Zero To A Hundred – Episode 23: Is Your Bookkeeping Setting You Up For Success? Expert Advice From Cynthia Facundo!

Hey Accelerators! 🚀 In this episode, we’re joined by Cynthia, founder of Bookkeeping Key and a powerhouse with over 40 years of experience in the bookkeeping industry. Cynthia dives into the essential steps every business owner should take to manage finances effectively—from separating personal and business expenses to creating a mindset geared for growth. If you’ve ever wondered how to let your numbers guide your success, this episode is for you!

What’s on the Menu:

💼 The importance of separating personal and business finances.

🧾 How to avoid costly mistakes with the IRS by keeping clean books.

🧠 Developing a financial mindset to support long-term business growth.

🔥Why Tune In?

Cynthia shares her decades of knowledge, emphasizing how your numbers can tell a story that guides your business decisions. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to optimize your financial systems, this episode offers the foundation you need for a successful business.

💬 Gem from Cynthia: “Your books are more than numbers—they’re the story of your business. Make it a good one.”

📞 Get in Touch with Cynthia:

📧 Visit BookkeepingKey.com to connect with Cynthia and learn more about building a solid financial foundation for your business.

Don’t miss out—hit that subscribe button and let’s take your business from zero to a hundred!💥

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Zero To A Hundred – Episode 23:   Is Your Bookkeeping Setting You Up For Success? Expert Advice From Cynthia Facundo!

Hello, accelerators. I am proud to introduce our guest Cynthia Facundo who is the founder of Bookkeeping Key. She is a 40-year veteran in the bookkeeping industry. She is a member of Goldman Sachs, the National Association of Women Business Owners, and the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers. We’re going to cover some poignant topics that I want you to listen to. Everything from the story that your numbers tell, making sure that you’re separating your personal and your business expenses the right way so you don’t suffer penalties, you don’t have issues with the IRS, and most importantly, setting the right financial mindset to be a successful business owner.

For those who do not know me, my name is Jarrod Guy Randolph. I am the founder of BoxFi. We are the nation’s leading payment consultant, providing business growth solutions through payment processing. I am excited to share the relationships and network that I have built over my 25-year entrepreneurial journey to help you grow your business and become more profitable. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s accelerate together.

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Cynthia, thank you so much for joining us.

You’re very welcome. I look forward to it.

We’re going to talk about how to properly get into the numbers, how the numbers speak to you, and how they can help you grow your business from a bookkeeping and accounting standpoint. I’m excited to have you.

Thank you. I’m excited to share what I know.

Strong Business Foundation

You’ve mentioned before that bookkeeping is more than just keeping track of transactions. It’s about creating a strong foundation for business owners. Talk to me about what that strong foundation is and how it helps them make better decisions in their business.

Like with anything, having a strong foundation is how you succeed with relationships or whatever. This is like a relationship. You have to take care of it and you have to nurture it. Most people who start their business know how to do something and so they’re gung-ho, but they don’t realize that there is so much to it.

You have to track your numbers. You’re looking at your revenue and thinking, “This is great,” but you have expenses for your office, people, and technology. When you have a good system in place, that does help track these costs so you can see what is going on. If you go blindly, a lot of businesses fail because that’s exactly what they do.

Red Flags

Let’s talk about walking into a business on day one. What are you looking for that are complete and utter red flags that they’re doing this wrong and you find consistently that you have to correct for most businesses?

The commingling of funds is a very large one. You have to have the right mindset. You have to separate yourself from your business. You own the business, but it’s a separate entity altogether. You cannot just spend money crazily and mingle your funds. If you’re set up a certain way like you’re an S-corp or C-corp, the IRS will say, “You’re spending money like it’s your own personal piggy bank.” They’ll strip those names from you.

They will take the corporate veil because when you become an LLC, an S-corp, or a C-corp, the individual is separated from the business. If you start acting like you’re one and the same, you will become one and the same because the IRS can come and say, “You’re not separate anymore.” That’s your asset protection. You’ve become an LLC for those reasons, to separate yourself from your business or your personal assets from your business assets. The commingling of funds is a big one.

