TL;DR
You've likely heard the quote “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. But do you know the entire quote?
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” ~Oscar Wilde
Man! Sick burn!
When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me to be flattered when my sisters would copy me. Younger siblings mimicking older siblings is harmless enough, but when we place copying in the professional adult context, it is just plain stealing.
Have you ever been exactly imitated (a.k.a.stolen from) in your business?
How did that make you feel? How did you handle it?
Have you ever been tempted to steal someone else’s work?
Maybe swipe a little too many exact words from someone’s LinkedIn post and use it as your own? Maybe design an exact copy of a social media graphic you saw on Facebook?
Shoot, know some people have had the entire contents of their website stolen.
There will be no end to the number of times you feel tempted to copy someone as you're building your bookkeeping career. In the early days when you have to do everything on your own, it will feel like there's not enough time.
But copying is stealing. Period.
But I also appreciate that there is a lot of gray area here. Because when you read enough websites or see enough social media images or Instagram reels you do realize that they're all kind of the same. So where is the line between outright stealing versus your creations/graphics/words/templates being simply a hodgepodge of all the things that your brain has consumed as you’ve built your business.
Because I also believe the words of wise King Solomon found in Ecclesiastes that there is “nothing new under the sun”. Everything we humans do is just a riff on something else. Every invention ever invented is just a tweak or a combination of pre-existing things and ideas.
So which is it, Kate? If King Solomon was right, should we not just make things easy on ourselves and blatantly copy something we see or something we get our hands on because we'll never have our own original idea in the first place?
No, don't be a thief. You know when you're blatantly copying something. You know in your heart whenever that is your motive. Would you be ashamed if the person found out what you were doing and called you out on it? Called you out on your mediocrity?
Well, I have a solution to this problem that I just utilized this very week.
When I can feel in my bones that I’m getting really close to copying and I would be ashamed if the person found out, I just go ask the person for permission. Because I’d rather keep my integrity than cut corners.
If you get permission from the creator of the thing that you need, then it is not stealing. That is called gift giving.
I have many personal examples I could share, but here is the most recent.
See, this past summer I was in Austin at a Xero RoadShow event, and they were teaching about marketing. And they gave some examples of good websites and I saw a website from a huge firm in our industry called Acuity. And there was a tagline on their site that said “the accounting experts that you've been looking for”. I wrote it down, and I've been thinking about that quote for months. No lie. I've sat down and tried to rewrite it to make it my own but I liked his exact wording. I wanted to grab a hold of the sentence and write the “Freshbooks expert you've been looking for” on my website and LinkedIn banner, etc. But I knew if I started to use that phrase, I would feel like a thief and be totally ashamed if he ever saw it.
So I finally just got up the guts to reach out to Kenji Kuramoto, the founder of Acuity, and ask for his permission to use the phrase. And he said “Yes. No problem at all”.
Another way around the problem of stealing things is to just buy them.
In this day and age, almost everything that you find yourself being tempted to steal, you can just buy. You can buy good templates for your marketing posts. You can buy emails that you can white label as your own to send to your clients. You can buy a checklist for any task we have to do.
A perfect example of purchasing exactly what you need is utilizing the materials The Workflow Queen creates. Could you build your own workflows and SOPs? Maybe. Would it take you a long time? Certainly.
She is inviting everyone to join in to her free Breakthrough Bootcamp for bookkeepers and accountants who need to learn her proven systems. Bang that graphic to grab your slot for her free program in early March.
Deals Deals Deals
💰 XeroCon will be in Nashville, TN, August 14-15. You can use code XCNASH24-first-access for $150 off your ticket to XeroCon through April 30. I want to go to this conference so bad, but I have never even served a single client on Xero! It makes no rational sense. But can any of your Xero Lovers help me make a case to go? And extend my stay to have my husband meet me for a romantic getaway to Nashville (which would be a partially deductible vacation for me!).
💰 If you (sadly) fell out of the QBO ProAdvisor directory today because you didn’t have the required 500 points, you can get 200 points by getting your QBO Payroll Certification. Fast & Easy QBO is having a big sale on their payroll course. Use code Feb-150*.
