IAM868- Business Owner Helps Others Navigate the Accounting World

Who says Accounting isn't sexy? Well, I'm sure nobody has ever thought that, but for business owners, it's a necessary evil. Christopher Aborqui, a 24-year Navy veteran, chose to help small business owners navigate the accounting world by providing outsourced bookkeeping, payroll, and tax services. As a small business owner in the Virginia Beach area, he understands the struggles business owners face managing their business.

• CEO Hack: Time management and time blocking
• CEO Nugget: Make sure you have a vision for what you're doing
• CEO Defined: Change equals opportunity

Website: http://www.ltwbooks.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LightTheWayBusinessServices
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/caborqui

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Christopher Aborqui of Light the Way Business Services. Christopher, it's awesome having you on the show.

00:38 – Christopher Aborqui

Yeah, thank you for having me.

00:39 – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on and learn a lot more about all the awesome things that you're doing. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Christopher so you can hear about some of those things. And who says accounting isn't sexy? Well, he's sure nobody ever has thought about that, but for business owners, it's a necessary evil. Christopher, a 24-year Navy veteran, chose to help small business owners navigate the accounting world by providing outsourced bookkeeping, payroll, and tech services. As a small business owner in the Virginia Beach area, he understands the struggles business owners face managing their business. Christopher, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:15 – Christopher Aborqui

Hey, I'm ready to do this. Let's go.

01:17 – Gresham Harkless

Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about how you guys started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with your business.

01:25 – Christopher Aborqui

Yeah, it started back in 2018. I was about 2 years away from my retirement date. Like I said, I've been in the Navy for the past 24 years. I just retired this year. So before that, I was thinking about what I wanted to do after spending pretty much my whole entire life almost in the military. And I realized I didn't want to work for somebody else. So I decided that, you know, I want to build my own business. So I have a background in doing tax returns since 2010. So I just kind of built upon that. My mom, she was a business owner. So, you know, and she still is. So I started looking at doing her tax return.

And I was like, you know what, if you actually kept track of everything throughout the year, it would be easier to do your taxes at the end of the year. So that's what I started doing. I started building a bookkeeping business that translated into being able to do the tax returns at the end of the year. So, you know, I had 2 years to build it up. So that's what I started doing. I just built it up really slowly. And then as soon as I retired, I was able to just walk right into a full-time business that was already supplementing my income of what I was doing in the military. That's how I got my start.

02:34 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I absolutely love that. And I love it because so many times people think about businesses and they think that you just kind of snap your fingers and wake up and then you're a successful business but there's a whole process that goes along with that. And I love that you were able to kind of coincide that with you leaving the military and all the gray service that you provided there.

02:52 – Christopher Aborqui

Yeah, it's just making that transition, you know, going through that retirement class at the end when people start saying, what am I going to do? I don't even have a college degree. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to get out of the military. I didn't want to be in that position. So when I was going through my retirement classes, they call it, you know, had a transition, how to do a job interview. I mean, it's like, I already had all this, all this done. I already knew what I was going to do. I already had a business going. So I was fortunate to plan for that.

03:17 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like you definitely could probably speak to this, you know, especially being in the military, you have the consistency, you have the ability to do those foundational skills that to me make it more likely for you to be successful in business as well.

03:30 – Christopher Aborqui

Yes, and having that leadership background and being able to direct things and being in the military, there's a lot of precision that needs to be done. So that's the way I just looked at it, being precise about what I needed to do and get it done.

03:43 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Cause that's what it comes down to getting things done the day. So I wanted to ask you now how you serve the clients that you work with. I know you touched on it a little bit and I did as well. Could you take us through what exactly that process looks like and what are the services you provide for your clients?

03:58 – Christopher Aborqui

Yeah, we focus on small independent businesses. Like, so usually like just one owner, and they're pretty much-doing everything themselves, or maybe they have less than 5 employees, a pretty, pretty small company will say maybe under 10 million a year under 5000000. A lot of our clients have 100,000 errors I'd like to say or thousandaires. Say, or thousandaires. But mainly, we want to focus on doing their bookkeeping. And everybody that we work with is on a monthly recurring basis. So they sign up, and they're on the monthly plan. And so we're able to touch, make contact with them, I'd say on a monthly basis.

So we can let them know where their money's at, where it's going, how much they're making, and what their projected tax liability is gonna be. So since we do their bookkeeping, we also can offer to do their tax return. So being able to do that and have those touchpoints all year just makes it a lot more efficient. And if they need payroll services, then we can also do that. So we're kind of like that one-stop shop where everything can be done right then and there. They don't have to go here or there. Everything is just done right then and there.

05:01 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And you know, being small but mighty, it sounds like, and I almost feel like I always talk about the ability to be able to be in your zone of genius, being the thing that you do best is so important. And a lot of times that happens because you have somebody that's able to help you out with your bookkeeping. You have somebody who's able to help you out with so many things so you can focus on basically providing your product and service and being there and being present for your clients.

