Meet the Founder: Russ

Hello, my name is Russ Shulman and I am the founder of Sound Bookkeepers! Below you will learn a little more about myself and my past experience in order to better understand how I am here to help your business succeed.

My grandmother was a bookkeeper for 35 years, and my mom was a bookkeeper for 20 years

until she lost her sight. In middle school, my mom would pay me to put thousands of checks in numerical order for her clients. She had a giant green general ledger where the income and expenses were neatly written down. This was in the ’80s before computers were popular. I moved to Seattle in 1996 to live with my older brother.  In 1998, through my brother’s prodding, I found myself in a sales/consulting role, working with business owners at a tax resolution firm, evaluating their financial situations and determining whether I could help them resolve their IRS problems. This involved becoming an expert in reading financial statements, tax returns, and reviewing business and personal financial history to determine what the real story was. Within a couple of years, I became a senior consultant, top producer, and eventually was hiring and training the new staff. I was moving in the direction of becoming an enrolled agent up until 2002 when I was lured away by the riches in the mortgage industry.

My first mortgage company was a partnership with a couple of friends. Mostly my role was in

technology and operations. Later, I started my own mortgage brokerage which I grew from being just me in my basement to over 130 loan officers and 1⁄4 billion in loans in less than 2 years. I was responsible for operations, sales, marketing, and payroll, as well as the annual financial reporting, tax filings, and annual FHA renewal process, among other things. Through time and testing, I learned to create systems that reliably and predictably produced the most efficient, most profitable result, while still ensuring the customer had a superb experience.

After the mortgage industry collapsed in 2008, I had to reinvent myself as a business owner.   I was in foreclosure and had to figure out how to survive.  I did try and find jobs, but none of them paid enough to cover my bills and the large debt I incurred from the loss of my company.   I worked in sales, marketing, technology, and operations.  I was a software and operations consultant for law firms in Washington and thought I would be a business coach, but life had other plans. I founded Sound Bookkeepers in 2014 because bookkeeping is an area of business where my philosophy, integrity, and skills are desperately needed. Clients are grateful for a job well done, it’s 100% predictable, and produces immediate results. Unfortunately, the industry as a whole is suffering a lack of consumer confidence and there are people who are claiming to be bookkeepers, but are actually thiefs in disguise. I hope this article will help you understand what the challenges of the bookkeeping world are and how you can avoid falling into their trap.  

Sincerely,

Russ

Reach me via the web at https://www.sbk2.co/  

By email at Russ@soundbookkeepers.com  

By phone at (206)794-3864