The One With Deliberate Discomfort
TL;DR
Do you ever deliberately make yourself experience discomfort? (Read down to “Kate Gets Personal” to learn about my recent intentional discomfort).
My life is very comfortable. My children’s lives even more so.
American culture seems pretty focused on removing all struggle. We can have anything at our doorstep with Amazon Prime or Door Dash. We don’t even have to go to the grocery store anymore. Shoot, with seat heaters in cars, we don’t even have to be cold anymore.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve used all of those resources. My Amazon spending is high and my tushie is warm in the car in the winter. But I’m not convinced they are only positive influences in my life.
I think there is a hidden downside to striving for lives of ease. For removing all struggle.
Sure, I want to use the resources available to me. But I also want to be confident that I won’t melt into a puddle of helplessness or bitterness if I ever found myself without all those things that modern society has given me to make life a breeze.
Because as I look back on my life, I know that most of my accomplishments and breakthroughs have come when I was not comfortable. When I was doing something that stretched me. When I deliberately stepped into a struggle to test my mettle.
When we pick up the more challenging book instead of the popular candy-books that we know we will be a breeze.
When we edit that school admissions essay one more time, knowing it could be better.
When we don’t give in to toddler demands and take the harder route of parenting through the tantrum.
When we practice a musical instrument or shoot more free throws.
When we passed that really hard accounting exam.
When we obtained that tough certification.
When we sent that email to the dream client.
And many times, those things that were once a challenge eventually become status quo. They are no longer difficult, and we get to move on to seek the glorious benefits on the other side of the next purposeful struggle.
What purposeful struggle can you choose for yourself today, in your career or your personal life?
You know what is a classic example of a purposeful struggle? Bootcamps!
Pricing is hard, but there skills and methods to get better at it. And Mark Wickersham is hosting a free Bootcamp all about pricing your bookkeeping services.
It will be a practical training so you can get better paid for your hard work. We do want our struggles to have positive payoffs at the end, after all!
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Short on deals this week, but I’m such a sucker for this section that I’ve got to populate this section somehow. So prize drawing it is! 👇
FreshBooks just released a major initiative and certification targeted at our industry. They are calling it “Collaborative Accounting”. You can learn more here. BUT, the important “DEAL” to note is that if you get certified before Oct 31, you have a shot at a large travel package worth $4,500.
I mean, be smart about this. Don’t take the time to get this cert just for the entry in the drawing. BUT, if you know you need this certification anyway, get it before Oct 31!
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.
📅 +Oct 26: Fowardly Demo. Learn more about Fowardly, a real-time payments solution for small businesses. RSVP HERE to learn how this payment processing software works (no email required). And as always, if you can’t make it live, you can watch the replay HERE.
📅 Oct. 24-25: Workflowcon. This virtual conference will help you streamline and maximize your accounting workflows to get work done. Oh, and it is FREE! Register HERE.
📅 Oct. 26: Profitable Bookkeeping Bootcamp. Mark Wickersham FCA and Teresa Slack will be showing you the precise and practical steps you need to get higher prices for bookkeeping work. Sign up HERE.
📅 Oct 31 - Nov 2: Accounting Salon Speaker Series. This is a CPE-qualified series that will focus on important practice management topics. Check out this thread in the FB group and comment which sessions you want to attend! The entire series is free, but you must register for each session individually.
10/31: Content Creation for Accountants with Lorilyn Wilson
10/31: Using ChatGPT in Your Firm with Brian Clare and Heather Smith
11/1: Empowering Your Clients to Trust Technology with Tate Henshaw
11/1: Growing Intentionally - A 4-Step Approach to Unlocking Sustainable Growth with Keila Hill-Trawick
11/2: Unlocking Accounting Mysteries to Empower Your Clients with Twyla Verhelst
11/2: Disengaging with Grace and Ease with Sherrell Martin
Featured Posts
🌶️ Kassy L. is interested in starting her own bookkeeping biz, but is wondering if anyone else is noticing that more and more people are wanting to do the same. Have you seen an uptick in folks wanting to start their own bookkeeping business? It is important to consider the competitive landscape. This is line of work is tough, people! Don’t be tricked into thinking this is easy money.
🌶️ Gary S. asked what type of insurance you have for your biz and there was some good insight. Be sure to check it out!
Help You Hustle
💪 If you want a practical breakdown of how to get started offering Client Advisory Services, check out my chat with Luke Templin. I appreciated how simple he presents it. All I hear about is “Advisory, Advisory, Advisory”. But what the heck IS it? I think you’ll appreciate the “Simple Numbers” framework he explained (borrowed from Greg Crabtree). Make sure to connect with Luke and all his resources here.
