Jonathan Bello, founder and owner of One 8 Solutions

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W four CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four CY Radio. Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helen n believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helen.

0:51 Thanks everyone for joining in again today. I'm Kevin Hallandan and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on W four cy. Of course, we're streaming live on talk four tv dot com. That's the number four, in addition to streamingline live on Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio, as well as available in podcast form after the live show on many other platforms including YouTube, iHeartRadio Spotify, Apple, pretty much wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. The mission of Winning Business radio and TV, as regular viewers and knowers and listeners know excuse me, is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others.

1:33 That's to learn best practices, the how tos, the what tos, the what not tos, to be challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the successes of others. Those are consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually every successful person I've ever had a chance to talk to has said some form of failure in their lives and careers. So I say it every week. While we all have to get our knees skinned once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it. I've given the better part of my career equipping businesses to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies all the way up to the Fortune fifty, and I've seen some of those companies win in to varying degrees. I've seen some of them fail I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest performing people around and with some who probably should have found other professions. And in my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but some failures too, So I like to think I've learned a lot about those lot from those experiences. So you're going to hear from me, but mostly you're going to hear from guests. Today's no exception.

2:37 My guest is Jonathan Bellow, founder, CEO, and principal accountant of one to eight Solutions, and here's his bio. Since launching one to eight Solutions in two thousand and one and becoming a certified QuickBooks Provisor pro advisor excuse me, Jonathan developed a client first business attitude, always putting his client's unique business needs first. Mostly, he's driven to continuous grow and improve his business skills to help clients grow theirs. Accounting and bookkeeping are two of the deepest levels of understanding of one's business, and Jonathan and his team value that partnership. They seek to understand the unique nature of their client's businesses to achieve improved results. The gather knowledge of the business's inner workings by conducting a detailed assessment.

3:20 They don't just learn about expenses and revenue. They also discover what's on the periphery that have a meaningful impact to the success of the business. They assess how the customer base is acquired, the systems used to manage the business, and a lot more. This manner of gathering information allows Jonathan and his team to take a more holistic approach to accounting needs and giving information back in a more timely way while providing meaningful knowledge or the other half of the story, caring about business his client's businesses is Jonathan's business. He likes to say that he helps business owners sleep more soundly at night knowing that financial operations are stress free. He was born in Boston, so he's a Cheue Bostony and he spent the first seven years of his life in Niedham, Massachusetts, then moved to Newton, where he has lived since and where he now runs his business. He spent five years in Maui, so we'll have to ask about that. And his significant other of thirteen years is Jen and they have a ten year old Giant Schnauzer named Gunner Oh and they currently dog sit for their nephew's six year old cavapo named that this is how it's spelled hunter. And finally, Jonathan is an avid skier. Jonathan, welcome to Winning Business TV and Radio.

4:29 Thank you for having me here. Kevin and I get to say you have a. Second life as a talk show of boats. Well, that's this, that's this, that's the fun. So I want to talk about a little bit of family and then some background. Tell us about jen. Oh. Jen is my partner and she is my foyl and she has helped me settle down in my life. So for many many years I had fomo. If I didn't go out, I thought I was missing something. And now she has gotten me very comfortable to be home, comfortable in my own thoughts, being quiet, which is a huge change of pace, which also sometimes causes conflict because after a long day of working, I got to tell one to make a small change in the crawl. It's one to eight solutions. It wound up being ton just noticing that in the crawl. And so sometimes I cause this conflict because like after a long day, I'm ready to sit. Imagine she's been waiting for me to come out and be part of her life.

5:46 More conversation for sure. But you know, it's been a very positive part of my growth in my life having a partner like her. Especially over the past year or so, some health issues have cropped up, you know, not being alone. And you know, of course, loneliness is one of the biggest problems playing American you know, America. The world. Uh, you know, you know, men mostly more so than women. So it's good. It's good to have somebody around. I like hearing that. All right, tell us about the dogs. Okay, So living in Maui, I went from being a person who was weary of dogs, scared of dogs, and uh and to a per I met this woman and she had two Schnauzers.

