The One About Being Alive
My business had made me feel alive lately
TL;DR
Y’all have probably heard me say “I promise you that you won’t die, even if you feel like you will” to new bookkeeping/accounting entrepreneurs.
I usually say it as an encouragement to people to let them know that they are going to have to do 90 gajillion really difficult and uncomfortable things if they want to be successful. But I remind them that the good news is that none of those 90 gagillion things is going to kill them. 💀
Announce your new business on LinkedIn…you won’t die.
Send that email to your dream client…you won't die.
Record a (really bad) first video for social media…you won’t die.
Travel to a conference where you don’t know anyone…you won’t die.
Study for a credential like your EA or your CPA or maybe your Advanced ProAdvisor Certification (now called Level 2)...you won’t die…you might not pass, but you won’t die.
Learning how to build a website when you feel like you and computers hate each other…you might throw your computer out your window, but you won’t die.
Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera…
These things never killed anyone. Facts.
But…not dying shouldn’t be our goal. Having a business that is not terrible shouldn’t be our goal.
That should be more like the floor. The minimum standard.
(Aside: Though, to be fair, a “not terrible” business is much better than what many entrepreneurs have. Work that is “not terrible” is better than what many employees have. So don’t forget to count your blessings.)
My hope for myself and for you is that we have an increasing number of days where we feel alive, not just not dead.
I’ve had some very alive days these last two weeks. And if you are curious, I’ll tell you more about the big milestone in my business further down in this newsletter.
It feels good to have days where my work makes me feel alive.
When was the last time your work made you really feel alive? Thriving. Strong. Blood pumping. Brain synapses firing hot. Electric. Giddy. Shutting off your computer camera and giving an audible “Whoop” and rubbing your hands together really fast.
The work that makes someone feel alive is different for each of us.
Can you list the types of work that make you feel alive? What steps will you take to do more of the things on that list in the new year?
If you can’t identify what makes you feel alive, can you at least list the work that makes you feel zombie-ish? That might be a good place to start as you think about what you want to do less of in the new year.
Please reply or comment with one thing you are going to do more of in 2025 so you get more of those electrifying entrepreneurial moments.
Our sponsor Seth David from Nerd Enterprises is a really inspiring example of someone who continues to pivot his business to do the things he most enjoys. He is a very experienced industry veteran. Yes, yes, he has had a real firm. And yes, yes, he is a QBO and accounting jock. But he also loves to teach and mentor and dig into tech and apps. Is he your guide to doing more of what makes you feel alive in 2025? 👇
Deals Deals Deals
💰 I am extending the discount for the “Should You Convert Your Clients to FreshBooks in 2025” webinar. (Truth is, that means I really need more people to sign up.) And, wait…there’s more. If you sign up for one of the sessions, you can attend all 3 for free. And wait…still more. We will be doing 3 hands on Q&A sessions where you will get technical support from me on your real FreshBooks clients files. One nitty gritty session each month in Jan, Feb, and March 2025.
💰 There is this small, cool accounting conference called Bridging the Gap. They just opened registration and have early bird pricing until January 31. I’ve heard many people say that this is the conference to attend if you can only attend one. Christmas present to yourself? Year end business expense? Tell me if you are going. I’m debating on making it a family vacation to Colorado in July.
💰 Xero is offering a promo where they will do your client conversion for free. Details here. And if you aren’t a Xero User yet, you will need to get your partner account here*.
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.
📅 December 10, 19, and January 7 (pick one): After 3 years of becoming the world’s leading FreshBooks expert, I’ll be teaching a webinar entitled “Should You Convert Clients to FreshBooks in 2025”. Every attendee will also be invited to 3 support sessions in Jan, Feb, and March 2025 to help you with your transition.
📅 December 11: Tech the Halls Accounting App Showcase and Virtual Holiday Meetup. This looks fun. Like speed dating but for accounting things. There are prizes. Go make friends. Unsubscribe from any emails you don’t want to receive after the event. Forwardly* is the host.
📅 +December 17: The Tax-Ready Bookkeeper with Nancy McClelland. Why learn about tax? By learning some foundational tips and tricks to handing off the annual books, you can add value and build lasting relationships with both your client and the tax preparer (your new favorite referral partner). Because everybody loves a Tax-Ready Bookkeeper! RSVP here.
📅 Financial Cents is hosting something called a Workflow Reset. 4 total sessions. I signed up for the last 2, and will be bringing my new Operations Coordinator to them with me.
📅 +January 2: What Bookkeepers Need to Know about 1099s. Shannon Ballman Theis from Payroll Restoration is our teacher. RSVP here.
Featured Posts
🌶️ How has your bookkeeping business changed your life? Nicole B. has had a rough week and is looking for some nice stories to lean on when she “feels like entrepreneurship is running over her over repeatedly with a semi”.
🌶️ When an odd duck client sends you an email that is a bit unorthodox and possibly rude, how do you respond? The good news is, there is no single right answer. Look at this debate! Heavens! But isn’t it great that there is room in this wonderful world for all types of personalities. Go build a life and client list that jives with yours.
Help You Hustle
💪 So you have probably heard about the company called “Fast & Easy QBO”? Well, it is gone (kinda). And I found out what happened. Nothing fast or easy about learning to be a bookkeeper. Pay attention to their plans to help students “become the bookkeepers that CPAs want to hire*”.
Watch the replay.
Best free way to stay up to date about the new direction they are going is in their QBO Locker Room*.
If this is the company you want to be your teacher, keep holding them accountable to the “hands-on practice” they have always been famous for.
💪 Intuit’s “In The Know” short videos are probably something every QBO ProAdvisor should listen to, but this one called QuickBooks Payments Revenue Share Program particularly caught my eye. Thinking about how to make money running a bookkeeping firm without doing bookkeeping is my love language. 30% of processing fees for 3 years sounds amazing.
