The One Where I Listen
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TL;DR
Let’s start with some assumptions:
You have put in the time and effort to understand accounting fundamentals. You know how Net Income flows to the Balance Sheet. You can explain how a business can have a lot of profit but hardly any cash. You understand that credit card payments are not expenses. Etcetera.
You know your way around a bookkeeping software beyond just classifing from a bank feed. You can match deposits to specific sales transactions. You can run and modify helpful reports. Your Chart of Accounts is tight. Your integegrations are properly mapped. Etcetera.
You are a darn good bookkeeper. Say it with me aloud right now.
“I’m a darn good bookkeeper”.
But how in the world can you start to get all that knowledge that is in your head to come out of your mouth in coherent and helpful ways so that you can show off your expertise to your clients?
You need to HEAR it. You need to hear conversations about accounting and software and financial statement analysis and KPIs and integrations and business trends.
But you are stuck in the job you want to leave or are working from home by yourself or maybe not working at all (or whatever your circumstance). You don’t yet have a chance to participate in conversations that you know you want the “future you” to be having with small business clients that you are getting paid (well) to serve. You don’t have an experienced co-worker to banter with. You don’t have a mentor taking you out for coffee.
So how are you going to solve your problem?
You’ve got to listen to other people say the words that you are going to need to say.
This is how little kids learn to talk. All of a sudden you turn around and some tiny human says something that either sounds just like their parents/siblings/caregiver or that sounds just like whatever TV show they have been watching, right?
Podcasts, youtube videos, webinars have to be in your ears.
I distinctly remember being an early listener to the Cloud Accounting Podcast and thinking “this is giving me the VOCABULARY that I didn’t have before”.
Some other content that I put in my ears in my very early business days (and still today) were the following:
Any webinar by Amanda Aguillard - running a business and raising kids
Hector Garcia - QuickBooks and creating excellent teaching content
Seth David - QuickBooks and apps
Ryan Lazanis - tiny tips with big impact and also how to be more CHILL
Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation - creative ideas in entrepreneurship
Omar Zenhom from $100 MBA - literally any business topic you can think of
Who are YOU putting in your ears so when you have to say a sentence that will knock the socks off of a prospect or client, you’ve heard it before so it rolls off the tongue more easily?
There is no shortage of content to put in your ears, though. So my advice for how to choose is one of these two criteria:
Whatever you are most deficient in (accounting, processes, sales, scaling, etc) deep dive into that one focused topic.
Or just pick a content creator that is actually running a business similar to the one you are building (versus just a guru who isn’t walking the road you are walking).
Alyssa Lang’s Conquering Workflows & Systems podcast definitely meets bullet #2. She is well known for her content and courses teaching bookkeepers how to create efficient systems and processes, BUT she also still runs a real bookkeeping firm, too!
Check out her episode titles. Which of her episodes will you listen to first?
Deals Deals Deals
💰 The Bookkeeping Business Accelerator* with Serena Shoup is $500 off the regular price. Expires very soon. Use code SIDEHUSTLE for an extra 10% off. It takes the price down to less than $900.
💰 Are you coming to Scaling New Heights this year? You can use this link* with the disount code SNHSPECIAL50 for $50 off! I will be there, and I’d love to meet you! If you are coming, will you comment below? Maybe we can have a private gathering for the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community? Also, I’m speaking at the event. I’d love some friendly faces in the audience!
💰 The chance to earn a scholarship to an industry conference is coming VERY soon. The application is not quite finalized yet, but will be by the next time this newsletter goes to press. I’m part of a brand new organizing committee called The Accounting Cornerstone Foundation where we hope to send a few qualified applicants to industry conferences throughout the year. This will be for first-time conference attendees. Learn more and bookmark this and keep your eye out for the announcment that the application is live. Scaling New Heights in June is the first conference we hope to send someone(s) to. Stay tuned!
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.
📅 +Mondays in April: Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community Co-working Hour. Join me on on Zoom Mondays at 11am EST. Zoom link (password: HUSTLE)
📅 April 24 - 27: Know Your Accounting Role*. Free training from Mariette Martinez where she will explain the differences in common accounting roles, how to create business strategies around the different roles, and help you design a path to stand out. 4 short lessons in just 30 minutes a day.
