Joseph Cacioppo runs a bookkeeping practice, holds a full-time job and is raising four young children. He has made it work by guarding two hours every morning.
Joseph Cacioppo spends most autumn Saturdays in Gainesville, Florida at his sons' games in the morning and watching the Florida Gators in the afternoon. Not long ago, he took his eldest, who is about to turn seven, to Atlanta to watch them play. He talks about the trip warmly, as one of the moments that make a busy life worth it. Joseph works full time as a software development manager and runs a bookkeeping practice on the side, while he and his wife raise and homeschool four children, the youngest just nine months old. "Life can be very chaotic," he says, without a trace of complaint.
"The time I've gotten back has really gone toward my family and myself."
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The bookkeeping practice grew out of temperament more than ambition. For five years, Joseph has helped his wife run her photography business. He liked the work and wanted a business of his own, but for a long time he couldn't picture what it would be. The answer came from what he had always enjoyed: math and putting things in order, and when he discovered bookkeeping, it all clicked. "When I discovered that I could get paid to do something like that, it was perfect," he says.
Nineteen months later, most of the bookkeeping work still happens between 5 and 7 a.m. He opens his laptop at five, while the house is asleep, and works through his to-do list, QuickBooks and whichever cleanup isn't waiting on a client. He speaks about those hours with real affection, as the stretch "before anybody's calling me or emailing me about anything." At seven he stops, give or take a few minutes on a heavy day, and the next couple of hours belong to his children.
"I do not think it'd be possible to do all the client work nearly as quickly, or without stress, without Aqqrue."
A window that fixed is also a hard budget, and for a while a few clients were using up much of it. Copying a Shopify store's daily sales into spreadsheets could swallow an hour or two, and he calls it simply "an annoying task." Aqqrue now does that kind of work in minutes, through tasks he built once for each client, while he reviews what it produces.
Aqqrue arrived just as his client list began to grow, and he now has sixteen recurring clients. "I do not think it'd be possible to do all the client work I've been able to work on nearly as quickly, or without stress," he says. It has also given him something solo practitioners rarely get: "more time to work on my business instead of in my business." He has even started to imagine hiring someone, and he laughs at the thought of how much two people with the same tool could get done.
The gift of mental bandwidth
The usual version of this story has the founder pouring the saved hours straight back into growth. Joseph says plainly that he hasn't, and that he's glad. The time has gone to sleep, to meals that aren't rushed, to workouts he never misses, and above all to his children, in what he calls "a very challenging time" with a baby and a two-year-old in the house. He thinks the bigger gift isn't measured in hours at all. "It's also the mental bandwidth," he says. Knowing the monotonous work is handled leaves more of his attention, and more of his patience, for the people at home.
Joseph credits his wife for making this routine work, and the two of them talk often about what comes next. The money from their businesses is going toward paying off the house and investing, so that when the children are older the family can travel whenever they like. Until then, the routine holds. He opens his laptop at five while the house is still asleep, and at seven he closes it and goes to find his children. "The time I've gotten back," he says, "has really gone toward my family and myself."
