The One About Building Wealth
TL;DR
Why are we all working so hard if not to build our legacy and to help our clients build their legacy?
Admittedly, making more money and building wealth is not the only way to build a legacy, but I have found that the more financial margin I have in my life the more mental space I have for bigger, legacy-building activities instead of day-to-day task management. This is true for my clients as well.
So what? Well, here’s the “so what”:
👉 I will personally keep learning and implementing legacy building actions in my own life.
👉 I will keep educating my clients about best practices when it comes to money management and I will endeavor to model good entrepreneurial behavior.
👉 And I will keep planting seeds for the hard working, legacy minded folks in the wider Bookkeeping Side Hustle community. Which is why I do things like interview a financial planner about setting up our own Solo401(k) retirement plans so we can all learn about these topics.
I want all you readers of The Bookkeeping Side Hustle Pub to get excited about things like shoring up your retirement savings, setting increasing goals for giving your money and time/talents/money, and teaching the next generation important financial concepts so they can have an even better head start than you. And I want you to teach it to your clients, too.
But maybe your are thinking, “yeah, yeah, Kate, these things are important, but helping clients do all this sounds like WORK. And, I’m not even sure how I can advise them” Well, the more you do it for your own life and business, the more you will have to share. Start by sharing the story of your own journey.
BUT, you can also get paid for this and put real numbers behind it. What about this…
What if you provided your clients with a summary report called “Operation Wealth Building” as a part of your monthly financial reporting package and it contained info like this:
🔑 Debt Pay Down Progress
🔑 YTD Interest Expense (bleh!)
🔑Total Financial Increase To Owner (payroll + distributions + accountable plan + retirement + payments to spouse or children…get creative here and give it a better name)
🔑 Owner Retirement Contributions
🔑 Staff Retirement Contributions
🔑 Employer Match Expense (a biz owner could have company wide incentives for this and match MORE if all the employees hit certain retirement contribution targets)
🔑 Days of cash on hand (what a powerful number for a business owner to track and set targets for)
🔑 Company Charitable Giving
Oh, how the small business world would change if everyone set targets and knew where things stood with metrics like these.
And you know what? You could create that exact report of those customizable key metrics with an app called Keeper*. Build the report summary one time, and you’ll auto-magically have the updated info as soon as you finish your bookkeeping in QBO (Xero is in beta). It costs $8 per month.
Would your client value that data a way more than $8? Undoubtedly.
Deals Deals Deals
💰 I bought my ticket to BKX 2023 bookkeeping conference. Anyone want to join me? $400 off through November 1*.
💰 You can get 50% off Seth David’s Bulletproof Bookkeeping Master Course or his eCommerce bookkeeping course OR the bundle of both with code 97Friends. You can also get access to all his Process and Workflow Design courses if you join his “97 & Up” membership.
💰 Free new app for QBO Power Users from Hector Garcia. I heard that Hector Garcia was building an app called Right Tool and asked him if I could help spread the word! It is an efficiency tool for QuickBooks Online power users. Currently the tool is free and he is looking for more beta testers.
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.
📅 +Mondays in October: Co-working hour from 11:00-12:00EST. Join fellow Bookkeeping Side Hustlers on Zoom and get work done. Zoom link and password can be found on the calendar. Don’t do business alone! Will you be there? Comment below right here on Substack.
📅 Tuesday, Oct. 18, 1:00pm EST: Business View vs Accountant View in QBO with Alicia Katz Pollock.
📅 +Thursday, Oct. 20, 4pm EST and Friday, Oct 21 @ 11:00am EST: Gusto Payroll Cert Collab. Hop on Zoom with others completing the certification and work on your own. More details about it are HERE.
📅 +Wednesday, Oct. 26, 4pm EST: Gusto Payroll Study Group Wrap Up. Join me and Gusto staff as we wrap up our study group and give away prizes for those that participated. More details about it are HERE.
📅 +Monday, November 1, 4pm EST: Intuit Job Fair Kick-off! Learn about how applying at Intuit works, get the deets on ALL the job fair interviews, and find out about a special incentive I’m offering to the BSH community! More information will be shared HERE.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Jack Workman shared his thoughts on mentors. Do you think it is hard to find a good mentor that is successful, but not too busy to share their expertise? How have you found a mentor? If you are a seasoned pro, what do you look for in a mentee?
🌶️ Have you ever used snail mail to advertise your bookkeeping biz? Taylor Bridges was curious if anyone had been successful in doing this? What has been your experience?
🌶️ What do you think is the standard for a referral fee? Do you send something when someone refers a client to you? Do you expect something when you refer to someone else? Is it stated or implied? Go chime in on Alisha Papizan’s post.
Help You Hustle
💪 It is not too late to sign up for our free Gusto Payroll Study Group and learn how to “do payroll” by using an outsourced payroll provider. 314 folks have signed up! The Payroll Essentials certification from Gusto is the training I wish I had when I first started my business. I even shared a picture in public of a screen shot of the journal entry part of the training and was not lying when it said it almost made me want to cry because I wish I had been so clearly taught that when I first started. Learn more 👇
MAIN PRIORITY: Be sure to SIGN UP for the challenge here.
Watch our study group kick off session with the team from Gusto.
Watch my 10 minute solo recording all about the training “How To Earn Your Payroll Certification”.