6:40 She had a giant Schnauzer and a miniature Schnauzer. We had a MANI for a long time. Yeah, that's right. We've had this conversation before. And so the first time she introduced me to the dog, I said, oh, these dogs are nice, but they smell. So two years later, if they smelt, I was washing the dogs on my own. A few years later she called to tell me that she knew met a new breeder and that I should get my first giant Schnauzer on my own, and Gunner is my third giant Schnauzer and will be my last giant Schnauzer because as I get older and strength is starting to wane, if something happens, I don't want to be picking up a seventy or eighty or ninety pound dollar to have to carry them out of the woods or something. But he's a goofball. He's very he's ten years old. He's got a ton of puppy energy. Handa who is. And by the way, nobody in my family had dogs before me. The family is now up was up to four dogs. We lost one recently. Hunter joined us about six years ago, right, you know, they got him right before COVID. But he you know, somebody's his COVID dog. And he is a fifteen pound kavapoo. He's really cute and he's very needy.

8:07 Also, that's all right, oh all right. And my brother and his wife are in Tokyo and Vietnam for the next three weeks, so we're house sitting. Okay, we're not house sitting, we're dog sitting. Dog sitting for them too. Wow, Okay, all right, let's go back. Let's let's rewind the time machine, set the way back machine. Simon Simon to growing up, what were your early interests in say, high school? Oh, my early interest in high school you know, uh, first being a bad boy, going on, drinking and smoking pot. That was always my you know, But then you know, truthfully, I was not a great student. I was good. I was a good student, got me into UMass amates, got me in the School of Business Administration, so that was an achievement.

8:57 But I was always like, you know, one of you know, one of these kids. I wanted to you know, go out, have fun and play before becoming serious athletic activities was skiing, wrestling. I used to joke that my best activities are from the waist down and as you know, you see you ski with me. Loved music. Around seventeen, eighteen years old, I started going to my first life concerts and that was always a big part of my life, you know, growing up in the late seventies early eighties as a young man, was always running into Boston to you know, because I lived in Newton, so it was easy so enjoying the nightlife.

9:45 I went to Newport because a friend had rented a house. I was the guest who never left. And that began like ten summers of doing Newport summers, which eventually got me out of accounting into software sales e into so. Well, I have that question in a minute. How did you pick accounting as a career, at least initially and then now. So accounting as a career. I called myself a reluctant accountant. It was math that got me into U MASS. And I went to U Mass initially as pre med and again my lack of study ethics got in the way.

10:29 You know, I had a great UMass experience, and I realized that I'm not going to be going to medical school, that I had better choose an alternate route, and I was able to do something that was very difficult to do and transfer to at that time, School of Business and Administration now is the Eisenberg School, and I'm looking around at the majors, and I just felt accounting was going to be the best fit for me. I very quickly realized that I was not going to be a CPA, and I was not going to be doing taxes, and I wasn't going. To be doing audit, and I already developed a leaning towards working with small businesses. I got a job in the university working with student run businesses, helping.

11:13 Them understand accounting. That was back in nineteen eighty seventy nine, eighty eighty one. Until I did it, until I graduated and got out, did two years of corporate accounting. Hated it, said I'll never do accounting again. But I could never get away from the industry. It's just like al Pacino in The Godfather jes thank you out, you get pulled back in. I worked from software. Companies and then one of Eight Solutions was started as an IT service firm, using QuickBooks consulting as a lead to have recurring revenue with my clients. You know, if you're doing set up, training, implementation of accounting solutions, your goal is to work yourself out of a job. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to build a relationship.

12:08 What's behind the one a name? Oh, I'll come back to the well you can come back to. Just very quickly. So twelve years into the business as an IT person, I realized I couldn't scale it, and I decided to get into transactional accounting because one thing I knew I did well is I teach people how to do accounting and bookkeeping. Okay, so how did one a come along? So my first consulting shingles was Bell Consulting. Now, I hung out my first shingle in eighty seven, right after all the Baby Belt all the Bell companies were broken up into the Baby Bell. Yes, and so I was.

