The one About fCFOs
Ever heard the term Fractional CFO? It is definitely popping up more and more in the accounting and finance circles. You have certainly seen webinars about it.
Perhaps you might have heard of some of its cousins: Advisory Services, Client Accounting Services, Fractional Controller, FP&A Consultant. Honestly, all these things can all mean whatever you want it to me. As long as you can successfully market it and as long as what you can deliver the value you promised your client, you’re good.
Assuming you actually are capable of doing the work a fCFO does, I think there is still some time left for that “early mover advantage”. Because my gut instinct is that the “Become a Fractional CFO” space is a handful of years behind the “Become a Virtual Bookkeeper” space in terms of coaching programs that help people get into this line of work. I think this happened for 2 reasons.
The apps and tech stack that help folks deliver services have caught up with the bookkeeping software and apps. The fancy apps that connect to the GL have put this kind of work within much closer reach of more people with accounting and finance expertise. Technically you don’t need any apps other than Excel to do this kind of work, but the ones that exist sure make it easier and definitely produce prettier reports. Less friction in client delivery means a lower barrier to entering this field.
I think some finance and Excel nerds saw the “work from home as a bookkeeper” crowd leave their miserable jobs to build their own businesses where they were in control of their schedule, and said, “Geez, I want to do something like that. Welllll, kinda like that. I don't really want to use QuickBooks very often if I don’t have to and I would die before I called myself a bookkeeper, but I can use Excel and read financial statements and know a bit about budgeting. I’m going to hang out my shingle!”
The kinds of services that a fCFO can offer are pretty broad. It is the wild west out there. And they can certainly include bookkeeping. Plenty of firms approach this line of work as an upsell from the traditional bookkeeping package.
So, if the more advanced finance and advisory type work interests you, here is a round up of some useful resources.
Apps:
Here are some apps that I’ve heard of. Please chime in with others you love. I don’t do this kind of work for my clients, so I’m not recommending one over the other. Each of these apps will have a lot of free public content and webinars about how to use them.
Training:
And here is a smattering of places to learn about and meet others doing this advisory type of work. These personalities are all different. I’m trying to share a wide variety for you to follow and learn from. I’ll put their LinkedIn profile in the second link after their program so you can follow them, too (but read the whole newsletter first, don’t click on these yet!).
Chime in below if you think you will start down this CFO/Advisor path? Share your favorite resources where you have learned to do this type of work.
And you know what would be a strong niche approach to this…If you become The Xero fCFO…whooo boy. I bet there is a lot of money to be made there with the simple message that you are a fCFO exclusively for businesses that use Xero. If you aren’t familiar with Xero and haven’t seen why so many folks fall in love with it, they have invited everyone to their upcoming Intro to Xero webinar. Bang that graphic to register.
Deals Deals Deals
💰 15% off ALL 5MB courses*! If you’ve been eyeing one, grab it now! Use code bshsecretsale for the discount. Sale ends June 12th!
💰 Gusto Next conference is being held in San Francisco at their HQs. Grab your ticket for only $25(!). Gusto puts a lot of investment into the wider accounting community (beyond just Gusto users). And you get to be in a room with other modern accounting and technology professionals. I hope you treat yourself to this event (especially if you are nearby).
💰 Shannon Theis is offering $20 off her monthly payroll mastermind. Use code SNH2024 to get the deal.
💰 Grab the Pricing Perfection course before the price increases! Currently only $99!
💰 Our community gets a generous discount on Josh Standley’s courses on Accountable Plans and S-corps. A perk of the course is that he allows his students to white label the Accountable Plan template and sell it to clients. I don’t sell a lot of the template, but have certainly more than made up for the cost of the course.
Please always send me any news of deals that you hear of that others might benefit from.
Be There or Be Square
📅 June 11: Next Level Accounting in QBO. Ready to go beyond the basics?
It’s time to learn indispensable and invaluable intermediate and advanced accounting techniques that bookkeepers use to increase the accuracy of a company's financial reports. QBO Rock Star Alicia Katz Pollock has designed this course to be extremely accessible so that you can comfortably take a deeper dive into important accounting techniques. Register HERE*
📅 June 17: DFW Meetup. I will be attending the DFW Bookkeepers meet up on June 17. Let me know if you want an invite if you are local to the DFW area. We are going to be learning about EOS (from the book Traction). EOS was talked about ~900 times during The CFO Accelerator conference. And one of the ladies I met is the bookkeeper for an EOS coach! She asked him to come teach us.
📅 June 26: Intro to Xero. Interested in Xero? Learn more about them in this FREE webinar. Sign up HERE.
📅 July 16-18: Gusto Next conference in their HQ in San Francisco.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Do experienced accounting pros ever forget the basics? Do you think they ever swear they are dumb and don’t know the left side from the right side of a T-account? You betcha! The people who chimed in on this post have many years of experience under their belt. Be encouraged.
🌶️ Andrea F. shared about feeling “pressure” to offering advisory services. You certainly don’t have to!
🌶️ Do you give gifts/thank yous to clients who send you referrals? Go share what you do with Dana D.
Help You Hustle
💪 Newbies, how do you know if you will even LIKE bookkeeping? I outline my ideas and got some crowd-sourced from the community in this video. 🎥 I am on a mission to help fewer people become bookkeeper because they saw some ad about it being a great work-from-home job and instead want more of the right people to become bookkeepers (or CFOs or Advisors, Fractional Controllers or tax pros or whatever else you want to call yourself).
