right? You started this business and are also raising a family. How do you balance and juggle the two together? It must be hard. It is pretty hard for a lot of people. 

It’s tricky, and it has to be. You have to be very proactive again about it. I have to structure my week correctly. I structure my time specifically between when I’m available for my kids and when I’m available to work. Of course, that’s much easier now that they’ve returned to school, as if it was a little trickier. When they were younger, they were always next to me. Do you know?

And so, when they were younger, I worked a lot on late nights, in the middle of the night when they were taking naps or early in the morning? But that came at a cost, unfortunately, and I let my health take a back burner to try to juggle all those things, and it kind of took a point where I was like, I don’t feel good anymore. 

You know, I feel unhealthy. I feel tired and stressed out, especially during tax season. And I just realized I need to be more selfish with my time, more selfish and strategic about the things that truly matter, and not allow the business to constantly infringe on that family time. Once I became good at time blocking, it became much easier, and it was much easier to balance that.

And so, and now, like I said, when the kids are gone, I feel like I’m blessed to have the kids gone most of the day. So, I work hard during the day and make myself available when they need me to be available. Try To be flexible, too. Like with kids, everything is different. I had a client today. Can I get on the schedule for my taxes next year? Like no, I have no idea what I’m doing next year in February. I don’t know what sports the kids will be involved with or what kinds of things they will need me for. 

And so I don’t schedule out a long time in advance. I try to keep my schedule flexible and fluid, and I only allow people to schedule a couple of weeks out because then. And not constantly rearranging things as things come up with the kids. So, it’s tricky. It’s tricky. It’s a constant balancing act, for sure.

But Andrew, you make it sound so simple like, like time management; I get time management, but it’s like a lot of people find it so difficult to manage time, like where they’re trying to create a balance in their family life and also trying to create a successful business. 

And I’m asking this for the audience’s sake because many people in the audience have families, right? And they are the major thing that stops them from doing so. Trying to grow a skilled business means that they have to put time into that and how they will maintain time on top of doing like a job and then getting away from it.

Yeah, it’s tricky, for sure. And like I said, I learned that lesson several years ago and had to learn it the hard way. I had gained a lot of weight and just wasn’t taking care of myself. So, my biggest “aha,” …  And I can’t remember who I learned it from to create your ideal week. We’ve been talking a lot about some of the groups I’m a part of and about our ideal day, but the thing that changed was planning my ideal week, which started with making sure I liked it. 

The top four things I care about are scheduled, so I have to make sure that’s blocked in my mental, physical, and spiritual health, and I use a different colored marker on my calendar every week. Can I block off those times to ensure I’m taking care of that first, and then my family comes second, so I block off dinner? You know, I block off when I need to be. I’m picking up carpooling and different things because that’s important. That doesn’t necessarily mean everybody can do that. And then I’d walk. Off-date nights for my husband and I, you know, early on, we realized that it was really important to put effort into that relationship. 

So, I make sure we always have that blocked off. I don’t schedule appointments when we have that, and then, just then, work comes last. And unfortunately, when we’re early business owners, work comes first. When I looked at my schedule, at first, I was like, I’m off like something’s off. And then I was like, how many hours am I working during the day? 20 hours a day.

And, of course, I can’t fit all the important things into my 4 hours, so I have to look at the end of my life. Like what? What am I going to be remembered for? My kids, my family, and my friends are going to think that she worked a lot. She was great, you know? Or were they going to say, like, I was always available, that I was a good person? I served and loved my neighbors; I served my kids, and they felt I was always available as a resource. 

And I do know that’s hard. But like I said, I strategically don’t usually work after 2:30. I schedule up because the day is crazy for the kid. Once the kids get home and I want to be with them to take them places, but carpools and asking friends for help and grandma to take sometimes, you know, that helps us be able to balance sometimes things with work do come up and we have to ask, we got to be willing to ask for help. Then, the other main thing is I. Notice with my business; if I try to do everything, it’s overwhelming. 

But if we divide our business into three sections, I can call them just like the three P’s because they are easy to remember. But. Promotion. We don’t have a business until we make a sale. You know, you have to be promoting your business. So, I do that on a whole separate day. 

For example, I schedule a time block for just working on marketing, advertising, and different things to promote my business and production.

And that’s always like looking at my procedures or my procedures. Can I hire somebody to do that? So I don’t have to do it. It is not anymore, do I? Have processes. In place, and then my people like, am I hiring the right people? Am I putting effort into helping them grow and do what they need to do, and can I afford them? That’s always important to look at, too, and then profits. 

So are we profitable, you know, constantly looking at those numbers and making sure, but I don’t train to do that all the time. I kind of imagine it like hats. Like, I put my accounting. I had on one day and put my marketing hat on another day, and then I put, you know, my people hat and take care of my people and my production.

And so, I think that helps, too, not just time blocks. These are just different parts of your day, but time blocks like the things you need to focus on for your business helped me not just be overwhelmed with trying to do everything every day. I was like, I only have to look at this once a week or every other week. And that also helps the business owner manage their time and tell it they’re to a point where they can then. You know, hire somebody to do it for them.

I think the word you’re using you wanted to use is compartmentalization because I can see that you’re very good at compartmentalizing the different sections of business and everything. So. Andrea, let’s say you have a female entrepreneur or businesswoman who is also a mother to children and wants to start a business, but she’s afraid,

Yeah.

She will not be able to manage both of them simultaneously. What advice would you give such a person if they are ambitious about starting a business?

I would say start small, start small, and just get started. Please do it. The side gig is great. That’s how I started when my kids were young. I didn’t want to go back and work for the CPA firms when they were little, so I didn’t, but I just started by helping people I know, reaching out, and doing friends and family books and things that I could do on my Timetable. 

And so just start small and do what you can, like be honest with yourself. What you can handle there was. Times in our marriage, especially during 2008, affected us big time. My husband did end up losing, not losing a job, but hating his job.

So, he ended up quitting and taking a huge, yeah, it was terrible. And it was a great job for several years. And then it just got to a point with different management and stuff. It just wasn’t doable anymore. It didn’t fit for our family.

So, then he took a huge pay cut. At that time, I had to do something different that I didn’t necessarily want to do. I had to work a lot more. But when I went into that interview, I intended to take a full-time job instead. I ended up asking for what I wanted, and I wanted to work from home part-time, and it was so interesting that it made that manager. I didn’t get the job I applied for, but he called me back in the next couple of days and said I had something better. It’s twice the rate you can work from home. 

We only need you in the office for one day. He’s like, you’d be perfect for this. And I hadn’t even thought of you. For that until you. Ask, and so I think sometimes, like if we just ask for what we truly need, if we’re honest with ourselves, if it is that we need to offset and make some money to help our household, you know, just do enough to get what you need to get by in those early years.

But there’s also the potential to, you know, really do it correctly and price. Correctly, and you can be very profitable even working minimal hours, and that’s definitely what we want to obtain. Grow to, you know, is to be able to work minimum hours and make maximum, and that’s what has been awesome about the accounting profession. For example, I don’t know how many years it’s been. It’s been like the number. One of the most profitable stay-at-home mom jobs is bookkeeping like it’s wild.

It’s a great career. I would just say research the careers. That is right for you. Maybe it’s not what you love the most, but that you could be passionate about and profitable. So, it makes it worth it to take the time away from the kids because you’re making enough money to make it worth it. So, look… Stay-at-home jobs that are profitable are going to help your family out.

No, it’s all about minimizing the time and maximizing the amount you’re making, right? And so, let’s say somebody new to your industry wants to start an accounting firm like you did. How would you go about advising this person to do?

I would say get some sort of education first, like getting certified. I started with an accounting degree, making jumping into this career easy. But even if you don’t have an accounting degree, there are so many certification courses, and we offer a certification course. If you just want to level up your skills and have the soft skills to apply for a job that may give you a better income, several firms want somebody with bookkeeping skills and a bookkeeping certification. We offer that. 

But if you want to start your job, sometimes hiring or contacting a mentor is better. We are a part of a community of other female business owners. We can love on and encourage and help each other to grow to those things but also be able to relate and be relatable. For example, today was rough, and I was a terrible mom. I will be better tomorrow, but sometimes having that support group just really helps you not feel alone. 

But I think if you want to like it, Like I talked to just a lot of my friends, like the biggest, the greatest investment we’ve ever made was to hire a mentor, like somebody who’s been there, done that, because then they time compress, right? They’re like, I already screwed that up. 

And so, I would say I’ve already screwed a lot of things up in the course of growing my business. I did many things wrong in the early days like I didn’t have. Courses and online things that I could look to uplevel my skills when I got stuck somewhere, so I would just say when you get stuck, like reach out to somebody who has been there and done that, and they can help you get through it faster and be more profitable faster. 

So, we do have a quick. Books or a bookkeeping business course where we help you from the beginning. Like, how do you start? What do I do? What are the first and most important things? What should I not pay attention to right now and then really help them methodically get that first client? And how do I upscale to that next client, making more money and then growing it to a six-figure business? We want to be able to help them. 

Along that way, I truly believe I’ve been blessed with this industry as a mom and a business owner like this. History has done nothing but great things for me and will only grow. More people are retiring from the accounting industry who are growing than are graduating from college in the accounting industry. So there’s a really big shortage, and more businesses are opening. So it’s just a great opportunity for somebody who wants to do it. It’s a. It’s a great career to start, for sure.

Andrea, I don’t know if you realize this. Still, you’re truly an inspiration for somebody that’s a family person that’s also doing like a business and like growing that business, that helping other businesses like this is basically kind of like what the American dream is about in a way, you know, like you can, like, they had different versions of the American dream. 

However, one of the American dreams is to get enough money to raise a family and even stay home while they do that. That position is what many people would love to be. 

So, my question is, what do you think is most Americans’ biggest challenge when realizing the American dream, and how do they overcome it?

When I think about the women I’ve helped and some of the other business owners I’ve helped, I think it goes down to confidence. That’s why I said, start with something you can be trained at to get that confidence and then already know. 

So, it helps you build that confidence. But just believing that it can happen, I think many people believe that times are tough. Right now, for many families, times are tough for just a lot of businesses. 

But if we get stuck in that negative mindset, we will struggle. But if we truly believe, and I truly, truly, genuinely believe that the American dream is still alive and well, that like businesses are wildly profitable right now, too, you know that we just need to keep our mind that right, keep growing, progressing, not get hard on ourselves, when things get bad. Things get frustrating because we all experience it. Issues in our business, people issues, pricing issues, and clients aren’t happy today issues, you know, and if we take all of that to heart and believe that it means something inherently about us, then we’re wrong. 

So, just keep spending that time in the mornings taking care of yourself and ensuring you’re in good headspace. You’re going to be more successful as you’re as you do things to build that confidence. So, I would say go for it, go for it, and do big things, you know, and you’ll be able to accomplish big things.

No, I mean, the part of this episode is to show that the American Dream is alive and well. It’s being manifested to you and other people in business and entrepreneurship who are working every day and succeeding in what they’re doing. Andrea, you’re a big proponent of time and financial freedom. 

And the American National identity. Has always been about freedom. So, how do you think most Americans today should go about finding time and financial freedom in their own lives?

In their own lives, I think, like you were saying, just be strategic about it, really focus on what you want, and get clear on what it is. What does freedom mean to you? My version of freedom differs from somebody trained to make it paycheck to paycheck. 

And I’ve been there. You know, freedom might be just a couple extra 100 bucks, and time freedom might be being able to do something from home instead of working your nine-to-five job, just allowing yourself to Be open-minded; there are different options you don’t have to do. What’s common is to look outside of yourself and know that if you truly believe and start looking for different ways around it, you can get that time and financial freedom in many different ways. 

The news and I just think, yeah, look out there. There are lots of options for lots of different things. Whatever your heart may desire, you know and do not compare yourself. The biggest thing I see with women is that men do it, too. But definitely, women do it more. Stop comparing yourself to somebody else. You’re comparing your worst day to their best day. And you’re always going to come up short, you know? So, comparison is the biggest thief of happiness. 

And so, I would say just, you know, start small and do a little bit better every single day. You know, maybe you just get 15 minutes more time today because you, you know, have a little bit better commute, or maybe you can work one day from home instead of five days in the office, you know, and just start asking for what you want and build. Build whatever dream, whatever life. Light you up. You know it’s different for everyone, and so.

But Andrea, how will you keep it up with the Jones and? If you don’t compare.

You have not to care. It’s not important. It just matters what’s important to you.

