Episode Details

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Ashley Jocic started Florida Keys Bookkeeping at one of the most turbulent moments imaginable: a separation, COVID shutdowns, and a career pivot — all at once. What followed was five years of growing a fully virtual bookkeeping firm while navigating a new marriage, a daughter, an international move to Serbia, and twins. This episode is a masterclass in building something real when life refuses to slow down.

Chapters

• [00:00] Life chaos that sparked the business
• [04:18] Early career and Bookkeeper Launch
• [07:04] Finding the first clients
• [10:40] Newborn, new marriage, slow growth
• [13:28] Twins force a systemization sprint
• [18:35] Running a US firm from Serbia
• [25:11] Building referral relationships
• [32:10] Plans for intentional growth
• [40:55] Protecting your work time

Starting From a Real Moment

Ashley's path into bookkeeping started with her dad. She'd been handling his books and noticed something: "I remember seeing the relief on his face when he knew his bookkeeping and his bills were handled." That moment made her realize bookkeeping is more than data entry — it lifts a genuine mental burden from business owners. Combined with a background in government accounting and a timely refresh through the Bookkeeper Launch course, she had what she needed to start.

Growing Slowly — On Purpose

Ashley's early client growth was deliberate and unhurried, mostly driven by a professional website and a referral from her father's network. "If someone called me and wanted a bookkeeper, I ended up doing their bookkeeping," she says. There was no aggressive outreach strategy at first — and that was fine. Her constraints as a new stay-at-home mom meant slow, steady growth was the only kind that fit. She and her husband aimed for 20 hours of work per week. Sometimes she hit it. Sometimes she didn't.

A Hard Deadline Forces the Right Decisions

When Ashley found out she was pregnant with twins, she faced a clear choice: systemize fast or shut down. She chose to systemize. She leaned heavily on Pure Bookkeeping to document and standardize her processes, hired a team member in Serbia she could train before going on leave, and brought on a second person to review that work while she was away. "I did a lot of things a lot quicker than I would have normally because of that constraint, because of that timeline." The firm didn't just survive her maternity leave — it ran smoothly.

Virtual-Only as a Filter, Not a Limitation

Living in Serbia with a six-hour time difference from the US East Coast might sound like a recipe for client friction. Ashley sees it differently. Being unable to visit offices or meet for coffee filters out clients who aren't ready for fully virtual work — and those tend to be the wrong clients anyway. The right clients, she's found, don't need her physically present. They need her reliable. A CPA who works with one of her clients has since referred additional business to her, which she considers a strong signal: "He liked my work enough to refer me to someone else he was doing taxes for."

Protecting Your Work Time

Looking back, the one thing Ashley wishes she'd done sooner is treat her work hours as non