The One About Practice
TL;DR
So this newsletter is chock full of resources about how to get practice so you can be better at bookkeeping and better at entrepreneurship. I’ve been rounding up all these items for a while and want to share them all at once. I think there is something in here for everyone.
Even if you are the world’s saltiest accountant and can do backflips in QBO, you’ll at least find something your staff could use.
If your chosen bookkeeping business coach or mentor is not providing real practical resources and telling you to carve out time to practice, practice, practice, then they are just helping build your business on a fragile foundation that will not likely stand the test of time.
I hope you enjoy this edition. Grab a cup of coffee and maybe flag this one to come back to over and over again, because you won’t be able to utilize all these resources at once.
But before we move on, let’s give some love to our sponsor, Forwardly. This payment processor can be used for your own firm A/R and A/P and you can help your clients implement Forwardly in their own businesses to get paid faster, for free. Keep reading this newsletter for a few more Easter eggs about Forwardly, including a deal they are currently offering and the text of an email I sent to my own client list about Forwardly that you could emulate (and possibly generate revenue by sending).
Deals Deals Deals
💰 The Solopreneur's Bookkeeping Workshop with Mariette Martinez is coming up in November. Get $50 off with early-bird pricing through October 28th. Sign up HERE*.
💰 2024 Xero Road Shows: The 2024 Xero Roadshows early-bird pricing ends Friday, 10/18. Grab your $50 ticket now!! It will be worth it if you live close to any of the 3 cities. Please jump into my inbox or the Facebook group if you need a friendly kick in the pants to get the confidence to go to one of these exciting events if you live near these cities.
💰 Forwardly is offering white glove onboarding plus $50 gift cards to users who want to do a mass onboarding of several clients.Get started here.
💰 Get 20% off an annual plan Financial Cents with promo code SR9BHV*. You must subscribe by October 15th to get this deal!
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: BSH Co-working Hour. Join me on Monday mornings for co-working hour. RSVP in the FB group to grab the link.
📅 October 16-19: I’ll be in Florida attending the Reframe Conference put on by Hector Garcia. Hector says there are 8 tickets left.
📅 October 22--23: WorkFlow Con. Financial Cents is hosting this FREE virtual summit. The speaker line up is awesome - sign up here.
📅 +October 23: How To Hire A Bookkeeper Who Knows What They Are Doing. Giles Pearson from Accountest will join be live to explain ways to make sure you hire a bookkeeper with the technical skills to help your biz succeed. RSVP HERE.
📅 October 28-30: Perfecting Your Proposals Workshop. Pachira Solutions is hosting this 3-day workshop about pricing proposals for prospective clients. Learn more and sign up HERE.
📅 October 30: Intro to Xero. Hop on this webinar to learn about Xero and how to get started. Register for HERE.
📅 November 7: The Solopreneur's Bookkeeping Workshop: Simplify your finances, get organized for tax time, and learn the simple steps to pay yourself from your biz in just 1 day. PLUS a bonus 90-Minute Q&A session will be held on Wednesday, November 20th from 10 to 11:30amPT. Sign up HERE.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Monica D. asked how to pay her children for work in her business. In addition to your comments on this post, I also have a video about how to put your children to work in your business.
🌶️ If you’ve been a bookkeeper for a while, do you need to get your QBO ProAdvisor Certification? Yes or No? Melissa J decided she wanted it, but she has been a bookkeeper and using QBO for a long time. Go add your thoughts to the post.
🌶️ How do you pay your contract bookkeepers? Like how do you actually move money into their bank accounts? Lots of different ways. I explained how I personally do it in the post comments.
🌶️ Cindy L. shares her story about having bookkeeping clients 8 years ago, then giving them all up to pursue a full time CFO job. And now coming back to bringing on clients because she regretted shutting the business. The path is not linear, folks.
Help You Hustle
💪 So, MakersHub wowed us with their technology that uses AI to read bills. If you ask me, doing accounts receivable for businesses sounds like the most tedious task in the world…that is until you let AI help you. The ability for MakersHub to do its magic to accurately extract the detailed data from the bills is truly something to behold. I loved how he also talked about how to sell this service and who to sell it to. Upselling to existing clients and offering to do a couple of months of the service at cost (with an agreement about how much it will cost after the trial period) seems like such a strong strategy. They are going to say yes after you prove you can get this off their plate. And you are going to have a nice a bump in your MRR without having to onboard any new clients. This is the way.
Book your own private demo* (👈 probably the better use of your time)
💪 Learn the Debits and Credits: Y’all know I preach that being strong at accounting fundamentals is one of the most important things in earning a living by working as an virtual bookkeeper. Your success and confidence depends on starting with the fundamentals. Here are my two favorite resources to recommend.
Accounting Coach is free but you can pay for tests for all the different modules. Look at these module titles. If you are ready to really nerd out, this is the place. You can pay a little money for certificates of completion and tests.
Schuam’s Outline of Bookkeeping and Accounting 4th Edition.