Promise, promise, promise me that you’ll thoughtfully wrestle with how to ethically pursue getting referral income. No amount of money is worth your reputation. Treat your clients how you want to be treated. But can you get on board with referring clients to using QBO for payments??? I mean, let’s be honest here. Using the built in QBO payment processor is probably the easiest way to keep the bookkeeping simple. It certainly works beautifully. There is a lot about it that is worth selling to folks.
Jobs
Check out the BSH Job Guide - a part-time position was added! Don’t forget to use #jobopp when posting your jobs.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
My Family Circus (43F, 39M, 13M, 11F, 10M)
🎪 We had to put our dog down the day after Thanksgiving. His name was Bowie (pronounced Boo-ee). He was a good dog. He was ours for 15 years. Black and white bird-dog mutt. Not so bright but so good natured. Shed too much. Never caught a squirrel but wanted to so badly.
Here is how we handled things over the last couple of months.
We started talking about it early since we knew he didn’t have a lot of time left. Our hope is to always look for ways to use these hard parts of life as a way to equip our children to be resilient adults.
We worked through this Pet Quality of Life Questionnaire as a family. It helped to have a framework to think about things when our emotions can make decisions hard.
We let each child decide on their own if they wanted to be there for the actual procedure. Two wanted to be there. One did not. The one that did not stayed back with my parents and collected rocks on the tractor to bury him with.
We all worked together to bury him. It was a combination of shoveling and building a big mound of big rocks. Earthy and raw. Death is not sanitary or sterile. One day my body will go into the ground and so will theirs.
We ended by reading this beautiful “Liturgy for the loss of a living thing”. It is from a book called Every Moment Holy and is one of my favorite things in life right now. Liturgies for the ordinary events of daily life.
Perhaps our experience might help one of you who is facing this soon.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 Should I have my first 6 figure firm year?
I’m facing a bit of a quandary (a good one). My Ignition dashboard says it is projecting that I’m going to invoice $90k in the year 2024 for bookkeeping services. I technically bill about another $5k in QBO Payments that isn’t included in that number. That is ohhhh so close to saying I have a 6 figure firm (except I have a real distaste for revenue numbers and prefer people to use net income figures, but just know that I have a very high profit margin and only outsource a little bit of firm work). But I kinda want to be done working for the year, too. December always feels like a tough month for our family, and I really don’t like it to feel that way. Do I hustle to scrounge up a couple of clean up projects to hit $100k? That is what I lay in bed at night thinking about the last couple of weeks.
Is $100k a lot of money for a firm (remember, I do this quirky influencer work, too, so that $$ is not all I make)? Certainly debatable. Some would say yes. Others would say no. You decide. If you follow this newsletter and listen to my stories about how I run my firm and how much I work, you should be able to make a judgment.
🎢 Milestone month for me
Mark it down, folks. December 2024 is a milestone month for little ol’ Heritage Business Services. I’ve been preparing for 3 years for this. This week I did my first true public education about FreshBooks when I did my collaboration with Mariette Martinez for our “Solopreneur’s Ultimate Year End Close in FreshBooks and QuickBook Online”. And I’m following it up with 3 more sessions specifically for bookkeepers in the next few weeks called “Should You Convert Your Clients to FreshBooks in 2025”.
Here is the condensed replay that Mariette uploaded to her channel if you want to watch the collaboration or if you want to actually learn about year-end readiness for solopreneurs and get a FreshBooks and QBO year-end checklist.
This would not have been nearly as successful if I had not done a collaboration. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t have even happened. And now it DID happen. Working with a single collaborator more than doubled the success. I’m grateful for the energy and accountability that fellowship infused into this effort.
If you are a bookkeeper who is “Freshbooks curious”, please join the “Should You Convert Clients to FreshBooks in 2025”. I’d be so honored to have you.
🎢 Rookie Mistakes
I still had some big blunders during that first webinar!
I was only chatting to “hosts and panelists” for the first ¾ of the webbie. Meaning no one saw my responses except my co-host! What a newb! Even though I use zoom just about every day, I learned how Zoom “webinar” is different than Zoom “meeting”.
I have NO PLAN for what to do now! I felt pretty good about my preparation leading up to the webinar. But once we closed zoom, I had no list of actions to take, which is arguably the most important part! Mariette sent me the list of registrants…and I’m just sitting here with a dumb open-mouthed trout face. There should be a written “after-action plan”, but I don’t have one, so I’m paralyzed.
When Mariette did her formal training part (not the more casual discussion part), she said this beautiful line that went something like “O.K. It is time to go into teaching mode, so I’m going to turn off my camera and let’s get serious about learning”. Something like that. And then she eloquently and slowly read her presentation. It was not free-flow blabbing. I was completely thrown off guard. Oh how I wished I had just declared that like she did. What a freeing sentence to declare. And the audience doesn't care. Shoot, they probably appreciate presenters who say exactly what needs to be taught.
From The Vault
That QuickBooks Payments Revenue Share program is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to “passive income” that accounting pros can make. Here is a video called “Passive(ish) Income for Accounting/Bookkeeping/Tax Professionals”. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Letters To The Editor
✉️ I hope lots of you saved some $$ with all the deals mentioned last edition! Many, many, many are still active, FYI.
Thanks for the discount code! I saved $100 off the 5mb Paid Diagnostic Review. Thank you. Make it a great day! Tori J.
Classifieds (Clickable)
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
I am down right rabid about transparency and full disclosure. If a link has a * beside it, it means it is either an affiliate link where I might receive compensation if you make a purchase, at no additional charge to you. Or it could be a tracking link that another business provided me to see how many readers click on that link.