I have big news, so I'll get right to it today:
I’m no longer the founder of TeamUp.
I’m now co-founder alongside Meryl Johnston, who many of you know as our investor and brand ambassador.
You might be wondering: What does this mean for TeamUp, for your firm, and for the wider accounting industry?
(And... can someone become co-founder after a business has started?)
To answer those questions, I have to take you to the moment everything changed.
Shuffling off the sleepless flight from Bangkok, squinting against the glaring lights, backpack slung over one shoulder...
I made that terrifying decision. I was going all in.
Even if it meant risking the income my family depended on, income I had fought so hard to stabilize after the wild swings of my earlier years.
Little did I know that I was about to receive a message that would make this timing perfect.
But this story began years before either of us would realize.
For years, I had followed Meryl's journey of building her firm, Bean Ninjas.
We were both members of a business community called the Dynamite Circle (DC) and she, an Australian, had been a guest on the related Tropical MBA podcast several times.
Bean Ninjas was one of the early online-focused bookkeeping firms built around the then-new cloud accounting software, Xero.
I'd been immersed in the eCommerce world here in the U.S., but Meryl's approach intrigued me.
She was taking a traditional service and reimagining it for the digital age, building a business around a fun and active lifestyle.
In 2019, I sold my eCommerce business. I felt successful.
Finally.
I had built something valuable enough to sell for what seemed like a large sum.
And it all started with a reckless promise.
In 2014, I convinced my wife to do something crazy.
We would both quit our jobs - though she loved hers and made great money - sell our condo, and move with our four-year-old across the country into my parents' house.
I told her I'd build a business that would make us rich, freeing her to pursue her creative dreams in music and fashion.
(For the record, I don't remember saying that, exactly, but I believe my wife when she tells me that I did.)
But while I was building, somebody had to pay the bills, so she found a job in our new home city of Portland - setting those dreams aside for the time.
What followed didn't go exactly as planned. My initial ventures failed.
My third business, Aria Chairs, took nearly a year to produce income, and even then it swung wildly.
With my newly 'successful' business I'd go months without paying myself, then take huge distributions when I felt 'safe.'
My wife hated that instability, but without saying a word, she kept on working.
By 2019, I was ready to sell Aria Chairs, but a stark reality became clear:
I was completely lost when it came to my finances.
I had a business with complex cashflow, but didn't realize what that meant.
Worse, my accountants couldn't explain the basics in simple terms, and their financial statements seemed wildly inaccurate, though I couldn't pinpoint why.
Nearly five years after that reckless promise, I was about to sell a business, but I still hadn't become the steady provider I'd set out to be.
In the right place at the right time, Bean Ninjas had hit explosive market demand.
They were growing fast and needed people to fulfill all that work. Like many firm owners, Meryl worked with an outsourcing company to build a team in the Philippines.
It was working well!
Clients were happy, and the team was doing great.
But she was about to have a nightmare experience that would change her career's trajectory.
When I decided to sell Aria Chairs, I realized I couldn't trust my accountants' financial statements.
I owed it to everyone involved to get them right, so I educated myself and rebuilt them from scratch.
And that knowledge changed everything.
I'd achieved 20% growth in just the few months leading up to the sale, which proved how powerful financial clarity could be.
Knowing my numbers let me make decisions I'd never been able to before - such as diverting more advertising spend to my most profitable items.
Understanding something as simple as the fact that net profit doesn't just show up in your bank account would have saved me years of confusion and family stress.
But my accountants could never answer my questions about these things. And I had many eCom friends in a similar situation.
When I sold the business, I knew I had to solve this problem.
So, I found a partner with an accounting background and went to work building a bookkeeping firm serving eCommerce companies -
meeting owners where they were and explaining how their money worked in simple terms.
I never would have thought I could build such a firm if I hadn't been following Meryl all those years.
What I didn't know was that while I was building a Meryl-inspired firm, Meryl was facing the exact problem I'd soon solve.
Bean Ninjas was booming. Then came COVID.
If you don't know, outsourcing companies charge management fees for every employee. As the team grows, that becomes a very large number.
