We sent you a handwritten letter because it's how we'd want to be introduced. This page is the rest of it — a 30-second video, what your first year actually looks like in Washington or Oregon, and why we think we're a good fit. No pop-ups, no chatbots, no hard sell.
We made this short instead of a sales page so you can decide quickly if it's worth your time. Watch, then read on if it sounds right.
Both Washington and Oregon publish new business registrations as public record. We pull the list each week, look at the type of business and the registered agent address, and write personally to a small number of new founders we think we'd genuinely be a good match for.
We don't run paid ads. We don't buy lead lists. We don't email. We mail you a letter because if we're going to be the person seeing every transaction your business runs through, you should know what we sound like in our own handwriting first.
If we got it wrong — wrong fit, wrong timing, already have a bookkeeper — toss the letter and we won't follow up. We send a small enough number of these that we read every reply.
Your CPA might mention these in March. Your bank won't mention them at all. By then it's late. These are the filings, taxes, and registrations new businesses miss in their first year — every single one of which we handle for clients on day one.
Both states require an annual report with the Secretary of State, registered agent on file, and proper LLC or corporation maintenance. The penalty for missing it isn't a fine — it's administrative dissolution. Your business stops legally existing. Recovering from that is doable but expensive, and it'll show up on a future buyer's due diligence forever.
We didn't start as a bookkeeping firm. We started as small business operators who built finance and operations across multiple locations and multiple companies — then began doing the same for other founders who asked. Today we manage the books for a wide range of small businesses across Washington and Oregon.
Running operations across multiple states taught us what most generalist bookkeepers never see: how multi-state payroll works in practice, what a registered agent change actually breaks, why your bank reconciliation looks fine the day you sell a location and falls apart three weeks later. We learned it on our own books before we did it for anyone else's.
For a brand new business, this matters in one specific way. We're not figuring out your first year alongside you. We've already handled other companies' first years — including the unglamorous parts no one warns you about, like switching banks at month four, hiring your first W-2 across state lines, and reclassifying transactions when your CPA shows up with a different chart of accounts in mind.
We keep the offer for new businesses simple. One flat monthly fee, all the WA and OR filings handled, no hourly billing, no annual contract. Once you grow into something more complex, we'll grow the package with you — but we won't sell you a tier you don't need yet.
For businesses registered in the last 12 months. Designed for low transaction volume and tight cash.
When you outgrow First Year — usually around payroll, AR/AP, or hitting six figures monthly.
The same method that put this letter in your hands — pulling state filings, picking the right businesses, sending personal mail instead of email blasts — works for almost any B2B service. If you sell to other businesses, this is one of the highest-yield outreach methods available to a small operator.
Paid ads punish small budgets. Cold email gets filtered. Networking takes years. Direct mail to publicly-registered businesses is one of the few channels where small operators consistently outperform big ones — because attention is expensive everywhere except a real envelope on a real desk.
On your intro call, if you'd find it useful, we'll walk through how we actually do this — what data we pull from the WA and OR Secretary of State sites, how we filter it, what the letters look like, what response rates to realistically expect, and the mistakes that kill the channel. No pitch, no upsell, no separate service to sign up for.
We do this because the businesses we keep books for tend to grow. The businesses that grow stay clients longer. Helping you find your own customers is, frankly, in our self-interest as your bookkeeper.
Every Make Ready client is paired with one named bookkeeper who handles the day-to-day, plus a partner who reviews the close. We don't pass you between teams. We don't grow past the point we can name every client we serve.
Operates two small businesses in Portland, including all multi-state payroll, sales tax, B&O, and CAT compliance. Built the operations playbook Make Ready uses on every client engagement.
Day-to-day responsibility for monthly close, payroll, and state filings across our client businesses. AIPB Certified Bookkeeper, QuickBooks Advanced ProAdvisor, and Xero Certified Advisor.
No pitch deck. No screen-share of dashboards. We'll ask what you're building, what state you're in, what you've already filed for, and whether we'd be useful. If you want, we'll also walk you through how we found you and how the same method could find you customers. If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you who is.