The One With Code Switching
TL;DR
If you’ve never heard the term, code switching is where you modify your speech or behavior or outward appearance to adapt to and be accepted in a certain environment.
I think we all do it. I know I certainly have. I mean, at one point in my life I was a frightened young conservative from an extremely small town in deep south Texas and had to find my way in New England academic circles for 2 years. There was definitely some code switching for me.
And I have plenty of other examples where I found myself in a place that I felt compelled to code switch.
And boy, is it exhausting!
I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing to be able to adapt to different environments, but the older I get, the more I realize that life is a lot simpler the more comfortable I am being ME, no matter where I find myself.
When I’m me, I thrive.
Yes, we should push ourselves to do challenging things and go to hard places and interact with all kinds of people and not be afraid of new situations. But if we have to transform into someone else entirely, we will eventually burn out.
Keep your values and your interests front and center in all you do, and the right kind of business and career opportunities will follow.
Ultimately, there is no one-right-way to be in this business. No matter how much I or anyone else tells you how to do things.
Alyssa Lang, The Workflow Queen, is a great example of someone who is not trying to fit anyone else’s mold. You’ll find that out extremely quickly by listening to her podcast Conquering Workflows and Systems and following her instructional resources. By being true to her colorful, off-roading, unicorn-loving self, she has built up quite business doing what she is uniquely gifted in.
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Buy One, Get One for Xero Roadshow Accelerate! I’m so stoked about this deal! Xero asked if I wanted to give away some tickets to their 3 Xero Accelerate events this summer. I decided to counter back and propose that we ratchet up the idea a bit. #sorrynotsorry
And so I’m partnering with them on a BOGO deal, which I think is better than a giveaway. The reason I think it is a better idea is that I believe economics and psychology tell us that we value things MORE if we put some of our hard earned money into it. AND I think that FRIENDSHIPS WITH PEERS are quite likely the most valuable thing you can cultivate as an entrepreneur. BOGO checks both boxes. ✅✅
So here are the details.
How to claim your free ticket: If you buy a ticket to any of these events, email your receipt to sarah.bleeker@xero.com and tell her you want the BOGO deal and she’ll send you the additional ticket so you can bring anyone you like.
Price: Only $62 through May 31 and slowly going up after that. And it includes lunch, cocktails, swag, and CPE if you need it.
Dates and Locations:
July 27 - Austin, Texas (I’m 90% sure I’m going to this one!)
August 3 - Atlanta, Georgia
August 17, Los Angeles California
So, are you in??? Who are you bringing with you? Comment on this newsletter!
💰 If you want to get your QBO Payroll certification, you can grab the Fast and Easy Payroll course for 50% off with code PAYROLL50.
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 May and June: Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community QBO RECERT STUDY GROUP to pass our QBO ProAdvisor Recertification tests that are due on June 30. Join me on on Zoom Mondays at 11am EST. Zoom link (password: HUSTLE). This will replace our normal “co-working hours”. No cheating. Just accountability to get the tests completed.
📅 +May 16: Financial Cents Demo featuring New AI Tools. Come learn more about Financial Cents during a demo with founder Shahram Zarshenas. He will also be showing us the new AI features. You can RSVP here to get a reminder (no email required).
📅 May 16-18: QuickBooks Online Product Training and Certification Bootcamp. This 3-day free virtual conference will teach you about QBO products and help you prepare for the QuickBooks Online Certification or the QuickBooks Online Advanced Certification exam. Register HERE.
📅 May 16: Reconciling in QBO. This Royalwise class will show you how to reconcile properly in QBO, and you will learn how to trick out the interface to finish in seconds instead of hours. Learn more and sign up HERE.*
📅 June 13-15: Value Pricing Masterclass with Mark Wickersham. Get your free ticket HERE*.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Any other introverts out there? Go and share some tips with Aysia Marcum.
🌶️ Scammer alert! The absolute nerve! No, I have not partnered with them for a deal for this community. I don’t know this person at all! But the most concerning thing is that these tactics probably work or scammers wouldn’t do them. Please, reach out to me or just ask in the community if you ever want to confirm that you are buying something worthwhile. Any resourse, tool, app, course, marketing material, etc.
🌶️ Two posts about getting paid.
This one is about up front vs in arrears.
This one is about remainder of invoices for clean up work when you take a deposit.