When Meryl's team was sent to work from home during COVID, she continued paying these huge fees but wasn't getting the benefits she was promised -
the office space, security, staff events, and management structure.
What was she paying all those fees for?
All that "management" seemed unnecessary when everything was running smoothly from home.
When they deemed it safe, the outsourcing company demanded the team go back to the office.
Some refused.
Bean Ninjas' manager, a top employee, said she would quit if she were forced to return.
When Meryl asked the outsourcing company about hiring her team directly - cutting the company out as the middleman -
she discovered the trap.
With a sinking feeling, Meryl realized the truth.
The people she'd mentored and built genuine relationships with?
They had never been her team at all.
It had been a trap all along. She didn't know that this was what she was signing up for.
The betrayal was crushing.
When Meryl offered to hire her manager directly to avoid losing her, the company said yes - for a price.
What followed was nine months of legal back-and-forth plus an "exit fee" of $12,000 just to buy out one employee's contract.
The whole process was infuriating.
Why should it take so long and cost so much to hire someone I've worked with for years?
The outsourcing firm wasn't providing any management or oversight - she wasn't even working in their office.
What exactly am I paying for?
Furious about the entire experience, Meryl cancelled the contracts with the remaining team at the outsourcing company, after making sure the employees were taken care of.
Never again, Meryl vowed!
Reaching out to my eCom network, I had quickly brought on bookkeeping clients, and found that my partner and I actually could make the impact I had hoped.
What a thrill!
And for my family, the bookkeeping income, though modest, provided something my eCommerce ventures never had:
Stability.
With recurring revenue and the cashflow lessons I'd learned, my wife and I could finally breathe a little easier.
Excited by that success, my partner and I started to experiment with other ways to help our clients, using expertise I had built through my years in eCommerce.
The idea was simple: if I could make this much of an impact just doing bookkeeping, imagine how much more I could help in other areas.
So we started helping with recruiting, and later, content marketing.
Recruiting, especially, showed promise.
The future was looking bright.
Meryl was dismayed at how the system actually worked versus what she thought she had signed up for.
Like how I had discovered that my accountants' firm wasn't designed to help me understand my business -
Meryl realized that the rent-seeking outsourcing company wasn't aligned with her success either.
The experience left her with a burning conviction: there had to be a better way.
A way where firms could build real teams with aligned incentives, without the antagonistic relationship built into the outsourcing model.
What she didn't know was that the solution was being built by someone who'd been following her journey for years.
Excitement about what we were building came with surprising new tensions with my partner.
On the surface, everything looked bright. Recruiting was working, really working.
But instead of doubling down, we kept adding - content marketing, new offers, new bets.
My partner believed in more. "Always be making offers," he'd say. And I'd find myself agreeing, coming up with the next expansion idea, even as something deep inside whispered:
"Slow down."
The business was stable and growing. But I felt increasingly scattered.
Each new project felt less like progress and more like noise.
I didn't know it yet, but these tensions were about to force a decision that would risk the very stability I'd fought so hard to build.
Now, Meryl had overcome her earlier challenges and built Bean Ninjas into a firm she was proud of.
Happy with her accomplishments, in December of 2021, she stepped down as CEO to explore what might be next.
She planned to spend the next year investing and advising other companies, and learning about what the next phase of life is like.
But that sense of wonder didn't last long before her world was upended.
One day in early 2022, on the urging of a friend who'd recently had a startling diagnosis, Meryl scheduled an appointment.
It was just supposed to be a routine scan.
And then they saw it, the telltale cluster on the screen.
It knocked the wind out of her.
Time stopped.
She barely heard what the doctor said next.
She thought of her family - her partner, her two little girls, the youngest still just a baby.
Is this really happening?
That’s all for today.
Normally, I send these emails every other week, but I don't want to make you wait, so I’ll be back next week.
I’ll share Meryl’s news and how it changed the course of her year.
I’ll tell you about the painful decision I was about to make, the one that meant giving up everything I’d fought so hard to build...
And what happened after that flight from Bangkok.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the story so far.
Thank you for coming along on this journey with me.
Cheers!
Isaac
Founder
Err...
Co-founder
TeamUp
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