💰 I’m about 82% confident I’m going to treat myself to attending a conference in May called The CFO Accelerator Live. The tickets will go on sale at a discount next week. Apparently if we put our names on the waitlist, we’ll get notified of the lowest purchase price of $697. I’m hoping there will be a landing page next week with more info about speakers and the agenda. This conference is local to me, and I’m specifically looking for training in Dallas/Fort Worth so I can save on travel expense. The theme of this conference is called “Building a 7 Figure Fractional CFO Firm”. I don’t want to build a 7 Figure firm, but I do want to expand my horizons to start getting more familiar with the CFO lingo and crowd. Anyone want to be my buddy at this conference?
💰 Kellie Parks is putting up all her workflow and SOP templates for sale for 25% off. Use code SWEETHEART24.
Please always send me any news of deals that you hear of that others might benefit from.
Be There or Be Square
📅 +Mondays in January: Co-working Hour. Join me each Monday morning to kick-off your week. RSVP - Feb. 26.
📅 +February 21: Join me for How Do I Get Started: Bookkeeping Side Hustle Open Q&A with Kate. This is a place for you to ask questions about starting your bookkeeping biz. This will be kept private to registrants only, so you can feel safe asking your questions. There are NO dumb questions! (reminder: I WILL NOT be answering techincal bookkeeping or software questions).
📅 +February 28: Learn about Relay’s new Partner Program. I use Relay for my own business banking needs. They want to reward bookkeepers like us who refer our clients to Relay. I am such a believer that every single one of us needs to quickly learn how to ethically increase our income by generating referral income. Come learn and see if Relay’s Partner Program might be a great source of referral income for your business.
📅 March 4-8: The Power to Breakthrough Bootcamp hosted by The Workflow Queen is for bookkeepers and accountants who are ready to scale their business. This FREE bootcamp will help you take it to the next level. Signup for this FREE bootcamp HERE.*
📅 March 5: Budgeting in QBO. You will learn everything you need to know about setting up your business' budget in QuickBooks Online. Sign up* for this Royalwise course so you can confidently use QBO's smart budgeting tools.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Kirstyn S. started a conversation about paying for clients’ bookkeeping subscriptions. Do you pay on behalf of your clients? Why or why not?
🌶️ Did you see the post where folks shared how they spend the money they earn working hard and using their big brains as bookkeepers/tax pros/CFOs, etc? There are over 220 comments on this post! The stories are amazing!
🌶️ Irina J. is concerned about protecting herself from books being changed after disengaging from a client. Some great advice was given on this post.
🌶️ Alex M. asked what advice you would give yourself when you started your business?
Help You Hustle
💪 I published a review of the new Freshbooks Collaborative Accounting Certification and explain who I think should get this certification. You can think of this certification as analogous to the QBO ProAdvisor Certification or the Xero Advisor Certification. Will you be the next person to get your FreshBooks Certification? If you do, please also join my (very tiny) little Facebook group called The FreshBooks Experts Hub. I’m trying to build that group to network with other accounting friends who use FreshBooks!
💪 If you use QuickBooks, listen up! You simply must meet my friend Alicia Katz Pollock.
The best way to learn from her is…
She has a Facebook group called Training For QuickBooks Users.
She created a podcast called The Unofficial QuickBooks Podcast, and Hector Garcia is her co-host.
In her Facebook community, she often hosts fun community parties. Last week she hosted a 1099 party. Prizes, games, sponsors. The works. And at this party, the attendees also donated $1,500 to The Accounting Cornerstone Foundation! That is going to cover the flight and hotel for someone (you, perhaps?) to attend their first ever accounting conference! Follow smart and generous people like Alicia!
