Becoming a Bookkeeper with Tatiana Tsoir

george grombacher 0:02
Tatyana Sawyer is a CPA. She has an MBA. She’s a business turnaround expert in m&a advisor, a tax strategist, speaker, and author. Welcome back to the show Tatiana,

Tatiana Tsoir 0:13
George. Thanks so much for having me.

george grombacher 0:15
Yeah, excited to have you back on tell somebody personal is more about your work and why you’re doing what you are doing.

Tatiana Tsoir 0:23
Personal life, enjoy family enjoy travel with family, I actually like my family. So I don’t travel a lot in terms of work, just try to stay away from conferences and things like that. But, you know, people ask me, like, why don’t you come to this conference, or that conference, or this or that, and I just say, you know, I actually like my family like to spend time. As simple as it sounds, and, and as direct as it sounds, I guess, you know, my career, my work had been very meaningful, because when I started back in 2004, or five, I really enjoyed accounting. Actually, at first, I didn’t enjoy accounting because I wanted to be an attorney. But But when I started being good at accounting, and I saw how much opportunity there is, I was also working as a bookkeeper, and then learning accounting 101, which is basically bookkeeping. I really, to me, it was an instant connection between theory and practice on my think that’s what really changed everything for me. Because I could see theory applied in everyday life and, and how that affects our lives, and our businesses, and all of those things, and our ability to make money and ability to have a good life that we really want. So, I’ve been telling people for a long time that really, accounting is the best profession, people would laugh at me. But they would laugh at me. And you know, and I would say, it’s true, it’s true, because even if you’re a doctor, even if you’re a coach, or a construction worker, if you don’t know numbers, it’s a problem. People can take advantage of you, I’ve worked in two companies where two different companies were two different people were stealing, you know, things like that. And medical professionals are known to really not manage their money, well, you know, on the surface of looks all glamorous and things like that. So I really see accounting and bookkeeping being this cornerstone of every business and life, because money allows us to have the life we want. It’s not all about money, but money plays a very important role. And if you count it or don’t count it, it’s a problem.

george grombacher 2:41
No doubt about that. And so you have more so than just your appreciation for it, you’ve you’ve, you’ve created a program to help others get into it.

Tatiana Tsoir 2:53
Yeah, I’ve always been passionate about it. Because I found you know, when you’re an early parent, I don’t know what to call it like a young parent and early parently, when your kids are still little, at least my experience has been a lot of mom’s experience that I’ve talked to, has been that you’re kind of living in this Groundhog Day, every day. It’s wake up or wake up in the middle of the night a few times, feed, you know, change, diaper, sleep, nap, whatever. And then repeat every day for a number of years. And so I found that work, especially work that’s meaningful when I see the result when I see what I do for clients, how that affects their business and lives. That meaningful work was my only anchor, if you will, it’s something that really, I would say, held my psyche together over those early kids years. And I definitely feel like I’ve lost myself for about three years each time I have two kids. And really after my second my youngest was three, I started to see how much I’ve lost myself and how much I have become so focused on the kids, which I don’t regret. But at the same time, I wish I had seen that earlier that I lost focus on who I was. And so accounting and bookkeeping has really been even though I worked probably 1015 hours a month. At that time. It really helped me together. It really provided me with that anchor that adult conversation that get out of Groundhog Day card, if you will. And so this year, I mean, I’ve had this project in mind for many years, but I haven’t found the forum to do it because the course that I’ve created in 2020 I think I launched it I mean I started in 2019 and I finished it in 2020 That course is a solid foundational course for bookkeepers and the reason I started it to kind of kind of go back a little bit in time was because as a CPA, I needed to delegate, I needed to have people doing some of the day to day work. And what I found was that there are very few really good bookkeepers. And the reason is very simple, you don’t need a degree. You don’t need to go to college for it, you can just learn the software and do it. The problem is that the modern day software like QuickBooks Xero, you know, whatever. What it does is it doesn’t teach you to be a bookkeeper, it teaches you to be a software user, and people have this false confidence that there are now bookkeepers, but they’re not. And so what I found is that I can delegate, just based on resume, somebody says, I’m a bookkeeper, I can freelance for you and stuff like that I can’t delegate if I can’t be confident, because quality is very high. Like I have a very high standard of quality. I mean, to put things in perspective, I haven’t actually seen books done up to my standards for prospective clients, I haven’t actually seen that. And so there’s always something. And so I found that I can’t hire like that I can delegate, I can get help, unless I train them. And so I started training, and but created a course, the course, in a manner that I’ve had the experience learning bookkeeping, so theory plus practice, examples, additional, additional series just turned on my phone, additional practice, tests examples from real life. And so I’ve incorporated all of that into the course. And so I’ve had probably 4050 people to date, by the course on their own. Some of them found jobs. After that some of them started their own businesses and are thriving and building their businesses. Some of them like my sister, she pushed back as much as she could and accounting. But she said, you know, she used to say that she is a creative, which she is, you know, she’s a photographer, and she’s pretty good. And then, when she needed to make money to pay the bills, she chose bookkeeping, because what she realized was that photography is great. But if you really want to make money with photography, you have to give up your weekend, which is completely not aligning with what she wanted to do, you know, in the moment that she wanted to be. So she started, you know, doing bookkeeping never took my course. But that’s another conversation. She’s a younger sister, as you probably can tell. And so, like, she’s a great example of that, right? So I created that course. And I’ve had people go through it. And this year, what I’ve realized was that I love giving back. And I’ve I always mentor people who are going to the field of accounting, and I don’t know if you know, the context, but as of seven, eight years ago, but 75% of tax preparers were over the age of 65. So we’re looking at today, you probably 75% of taxpayers are still in the workforce, hopefully, are over the age of 73, roughly 7273, right. So in the accounting, enrollment in colleges has been falling, because the new generation doesn’t want to work like that. They don’t work to work for them. They don’t want to work for the resume. They don’t want to work 24/7 And I can’t blame them. They’re putting life first. And again, I can’t blame them. So what I’ve realized was that there are four areas and every all of us support causes that really speak to us. So for me, I’m creating better bookkeeping in the United States, right? Because the laws I mean, bookkeeping, laws, debit and credit as the same everywhere but but I used to before we started the US population, in businesses. And so it’s, I just realized that it’s, I can, it’s in my power to create better bookkeeping across the board for everyone, because the stuff that I see that comes in from prospective clients, future clients, is just awful. So I wanted to raise the bar. And I thought, what better way to raise the bar for small businesses and bookkeeping, than to give the ability to those who need it most. Learn how to do it and do it well, so that they can build businesses or just pay their bills or have it as a side hustle, whatever the reason, or maybe do motherhood a full time and have a little escape from the groundhog day for themselves. And so we started this project called the bookkeeper project. In May, we launched it in May, and the idea is that we are supporting, providing free education it’s by application and we as We get funding, we basically award scholarships, and people go through the training, which I lead. So it’s not just a pre recorded training, it’s cohort based, that’s involved, that’s weekly meetings, actually, twice a week, and things like that. So it’s very involved. And we’re targeting four groups of people. One is teens, because teens are our future. And I want to show them that there is fun beyond I mean, behind accounting, that there is a skill behind accounting that they can use, even if they become an engineer or doctor, they can still use that skill because they can build their business. And we all know that United States has was built on small business, the tax code is geared to small business. So teens, moms, because I believe that moms, a lot of moms, you know, when they become mothers, they rediscover themselves, or they’re no longer passionate for the career they used to have, and they just don’t want to do it anymore. Or maybe they didn’t have her career passion before that. And so they starting to rediscover themselves in and they really wants to make a living, maybe it’s, I don’t know, nails money, to get your nails done, or hair money, you know, whatever that is, I think it’s very important. And a lot of them need that little push to start getting into it. And then first generation immigrants are people who basically have to start that life from scratch. Because I know because I’ve been there. It was easier for me, because I didn’t have kids, I didn’t have to, you know, support a family. I was younger, I went to school. And so it was a lot easier for me. But a lot of people who move after they’re 30 or 40, it’s really hard for them, they made an effort never really become you know, get a real profession or whatever real profession. But they never really get a profession that they can really thrive in, it’s more jobs that are, you know, usually tough, physically tough construction, you know, waitressing, whatever that is that are tough jobs. I mean, I’ve worked in as a waitress for years. So I know. And so I think that if I could get them a skill, I think that they can, even if they don’t build a business around it, which some of them do, some of them don’t, they can still make a living a decent living and build a dignified retirement for themselves and their kids. And then finally, the fourth group of people that we support is abuse survivors. So I haven’t been an abuse survivor myself 20 years ago, I know what it’s like. And even though we can’t, I can’t help those living in domestic violence situations or whatever, get out of them. Because usually, it starts it does require an in my opinion, because I’ve been there in requires an external intervention, but also an internal decision.

We do help those who have been through that recover faster, find themselves faster, Rediscover themselves faster, and get a skill that will allow them to make money and support their kids. Because if the kids are involved, that becomes a much different ballgame. When I went through something like that. 20 years ago, I didn’t have any children, thankfully. But imagine haven’t. Imagine being connected to somebody forever for the rest of your life because of kids, and not be able to do anything about it. And a lot of it, you know, has to do with financial abuse and, and things that we’ve discussed. So we’re supporting those two groups, we’re accepting applications, to get sponsored to get a scholarship to free scholarship. And we’re also reaching out to accounting firms, financial firms, and just small businesses who want to sponsor people. It’s basically where we’re making it very, very easy to sponsor and it’s not doesn’t cost that much. So that’s in a nutshell, what the project is about.

george grombacher 13:49
I think it’s great. So what is it that the software user versus a bookkeeper and that you’ve never met? Anybody that is up to your standards? What is that continuum of unacceptable, terrible to passable to good from a bookkeeping standpoint,

Tatiana Tsoir 14:08
the problem and the reason why I started, you know, this whole course and everything. And the problem with those software users is they typically don’t know the basic foundations of accounting, you have to know the basic accounting equation, you have to know the debits and credits, you have to know the normal balances on the balance sheet. You have to understand the financial statements, then it’s how you use the software. And then at that point, once you know the foundation software doesn’t matter. You can use QuickBooks, you can use Xero. You can use Zoho, you can use you know, whatever, whatever you want. And so, I don’t know why is that me? I think it’s me, but I don’t know, I hope it’s not and it looks like my connection is going in and out. But hope isn’t it so it’s all good. Okay, so that’s kind of the idea. So they’re missing the foundations and the problems start when they start downloading transactions. is creating new accounts. And that spectrum is pretty, pretty significant. Like I knew many years ago, remember I said that I’ve been worked into businesses where somebody was stealing. If you’re doing your bookkeeping properly, if it’s properly done by a professional that knows what they’re doing, that should be uncovered within a month for happening. First, the situations where I worked, the fraud has been happening probably for at least two, three years before it was caught. Two different approaches to different people. And the people you would suspect the least, and that’s the, the, the probably the worst part. And so it’s more than just fraud detection, right? It’s also, I’ve seen situations where bad bookkeeping would cause people 50 $60,000 a year in tax, because the book bookkeeper doesn’t know, the CPA doesn’t look, because you know, CPAs, or traditional firms, they don’t have the time to look at three 400 clients books to prepare their taxes in a two month period, it’s just not possible. And so it’s typical for traditional CPAs work with the volume of clients on who focus on the volume. It’s very typical for them to miss things. And it’s costing client not only money in tax, it’s costing them potential penalties and interest, and it’s also costing them potential audits. And so good bookkeeping covers all of those things. Because when your books are done, right, you fly through an audit. And I’ve certainly had that with clients where they just flew through an audit was a no change, nothing. And so that’s kind of that spectrum is pretty bad at the biggest issue is that I see is that bookkeeping mistakes, take years to get discovered. Sometimes they’re never discovered. And I know because I was a starting up bookkeeper, you know, 20 years ago, I remember when I was, as I was learning in college, I was learning the accounting principles and going through accounting, 101102201, whatever, whatever that was. I was like, Oh, my God, I was like, screwing up this thing, I need to go and fix it if the client is still my client. So I know I’ve been there. And I know what it’s like. And of course, you know, people say that I you know, I’m an accountant. And because of that, I know, bookkeeping, so well, but it’s bookkeeping is the foundation of accounting. And so that’s what I teach. And of course, they don’t need to become accountants to be great bookkeepers. But they need to know the foundations. And that’s not where, well, that’s what all of it comes down to really.

george grombacher 17:52
It makes sense, why me why this is a great opportunity for everything that you’ve laid out. And I think that there’s probably people that have found themselves in the situations that you’ve described, that have extremely high intellects and people that have average intellects. What does it take to be able to, to do this? If I’m listening to this, and I’m thinking about somebody or I’m thinking about it for myself? And then a little bit of doubt creeps in that I don’t have a high educational background, potentially, I’ve never done this, what do you say to that?

Tatiana Tsoir 18:27
There is a an old meme, where somebody’s standing by the Blackboard and writing, calculus, and it says what people think accountants do, or the level of math that accountants need is like calculus. And then what we actually need is like algebra, one plus two is equal three. So you don’t have to have any really any education. If I teach you the basics, the foundations you do the exercises, you do the practice steps, you do them, the quizzes and things that I’ve built in, and you show up and you ask questions, I teach people to learn better also, then you don’t really need to have anything. You don’t need to know math. And that’s a common misconception misperception with accounting and bookkeeping that you need to be good at math. Now there are computers doing all the math. And so you need to know kind of the basics and be able to learn and be have an open mind. That’s probably the most important thing. Love it.

george grombacher 19:29
Well, Tatiana, thank you so much for putting the putting the bookkeeper project together and for coming on to talk about it. Where can people learn more and how can they how can they get enrolled and take advantage?

Tatiana Tsoir 19:41
So if you’re looking to just buy it if you don’t need sponsorship, because sponsorships happen in? chunks, right? So we build a cohorts we accept applications, we get the funding for that cohort. And then because I need to, you know, we need to pay the admin people, the Dean of Students and and everything else to kind of monitor and help people make the best out of it. So typically what if you want that then you can apply at the website. It’s basically the nonprofit the charitable nonprofit is called society for financial independence. And so the the website is the short version of that. It’s s o f, and then find.org. So the left in the middle kind of SLF find that org. And you can learn more about the project you can find the applications there and an apply in the one of the groups. And if you’re looking to just buy it and learn it, you can just go to Tatiana sawyer.com And you will see the learning learning tab there and you can only can take a look at all of the programs.

george grombacher 20:47
Excellent. Well if you enjoyed as much as I did, so Tatiana, your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to or learn more about the bookkeeper project at SOFFIN d dot o RG. And then if you’re just interested in buying the course or learning more about Tatiana and the rest of her work, go to Tatiana sawyer.com That’s t a t ian@soir.com. Thanks again, Tatiana.

Tatiana Tsoir 21:19
Thank you.

george grombacher 21:20
And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.