The One About Judgment
The One About Judgment
TL;DR
Have you ever heard of the concept that each of us are the sum of the 5 people we spend the most time around? Think about the top 5 people influencing you, even just in 2024. Are they elevating and edifying you, or are they bringing you down?
Now, to make this determination, you are going to have to commit a pretty big modern day “no-no”. You are going to have to judge people. (Gasp!).
Yes, I’ll say it. Shoot, I’ll even encourage it. Making judgments about people is one of the most important things you will do in your life.
Y’all, I believe this so much that I named one of my son’s “Judge”. I’m not kidding.
Now, by “judge”, I don’t mean it is your place to be condemning. But I do mean you should be discerning.
It is really hard to judge while also not condemning. In just 6 little verses in Matthew Chapter 7 in the Bible, Jesus preaches “Judge not” and “Take the log out of your own eye instead of worrying about that little speck in someone else’s eye” (paraphrase). But he also says “don’t cast your pearls before swine”. All in the same little section! Really difficult stuff. But life is full of difficult stuff, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do the best we can.
I think of it like paths on a hiking trail. That friendship you make, that book club you sign up for, that gym you join, that person you follow on LinkedIn or Instagram, that person you let teach you, even the apps you use in your business are each little forks on our trail. And does that fork get you closer to what you want your life to look like, or farther away?
By learning to make wise judgments and choices in life, you can make quick course corrections before you get entrenched in ways of life or thinking that will be hard to extract yourself from.
The world sends the message that we’re all just supposed to say “You Do You”, but I want you (and my kids) to recognize that some people’s “You” is pretty crappy and it is ok if you don’t want their crap to rub off on you.
As you think about building your career and business in this industry, who are you letting have the most influence on you? Who are you letting into your mind, calendar, and eyes and ears via social media? Who are you spending time with IRL? What conferences do you choose to attend? I mean, you can’t go to them all, right? And you can’t listen to every podcast.
Even decisions about the apps we use are forks in our trail. And it doesn’t take very long for an app choice to be very sticky. Very hard and painful to extract yourself from.
Xero is inviting each of you to learn about their bookkeeping software. Xero wants to be your preferred bookkeeping solution as you decide what tech you will use in your business journey. Sign up for their next Intro to Xero session to find out all about them. 👇
Deals Deals Deals
💰 2 Sales at Fast & Easy QBO
The Fast & Easy QBO Payroll Certification* course is $250 off through July 30 with code JULYPAY250. Remember, the Intuit certifications badges like this one are one of the fastest ways to meet the criteria for showing up in the ProAdvisor Directory.
I saw in an email that the Fast & Easy QBO Cleanup Course plus live coaching will be on sale for less than $1,000, but you have to wait until July 30. I would join this other QuickBooks-focused group* to make sure you get the reminder about the sale. A single clean up client should more than pay for this course.
💰 If you need the a better grasp about the bookkeeping for S-Corps and liked what you saw from our interview with Josh Standley, use this link for a discount on his courses for the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community. aff link:
💰 I saw Hector Garcia was offering a discount code for his Reframe Conference in October. I will be there. Use code 0731 for $200 off through July 31.
💰 The Theater of Public Speaking Fall 2024 cohort is open for registration and I wrangled a discount code for y’all (not a paid referral link, fyi). Use code kjtopsfall24 for 10% off. I have taken this course and am in the WhatsApp group. The training is really top notch. Truly. I took the training seriously and completed the whole program. But I’ll also say that this program is also a way to get in a “room where it happens” with thought leaders in our industry, if you are willing to put in the hard work and overcome your fears. Many of the people in this group are the folks that you see speaking at conferences and webinars for our industry. (sorry guys…this one is for the ladies only).
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 14: How to Know Which Problem to Fix Right Now in Your Accounting Biz. Alyssa Lang, the Workflow Queen, will be how to figure out which problems are a priority to address for bookkeepers. RSVP in the FB group.
📅 + August 20: Bookkeepers MUST Do This To Get Clients on LinkedIn. Isiah King from the CFO Accelerator will be sharing tips on how to get clients on LinkedIn. RSVP for this live stream.
📅 August 29: Intro to Xero. Interested in Xero? Register for Intro to Xero and learn all about it. You will see demo of the platform and discover all Xero has to offer. Sign up now!
Featured Posts
🌶️ Heather T. is teaching classes about bookkeeping basics to her Women in Business group. She is looking for suggestions on hands-on work she can use during her classes. Have any ideas?
🌶️ Melanie K. wants to know how you train new bookkeepers on client accounts. What do you do? Great tips so far in the comments.
Help You Hustle
💪 Josh Standley taught us about LLC to S-Corp conversions. The first time I encountered this with a client, I was terrified. But every successful bookkeeper will eventually have a client that makes this tax election. Josh does such a great job of breaking it down. We get pretty technical with showing actual journal entries and using the word “equity” a lot. You can also download the slides and just read the presentation here* (an affililate link if you end up wanting more than the free slides) .
💪 Financial Cents published a list of 30 Accounting and Bookkeeping Firm owners to follow. Social media stalk these folks and see who you want to let into your world. Who on this list should you let influence you as you build? I am humbled to be on this list.
