Hi Victoria here again, author of Zest for Success, owner of The Bookkeeper Hub, and HBA Encompass. Yes, I’m sitting in my car again — another day, another three kids to pick up.
So like most small business owners we’re squeezing the best use of our time that we can. So today I’m sitting here to explain to you how The Bookkeeper Hub using the Zest for Success method has been able to grow from zero clients to seven and beyond. Yesterday we talked about the foundations of a business.
Today we’re talking about your product. So if either it’s a product or service, what is it that you’re actually selling? And sometimes it’s not what you think. Take for an example a florist. You might think a florist is selling flowers. They’re selling something for weddings or for funerals or for anniversaries or for first dates. You know what they’re not actually selling flowers. What they’re selling is an experience. Something that means something to the people they are given to that they can cherish and hold long time after those flowers die. After you’ve worked out what your product or service is, you need to make sure that whatever it is that you’re selling is gonna be available for a long time. We’ve all seen things that have been fads. Think about the hula hoops in the 60’s, Rubiks cubes, and even those stupid thing the kids called at the moment. What do they call? Fidget spinners. Seriously, who came up with that idea? So what I’m trying to say is it’s not that the cash might not be good in the short term if you’ve got something that’s gonna sell out and sell out hard. But if that’s your only product, you’re doomed to failure because it’s only gonna be there for a short time. So you can either start a business on a product that’s gonna be short term. That’s gonna come and go, that you need to repeat and repeat and repeat. Or you sell a product or a service which is going to transcend eons of time. Something that’s gonna be around forever. So we chose bookkeeping. Bookkeeping is something that’s essential for every business. Sure, it’s a commodity. It’s something that you have to do to make the tax office happy. But you know what? Once you get those books it gives you valuable information on how your business is running. And you can use it to make decisions and that’s something that having a good bookkeeper or a good accountant can help you with. So bookkeeping is something that ‘yeah sure, overtime, perhaps the next five to ten years, it’s all gonna be automated’. But for us at The Bookkeeper Hub, it’s not simply about getting those books processes quickly and cheaply as we can. It’s about valuing our clients, valuing our service, and making sure that we can actually add value to our clients’ businesses through what we do. And the last thing about your product is you want to make sure that whatever that you’re selling is going to give you the return that you want. There’s a saying that the cheapest way to the bottom is by discounting. If everyone discounts, the margins or the price gets lower and lower and lower until suddenly everyone’s out of business. I don’t think that’s a very good strategy.
So what you wanna do is offer a product or service that if you can is unique to you, something that’s gonna last a long time, and something that’s being sold at a price that you’re gonna get valued out of and the client is gonna get value out of. When you’re looking at price for products, you need to look at the costings of your business. Now, that’s something for another day because the deep dive into costings takes a little while. But it’s all about making sure that you’re getting a great return on your investment. I’ll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow we’re talking about your target market and that’s gonna be interesting.
