Behind The Hustle: Jordan Weinstein
The name of my bookkeeping firm is Heritage Business Services.
Not sure how many of you readers know that.
It is a pretty uninspiring name.
And it is truly a terrible domain name because it is miles long and has THREE “s” letters in a row. 10 of 10 do NOT recommend that!
I don’t have the energy or the “give-a-care” to change it at this point. My business is doing as fine as I want it to do for now.
But there is one main reason I ended up with that name.
I could not stomach the idea of building a business with the word “bookkeeping” in the title.
I was allergic to that word.
I’m not necessarily proud of that. I’m not saying it is the right decision. I’m just admitting the facts.
And let’s be very clear. Whether I like the word or not, I certainly am a bookkeeper.
Why do I tell you this? Well, my hunch is that some of you reading this are interested in building a business that utilizes your existing skills. Which likely includes bookkeeping skills. But, like me, you also might not feel super jazzed about building a “bookkeeping business”. You might want to also use tax, finance, forecasting, budgeting, advising skills.
Some of you might also be completely comfortable with the word bookkeeper, but you look at the scope of work that you do and realize you do so many things for clients that fall outside the scope of what bookkeeping means.
If you fall into either category, The CFO Project is inviting you all to a free session to learn how bookkeeping practice owners can increase their sales through CFO Advisory Services. You need a different approach and skills if you are going to sell yourself as a fractional CFO. This webinar will explain the way to sell a high-ticket service in addition to (or in lieu of) your bookkeeping service. Sign up today, before Thanksgiving makes you forget. 🦃
Lots of these (*) are referral links. I always say that quiet part out loud.
💰 Marketing Academy for Bookkeepers and Accountants* - 30% off enrollment with BSH30 ends midnight 11/28.
💰 The CFO Project* - Inquire now to access The CFO Project’s Black Friday special pricing and flexible payment plans to level up your advisory services and transform your bookkeeping practice.
💰 Bookkeeper Launch* - 50% off with code gobbleup6. Active already.
💰 The Ambitious Bookkeeper Accelerator * - 20% all courses from Serena Shoup. From Nov 28-Dec 2. Browse now.
💰 Akadian Accounting*- $300 off all the Fast & Easy QBO Companion Courses. Code November300. Active already.
💰 Royalwise* - Courses run by the QBO Queen Alicia Katz Pollock. 50% off individual QBO courses with lifetime access (code Blackfri2025). 15% off memberships (CYBERCOM15).
💰 5 Minute Bookkeeping* - Courses from Veronica Wasek. Known for her bite-sized teaching. Browse now. Use code 5mbbf25a.
💰 TB4A Sarcastic Accounting Shirts* - Use code GIFTS and treat yourself. I love my “Your Email Finds Me Unwell” t-shirt.
💰 App Sumo* - A marketplace where new apps sell themselves for very cheap. Think meeting apps, project management apps, video apps. I see lifetime stock photos for $39.
💰 GrowCon - Conference in May 2026. $300 off with code BKPRS (not my discount code).
💰 Scaling New Heights - They ALWAYS have a huge sale for this conference on Cyber Monday only. Set a calendar reminder. I’m going to be at this one.
💰 Financial Cents - use code WorkflowCon2025 for a discount on their Team or Scale plan.
💰 The Firm Foundation Community - Use code BKSH45 for 45% off joining that community for building your firm.
💰 Automation Edge HQ - Jay Kimmelman is helping accounting pros build accounting automations that actually work. $37 lifetime for founding members.
💰 My Nerdy T-Account Mousepad - 15% off with code Friday. Treat yourself. Put it in your Christmas stocking. Through the end of the month. You know you want one.
Please always send me any news of deals that you hear of that others might benefit from.
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.
📅 November 24: The AI Advisory Advantage workshop*. Hosted by The Worklow Queen, Alyssa Lang, which means it will be about using AI in a systematic way. She is a mega systems and processes nerd. Replay available for those who can’t make it live.
📅 December 1: 2025 AI Notetaker Wins RoundTable. I saw a post on LinkedIn that my friend Erin Pohan is hosting a casual zoom chat about using AI notetakers. Free. Looks like there are 9 spots left.
📅+December 3: Behind The Hustle: Nicole Beitenman. Nicole is joining me to share her story and how she built her career. My hopes in doing these, is that you will find a story that clicks with you - inspires you to keep going. See all the interviews HERE and subscribe to stay in the know!
📅 December 4: Make 2026 Your Best Sales Year Ever. Learn how to dramatically increase your sales this year through CFO Advisory services. The CFO Project will show you how to increase your bookkeeping practices’ revenue by adding high-ticket CFO Advisory services so that you can have the best sales year ever. Register for this FREE training HERE.
📅 December 4: Growing Your Firm Summit. Learn how top firm leaders, owners and partners are building more resilient, profitable, and client driven firms in 2025 and beyond. One day. Virtual. Register HERE.