Sure.

Yeah, my funny, that just came to me, so I don’t know if it’s. Relates at all. But the biggest lesson that has blessed me the most in my life was my husband’s. Like, you’re so funny. Like you see, like a successful person, you want to shake their hand and meet them. I’m like, I want to know what lights them up, but I get that excited about other people, too. I love hearing the stories of Uber drivers. And how they came to this country, and now their kid is a Harvard graduate. 

And I’m just like, that’s such an awesome story. Like, we all have amazing stories. But my dad taught me when I was very young, and it’s what his dad taught him, too. You’re not better than anyone. For example, when we try to put ourselves above someone we know, we hurt that other person. But you’re not better than anyone. But you are just as good as everyone.

So, whether that person makes $1,000,000 or $5, I’m just as good as that person; I don’t have to devalue myself because they’ve accomplished great things. I can think they’re awesome and aspire to do better for myself. It does not affect my self-esteem because of something somebody has or hasn’t accomplished. 

And so, I think that’s a great lesson in business and everything else, as if we’re just servant leaders helping others who haven’t gotten there. And then, you know, being inspired by people who’ve done bigger things than us. That just is a lot, a lot more successful life. 

And you get out of the rut of keeping up with the Joneses cause you’re just you’re just happy with yourself. But it is knowing, like, I want more. I can get more if I think that thing is awesome. That person has, like, I better work harder or figure out how to get it. So, I think it’s inspiring.

No, Andrea. I couldn’t agree more. So, Andrea, can you tell me a little bit more about the premise on which profitability started and a little bit more about what brought you to start the company?

Yeah, profitability only came to be, like, I don’t even know. Years run together now, like probably five years ago. I rebranded, and I think it all went back to that. I’ve been in business forever, but it just went back to that, realizing that business owners had it wrong, that they were, and were looking about it wrong. They were focusing on revenue, revenue, revenue. If I just make more sales, you know, and that’s why they’re running themselves into the ground, they’re killing themselves to get those sales. 

But they forget that they have to have money left over at the bottom of the money. Leftover at the prom. Profit at the bottom is what allows you to pay yourself back. So now you don’t hate your business because you’re paying yourself; it allows you to have the money to hire other people, allows you to. If you have other owners in your business to be able to bless those other owners for investing in you, you know the profit is what it is. It makes the most sense, and so. 

So if we are strategic about not just tax savings but also about, like, are we pricing things correctly, do we have the right people, do we have too many people, and looking at different ways, how do we get more sales? Yes, but not at the expense of having no profit.

So, profitability was more like that. I am giving business owners the opportunity, the knowledge, and the numbers and helping them understand their numbers so they have the ability. To manipulate those profits, the ability to increase those profits as needed. Or, you know, maybe do a little bit because we need a new asset or something. 

But I just thought it was a fun play on words with exactly what I want to accomplish with business owners by just helping them have the ability to be a better, more knowledgeable business owner. And so that’s kind of the way that started. Just more looking at the whole picture instead of just the taxes at the end of the year, just looking at the whole picture through a business, and I like to think of it like kind of like a journey at the beginning, like your business owners doing all of it, you know, and those profits aren’t huge. The most important thing is just knowing those numbers and being able to look at them and start to learn them. 

Then, the next phase is being able to do it. Now we have our numbers. We’ve got to set up the business and want to increase that profit as much as possible. We’re going to do everything that drives that profit, and then that next phase is to scale to either sell it, you know, or scale to a point where you. I can walk away and still be able to make money. 

While that business is running without being involved in the day-to-day, we love to help businesses along that version, you know, and be able to get to that end stage where we’re now. We’re coming to a point where we’ve got passive income, and we’re helping people generate, you know, generational wealth, which is a free place to be. 

That’s true financial freedom, you know, and that’s what I’ve been able to do. I grew and scaled my business, reached a certain point, and was like, hey, now I’m bored. Like, I hired people, and I got businesses and different things. And so now I’m like, what way can I give back? And I’m like, what did I want when I started my business? 

And man, I just kept saying I wish. There was this, like, a how-to-start a bookkeeping business for dummies, and I was like, I didn’t know how to do it. I knew how to do the tax side, but I didn’t necessarily know how to do the business side of starting my tax firm, you know? And so, I made a lot of mistakes. 

