$70 an Hour from Home? How to Start a Bookkeeping Side Hustle (Greatest Hits)

23:59And it was this timed exam where you pretend to be a bookkeeper. They had set up this simulation. But I got in, and then they have their whole sales team whose job is to go and sign small businesses. One of my early clients was with them. So that's one way to get a client, especially if you realize that you want to work virtually, but maybe you're not fully invested in the concept of being an entrepreneur. And a lot of accountants are not. A lot of people who have the skill set that would make them a great bookkeeper means they're a terrible business owner, but they'd make a great bookkeeper. So don't worry about going to networking meetings.

24:38Don't worry about having a website. Don't worry about posting on LinkedIn and all this other nonsense. And you're like, if I had six clients from Pero, yeah, I'm not going to make as much because Paro obviously has to keep their doors open and take a cut, but you can make a decent wage. That's an option. I think, did you ever interview someone from Belay, Nick? I know Brian and Shannon, but I have not done that. Okay. I wasn't sure if you interviewed them or not, but Belay is another option. They have bookkeepers on their staff that they'll kind of loan out to businesses all around the world. So that's kind of one way.

25:14Okay. Did you end up onboarding with them? With Belay? No, I never even tried. I think there's also more and more. So QuickBooks Live is another program. So QuickBooks just in the end of 2018 launched its own bookkeeping service. I think they put up an ad in the Super Bowl maybe too. So they're taking bookkeepers instead of just being a software company, now they're actually an accounting and bookkeeping company. A small business owner can subscribe to QuickBooks and they're going to immediately start getting marketed to, to, hey, do you need help? We have a team of bookkeepers and they pay, they pay a decent wage.

25:47I think their average wage right now is like in the 20 to$25 range, which is, I mean, not too shabby if, you know, fits your family's lifestyle and your, and your goals and you just, you're supervised by someone. So you don't have the pressure of like, well, if I make a mistake, who do I, or if I don't know what I'm doing, I don't have anyone to ask. I mean, that's kind of terrifying. Luckily the course that I put kind of has my, that's my support system when I don't know what to do. It came with like actual very, very experienced accountant so I can fall back on. But so Quick's Book Lives would be another like, that's kind of a gig economy, part time virtual job, but not full blown entrepreneurship.

26:24And then if you want to just keep going down the entrepreneur path, my best way is just people that I know. So you know that game like six degrees to Kevin Bacon, like that's how I think all my clients pretty much have been. If not someone that I know, it's like someone that I know knows that person. And I just tried to tell as many people as I can that I have this business and it has just kind of worked for me. Once I got a website, I finally built the website about a year and a half into my business. So like heritagebusinesservices.com is where I, once I built that, it's just a little simple four page website.

26:57I felt a lot of confidence grow in my marketing and I was able to say to people, Hey, I'm a virtual bookkeeper. Check out my website. And it just made me feel a lot more legit. Sure. Yeah, exactly. It's not something that you need in the early days, but it is something that can make you feel more official, make you feel more legit down the road. But I like how you were able to validate this thing with a paying customer before business cards, before getting a logo, before getting a website. It's just like, no. Yeah, I don't have a logo at all. I still don't have a logo. Yeah, you don't need that stuff.

27:28You don't need that stuff. Okay. With the website, were you able to add it to Google local, you know, Google my business, like trying to get local clients? Curious how the website eventually helped you aside from this confidence factor? So I think I probably could have done that, but I have not done that. No, I don't, I don't have a find me on Google. I don't think I, if people are searching like Virginia beach bookkeeper, they're probably not going to come up. And that's just because I've taken the approach of, I really do think it's going to be someone that's like not too many degrees away from me.

27:59Well, I think my third client was from the elementary school pickup line. We, we parents have to go in to pick up our kids. He was one of the dads of one of the older kids at the school. And that's how it's worked for me. So I haven't put a lot of effort into... I mean, there's no SEO for my website. What was the conversation like with that dad? He was just like, hey, what do you do? No, it was that easy. So our school has Pizza Friday, and that's what parents are encouraged to come. And he would come occasionally, and I just ended up sitting by him. And I don't know, I'd probably been at the school about a year and a half at that point.

