The One With The Most Valuable Part Of My Business
The One With The Most Valuable Part Of My Business
TL;DR
Do you want to know what I find most valuable about my bookkeeping business.
Not having to count vacation days.
Do you have to worry about how many days you are taking off from work? Or maybe you have “Unlimited PTO” but a toxic workplace and don’t feel free to use that benefit?
When I finished b-school, I went to work for ExxonMobil. I had TEN vacation days and wouldn’t hit 15 days until I had worked there for 5 years. It was so sad (everything else about working there was amazing). Each of those ten days was so precious. I remember really being torn about the tradeoff of visiting my family or my new husband’s family on holidays versus getting to go on real vacations to interesting destinations.
No way I would have used one of those precious 10 days to PREP for a vacation.
But that is what I do now.
Not going to work the day before and the day after my family of 5 goes out of town is such a valuable part of being a self-employed bookkeeper.
That is when it hits me the hardest. The sheer amount of work involved in successfully pulling out of the driveway is overwhelming at times.
And we go out of town a lot.
My husband literally sets written goals of the number of times we will go camping each year. And guess what that means for me? Mama gets to go on 6 camping trips, too!
We also buy the Epic Ski Pass for military each year and get our cold tooshies and Craigslist ski gear out on the nearest patch of manmade snow in Pennsylvania at least 2 weekends a year, often more. It is 5 hours to get there and we only go for 2-3 nights. That is a whole lotta squeeze for not a lotta juice. But we’re making memories. 🤪
It practically takes a full day to get ready to go anywhere. Washing clothes. Folding clothes. Mounting the car topper. Prepping food to be cooked at a campground or on a hot plate in a hotel room. Arranging for the dog to be taken care of. Hopefully remembering to pack 5 toothbrushes.
And also trying to be forward thinking enough so that we are ready to peacefully resume life when we get back (do we have groceries for lunches, are clothes washed for school, who needs to work on a book report early?). Coming home to chaos kind of defeats the point of a getaway, right?
But I don’t have to worry about vacation days. I can just not work that hard on the day before and morning we plan to leave. And also on the day after we get home.
If you want this incalculable benefit of being able to have a more peaceful prepping and unpacking time for your family memory-making excursions, you can check out the upcoming Intro to Xero event. Many an accounting pro has built their entire practice on the Xero General Ledger.
Thanks to Xero for supporting this community!
Deals Deals Deals
💰 Scaling New Heights tickets will be on sale on Groundhog Day. It is $120 off if the critter sees his shadow and $100 off if he does (maybe vice versa). Not kidding. I appreciate the quirky marketing. Kinda my speed. It is ONLY on February 2nd. Set a calendar reminder to buy!
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.
📅 +January 23 and 30: Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community Co-working Hour. Join me on on Zoom every Monday at 11am EST and do some work. Zoom link (password: HUSTLE).
📅 +January 26: Course review of Booming Bookkeeping with Bill Von Fumetti*. If you are reading this newsletter, you’ve probably received an ad for his course. Come meet him live and see for yourself if his course is what it claims.
📅 February 1: Year-end Cleanup in QBO with Royalwise. Join Alicia Katz Pollock as she shows you the 10 steps you need to do to get your new clients’ books ready for their accountant to do their taxes. More info can be found HERE*.
📅 February 1: The QBO Book Club with Royalwise. This QBO Bootcamp course will help you gain a solid understanding of how QuickBooks software works. With easy-to-follow step-by-step guidance, Alicia will cover everything you need to quickly get up and running. Sign up HERE*.
📅 +February 15: Job Placement Tips- Finding the job you want in the accounting industry (Guest Roger Knecht from Universal Accounting*)
📅 February 16: Intro to Xero. Join Xero for a demo of the platform and learn if you want to start serving clients on Xero. Register HERE.
Featured Posts
🌶️ One of the things I love about the BSH Facebook group is the mastermind mentality and the willingness to share with one another. Laura Prater asked if anyone would be interested in her “One Sheet” that she uses for a quick reference for each client as she works on their books. The group went NUTS! Thanks Laura!
Help You Hustle
💪 Now I understand why everyone who uses QBO is freaking out about about the new free app called RightTool. Watch the replay of my interview about the hot new QBO extension with Hector Garcia and Mark Corum. I’ve even heard that folks are completely hiding the LEFT menu bar in QBO now and only navigating using RightTool (someone at HQ needs to rein in the devs working on the wild left menu in QBO, amiright?)
💪 If you live anywhere remotely near Denver, you are invited to a free party (and by party I mean day-time lunch/training/networking) at the Gusto Headquarters!
If you are thinking “no, Kate, this event is not for me, I’m too small or I’m not ready or I won’t fit in or the invite says the word TAX so that is my excuse not to go”, then you are the exact person who needs to go! GO! If I lived within 5 hours of Denver I’d wake up at 3am to get there. Don’t be scared off the the words “tax”. Gusto does outsourced payroll and Freshbooks is a GL. They are not tax software companies!
When you sign up, share it in the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Facebook Group and ask who else is going and you’ll have a friend.
💪 Do you have a headshot? You need one! It is one of th 99+ things you need to have on your hustle list. And now it is easy to get. There is a new AI tool called Snapbar that makes headshots and it is FREE while in Beta. NO EXCUSES. Thanks to Caitlyn Matalone for sharing this on LinkedIn.
💪 Do you want to know how much money a 2nd year CPA firm owner made in 2022? Logan Graf spills it in this tell-all video. This is only a single data point, but at least it is a real and honest data point.