Talk to me about the commingling of funds and what could happen to that S-corp or that C-corp. Does it also apply to LLCs? Have you ever seen it happen where because the books were such a mess for a business, the government said, “No, this is just you using it as your personal piggy bank?” What penalties did they suffer for doing that?

Luckily, I’ve never seen it happen, but I have seen CPAs say, “I will not file your tax return. You get your books in order.” I had a cleanup job last year, where they came to me and said, “Our CPA won’t file our tax return because the books were such a mess.” When your books are a mess like that, that’s one thing. The CPA will not do your tax returns. You could pay more taxes because things are not in the accurate places they need to be. A lot of things are going to happen.

This is great because you’ve said before about the story your numbers tell. How can that impact your day-to-day business if your numbers aren’t telling the right story? The members of our audience are business owners and entrepreneurs. They’re doing this on a daily basis. A lot of times, they’re not looking at their numbers on a daily basis. They might be looking at it monthly, quarterly, or even once a year. What does that mean for their business?

What that means is they’re making decisions off on faulty information. Probably, what they’re doing is going in and looking at their bank account and saying, “I have money in the bank,” so they spend it. They’re not planning for their taxes. They’re not planning for any big expenses that are coming up. If you wait until the end of the year, you can’t do a lot of tax planning because you have no idea what your numbers look like. You could end up paying more taxes. It costs you money. If you come to me and you haven’t done your books accurately, we’re going to charge you for that whole year at a clean-up price. It ends up costing you more money all the way around.

Hiring A Bookkeeper

Let’s say you’re talking to the audience and you’re advising them on hiring a bookkeeper or even making sure that their bookkeeper is doing exactly what they need to be doing for that business. What are some of the key things that you should have as an expectation for your bookkeeper?

One is a very good communication. You have to have good communication with your bookkeeper. Good records and good receipts. The IRS is tracking down all these things. Good receipts both through your books with your bookkeeper. We have we have monthly meetings with clients. We also have clients we meet quarterly. We have quarterly meetings with them. We go through their books with them.

I firmly believe as a business owner that you need to know what’s going on in your business and your numbers. Not everyone is this way, but I have seen where someone lose $500,000 because they were not watching their books. Their bookkeeper was making invoices here, paying them, making invoices for her husband. It ended up over the course of five years $500,000. He never looked at the books. It’s not to say you can’t trust your bookkeeper. It has nothing to do with trust. It has to do with being accountable, being in your business, and seeing what is going on. you know,

Let’s say you’re a business owner and you’re doing $5 million a year in gross revenue. What are some key things that you should do in terms of communication scheduling when you should be looking at your books and your reports to make sure that you stay on top of everything? On top of having to work in and on the business, what’s the advice you would say? If you’re the CEO of a company, what should you be doing?

Make sure you at least have a quarterly meeting with your bookkeeper. With that $5 million, I would say monthly. Meetings usually go on for one hour. We have a one-hour meeting. By that time, you should have already had some communication with your bookkeeper. Go over your numbers. You don’t have to be an accountant or a bookkeeper to look at these numbers across the way. Make sure you get a report that lists month-to-month so you can see trends.

That’s where you can start seeing if those expenses shoot up high. You need to figure out why. Is something gets misquoted? Is someone doing something they shouldn’t? Look at margins too. That is a good indicator. Your gross profit margins. Even though your revenue goes up, your profit margin should stay about the same unless something extraordinary happens. That’s what I mean by telling your story. You start looking at your numbers and you start realizing, “That was when we were closed for a week because we had a hurricane.”

If you start looking at your numbers, you will start understanding what’s happening. It takes a shorter time to look at it and you know what’s going on because that’s what you want. You don’t have to be an expert. You want to be accountable. You want to make sure you’re looking at these because your bookkeepers are humans. They could make a mistake. You know your business better than anyone. Going over it with them is a very good thing, and it helps them to start understanding your business more.