📅 December 11: Velocity Annual Planning Retreat* If you’re a bookkeeper or accountant who needs a strategic plan for 2026, consider this your official invite to Velocity, Justine Lackey’s half-day (FREE!) virtual planning retreat. You will leave feeling grounded and organized and gain real momentum. Register for Velocity today.
Subscribe to the YouTube Channel
🌶️Carina M. asked to see your home offices and yall did not disappoint!
💪 This is interview #10 in the Behind The Hustle series. Golly, I think this entire series is probably the best idea I’ve had in 2025. Jordan Weinstein was wise beyond his years. Pretty impressive to hear all of what he had to say, but the main thing that stuck out to me was when he talked about the conditions where he thinks scope creep with a client is OK. I am going to be thinking about that for a long time.
💪 The Bookkeeping Side Hustle Guidebook has been updated. This is my magnum opus about my thoughts about how to get started as a bookkeeping entrepreneur. It is an eBook, so I could make it free, but it is better that I charge a small sum because those who purchase it take it more seriously and if they download it for free. You can use code STACK to get it for 50% off. For those who are new. Or those who are stuck and need a reboot. You could also buy a copy for a friend.
🎧 Alex Roman interviewed me on this Humans in Accounting podcast. I am a verified human (In this day and age you can’t be too sure). And I talk about running my firm and my favorite food.
💼 Two new jobs were added to the Job Guide. Be sure to check it out - one is a job for a biz that niches in vets - where are the pet lovers?
Don’t forget the standing opps on my Find A Freelance Job article. 1099 and W-2 opps.
🎪Traveling for the holidays
If you or anyone you love is traveling by car for the holidays and want to keep your car mostly screen-free, this story might help.
Because we have lived very far away from our families, we had to do very long drives with our kids from an early age.
Like I am talking Virginia Beach to south Texas, which is 24 driving hours. An absolute eternity. We did that round trip drive at least 6 times in my children’s lives. Lord, have mercy.
Here was one of my most successful survival tactics…
The day before we had to leave, I would grab my giant blue Ikea shopping bag (you know the ones), and take my children to the library. I’d tell my kids to fill it to overflowing. I think the policy was that we could get 100 books total. That might have been on 2 library cards.
They would grab every “I Spy” and “Fancy Nancy” and “Pete the Cat” book available. I also tried to direct them to the thick National Geographic and DK science books and the Guinness World Records kid books, too, simply because they were large and long with lots of pictures.
So many books.
Mind you, they could not read. But they had already been taught to enjoy books.
They would just flip through them over and over and pass them around (It helps that my 3 kids are all less than 3 years apart so it was easier to share).
By the evenings, the car was EXPLODED with books surrounding their car seats.
I always packed half of our haul away up in our car topper so that they had completely new reads on the return trip.
Pro tip: Do not let the car books go inside the house of the people you visit. Too hard to keep up with.
When we invariably all started to get miserable, I’d just remind them that the families who were a part of the Oregon Trail had much more boring and uncomfortable travel conditions. Dr. Suess hadn’t even been born yet and Sour Patch Kids candy had not even been invented.
My 2013 SUV does not have a TV screen (on purpose), so once it was dark, we did let the kids watch a movie on my laptop after our dinner stop as a reward for being good travelers. Helped us get about another 2 hours of driving in the dark.
Two other quick hacks for long drives:
We had a “no talking” policy before the sun came up. My thought was that it might help people fall back to sleep when we would start driving at 5:00am. But the other thought is that, though I do love my people, I do not want to hear their questions, stories, requests, disagreements, and complaints for 2 days straight. You just hold your index finger up to your mouth and whisper “not yet” when someone forgets and tries to talk.
My other great travel hack was that I prepared snack bags ahead of time to be distributed at certain time intervals. I would distribute a paper lunch sack with a variety of identical contents two times a day (mid-morning and mid-afternoon). And everyone was master over their own snack destiny at that point. Trade. Hoard. Savor. Binge. But you get what you get. And don’t ask for more.
🎢 I am back to the drawing board on hiring for my open Digital Operations Assistant role.
I have interviewed 6 people. I even brought in 1 in for a demo day last week. I thought it was going to work out and told her I was interested in offering her a job if we could figure out how to get our schedules to align for an in-person time each week (I insist this role be hybrid). But on Thursday she just picked her classes for her next semester of school and let me know that her course schedule for her schooling next year was not going to allow us to have that in-person time together.
Still unsure of my next steps.
Keep hustling!
Kate
-Chief Hustler-
Get your copy of The Bookkeeping Side Hustle Guidebook: Actionable Steps To Becoming A Virtual Bookkeeping Without The Overwhelm
Easy and FREE ways to support Bookkeeping Side Hustle
Follow @BookkeepingSide on Twitter
*I am down right rabid about transparency and full disclosure. If a link, including Amazon Links, 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.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.