💪 Twyla Verhelst shared a twitter post about how she used to piggyback on Valentine’s Day as a way to ask her clients for referrals. You might know Twyla as FreshBooks’ Head of Accountant Channel, but she did run her own firm in the past. Check out her post and see if this inspires you to do something unusual like that. Jump in her DMs and ask her if you can borrow it. Be different, y’all! Follow her on Twitter and on LinkedIn, too. She gives away lots of free Starbucks throughout the year! But also has thoughtful things to say! 🙂
For Fun
😹 The Accounting High March Madness bracket is back! It is a fun little diversion during the spring busy season. Last year Bookkeeping Side Hustle was a surprise “Cinderella Story”, making a deep run. This year, I’d LOVE for y’all to nominate The Accounting Cornerstone Foundation. This foundation plans to give 12 scholarships for folks to attend their very first accounting conference! This org deserves to win!!!
Jobs
💼 Have you checked out the NEW BSH Job Opp Google sheet. 10 jobs were added to the list! Some part-time, full-time, in person and remote! Even one single set-up job. Go check them out! Check it out HERE! The link to the spreadsheet is the ONLY post in the job guide. Hope this makes it easier to find. Don’t forget to use #jobopp when posting about jobs!
My Family Circus
New section of this newsletter for 2024. Completely non-bookkeeping related. It will be a short blurb about topics related to how we manage our family/marriage/house/LIFE! My self-imposed goal is to keep it under 200 words.
🎪 In our house, permitted screen time is typically either playing local Minecraft, 1990s classic games, or coding on Scratch on our desktop we have in our kitchen. We’ve tried a few different ways for my children to earn their “screen time”. But one thing has been pretty consistent. They have to do a pushup for each minute of screen time they will use. I can’t do 30 pushups at once. But my kids easily can! Other things that have been used as screen time “currency” are minutes playing piano or minutes dribbling/shooting the basketball.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 Extra time NOT working:
I attended the school Valentine's party with my 3rd grader. Class parties are not my favorite thing, but it's not for me. It's for him. He’s glad to see me come in.
Our new charter school also has a big day of service that requires lots of parent volunteers and that was an all day effort. I was supervising planting flowers and delivering them to the nearby senior living home all day long.
I watched a friend’s 3 children for an afternoon. She found herself in a childcare bind. I knew she wouldn’t have asked me if there was any other alternative. I’m glad I was able to step up.
🎢 The unglamorous side of solo-preneurship: So I am my own IT person. Technically I've hired someone for some hourly help with some Google Suite stuff, which I told you about in this newsletter and this newsletter. But I manage my own website. And the thing about handling that sort of stuff yourself is that eventually something's going to break. For me it was my integration with my email marketing app called MailerLite. That is what I use to capture email addresses for my business and it is free up to 1,000 subscribers (I’m only at about 350, FYI). But MailerLite made some sort of fundamental change and basically broke every email capture that I have on my website. Including my contact form which is sort of the most crucial page on my website! I spent a good bit of time wrestling with that. It was terrible. There are absolutely joy-sucking aspects to being your own boss.
🎢 Less working for free: I’m proud to say that I am converting more of my FreshBooks training calls into immediate paid gigs without spending unpaid time on a “free consultation”. I think that is another step on the path for me to eventually not talk to anyone for free. There are people that do that! I want to be one!
I’m getting so good at knowing what to look for when folks answer my prospective client questions and book their free 15 minute consultation, that I’m just emailing some of them back and telling them that I’m pretty sure they will end up with my 1-on-1 training service and would they like to just go ahead and make the meeting a full hour and get started on training. Next thing I want to do is to sell a paid diagnostic review (that hopefully leads to a multi-thousand dollar clean up) without talking to the prospect for free first.
From The Vault
⚡ If learning about the new FreshBooks certification has piqued your interest, check out this video I made to explain why I chose to niche in FreshBooks.
Letters To The Editor
✉️ Reading this feedback and all of the other comments that came in mean so much to me.
"your newsletter is the only one I actually look forward to reading. It doesn't feel like work reading it. I derive value from all but I appreciate how personal and thorough yours are. And for me personally, bi weekly is just the perfect amount of time."
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.
Just got your newsletter for the first time yesterday! Loved it and will look forward to receiving it in the future. Lots of great information! Also, I'm definitely going to reach out to you next time I'm in Fort Worth visiting my son! Would love to have coffee or lunch!