💪 Relay has launched the Reasons To Be Profitable Contest. They are awarding $100,000 in cash prizes to entrepreneurs—including a Grand Prize of $50,000. 🏆 Learn more about the contest and enter HERE. Enter your own business or tell your clients to enter theirs. The deadline to enter is November 12 - so get to work!
Jobs
💼 LOTS of part time, contract work in the Job Guide! People are wanting help to close out the year, so if you are wanting some experience, these could be the right jobs for you. Check out the guide and start making connections.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 YouTube Update (The Good 🎉 and The Bad 🙈 )
🎉 So, I hit a milestone on my tiny client-facing YouTube Channel (mostly of FreshBooks tutorials). I reached 1,000 subscribers! Celebrate with me! See, there are 2 things you have to do to get “monetized” on YouTube. You have to 1) have 1,000 subs, and 2) have 4,000 hours of Watch Time in a 12 month period. I’m only about 70% of the way there with my Watch Time, though. It is hard to hit when my quick tutorial videos are short. I have some ideas for how to get the Watch Time with a few focal videos that are longer and with broader topics. Here are some of the titles I’m thinking of (names need work):
My 10 Favorite Buttons In FreshBooks
1099 Deep Dive: How to send 1099s to contractors (FreshBooks Style)
FreshBooks Weekly Bookkeeping Checklist (2024 Update)
Prepare for year end (FreshBooks Style)
How to collaborate with your accountant in FreshBooks
So your tax pro says you should become an S-corp (you probably shouldn’t)…
Top 5 tips for creating invoices in FreshBooks
Bank Reconciliation in FreshBooks (The Right Way…)
FreshBooks Receipt Management: Tips and Tricks
Pro Tip: If you would copy these titles and make videos ☝ for any other General Ledger software that is not QuickBooks (Xero, Zoho, Odoo, Sage, Wave, Accounting Suite, etc), you’d have inbound prospect inquiries for days.
🙈 Confession: In this goal setting newsletter edition from early January, I shared with you that one of my goals was to publish 52 FreshBooks videos in 2023. Well, I haven’t published a video since May! Whomp, whomp, whomp. I only made it 5 months of keeping that particular goal for the year. Buuuuutttt…I’ve published 2 videos in the last 2 weeks! To be clear, these videos have very low production value. But I had to get back on the horse.
I’ll tell you how I got these videos published. I had to answer 2 different questions for clients. I recorded short Loom videos to answer them, but I made sure that the way that I spoke in the video was generic. Then, one day last week, I washed my hair and put on some mascara and turned on some decent lighting and recorded quick 20 second intros and outros for both of those videos, and slapped those on as bookends to the not-pretty Loom videos.
I’m really hoping that I am going to have some momentum again for this channel. Feel free to hold me accountable 🙏.
🎢 I just created a private Facebook group called FreshBooks Experts Hub. It is just for accounting pros who are serving businesses using FreshBooks for their bookkeeping. When you have a question about FreshBooks, you are welcome to ask it in that group.
I have not been shy about saying that my entire plan to niche in FreshBooks software was to “become the Hector Garcia of FreshBooks”. So, creating a group like this has always been part of the plan. Since FreshBooks had their big release targeting accounting pros, I have been seeing a lot of questions pop up. I’m in a position to answer them. Now I must answer and demonstrate my expertise that I’ve been working hard to build.
🎢 My children had a week off for Fall Break. We went to New Mexico to visit my in-laws, but took one night out backpacking in the national forest. We were up at 12,000 feet at below freezing temps overnight. It was not comfortable! But we are glad we did it!
Here is the highlight that I want to share that would not have been possible without the pain.
As we were approaching our destination, I was really struggling. Both of my boys and husband were much better at hiking than me. When we had about a half mile to go, they forged ahead to scout the campsites and start to set up (my daughter stayed to walk with me to be my trail buddy). But my 12 year old son doubled-back to come help me finish and carry my pack for me. Sure, I could have finished the hike all on my own, but I was certainly glad for the relief from carrying that pack. I got to tell my 12 year son he was my hero. And I meant it.
Talk about a glorious payoff after a struggle.
From The Vault
⚡ Now is the time of year to be reaching out your local VITA site to get signed up to be a volunteer tax preparer for the IRS. You’ll learn about taxes and truly serve your neighbors. Learn all about here. Who is going to do this?!? Chime in below.
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Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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