And I’m just like. If I could help somebody’s number one, have the confidence to believe in herself enough to start something or to believe that she could get a certification and pass the test and be able to up-level her skills to up-level her life like there would be nothing more enjoyable than that to me. I am so being able to coach business owners and coach women now. Starting and scaling their business has been just so rewarding. And I’m so grateful for that. And so, if I can give back in some way to help somebody else start a business that truly will bless their family’s lives, then I’m so excited to do that. And on a bigger scale.

So, we’re getting ready to launch an online course, which we’ve always done in person rather than just one-on-one. And so. Now, we just want to be able to bless more. For women, it’s hard out there for many people, and this isn’t an industry that can only work in the US like you can work nationwide and be able to do this. Know they’re just. It’s a need for every business owner, and once they reach a certain point, they will hire it. So, we want to have people ready and willing to do that when they need them. 

Andrea, I would recommend that anybody listening to this take a look at your firm and understand more about taxes. If they need help with their businesses, check you out. And we’re Speaking of, as a continuation of this, I know you founded an organization called Thrive for Women Business Owners. Can you tell the audience a little bit more about it?

Strikes started as just women’s retreats. I had a dumb idea one day, and I was like, what do I need right now? And I was like, oh, I need a vacation. I need a break. And so I was like, I like other women do too. But I’m also business-minded. So I have a hard time just doing vacation for vacation. So I was like, what if I spent an entire?

You’re full. You’re supposed to be on vacation.

Speak.

Oh my God.

My brain doesn’t function like that, but I’m like, what? If I were on vacation but also planning for next year, I would be like, I bet other business moms want to do that too. We want a reason to go on vacation but will also work on our business. So, it started as just a female business retreat. I just got a dumb idea and was like, let’s see. 

And I threw it out on Facebook. I had a great response. And we had. It was a blast, and it was just awesome, and I just read. It was what women have to offer, and I realized I wasn’t alone. Sometimes, being an entrepreneur, especially a female mom entrepreneur, trying to do it all, and your husband’s like, what are you doing? And you’re like, I’m trying to build a business. It’s going to be awesome, but it can be very lonely. It can be very lonely. It is very frustrating.

So, we’re just working, it’s just small, you know, we’re just working on building a community of women who want to come together and support each other, and we just want to. Be a resource. For that, we just have a Facebook group, and it will be super fun and encouraging. We will add lots of free content to help women grow their businesses and have the confidence to. Grow bigger, care for their health and lives, and help them learn tips and tricks to balance their lives better. And so and so it’s new, it’s in its infancy for sure, but yeah, it’s awesome. It’s been really.

That is awesome, Andrea. So, Andrea, how can our audience connect with you to learn more about you, your work, and everything you do?

So, if you just want to connect with me in general, my website is Andrea Bell. Of course, it’s a bit common, so we had to add the AndreaBell.com. Then, it will redirect you to any sort of resources you need. If you’re a business and you need. Help with you. Books or your taxes, we would love to help you. We have a fantastic team of female business owners who work from home and whatever. However they want, some of them work a lot. Some work a little, and we just love giving women that opportunity.

We’ll also direct you to our Thrive site. If you want to become a community member or take any of those courses, those will also be listed on the Thrive site. The other awesome thing we love about offering these courses is getting to know and meeting awesome women who will be an awesome part of our team. Many of those people end up being a part of our team, too. 

So, it helps them start their business journey underneath somebody who’s already been there, done that, and get that training inside of a business that’s already grown to the point they want to. And so that’s been rewarding to have them come on and help us grow and stay. And sometimes they learn enough and go out and just excel in their businesses. 

It’s been awesome. That could also be an awesome opportunity for people who take our courses. We only take the best, you know, and so on, but if you’re excelling and we love you and think you have potential, you could become part of our team. So, it’s awesome. It’s a cool opportunity.

Andrea, thank you so much for taking the time to be on this podcast and share your general wisdom regarding taxes and business. I appreciate that, and I’m sure the audience does, too. We hope that you come back to the show at a later time.

Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It’s been a true pleasure, and I follow and watch what you do, so I appreciate it. I appreciate being here, and it’s been super fun.

Thank you, Andrea. And I want to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary within every one of us. We must awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.