The One About My First Client
TL;DR
Y’all, this past week’s live stream where we learned how to get clients on LinkedIn got way more live views than my streams normally do. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love when people watch my videos live, but I can’t stop thinking about how this signals to me that folks are really looking for any and all advice about how to get clients.
So, I thought I’d tell y’all the borderline embarrassing story about my first client.
It was 2017. I thought virtual bookkeeping was a promising option for a SAHM with a business background, but who had been out of the workforce for a while making babies. I wanted to take a course to quickly teach me what I needed to know about starting this kind of business, but was fearful that I’d be lazy and not take it seriously, so I made myself drive rideshare for Lyft to actually earn the money (we had the money, but this was my “course money”).
I drove and drove in the evenings after dinner for a few hours at a time while my husband handled bed time. Once I earned enough, I bought that course. I went through it diligently for a few early hours every morning. Eventually, I came to the part of the course where it says to get certified in a bookkeeping software. So I did that. Passed the test. Got the badge. You know the drill.
I didn’t have a business name. I certainly didn’t have a website or client intake form or even an email address.
I also didn’t have a business card, which I do not think is necessary for everyone, but is relevant to my story.
At the time, I thought we might also become real estate investors and buy a fixer-upper to improve and rent out, so I was really into learning about that industry. So I thought maybe Real Estate could be my bookkeeping niche (I no longer think that).
I spent a lot of time dreaming about how to get a real estate client. That led me to find the Tidewater Real Estate Investors Group. And that led me to their events page where I saw one of their monthly meeting was “Speed Networking”. This is like speed dating where you meet a gagillion people in one evening. They said that we’d likely meet up to 90 people that night.
I paid $20 to get a ticket to the meeting since I wasn’t a dues paying member of the group.
I drove myself to the hotel conference room where they met. And then it hits me as I pull into the parking lot…I need business cards for this kind of shenanigans.
Remember, I don’t even have a business name. I only have a personal gmail email address. No business phone other than my cell.
But, praise the Lord, I found a pad of semi-grungy pad of Post It notes deep in my purse. I began to furiously scribble my name, phone number, and the word “bookkeeper” on the entire stack of Post Its.
I walk in, I get my number for rotating through my assigned tables, and try my hardest to hold my shoulders back and head high as I introduced myself as someone with a certification in a bookkeeping software. I exchanged those pitiful Post Its with all sorts of people. There were pest control guys, and roofers, and realtors, and lenders, and appraisers, and inspectors and photographers. Anyone you can think of remotely related to the real estate industry was there.
I left pretty worn down and my cheeks hurt from talking and smiling. But I was pretty proud of myself for pushing through. It would have been much easier to have driven my butt back home and said “I’ll go when I’m more prepared”. And if you are reading this and are thinking “I would have died if I’d done what she did”, I guarantee you that nothing about bookkeeping is going to kill you. Ever. You 100% will not die. People have survived way more humiliating and awkward experiences than what I’ve just described.
And the story has a good ending.
Y’all, a few days later…my little personal cell phone rings. A house flipper said she needs a bookkeeper (PSA…I do not recommend a house flipper as any rookie’s first bookkeeping client…if you agree, please comment below). She was my first client.
That is my origin story. Handwritten Post It note business cards.
And then my second client was a dad who I met at “Pizza with Parents” luncheon at school. And my third was a business school classmate who had seen some of my (surely terrible) general posts on LinkedIn.
Y’all, these people were not total strangers. I had literally looked in the eyes of each of my first 3 clients.
And I believe that your best chances of landing those early clients are people who you have some sort of real life connection with.
So yes, listen to the LinkedIn video that I’ll share below in this newsletter. But before you do what that video tells you, make sure every cousin, former classmate, neighbor, church friend, PTA dad, housekeeper, bike repairman, barber, baseball team mom, owner of your gym, dentist, poker club members, I MEAN EVERYONE, knows that you are a bookkeeper taking on new clients.
If you want to parallel my story, you can get the Xero Advisor Certification that you’ll learn about at the Intro To Xero webinar and then tell everyone how wonderfully nerdy, nerdy, nerdy you are because you love bookkeeping (the thing that makes them want to scream or cry) and Xero.
Sign up, learn Xero, get certified, and then tell at least 100 people about it. 👇
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Fast & Easy QBO is having a one-day sale on their QBO Advanced and QBO Payroll certifications course bundle*. Savings should be $499 when you purchase the course combo for both of those certs. Remember that all 3 certs help you get in the points required to be in the ProAdvisor directory.
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.
📅 +September 5: Roast My Client Intake Form. Kellie Parks is joining me to look over (ROAST) your client intake processes. RSVP to join us live, and submit your form HERE (we will choose a few from all submitted). She is roasting my own form, too!
📅 +September 9: Co-working Hours. BSH Co-working Hour is BACK! RSVP in the Facebook group so you get the reminder. Time to get back to those Monday morning tasks…RSVP HERE.
📅 September 16: The Get Organized Challenge hosted by Justine Lackey for bookkeepers who are done feeling unorganized and scattered. Sign up HERE.
📅 +September 25 & October 3: The Value of Value-Based Pricing & Making AP Profitable. MakersHub is doing a 2 part series about accounts payable. The first one will be a more general explanation and the second one will be a demo of MakersHub. RSVP for both events HERE & HERE.
📅 September 25: Intro to Xero. Looking to grow and scale your business further? Join Xero for a demo of the platform and discover the possible efficiency gains with the power of Xero. Register HERE.
📅 October 16-19: I’ll be in Florida attending the Reframe Conference put on by Hector Garcia.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Kemberli S. asked for ideas on finance topics to speak about for a half hour. Some good ideas in this thread - keep this in mind if you have the opportunity to speak as a business owner.