💪 Unique QBO course cohort: Alicia Katz-Pollock of Royalwise is teaching a Hands-On Training for QBO. This is almost like the style of a college class. 8 weeks, 16 classes 2 hours each. Plus homework. A dedicated class time like this might just be the solution for procrastination and loneliness. You have a real class, a real live “professor”, and real live classmates. And even a textbook. She wrote a hefty text book about QBO, and it is a part of the course. Sign up HERE. Starts soon!
💪 Learn how to clean up messy books: It is Q4 (how did we get here!) and that means the messy clients are going to start coming out of the woodwork. Don’t wait until you have a clean up (or catch up) client to learn how to do Clean ups. Unless you love sleepless nights, headaches, and gray hair. The you do you.
Here are links to courses specifically designed to teach you the specific skill of fixing many months (years even) of bad bookkeeping.
Fast & Easy Clean Up by Margie Remmers Davis and Corry Jakowski. This course contains a final project and a monthly call. Link*.
5MB Academy from Veronica Wasek. Link* and then scroll down a tiny bit and click on “clean up” for a variety of different resources related to clean up. I’ve taken the diagnostic review course. It paid for itself in no time at all.
Year-End Cleanup for Tax Time by Alicia Katz Pollock. Link*.
QBO Mastery from Nerd Enterprises. Seth David includes instruction on this in the course* and then ongoing support in his group coaching* (discount wrapped into that link).
💪 Learn Tax: Intuit has many tax courses on Intuit Academy now which is where I personally would start if I wanted to start to break into the tax field with no experience (bless y’all tax people!). These courses have true graded tests at the end. And the Intuit name is one of the most well known brands in the world. I place a very high value on graded tests, y’all. Study like your financial future depends on it. Crush it. You will be offered a chance to interview for TurboTax Live after these courses. If that doesn’t sit well with you, then take your knowledge and test scores and move along and confidently build what you want to build.
💪 QBO Simulation: The QBO Gym is set up to provide hands-on experience doing the books for a simulated company for an entire simulated year*. Everyone always asks how to get experience when you don’t have a job or a client. This is it. I also think it would be a valuable professional development tool for your staff, if you are an established firm.
💪 Learn to be a digital writer: There is a 30 day writing course called Ship 30 for 30 all about learning how to write for online platforms. I’ve been dreaming of taking this course for over 2 years.I don’t know when it will be an option for me, but I hope it is an option for some of you. One day I hope I quit making excuses for not signing up for this one.
Jobs
New jobs were added to the BSH Job Guide. Check it out!
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
My Family Circus (43F, 39M, 13M, 11F, 10M)
🎪 My oldest son has to earn $850 dollars by February to pay for half of his Boy Scout Trip to Philmont next summer. So the boy has been hustling around our neighborhood trying to find jobs he can do for neighbors.
Well, he had a very warm lead from a woman who said she needed to think about it. She provided him her phone number to follow up.
As I gently prodded him about calling her back, I realized he was extremely hesitant to make this phone call. Which, of course, means that momma is going to make him make the phone call.
We practiced via role play. Then he called.
Whooo boy, he found it oh so painful, y’all. Truly. He actually did a decent job for probably his first time conducting a phone call with someone other than a grandparent.
He did thrash around on the couch moaning in the fetal position for a bit afterwards. But he didn't die.
And I made a mental note that he needs more practice speaking on the phone. Here is my working list: Dinner reservation, dentist appointment, next time he wants a friend to come over (since he has no phone, his social life is still mostly managed at the parent-to-parent level). What would be another idea for a phone call I could have him make?
At 13 years old, phone calls are not going to have completely died by the time he is in his 20s and 30s. What an advantage that will be for him if most other folks from his generation are not practicing talking on the phone.
Our kids need to practice the hard things just like we do.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I sent this email to my firm email list recommending Forwardly as a payment processor. This email is hopefully going to be a money-making email for me because I’m sharing my referral link with these business owners. What do you think of my approach?
Bonus Idea: Honestly, the varsity move here is to have an email automation that includes this email (or one very close to it) as a part of a series of emails that every new subscriber gets. See, for now, this is a one-and-done email. But ugh! The thought of a really robust and valuable email flow that happens every time someone signs up for my email list takes my brain to the edge of its abilities. I know it is the right move. Will I execute on it???
🎢 I bought a desk treadmill for $179 on this week’s Amazon Prime days. I have been eyeing one for over a year, ever since I got my standing desk. Make sure you're subscribed to this newsletter because I’ll give updates in a few months about the physical effects I see from it. My hope is that it is a magic solution to lose 10 pounds. It probably isn’t that easy, though.
From The Vault
Another great way to get practice with taxes is to be a volunteer tax preparer. Now is the time to reach out to your local VITA program. This is a great way to serve your community, while getting experience in the trade. Learn about VITA and how you can get involved.
Letters To The Editor
✉️ Delma K. wrote to me after the last newsletter “Awesome email. You made me go back and learn how to write catchier emails. What advice would you give someone who wanted to be a better writer?”
Check out my response HERE.
Classifieds (Clickable)
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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.