05:23 – Christopher Aborqui

Exactly, yes. You know once you start making that money you want to be able to focus on continuing to make that money and not having to do all these other things. Once you can pass something off it's always better to pass it off because, you know, that's going to be a task that you don't have to do anymore.

05:37 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. So huge to be able to find those subject matter experts and be able to partner to some degree so that you can, you can continue to kind of bring in that money, so to speak.

05:45 – Christopher Aborqui

Yes, exactly. Focus on that.

05:47 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself or your business or a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

05:57 – Christopher Aborqui

Just the fact that the way we bundle our services, being able to be that one-stop shop where they don't have to go everywhere else and working within their budget. So you know it's not one price fits all, is whether or not it actually makes sense for them to move on with their services, but being able to first focus on their bookkeeping and offer payroll services and tax services all at a monthly fixed rate where they're not having to guess what their bill is going to be because we don't charge by the hour. Everything is just a monthly fixed rate.

So I think that's what unique is about us because when I first started my business, I was just offering bookkeeping services. And I noticed that when I started, I mean, people were asking, do you do taxes as well? And I was like, yeah, I actually do taxes. But you know, it's not something I was focusing on. When I put those 2 together and packaged it together, our business just took off. And that and I'm just a really cool guy. Yeah, that always helps out as well.

06:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, and that's so huge because in addition, of course being a cool guy, the fact that you're able to kind of, cause I almost feel like even though you might have just done the bookkeeping, you probably had insight on so many different levels. And it made sense just to provide that kind of, I guess, insularity services because people are already, you know, getting their bookkeeping in order to do their taxes or they're at a point and they know because of their bookkeeping that they can bring on that next employee. So just having all that information kind of sounds like a natural segue.

07:22 – Christopher Aborqui

Yes, and then it just made sense. I mean, you're already giving everybody all your financial information, then you have to give it to another person and another person is just, it's just keep it all in one spot. I mean, already talking about finances and in your personal and business life because you kind of see both, you know, it's a big step for somebody to hand that over to somebody. So, for somebody to be able to hand that over to us, it's, you know, we don't take that too lightly. We want to guard that and we like that building that trust.

07:47 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And that's a big point that, you know, I'm glad that you spoke to because again, you know, it sounds great to be able to have, you know, 30,000 people or whatever, to be able to touch your finances and all those things. But we sometimes forget about that, that trust that needs to be built up when you're doing something like that. And to be able to have that one-stop shop as you all provide allows you to build that trust, have that trust with you and your team. And then you're able to kind of have most of the things if not all the things they can care of.

08:11 – Christopher Aborqui

Exactly. And that's why we say, you know, we don't price you on transactions, you know, because we don't, we don't want to know how many transactions you want to build a relationship business Not a transactional business. So that's that's what you know being able to be a business owner Of course, you get to choose and pick who you want to work with So that comes it comes into big play about you know, if somebody sends me email or calls me I'm like, oh man, so-and-so is calling.

I don't have to deal with that because most of the people that we talk with, it's more about us interviewing them than they are interviewing us for their services. Do we want to work with you? Do you want to work with your business? Is it what your business is doing? Can we help you grow your business? That's I guess that's what it comes down to and do we like you?

08:49 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, are you a cool person too like like Christopher and that's so important because when you start to do You know really great work and you do and provide phenomenal services You start to attract the right people, and and business, you know We might have in our lives had those bosses or people we didn't want to talk to. We never want to have that when you're putting your heart, blood, sweat, and tears into the work that you're doing.

09:10 – Christopher Aborqui

Yeah, because you know, you're going to, you're going to put in those extra hours. You're going to be working with these people. So you want to make sure you enjoy working with them, enjoy talking with them, have similar likes, or maybe things that you know they do that you don't even know about and you're like, oh that sounds cool and then you know you just network and it's just, I mean it's just so incredible. Yeah, when you think about it, working with cool people or people that you like to work with and just how much more it just opens up your horizon. Because for us, we're kind of isolated, especially nowadays, but to kind of venture to other people's worlds and see what they do and hear about what they like to do and people they talk with. I mean, it's just, I think it's exciting.

09:47 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the best things and the awesome things about being able to kind of partner and work with people and serve people is that you really get to learn, you know, from to see the world, to see the business, see all the things they do from their vantage point, their expertise, things they learn about. And I think it only kind of helps us sharpen our saws and iron sharpens saw, iron sharpens iron so to speak. So you get that opportunity.

10:05 – Christopher Aborqui

Yes, exactly.

10:07 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:19 – Christopher Aborqui

Oh, yeah. Time management. I mean, that's a big thing. And for me, it was, you know, always, like, you know, I always grew up, you know, kind of like the way that my business name, like the way, just kind of the way I was brought up. I was just, you know, religious background, I see religious, but you know, I believe in God, and just be able to have that servant's heart. So but you kind of that it kind of overtakes you and you want to keep on working and get things done.

