Katie Ferro: Scaling a Six-Figure Bookkeeping Business

Looking to scale your service business? Take notes from accountant Katie Ferro. Katie is a CPA who has taken her corporate finance knowledge and packaged it up for small business owners and fellow accountants. 

She helps business owners with their books through done-for-you and DIY bookkeeping offers, and also teaches accountants and aspiring bookkeepers how to surpass their corporate salaries while working less and living more. Plus, she’s the host of the Profits + Prosecco podcast. Here’s a quick glimpse at what her businesses have achieved: 

• Earned six figures in revenue with multiple income streams 
• Achieved an industry-breaking 64% completion rate for her bookkeeping online course

Entrepreneurship was not something Katie planned. She admits that for most of her life, she followed the straight and narrow path laid out in front of her. She studied accounting because she was good at math, which led to working in corporate America, getting a master's in tax, obtaining her CPA license, and working at a CPA firm.

However, everything changed when she became a mom and faced a turning point in her career at the same time. She received a paid offer to quit her job and, without knowing what was next, she took the offer, had her first baby, and enjoyed stay-at-home motherhood.

People knew she was an accountant at home with a baby, so her first few bookkeeping clients approached her or were referred to her by her former CPA firm — this marked the beginning of her independent bookkeeping business. 

The Challenge: Scaling a Service Business 

Katie intentionally kept her business small for the first couple of years so she could focus on her children. However, while pregnant with her third, she had an epiphany about the trajectory of her business.

“I finally realized that growing my bookkeeping business didn’t have to mean sacrificing my motherhood,” says Katie. “I just needed to hire a team.” 

With clarity and intention, she grew her bookkeeping business from five clients to 18 in a few short months, and grew her team from one to three bookkeepers. As she shared more about her journey, fellow bookkeepers followed along and started reaching out, asking how she grew her business which is how her coaching business was born. 

With growth came new challenges. Katie’s main challenges she wanted to solve were: 

• How she could help more people
• How she could transport knowledge from her brain to others on a greater scale
• How she could easily showcase what she does, automatically deliver the product, and easily get paid

“I genuinely had no idea how to do all of the above,” she admits. “I thought it required coding, an admin [assistant], or a lot of one-on-one time.” 

Katie knew automation would be the solution to reaching her goals, running her bookkeeping business, and living her life. She found that other tools weren’t scalable and were expensive. 

The Solution: Packaging and Selling Her Knowledge 

As she began looking for a way to package and sell her knowledge, Katie discovered Kajabi. She started a trial, began building her site, and the rest was history. 

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Katie now uses Kajabi for nearly everything for her online business. She says, “I use Kajabi for as much as possible because I like simplicity and when my systems seamlessly talk to each other.”

Kajabi is the platform that hosts all of the following for Katie’s business: 

• Website
• Landing pages
• Kajabi payments for coaching services 
• Online courses 
• Membership-based training via Kajabi Live 
• Intake forms for bookkeeping clients 
• Email marketing to upsell services and offers 
• Shortcuts for affiliate links and Zoom landing pages
• Link in Bio page 
• Podcast show notes on her blog

Additionally, Katie's use of Kajabi Payments has made her experience more seamless as a bookkeeper, most notably the integration with Xero and the flexibility of offering AfterPay to her customers.

Katie says, "I haven't made a ton of sales on AfterPay, but having the option alone brings me a lot of peace of mind. I think the extra fee for me is worth its weight in gold as it eliminates risk of not getting paid and allows me to have a client/coach relationship without also acting as their lender. Even if people don't choose AfterPay, I no longer feel I'm excluding anyone who may NEED a payment option - having a direct integration to this option keeps things super simple."

The Results: Saving Time and Growing a Six-Figure Business 

Since integrating Kajabi into her bookkeeping business, Katie says the platform has helped her automate and circulate everything, which has helped amplify her sales and impact. “I also trust it helps people get the solutions and answers they came for without my constantly repeating myself,” she says. 

On top of a smoother process, Katie has experienced immense time and cost savings since using Kajabi. 

“Kajabi pays for itself 10x over each month, if not more, in both income earned and billable time saved,” she says. “Kajabi saves me more hours than I could quantify.”

She adds, “Kajabi helped me surpass my corporate salary working only the hours I used to commute.” 

And thanks to Kajabi’s online course tools, Katie’s self-paced course on the technical skills of bookkeeping has an industry-breaking 64% competition rate, and students rave about it. “I use a lot of automations in this program that allow me to engage the students and ensure they’re ready to move on,” she says. “This allows me to simulate a training and testing experience.” 

Looking Forward: Maintaining Steady Growth With Kajabi 

Katie has made balancing two businesses on top of motherhood look easy. Since growing her team and simplifying her internal operations with Kajabi, her goal is to stabilize and maintain her business growth. 

Her advice for other creators who are ready to launch their businesses or expand revenue streams? Just start. 

“Simplify it down to its core,” says Katie. “Ask yourself, who can you help NOW? What’s the easiest way to do that? Create an offer, make a link to pay, tell them about the offer, deliver the offer, serve them well. Rinse, repeat, and enhance.”

Want to simplify your operations and cut down on time and expenses like Katie did? See how Kajabi can help.