2012: I was 42. Newly divorced. Single mom. Earning $7.10/hr.
2025: I'm 56. Running a $2.5m business that recently made the Inc. 5000 list.

Here’s what happened in between:

After 16 years of marriage, I was suddenly a single mom in my 40s with no job.

I’d been out of the workforce for 6 years raising my daughter, and when I tried to get back in

No one would hire me.

So I kept lowering my expectations.

Finally

I walked into White House Black Market (a store where I used to drop $1k in a day when I was married) and asked for a job.

They hired me.

$7.10 an hour.

My first paycheck was $240. 

It wasn't enough to cover my electric bill.

Some days, I’d ring up women wearing the same expensive blouses I used to buy, and they wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.

I cried a lot that year.

But one night, sitting at my kitchen table, staring at overdue bills, I realized something: 

No one was coming to save me.

Over the next few years, I clawed my way back. 

I took temp jobs, then a FT role, then finally started my own business at 50.

Today:

That business, Zacharin Consulting, now brings in $2.5M a year.

And in 2025:
↳ We ranked #802 on the Inc. 5000.

Zacharin Consulting provides bookkeeping + fractional CFO services to help IT firms and Managed Service Providers:

1. Pinpoint which clients, contracts, and services are actually profitable
↳ So you can double down on what scales and cut what doesn’t.

2. Turn unpredictable project work into reliable MRR
↳ Giving you steadier growth, stronger valuations, and less founder stress.

3. Build the cash cushion and margins you’ve been chasing
↳ So hiring, scaling, or even exiting becomes a choice, not a gamble.

Clients say things like:

"Natalia really knows her stuff … She’s knowledgeable on multiple accounting platforms, and she has great insight into how strategic accounting can make a huge difference for your business. If you’re in need of a virtual CFO or financial coaching for your business, you can’t go wrong with [Zacharin]." Faith W

"We were recently approached for acquisition, and having Zacharin Consulting in our corner gave me the peace of mind in knowing that our numbers were rock solid. We are a scaling business and their service is invaluable." Ray K

Curious about working together?

I offer a free Profitability Clarity Call for IT & MSP firms over $1m in annual revenue, so you can identify

→ Where your cash is really going
→ The biggest gaps holding back profitability and cash flow
→ The 1-2 most important levers to increase profitability

Just DM me the word “call" to get started.

“Bookkeeping is just data entry, my mom (or wife) will do it.”
No, it’s not.  (and yes, I am told that often and I always cringe)
Because when bookkeeping is treated like data entry, the job becomes:

1. Put the numbers in
2. Run the reports
3. Move on

Everything looks clean... but behind the scenes: 

- Expenses are coded in ways that distort margins
- Revenue is grouped, so there is no clarity in profits
- Payroll is just posted, and not recorded accurately

That’s what happens when the focus is on finishing the task instead of verifying everything. 

Yes, the numbers are entered.

But you’re making decisions with inaccurate data, and that can get expensive fast.

This is exactly why we hire talented, highly skilled staff accountants at Zacharin Consulting.  

Bookkeepers are responsible for accuracy, structure, and clean financial history.

Data entry is just recording, rarely validating.

Those are not the same thing.

Natalia Zacharin

I help IT firms boost profits & build scalable, sellable businesses ◆ Founder & CEO, Zacharin Consulting ◆ #802 on the Inc. 5000

I closed a new client a few weeks ago. She had an “all-in-one” finance guy handling everything, but instead of helping her, he caused a massive problem: 

She has a growing business and relied on one person to be her CFO, bookkeeper, accountant, and even the one running her payroll.

She didn’t see any issues at first, but eventually, she noticed something was off.

When she opened her systems in QuickBooks and Bill. com, she saw that he had been duplicating vendor bills across both platforms.

She assumed he knew the software, but he didn’t.

So for months, she had been making business decisions based on inaccurate numbers.

An all-in-one finance person can handle many tasks, but they can’t excel at all of them because each role requires specialized expertise:

• A CFO is a great visionary and strategist
• A bookkeeper is a detail-obsessed historian
• A payroll person is great with compliance

That’s why at Zacharin Consulting, we hire specialists for every role.

We would rather invest in building a solid team that protects our clients than spend days cleaning up this kind of mess.

If you're relying on one person to handle all your finances, your numbers will start lying to you.

Because when one person is juggling strategy, compliance, data entry, and HR laws, something is going to drop, and most of the time, it’s their accuracy.

I quit my full-time job when I turned 50.
I had a teenage daughter, and our house was falling apart at the time.
But it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

At the time, I was a single mom working full-time as an invoicing clerk at a tech company. On paper, it was a decent job. I just had to process invoices.

But it didn't cover the bills.

My house was falling apart under the weight of the mortgage, that paycheck wasn’t cutting it, and I was running out of room to pretend everything was fine.

So I started looking for another way to make money.

I took a course on how to start an accounting business and got started ASAP.

- Lunch breaks became outreach.
- Weekends turned into sales calls.
- Nights and weekends became upskilling.

I was exhausted and working more than I ever had, and I was still broke. 

Around that time, I went to a lecture and heard a woman say something along the lines of: 

“Sometimes you have to burn the bridges of the past so the universe can align.”

It sounded a little “woo-woo” to me. But I was exhausted and out of options. So, I made a hard decision...

The month I turned 50, at less than $2k in monthly gross revenue with my 'business', I quit my job. I had no backup plans and no savings, and I had a mortgage I couldn’t afford to miss.

So I got to work.

Within 3 months, I had closed 12 clients. It wasn’t enough to call myself successful, but it was enough for me to believe that the accounting business I was building might actually work.

Now, 7 years later, Zacharin Consulting has become a multi-seven-figure firm that helps service businesses scale and was recently listed on the Inc. 5000.

If you ended last year feeling tired and stuck while building a business or trying to make a hard decision, maybe it’s time to stop waiting for the right moment.

Take 2026 as your chance to go in a new direction.

taplio

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