💪 How do you talk about prices on your website? Should you even mention prices? This video ranks the pros and cons 7 different methods firms can use to put pricing on their website. See “Kate Builds In Public” section below where I tell you what grade my own website would get based on this video’s scoring system.
My Family Circus
New section of this newsletter for 2024. Completely non-bookkeeping related.
🎪 Did you ever have to “write lines” as punishment in school when you were a kid? I certainly did. Particularly in Mrs. Brachle’s class in 5th grade. Sometimes I earned them myself. Sometimes the entire class got the punishment all together.
I think writing lines is like the bigger kid version of “time out”. And we use this discipline method in our own home at times.
I haven’t doled out this punishment in a while, but I was doing some decluttering and came across a piece of paper that had “I will not act wild in class.” filling the front and back. Here is a picture of it I shared on social media.
You know, I haven’t heard of any of my children's teachers making students write lines. I wonder if it has been banned from schools? Maybe too tough on students’ delicate, youthful wrists?
And remember as I told you in this edition, the more one of my children protests something that I have decided they must do, well, the more they get to do it. I typically start with just 1 page of punishment, but I asked my children if they remembered the max number they have had to write and one of them said he/she “earned” up to 5 pages of lines one time. (Masking the pronouns to protect the innocent).
That is a looong time for small people to sit at the kitchen table and use a pencil. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth. But I have found this to be a pretty effective parenting tool.
Jobs
💼 Three job posts were added to the Job Guide - be sure to click the links in the spreadsheet to see the post. Part time positions, and an account manager/executive assistant were added. Check it out HERE.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 New Business
I have booked another Freshbooks clean up for January to June 2024 for $1,750. When I gave him his proposal, he wrote me back “Kate, I can’t thank you enough for taking on this task.” 🤍 It felt really good to hear. To know my skills really do help business owners. His business is simple, but he went a little overboard with trying to implement Profit First and created a lot of very specific debit cards for different kinds of Operating Expenses. But didn’t really understand the concept of “Transfer”. I know the project will be pretty tedious, but not too mentally taxing. I feel good about the relationship and the pricing. And he has already paid me $500 for 4 hourly training sessions, so technically I’ve already “done” some of that clean up by helping him on each of those calls.
I also converted a training client into an Office Hours member (my fave 🎉) and also several existing training clients booked more training hours on my Tuesday and Wednesday summer calendar slots. One guy has already paid me $1,000 since June, just to do his books with him on zoom at 6:30 in the morning. This works very well for me and my family right now for our summer schedule.
🎢 Prospect Pushback
I’m getting pushback from folks who see that I have no new prospective client inquiry calls on my Calendly link until mid-August. People will straight up email me asking “I don’t see any availability until August, but do you have time for a quick chat today?”
The truth is, I almost certainly have time to talk to them. But I don’t want to. And I know serious businesses don’t operate that way. That is not scalable and certainly not sellable (I’m starting to realize that I’d like to say I’ve sold a business one day). The sound track I keep having to play to myself about these yahoos up in my inbox is “Not my problem. Not my problem. Not my problem.” As I explained in the last edition, I really do not want new clients right now.
🎢 First “Advisory” Client Call
Had my first monthly debrief from the first client I told I was selling “advisory” services to. It was actually pretty fun! Much more of my wheelhouse than doing the actual mouse clicks of bookkeeping work. I’m not really doing anything different from what I was doing with the other monthly bookkeeping clients I’ve had except in the sales process I made it seem like the monthly meeting is a big deal (which technically my bookkeeping clients had in their engagement letters, too, but they never used). This woman seems like she really just wants a friend to talk to and in this meeting I was helping navigate some disagreements she and her husband are having about the business.
Client details: 2 bank accounts, husband and wife and one contractor, consulting on software development, $600k annual revenue from a few large clients. I’m charging $549 per month.
🎢 Updated My Pricing
I went to my services page on my website and increased my prices on 3 things
Hourly training on FreshBooks from $125 per hour to $140 per hour.
FreshBooks Office Hours Group for DIYers from $59 to $69 per month.
Diagnostic Review from $250 to $275.
Now, there is not much thought behind this other than my website has had these same prices listed for well over a year. And I want to not be such a wimp, so I logged on to WordPress and increased them.
I don't have the mental or emotional capacity to make comprehensive overhauls to how I price, market, or talk to clients. If you do, I suggest watching that above video (Help You Hustle section) about pricing philosophies. This current method I display on my website gets a grade of a “C” according to that video.
From The Vault
⚡Josh Standley was such a great instructor about S-corps. Make sure you catch this other interview he did for our group about Accountable Plans, which are required for S-Corps to reimburse their owners for home office expenses and mileage. Once a business becomes an S-Corp, there is no longer a place on the tax return to directly report those expenses. I’ve white labled and sold many of his Accoutable Plan templates* like his course taught.
Letters To The Editor
✉️ Thanks to a few readers for some feedback - send me yours OR comment with your thoughts on this newsletter 👇
As always such a great newsletter - I love your adventures with your kiddos! And bravo for saying good-bye to the client who isn't your ICA. - Justine L.
This has lots of great stuff in it Kate. I loved how you framed the Intuit price increases. Nicely done. - Kellie P.
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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.