Business | The Amy Baltimore Success Story | “You Have to Listen to the Coaches And Actually Follow Through And Do the Homework.” – Amy Baltimore (6 Year + Clay Clark Consulting Client)

All right, Thrive Nation. On today’s show, I’m going to introduce you to a wonderful CPA who we’ve had the opportunity to work with over these past few years, and I really do want you to hear her success story because she’s been a great client to work with, and she’s a great woman. Amy Baltimore, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show. How are you?

I’m good, thank you. How are you?

Oh, I’m fired up to interview you today. So I want to ask you, having worked with you from 2017 to now, how’s your life different now, 2023 versus 2027?

Well, in 2017, I was not paying myself anything, and I was having to borrow money to make ends meet. I had so many employees and just trying to cover payroll and get the work done and train all these employees because we were so unorganized and inefficient. It’s just looking back on it now, it was a miserable experience. And I just looked at year over year from last year, from this time last year I’m down 12 employees because we have become more efficient and my net income is, January, February of last year to this year it’s up $38,000. My take home pay is up $30,000 and our equity in the company’s up over 120,000.

Hey, man. That’s great.

I know.

So Amy, I guess for anybody out there that’s thinking about hiring you, who’s a good fit for you there, ma’am?

So I want small businesses, partnerships, sole proprietors, [inaudible 00:01:46], things like that. We’re becoming more niched into the contractors area, home builders, subcontractors, flippers, roofers, things like that. We’re working with them about getting their finances under control, their daily work schedules under control, and making sure that they have the money that’s coming out of the business to support their lifestyles.

And who do you think is a good fit for us, somebody out there looking for business coaching, who do you think is a good fit?

Well, I think I was a good fit, for one. But it’s a lot of work, you have to be able to put in the work and the time and listen to the coaches and listen to what they’re recommending and actually follow through and do it.

Amy, it’s been an honor us serving you over these past six years. I’m so glad you’re in a great spot and it’s just wonderful to hear that, and that’s why we do it. So people out there can prove that you’re not a hologram. What is your website people can go to if they’re looking for you?

It’s amybaltimorecpa.com.

amybaltimorecpa.com. And how long have you been a CPA?

Oh, probably about 30 years, I guess, by now.

Really?

Yeah.

What made you want to become a CPA?

I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and so my dad had me helping him with his accounting work, and I just moved on into that through college.

And where is amybaltimorecpa.com located? Where’s your business located?

We are in Covington, Tennessee, which is just about an hour north of Memphis.

And I know it’s been many years, but how did you first originally hear about us?

From another one of your clients, actually.

Really?

Yeah.

And what were you needing the most help with at the time that you first met us there?

Oh, my business was just out of control. We were growing faster than I could keep up. I couldn’t get employees. I couldn’t get them trained. We were unorganized. It was chaos.

And how long ago was that? Do you remember how long ago that was?

I want to say it was maybe 2017.

Okay. Yeah. And so you have grown and a lot of great things are happening, and you’re going to be taking your business into a completely a new level, new direction here very soon, you’re offering some new services. Can you talk about some of the growth that you’ve experienced since 2017 to now?

Okay. Yeah. So when I first came on, I was just your typical CPA, we were doing tons of tax returns and lot of work, low profit margins, lot of stress. And then we went through COVID and the IRS shut down and the chaos with that and my clients started struggling, and I started realizing that there was more that I could be offering to help my clients and to help myself actually. And I was working with Derek at the time and so we started reorganizing the business and I became more of a valuable asset to my clients and to myself, actually. And I started hiring better, more qualified people, and all of a sudden it started to come together and I was more organized and more efficient and so things are going great right now.

And what are all the services that you provide at amybaltimorecpa.com?

So we’ve moved away from just the individual tax returns and the retail side of the practice and we are more into what we call CFOs for small businesses. And so we don’t, the larger companies they can hire a CFO and handle their finances and things, but we work with the smaller businesses that can’t really hire a CFO, but they can share one.

And are you working with clients in all 50 states, or are there certain states you’re focusing in on or?

No, we work across the country. So we have less clients now with larger profit margins, and so we don’t work as in as many states as we did with the tax returns, but we’ve got clients in Utah and Idaho and Florida and Georgia.

If people want to hire you or learn more about what you do, how do they get ahold of you? What does that process look like?

Well, so they can get on my website and see my phone number, and there’s also a little link there where they can contact me and we will give you a call back.

Okay.

And one of the perks with this new business model that we have now is they have more access to me. And so once they sign on, I have three different packages, if they sign on with the middle or the larger package, they get my direct phone number and I will pick up the phone when they call.

Got it. And so you’ve grown the business quite a bit, and if you could go back and go back to 2017 when we first met you, what kind of changes did we help you to implement or what kind of changes did you make in the business?

Well, we got more organized for one thing, and probably the biggest asset that we came upon was the morning huddle. My employees love the morning huddle. We get together, we talk about our burning fires, and we train, we find things that people have questions on, and we drop what we’re doing right there and we train on it. And so the clients, their employees, they’re more involved in the business, they’re more hands on now, and they’ve started training each other, which is pretty awesome to see. It’s not all falling on me now.

Amen. Now, for people out there who are listening who are thinking about becoming clients of ours, I know we’ve helped you a lot with the websites, and can you talk to the listeners out there about maybe some of the work we’ve done with you on the website or marketing materials?

So when I first came on in 2017, I had created my own website through one of those canned programs where you just go on and change your name and boom, you have a website. So you guys helped make it a little more professional, more customized to what I was doing. And then over the last year, we’ve actually customized it even more. And then you’ve also helped me with the search engine optimization, which has been huge.

Are you getting more leads now or how many more leads are you getting now than as far as leads that you used to be getting before we started working with you guys?

Oh God, I used to not get any leads from my website. Now all my leads come through the website and we’re to the point now where we’re turning people down, they Google me and I’m at the top of the search, and so they call me and I have to turn them away. We’re knocked out.

And our whole thing, much like yours, is we only work with 160 clients, and so it’s kind of a thing where I don’t want to waste anyone’s time who’s not a good fit, but I also want to help people that are a good fit. How would you describe how the business coaching has helped you since 2017 to grow your business?

Oh, it’s helped me hone in who exactly I want for clients and who’s a better fit for me. And so we’ve done our immutable laws where we can determine what kind of clients we want, and we were able to that weed out the ones that just we’re not a good fit for us. And now we have honed into the type of clients that we want to work with now, our maximum that we’re going to take on now is 25. Because we do a lot of work with the clients that we have, but we do, we want small business owners who are serious about making a successful business and not just the business, but their own lifestyle, with their families and their own personal time and then we also help with their financials, their investments, and retirement planning, succession planning, things like that.

Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a market increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof and turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. I established my practice here in Tulsa.

The Thrive Time Show. Today, interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zoellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website, we’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. Now we’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days, you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve.

You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I’ve built these workshops is because, as an entrepreneur, I always wished that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge and they’re like, “Oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop.” And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick, walk on hot coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business.

But I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 Auto Auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zoellner And Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’ll even give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you.