I have one client. I’ve known him. He was my second client. I go to his shop. We were together. When I first started, his shop was a mess. We’ve been working together for thirteen years now. I go there and we look at all of his margins. We have his client acquisition cost. He’s a shop, so his parts cost, labor cost, and all of those costs, we make sure we look at. When we start looking at percentages, that’s when you start digging in because those should not shift a lot.

Budgeting For Businesses

It’s interesting that you, that you say that. I want to get down to budgeting for businesses, but even in my business this last year, I’ve started to put in certain financial constraints in terms of, depending on the category, if it’s above $1,000 or above $2,500, I need to sign off on that expense beyond salaries. For each category, we know in general, we’re spending $10,000 in this category, $20,000 in this category, and $5,000 in this category.

If it goes beyond that within the month, we need to review that so we can control what’s happening there. Could it be the cost of that product went up? If it did, should we be going and looking for a new supplier? Should we be renegotiating the terms with that supplier? Breaking it down into increments has helped our business with much better financial management. How would you advise businesses to budget? It’s funny. It’s like you have expenses, but I don’t feel like the conversation around budgeting for business owners is the same for somebody who was personally budgeting.

That’s a hard one. It’s so hard to get business on just a budget. It’s like what I said before. It’s the mindset of the small business owner. The way I run my business is I try to run it forward. When I make decisions, I try to make a decision for the future, thinking about where I am right now. I say this all the time and my team laughs at me. I say, “Let’s throw it into the universe.” I truly believe in planning for these things and making them come to fruition. When you start planning it and put it out there physically, it does come to pass.

Budgeting is an important thing. I have a neat cashflow tool that accounts for the budget. What’s good about budgeting is that if you have 2 or 3 years of good numbers, you can write a good budget. QuickBooks has the ability to compare your actual numbers to budget numbers. You know where you fall and you can adjust your budget.

I have something that is a cashflow tool and a budget tool. A good exercise for most small businesses is that you plan for expenses. You say, “We’re going to have a cash injection in June, so we can make this purchase maybe in July.” You can fill it in and they’ll show you the changes. People have to be comfortable with budgeting and the cashflow. Cashflow is very important for everybody, especially small businesses.

Mindset Shift

You mentioned something earlier about mindset. I want to dig into this. It’s a little bit of a segue because we don’t typically deal with this. We’re talking about finance but you gave the example of the gentleman that you’re working with his service and parts business and it’s going back thirteen years. When you first met him, his books were an absolute mess. You fixed everything. To this day, you’re still working with him and reviewing everything to make sure it’s in line. What shift in his mindset did you see that helped him get over that financial hurdle to realize success in managing his finances properly?

It’s very interesting. He and I are like two peas in a pod. He is one of my best friends also, and we push each other. The imposter syndrome someday will go there and he will lift me up. We’re both on the same path. What has shifted to him for one is he got into some good groups where they mentor him, and they’re all in the same vein. They all feel the same. They have the same goals. They want to succeed, and it’s important to have those types of people around you, no matter what business you’re in. That’s where it shifted for him.

We’re always on a quest for the best books on mindset, team building, and things like that. You have to have the mindset that you don’t know everything so you have to be on a path of learning. I think that numbers and money scare people. When people come to me, at first they don’t want to tell me. They’ll say, “My books are so bad.” I’ll tell them, “I have seen it all. I’m not here to judge you. I just want to help you.”

I think that people have to get over that scaredness. They don’t want to deal with the IRS, so they don’t file the returns for five years. I’ve seen that too. I’m like, “Let’s get it done then you can see what’s happening,” and then they feel so much better. You need to face your fear, especially around money and change your mindset. We are a small business, but we don’t have to think like that. You don’t have to think like that.

I love the suggestion of finding mentors, finding your financial mindset community, and reading books. I do a lot of that. I can say for my own selfish reasons and I’m super blessed because of this that I get to do this podcast and I get to meet people like you. There’s so much that I take away from this, from that mindset around I do what I do because I have a passion for it. I love working with merchants. I love being in the payments business. It is a blast because I meet some of the coolest people, but I always want to up my game.