28:34So I recognized him and I don't know, I just like, I try to be socially adept. That's kind of it. I don't know. Maybe he, I think he might've been wearing like a badge to get into a business. So I was asking him about his business and then it turned out that he had this extra nonprofit that he was responsible for. And so it was for the nonprofit that he said he needed a bookkeeper for. So once I had that business mindset on, I was just like looking for places to turn the conversation to that direction, if that makes sense, without being annoying. Yeah, a couple of different options. Obviously, the in-person networking stuff, your six degrees of separation.

29:08Who do you know? Who do they know? And just being upfront saying, like, this is what I do now. This is something I can help out with. Going down the route of the QuickBooks Live or the Paro or the Belay, like going where larger companies already have a network of bookkeepers that they're referring out to clients. So it's like going where customers are already shopping. That's one way to do it. And then, you know, finally there's this whole level of online marketing and, you know, trying to find complete stranger type of clients that I imagine you'll get to down the road. But the important thing to notice here, it doesn't take a ton of clients to make a meaningful business out of this.

29:45So exactly. I don't want a lot of clients.

29:51Where do you see this going? Like, Are you happy with where it's at? Are you trying to grow to have a team of bookkeepers underneath you? What's the future hold? Yeah, maybe I jumped the gun by saying I don't want a lot of clients. Although I think I actually don't want a lot of clients. There are definitely ways that you can take this business down that path. But for me, my next step is to probably outsource some of the monthly work. And I've actually done that. So I'm proud to say that I have just in 2020 brought on a subcontractor for two clients. and that's just such a cool, amazing milestone.

30:24I feel really great about it. It's working out well. It's something you can test slowly and that's a good model, I think. Anyone is trying to grow or maybe they get a client that they're not confident in, like if a client has inventory or maybe they have foreign currency or kind of a little bit more varsity type accounting, bring them on and hire a really experienced, slightly nerdy accountant who loves that stuff. And they'll be able to do a lot of the work and you can still share in the revenue of that client. Right. This is one way a service business becomes a little bit more time leveraged, a little bit more passive when it's like, hey, I don't have to be the one laying the bricks anymore.

31:09Yeah. And another reason I'll say that I'm not interested in being huge is because kind of, as you mentioned at the very, very beginning, I have found that I I have a unique skill set and interest in kind of encouraging other people to become bookkeepers. So my bookkeeping side hustle work where I'm helping people get started and go, I'm loving and I'm passionate about. And there's a lot of people like me who are, what hell was I? I was like 32, had a kid, had a couple of little kids feeling like drowning a little bit. I mean, I love my kids very, very much, but just like, where did my brain go?

31:44And there's lots of moms out there who are kind of like me and they're like, man, if I could just have just a little bit of kind of that old self, it'll help me even be the better mom. And I love being able to have my kids see me work. I like them hearing them say, like, my mommy does accounting or my mommy does QuickBooks. I think they say that. They don't really kind of get it. But I love that. And for years, I didn't really have that. And not every mother needs that. But for me, I found a good balance, I think. Yeah, I love it. When the kid, you know, asking our kids, like, what does daddy do for work?

32:15I don't know. He talks to people. What does mommy do for work? Oh, she'd take pictures of people. Or it's like, oh, she's not taking pictures today. Oh, laboratory. Yes, she's at the laboratory today. So I love it. It's like, it's awesome to try and instill that in the kids too at an early age. I love this because it illustrates so many of like the side hustle show themes, especially the part about the kind of entrepreneurial physics of the opportunities become visible once you're in motion and an entrepreneur in motion stays in motion. So bookkeepingsidehustle.com is an example of working in public in a lot of ways.

32:51Like, here's my experience in doing this. Here's how you can get involved too. And I understand it started almost by accident on a basis of a Facebook thread. Yes. So I think it was about September of 2018 now. about 18 months ago, I was in a Facebook group. It was ChooseFI was the name of the group, which is just a financial, like a personal finance kind of a group. And lots of people in that umbrella are going to be wondering about like, there's two levers you can pull to increase your expenses or increase your income. And so lots of people ask like, how do I increase my income? And someone had posted something about accounting or that they were an accountant and they needed to make more money.

33:28And I just chimed in that I do virtual bookkeeping and just serve a few clients that I'm able to do it during the cracks of my day. And the thread kind of grew and a lot of people were interested, but it kind of got too much. And someone suggested, hey, why don't we just make a small Facebook group and you can answer all of our questions at once and kind of be done with it instead of me just kind of being pulled all over. And I was feeling generous and wanting to answer people's questions, but it was going to make it more efficient to do that. So I thought I didn't know about creating my own group.

