The One With Even More Help
TL;DR
I am on a mission to elevate the bookkeeping profession.
I truly believe this is an important and serious job. And I think good bookkeepers should make a very handsome living for the value they provide.
And I also think it is a really hard job.
Deceptively hard. I don’t know why so many folks just think they can purchase a subscription to a bookkeeping software and maybe watch some YouTube videos and do something that I think takes an enormous amount of training and study to be proficient in.
Even people who might have studied accounting in college don’t know where to click inside a bookkeeping software.
But at least those folks (hopefully) know their Debits and Credits and what Retained Earnings is (etc).
But then there are the people doing bookkeeping who don’t even know the accounting fundamentals, yet they are responsible for doing the bookkeeping for a client.
Those folks are going to quickly find themselves in the miserable position of knowing that they don’t know what they are doing.
However, you need not despair!
If you find yourself in that miserable position (I’ve been there and can still be found there), but are serious about your business and serious about this profession and you are willing to work really hard to learn the technical skills you need and you want to build a business that will last long into the future, I want to help you get over your roadblock.
I want smart, hard working people (not the lazy ignoramuses) to get the help they need.
So I put together a 4-person panel last week about how to work with a bookkeeping mentor to get the technical help you need.
I honestly think everyone should listen to this interview because I think every bookkeeping entrepreneur is going to need technical help at some point. But y’all know how I hate overselling, so I’ll just share the list of questions I asked them and let you decide if it is worth 30 minutes of your time.
Here is what I asked the panelists:
How does someone know when it is time to work with a bookkeeping mentor or coach? It seems expensive.
How would someone determine what kind of mentor they need to work with? There are a lot of different flavors of mentoring and troubleshooting, so how can someone know what services they are best suited for?
How does someone best prepare to work with a mentor? Say you’ve found the person you want to hire and your appointment is approaching. What do you do ahead of time to get the most out of it?
How does someone know when their work with a mentor is done?
I want each of you to share the name of 2 other people who offer a mentoring service and what kind of service they provide.
In the description of the video, you are going to find a link to a Google Sheet with the contact info for the 4 panelists (including our sponsor Pachira Business Solutions!) and other technical mentors. But go listen to the video first.
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Scroll down to the classified ads - check out the deal from MediaBooks?
💰 There is STILL TIME to get your BOGO tickets to the one-day Xero Roadshows this summer in Austin, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. Get all the details HERE. Comment on this newsletter if you plan on attending (and who you are giving your extra ticket to).
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.
📅 Co-working Mondays @ 11:00 EST: No coworking this Monday because I’ll be at Scaling New Heights. 💃
📅 July 6: The Roadmap to Solid Books Part Two with Mariette Martinez will cover building solid books, making confident business decisions, and managing your business's finances and cash flow year-round!. Register HERE. This webinar is free, but if you ever end up purchasing any of her material, you can ask me for an affiliate link, FYI.
Featured Posts
🌶️ Health insurance is always one of the biggest hurdles to full-time entrepreneurship. Here is one recent post about it and here is another. How are you handling it?
🌶️ Don’t be shady. Clients may ask you to do unethical things…JUST SAY NO! Never lie.
🌶️ It is not a matter of IF, but WHEN you will encounter accounting for deposits from a POS or eCommerce system that were sold in December but aren’t deposited until January. You need to know how to handle this.
🌶️ Somewhat spicy post from an 20 year CPA asking for advice about whether or not doing part-time bookkeeping is worth it (like financially worth it) if you are really just wanting to keep it as a side hustle and not build it into a full-fledged business. Real talk in the comments.
🌶️ Are you a business owner but still have an employee mindset? That doesn’t work out well.
🌶️ Alicia B asks is she should finish her formal degree in accounting if she has found a job that will give her the hands on training she needs. Yes/No?
Help You Hustle
💪 Did you scroll past reading my opening segment of this edition of the newletter? 🤨 Well, if you did, you missed my explanation about why you should watch THIS VIDEO about working with a technical bookkeeping mentor/troubleshooter? Some great advice was shared by some amazing bookkeeping mentors. Plus, you can access the Bookkeeping Mentor Database (keep checking it as it gets updated!).
💪 Intuit is accepting applications for their Partner Council. You, yes YOU, should apply (assuming you use QuickBooks products). Also, my hunch is that the vast majority of people on the council apply more than one time before they get in. So go ahead and put your whole heart into your application knowing that you will probably not get selected this year. But take your L so you can get your W in a few years.
💪 If you haven’t recertified for your QBO ProAdvisor test, you only have 6 more days! Better get on it. I did my Advanced Recert with this resource from Margie Remmers-Davis.* And learned a lot, too.
For Fun
💀 How do you store your passwords? This made me chuckle.
Jobs
💼 New jobs were added to the Job Guide. Everything from a Course Developer (with Margie Remmers-Davis), to a QBO bookkeeper, to a part-time bookkeeping assistant.
💼 If you have posted a job - be sure to comment when you have hired or take the post down - that helps keep the guide up to date.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 After much investigation, I finally bit the bullet and paid a small fortune for a Netgear Nighthawk Hotspot to finally get internet out at my parent’s property in south Texas (where I’m living for the summer). I picked that one because I actually borrowed one from a “neighbor” to see if it would work at this house. It has been a pretty fast and reliable solution, and I’ve even been able to do a few zoom calls and only had tech/bandwidth problems on one of them. (I have no idea why it worked most of the time and not that one time). If anyone wants to be a digital nomad, the Nighthawk might be the way to go. As I swiped my debit card, it helped that I could say “at least it’s a business expense.”
🎢 QuickBooks Connect (giant accounting conference/party for ProAdvisors in November) is accepting applications for presenters. The compensation package is quite generous. I submitted 2 solo presentations and Mariette Martinez asked if I would be a panelist on a topic she is submitting. Shooting my shot, y’all! The proposal length is very short, so I’ll share the text of the 2 that I turned in. I have no idea if these are good enough to get selected, but can you do better than my proposals? Go beat me and get selected and share all your valuable knowledge with your peers (and basically get a free vacation to Las Vegas while you’re at it). Deadline is June 30.
My submissions:
💡 Passive(ish) Income For Accounting Pros
Once you get a taste of scalable, passive income, you will start to see opportunities everywhere. In this session, you will identify a host of opportunities within 3 broad categories for you to increase your firm's revenue without increasing the mouse clicks inside client accounting files.
Monetize activities you are already doing in your firm (templates, ebooks, small niche apps you can build on your own, monetize a video library on YouTube)
Identify partners where you can resell their products/services/apps
Develop service lines where you can sell "one-to-many"
💡 Let’s Hit Record: Why and How to Leverage Video in Your Business
The data about using video in your business is clear (I'll share some stats in the session if you don't believe me). Using video is no longer optional for modern firms. Thankfully, using video has never been more accessible for even reluctant accounting pros. In this session, we will simplify the process of using video in your firm:
Familiarize yourself with the 2 skills needed to make videos
Identify the 3 categories of videos that ProAdvisors can/should be making
Curate a list of the technical equipment needed
Leap ahead in your video journey by learning from common mistakes.
🎢 I am still mentally struggling with my lack of routine and not understanding how to work when I have my family around me all day. I’m not really able to do the kind of strategic work that I’d like to do or the difficult bookkeeping projects that are more lucrative even though I do have prospects wanting FreshBooks clean ups done. The thing that does seem to work for me is to have scheduled MEETINGS. If I have my headset on and can close myself in a room, my people understand that I’m working. So I’m just trying to focus on more of those and to make sure that they are paid. If something is on my calendar, that is clear work that I need to be doing. Yes, it is trading time for money, but it is what I’m capable of right now and makes me happy.
To illustrate my lack of routine, I’ll share what I’ve done in the last 2 weeks:
Hosted my young niece and nephew for a few days.
Driven 3.5 hours to go with my dad to two doctor’s appointments.
Spent a long Father’s day weekend at my dad’s house with both of my sisters and our families (all of us have not been together in over 2 years).
Took my kids to a museum in San Antonio with my mom.
Read over half of Lord of the Rings aloud (hoping to get through all 3 before school starts).
Though from a business persepective I feel like I’m not accomplishing much, my life is full of blessings.
🎢 I did put up this little pool this week and the kids have spent a lot of time in there. Hoping this will buy me some time for the rest of the summer.
From The Vault
⚡ Since I’m leaving for Scaling New Heights tomorrow, here is my video documentation of SNH2021. Can’t wait to see some of y’all there.
Classifieds (Clickable)
Want to have an ad in the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Pub? Click HERE for more info.
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.