I also want to make money doing what I’m doing. Having that financial structure in place and the right mindset is tantamount to success. Beyond this gentleman, you work with over 60 clients. That’s a strong book of business. With the clients that you’re working with, especially your clients who are top of their game and running successful businesses, is there anything that you see them doing that you would want all of your clients to replicate to help grow their businesses financially?

They are in it. They want to know about their business. That’s the big thing. The one I was talking about, we have meetings all the time. I had a meeting with someone this morning who wants to know, “What can I do to keep more profit,” and tax planning. It’s the whole mentality that they want to be the best they can be. You can see it when you talk to them.

To run a successful business, you have to want to know your numbers.

You can’t run away from them because that’s where people get in trouble. A couple of years ago, I had a gentleman and he was very small, but we were helping him with his books. He was like, “We’re going to have to quit.” His wife got sick or something. They came to us yesterday. His wife was doing his books and she’s like, “I don’t know what happened. I messed my books up.” I could see. I got in and right away, bank balances were $200,000 off, and these types of things. There’s no way you can do a tax return from that information.

Not just that, a lot of small businesses do run with the mentality of, “I’m just doing this to get money to pay for the next thing.” If they could get out of that and think, “This is a business I can run where I can either leave it to somebody or sell it.” Work on it as you’re going to sell it for the best possible price you can get. Especially for small businesses, they need to shift the way they think and not think so small. Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you can’t run your business properly and grow and prosper. I do think it’s a mindset and there’s not enough education around that.

I 100% agree with you. The more I think about it and realize my business, it is the mindset, which then drives me to take those next steps forward. Having proper bookkeeping is foundational and one of the number one things that you need to do. Many in our audience already know this. Sometimes hearing it reminds you of the things you need to do to elevate your game.

You work with a lot of companies, not just on the bookkeeping. This is something I want to lean into because I think it’s important to understand how the entire ecosystem works. You’ll do things like workers comp audits. You’ll prepare the 1099 and a litany of other things. Why is it important for your bookkeeper to be involved or bring that value-add to your business?

Benefits Of Involving A Bookkeeper

The truth is most people like to go to one place. They don’t want to have to go here and there and everywhere. Plus you show your value. It’s a value that you’re giving your clients and the trust that they can trust you to do this work. If you don’t follow your 1099, you can get penalized. If you don’t follow your franchise tax, you’ll get penalized. Eventually, they can get forfeited. You then have to go through the whole step of getting it reinstated.

With workers comp audit, if the numbers aren’t accurate, you can pay more work insurance than you need to. All those things are important. Who knows your numbers hopefully better than your bookkeeper or your accountant? They’re keeping it up the way they’re supposed to. They know all these numbers. It’s up to you also as the owner to not follow blindly, which happens a lot. It happens to us. I always say, “I want you to look it over. We can go through it,” because if something goes wrong, guess who they’re going to blame?

You.

Right. All the things that we prepare that we put on there are prepared from client information. We do our best to talk to the client. We have questions. We have good communication with clients because I believe that. I’ll make sure that my team does that. Today was nice. We had a call and I said I am very grateful for my team because I can trust them. It took me a long time to get this team. He said, “I am so grateful for your team also.” That was a great compliment.

Building A Team

Let’s talk about teams. What do you think or who are the essential individuals or service providers that you need to have on your business’s finance team?

I did a lot of networking and we have a business lawyer that I network with because you never know what you’re going to need. Employment law and contracts. You want to make sure you get into the right contracts. I also have someone who can help with financial planning. I have relationships with CPAs. I make relationships with everyone who I feel will help my clients. If they come to me and say, “I need this contract looked over,” we have a client who is a contract lawyer. We try to keep it In our network. I have a lot of different clients. If one of those clients can help one of my other clients, we try to do that.

It’s having that business lawyer, contract attorney, right financial advisor, and your CPA or some of the key team members that you need to have to make sure you’re managing your finances properly as a business owner.

