The One Where I Wrestle
TL;DR
As this arrives in your inbox, I’m on day 3 of a backpacking trip in the Shenandoah Mountains. We’ll head home this evening. I’m looking forward to reading some replies to this email! What do you think of the new format?!? I’m just proud I wrote it 3 days early and scheduled it. Never done that before.
So, these last two weeks have been marked by some wrestling with technology.
I purchased and implemented Google Workspace.
I almost ruined all my Slacks somehow, got them fixed, and still am staying up and night worrying about if and how to move off of Slack since they will be starting to charge in September. I currently have a Slack workspace for every monthly client. It sounded like a good idea at the time I implemented it. Now, not so much.
I just switched to Substack for this newsletter. That required a lot of research of different tools and some fast learning. I hope Substack is a good solution for me. It will be a little embarrassing if it isn’t. But MailerLite by itself wasn’t working. Then my recent change to MailerLite with a button to a Google Site wasn’t great either. But I’m not gonna quit!
I made a zap to put any appointment on my work calendar over to my personal calendar.
I installed the “Facebook Pixel” on my business website because I’m thinking of running some ads. Baby steps. But as soon as I tackled that first step, I shifted to having an existential crisis about my personal convictions about feeding the Mark Zuckerberg monster. Gah!
Have you wrestled with tech lately? If you are a business owner, it is not a matter of IF, but WHEN. The goal is to still stay in the fight after you take your lumps.
Here is a thread in the Facebook Community where others share their recent bouts with tech they are are proud of.
Masking ACH info in Adobe Documents to collect that info as a part of your engagement letter.
Using tasks in Google calendar as a daily schedule that emails you your schedule every morning.
Asana. Plooto. Airtable. ZenBill. TaxDome. Zapier. Plus more!
What would you add to this thread?
Some other new tech to consider doing some wrestling with is our sponsor Digits. You can integrate Digits Reports with QBO for FREE then build and export custom reports for your clients. The Digits Reports interface is “Drag and Drop”, so hopefully there will not be much wrestling required! And if you do find yourself wrestling or just have questions, come post in the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community. As a community, we’ll get you sorted out.
Deals Deals Deals
💰 The Ambitious Bookkeeper Accelerator* by Serena Shoup is on sale with code BACKTOSCHOOL through August 31.
💰 Were you excited to see the QBO Payroll Certification become available last year, but then deflated when the training and test were so convoluted and confusing you couldn't pass the test? Don't worry--Margie Remmers-Davis has you covered! Her Fast & Easy QBO Payroll course is now available and folks are finally making sense of all the information and passing the test right and left. Find out more using my affiliate link here* , and use the coupon code "Hustle" (no quotes) for $200 off.
💰 Ryan Lazanis’s program called Future Firm Accelerate is increasing in price today. Sorry for the short notice. $95 bucks per month to be in coaching with a very tech forward, modern accounting industry leader. If you Google his name and do just 10 minutes of internet stalking you’ll know whether he is the kind of guy for you. He is not for beginners, FYI.
Please always send me any news of deals that you hear of that others might benefit from.
Be There or Be Square
📅 August 24: Lunch with a Leader: What Bookkeepers Should Know About Tax. Nancy McClelland will be the leader for this free event. More info here.
📅 August 29: Registration begins for Bookkeeping Biz Workshops with Serena Shoup. Get on wait list*.
📅 +September 15: Third installment of the Financial Cents webinar series.
Let me know of other events you hear of that would benefit the community.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Laurie Coia shared her story of how she made her own small business networking group because none of the ones available to her met her needs (her need being a group for entrepreneur moms with young kids). THIS is the hustle that I love to see. Don’t give up. Instead, make a way!
🌶️ Jaime Urban put out the most popular post in the group recently. Clients owe us for the years of experience we bring, not for the 10 minutes it takes us to do something that takes them 2 hours to do.
Help You Hustle
💪 How to Automate Your Accounting Firm webinar series replay. Make to download the “Firm Automation Playbook” in the description of the video. My main takeaway about implementing more automation were the following:
Don’t do it all at once. Do it in bite-sized pieces.
The automation priority matrix was simply elegant. Focus on the top left quadrant where things are the Easiest To Automate and also give you the Most Time Saved.
Don’t move on to the next thing you want to automate until you’ve nailed down the one you chose to work on first.
💪 After my presentation about my Office Hours for DIY clients at the Taking Your Firm Virtual vCon, I had a few inquiries as to why I had decided to niche in FreshBooks. So I made a very quick video reply to explain my reasonings.
For Fun
💀 An online store called The Big 4 Accountant full of hilarious merch about our industry.
“Your email finds me unwell.”