🌶️ How many clients can a solo-shop handle? Drea J asked if 70 was realistic. 👀
🌶️ Casandra S. asked for ideas for how to successfully get clients to leave you reviews.
Help You Hustle
💪 Isiah King gave amazing tips and strategies on how to get clients on LinkedIn. Watch it HERE 🎥. My main takeaways:
The examples of how to have some cool, not slimy, conversations in DMs.
How important it is to have a meeting with yourself on your calendar for business development, a.k.a Biz Dev Time.
The checklist to use during your Biz Dev Time.
Some of the rules about how to stay out of LinkedIn “jail”.
Learn more about the program that Isiah works for, The CFO Accelerator.*
💪 The Bookkeeping Business Accelerator * VIP enrollment opens on 9/3 and closes a week later! The Ambitious Bookkeeper, Serena Shoup, can help you build your dream business. Should she be your mentor? And she still runs a real firm, y’all. Respect.
💪 I want to recommend a new podcast called Accounting Conversations. I’ll share a specific episode that I thought was very interesting. In this episode, Chayton Farlee interviews Lukas Sundahl about his journey to being a Fractional CFO and about his very prolific and unique social media presence.
Lukas explains how he only uses his iPhone to make his short little videos in about 15 minutes now. He really walks through his workflow about how he uses all these free, built-in tools that already exist in apps that people use all the time on their phone. I was very impressed with his ingenuity.
He also talks about how he has simply taken his brand of being a fun accountant to create a merch store. Y’all, these t-shirts are great. But even more, I love, love, love how he is taking something he already wants to do (make funny tshirts for HIMSELF to wear) and puts in a little effort to figure out how he can easily get that in front of other people. It is a beautiful illustration of creativity, hustle, and personal interest (he made little movies in high school with his friends and has always loved this kind of thing).
For Fun
😹 What to cook for dinner on the nights when you have Fifty Eleven things to do and places to be. Please add your ideas.
Jobs
💼 More jobs were added to the BSH Job Opportunity Guide! Part-time, full-time, a position in Ohio and more! Check it out ASAP - a few of these have application deadlines. Don’t delay!
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
My Family Circus
Do your kids go to a school that makes them learn to use a dictionary?
We have had our first homework assignments, and in 4th grade at our school, part of their homework every week is looking up words in a dictionary. My kids don’t realize that I intentionally make this assignment harder than it has to be, but I do. Because in our house, our dictionary is so big, it takes up TWO volumes. The pair of books are really quite beautiful. I bought them sometime right after college at a garage sale because I love beautiful hardback books.
So, instead of a small elementary school dictionary, when they come home with homework, they have no choice but to use these big honkers. It is just part of their life. My first two children survived this torture, and now it is the little brother’s turn.
Honestly, they don’t even really complain. I mean, they generally complain about homework, but they don’t know that it really isn’t normal for folks to use giant dictionaries. It is stretching those little minds in big ways during the years when it matters most.
I am always looking for little ways to insert a little extra struggle into their charmed lives, without making it obvious to them. Real life is hard. And I want them to be able to face anything that comes their way. They need practice not being fragile.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I officially clicked “submit” for one session for consideration to be a speaker at Scaling New Heights 2025. I plan to submit more, perhaps up to 4 more. Here is my working document if you want to see my topic ideas. Throwing it out there, because some of you have better ideas than I do and should be applying! I’d be honored to be beat out by you newsletter readers! If you get selected, will you come back and tell me? The deadline to apply is September 30.
🎢 So, back in the spring we did a livestream interview about the Relay Partner Program. Relay is who I personally use for business banking, and they are really trying to build strong relationships with accountants as a part of their marketing strategy. I’ve been trying to really lean in to figuring out how I can ethically recommend this to my clients and generate revenue for my firm. Y’all, I’m looking at my last 4 months of payouts, $200 (May), $150 (June), $526 (July), and $526 (August). I’ll take that extra money! A few comments about my strategy:
Whenever I am training a FreshBooks client (my main bookkeeping activity) and I see someone is paying bank fees (this is very dumb in 2024), I immediately tell them about Relay, which is free, and ask if I can send them an invite to check out the bank that I personally use.
Whenever a Freshbooks client has trouble with their bank staying connected, I tell them about Relay and ask if I can send them an invite.
Whenever Relay marketing folks make posts to social media about some new feature, I think of a way that I can send an email blast to my mighty ~500 person email list (my firm list, not this substack list).
I do have to be careful with this strategy. I’m not the best at regularly emailing my email list, so if I only send emails about how they should try out Relay, I will come across as a slimy shill. So I better get my but in gear with more regular emails about a wide variety of helpful topics. (Ahhh…so, Kate, you’re telling yourself that you have to put in the WORK to make money…well crap, that’s no fun).
Note: There is a chance that some of this referral income is from fellow accounting pros. I can’t tell. But I’ve worked MUCH harder to share it with clients than with y’all.
Buuuuttt…if you are looking for a new bank or want to create a Relay account so you can join their partner program, I will share my referral link with y’all, too. 😎
🎢 I have been procrastinating sharing this job description for a part time “Operations Coordinator” that I’ve been wanting to hire for. But I finally took a baby step. I shared it in my church’s Women’s Ministry Facebook Group. I pretty much wanted to throw up after I hit “post”. I am dipping my toes in to this very scary thing of hiring someone in my firm. And I didn’t die. And what if I find someone amazing…
Classifieds (Clickable)
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
Get your copy of The Bookkeeping Side Hustle Guidebook: Actionable Steps To Becoming A Virtual Bookkeeping Without The Overwhelm
Easy and FREE ways to support Bookkeeping Side Hustle
Follow @BookkeepingSide on Twitter
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.