Reading · The Bookkeeping Side Hustle Pub

This page did not load. You can still read it on the original site — the toolbar below keeps your place in the directory.

TL;DR

Behind The Hustle: Valerie Armstrong

This happens to me about every 12 months or so.

I start to panic that my business will run out of money and will fail.

I even asked my mastermind gals at our latest meeting “Didn’t I talk about this very same worry last year? And ask y’all to hold me accountable to cut costs?”

And they said something like “Yes, Kate. Yes you did. And you’ll notice that you are still in business.”

This feeling usually coincides with summer months.

Because my firm’s income usually drops in the summer.

Shoot I remember 3 years ago when the Navy relocated us to Texas and I had to spend 3 months living in my parents’ house way out in the country where there was barely even reliable hotspot internet. That summer, my main goal was just to maintain the business. No extra projects. No growth.

So down in the “Kate Builds In Public” section I’ll tell you specifically how I’ve reduced some costs recently.

And as long as I don’t do anything crazy, I guess this fear is a healthy way to ensure that I keep my expenses in check.

But I do have to constantly fight to not let my feelings rule the day. I have to remember the facts.

I have been in business for over 7 years.
I have a strong cash balance.
A good chunk of my income comes from 1-on-1 training of FreshBooks users, and so if I am blocking off times in my calendar where I won’t be doing that service, of course I’m going to make less money. And I’m blocking off many days! For instance in June I am taking a full week off to go to an accounting conference and the week after that I’m coaching a softball camp! I am smart enough to understand that math!
The clients I seek out are the types of business owners who are also probably working less in the summer, so of course it will feel like my sales/networking pipeline is a bit dry at this time of year.
I certainly have to still exert effort/brain power to earn a living (I reject the idea that most normal people will be able to earn income without having to exert some effort…those are internet lies!), but I do still receive some money when I do not work. My business is not entirely “No Work, No Money”. I am proud of that.

Sticking to the facts does help me not be as worried. Helps me not to quit.

Does anyone else go through this panic? Please tell me I’m not alone! 🙂 Comment below on Substack and share your roller coaster of emotions with the rest of us.

Before you scroll on, please check out our sponsor Clean Books.

Many, many, many of you are looking for excellent, powerful, affordable bookkeeping software options for your clients with hands-on support for you. Is Clean Books what you are looking for? Clean Books would love to hear from you if you have any questions.

Deals Deals Deals

💰 Price is going up on soon on the QuickBooks Online Complete Hands-On Training*. This course is for you if you know you learn best with structured class schedule over 12 weeks.

💰 You can get $600 off the Tax Ready Books course* with code Hustle600

💰 Get a discount for the QBO Recertification courses (Level 1 and Level 2)* with code Hustle15. Use this if you get desperate to pass by June 30 and the free study materials from Intuit aren’t enough.

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.

📅 June 9, and 11: Building a Modern Accounting Practice with Xero. Y’all, Xero is having 3 FREE gatherings this summer. Get yourself to one!

June 9 | Denver
June 11 | Dallas

📅+June 18: Behind The Hustle: Zach Johnson. Subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don’t miss it.

📅 June 30: QuickBooks ProAdvisor Level 1 and Level 2 recertification deadline. Here are two resources to help you pass those exams quickly.

Alicia Katz Pollock and Matthew Fulton breaking it down on YouTube.
QBO Recertification Made Simple* from Akadian (reach out if you want our community’s evergreen discount code for Akadian courses)

📅 July 21 - Oct 8: QuickBooks Online Complete Hands-on Training*. Over 12 weeks, you’ll build real QuickBooks Online company files step by step, using practical case studies that mirror the daily work bookkeepers and business owners actually do.

Subscribe to the YouTube Channel

Featured Posts

🌶️ Irina J. was looking for advice from those of you who work while you have kids home during the summer. The community showed up in the comments to share how they make summer work in their families! Gold mine!

🌶️ Nicole B. asked if she should you use the word “Bookkeeping” in her business name when she does a rebrand? Whoooo boy did I wrestle with those same thoughts.

🌶️ Homeschooling parents (mostly moms, let’s be honest) came into the comments when Brandy B. asked for stories of how they are able to succeed at business and homeschooling at the same time.

Help You Hustle

💪 The latest Behind The Hustle interview with Valerie Armstrong was unlike any of the ones before it. She has no monthly bookkeeping clients. She only does cleanup projects. And most of her business comes from peers in the accounting industry, not from the businesses that need the cleanups. There are so many ways to make money as a bookkeeper if you are smart and hard working, y’all! I love it!

She was a little skittish about sharing her income figures, but I was able to pry some numbers out of her in our last question that I always ask every guest about how much money they are making. 🧐

💪 Please take the State of Virtual Bookkeeping Industry Survey so we can all better understand our industry based on real data. Deadline to complete is June 15.

Thanks for reading The Bookkeeping Side Hustle Pub! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Jobs

💼 FIVE jobs were added to the Job Guide.

If you are hiring, please feel free to post your job description so we can share it here in this list.

My Family Circus (44F, 40M, 14M, 12F, 12M)

🎪 Empowering kids to speak up

One of the ways that I was able to give my tiny children practice advocating for themselves and practicing talking to safe strangers was a little trick related to the kids’ meals at Chick-Fil-A.

I was reminded of this trick when a great bookkeeping friend named Nicole Beitenman mentioned on LinkedIn how she is already putting her 3 year twins through the really tough task of looking a human in the eye and projecting their squeaky voices loudly enough to order for themselves at restaurants. And someone had chimed in on the comments that one of her children was extremely shy and would rather starve than order for herself at a restaurant.

So I shared the little trick that came to mind in a comment to that responder that I thought could help her sweet, shy little one start getting a little practice pushing through the shyness.

At Chick-Fil-A, you can exchange the toy that comes with the kids’ meal for an ice cream dessert.

When I started to require that my own children did this, they weren’t able to go through all the motions from start to finish immediately. They were scared. They didn’t know the words to say. Of course they would rather mom had done it for them.

But we worked up to it. Because I thought CFA was a loving training ground.

And we ate a lot of CFA when they were little because I was alone a lot and CFA had a playground they couldn’t escape from. Bless it. 🤜🤛

Ultimately, getting their own ice cream at CFA wasn’t extremley difficult for my young kids to be able to accomplish. It was harder for #1 and #3. I had to break it down into more steps over more attempts.

My #2 had no problem speaking up for herself when she was little (though at 12 we’re starting to have to work through speaking up about some other things…so apparently this parenting thing doesn’t actually ever end 🥴).

But I’ll write some more to tell you how I would have handled it if it had been truly a challenge for them.

I’d explain that we were immediately beginning “Ice Cream Ordering Training Camp”.

Because a vanilla task for one human to order an ice cream from a human should be a non-issue for 99.9% of the population.

I would have explained that they didn’t have to like doing it. But that they definitely have to be able to do it. Like brushing their teeth or feeding the dog or pushing a lawn mower. And that we’d work together until this normal task was not a crippling emotional experience.

My training camp would probably start off with an explanation like this…

“I love you very much. So I’m going to help you learn how to do this. I want you to be able to take your own kids to Chick-Fil-A one day to get ice cream and you’ll need to be able to order for them at first. Because they will probably love ice cream as much as you do. One of my favorite parts of being your mom is when we get so snuggle and share an ice cream together. So let’s practice. We can keep coming back to Chick-Fil-A until you can do it all on your own. Let’s start by practicing how to ask. I will go up there and stand a few steps behind you. Now, I want you to look at the workers and you can decide which one you want to choose to talk to.”

And we’d grow from there until they could just do it.

There is one other criteria for making this trick work.

Obviously, your children have to love to eat ice cream more than they hate talking to someone.

But most tiny people do love ice cream.

And if I had a child who liked ice cream, but was willing to occasionally pass it up at CFA just to avoid ordering, I would have no qualms about saying that this task was so important that we were going to have to withhold ice cream at home until they could start making meaningful progress to one day being able to fetch ice cream at CFA completely on their own.

Harsh! But welcome to my house!

Kate Builds In Public

🎢 I told you in the opening section that I have been focused on cutting some more costs:

I found a part-time subletter for my office in my co-working space. He will use it 3 days per week in June, July, and August. I was hoping to get a higher price than I did, but the demand for this sublet wasn’t as great as I’d hoped. I asked neighbors, the church and school social media groups. I wasn’t getting any serious offers. So I finally took the first person that agreed to pay me real American dollars.
I downgraded my subscription to my billing software to a lower tier AND paid the annual fee. So larger cash outflow today, but significant savings over time.
I asked my part-time Operations Assistant to try to tend more toward the 10-hours per week than 15 hours per week. My formal job description said the role was 10-15 hours per week.
I completely unsubscribed to a popular software for our industry that I simply wasn’t using. It was not that there was anything wrong with the software. But it was silly to keep paying for it, only holding on to the hope that I’d eventually start to use it one day.

🎢 I took my husband (and future COO) out last night and considered it a business expense. Because we really did do legitimate business work. I am providing him with professional development by taking him to the upcoming Scaling New Heights conference next week. And so I printed off the schedule and took it to the restaurant and we made a plan for what sessions we both would attend. We looked like nerds with my papers and clip board and pencil. We also had one eye on the Spurs game.

In 7 years of owning my business, this is the first time the business has paid for his part of us going to a restaurant. Because I’m very, very straight when it comes to the tax laws.

But last night I couldn’t help but think about the financial benefit (a.k.a deductible business expenses) that will be introduced to our lives as he ramps up working for me as he retires from the Navy soon. All legal.

From The Vault

⚡Doing any travelling this summer? Will you be far away from home? Check out Accounting Nomads on the Bookkeeping Side Hustle channel to get tips and tricks for working on the move.

Letters To The Editor

✉️ Yours is the only one {newsletter} I keep up with and that isn’t an exaggeration. Thought it was important to let you know!! ~Colleen W.

✉️ This edition “The One About The Arena” was the newsletter I’ve gotten the most feedback from y’all on. Guess is struck a chord.

I just finished applying for the XeroCon scholarship and popped back into my email to see this newsletter which I am fairly new to. I read the whole thing. I really needed the wise words of Teddy. I just got done explaining in my application of the lack of the family support I have in launching a bookkeeping practice then BOOM💣, Your newsletter talking about just that! I have never even really said/wrote that out to anyone either. I did and was instantly encouraged. Thank you. I am going to have to print that out. ~L.V.

Classifieds (Clickable)

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

Subscribe on YouTube