But you have to manage your time and block off days. Like off your calendar where you say, hey, I'm not available today because I need to focus on building the business or doing things within the business. And I think that my little hack is just, making sure you have time management and Blocking off days where you can just work on your business and do what you need to do. Yeah, that's- And not work on the weekend.

11:06 – Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, that too. That's not your vision and definitely don't do that. But that's so huge. I often say like, it's not the number of hours in the day it's how you use them and how you leverage them. And so many times, again, you know, as businesses, businesses, and organizations and leaders, there are so many things that are kind of popping up and happening that you have to be very cognizant of how you're using your time because you can easily, I guess, lose that time or lose track of that time and what you're doing. And then, you know, that's when the business starts to fall off the rails and all those things happen. But if you're very aware of how you're spending your time, you're being very strategic about it, it starts to really create an opportunity to build tremendous momentum.

11:42 – Christopher Aborqui

Yes. It's called a task audit.

11:44 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, Absolutely. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:57 – Christopher Aborqui:

Yeah. So every time we take on a new client, one of the things that we want to find out and ask is what is their vision for their business. Where do they see themselves in their business? Is this something they wanna build so they can pass on to their kids? Is this something they just wanna do to pay the bills? Or is this something they're trying to reach something? Because you're putting all this hard work and it's like, if you're running a race and you're just running, but you have no end in sight, and you just keep running, you're like Forrest Gump, you know, you just keep running to your tire. But you have to have a specific place that you're trying to get to.

And once we understand that and we're doing the counting, we're working with them, then we can plot points that they reach, because they're going somewhere. And they need to know that they're making progress to get there. So us knowing that and finding that out, just as a business owner, you need to have some sort of vision. What are you building towards? If you don't have that, then what are you doing? So I think that's the little nugget is just make sure when you have a business and you're doing something, you're working towards something so that way you can measure your success and how you're getting there.

12:58 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's absolutely huge. And this book that's literally staring at me right now, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the big habits is beginning with the end in mind. And I think so many times when we start businesses, you know, or start anything, sometimes we forget to have that north star, so to speak, that light, as you kind of spoke to, that we know how to follow because again, there's so many distractions, things that pop up and things that happen, that it's so important that we make sure we understand our goals are. But we also want to make sure that people that we're working with understand that too, so we can figure out the best and most optimal way to get there.

13:30 – Christopher Aborqui

Yes. Yeah. And I would say that because, you know, when you're starting a business, you know, you're putting in a lot of work you're putting in a lot of hours you're sacrificing a lot of time away from your family and there has to be a reason why you're doing it and it has to be worth it. So if you're not working towards something then you're not you're not working it you're not going anywhere. Yeah. You're just going in circles.

13:48 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly you're definitely the Forrest Gump of the business, which is what you're not trying to do.

13:52 – Christopher Aborqui

Yeah, I was just running.

13:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And also now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Christopher, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:05 – Christopher Aborqui

Oh man, being able to, I guess, you know, the big 1 just being able to be a leader. But for me, CEO, for me, it stands for change equals opportunity. So, you know, if you're leading and you can see something coming down their horizon and you need to make a change and don't be afraid of it. It sees it as an opportunity. A lot of people get set in their ways and this is how we've always done it and this is how it always works. But there are always new things coming along. We're always evolving. So as a CEO, I mean, you just, have to be able to adapt to it. So that's why I think as CEO is, you know, it stands for change equals opportunity.

14:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. I absolutely love that acronym, especially during times like this, where there's a tremendous amount of change that's happening, I think we can easily look at it as change equals problems or CEP instead of CEO, but those, opportunity has so much power, power in it when we start to think about that, because even though there are changes and there are challenges at times and there always will be. We know that there are opportunities among those so we just have to figure out how best to get to where we want to be. So I love and appreciate that definition.

15:10 – Christopher Aborqui

Yeah, if it's not hard if it's like you just said, if it's not a challenge, it's not worth doing.

15:14 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the saying goes no pressure, no diamond. So that's where you have that opportunity to really bring about certain diamonds and opportunities as we talked about. So Christopher, truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:36 – Christopher Aborqui

Yeah, it's so weird because like 90% of our clients don't even realize we have a website. So, if you want to reach me, that's probably the easiest way. It's www.ltwbooks.com. So that's an easy way to contact this kind of get a little bit more information about what we do. And then, you know, get some traffic to our website, even though we mostly work off of referrals, We're a small community. We get busy pretty fast. So that's the easiest way to get ahold of us.

16:05 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, we'll definitely have the links and information and the show notes as well to consider this a podcast referral if you hear it through from Christopher. So heard about Christopher's episode and want to reach out to him. So it'll still be a referral either way. So Christopher, truly appreciate that. Appreciate your time again, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:38 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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