“The H in Accountant stands for happiness.”
“I’m billing you for this conversation.”
I saw an add that says if you use code GAAP you get 50% off your second item. The reason I saw that ad was because of Facebook Pixels for advertising. Guess we gotta hate the game, not the playa.
Jobs
In the #JobOpportunity HashTag (right bar inside the Facebook group on your desktop), there are some new leads. I deliberately make you do a little work to go find these so that these folks don’t get inundated with people who aren’t serious. SorryNotSorry.
💼 Michael Ly from Reconciled posted about part-time remote bookkeeping positions.
💼 Heather Snow Kwitschau with Executive Geek is looking for another geek. This is initially a contract bookkeeping position. Check it out.
💼 Anna Padilla’s client is looking for a part-time bookkeeper.
💼 Morgan Tapp’s business is growing and is looking for help.
💼 Live near Bethleham, PA? Gita Faust posted about an in-house position.
💼There are TWO new jobs on the www.cloudaccountingjobs.com site
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I commend to you a man named Ross Feldman who helped me quickly and efficiently get Google Workspace set up and my business email properly transferred over.
I was looking for someone to screen share train me so I could LEARN and also be coached QUICKLY through the Google Workspace set up process. I felt like this was high risk for me because it involved my EMAIL, which I did not want to have that messed up.
If I had tried to do it on my own, I would have spent probably 10 total hours studying and being scared to click certain things AND guarantee that it still would not have done it perfectly. If you need an “IT Guy”, he was good. His email is rfeldman@ccpteam.com.
🎢 So, I might be facing a non-payment situation. This would be the 2nd time it has happened to me (the other time was Covid related and I paid for a QBO subscription for a client for several months that I never got paid back for).
This current situation is for a training client. I charge $250 for 2 hours of training, broken up in to two hours. On the day of the training, his payment was declined by Melio. I told him wasn’t a big deal (he legitimately tried to pay on Melio) and we’d figure out the payment before our 2nd hour and went ahead and did the first hour of training. I’ve given him a couple of other options to pay, including mailing me a check. Earlier this week he messaged me to ask for my bank routing and account number to wire me money. Ummm…No thanks, bruh. I said he could still mail a check. We’ll see if I get it. I definitely won’t do the second hour of training if I don’t get the check.
🎢 I don’t know how to tell this story quickly. But it is about a tough client encounter. The point is that when I get a pit in my stomach about my business, it still lasts for over a day, but not as long as it used to. I think it just comes from more and more experience. Which gives more and more confidence.
See, I have this long time client. I do books for several of his businesses. We had kind of been on a mutual pause for a few months because she was making some changes. She also had a lot of outstanding action items that I had sent reminders of (which never got any reply or action). The details don’t matter. What matters is that I finally got her attention by telling her that I had just billed her via auto bank debit (as per our contract and which I’ve done for years with him). Well, that got a very quick reply. She did not like that. The Slack chat stayed cordial but was curt. I don’t really feel like I did anything wrong, but it still caused a pit in my stomach. And on a Friday!
She is supposed to book time with me to get it sorted out and take care of outstanding tasks. Hasn’t done it yet.
🎢 Last week I had my children in a basketball camp. Yes, I’d love for one or all of my kids to get into basketball, but really I picked the camp because it was not expensive and was near my co-working space. This was the 3rd week of a day camp that I’ve put them in all summer.
But I got A LOT of pushback from my kids. One in particular. Every day it was tough to get out the door. And it made me SO ANGRY. Mama needed to put herself in time out. I lashed out and said “I have a real job you know! Do you act this way when you father goes to work!?!”. The internal battle I was having in that moment is “wanting it all”. The job/career/business that they respect and the SAHM life that lets me be there for all the things I want to do with them. I want their behavior to validate me in 900 different ways (“You are an amazing and hard working mother and brilliant business owner and more than we could ever dream of and we appreciate and notice all you do and just let us know how we can best support you to fulfill your personal and professional goals and yes our lunches are packed and and we put on proper clothing all by ourselves and we’re already loaded in the car”) and it wasn’t happening.
From The Vault
⚡ Get bookkeeping software discounts for non-profits. Links for discounted QBO and for Xero in there. Old article I wrote about getting started with your Bookkeeping Side Hustle by serving a cause you love and getting them a software discount, too. Now, please make sure you know the ins-and-outs of non-profit accounting. I know of one Facebook group called QuickBooks For Non-Profits. You can comment on this newsletter if there are others.
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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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.
Kate, thank you for putting out these newsletters - they are always a joy to read. I relate so much to the last story, about wanting to have it all and be recognized for it. You’re doing a great job! 💙