The One About A $50k Expense
When I only charge a fraction of that
TL;DR
“If I cannot get sales going in the next 6 months, there is a good chance I am out of business next year.”
I received this exact closing line in an email from a client this past week.
Sorta made me emotional.
Sure, I personally like the recurring income I receive from him, but I have also grown to care about him.
And his numbers are looking grim.
He is noticing. He is feeling them in his gut.
But I am not being proactive in looking at his numbers and pointing out some negative signals with hard data. So he doesn’t see me as someone to come to for advice before he makes big decisions.
For instance, he did not come to me last fall for advice before he entered into a year-long contract with a “marketing expert” for FIFTY THOUSAND dollars. Had he done so, I might have been able to help him analyze whether he could afford such an investment.
And now he realizes it was a colossal waste of money, because, well, he has a very dry pipeline and is in panic mode.
But why would he come to me? I certainly do not do a great job of positioning myself as someone he should be talking to about his business.
But he does spend his money on advice and consulting from other people.
So I lay in bed and wonder, why does a marketing coach get paid $50k, yet I’m struggling to play in the $500/month range for recurring clients?
And I know in my bones that I can actually provide him a lot of value while this other smooth talking consultant sells a very expensive platter of puffy dream clouds.
I know I have the financial brains. I know that my insights could help clients. But I need to learn to communicate those insights.
I do feel a bit handicapped because I never worked for anyone in the accounting industry before starting my own business, so I don't even have a lot of experience listening to how other accounting pros talk.
I need to hear more of those conversations in my ears. “Ahhh…so that is how the great ones talk to their clients in ways that position them as the person clients seek out for strategic advice (that they can charge for).”
But since I have no plans to go work for someone, I am left to myself to figure out how to capitalize on other people's experience. Thankfully, in 2025, there are ways I can learn from great advisors without having to go work for them.
There is one of those types of conversations next week. 👉 Mind the GAAP: Guiding Clients from Reported Profit to Cash Reality & Stability.
We’ll leave with the 5-step Cash Shield framework that will help us keep our existing clients alive and thriving, which helps us build our own bottom line, too.
Everyone is invited. Bang the graphic to register.
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Having bookkeeping or accounting skills is much different than having the business skills needed to run a firm (or even an organized solo practice). Justine Lackey is one of the best-known educators in our industry who teaches these skills - she built her firm to nearly 7 figures before she exited it in 2023. Enrollment for her program, The Nest, is kicking off in mid-September and her VIP list is set to close this week. VIP members get some additional discounts, perks and benefits. Join the list here* to snag the deals.
💰 Workflow Queen will have a sale August 21-24. All her courses* will be 20% off. Investigate them now so you are ready when the discount code is announced.
💰 Get 20% off your first 3 months of Keeper* with our community link. Discount baked in to the link.
Please always send me any news of deals that you hear of that others might benefit from.
Be There or Be Square
Items with a “+” are hosted by me. All these events can be viewed and registered for in the DESCRIPTIONS of each event on the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Calendar.
📅 August 18-20 - The Ambitious Bookkeeper hosts her 3-day Bookkeeping Biz Workshop Series*. Only $37.
📅 August 20: Marketing Your Practice: Getting the Recognition You Deserve. This webinar is all about getting clients.
📅 August 19 - Restaurants (and Bars) in QuickBooks Online*. Join restaurant accounting expert Kristen Nies Ciraldo as she walks you through setting up, keeping up, and even summing up the financial life of a typical restaurant using QBO.
📅 August 21: Master the Intuit Bookkeeping Certification*. Join the free workshop that reveals everything you need to know, including how to pass quickly and whether it's actually worth your time.
📅 August 26: Mind the GAAP: Guiding Clients from Reported Profit to Cash Reality & Stability. Learn how to turn client financials into clear cash insights that build stability, safeguard their business, and set the stage for lasting growth.
📅 +August 28 - Behind The Hustle: Shaan Rizvi. Tune into the 4th interview of the Behind The Hustle series. Turn on notifications here on the YouTube channel.
📅 September 15: Modern Firm Challenge*. This is a free 5 day challenge for folks who are ready to trade client chaos for a business that runs like clockwork.
📅September 23 - October 9: Advisory Amplified is a series of six 1-day gatherings. Hitting the normal big cities in the US. Is one of them near you? Wildly affordable.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Lynsi I. shares that feeling when you finally dump that D-list client. And the good things that usually happen once they are gone.
🌶️Errrbody is in meltdown about the new QBO interface. Tough times out there, y’all. Here is a discussion about resources to help you learn all you need to know about the new QBO interface. If you have other resources to help get smart on this, please add them.
Help You Hustle
💪 The third Behind The Hustle interview with Chris Kocina was equally as good as the first two, but also remarkably different.
First of all, he was recording from Thailand because he's doing his first 4-month digital nomad adventure while running his business.
He was a wild child who barely graduated high school but thankfully became clear-headed enough to change course and get off that foolish path.
At the end of the show, when I asked the juicy question about revenue, he shared some honest facts about how much he's earning and how there was definitely a long season of working a lot of hours to get there. Listen to the end and you decide whether how much he's making sounds like a lot of money to you or not. But the man's working from Thailand on a 4-month trip, so he's doing something right.
