Inspiring Bookkeeping Journey and Business Strategies Revealed! | Serah Blackstone-Fredericks

Serah Blackstone-Fredericks shares her journey into bookkeeping, initially aiding a friend with legal paperwork and later managing an office before establishing her bookkeeping business. Her multicultural upbringing cultivated her fluency in various languages, which she refined through practice and active recall methods. Gary DeHart explores Serah's challenges of clients undervaluing bookkeeping's significance and emphasizes good bookkeepers' role as strategic allies in business growth. Serah prefers fixed fees for her services, offering discounts for prepayment and requesting retainers upfront.

Serah discloses a fraudulent credit card chargeback experience, leading her to cease credit card acceptance due to customers seemingly favored over merchants in disputes. She outlines disengagement procedures to conclude client relationships professionally and recommends periodic business evaluations for optimization. Emphasizing working on the business rather than just in it, she advocates networking and referrals for client acquisition through events and publications like real estate associations or chamber of commerce mixers. When asked for book recommendations by Gary, Serah cites "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown and "Atomic Habits" for personal and professional growth insights.