From Bookkeeper to Business Owner: The Identity Shift No One Warns You About
I was coaching a bookkeeper last week who's been a client for a while now. I've watched her business grow and transform. She's brought on more team members, improved her systems and procedures, clarified who her ideal client is, and stepped more into leadership of her business.
It hasn't always been easy. There have been setbacks along the way that she's had to overcome. It's been a personal growth journey as much as a business growth journey.
But then one day she sat there and realised that the constant pressure of to-do lists and deadlines had eased. She kind of looked around her office and wondered, "Who am I now? What do I actually do with my day when my team has most everything handled?"
Who are you when you move from the identity of Bookkeeper - where you're the one carrying the load (even if you have a team), constantly on alert, responsible for the never-ending to-do list - to the identity of Business Owner, where you don't have all of that, because your team members are handling it all?
The answer is that not only does your role within the business change, but your identity shifts as well.
What I've noticed actually changing is that your identity moves from:
Doing the work to designing the business.
Earning income to creating profit.
Doing everything to build in capacity.
Reacting to leading.
Working in the business to working on the business.
This can be an uncomfortable shift sometimes, because identity shifts can be that way, especially after years of operating the same way. They can take some getting used to.
And none of this happens until you're willing to actually let go, which is harder in practice than it sounds. Lots of mindset stuff around this.
But if you want to build a business that's bigger than just your own capacity, you can't keep being the one making the fries.
That moment of "who am I now?" is a rite of passage. It means it's working.
PS: Remember, if you’re looking for help on how to design your bookkeeping business to truly work for you, I’m here for you. I'm a business coach just for bookkeepers. Book a free Bookkeeper Breakthrough Session with me now to see if business coaching with me is right for you.