12:50 I always got the question are you related to Bell Labs? Are you part of AT and T? And something like that. So when I was when I came back from aUI you know, when you're ready, I'll tell you more about that. And I had done a couple of stints working for some people. I decided to hang out the shingle again because it was one the dotknot bust had taken place. There were plenty of salespeople who had successful track records. Because I always worked with startups as a salesperson that never had a track record, I decided to hang out the shingleful one eight solutions. I was struggling with coming up with a name, and my oldest brother, and I'm the youngest of three boys, said hey, come and have lunch with me. I get some name for you, and he gave me like the first two and then he gave me one eight. I go, why one eight? Well, I'm Jewish and Hi.

13:49 They let a hi, which is the eighteenth letter of the Hebrew Alpha bit was also my grandfather's name, Kiman. He lived eighty eight years old, which is eighteen past seventy. So there was a numerology there and life wocks. I said, I like it. Then the company, I like it. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. All right, it's already quarter after. We're going to take our first sign up. It does, it does. We're going to take our first commercial break. We'll be back in just one minute with Jonathan Bella. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.

14:36 Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Best in Wealth Management is family owned for two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and wealth management with a family feel for your closely held family business. Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning. Integrating your business planning with personal tay will help put your money to work and your mind at ease. Go to Bestinwealthmanagement dot com for more information advisory services offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join the Best Family and let our family advise your family. That's Bestwealthmanagement dot com for your complementary initial consultation.

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16:17 We're back with Jonathan Bellow, founder, CEO and lead or principal accountant at one to eight Solutions. Yeah, I did put lead in the. I had to check my notes, sir. All right, So you spent time in sales, you were at startups, you started, you got an accountant counting on a computer science degree, and then you take this turn and you find yourself in Maui as oh, hold on, as a fine art consultant. You got to explain that, Okay. So I went to my first trip at Maui in nineteen eighty seven. I was just getting into wind surfing. Yeah, and my friends says, I had to come and visit Maui.

17:01 You love it. And I fell in love with the place. And I was a salesman for a software company at the time, where I just sided to hung out money for shingle and I went to a gallery and I was so impressed with the sales capability of the person that I went back to the next day and said, do you have to be an art person to sell art? And they said no, I have to be a good salesperson. So for five years I developed this dream of moving to Maui, and then in ninety two, the stars aligned and the opportunity to move to pick up my stakes, disappoint my parents and moved to Maui came up and I went to work for that gallery.

17:46 Now that was nineteen ninety three, during the same as a loan debacle, and guess what a lot of people didn't have. Discretionary cash, just met on art and as I alluded to before, yes, when you're thinking you're out of the industry, I got pulled back in and I wound up starting to do uh, system set up, common system set up. I got introduced to quick books there for the first time, and I did that for about. Two and a half years there. And you do sage surfing and windsurfing. I bet you did. You want me on the north shore? Uh? No, I actually live in keyhy which is on the western southwestern side.

18:30 Okay, but the island is so small that it only takes four half out of forty five minutes to get to someplace else. No, we were there, We were there. We're going to be there September, I think, yep, yeah, just last September. So all right, so you do more than just quick books, you do? I know sage is a little bit larger for larger companies. Is that right now? I'm gonna say that we're we're I have three wives. Okay, my my oldest wife in the distance, isn'to it? I consider into it a wife. I am married to them right now. We only do QuickBooks. Okay. My second wife of course is my girlfriend who am not officially married to. And then if you guys, if everybody notices in the crawl, there's a woman's name tu the eyes are silent, and she's my third wife.

19:24 That's your work wife, that's my workway. Y's right, that's right, all right. So tell us what how you saw the need for the work that you do such that you made it your mission. You founded a company in two thousand and one. Well, initially again, when I found the company, I was using people so QuickBooks into it has a website called find a Pro Advisor, and that used to be money for me. I'm number one in Boston. I've got seventy five star reviews. People, especially with QuickBooks Desktop. They were calling having problems, we need help. I'd go in, I'd help them straighten out their problems. And I said, oh, what are you doing for it? And then it wound up working out very well, but I couldn't scale that business, and I you know, and I just bit the bullet and said, I'm going to do transactional work. I'm going to get my hands dirty and help people run their businesses.

