Episode 7: Failures That Brought Success in Business with Melissa Honan

Mar 14

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I interview Melissa Honan, the CEO of Bookkeeping for Painters and the founder of Melissa Honan Consulting. We dive into the reality of things that felt like failures but turned into successes, we talk a lot about the legal side of business and how to deal with the ups and downs in building your business.

In this episode you’ll hear:

The failures that Bookkeeping for Painters experienced that turned into successes
The reality of what a team member can do upon quitting
How differences between thought processes and point of views can make things feel out of alignment
Why you should get strong legal contracts to protect yourself, your company and team members
Why it’s so important to document issues with team members
Importance of not stealing other peoples hard work and instead make things your own
How not being honest with yourself can backfire on you

Resources mentioned in this episode:

👥 Sales & Marketing Tips for Bookkeepers Facebook Group

📝 Melissa’s One-on-One Coaching Application

💻 How to Increase Client Prices Mini Course

💻 Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants

⚙️ Slack

⚙️ Notion

📝 Linsey Shay contracts (use code WFQ10 for 10% off contracts):

Bookkeeper Legal Template which provides 4 different services - Bookkeeper Services Template
Bookkeeper Bundle Agreement which includes the Referral partnership agreement, Independent Contract Agreement, Website policies, and an NDA - Bookkeeper Bundle Template

⚙️ Grammarly

Listen to the Full Episode here 👇🏼

🎧 Or listen on our website here ⇨ workflowqueen.com/podcast

Failures sting. But, as business owners, we know they’re inevitable. Melissa Honan, the CEO of Bookkeeping for Painters and the founder of Melissa Honan Consulting, joins me in this blog and podcast. Through her wildly successful firm, Melissa knows how to turn things that feel like failures into successes — and she’s spilling all her secrets in this episode!

In this blog, we’ll dive into:

The “failures” that Bookkeeping for Painters went through and turned into successes
How differences between thought processes and points of view can make things feel out of alignment
Why you should get strong legal contracts to protect yourself, your company, and your team members
Why it’s so important to document issues with team members
How to be honest with yourself when making business decisions

This is an episode PACKED with valuable info and note-worthy nuggets. I can’t wait for you to dive in!

How To Turn Failures Into Successes

Melissa’s bookkeeping, accounting, and tax firm works with painters all across America. And as a natural introvert, she used to struggle with finding leads and talking to others. But since starting her firm, she’s been able to focus on her strengths and land TONS of clients by refining her sales process.

(She also offers one-on-one coaching on how to simply talk to humans. Because, for some reason, a lot of us find that difficult!)

So has she failed? Of course she has. When she became a mother in 2017, she made the decision to stop working in the business. A few years later, she decided to come back to business with a two-year-old, newly pregnant, and a husband who was about to deploy.

Then her CEO texted her their resignation. Melissa was four months pregnant with a husband out in the field and felt like everything around her was completely on fire. So she panicked.

Then she learned that her former CEO attempted to steal her and clients. (Thankfully, they were the ones to let her know and stayed loyal to her)!

As much as she felt like a failure— she survived. And from there, she decided to not only run this business, but she was also determined to double it. And guess what? SHE DID!

That was a defining moment for her when she felt underestimated, and it fueled her to take that drama and use it to propel her forward!

Protecting Yourself Through Your Failures

There’s things you do to be prepared for when these failures happen. Some of them are things you’ll need to work with a lawyer on, and some are things you can put in place yourself.

Setting yourself up with the right legal protection will help if you ever get the rug swept out from under you like Melissa did.

A lot of the self-protection she has in place now includes:

Really strong non-compete agreements in place.
Good employee contracts in place.
Compensation and bonus package tracking.

Sometimes, you don’t know how important these things are until something unexpected happens that feels like it’ll break your business.

I have a whole segment in my program all about protecting yourself. A lot of people think when they start, no one’s going to steal their clients, and no one will ever leave. And in the beginning, I thought that too!

But sadly, when you hear people telling you to put things in a contract— it’s because of their experience NOT having a contract. Nothing’s fun about paying a lawyer, but protecting yourself that way is so important because you can get screwed if you’re not protected!

The next step you can take to protect yourself is documentation! Write down everything! Date. Time. Everything. Because employees can go in and delete things from Slack, they can delete texts, they can manipulate tasks in Asana.

Not trying to be a bummer here, but it’s just the reality of having a team. When you’re hiring, you never want to think about what might go wrong. But when you see a red flag, you just have to start documenting them. Because even minor things can snowball into a huge problem.

Documenting as much as you can helps prevent things from getting out of control. It doesn’t have to be public, but you can always keep that. Have that documentation just in case you need it. I document like crazy, and Melissa even keeps documentation in a Google Drive that no one can access. She’s super thorough about it after going through this experience!.

(If you need help in this area, look into the Bookkeeper Bundle Template by Linsey Levine — it includes the Referral partnership agreement, Independent Contract Agreement, Website policies, and an NDA. Use code WFQ10 for 10% off contracts!)

Honesty Is Always The Best Policy

We all use things as inspirations, but we can’t copy and paste each other’s content. You can’t just take someone’s ideas. I always get my job description page copied, which cracks me up because I have things like KICKASS and ROCKSTAR in there. If you’re copying someone else’s content and their brand voice doesn’t even come close to yours, it’ll show!

Being a business person is taking a leap of faith in yourself. It’s not nice to copy and paste (but also it’s not legally OK), guys, but you’re also not setting the right tone. Don’t bait and switch these people — have them pumped about YOUR personality.

My identifiable failure? My self-honesty about having a business partner. I wanted to have a partner, but I don’t think I was honest about what I was seeking from someone else. Being in business for so long had given me enough chances to find failure, and it was enough to show me that I didn’t need a business partner. I had been through the wringer. Big time. And I was ready to do it on my own.

Essentially, because I didn’t think it through— I felt like such a bad person. My business partner was incredible. And having to tell them that I no longer wanted to move forward as partners made me feel like I failed. Ultimately, it’s hard to identify this as a failure because it’s on the back end of everything and it no longer feels like a “failure.” But it’s hard not to feel like I’ve failed someone I care about.

Failures feel like failures when you’re in them. But remember, they’re so temporary! Business owners wake up and just keep going. One step in front of the other, and just keep plugging away. You’ve got this!

About our guest:

Melissa Honan is the CEO of Bookkeeping For Painters, a bookkeeping & tax firm that works exclusively with painting businesses. Under her leadership, Bookkeeping For Painters serves over 130 clients at $1.5 million in annual recurring revenue.

In addition to her role at Bookkeeping for Painters, Melissa is a Business Sales & Marketing Coach for bookkeeping business owners that want to scale their businesses to 6- or 7-figures. An introvert herself, Melissa has 15 years of sales management experience with proven tools and techniques to teach anyone how to sell comfortably and confidently.

Connect with Melissa Honan:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialmelissahonan/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissahonanconsulting

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissahonan/

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/tipsforbookkeepers

Email: melissa@honanconsultinggroup.com

Website: https://melissahonan.com/

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