From Pressure to Peace as an Expat CEO, with Bernadette Harris, The BTB Advisory Firm
Bernadette Harris, the owner of The BTB Advisory Firm, joined host John Ray to share her unique entrepreneurial journey. Bernadette shared insights from starting her tax preparation and bookkeeping business in 2001, evolving into a forensic accountant and a certified fraud examiner dedicated to aiding small businesses. Her narrative includes navigating the successes and challenges of entrepreneurship, the pressure that built up over the years, how the pandemic amplified that pressure, and a health scare that led to a pivotal decision to drastically cut down her client list. Bernadette also discussed her transition towards a CEO role, moving out of day-to-day operations, and her move to Mérida, Mexico, to live as an expat. This move, she emphasized, was a crucial step in reshaping her business to focus on providing comprehensive services to a curated list of clients, significantly contributing to her firm’s evolution and her personal rejuvenation.
The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.
Bernadette L. Harris, Founder and CEO, The BTB Advisory Firm
Bernadette L. Harris is the CEO and Forensic Accountant at The BTB Advisory Firm, a small business accounting firm focused on helping entrepreneurs make confident financial decisions and propel their businesses forward. With over 20 years of experience, she has helped numerous small business leaders gain a handle on their finances, understand their financial picture, and positively impact their bottom line.
Bernadatte is not only an award-winning tax and forensic accountant, but she is also a bestselling author and keynote speaker. She holds an MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management and an MS from Carlow University. Her professional certifications include Certified Fraud Examiner and QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor.
Bernadette is passionate about empowering small business owners with financial literacy and expertise. Through her firm, she provides high-quality financial data, advice, and strategies to help clients make informed decisions and achieve long-term success. Her clients praise her ability to ease their fears, help them understand their financial picture, and positively impact their profits.
With a strong educational background, professional certifications, and decades of experience, Bernadette has established herself as a trusted advisor and advocate for small business owners seeking financial guidance and growth.
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Topics Discussed in this Episode
00:00 Welcome to The Price and Value Journey with Bernadette Harris
01:44 The Evolution of Bernadette’s Accounting Firm
04:02 Navigating the Pandemic: Challenges and Growth
06:14 A Personal Health Crisis Leads to Major Changes
10:43 Strategic Business Shifts and Becoming an Expat
15:44 The Difficult Decision to Let Go of Clients
20:46 Revamping the Team and Embracing Remote Work
22:59 Embracing Remote Work and Flexibility
24:07 The Power of Location Independence
25:59 The Role of Coaching in Business Transformation
28:40 Stepping into the CEO Role: A New Leadership Paradigm
32:33 Navigating Business and Personal Growth from Mexico
38:23 Envisioning the Future: Business Evolution and Client Relationships
42:21 Connecting with Bernadette
43:17 Closing Thoughts
About The Price and Value Journey
The title of this show describes the journey all professional service providers are on: building a service practice by seeking to convince the world of the value we offer, helping clients achieve the outcomes they desire, and trying to do all that at a price that reflects the value we deliver.
If you feel like you’re working too hard for too little money in your solo or small firm practice, this show is for you. Even if you’re reasonably happy with your practice, you’ll hear ways to improve both your bottom line and the mindset you bring to your business.
The show is hosted and produced by John Ray and the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®. The show can also be found on all the major podcast apps. The complete show archive is here.
John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey
John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.
John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include business coaching and advisory work, as well as advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their expertise, such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, coaches, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
In his other business, John is a Show Host and Producer and owns the North Fulton (Georgia) studio of Business RadioX®. John and his team work with B2B professionals to create and conduct their own podcast using The Generosity Mindset™ Method: building and deepening relationships in a non-salesy way that translates into revenue for their business.
John is also the host of North Fulton Business Radio. With over 750 shows and having featured over 1,200 guests, North Fulton Business Radio is the longest-running podcast in the North Fulton area, covering business in its region like no one else.
John’s Book, The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices
John is the #1 national best-selling author of The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices.
If you are a professional services provider, your goal is to do transformative work for clients you love working with and get paid commensurate with the value you deliver to those clients. While negative mindsets can inhibit your growth, adopting a different mindset, The Generosity Mindset™, can replace those self-limiting beliefs. The Generosity Mindset enables you to diagnose and communicate the value you deliver to clients and, in turn, more effectively price to receive a portion of that value.
Whether you’re a consultant, coach, marketing or branding professional, business advisor, attorney, CPA, or work in virtually any other professional services discipline, your content and technical expertise are not proprietary. What’s unique, though, is your experience and how you synthesize and deliver your knowledge. What’s special is your demeanor or the way you deal with your best-fit clients. What’s invaluable is how you deliver great value by guiding people through massive changes in their personal lives and in their businesses that bring them to a place they never thought possible.
The combination of all these elements is quite different for you compared to any other service provider in your industry. Therein lies your value, but it’s not the value you see. It’s the value your best-fit customers see in you.
If pricing your value feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar to you, this book will teach you why putting a price on the value your clients perceive and identify serves both them and you, and you’ll learn the factors involved in getting your price right.
The book is available at all major physical and online book retailers worldwide. Follow this link for further details.
Steve Zylstra serves as president and CEO of the Arizona Technology Council, a role he assumed in 2007. He is responsible for strategy, operations, finance and policy development. Zylstra is a vocal spokesman for the value technology can provide in raising social and economic standards in Arizona.
Karen Nowicki is a successful author, speaker and the creator of Deep Impact Leadership™ and SoulMarks Coaching™. She is a two-time recipient of the prestigious national Choice Award® for her book and personal development retreat. Karen was crowned the first-ever “Mompreneur of the Year” Award in 2010 for the southwestern states. She was recognized for her leadership, business acumen, and work-life balance.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Bianca Buliga is a trilingual first-generation American of Romanian ethnicity. A marketing professional with experience in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, Bianca currently works as Director, Marketing & Communications for the Arizona Technology Council.