📅+April 25: Meet Breakaway Advisors. Shea Keats, Founder and CEO of Breakaway Advisors, is joining me to tell us all about Breakaway Advisors and how you could benefit from this unique model of entrepreneurship, but not doing business alone.
📅 April 25: Vacation Rental Bookkeeping. AirBnb and VRBO have transformed the travel industry. But how do you track that income and the associated expenses to make sure it’s worth the effort? Royalwise is hosting this course with Instructor Gita Faust is the queen of Real Estate Accounting. Learn more here*.
📅 April 28: How Hector Garcia is using ChatGPT in Accounting. Register here.
Featured Posts
🌶️ If you only had 15 minutes to give a presentation, what would your topic be? Joseph Powell is looking for ideas. Let’s add to this thread.
🌶️ How do you handle it when a client wants to make changes to your engagment letter?
🌶️ After you get good at our craft, be like Doris.
🌶️ If anyone tells you your prices are too high, remember how much Tiffany’s sells their PAPERCLIPS for.
Help You Hustle
💪 If you find yourself recommending QuickBooks products to customers, did you know you can start getting PAID for that? Here is video I just released with 3 ways you can get commissions on selling QBO.
💪 This podcast from MediaBooks explores the little blue check mark on social media. This episode is only 8 minutes, and Kristin quickly discusses the pros/cons of paying to get verified.
💪 Ryan Lazanis of Future Firm shared a brilliant little tip on LinkedIn about how to stand out. It is a totally free idea and can be done in 30 minutes. It just involves a little “word-smithing” of your service offerings. Check out his post and then go for a 20 minute walk and think about how you can rename what you do.
For Fun
🎈 A Tax Season Giveway with a whole lot of free stuff (worth over $3,000!). Some of it is practical for our profession. Some of it is just fun.
Jobs
💼 Part-time, full time, remote, and in person job in Washington were added to the Jobs Guide.
I even made the “Job Opportunities” the first guide to make it easier for folks to find.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I submitted my presentation for Scaling New Heights. I hope you join me there! I will be doing a very PRACTICAL session on getting started with video in your business.
🎢 I have 1 new FreshBooks Office Hour Member and 1 new one-on-one training client. And this was when I have had my calendar blocked off because we listed our house for sale last weekend (we got multiple offers, praise the Lord!) and had spring break this week.
🎢 I should have been able to tell you that I had TWO new one-on-one training clients, but, instead, I get to tell you about how I got tripped up because I tried to get too cute and didn’t stick to my processes. Here is the scenario:
I’ve been having A LOT of inquiries. Errrrrrrbody has their hair on fire because of the tax deadline. There was one man who I got into an email exchange with. He was very nice and really responsive. I had sent him a short reply while I was away for spring break and he pleaded his case that he just needed a couple hours of training. So I told him that I could carve out some time (I was completely free on Thursday morning and my husband was home), but that I would have to charge a rush fee above my normal training rate.
Well, I’m the sucker because I didn’t do an initial interview and didn’t even have him fill out my prospective client form. Turns out, the gentleman runs a large eCommerce business complete with inventory and a warehouse (a.k.a. not a good fit for FreshBooks). If I had stuck to my processes, I would have figured this out. But now, I get to eat the payment processing charges for his $300 payment to me and for my refund back to him!
🎢 I crossed 600 subscribers on my FreshBooks YouTube Channel. Slow and steady. Slow and steady.
From The Vault
⚡ Check out my Best Podcasts for Bookkeepers article. What am I missing from this list? Comment below so I can add to the article!
Letters To The Editor
✉️ Kathy Grosskurth replied to my “How To Change Your Email Address in QuickBooks Online Accountant” video with this comment and created a more up-to-date video:
Hi Kate. I am glad to see that you did a video on this topic. As you have succinctly pointed out, the process of updating an email address (or any other information) within QBOA is not an easy or a straightforward process. And as I had found out recently, making the changes in the "wrong" order may trigger an automatic removal of one's listing off the Find-a-ProAdvisor database. And sadly, the steps that you outline may or may not be enough to keep one's profile from being taken down. To that end, I will be doing a follow-up video to yours (I will share the links to this one in my Description and comments). I am hoping that my experience and what you outline in your video will be a catalyst to real change being made on how these updates are made AND fixing the system which is quite broken to the point that many do not want to update their information lest it happens to them, too.
Classifieds (Clickable)
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Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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