20:28 And we started off just doing bookkeeping, you know, you know, like recording the checkbook and so on, maybe entering bills. And then I said, wait, this isn't what I learned at school and accounting. We're not like somebody would be like they would pay the insurance bill and let's say the insurance bill one hundred and twenty thousand dollars and that would hit that one month, okay, And that's not realistic because it's really the benefit is spread out over the year. So then we started doing more accounting services. Then the buzz term of client accounting services came in, which is what I've always been saying, let us help you see beyond the numbers. Let us help you understand what's going on with your with your business. What you know, like what are the trends, and can we use this information not just to understand what happened in the past, look into the future by doing forecasts, cash flow forecasts.

21:27 Budgets and help people be able to make decisions. Which not all accounts do of course, right right. So we you know that's what you know. So there's CFOs and uh, you know, my my version of a CFO is they're going to help you really plan the growth of your business, Like if you're thinking of getting into a new line or opening up a new office or hiring a person. You know, they they will help you do deep analysis to make that decision. You know, we can do some of that light light work, you know, like I can have if somebody says, can I hire a person? And I can say, you know, look at it, and I can say yeah you can, or you know, and make them think about here's your startup cost of hiring a new person.

22:18 So you lead a team at this point, Oh yeah, yeah. We are coast to coasts and north to south. We have a we have a person who's outside of Chicago, and we have three people in North Texas. We have one person in California. Majority of us are in New England. But is that to cover I mean, you can work anywhere remotely, but is that to cover the time zones? It helps, but not primarily. It's more about the quality of the person than the time zone. That there makes sense. Now, we do have a funny story. Very quick, I'll tell you we have a legacy client and we have a person we had to let go that was out of California and he's he's on QuickBooks desktop and he's using his computer all day long, so we can't do any work until he's done. Now, that was great when we had a person in California because he's three hours behind.

23:16 So now we're trying. We're going to work on trying to get him to convert to QBO, and it's come along, so it might be a good time for him to do it. Because it impedes our ability to work. So tell people those that don't know QBO is quick Books Online, what's the difference between that and the desktop version? Well, less and less and less. When it first came out, there was a significant difference in features between QBO and. Between online and desktop. The feature the features is really getting narrow and in addition, there are actually now features that are in online that are not in desktop. We transferred one eight solutions in twenty twenty from desktop to online, and I think that was one of the best business decisions I ever made.

24:15 Yeah, I remember having to stop working in the accounting system to let the CPA do the thing, do their thing. And then yeah, yeah, no more of that. Yeah, you invite you know, depending on your version, you can invite one up to three CP firms to your quick Books. Not a problem anymore. And you don't have to send an accountant copy for them to make their entries wait for it to come back. Yeah, more of that too. That so much better. All right, So you consider yourself, as I believe your clients do, really as a strategic partner rather than a vendor. Talk about that all absolutely. Absolutely it pays me when I'm considered a vendor.

24:58 And non partner. Uh. Some you know, some of my clients that are on the younger side, they I've gotten them to call me accounting dad. Yeah. I had a client the other day who was looking at potentially doing something and he said, you're the first person. That I called UH to get advice. That was tremendous. Well with that type of reputation on the top of the pile anyway, right, So. Well, we hope, we hope not always, but we hope. How do you find your team?

25:41 Oh? Okay, so this is uh in all different ways. Okay. When we're first getting started, we did ads. Like in Craigslist. And I found one of my best resources but best team members that way. Uh. I have gotten a lot of introductions from networking to team members provisors. Has been great that way. We are recruiting for a senior accountant position right now. So in that we did a AD and linked. In why don't you give why don't you give a quick plug for that? What were the qualifications?