33:54I had no idea what to do, but I figured it out. And you stood out in the thread because you weren't pitching a network marketing scheme. No, no, no. Oh, gosh, no. I was just saying, oh, yeah, like, here's the QuickBooks Pro Advisor site where you can get your certification or, you know, whatever. I don't know what I said. But we moved, I'm guessing it was probably 10 or 15 people to this private little Facebook group, answered some questions. And I wish I knew exactly how it happened. But now there's 7 ,000 people in it. By accident. Yeah, well, so all I would do is every once in a while, I would say, a lot of my military spouse groups, too, would, like, ask career questions.

34:28I say, well, I'm a virtual bookkeeper. And if you want to learn more, I have a Facebook group where we talk about it. And then I finally like actually gave the group a proper name. I probably didn't do that for like six months or something. So people could actually find me. You can like change the name of the group. And then I don't know, people were really taking my advice and kind of running with it and people were having success. So yeah, then I started a blog because the only reason I started the blog was because I was answering the same question over and over because this isn't rocket science.

34:55It's like learn accounting, learn a bookkeeping software, figure out what's going on. how to set up a business and then go get a client. But everyone has those same questions. And I kind of got tired of answering how do you become a QuickBooks Pro Advisor. So I just made a like a YouTube video about screencasting me like pretending to sign up for a QuickBooks account. So then I could answer those questions over and over. And I enjoy it. I like it. I like seeing people succeed. Yeah, I even created a tried to write a book this year. I did write a book in January just called the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Guidebook.

35:25Yeah, I just just knocked it out in January. No big deal. Yeah. Well, I just, I don't know. I know, I know how to tell people how to do it. So I wrote it down and I have that and it's all about actually taking action. Is the book on Amazon or is it through bookkeepingsidehustle.com? Yeah. So bookkeepingsidehustle.com. I think it's backslash bookkeeping dash guidebook, but I have a link on the main homepage. I just sell it on my Shopify store and it's just an ebook download because the important part of the book is it's very actionable. So when it talks about getting your QuickBooks ProAdvisor certification or your Xero certification, I have a link like in the ebook.

35:59So as you're reading the content, you'll be able to jump to like the next thing you need to watch. Or if you want to watch a lot, I have a lot of YouTube videos I recommend people listen to by a lot of like really, really expert people. And so the link's right there. So I don't know that I'll ever make it a hard copy because the linking functionality is so important because there's a whole lot of people who know a whole lot more than I do about how to do this. I just have, I would consider myself probably the best expert at being like the hub of it all. So that's my role in it. And I can point you to the true, true, true accounting experts or software experts.

36:34I think it's awesome. I think it's really cool what you built. And then by spreading the word, you've opened up another income stream, which can be even more time leveraged. Really, really inspiring stuff, Kate. Thank you. All right. So bookkeepingsidehustle.com is where you can find Kate's home base. Be sure to jump in the Bookkeeping Side Hustle group on Facebook if this is a side hustle that interests you specifically. But again, think of the broader parallels for any type of home-based service type of business where you can find clients, how you can gain the skills and expertise you need to get started and really go from there.

37:09So again, Kate, thank you for joining me. And let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation. So I thought about this. I want to say with this particular side hustle, we really need to have the long view in mind. So if you need$1 ,000 next week, don't do this. If you would like to have$1 ,000 a month in a year or in retirement as you're traveling in your RV, this could really be the perfect side hustle. So think about learning a new skill. Think about taking the time that it takes. Maybe actually take a couple of junior college accounting classes. Do what it takes, but knowing that you can kind of craft this life that you want and you could grow it as big or as small, scale it as quickly or as not quickly, you know, once you have the foundation, as much as you want.

37:57So that's my number one tip that this is a really great side hustle with the long view in mind. I like it. Thanks for sharing that. Nick, can I ask one more thing? I did want to say I did create a discount code for the book. So SNH30OFF. That would be my number two tip. If you get this little ebook, it costs hardly anything at all. You'll spend an hour reading it and you'll know quickly whether this is for you or not. All right. Very good. We will link that up in the show notes for this episode. Thank you for that. You're welcome. All right. Once again, this is Kate Johnson from bookkeepingsidehustle.com.

38:29Thank you so much for joining me and we'll catch up with you soon.

