The One About Where To Find Them
They are out there. Where will you look?
TL;DR
Happy half way through summer!
In this edition, you will find a round up of as many “How To Find Bookkeeping Clients” resources as I could find. Grab a coffee and go slow. Or come back later this afternoon if you need to.
Surely there will be something in here that resonates with you and that you can run with to start building your pipeline and signing clients.
But hopefully your marketing will be helping you find savvy business owners. Ones who have some sense, not just a pulse. And if you're finding those clients, they know that they need to check out a few different bookkeepers before they make their decision.
That means meeting clients who express interest is not the last step to finding clients, y’all. If you're in a competition for the work, you're selling all the way up to the point that they sign their engagement letter and the initial funds hit your account (Because you're charging up front, right? Right?).
Don't fumble the ball on the one yard line. Continue to present yourself as high value, organized, and serious all the way into the end zone.
Anchor helps carry that ball those last few yards into the end zone for the touchdown. Anchors tools can't do all the hard work it will take for you to market your business, but the webinar next week can help you understand how your engagement letter can be a tool to continue to attract your clients all the way up through the moment where they officially sign on with you.
Bang that graphic to register before scrolling on. 👇
Deals Deals Deals
💰Jaime Campbell is celebrating being a CPA for 20 years by giving away all her Microsoft Excel courses for free with code CPA20 through July. Go to her Tier One Services learning page and see all these tiny little Excel tutorials. This gal loves to teach! She has Excel solution for every bookkeeping problem! Holy Moly. Thanks Jaime for being generous with your brain!
💰 A new Theater of Public Speaking cohort starts this August. I am passing along what would be my affiliate commission to you so you get a 10% discount. I took this course. It is a definitely a “door opening” course for our industry, in addition to being outstanding training in speaking and presenting yourself confidently.
💰 Bookkeeper Launch is offering 30% off their “Pain Points Bundle*” with code painfree30. Navigate to the courses page and scroll to the bottom.
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.
📅 July 21 - Start date for the “college style” QuickBooks Online Complete Hands On Training* with Alicia Katz Pollock.
📅 +July 24 - Behind The Hustle: Amber Reusch - the second installment of the Behind The Hustle series. Learn from REAL people who built their bookkeeping business. Subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don’t miss it!
📅 July 24 - How to Turn Your Engagement Letter Into a Client Magnet by Starting with Why - Anchor is hosting a live workshop for accounting firm owners who want to win more of the right clients and grow revenue with confidence. Register for this FREE webinar HERE.
📅 July 28 - The Ambitious Bookkeeper opens her next round of the 3-day Bookkeeping Biz Workshop Series that from August 18-20.
📅 August 12 - Bookkeeping Buds Magic Hour - Running a bookkeeping firm can feel isolating—even when your calendar is full. You're holding it all together, saying yes too often, and wondering if anyone else understands what it’s like to build a business while trying to protect your peace. Magic Hour is your invitation to pause, connect, and step into a space where women like you gather to grow—together. Connect with your bookkeeping bestie - this month’s topic is about being Red Rope Ready. Sign up NOW!
Featured Posts
🌶️I asked for your best stories about how being a bookkeeping entrepreneur has given you summers that you could never have dreamed of. The answers 👈.
🌶️ Joana L. shared news that our Accountant-In-Chief had some changes to the 1099 threshold in his One Big Beautiful Bill Act. This definitely affects bookkeepers in the USA.
🌶️Elizabeth R asked for people to share how much they made in their first year of business. Add your answer. It is so hard to get real numbers!
Help You Hustle
Round up of resources to help you get clients. 💰👏
💪 Please make sure you watch the replay of the interview with Serena Shoup about the formal results of the State Of Virtual Bookkeeping Industry Survey. There were 645 responses! My most important take away is the part about what title people give themselves. The words we use are so important.
As you listen, make sure you are asking “so what”? What does this data mean for YOU and how can use the results to improve your own business? The best way to do that is probably to “Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V” the entire survey results into your favorite AI tool to have a discussion with you about how these results can prompt you to take meaningful action and be more successful and get better clients that pay your more. Download the survey results here 👈.
💪 Here is my curated “How To Get Bookkeeping Clients” playlist on YouTube. It makes it easy for you to access all of my live streams where I interviewed different people who had success with different marketing techniques. Listen to several and then pick one or two methods to go all-in on!
💪 The folks at Akadian have a “Getting Clients Cohort ” resource*. Simple challenge that lasts a month. The entire program is designed around promoting your status as a QBO expert and progresses naturally into delivering paid diagnostic review.
💪 Hey introverts, Veronica Wasek of 5 Minute Bookkeeping Academy had resources that specifically stood out to me about getting clients.
💪 The Ambitious Bookkeeper has “The Bookkeeping Client Closer”*, all about creating a full system to land clients and it includes a resource called “12 ways to find your first (or next) bookkeeping client.”