26:24 So it is a fully remote position. It starts off as part time. Hours are very flexible. Uh. And we're looking for people who I've been training up for years. We want somebody coming in this time who's ready to go. So typically they have account real accounting experience. Uh. They have both a Level one and Level two quick Books Online certification, and they have knowledge of some of the reporting and AI platforms. Okay, and we will be putting the ad. We took down the AD because we didn't have We had a little bit of a bug that we fix.

27:05 So the AD will be going back up in the next day or two. Right. If anybody we have a great. We have a value. We have an evaluation process, like somebody what we even talked to goes through a survey. How long you been working with QuickBooks, what industries are you used to working with? What function areas and QuickBooks? Are you comfortable, are you certified? Are you listened as a QuickBooks prior advisor? If you're if you consider yourself a gur or why do you consider self agou what can you do better? That's all in my survey. That's really good. So who are the clients that you are servicing, Where do they come from, what are their size you know might come from, what industries are they in?

27:49 It probably doesn't matter a whole up, but give us more of the background of clients. Okay, So initially our client tele found us mostly through the Quick Books Find a pro Advisor website and some networking that I did before joining provisors. Provisors has been a boom for our business. Now it was one second spam PHM. Now our clients. So you know, my specialty is going in and understanding how a business operates. I've been doing that for forty years. Okay. I cut my when I got out of doing transactional accounting. I got into manufacturing software.

28:42 So I learned manufacturing, I learned distribution. You know. I just when I started working with businesses, I wanted to understand the why of what they were doing, not just what they were doing, and that built into our assessment. One of the new changes that they made. In quick Books in the accounting suite is I can see all my clients is financial information and a single window and now I can ask it what is the average revenue of my clients? So we have a special I would say, first and foremost, our real specialty is contractors trades people who have front end systems that they use to run the business that needs to be incorporated in QuickBooks. So if I was throwing out like the plumbers and hvac people, if they're listening and you work with Service Titan and you're looking for an accountant that knows Service Titan and QuickBooks, that would be a great fit.

29:47 I've worked with restaurants, I've worked with retail professional services and are you know, generally we don't work with startups because they don't generally have enough need to work with us. But if they're well funded, I'm supporting a SaaS startup. Right now, I have a new client who retired and now she's born and she's starting a new manufacturing concern, so she's still in startup. So you know, we do have some pre revenue companies. Generally speaking, a good fit of a client who wants basic book keeping services typically starts around seven hundred and fifty thousand to a million dollars and typically has about three to five employees. And then our largest client is in the thirty million dollar range, multiple clients in the ten to twenty million dollar range, multiple clients in the five to ten million dollar range, and then we're actually looking for a lot more under five millions because high value clients can sometimes, you know, if they decide to make a move or they go out of business because they didn't listen to me. They you know, the if a loss of monthly revenue hurts.

31:07 So one of the things I know you probably preach is you don't want to have heavy customer concentration, right, So we're working on trying to you know, build like lower the average revenue of our clients. Actually good spread that risk out. Yep, all right, we're going to take our second commercial break. We will be back in about sixty seconds with Jonathan Bello. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio.

31:49 Best and Wealth Management is family owned for two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and wealth management with a family feel for your closely held family business. Wealth management focuses on deep planning, integrating your business planning with personal They will help put your money to work and your mind at ease. Go to Bestinwealthmanagement dot com for more information. Advisory service is offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join the Best Family and let our family advise your family. That's Bestwealthmanagement dot com for your complementary initial consultation. The YP dot com website is your local search engine.

32:30 If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the YP app to find the closest repair shop. Or maybe you're just looking for something to do on a Friday night. While it has great local coupons for all sorts of things in your area, no matter what, when or where. If you're looking for something, YP local search can help you find it. So go to YP dot com or download the app to search local to find local and save. Local and Now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helenette.