On twitter I’ve seen two other firm owners tweet their financials, too. These are real professionals who do real accounting for real clients. You can see Jeremy’s and Vimal’s numbers here. Give them both a twitter follow for being so brave, please. I’d take a follow, too. 😎
For Fun
💀 The number of times I’ve said “scorps” in my head since reading this tweet is high.
Jobs
Search the names of these individuals inside the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Group. I deliberately make it require a bit of work to find the job listing to discourage non-serious applicants.
💼 Candace Gallifa shared that NewWay Accounting is hiring a remote accountant position.
💼 Jennifer Shrewsberry posted Just in Time Bookkeeping, LLC is are hiring two Jr Bookkeepers. One bookkeeping position will be dedicated to Real Estate clients and the other will be with the construction/service-based businesses.
💼 Beckie Rosenberg is looking for a part-time temp 1099 contractor to help through tax season.
💼 Andy Nichols has two businesses and is looking for a solid bookkeeper familiar with home service businesses.
💼 Becca Gamache-Sutter is in search of a bookkeeper for a small construction business.
💼 Anthony Kam posted a NYC full-time, hybrid accounting position for Storebound. Be sure to read his post carefully - he can help get your app in front of HR.
💼 Amber Esquibel shared Moose Creek Bookkeeping’s job post for an experienced bookkeeper.
💼 Kirstyn Seward with Seward accounting is looking to fill a remote bookkeeping position.
💼 Do you live in Phoenix? Samantha Myres has an acquaintance looking for an in-person bookkeeper.
💼 Nathan Hirsch, founder of EcomBalance, is looking for a part-time US Catch Up and Clean Up Bookkeeper to help with client Catch Up and Clean Up projects.
💼 Jeremy Toler is looking for help to get his clents tax ready.
💼 Liat Dayan is looking for a Jr. Accountant/Bookkeeper for a small CPA firm.
💼 UK based Jemima Mari Seddon is wanting to sub-out some bookkeeping work. So if you are in the UK reach out.
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
Kate Builds In Public
🎢 I’ve had 3 recent inquiries about my Accountable Plan template (that I bought from Josh Standley to resell based on this interview explaining how to use his template). All of these inquiries came because of a short demo video I created about accountable plans on my actual bookkeeping business YouTube channel. But when I reply to them with the link to purchase, I get crickets. 🦗 Anyone successfully selling Accountable Plan templates? I’m pricing mine at $149. Too rich? I really want some “products” I can sell so I’m not only making money via direct client work. Teach me, oh wise ones!
🎢 I signed up 1 new member of my FreshBooks Office Hours. Hooray! Selling this is still my number 1 goal for 2023. Another one of my office hours members bought an additional hour of my time. Love it when a plan comes together.
🎢 I secured 2 new 1-on-1 training clients. A new training engagment with me is $250 for 2 one-hour sessions.
Interesting note: One of those new training clients is deaf. I admit that I was pretty trepedatious about how we would successfully communitcate over zoom. But she was able to speak audibly where I could understand her points. And then she was able to read my lips to understand me, and we used chat to clarify when something that either of us said wasn’t clear. BUT, Zoom Annotation settings was the real savior. I was able to put red boxes on her screen, just like I told y’all about in my recent video about how I use Zoom. You MUST watch this 6 min video if you do zoom screen shares with clients.
Additional interesting note: I’ve always thought targeting deaf entreprenuers could be a pretty good bookkeeping niche because I bet the referrals would be very strong. Who is going to run with that idea?
🎢 Vent session: If there is ever a time I think about getting off this bookkeeping business roller coaster, it is 1099 season. I think our entire industry looks like FOOLS. It is all such a crock. There is the current disaster with QBO wholesale billing clients not being able to issue their 1099s from inside QBO. No one knows what “payment processor” really means. There is conflicting advice online even from long-time industry experts. Let’s just be honest. Ain’t no business with any sizable operation that has their 1099s 100% accurate. I haven’t formally said this to any client, but I feel like someone just needs to say the following advice to business owners:
The best advice is to just be an honest business owner who isn’t trying to do sketchy things like avoiding claiming income or hiring people as contractors when they should be employees. The laws for 1099s were put in place because of fraudsters. Don’t try to lie on your tax return and commit fraud.
Make sure you try your best to issue 1099s correctly and document the efforts you took.
Make sure that your “contract labor” box on your tax return is as low as it can reasonably be without being unethical so you don’t trigger any computerized/automated IRS red flags.
Make sure you have MORE income than the total of the 1099s YOU get so you don’t trigger red flags on the income side of things.
No, no one knows for sure what all the different payment processors are going to report and yes, there will be some processors that don’t do it right because the guidance is clear as mud.
My “give a care” button just doesn’t seem to turn on about this. Perhaps that makes me a bad bookkeeper. I’m mostly going to try to avoid having to be in the weeds of 1099 issuances. I issue less than 10 total each year for clients. I’d love to have a successful bookkeeping business where I don’t have large volumes of 1099s be my recurring January problem. It is possible. I’m copying the people in accounting land that I see NOT on the 1099 struggle bus every January.
And if you are deep in 1099 despair, at least charge a TON for it next year.
From The Vault
⚡I added the RightTool Demo video to the full Resource Rundown playlist on the YouTube channel. There are lots of educational demos and resources on that playlist. Go check it out.
Letters To The Editor
✉ Hey there!! Just writing to say I love this newsletter! I receive so many from various mentors, educators, etc. and I can honestly say yours is one of the few that I actually read top to bottom. It's the best. Thank you! ~Jen F.
Thanks, Jen. This feedback keeps me going!
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Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
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