Chime in below right here on Substack if you’ve already completed your cert and tell us one of you main takeaways from the training.
💪 Shahram Zarshenas from Financial Cents taught us “How To Build A High Performing Firm”, and I made sure he kept it very relevant for folks who were happy having small firms. “High performing” doesn’t necessarily equal huge. It does mean lots of money in your pocket for the amount of effort you expend.
💪 Margie Remmers-Davis has opened up a Facebook Group called the QBO Lab where she is posting QuickBooks Online Practice questions*. This is the kind of practice that new bookkeepers are begging for. If you ever end up buying one of her courses for the different certifications, don’t forget to use code “Hustle”.
Jobs
Job seekers, visit the #jobopportunity Topic/Hashtag in the Facebook Group to find these opps. I deliberately make you have to search a bit to get to these opps to help weed out tire kickers.
If you want your job opp featured here, be sure to use #jobopportunity on your post. This posts it to the saved hashtag, which is where these job postings are pulled from.
💼 I’m working with Intuit to put the final touches on the job fair for the QuickBooks Live and TurboTax Live part time, virtual jobs. Officially we kick off on November 1, but if you already are certain you want the jobs, you can apply right now.
💼 Medrano & Cali Bookkeeping is hiring a lead bookkeeper. Check out Jen MC’s post.
💼 Nicole Scudder shared that Spectrum Bookkeeping & Business Solutions is looking for an experienced bookkeeper.
💼 New posting on CloudAccountingJobs.com for a full time opp.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I have sent a couple of emails to my mighty 92 person business email list this week.
I tried to take a hint from what we learned from Jeremy Wells when he taught us about “Rapid Content Creation For Bookkeepers And Accountants”. He uses the principle “They Ask, You Answer”. Well, I’m not exactly getting a ton of juicy questions from my clients and prospects, so I decided to email the folks on my list and ask them to reply with any small business questions or technical bookkeeping questions. 3 people wrote back with what they wanted me to answer for them. Now I have to answer their questions! Gah!
How are you going to find out what questions your ideal client has? Comment below right here in Substack and tell us!I listened to a recent 2Bobs podcast and the entire time I kept thinking “I wish my clients would all listen to this!” It was about preparing for an economic downturn. So, I wrote up a short summary of the podcast and sprinkled in my own thoughts. No one replied to that email, though. 😞 But I’m hopeful a few folks found it helpful. 😁 I went one step further and put the exact contents of that email up as an “article” on LinkedIn. You can read it here. Maybe it will inspire to you to take a shot at piggybacking on some content that you found helpful. And then when you create anything, be sure to share it in more than one place.
🎢 One of my children has had a really hard time with spelling and reading and this child is CRUSHING elementary school this year and has an A+ average for spelling and reading. Every Friday I’m so nervous but when those spelling tests have come home in the backpack and the grades show our efforts every afternoon at the kitchen table are paying off, we whoop and hug and celebrate the payoff of hard work! Right now, this child needs me and that means phonics and spelling rules are a high priority in my life…”English words do not end in I, U, V, or J.”…
🎢 I’ve been implementing Ignition for proposals and billing. It has all the usual hardness associated with new tech. I know in the long run it pays off. I’ll mention one WIN and one TOTAL DUFF.
Win: I had recently lost my courage on Paid Diagnostic Reviews. On one particular call, I didn’t say the words “I recommend a paid diagnostic review” like we were taught last spring by Veronica Wasek. I want to get paid for looking at a prospects books and generating a proposal. So, I refreshed myself from the material in her course, and booked TWO paid diagnostic reviews this week. Where Ignition comes in is that I went in to the contract template that Veronica provides her students* and just popped that language in and saved it as a template. Then, when I had my 2nd chance to send an invoice for a paid diagnostic review this week, I sent it immediately after I got off the phone. I think it took me 5 minutes max. I have never sent an engagement that fast in the entire 5 years I’ve been doing this! And both of those paid diagnostic review engagements were signed and paid the same day I sent them! This is the time of year for folks to start reaching out because they know they have messy books. Be ready!
Duff: Ignition lets you add a video to your proposals (though I’m not certain I’ll be able to justify the additional cost of this feature after my 4 month discount runs out). I had sent a few proposals without the video, but wanted to start to use the feature. But I TOTALLY froze. Couldn't do it. Then I finally did it, and did a royally TERRIBLE job this first time. Thankfully that video/proposal was for a client for whom I’ll be glad if he turns me down (and he still hasn’t accepted).
I did get some very helpful tips from a lot of Ignition users which you might benefit from. And my second video was so much better! Even if you don’t use Ignition, you could create a three tiered proposal in excel and screen share that behind you and record a short walk through.
And then someone shared a crazy comment about how there is a trick in Ignition where you can send a proposal that has your fees AUTO-INCREASE every year by any percentage you want. 🤯
From The Vault
⚡ This playlist contains replays of all the interviews from our Intuit QuickBooks Live and TurboTax Live job fair from 2021. The jobs haven’t changed that much in a year, so these interviews are still relevant.
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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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.
I just started a career change for a Financial Adviser .. The only problem with the idea of building the report is Compliance... I think you need FINRA Series 65 and Series 63 .. To start putting any financial advice ...
Sounds reasonable...
Something like providing them with financial data would help.. without falling out of compliance..