33:20 We're back with Jonathan Bellow. He's founder, CEO, and principal slash lead accountant at one eight Solutions. Talk about the problems that your your prospective clients have that you help solve. Okay, So, first and foremost is lousy financials Okay, people doing it on their own, uh, putting their trust in a person who purports to be knowledgeable but really isn't. So that, you know, that's the first hurdle that that we encounter. You know that you know, by doing our assessment, we try to get under the hood and figure out why they were doing things like that. The next thing is that they're not getting information on a timely basis and it's not accurate, you know, especially if they're you know, key drivers are like oh I need I have an insurance on it, and I need to give my insurance agent financials or I have a loan that I need to give, you know, either to get the loan or to continue to support the loan that they need to give to the gift to the bank, you know, so, or they're thinking of selling or you know, evaluation, evaluation, you know, those are drivers for you know, getting us,

34:54 getting us in the door. I think the major thing is that a lot of people that we don't that we work with, really don't have a workflow a tech stack. Talk about that, and it's you know, working with them to uh make sure you know. A good example is, you know, my marquee client, which we need to account better from maintenance contracts that they sell, and we're trying to see if we can get it from the front end system. But if we can't get it from a front end system, I have developed a workaround for us to see you know, like, you know, how many maintenance contracts do they sell because that is not revenue until it's.

35:41 Used earned income. Yeah, yeah, so. You know, it's it's just getting an understanding of what the client's needs are and helping them solve them by not only. Putting in quick books, but putting in other apps to. Support that outstanding. So you act as really controller level accounting department really right. So one of the nice things, you know, one of the one of the things that makes one eight Solutions different is we're a process driven firm. We want to learn your processes, we want to learn what makes your business unique and then.

36:23 We're going to document those processes, either. In writing or in video or both and then put those into our workflow system. So if somebody is out vacation or health issue, we're ready to slide somebody else in because everything's documented. And that's definitely one of the things that we pride ourselves on. And you know, like we just replaced the person and we get the stress test how good. Are we living up to what we expect we are doing? And every time you go through it, it's a learning experience.

37:06 So you're going to handle any kind of catch up or clean up work Books aren't books? Are open? Quarters still open? Month are still open? Yep? Well, you know, generally speaking, depending on the business. So we work with a couple of companies that like especially because they're owned by foreign entities. You know, like our book's going to be closed by the fifth day and once it closed, you can't touch them. Okay. Then we have a client who. I know who you're going with it? Yea. Then we have a client that we were recruing some expenses. We finally got the answer from the client that you know, now it's intermittent, so we're now got to go reduce those accruals going back to the beginning.

37:48 We can't touch last year because that is locked. But you know, uh, and we issue a financial package every month. We're not going to go reissue. We're going to make the changes in the probably months because we want to even those flows. But in our financial package, we're going to state that we made these changes on the year to date numbers. So this disclosure. So they're getting a whole lot more well, cleaner, better, more accurate, ability to forecast, visibility into cash flow, et cetera. Yep, and now with AI, I'm steroids. So tell us about that. How has the AI changed your business slash industry and how are you utilizing it so people stay confident versus you know, concerned or or worried about AI.

38:38 So right now AI hasn't you know, it hasn't really move the needles speak Okay now, Uh, it is getting better every day. So right now I have two tools, one within quick books and one's a third party tool that I can ask questions and feel comfortable that I am getting the right answer time. You still have to check it all the time. So I'm now getting done with the analytics. I know how to ask the questions. So so give us the answers because that's almost that's as important, you know, knowing the right question to ask, because if you don't ask the right question, it will give you the wrong answer. And now moving into the automation the agenics area. Now, I'm going to a conference next month where I'll get a deeper dive into it.

39:38 But I've spent the past two years evaluating chat, GPT, evaluating co Pilot, and very at times. It reminded me when I did programming a website programming in nineteen ninety five. It's like it's has a lot of promise, a lot of hopes. It can look really good and it and also fall flat on its face. Yep, I've had the same experience, and it's only for me. I'm just working on some certain processes and sometimes it just flakes out. Other times it's pretty spot on, you know, as you said, you got to check it. But it's still growing, it's still there. It's gonna be a good tool as time goes on.

