Introduction

Hello! I own and operate a fully remote bookkeeping firm. My small but mighty team provides bookkeeping support to historically underestimated entrepreneurs, the creatives and changemakers operating at the fringes.

How did I get here? By ‘here’ as in the work that I’m doing in this moment in time?

I’ve been a contract bookkeeper for-ev-er. My dad is a cpa. I grew up in his office; starting with filing, copying and playing with his office supplies when I was bored. (Ah I miss that funky ruler and the adding machine.) I eventually graduated to simple tax preparation and bookkeeping. I could perform a bank reconciliation before I could drive. But when asked if I wanted to be an accountant like my dad, my answer was an immediate “hell no!” Because like most reasonable people, I hate taxes.

(I still love the cpas I work with though. They handle a necessary evil. And I love that they do that for us.)

But this was not a path I thought that I wanted to take. Like a lot 16-18 year olds, I had no idea what I actually wanted to do as a career. So I went to college for a degree in Psychology. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.) That didn’t work as planned (who wants to be in school for forever? - Especially when you already have ten years of work experience at 21.) So I fell back on what I knew and enjoyed. I liked bookkeeping, so I looked for a job doing that. Life happened and then I got laid off.

I had wanted to operate my own bookkeeping firm, but I didn’t think I was ready. And when I first started out, I didn’t think of myself as an entrepreneur. I thought like a freelancer. But I learned how to think like an entrepreneur when I merged with another bookkeeper. That worked until it really didn’t and then I went on my own and founded Phoenix Growth Systems. Building a bookkeeping firm that was intentionally inclusive for entrepreneurs from historically excluded communities was really important to me and became our founding value.

There’s more to the story, like the why and how behind building an inclusive brand (something that wasn’t as common in 2019 as it is now). And how that’s grown to include incorporating activism and travel.

Thanks for taking the time to learn about our origin story, stay tuned for the rest of the tea and rambling thoughts that meld entrepreneurship, bookkeeping, activism and travel.