Help You Hustle
💪 Kickstart your bookkeeping business in just 3 days with the Bookkeeping Biz Workshops* with The Ambitious Bookkeeper, Serena Shoup.
After those workshops, if you need more support, you can join her full Bookkeeping Business Accelerator program with my link* and use code KATE for 10% off.
💪 Do you need to learn more about how to price? Do you wonder how people charge those high prices you see tossed around social media sometimes? The Value Pricing Masterclass with pricing expert Mark Wickersham will teach you how to win clients for advisory, deliver a valuable service and charge a high price*. This is like a full blown mini-conference (virtual) over 3 days. For free!
💪 Have you applied to the scholarship to attend industry conferences from The Accounting Cornerstone Foundation to attend accounting conferences? Details in this 3 minute video.
💪 The voting is open for the TOP ProAdvisor. You get to select 3 people from the Top 100 list. No, voting won’t help you hustle, BUT if you are a QuickBooks person, this is your list of “These are the people I need to follow”. Some are active on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, webinars. How many are familiar to you? This is your unofficial mentor list right here. Don’t pester them. But think about how you can learn from them.
💪 QBO and App expert Seth David’s has opened his mastermind group up for a free trial for 30 days. Give it a whirl. No risk.
Jobs
💼 New jobs were added to the Jobs Guide - part time, tax specialist, and real estate experts!
💼Here is a loom video to tell you how to access the “Guides” in Facebook to see the job postings that have been added. People have been having trouble finding the list of jobs.
📌 Note: If you have added a job opportunity and notice that I did NOT add it to the “Guides”, please message me. I try to catch them all, but I’m sure I miss some.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 Anyone else feeling like things are getting crazy out there?
I trained one client for an hour. This is the 3rd time I have trained this client. They had microphone issues. I give all the details here in this thread. The issue is, they emailed me after the call saying they were unhappy with my service because they feel they didn’t get a full hour. But they didn’t request a refund. They requested an additional free hour of training. As you can see by the over 50 comments, there is no consensus on how to handle this! How would you have handled it? It is only $125 we are talking about, but I’m much more interested in the PRINCIPLE of the matter than the dollar figure.
You might recall from the last newsletter that a previous client who did not accept my proposal for ongoing bookkeeping came back a year later and asked me to do their books for 2022. Well, I did tell them the price was 12 x THE MONTHLY RATE I QUOTED LAST YEAR. They went radio silent. Then a couple of days ago they wrote back saying they had found someone else to do the catch up job (cheaper, I’m sure), but thought that person would get them 90% of the way there but that they liked my final report package from last year and wanted to know if I could “do the last 10%”? I politely declined.
🎢 New Business Update:
1 Freshbooks clean up and joining my monthly Office Hours 🎉 ($2,892)
3 new 2-hour training clients ($250 each)
2 additional paid hours from 2 former clients ($125 each)
🎢 I took a speaking course/cohort last year for women in our industry called The Theater Of Public Speaking. Highly Recommend. In that course, I wrote that one of my goals was to speak at my 2 alma maters. Well, I went to my 15 year reunion for grad school this past weekend and spoke on a panel about “Career Pivots”. Check. ✅
🎢 I just wrapped up my year teaching Bible Study Fellowship. I taught 5 year olds about the Old Testament prophets every Thursday morning for the last 9 months. Here is a picture of my co-leaders and the “scroll” we added to throughout the year. This position takes up 2 mornings a week, 9 months of the year. I can do this because I own my own business.
🎢 The grief train is moving, and I’m on board. 💔 Anyone have Bible verses or resources for young families who are uprooting? We are in the Navy, but some unique circumstances have caused us to live in the same house for 12 years. I’ve never lived anywhere for this long. In the last week I’ve already cried 3 times and I still have 3 weeks left of more goodbyes before we drive away to our next duty station (crap, my nose is burning just typing this). I feel like the dam is about to burst and the grief will just be so much for all 5 of us. I’m trusting that there are good things on the other side of this, but that doesn’t take away the hurt. I’m setting very low expectations for my business for the next couple of months.
From The Vault
⚡Watch this series I did with Financial Cents last summer. Learn how to build a high performing firm from Financial Cents Co-Founder, Shahram Zarshenas
Classifieds (Clickable)
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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.