40:22 All right, Just like the Hey, just like the Internet and idea years ago, who would have ever thought that we would be doing a broadcast together over the internet. All right, So here's this is even funnier. And I know I'll bore some people with this, and others will think, man, you're old. Well you're not wrong. But I remember in my dorm room in Kennedy Tower, having the coupler. You dial into the computer center, you hear the noise, You put the phone in the coupler so you could work on your green terminal, green screen terminal and write your code for the assignment. You know, Yeah, I actually didn't do that. I actually walked walked from Washington all the way across campus to the Computer Science Center just sit at a deck writer to enter do coding.

41:09 Yeah. Well, I talked my parents into getting me the getting me the terminal for the room. It was by the month, I think, for that semester. So but it worked out. It worked out well, took up a ton of room though. The thing was big, yeah, big fat monitor. All right, So you're working with SaaS companies, subscription based firms, professional services, lawyers, lawyers, manufacturing, trades and construction. You mentioned that, oh, veterinary and health services. Really, really, anybody, but you probably have some specialties, but really, anybody in anywhere. Geography is not a hindrance anymore. That is correct. Yeah, Well, like I said, you know, right right now, if you our real specialty is if you have a front end system that you really use to run your business and it's not communicating well with your counting solution, that's a that's a good opening for us.

42:04 They could be franchises. Do you work with franchises because they have you know, very characteristic. Is they have some kind of front end system. Yeah, yeah, it's just per chance. It really hasn't fall, you know, fallen into our. Lap, but you can. The funny thing is as a reseller for quick books, we have multi unit discounts that we could give franchises. Very cool, Very cool. All right, can you give us a couple of case studies. Don't mention names, but you know, give us some case studies of where you feel like you've just added a ton of value. Oh, I'm going to go with my marquee clients and if they perchance to listen, they know who they are.

42:47 I started with them when they were operating out of the three season room in the front or the front of their houses, and I was trying to you know, they came in, they were on desktop, their mother was doing the bookkeeping and it was a mess. Yeah, And I said to them and said, hey, look why don't you let us do it, you know, have us do this with you. And and as they've grown, we've grown, you know, like but there they also are really a good best practice company. They hired a sales coach to show their technicians how to sell up sell.

43:37 Without being sold. Okay, uh they've done. They did eos on their own, so you know that is that is one of the reason why they. Always trying to do the right thing and always listening to me. Another best we had a client who just sold and we came in and it was a referral from provisors and we came in. They had just migrated off of QuickBooks Desktop enterprise to quick Books Online. It was a mess. It was horrible. And again another person, he hired a industry consultant to help him get the you know, do the best practicing. So we started doing some very complicated work in progress. We had a very elaborate chart of accounts, and when the boy was doing their due diligence, we never got any questions and it was a very successful sale. And my client is very happy right now and he's working at a golf course.

44:53 Good for him. Now you're at a client though, no bad reason. But right, no bad reason. You know there's always going to be churn. The good churn is we've helped I think six companies either get capital influx or been sold. When they get capital influx, they tend to say, you have to hire our people, so we tend to lose them. But you know, we've been very successful in that area. All right, let's uh. I want to touch on a couple of other things too. What's Woodard is an organization? Right, You've got a lot of recognitions and credentials, credentials, and I just want to run down those. Let's tell us what Woodard is.

45:42 First, Wooded is run by Joe Woodard, and Joe Woodard was one of the first people to actually create training documentation for into it. And then he was working with somebody else and they had a conference, and then Joe decided to go to his conference, have his own conference, and I went to my first Wooded scaling New Heights, which is next month. Always saw you on Father's Day for the fathers, and going to that conference was life changing. He was the person who you know, said pick a niche, which we didn't do.

46:26 But because if you pick a niche, you can you can. Have established processes that are repeatable and scalable. So I picked up on the process driven firm portion of it. And uh and you know, over the years, Uh, you know, I've just learned so much from him. And because of him, I also hired a one to one coach and uh, I'm gonna give him a little shout out. His name's Richard Roper. Uh, he runs round Table. And the two of them were really really instrumental in my professional and personal growth. And you for twenty through twenty four, both years you were awarded Top fifty.