Yes, because it takes a village. There are a lot of different pieces to your finances.

Having these individuals in place structures your business to be a real business. When you move from being a startup or being a smaller business to a mid-sized to a large business, you have to have that separation of church and state. That’s why you have a business finance team. That’s why you have a personal finance team. Talk to me about ways in which, from a mindset standpoint, business owners can start to properly separate their business expenses and their personal expenses. How should they be paying themselves? How should they take money out of the company? Talk to me about how to do it properly as a business owner.

Separating Business And Personal Expenses

The first thing is you get a separate bank account. You have to get it in your mind and it takes discipline. You got to get it in your mind that this is my company and this is myself. We’re two separate entities. Now, sole proprietor, you are the same, but I would say you’re one in the same way. You want to see what your business is doing because then you go up to an LLC. You set up a separate bank account and you get some way to record your revenue and expenses with a software program. I hate QuickBooks but unfortunately, there’s a necessity.

When you’re small, set up an Excel spreadsheet with your revenue and expenses, something to keep track of. As a sole proprietor, you can take money out any way you want. You can move it over, but I would move it from the business to your personal to track it. Most people don’t understand that when they take money out like that. Let’s say you have a $50,000 profit and you’ve drawn out $50,000. When you look at your bank account and it says zero, you’re like, “I show a profit.” The thing is that the $50,000 you drew out does not hit your income statement. It’s on your balance sheet. People have a hard time wrapping their heads around that.

You have to be careful about how you spend your money. As an S-corp, you have to draw a salary. That’s one way. It’s it’s one of the rules. You have to draw a salary and you can take dividends. You can set up your dividend quarterly if you like. With the S-corp, you have to pay yourself a reasonable compensation. That’s a gray area. People still are trying to figure that out.

The best way to do that is to see what job you’re doing and look out in the marketplace to see what they’re getting paid for that job. It’s as long as you have something like that to back up because the IRS can go back and say, “We don’t think you’re paying yourself enough.” Make sure you’re paying yourself. Do not take more dividends than your salary because then the IRS will say you’re avoiding payroll taxes. You have to be careful with that stuff.

With an S-corp, if you’re not paying yourself enough based on your job title and responsibilities, the IRS can say you’re not paying enough. I assume there are penalties associated with that. That’s because they want to get that payroll tax.

Exactly. You have to be careful. I love research. I have something that helps with trying to figure out what your reasonable compensation should be. You need something like that. You need someone to help you or go out and look around. Look at a benchmark report. Look at something that says, “I’m working this many hours. This is a job I’m doing. At least you have a basis for what your salary should be.”

AI Tools For Business

Let’s talk about the tools that you’re using right now to operate your business. AI is in everyone’s business whether or not you like it. How are you using that to stay on top of the massive changes that we constantly see with in terms of regulations around taxes and ways that you’re helping your businesses that you work with grow through the AI tools you’re using?

I love technology. I was talking to my niece this morning who is my second. I am always looking for something. You have to stay on the edge of everything or you’re going to go extinct. That’s the way it is. You have to adapt. I told her, “Good old customer service with leading-edge technology, that’s who we are.” We want to make sure that when someone is working with us, we take care of their needs, and they feel comfortable with us, but we also have tools like AI to look up tax law. Tax law is complicated. AI does make it easy to research. There are some tools that give you the code to go and look at the IRS. Plus, I’m a member of a lot of different organizations where I can look up tax laws. That’s how I do it.

One of the things that I think is important is those changes in tax law and the changes in regulations that we see, so make sure you’re working with a bookkeeper who is staying on top of that. I don’t think anyone willingly turns a blind eye. They just might not realize all of the evolution that we’re seeing right now. One of the things I’d love for you to talk about is those key regulations that are changing, what business owners need to be aware of, and how they could negatively impact their business if they’re not.

There is a thing like you have a bookkeeper. I’m an accountant and I happen to know how to do tax planning and all these other things. Not all bookkeepers are like that. There are sections. There’s a bookkeeper who keeps your books. There’s an accountant who can go above that, then you have a tax plan, then a tax preparer. Those are all different buckets. You need to be careful. Not every bookkeeper can do all the different things. If that’s what you want, you need to seek someone else who does that.

I know businesses who have their bookkeeper and then they have someone who does their taxes. It’s important to make that distinction because some people come to you and think that you’re going to do everything for them. I just happen to be able to do that stuff. Clients need to know that there are different buckets and it depends on what is it that they need, and that affects the cost too. Most businesses don’t see bookkeeping as important until the IRS is after them, then they know it is.

FinCEN Reporting

Talk to me about FinCEN reporting for LLCs that are happening right now.

They’re still trying to figure out if that’s going to happen, but if you don’t do it, it’s over $500 penalty a day.

For the audience who are not familiar with this, talk to me about what FinCEN reporting is.

I just know it’s BOIi. I forget the whole thing. It’s to report the owners of the business.

Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting. By the way, audience, we look things up in real time because I don’t remember half the acronyms in my business.

It’s reported not to the IRS but to the FinCEN. What they’re trying to do is crack down on money laundering. They want to know who operates the business and who are the owners. You have to be careful because, for an accountant, there’s a line between doing legal and doing accounting. I will do my own BOI. I probably will not do it for clients, but I do have a lawyer who will do it. I have a service too that will do the reports because it’s a fine line and a lot of our insurance won’t cover it. If something happens down the line, they won’t cover that.

If you’re not doing it properly, insurance will look back and not cover your general liability.

Yes. Some insurance will but not very many. It is a line between accounting and legal. You have to be very careful. I decided I had enough on my plate. I don’t need that too. I have a service that does it and I also know a lawyer who does it. It’s safer.

As we’re now talking about some of the things that businesses need to look out for like the beneficial ownership information reporting for the FinCen is financial crimes somewhat for the other. We’re talking about those changes and staying on top of making sure you’re reporting and doing things properly for your business. Let’s talk about staying on top of your tax obligations and things like franchise and sales tax. What are some of the common mistakes that business owners are making in that arena?

Common Tax Mistakes

For your franchise tax, if your address changes and you don’t let them know, all the letters will go to your old address. Most business owners don’t keep up with, “It’s due on this date.” They saw the letters and passed. Before you know it, the franchise has been deactivated. You have to make sure that you keep the addresses correct because they will send all the letters to that address, and it depends on the registered agent too. Make sure that’s accurate. Make sure that you file on time. The franchise in Texas is a $50 penalty. Everything is penalized. If you owe taxes on the franchise, it’s even more. That’s why you don’t owe taxes in Texas.

In sales tax, you have to make sure you pay your taxes due by the 20th of every month if you are a monthly filer. If you’re a quarterly filer, you’re doing that on the 20th after the third month. If you don’t put your sales tax, you get penalized there and they can revoke your sales tax certificate. You need to keep up. That’s another thing a good service will do for you. We do sales taxes for our clients. We know that dates are due. We do the franchise tax and we make sure that they’re compliant.

Converting To An S Corp Or C Corp

Before we get into our rapid-fire section which is always fun, I want you to talk to me about how you choose the right entity. Our audience has business owners who are experienced, but let’s say you’re an LLC. When do you know you should convert to an S-corp or a C-corp?

That’s a hard question. Usually, I have my LLCs convert when it makes sense. LLC is a Schedule C on your tax return or your 1040. When you convert to the S-corp, you’re going to have a whole different tax return. Some things are different now and you have to make sure it makes sense for you. I have something that I can calculate whether this makes sense. You’re going to have a whole other tax return. That’s a cost. Now, you’re going to have to pay your staff’s payroll. You have payroll costs and payroll taxes because you have to match the tax.

You have to make sure that it makes sense to you. Now you have your meeting notes. You have to make sure that you stay up on that. At least once a year, put something in your meeting notes. Ideally, it should be quarterly. If you buy a piece of equipment, you should record it. There are some things with the S-corp that you don’t have to do in an LLC, and then it’s a flow-through. It does help save on self-employment tax.

You have to pay. When you do an LLC, you pay the full self-employment tax. When you’re an S-corp, the business absorbs half of it. Most businesses will become the S-corp. Now, the C-corp is if you’re going to eventually have many investors. That makes sense for larger corporations. A lot of companies were becoming C-corps because they had a 21% tax rate. That was beneficial for them. You have to think of all those little different things and see if it makes sense for your company.

Rapid Fire Questions

Before we wrap, we are going to do our rapid fire. Are you ready to go, Cynthia?

I’m ready.

Coffee or tea.

Coffee.

If it were a zombie apocalypse and you had to leave your home and protect your family, what would be your weapon of choice?

I hate weapons. I will have my brother.

Your brother is your weapon of choice. I will accept that because there are no non-answers. You have to answer. That’s all.

My weapon of choice is my brother.

What is one of the top books you would recommend that our audience of business owners and entrepreneurs read?

I love the Atomic Habits.

You are now the third guest that we’ve had.

That’s a great book.

It’s one of my favorites.

There’s another book called The Radical Edge. That’s a good book. I love that book too. I think I’ve read it three times. It talks about how we’re in the box or outside the box when we make decisions. It talks about how we make decisions.

I’m going to add that to my Amazon.

It’s a really good book.

What are three money-saving strategies that you would recommend for our audience for 2025?

As a vendor, make sure you negotiate your vendor costs. That helps a lot. Also, watch your cashflow. I would pay bills two times a month. That helps with cashflow. It helps you save money. You can flip that money and invest it. Track your expenses. Subscriptions are big ones, dues and subscriptions. People will sign up for something and they forget to turn it off. Look at that account. Make sure that everything that you don’t need is not there. That will save you money.

Let’s say I am Publishers Clearing House or someone else who’s rich and you’re a business doing $10 million in sales annually. I walk through your front door and I give you a $300,000 check. How would you advise that business owner to invest that $300,000 to grow their profits over the next twelve months?

I’ll invest it in real estate property.

If you can invest in real estate that will impact your business, you have that write-off and you can operate your business out of it. A double whammy. Last and final question. What is the biggest obstacle you’ve had to overcome in your life or business to build the success that you have now?

My self. I’m the mountain sometimes. There’s a book about that too. I sometimes have the imposter syndrome until one of my clients is like, “I am so grateful for you,” and I’m like, “I’m doing okay.” It’s my self.

Cynthia, please tell the guests where they can connect with you.

The Bookkeeping Key. We are on the web at www.BookkeepingKey.com. Fill out a form and we’ll be glad to talk to you.

Cynthia Facundo, thank you so much for joining us on Zero to a Hundred.

Thank you. Have a good day.

Important Links

• Cynthia Facundo – LinkedIn
• Bookkeeping Key
• Atomic Habits
• The Radical Edge

About Cynthia Facundo

Owner / President / CEO

Cynthia is the leader, developer, and manager of The Bookkeeping Key. She skillfully navigates managing her team, training employees and clients, all while providing outstanding service to her clients in bookkeeping, account cleanup, business startup, tax, and advisory services.

Cynthia has worked in the bookkeeping industry for over 40 years. She began working in business at a young age, and with hard work and the ability to embrace changes and new technology, she found her way up in the corporate world. She continued her career in finance working with various companies while completing her bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Phoenix. She then sought to change the cold, impersonal tactics she witnessed in the industry and provide clients with a more friendly, old-fashioned customer experience by creating Bookkeeping Key PLLC.

Her goal is to help small business owners like herself access the knowledge and time they need to succeed in today’s market by assisting every client with the understanding and patience that encourages growth and prosperity for all.

Cynthia is a member of Goldman Sachs, National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers (AIPB), National Association of Certified Public Bookkeepers (NACPB), QuickBooks Pro Advisor as well as an avid traveler and fan of the arts. When she is not busy networking, you will find her enjoying time with family and her 4 dogs.