💪 The CFO Project interview “How to Build an Online Presence to Attract More Clients” where I talked about how I finally landed on YouTube to attract FreshBooks clients. *
My Family Circus (44F, 40M, 13M, 12F, 11M)
🎪Lego Masters
We have spent a small fortune on Legos over the years. It was a pretty deliberate decision, mostly spearheaded by my husband because I don't think my sisters and I had a single Lego in my house growing up. But he grew up with legos in his house, so I got behind the idea of becoming a Lego family. It definitely jives with my style of parenting. We have so many that we had to to build a “Lego Table” from an idea we saw on Pinterest to store them all.
So when the show Lego Masters came out, we were naturally going to watch that as a family. It's a pretty good show. Very impressive competitors.
So then we decided that we should do our own Lego Masters competitions.
It regularly gets selected as an activity for our Sunday evening “Team Time”. Here is how it goes down.
One person selects a theme. It's usually one word or maybe a very short phrase (e.g. “food, “under the sea”).
Then we set a timer for 1 hour.
After 1 hour we inevitably all scream for 10 more minutes.
Then each of us stands up and speaks about our build for 2 to 3 minutes.
This part has gotten a lot better. It's been cool to watch the creativity and showmanship grow. If any of us just stands up and boringly narrates through the features of our build, that person will definitely not win. You have to SELL it.
Then we each have four scraps of paper with the numbers 1 through 4 written on it and cast secret ballots where we rank each of the builds. You can’t vote for yourself. So after everyone votes, the person with the lowest total sum is the winner.
I don't think I've ever won. I usually can put on a pretty good speech, but it's never enough to make up for my lack of experience with Legos. I definitely have the least amount of Lego experience of the five of us.
Family time. Creative time. Fine motor skill time. Presentation skill time. “Handling heart breaking loss from your own family members” time.
I realize this idea doesn't work for every family. You can't just acquire thousands of Legos over night. But if you wanted to get started, I think the best way to get started would be to buy all the bulk bins of Legos that you see at garage sales or neighborhood social media pages.
Or you could think of what you already possess and make it a reality competition show.
Dance off.
Sing off.
Cardboard building competition.
Cake decorating (make sure you have neighbors ready to pass if cake to, or maybe just do cupcakes).
Chef challenge (maybe everyone has to make the best chicken wing sauce or favorite pie or sushi roll, etc)
Legos are going to be one of the few toys I hang on to for my future grandkids. How retro will Legos be in a couple of decades!
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 Asking chat GPT for technical help.
I've been having some rough IT days lately. That is the worst type of work. It can feel so helpless. The two specific problems were related to my “DNS settings” for my email marketing platform (I still don't really know what it means) and my Google Drive becoming unmapped from my computer hard drive. The specific problems aren't the point though. The point is that this crap makes me want to scream or cry or both.
I sit down to work and then I'm thwarted by broken tech that seemed to work just fine the day before.
But I'm getting better at using AI to be my tech support to help me troubleshoot. The key change that I've been making instead of just telling my woes to the AI and asking “can you help me?”. Instead I ask it “Walk me through one step at a time and do not move on until we make sure each step has been successfully completed.”
When I don't say that, it delivers a 8-step process that isn't actually accurate.
Interacting with it this way makes it behave more like a real one-on-one technical support expert instead of trying to read a blog about a generic solution to my problem.
🎢 3rd Grade Level Email Marketing
My Operations Coordinator and I successfully built my first true email marketing automation. Over the years I have developed the skills to put a couple of forms on my website that lead to email capture. I have 700 emails for my firm.
But other than basic capture, my email marketing has been sooo weak sauce. Basically I've just delivered the resource via a single email. There was no continuous automated marketing afterward.
But we finally have officially turned on our first “baby” email marketing automation.
And y'all, it is only 4 additional delayed emails after the immediate one that delivers the download. No “if/then”. No A/B testing. No adding readers to different groups based on behavior. It just delivers another email at day 3, day 8, day 28, and ends with a very soft “how are things going with your bookkeeping email at day 128.
It is the most kindergarten level email marketing automation you can imagine.
Okay, maybe not kindergarten because I had been able to create the initial email capture automation that delivers a resource. That is probably the kindergarten version.
So maybe this was like 3rd grade or 4th grade level email marketing activity.
Part of me is embarrassed because of how simple it is. But then I know on the inside that it wasn't simple for me, or I would have done it several years ago after I had started to capture emails.
I've known I've needed to do it for years and have just now done it.
Better late than never.
And the next one will go faster. Onward!
From The Vault
⚡July means that the school year is right around the corner. If you aren’t loving the idea of sending your kids back to school and homeschooling is on your mind, but you aren’t sure how to run your biz and teach your children at the same time, check out this video about Homeschooling Bookkeepers.
Letters To The Editor
✉️ Thanks for the kind words Jodi S.
I always enjoy reading the newsletter, thanks for taking the time to put it together.
Classifieds (Clickable)
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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I am down right rabid about transparency and full disclosure. If a link, including Amazon Links, 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.
I love your family's Lego night! Ours are all grown now: 28, 26, and 22. We always had a game to play when we were together (blended family). We had the Monopoly version with the trophy and, trust me, it could become cutthroat at times! ;)
I wish I had read the newsletter yesterday. I spent hours troubleshooting something that ChatGPT probably could've done in no time flat... I'll know for next time because we all know there WILL be a next time!
Great content as always, Kate! Thanks for all you do for our community.