47:11 Consulting Client Accounting Services. CS Client Accounting Services. Yeah, yeah, or A or just as. Account Service top fifty. That's outstanding fifty. Yep. With this year you didn't apply. No, they didn't do it this show. Oh they didn't do the award. Oh. You're also top ten QuickBooks Online Advisor Insightful Accountants version for twenty twenty three. You're an eight time top one hundred QuickBooks Pro Advisor. And there are thousands, there are thousands of QuickBooks programs. I'll give you some numbers very quickly. So I started in the program in nineteen ninety seven when it first rolled out. On the twenty fifth anniversary of the program at at that time, it's now into a connect at QuickBooks Connect, I was told by a person you got to go sit in the front rows. The accounting segment leader got up and talked about the history of the program.

48:07 There's something like seven million Quick Books Pro advisors the. World, okay, worldwide? Yeah, yeah, worldwide. Out of that's let's say even four million, whatever it is, only four hundred of the original class are still pro advisors. Wow. Forty five of us showed up at that conference. Okay. So Joe used to be a partner in Insightful Accountant and he sold his share. And so Insightful Accountant does a rigorous survey to hand out their top one hundred awards. And I did not participate this year on purpose.

48:48 I thought eight was a wonderful number. To stop at great number. And also in twenty three I got the online QuickBooks Online Pro Advisor of the Year. There was only one more above that, that's the QuickBooks Pro Advisor of the Year, and that for the most part has generally been going to women. So I said you know what eight top ten two times, I've got enough acco beautiful because truthfully, one eighth Solutions is not about Jonathan Bellow anymore. Okay, I need to be replaceable. It's about what my team stands for. The top fifty. The top fifty is not my award. It's my team's award.

49:33 Well, I did notice that your bio, and I hope those that listened noticed your bio is equally about you and your team. So ye, you know, normally a bio is about an individual. You chose to make it about the team, which is commendable. All right, last question, two last questions, Actually, who in the viewing and listening audiences should reach out to you? And why? Ooh, you go into your quick books and you don't trust it. Okay, you go into your quick books, it's dated. Okay, that's just a great place to start. Okay. Now, if you want to work with a firm that's going to help you grow and do the right things, okay, Like I'll tell my clients, don't spend personal money out of the business because one day you're going to maybe you want to sell the business or give away the business, and you know, and that's going to hurt you down the line. Okay, so I think that's a good place to start.

50:34 Excellent. And the last is what's the best way for people to get in touch with you? But go ahead and say it. So, first of all, if you wrote down the website from the crawl, you have to add a io N at the end of one eight solutions. It's to n h tu my work. Wife, who's my sales and marketing director who came on board really not knowing anything about the industry. She oh, no, all right. Again, that's right. So it's t I I you at O an e hyphen the number eight dot com.

51:18 She is a great person to start with. Great, t I I you at one. Then spelled out one dash the numeral eight dot dot com. Yes, right, and mentioned the show get a little messed up. That's all right, it was a type Sorry about that mentioned the show, uh, And the website is. Oh one eight solutions dot com, which is any the number eight solutions dot com. Perfect. Well, thank you very much, Jonathan, I know how busy you are. Thank you very much for having me. This was a last I'm so glad I enjoyed it too, And thanks everybody for listening. This is a show about business, often business challenges. That's what Jonathan solves. If you've got concerns about the sales effectiveness of your company, whether your sales team is you or very small, or it's large, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning Business Radio or drop me a note Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com. Our team is Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training. We develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. We're not a fit for everybody, but hey, maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you to producer and engineer one for another job. Well done. Thank you one.

52:33 Be sure to join us next week next Monday, May eighteenth, My guests two guests will be Jim and Dina Deanna Barney, founders and owners of Wavelength Coffee Roasters. Until then, this is Kevin Helena. You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host, Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode. The podcast is available on Top four Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four CY Radio W four c y dot com.

53:15 Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio