The One About The Mom Test
Or a "hit by the bus" test
TL;DR
Last edition I mentioned about how letting someone else have eyes on your business helps you get things in shape fixed real fast.
Well, one of the greatest illustrations I've ever heard that illustrates how having other eyes on your business forces you to not be sloppy is a presentation I heard from a friend named Tyler Otto where he described what he called “The Mom Test”.
His mom is retired from our industry, so she's a really good candidate to do actual technical client work.
And he said he would occasionally hire her to do his employees’ work for them. And if she can't do the work, then it is not documented and systematized well enough.
Whaaaaattt! That is a business, y'all!
Now, my mom is a retired high school English teacher. She's smart a hard worker, and she loves me, but I don't think we would ever do the Mom Test in my bookkeeping business.
But the IDEA of a Mom Test as a standard to aim for is a great word picture that we can all benefit from.
For me, hiring my Operations Coordinator and forming my small little weekly mastermind group have both been things that I've done to help me head in the direction that I want to go. To help me build a business that I'd be proud for someone else to see the inside of.
Maybe a temporary business coach could fulfill the Mom Test function.
Maybe a committed friend who's building a business similar to yours could be a swap partner where y'all commit to serving this role for each other. This particular idea is one that might be useful for people who are solo and afraid about what will happen if they get hit by a (metaphorical) bus.
The overall point is that it will be impossible to build yourself a BUSINESS and not just another stressful JOB if you aren’t building together with someone. And there are countless ways to build “together” if you decide this is important.
So what better sponsor for this edition than The Together Summit by Anchor. And as they say on the sign up page, “This isn’t just a webinar. It’s a whole new kind of experience. This will not be a Zoom call. It'll be in a real, interactive space where you can explore, connect, and learn in ways that feel human, intuitive, and energizing”. And sure, you can bring your mom with you to this event. Or you could invite an online friend to join you and then start to brainstorm how y’all can help each other build your peaceful, “lifestyle” firm that you long for.
I’ll personally be listening in to the session called “Stop Talking: Introducing Intentional Communication” because if there is one thing I need to get better at it is talking less!
Hit that graphic to register.
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Bookkeeper Launch (the course I took to get my business started), is celebrating it's 10 year anniversary. Use code celebrate10 for 40% off. Take a peek at the course here*.
💰 5MB Academy by Veronica Wasek has just released a brand new resource called The Bookkeeper Sales Script Vault*. You can get it stand alone or very discounted via her Sales Success Bundle*. Y’all, in addition to the scripts for when you are talking to a prospect, she includes the templates you need for all the PRE and POST call stuff (intake forms, follow up emails, etc). The before and after is all part of the sales process, too. Every.dang.step of sales is important. That is why sales is so hard!
💰 Only $37 for the 15 Day Firm Reset Audio Series for Bookkeepers & Accountants. Sounds like a deal to me!
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.
📅 May 13 - Together Summit. Anchor is hosting this virtual summit that was to co-created with their customers to move beyond traditional conversations, bring fresh ideas, bold strategies, and real perspectives to help firms grow, evolve, and lead. The agenda includes impactful sessions that go beyond a webinar. This will not be a Zoom call. It'll be in a real, interactive space where you can explore, connect, and learn in ways that feel human, intuitive, and energizing. Sign up to attend HERE.
📅 May 13 - In the Ring: Xero vs. QuickBooks. Curious how Xero’s new releases stack up against QBO? Two heavy hitters will be going head to head to discuss. Sign up HERE. I personally believe a few funky folks who attend this webinar will consider it one of the pivotal moments in their business because they are going to take the plunge and decide to go ALL IN with Xero.
+📅 May 14 - 2025 Bookkeeper Launch Course Review - Learn all about the updates and changes in Bookkeeper Launch. Learn about . RSVP in the Facebook group to get a reminder when we go live. You can learn a bit about this course here* if you want to come to the Q&A a bit more informed.
📅 May 14 - QBO Recertification Virtual Conference. This will help prepare you for the QBO ProAdvisor Recertification test that must be completed by June 30. Totally free.
📅 + June 2 and June 14 - 2-part Keeper Series. Join us for this 2-part series - the first will be a demo of Keeper and the second will highlight the features that “power-users” love. Be on the lookout for more information in the next newsletter.
Featured Posts
🌶️ LaTara S. asked how many staff members (FT or PT, contractor ir W-2) bookkeepers with 30+ clients have and how many clients each staff member is managing.
🌶️ Delma K. asked the group “how did your highest paying client find you”? 69 comments so far. I gave my answer in those comments, too.
Help You Hustle
💪 We had an expert guest, Josh Hsu, come teach a session called Personalities Of AI In Back-office: How To Think About Different AI Tools For Different Workflows.
He took real examples from questions that you community members had asked about your business. Then he demonstrated how he would go about using AI to answer the questions.
My main takeaway was how he thinks about switching from ChatGPT-4o to ChatGPT-o3 as he is in the middle of a chat. I had NO IDEA about the difference between the different versions of ChatGPT. And that ChatGPT-4o is like a “daily driver” or “buddy”. And ChatGPT-o3 is like a big nerd so he gives it context from 4 before asking it questions.