💪 Intuit has a formal certification called the Intuit Bookkeeping Certification. But should you get it?* Watch this free webinar to find out all about the certification, the exam, and who needs the cert.
💪 Marketing Your Practice: Getting the Recognition You Deserve. This webinar is all about getting clients. FreshBooks is hosting. My guess is 80% of the presentation will apply to whatever ledger you serve clients on. That is how these things work.
For Fun
A generous friend is celebrating her birthday by doing a matching donation to the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation. Please, please Puuuhhh-lease click that link to donate to this cause. This non-profit exists to provide scholarships to accounting professionals to attend their first industry conference. It is changing lives, y’all. We are in our 3rd year of giving scholarships and don’t plan on stopping. But we need more donors.
Please ask me if you have questions about this non-profit.
My Family Circus (44F, 40M, 13M, 12F, 11M)
🎪 Being a “Yes Mom” when I want to be a “No Mom”
Every Sunday and every Wednesday evening, you can hear the same sound in my house.
It is the sound of the freezer drawer opening followed by a clink clink of spoons against dishes.
Sundays and Wednesdays are ice cream nights in the Johnson house.
We put this protocol in place about 3 years ago because I got tired of having to make a decision about dessert.
Being asked everyday if we could have dessert just made me grumpy. I had a long list of reasons to say “no” to the constant question.
I am not a baker. Some folks find joy in the kitchen and keep the cookie jar full or a cake on the cake stand. Not I. Not my happy place.
In this economy?!? Dessert is expensive. For ice cream, we buy Blue Bell Ice Cream, and it costs a small fortune. And I want my kids to go to college.
Ice cream gives you cavities. One child already has had a cavity. It cost over $200 to fill. What?!?! That was the first filling I ever had to pay for with my own money in my life. Is there anything more disappointing than that for a grown up to spend money on? Maybe removing a dead tree? Or repairing a roof leak?
And it is not healthy to eat that much sugar. Look, I am certainly not some health nut. If you saw my pantry or fridge, you would see that we get plenty of daily sugar in our regular diet. But I know very few people who could eat dessert every night and not have negative health consequences. And these small humans would eat dessert every single day if left to their own choices.
👆Pretty thorough list to defend my “no”, right?
And the only reason I can come up with to say “yes” is just because dessert tastes really good.
So the 2x per week ice cream policy has been so freeing for all of us.
We don't have to have a discussion, so that lets us talk about more interesting things instead of dessert.
The kids really appreciate clarity in their mental calendar. There is no tumult in their little developing brains strategizing all day whether they should even ask for dessert and worrying about what the answer might be.
It is a moment of autonomy and authority in their lives. Little kings and queens on the throne for the moment! They are completely in charge of something. They know what day it is. They can march their little butts to the freezer whenever they feel like it (As long as it's Sunday or Wednesday night, of course 🍨). Just don't leave a mess behind!
And I love it because I don't always have to be a “No Mom” who just likes to kill all the joy.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 Where there is a will, there is a way.
As a frequent “Zoomer”, I wanted to share a tip about how I've managed to continue having productive Zoom meetings with weak internet.
I have found myself having to work in less than ideal Wi-Fi conditions lately. Instead of letting that slow me down or stress me out, I attacked it head on.
I don't understand the technical ways of the internet (isn't it just magic?), but I just know that my phone on 5G has a stronger signal than the guest Wi-Fi or the Wi-Fi from my hotspot.
So I join the meeting on my laptop, but then I also join from my phone. I just tell the person I'm talking to that I'm having internet issues at the moment, and that's why I've joined the meeting twice. In 2025, everyone pretty much understands that a weak internet signal happens to everyone at some point.
But I can't just have the meeting from only my phone. I think zooming from a laptop looks more professional than from a phone. And I need people to share their screen, but screen share is too tiny for me to see on my phone.
But when I use the 5G network from my phone in addition to the computer, even if the internet is buffering a bit and zoom looks frozen on my computer screen for a few moments, the audio remains strong on the phone so the client doesn't know that my computer connection is on the fritz.
The audio does get a bit wonky with 2 devices next to each other, and it took me a hectic moment to figure out the right settings on both devices.
Here are the settings to make it work:
Laptop: Zoom muted. Internal speaker off. Camera on.
Phone: Audio on (microphone and speaker). Camera off.
If you want to know where I have been working with slightly weaker Wi-Fi than normal, be sure to read the next newsletter where I plan to share that unusual story.
(Cough, cough. Hit subscribe to this newsletter.)
From The Vault
⚡If you want to be like Chris Kocina (my third Behind the Hustle interview) and work somewhere cool like Thailand for a few months, watch the Accounting Nomads panel to hear from other bookkeepers who travel while running a business. It is possible!
Classifieds (Clickable)
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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Really resonated with your reflection on positioning. A lot of bookkeepers and accountants run into the same challenge — clients don’t always see them as the first call for strategic advice, even though they hold the financial clarity that can make or break decisions. TCLM focuses on turning financial data into cash insights and stability frameworks — could be something that helps strengthen that advisory role you’re aiming for.
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