Dida Clifton | Dare to Leap Podcast
7

Whatever You Do Pick One Thing and Focus with Dida Clifton

Dida Clifton is the Founder and CEO of The Office Squad, a virtual bookkeeping service. Dida is an Air Force veteran and has been working with QuickBooks for over 30 years. She is now looking to expand her business through franchising. In this episode, we learn about Dida’s business model, how she makes it work, and some of the challenges she has faced.

Whatever You Do Pick One Thing and Focus with Dida Clifton

Hey everybody. It is Kathy with the Dare To Leap podcast. I have the great honor today of having Dida Clifton with me. She is the CEO of the company called The Office Squad. We’re going to learn all about what that is today. She’s also a wife, mom, Air Force veteran and dog wrangler. And her mission is changing the way America grows small businesses. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Thanks for having me.

So, would you tell us just a little bit about yourself? Like where you live and anything else I left out of that intro.

Okay. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, and it’s really quiet around here right now. Casinos are shut down and boarded up for the first time I think in history. But they are supposed to be opening up in the first week of June. So yay. We are military transplants. There is an air force base here called Nellis Air Force Base. And so that’s how we got here. I have a home out in the suburbs and my office is five minutes away. So that’s where I am. And it’s like 107 today.

And believe it or not, it is that temperature here also in the humidity, dry heat, you have really dry and 107 really dry. I’ve been in that kind of weather too. And that’s really hot. If you see me sweat and it’s because it’s 99% humidity here today. So, I’d like to just jump right in and have you tell us about your amazing business that you are the CEO of today? Tell us all about it, all the goodness of it and any plans that you have for the future.

Well, I love to talk about myself and my business. So thank you. Let’s talk about ourselves, even the shy ones. The Office Squad is, gosh, it’ll be 19 years old, this August and we’re franchising starting in 2021. So, I’m really excited about that. We are a full back office support squad or team, as some people like to say, for small business owners, entrepreneurs, startups, any size shape, small business you can think of. I hate the word, what’s your target market because it’s everybody. We have three levels of service and we’re kind of based on military terms and military systems and procedures. Cause that’s where I spent a little bit of my time and then I married a pilot. And so that’s just been our life, the military way of doing things. So, the business model is kind of based on that.

That’s where the word with the Office Squad comes from. In the air force, you have a base, a wing, a squad and a flight. So we’ve divided our businesses model up a little bit like that. I have 11 on staff currently. We have four full time bookkeepers, three full time admin assistants, a customer relations manager, a sales liaison. I have a GM, an office manager, but I think that’s 11. I have created a little business that runs by itself. I like to say I’ve done the impossible because I had advisors and accountants and CPAs telling me that it wasn’t possible to scale a bookkeeping business and lo and behold, it is! So, never say it is impossible.

I would love to ask you a few additional questions about your business. First of all, congratulations on doing what others said wasn’t possible. What gave you the courage to be able to do that?

Maybe it’s not so much courage as tenacity. I have an entrepreneurial father, so he has a shop that in Texas, a little machine shop, that he’s always been, can’t work for anybody else. So, I think I have that mentality, but I just saw something that needed to be solved and felt that I could solve it. And so I just started small and over the last 18 years have grown it to be what it is.

That’s an amazing success story. In my opinion, it’s not easy when multiple people tell you something isn’t possible. To have the tenacity, the courage to go ahead and do it anymore. And obviously there was something inside of you that just knew it was possible.

Well, I think if you see a need. I had a small bookkeeping business and I kept seeing these business owners that were getting screwed by bookkeepers that didn’t know what they were doing. So it wasn’t fair to them to let that happen. I’m a fixer, I needed to fix it.

That’s awesome. And let’s talk about your staff for a few minutes. You mentioned that you have 11 people on your staff and you said you have a tiny office. So, where do all your staff members work?

Well the office is probably a good, I don’t know, 1200 square feet. We have a bullpen and we have some offices, so it’s not tiny. I started tiny. So, we have a bullpen where the bookkeepers sit and admin actually works the front desk. We’re in a privately-owned executive suite right now. And we work the front desk and we help manage that. So that was kind of a deal I made during the great recession to survive.

Awesome. Again, thinking out of the box, just like you did building your company.

Yeah. People think we work remotely. We work remotely with our clients, who we hardly ever see, but we all come into an office. We did have three that worked from home during the pandemic so we can do it. It’s very easy. All the technology is there, but they come into the office.

Since you work remotely with all of your clients where they don’t actually come into your office, nor do you go to their office. Do you have clients all over the U.S.?

We do. Not as many as you would think, I’m not nationwide. I keep telling everybody, but I haven’t reached that far yet. We have most of our bases here in Vegas and the surrounding area. A lot of people want to know where their bookkeeper is. So that’s why the franchise model will be built the way that it is and not all remote.

Okay. So, let’s go straight into the franchise model. Cause that was going to be my next question. What made you think of doing a franchise? What need did you see or what issue came up and talk a little bit about what that franchise is going to be like, and if people want to get in touch with you about how they might do that.

Absolutely. I want to expand and expanding takes money and bandwidth capital. And so, I can either partner with an investor and share my wonderful ideas with others, or I can be selfish and create it and do it myself. So, the franchise model is a bit myself, be selfish kind of thing. I’ve been doing this for 18 years, run into a lot of people. There’s a lot of not so good. So, you be careful with who you like and trust, but the franchise model is for bookkeepers and accountants and virtual assistants literally so that it can do what I did only faster, better, and way smarter, because I’ve made all the mistakes. I’ve missed the tax payments. I’ve survived the recession. I’ve hired the wrong people and kept them too long. And so now we take everything that we’ve learned and we convey that to someone else and say, look, here’s the way to grow your business faster, better, smarter, and help grow small business while you’re growing your small business.

We need to start with an end in mind and I think a lot of us forget that. Click To Tweet

And is the franchise ready for people to step into, or are you still waiting on putting some more into it?

There’s some legal that goes with it. I hired a legal team who are working on the FPD and that’ll go back and forth and there’s this big fat manual that needs to be put together. So, I’ve got that tweaking so it’s just paperwork really. There is a spot on the website. You can go look and send me an email about what territory you would like, we’re going to do it by zip code. So, if you think you might want to do something like that next year, give me a holler.

So, it sounds like people need to take a look at it. If they’re interested, start thinking about it, start working with you and perhaps get on your waiting list for when it is time.

Get the territory before it’s taken. Absolutely.

Exactly, And I love that you are limiting it like that because that makes it so much more special for that franchisee.

Yeah. You can have clients from just about anywhere, so you need to be on it to know what you can and cannot do.

And could you share in case somebody is just listening and can’t access the notes right now. Can you tell people again how to access your website?

Oh, it’s easy. It’s just theofficesquad.com. So, pick a domain dot com was taken when I first started, but it miraculously appeared.

Let’s take a pause and go back to the very beginning. Let’s even go back to before you became an entrepreneur, unless there was never a time you weren’t an entrepreneur. Did you go to college? Did you have a job at a corporation or anything like that?

No. I joined the Air Force right out of high school because I was not a perfect child. And my parents said you need to go find something to do before you get in trouble. So, I went down to the recruiting mall. I don’t know if you have one of those in your little town, you walk in the door and there’s Air Force, Army, Coast Guard. You pick whatever you want. I think Air Force, cause the uniforms were cooler looking than Army. I’ll be darned if I didn’t end up wearing green anyway. Cause that’s what the daily uniform is green. So, I joined the Air Force. Didn’t go to tech school, went to boot camp and then went straight to my first assignment, which was in Alamogordo, New Mexico, working with really hot fighter pilots, it was awesome. My dad was disappointed, but that’s okay. So, I got to work operations in a NFC and fire squatter and I got to sit behind a big desk and answer the phone and take care of pilot training and know where they are and what they were doing. I learned all the systems and procedures to accomplish your mission and to help difficult personalities get to what they need to do. And then I married one and we’ve been married for 34 years.

So, I started traveling around with him cause you can’t really keep the job when you’re moving every year and a half to two years. And I started some small businesses. I made gift baskets. I did Mary Kay. I did all those things while you grow and have kids and travel. And then we got here and I started my little bookkeeping business from home because I figured we were going to move again. So, a virtual assistant specializing in bookkeeping. All the kids were at school, no big plans to do anything crazy with it. And then this light bulb came on about two years into it that said, Oh my God, these people are like fighter pilots. They have these unique personalities, they have this mission. They don’t want to listen to anybody else, but they need the systems and procedures. So that was kind of my aha moment that I wanted to take what I had learned in the military and put it in the civilian world.

And so, because bookkeepers don’t really have to have a license or a class or any kind of accountability you just say, Oh, I know QuickBooks. I can do that. And you start a business now. And virtual assistants are the same way. There is no industry standard for either of those. And we love to think that everybody is honest and has great integrity and does exactly what they’re supposed to do. But if they have no accountability, they’re working from home, you can’t get ahold of them. How are you? I wanted to change that. I wanted VAs that were accountable and under our wing as I call it. And that’s what the franchise is all about.

And one of the things that I’m on a mission to help people learn about is exactly what you just mentioned. The difference between VAs, they’re not all the same. And there’s a wide range from fabulous ones all the way down to people that really don’t know what they don’t know. And so they don’t do the kind of professional work that you do. So, do you have any tips?

Let me back up a minute. I’m going to get to the tips in a minute. When you were in the air force, at what point did you get out of the air force?

I was in about six years.

Thank you for your service. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

And what made you decide to move out of the air force?

Well I was dating an officer and you can’t stay in.

You can tell I’ve never been in!

Yeah, we wanted to get married and I was literally working under the rank of him. And so, we needed to, I needed to leave.

Well, he was a lucky man that you were willing to do that. And I’m really glad to hear that you guys are still together because that was a big sacrifice.

Thank you very much. I kind of feel like I got the bonus, you know?

So, when you got out of the Air Force and you were trying all these different things, which by the way, I hear this story many times and it is also my story. Once I decided that I wanted something of my own, I tried Mary Kay and I did try in your case, I’d try network marketing. I tried selling on eBay, so I kind of went down the same road. So, when you decided, Hey, you know what, I think I want to have something of my own. And you started trying all those different things. What was it that made you think – I want something of my own, I want to do this on my own. I’m going to take the Dare to Leap into this entrepreneurial world.

Well, stupidity is the first word because I call it courage. Yeah. I think you’re born with it. I think it’s a personality. Like I said, my father had that entrepreneur thing. My mom has it. She’s a painter, a creative, but she always wanted to do more. I think it’s just something that you have is that it’s a passion. You find something that you believe in it and you want to fix it. You want to do it. That will make, you can say, I want to be a business owner. I’m going to learn how to do that. I think it’s something that you you’re born with.

What? Well, I would tell you I was not born with that, huh? Well, yeah. Wrong and coachable. That’s what I think a lot of people are born with it. Especially when you have an entrepreneurial parent, like you had, do you feel like that influenced you at all?

Yeah. Watching him try to work with others.

For me it was just being so sick of having people tell me what I could and could not do and how I could and could not act. And I found that the only way to stop doing that was to start my own business. And like you, I didn’t know what I didn’t know at the time, so I can do this.

I think that part that you mentioned about, I don’t take instruction. So, you kind of were born with it. I see what you’re saying to be told what to do. You didn’t, you got tired of that. And so you kind of were, you just didn’t know you were, that’s a good point.

That’s why I only lasted six years in the military, you know, I don’t take instruction now.

I feel like I take instruction well, but not from stupid people or people who want to change me. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

That’s really interesting because you and I really do have a lot in common with that and I had not made that connection. I love that we made that connection. You’re going along and you’re trying Mary Kay, all this other stuff. How did you find out about being a bookkeeping virtual assistant with Google around in 2000?

My husband got stationed here, got the kids in school and it was like, okay, now what do I do? I don’t want to do Mary Kay. Don’t want to do gift baskets. What am I going to do now? When I said that I could do from home that we grow. And I think I just came across the words, virtual assistant when I was searching. I found the International Virtual Assistants Association. That’s how I started, which is weird to go all the way back. I actually outgrew IVAA. I went to renew and they wouldn’t let me because they said I wasn’t a virtual assistant anymore.

So, talk about that journey because I find that this happens more frequently than not in women like us, where we just can see the possibilities and we want to help people. And as we see those and we continue to grow, we do grow into something different and more and bigger. And that’s what you’ve done. Talk about that journey from being a VA to growing into and how did it feel?

When they said you’re not a virtual assistant, I argued with her and then I lost. Virtual assistant by definition is one person working remotely on past. And I wasn’t one person anymore. So, I think that was now that you mentioned it kind of a turning point. But I’m not that anymore. I have to be this. That turned me off and turned me in the other direction. I started calling us a virtual staff, central office with staff. So, we’re still that, we’re just a little bigger. It was an awakening moment.

Yeah. And, how long ago was that, that you made that turning point?

At least 12 years. 10, 12 years?

And do you feel that, or how do you feel that working as a virtual assistant bookkeeper helped you grow into what you are today?

Oh, that was the foundation. I mean, I would never be here without that. That was the word virtual assistant. It wasn’t big then. It existed, but it wasn’t big. There was no QuickBooks online. I was driving around from client to client and making a backup and going home without the virtual assistant thing and we’re still doing it. You know, we’re virtual assistants. We’re just on a bigger platform and they’re everywhere now. It’s the perfect job.

Step into the fear. The only way you're going to grow is to step into it and it goes away. Click To Tweet

Thank you for sharing that because I think a lot of people, and by the way I was the definition of virtual assistant. Is there a definition? There is no official definition. Just like no industry standard. I think they’re awesome. I love everything that they do. So that’s why I asked you how you felt when they said you couldn’t be part of their group any longer. And I love that they do have those standards and things like that, but I want everybody to know, just like with you, it really is dependent on you and what you want to do.

Yeah. Change is good. And if you want to grow, it’s possible. I’ve met a lot of men and women that don’t want to be any bigger than just them. And they take care of whatever workload they can and that’s fine. We need them. And when you’re tired of doing it, let me know. I’ll buy you out and go from there.

So, talk a little bit about buying somebody out or being bought out. I mean, that’s part of being an entrepreneur, right? You could very well sell your business. You could franchise like you’re doing, there are so many different opportunities. I want to talk a little bit about that.

Well, you need to start with an end in mind. And I think a lot of us forget that, we just start. And if you’re doing something and no backup, if it’s just you, then you really don’t have a company. You have a job. You have a job because you created a job for yourself. So unless you have started to create another person that can help you with that, and you can step away and you create a company, which is where the systems and procedures that we do come in, our franchisees will be able to step away and then we will help them with whatever their clients need help with. It’ll all be interconnected.

I tell people all the time, if you’re working, you can’t take a day off. Then you’ve got a job for yourself. That’s really all it is. So you have to start and then you need an end game. Do you want to do that? You want to DOB that you just don’t have anybody to be the boss of me, which by the way is untrue because your clients are the boss of you. There will always be a boss of you. Now you can pick your clients. That’s great, but you’re always working for someone and you need to know, are you going to continue to do this, or don’t want to do it 10 years and build up my clientele and then sell it to another virtual assistant. How do I, how do I want to get out of this? Cause I don’t want to be buried with it. Do I?

Yeah. That’s one of the things that I’m looking at now is my end game, which has changed many times over the years. I’m sure yours probably has too, as you continue to grow and learn and all of those things and it’s okay to change what your end game is. Do you agree?

Yeah. We all grow and change.

So right now I’m examining two options. If I want to hire a CEO, when I go into my retirement years, which isn’t going to be for a long time yet, but you know, you gotta start thinking about that. Cause I feel like you have to plan at least five years out. What do you think? How far out do you feel like you gotta plan?

I plan five years out anyway. Yeah, we sit down and do a five-year plan and we bear that we’ve narrowed that down into one-year plans and months and weeks and days. So everything is planned. But yeah, I’m now 58. So, I want to work about another 10 years.

Yeah. I want to actively do it for another five years. And then the next five, I’m just going to sit back and be the face.

Yeah. That’s kind of what I’m looking at too. I mean, they’re going to be the CEO or I’m going to hire a CEO and I’m going to stay a part of it as the head of the company. Or I’m going to sell it. I don’t know yet which one I want to do because make sure I do that, thinking about it and then start planning for it five years before I want it to happen. So, I’m not quite at that point yet. But how exciting that we’ve been able to do this, right?

So, thinking back on when you started. Thinking back to when you started your VA business, did you have any idea that you would grow into this big company that you had created and franchise it?

No. I was planning on doing it for a couple of years until he got orders into somewhere else. And then I would be able to virtually take my clients with me. And he decided to retire and I went, Oh, I think I can grow this thing. So that’s pretty cool. But yeah, I had no idea. I read an article written recently called the accidental business. So somebody, that’s what they call them. I love that so much.

I just wrote an article that actually went on LinkedIn and Facebook that I called in and I called some people that just went through the pandemic. I called them accidental remote workers. They didn’t want to be remote workers necessarily, but they were suddenly thrown into it. So, you can tell, I love that term that you and I have a lot in common here. I know, because guess what, when I decided to grow my business was when I knew my husband needed to retire also.

Well, he kept it. He has a civilian job that we had to be kept in the manner that we had become accustomed. So I had that safety net, which a lot of us don’t have. So, thank you so much to him. He’s my chief stockholder. He says, I actually got to pay myself the last couple of years with some real amounts of dollars. And he’s gonna really officially retire this year.

Oh, that’s exciting. That’s very, it is. I’d also like to ask you how it feels to be able to have a business that is so successful that you’re able to have your daughter work with you.

My role has always, after I hired my oldest daughter as my first receptionist, I swore I would never hire family again. And I tell my clients that that is a really bad thing to do. But this just happened. In March, she has been in retail her entire adult life. She can sell, she can sell, she went to school for it. She can do it. And I never thought of her working for me. And she never thought about working for me cause she didn’t want to do bookkeeping. She wasn’t doing that. And we were having lunch shortly before the pandemic hit. And she said, mom, I think I just need a career change. Retail’s going away. And I knew I needed a career change and I’ve been looking for a sales person for years. So the little voice said, this is it. This is your sales. This is your moment. But the other little voice says, hell no, it’s your kid.

How are you going to treat that differently and make sure that you don’t have that, “it’s your daughter in the office” feel? So, I asked the staff, we would practice a little bit with some networking events to make sure and it’s working, but I really had to go to the staff and say, look, I need a sales person. I think she’s good. What do you guys think? And they went, yes. And I said, but she’s my daughter. They said, that’s okay. So, if you get to do it, make sure the rest of the people know what the plan is, really vet it. And yeah, I accidentally wanted to call her sweetie the other day. And I went, Oh no, Ms. Clifton.

The more things you’re doing, the less you’re going to be good at them. Focus on one thing. Click To Tweet

So, one of the things that means a lot to me, and I want to get your take on it. Actually two things. One is being able to choose your own destiny. That’s one, the big reasons why, after I began my VA business, I realized, wow, I get to choose my own destiny. Now I can decide how much I earn. I can decide how big my business gets or what clients they were. How does that sit with you, that term destiny? Does that feel impactful for you?

Yeah, it is impactful. I hadn’t really thought about it. I just was kind of living day by day, married to a fighter pilot, moving every couple of years and just doing what needed to be done. I think it probably hit me about 10 years ago when the recession hit here in Las Vegas, it hit really hard. We were closing going bankrupt and I could have closed. The whole thing said, nevermind, my husband makes a good living. I’m just going to go home and be a wife. Which would have been a lot easier. That wasn’t my destiny. I don’t want to sit home and just be the wife. I’ve always pushed to do more. And I don’t know if this leaving a legacy now that Taylor’s here. We’ve talked about her taking my place in five years and keeping it going. So, now there is the legacy, but it wasn’t there before. I knew what I wanted my end game to be. I wanted to create something that would go on past me.

Yeah. That’s a legacy right there. And the other way I look at a legacy because I don’t have any children or grandchildren that want to work on my business. I have a son and grandson in the Navy and that’s what they want to do. And everybody else is doing their own thing, too, and nobody to be in my business. So, I got to thinking about, what kind of legacy am I leaving? And I realized that I’m leaving a legacy of being a woman role model for others. Being a role model for my kids. Even if they don’t choose to do what I did. I was still able to show them that women can be powerful. Women can have their own businesses, anybody can do what they want to do. It’s a big world and you can do whatever you want. Don’t listen to anybody, make your own decisions.

Yeah, right behind that is get a peer group that can help you make the right decisions.

Yes. That’s really important and support you through the hard times. Right. Cause there are hard times as a business owner there. So, let’s talk a little bit about that. What challenges have you encountered and how have you overcome them?

During the recession, we talked about a little bit, I gave up my location and had to let half the staff go. We lost a lot of our clientele and I did a partnership with the gentleman that owns this building and he needed someone to help manage it and run the front desk and I needed a place to be. So, this is where we have been camping for the last 10 years. So, that’s how we survived that. And it wasn’t easy.

I don’t really know how to explain it. You just keep plugging away one day at a time, kind of like now with the pandemic and everybody’s laid off and businesses are shut down and it too will pass. You just have to keep looking for the end. I think one of the biggest challenges that I’ve had is, there’s a lot of self-doubt and is this gonna work? Can I really do it right now? We’re looking to lease 8,000 square feet, and a new building up the road with a huge tenant and lots of things going on and I’m going, yeah, I can do that. It’s awesome. We can do it. And then the other part’s going now the hell, are you going to do that? Are you crazy? That’s 10 more years.

So, first of all, let me just say I’m so glad you mentioned that because I am sure that everybody listening to this feels like I am, which is really surprised that you ever have self-doubt because you sound so confident. Powerful. When you have that self-doubt, when those questions come in, what do you do? How do you overcome that?

Your peer group is huge. So, mentors, a board of advisors, depending on how big you are. Family doesn’t really get it. My husband is a career pilot. He doesn’t get the entrepreneur thing at all. Making friends is not a big thing. Burning bridges is okay. I’m not really anybody. You can share that with other business owners who have been there and done that, and they can give you advice on which path they took, how it worked for them. And then you can make that decision, weigh all of those things and make that decision works. I still have it today. Like movie stars have stage fright. You push past it. Cause otherwise you get stuck there.

That’s good. So, tenacity seems like a big part of what you lean on for everything. Just keep moving. Put one foot in front of the other, don’t give up, keep going.

Yeah.

That’s the way I totally agree with you. I think that’s really important and that is one of the top traits people have to have if they’re gonna have their own business.

So, I saw a Facebook post, I think it’s called one goal or something it has morning goals. And it said step into the fear. The only way you’re going to grow is to just step into it and it goes away, face the fear and do it anyway.

Another quote that I love is, if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.

I was talking to my GM about this new undertaking with the move and the size and the huge rent and all of that. And she has turned into what I used to be, and that’s great to have, she’s the worrywart. I have her now so that I don’t always have to do it. And she’s like, well, but what if this happens and what if that happens? And I’m like, we’ll get past it. I’ve made it this far. I’m not worried about it.

Oh, I totally agree with that. One of my first clients, I can’t even tell you the number of mistakes I made as a VA. I mean, I should have been fired so many times. One of my clients that I made a big mistake, something really big. And, I just apologized over myself. And I said, you know, here’s how I’m gonna fix it. And I said, I don’t blame you if you fire me. And she said, nobody died. We’re fine. Cause he didn’t die to.

I think a lot of my staff, we do a 90-day bootcamp for any new people coming on board. And that’s a big subject is making mistakes and mistakes are allowed here. Just be truthful and every one of our clients that’s been with us the longest started out with mistakes. They know you’re gonna fix them. They know you’re going to make it better.

We’re humans. We’re going to make mistakes, period. Anybody that thinks they’re going to be perfect. They’re kidding themselves. Yeah. I love your attitude on that. Figure out how to fix them so that they don’t happen again.

Yeah. And if they’re not okay with that, then they weren’t a good client. It’s OK to let them go without burning the bridges.

No bridges back when you need me and I’m better, send other people my way, right? Yeah. Well, in wrapping this up, this has just been awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all of your insights. Is there anything else that you want to be sure that our listeners or watchers because we’re on video, too.

I think we touched on it a little bit and I hear it with a lot of women and I see it on Facebook. And a lot of the groups that I’m in, you know, they’re selling jewelry and they’re doing VA and they have a part time, something over here and something over there. And I run around going pick one, pick one thing that you like, that you are passionate about that is going to change the world. Even if it’s jewelry, change the world, your tiaras. Cause it drives me flipping crazy when you go to a networking event and they say, well, I’m this and I’m this and I’m this. Okay. Which one are you? And what do I call you? Which one do I call you? Pick one, stay in your lane and go full force.

What are the negatives to being all over the place like that? To doing more than one thing to not fall down on one thing?

Well, my job is to help business owners. So, I tell them that all the time, the more things that you’re doing the less you are good at them. Yeah, you’re good at it. If you focus on one thing and it makes money or it starts to make money, or it’s not, maybe it’s not making money and you go to start another thing, neither one of them is going to make any money. And it’s really not about making money to begin with. It’s about helping someone and having a purpose.

If you help someone, you have a purpose and then money will follow. Find that thing. It’s going to take a while, find the one that is such great advice. I was listening to somebody yesterday and they said choose one thing, one very narrow niche that you can put into two words. Well, that was hard for me to put it into two words. I really struggled with that one. Now I don’t think you have to put it into two words, but I think it needs to be something narrow, something specific. And he said, earn a hundred thousand dollars at that.

You have my permission to start something else. If you feel like you want to, but I will bet that once you get to a hundred thousand on that thing, you will love it and you will not stop.

There’s a lot of virtual assistants that pick one thing, they’re admin or bookkeeping or taxes. Pick one thing that you’re really good at, mine was bookkeeping. It’s still, 80% of what we do. And I added those other little things like admin and phones to support that business owner in other ways. But the mission is always about support.

That’s a great mission. So, get a share one more time. The two different kinds of people that might want to, if there’s more than two, let me know. But bookkeeping where your business.

So, the people that are good for what I do or who I want to help. Well there’s three. So I want to help that startup the VA, that’s just starting out and doesn’t quite know how to do it. And we can help them with a franchise start from the ground up, bookkeepers, CPAs, virtual assistants that already have a firm that don’t want a job. They want a system and procedure that will grow and help them get out of that job. They have eight great franchisees. And then if someone has an executive suite building like this wonderful guy who wants to put an office squat in it. So, if you’ve got business owners in your building and you put an office squat in there, then there’s a bookkeeper and a phone person, and they’ve got everything they all in one place, that’s it.

Boom, office squad. You can’t ask for more than that. That’s awesome.

Yeah. It’s like a Smith’s grocery store with a Starbucks in it.

Anybody wanting to find out more and all of her opportunities, please go to her website, theofficesquad.com. And I will have that link in the notes for this podcast. Thank you so very much.

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About Dida Clifton

Dare to Leap | Dida Clifton

Jarita Clifton, call sign Dida; is CEO and founder of TheOfficeSquad®. She served 6 years in the U. S. Air Force as an F-15 squadron operations specialist; where she met and married her husband of 34 years. In 2001 she started a web-based virtual assistance business specializing in QuickBooks and bookkeeping. For the past 18 years, she has dedicated herself and her squad to the support of small businesses. This year she begins franchising TheOfficeSquad so that others have the opportunity to grow their own Squad.

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