💪 Intuit has come out with a new video series called In The Know. It appears they are trying to show off some pretty technical features (like Desktop migrations and Spreadsheet Sync, for example) in a quick, fun-ish, peppy way. Normally I would not highly recommend content created by a behemoth software company because it is all going to be so heavily curated by the marketing department 🤮 and full of approved talking points, but I know the woman who is the brains behind this. Intuit recently hired her to revamp their education. She produces good stuff.
My Family Circus
New section of this newsletter for 2024. Completely non-bookkeeping related.
🎪 I believe that parents have an obligation to make sure their children grow up to be strong swimmers. It is honestly a matter of life and death.
But, we don't all have a pool to practice in, right. So here is how I solved the problem of getting my elementary school kids to be strong swimmers.
🏊♀️ Swim Team
At our previous Navy base, they had a little summer swim team. Low pressure and fun. And swim team practice is just swimming back and forth again and again for 45 minutes with friends. There are also peppy teenage coaches in the lanes watching and helping and being cool with the kids.
And, as typical for my style of parenting, the more a child might protest learning/doing the thing I have decided is really important, the more I insist that they do it. This is not up for negotiation.
The children who protest the loudest about not wanting to do swim team are probably the ones who need it the most. We did three years. Never ever had any fast times. But all my kids are strong swimmers. Parent to-do list item…Check.
Hope this idea isn't too late for some of y’all for this summer, but, if so, try it for next year.
Jobs
💼 More jobs were added to the BSH Job Opp Google sheet. Click HERE to see the list and go apply!. Be sure to use #jobopp when posting about jobs!
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I am sending this from Belize on the last day of a mission trip with my church. I was ripping out broken toilets from a dilapidated bathroom and organizing it into a storage shed. And we had very few tools and my entire project had to be completed with scrap wood I found around the property. I love, love, love that kind of hard work.
🎢 How I tried to make money while OOO on international travel: Since I have morphed into making most of my income in my firm by providing FreshBooks training (a.k.a. my butt in my computer chair on zoom with a client), I kind of shuddered at the thought of making $0 from clients while I was OOO this past week. So, before I left, I composed an email and sent it to my mighty 402 person email list for my firm. In the email, I shared my Relay Partner Referral link, just like Relay taught me in their certification program for accountant users.
Here is the text of the email that I sent everyone suggesting Relay for their business banking.
If you want to join Relay as an accounting partner, remember that the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community has a direct sign up link for fellow accounting pros. It would be so grateful if you used it!
🎢 A full pipeline: I have had 4 prospective clients book calls with me in the last 5 days while I have not been working. How did this happen, you ask?
I niched in something rare (a.k.a. not Quickbooks).
I have a fair amount of tutorials about FreshBooks on YouTube. (Note: there is not another soul in the world creating Freshbooks tutorials.)
In my super helpful videos, I mention that people can book a free consultation with me and direct them to a link to book a free 15 minute consultation via Calendly.
When booking time, they are directed to complete an intake form so I can learn a little more about them and cancel any meeting from folks I know aren’t a good fit (it is just a free Google doc).
At this point in my business, almost every person who books this free call with me will end up giving me money in some way. They have already become desperate for my help and fallen in love with my brain. At a minimum, they all can easily be sold 1-on-1 training/coaching. If I like the client/company and they have decent revenue and a high value on their own time, I might propose they do a paid diagnostic review and pitch them a clean up. And if I really like them and their business is simple, I will invite them to join the paid Office Hours membership (however, this service is a lot harder for me to convince people to purchase).
In my bookkeeping business, I have problems galore, but my pipeline isn't really one of them. And that is because YouTube is evergreen and searchable. If feels less “hamsterwheel-ish” to me than the other social media platforms that require the constant posting and commenting. If I had something good to say last year, it is still usable today. Not buried in my Instagram/LinkedIn/TikTok profile. And because I’m not in a competitive space (Freshbooks), I am not even uploading a lot anymore. I’ve only uploaded 6 videos on that channel in 2024 (note: I did bust my butt a lot more for video creating in 2023…but those videos are geese that still lay golden eggs…ish).
Letters To The Editor
✉️ Always thankful for kind words:
Thank you Kate! Your newsletter and channel are hands down the best. I use your affiliate links whenever possible and I have purchased from your shop. I hope this helps to keep you writing because I have learned so much from you.
Have a wonderful holiday weekend. I am indebted to military families such as yourself who make huge sacrifices for our great nation. Andrea J.
And yes Andrea - using my links DOES help me keep writing. I appreciate that support, too.
This was one of the best newsletters I have ever read, great job! Josh S.
Classifieds (Clickable)
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Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
Thanks for reading The Bookkeeping Side Hustle Pub! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
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.
Kate, great newsletter, as usual!
I’m a Relay partner, but I don’t have shareable link like you. The only thing I can find on Relay is to invite clients through my portal. Are you in Relay as the influencer you are? Am I missing out on something I have, but can’t find? I’d love to have a link to share with people who are not yet my client. I send people to Relay every week. When I tried to sign up for their affiliate program, I had to answer, no I’m not an accountant or bookkeeper before it would let me apply to join.
Financially yours, Penny