Albuquerque’s Quiet Super-Power: How Melissa Willems Makes Every Client Feel Like Her Only Client

Walk into any coffee shop along Central Avenue and you’ll find laptops open to dashboards of sales, inventory, and “What does last month look like that?”  Somewhere inside those glowing screens is a small-business owner trying to hold a dream together—one receipt at a time.  The difference between panic and progress often comes down to a single phone number now ringing inside a modest home office in northeast Albuquerque: (505) 555-0199, answered by Melissa Willems, founder and soul of MW Bookkeeping & Tax.

To her clients—coaches in their first breakout year, sculptors who ship pieces to Dubai, roofers who still smell like tar at 7 p.m.—Melissa is more than a bookkeeper.  She’s translator, therapist, strategist, and occasionally late-night pep-talker rolled into one.  “I’m never just organizing numbers,” she says.  “I’m organizing someone’s future.”  The statement sounds lofty until you see the spreadsheet she’s working on, color-coded with notes in the margin: *Q3 retreat—save extra 2 %, client wants beachfront venue.*

 

A 30-Year Master Class in Listening

Melissa began her own story in January 1994 behind the front-desk computer of a Houston-area Motel 6, learning double-entry bookkeeping on giant paper ledgers long before “the cloud” was anything more than weather.  Motel ledgers turned into QuickBooks in 1997, then into office-manager roles for an interior designer and a busy construction company.  Each new environment drilled the same conviction deeper: every number is somebody’s dream.  “I can’t fix a roof myself,” she laughs, “but I can make sure my client buys shingles without maxing out his credit line.”

Today Melissa offers the same life-preserving clarity to Albuquerque’s newest entrepreneurs.  Her pricing is intentionally radical: one-hour minimum bookkeeping, billed monthly at only $50.  No hidden fees, no nickel-and-diming for every phone call. The point isn’t to become wealthy off start-ups; the point is to make sure *everyone* can afford to know their numbers from Day 1.  “If a client worries about paying me,” she reasons, “they can’t possibly worry about paying themselves.”

Trust is the unspoken requirement of bookkeeping.  Melissa keeps the circle tight: her daughter, sister, and stepmother form her entire virtual “team,” each handling data entry or document scanning under the same last name and the same pledge of confidentiality.  It’s more than nostalgia.  After two decades of watching headlines about stolen identities and embezzled withholdings, Melissa refuses to let fear creep into the room.  “If you worry about the person touching your books,” she says softly, “you’ll never sleep.”  So her clients rest while she, laptop glowing in the quiet of 2 a.m. Albuquerque, reconciles the day’s sales, flags discrepancies, and leaves voice memos that begin, “Hey, I noticed a tiny thing…”

The client who once sent her a postcard from a German cathedral now sends WhatsApp pictures from Dubai, Taipei, and Reykjavík—every stamp proof that location no longer limits a small business.  Melissa files multi-state sales-tax returns the way some people fold laundry: routine, comforting, done with care.

 

The Human Behind the Highlight Reel

Spend ten minutes with Melissa and you’ll notice the details that never make line items: her voice softens when she speaks of her 25-year marriage, the move from Houston to Nashville to care for aging parents, to Albuquerque, the way she still tears up remembering her mother’s medicine-related confusion before a simple dosage change restored her mom completely.  “Life happens *to* all of us,” she says.  “Numbers just help us decide how we move forward anyway.”  It’s not uncommon for a client call to end with, “By the way, how’s your husband’s new garden coming?”  That’s not scripted empathy; that’s simply Melissa believing that businesses are people first.

Ask her about hobbies and she laughs: “I work.  Then I post about work on social media and call it networking.”  Yet scroll through her Instagram stories and you’ll also see sunset shots of Sandia Peak, captions cheering on Albuquerque’s newest food trucks, and heartfelt congratulations to clients who just crossed the six-figure mark she once helped them set as a “crazy stretch goal.”

Your Turn for a Brave Conversation

Albuquerque’s entrepreneurial soil is rich: red-chile roasters, ceramic artists, micro-brew wizards, and drone-mapping engineers.  But rich soil still needs steady water, and that water is honest, accurate, *known* numbers.  Melissa stands ready with the virtual watering can, one $50 bucket at a time.

So, whether you’re a coach launching an online academy, a contractor bidding your biggest job yet, or an artist who simply wants to know if selling stickers at the next festival is worth the booth fee—there’s room on Melissa’s screen.  The first call is always free, always cheerful, and always ends with this gentle reminder: “Your dreams are already in the ledger somewhere.  Let’s just give them line-item clarity.”

Reach out at MWBookkeepingandTax.com or (505) 555-0199.  Because when your numbers make sense, the rest of your story almost writes itself.

MW Bookkeeping and Tax
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Website: mwbookkeepingandtax.com

Phone: 505-312-9234

Social Media: Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn