How funny, did Zig really say that? LOL. I do know his name for sure from SO many years (decades) back. One of my ex's from way back was a salesman for BofA and attended his seminars is how I know the name.
As mentioned, "sales" is definitely not my expertise. In fact, back then I was working as a Payroll Manager.
Ex was good at sales, in fact he sold me/my company BofA Payroll Services back in 1980's on ADP. Funny part was after all that torture, ADP acquired BofA Business Services Payroll, so we were forced back to ADP.
Looking back I should thank him for the experience of my 2nd system conversion, always a learning event and I have done so many system conversions since then as that has been a one large part of my business.
So far I only thanked him for free week in Maui he won as salesman of the year when we started dating, lol. Cheers to Zig Ziglar, as I definitely agree with that statement. When you help other people, all else is fine.
I stopped thinking about me or my money over 10 years ago since I knew there was plenty so I can ignore.
I hate to confess this as an accountant, but I have no idea what I pay or have paid for QBDT or QBO since I know it is not much and my assistant handles all that, so the price would not really influence my selection.
Although I am well aware of what my clients pay for everything, usually more so than them but it is my job. However, I did happen to see the service fees if you let a client pay by CC, geez, that is really ridiculous. That client even warned me since he was on QB before I converted hom to GovCon system and I thought yeah whatever, how much can they be, lol, hundreds of dollars off of each invoice he paid, ah, no thanks.
I switched my books from QBDT to QBO for two reasons: I have QBDT on desktop in home office room where my assistant works at my house sometimes but mostly accesses from her home and we both were accessing QBDT via Teamviewer which is great but still not as easy as QBO. I also had two clients on QBO where I had to help cleanup books before I could convert them to new system, but those are both done, so the final motivation was so the one client could pay by CC, which he did but I turned off that function now.
Truthfully, I do not have any ongoing clients on QB but I have worked with many to clean-up their QB and often in preparation for conversion to a more appropriate accounting system for GovCon industry since even Intuit admits that QB alone cannot meet their requirements without add-on systems and expertise, so I don't see it as taking clients from them but rather saving them from the eventual bad PR when customers complain, which I am sure is the same reason they provide the disclaimer about not handling GovCon.
Congrats to you for starting your business! I don't think I ever would have made that big leap as a planned move due to dreading the marketing, etc. so I am very fortunate for how my business created itself for me via LinkedIn without me ever even thinking about it until it happened, so I can't take credit for any big plan. As far as having staff, not really necessary if you don't want to in my opinion. Some say that is the only way to make money, but I have a hard time taking money for other people's work, even if I train and manage it.
My assistant was/is my best friend, who I hired when she was laid off from her job several years ago. I hired her to handle my personal banking and errands and then I taught her how to do my boookeeping on QB and later how to do bookkeeping for some of my GovCon clients on other systems, which she still does. I think trust is the most important criteria for someone you hire, since you can teach them everything else.
Do be careful with QB Help as they are not all experts on everything, I see that here and I am not expert. Anyone who knows less than me about QB or Taxes, is a concern to me, since I know I am not the expert.