💪 Every once in a while I see some academic-ish report about the state of the accounting industry. But when I read it, none of the firms in the data set look like mine. I don't care what's happening in the top 100 firms. That data isn't very useful to me. So, you can imagine my excitement when I saw The Ambitious Bookkeeper publishing a survey to collect data for a State of the Virtual Bookkeeping & Accounting Industry report*. This is the first of its kind data gathering initiative for firms that look like mine. The report will be out in June. So take the survey now. It took me 7 minutes. Then forward the survey link to 3 more people so she gets a high number of respondents.
Jobs
💼 The Job Guide had 3 remote positions added - including an entry level position! Check it out HERE.
My Family Circus (43F, 40M, 13M, 11F, 10M)
🎪 Delaying Cell Phones
I sent this exact wording to the 4th, 5th, and 7th grade parent GroupMe chats and the entire school private Facebook group for parents.
Fellow Mascot parents,
We are Clay and Kate Johnson, the parents of Boy (7th), Girl (5th), and Boy (4th).
Before the school year ended, we wanted to send a quick message to let other families know that we are trying our hardest to wait until 9th grade to give our children their own cell phone. We've almost made it to the end of 7th grade with our oldest, so we really only have a little more than a year to go to hit that goal with our first child.
We just wanted to let other families know in case y'all are debating with yourselves and with your children about when to give them a phone. The more families at the same school that do this together, the easier it will likely be to delay it.
Just spreading the word in hopes that some families will join us so our children can't say "But everyone else in my class has a phone". 😄
If anyone has any questions, we are happy to answer them.
Go Mascot
Quite a few parents chimed in with encouragement. Some chimed in that they were waiting even longer! Some said they were so grateful I said something because it has been a source of a lot of discussion in their home and they are glad that they now have evidence to tell their child that they won't be the only one without a phone.
I was a bit nervous to make the post, but it went better than I thought. Hopefully it will help some families and let a few more kids be phone-free a little longer.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I’ve been taking an axe to some of my business expenses. There has been a lot of slow bloating over time. Just like with our bodies, if we're not careful, those pants that looked so cute in the past can start to look a liiiiittle tight. I just felt like my expenses were a little pudgy. I told my Mastermind group that I wanted to analyze my own expenses and asked that they hold me accountable and the very next week I had done the work.
🎢 Two updates about internal operations that I’m proud of and excited about from the last two weeks. You may begin your Slow Clap now. Thank you.
Passing off tasks: I basically sell 5 services inside my firm (niched in FreshBooks, remember). I sell (1) 1-on-1 training, (2) FreshBooks Office Hours for DIYers, (3) Diagnostic Reviews, (4) Cleanus/Catchups, and (5) Monthly Bookkeeping & Advisory services. I am proud to report that my Operations Coordinator and I have successfully documented and handed off the onboarding/pre-work/billing (basically all the admin tasks) related to the first 3 services listed! I’m going to keep the 4th and 5th for now, because those are pretty unique to each client and harder to systematize. I’m still doing the technical bookkeeping work for those first 3 tasks, but not the admin side of things. This feels HUGE to me.
Batching: So, 3 weeks ago I recorded a pretty great video for my Fix Your FreshBooks channel. The topic was “What is a FreshBooks Diagnostic Review”, but the topic isn’t important. What is important is that I asked my Ops Coordinator to watch the 8 minute video one time and then BATCH write a full year of social media posts related to the topic, and then send them all to me for me to edit/approve all at once. 6 posts are now sitting in our content calendar (which is just a running Google Doc, y’all…don’t imagine anything hard core). I know, know, know that the smart people in the world try to reduce their switching from one thing to another. That is what this Batching effort is about. And it caused me to write a list of other things that I think are “batch-able” to discuss with her on Monday at our weekly in-person check-ins
I can hear your Slow Clap. It sounds a lot like hitting the heart ❤ and the Comment and Restack button at the bottom of your substack screen. Muchas gracias.
For Fun
😹 Irina J. asked how to crack the social media networking code to connect with your ideal client. You see that wedding planner’s account on Instagram and roll up in the comments like “Nice wedding! I hope you deposited your checks and reconciled the bank. Let me show you how." "Wow pretty! Looks like a lot of sales tax needs to be paid. I can help today!"
From The Vault
⚡ With QBO recertification deadline looming and the QBO vs Xero showdown happening this week, I just wanted to share this video about why I chose to niche in FreshBooks. Watch it HERE and who knows. There are LOTS of General Ledger software options. Odoo and Zoho are two others that come to mind, but there are more than that. Pick a tool and be a master at it!
Letters to The Editor
✉️ Thanks for the feedback to this past Family Circus section about board games! Hope you found a new game to play!
"Gateway games" made me chuckle! I always look forward to reading these! Stephanie M
Classifieds (Clickable)
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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Thanks for sharing the message you sent to parents about delaying phones. We are a long way off, but we have started the same conversation with other Kinder parents. It sure makes it easier when you know others share the same ideas!
Loved that Mom Test idea - it's something my clients often do with me. Having that fresh set of eyes can really help you see what you can't because you're *in it*!