38:35All right, here's hoping you drew some inspiration from Kate's story in this episode. I loved her attitude about being a good steward of her time and how even just a few hours a week, combined with intentional action, can build a meaningful extra income stream. She essentially followed the framework of learn, connect, and earn. And there's no reason that you can't do the same in any skill under the sun. and by being excited about her side hustle and spreading the word, like telling people what she does, that led to this whole bookkeeping side hustle dot com project in the Facebook group. Lots of good stuff in this one.

39:12Be sure to hit up side hustle nation dot com slash bookkeeping for links to all the resources mentioned and the full text summary of our conversation. All right, we're about to do a little time travel and check in with 2024 Kate and see what the business looks like today right after this.

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41:41Quo.com slash Side Hustle. And if you've got existing numbers with another service, Quo will port them over at no extra charge. Quo, no missed calls, no missed customers. All right, Kate, welcome to 2024. So glad to have you back. Give us, to the extent that you're comfortable, the state of the business, the monthly client load, ballpark, revenue numbers, whatever you're comfortable sharing here. Sure. I'm so glad that you asked me to come back. Yes, so business is going good. It's different. I've relocated with the Navy. My husband's in the Navy. So since the last time we talked, I'm in a new town.

42:18And the cool thing about my business is I've been able to keep it. So let's see. The biggest update of all on the actual client side is that I have niched in a specific bookkeeping software. I chose FreshBooks. I didn't think I was going to be able to stand out in kind of like the larger American QuickBooks world. I thought I'd always be a pretty small fish in a big pond. And so I thought I want to build something kind of non-traditional anyway. So I picked a software that was big enough for me to find a lot of plenty of clients, but where accounting professionals weren't necessarily like saturated that market.

42:52So I serve FreshBooks clients exclusively. All of my marketing and all my clients are inbound from my YouTube tutorials. So I create accounting tutorials for a smaller software and people find me because they found me on YouTube because they were trying to solve some problem. Yeah, it's really cool. Wow. Now, there's lots of cool stuff going on here. So relocated, but hey, I've got a location-independent skill. I've got a portable business. My toolbox has wheels, right? I could take the show on the road. You niche down, say, hey, maybe it's going to be better to be a big fish in a smaller pond than be a small fish in a big pond.

43:26Like, you know, if QuickBooks is the market leader or, you know, one of the big, big players in the bookkeeping space, like, well, that's a little crowded for a little old me. But what if I carved out a name and a space for myself in FreshBooks? And this is interesting because FreshBooks kind of builds itself as like solo operators, service provider type of businesses, like, you know, young freelancers, you know, typically like my impression was like DIY type, like you don't need a bookkeeper if you have our software, but you're finding that, that people still need some help with it. So 100%, everyone thinks they can do their own accounting and then like no one does.

43:59And also even, even, even if they really do, like they're good at whatever it is they do. And so the smarter business owners, I think, do realize, hey, it's worth it to invest a little bit in getting some help. And it's interesting that you say it's for DIYers. So the biggest thing I do is actually not monthly client work, which I think if I think your listeners are probably going to get, you know, if they're interested in bookkeeping, they're going to get ads for programs that will help them get like a monthly client type of a business. I have switched. I really like to teach. And so I do a lot of one-on-one training.

44:28And that's the perfect fit for FreshBooks because some people do have pretty simple accounting and they just need a couple of hours of information about how to use the software before they go on their own and then maybe call me again later in the year for a check-in. So that's one thing I do. And then the other thing I do that's not traditional accounting firm work is I am, I wanted this concept of like selling one to many or like subscription to myself. I have an office hours model. And so it's a pretty low price. It's four DIYers, but then they have a bookkeeper in their back pocket once a week for an hour.

45:00And so my thought is, how do you scale bookkeeping services where I'm not having to click in the software? Well, let the client do the work. And so that's another thing that I sell. It's on my services page on my website, Tuesday afternoon office hours, and people join that, but they're their own bookkeeper. And that's another kind of funky angle I've taken. And it's working out well, and I'm proud of it. And I think I'm helping a lot of people. These people need help, but they can't afford to outsource their bookkeeping, right? So that's another just a funky angle I've taken. Okay, that is an interesting one.

45:32What do you charge for that? 69 a month for that. And I kind of don't have any responsibilities after except for the goal, you know, Yeah, just got to show up and do this weekly kind of q &a. That's an interesting because well, it's like, that's what you've shifted away from this like monthly recurring client base, like, that's what's appealing to this business is like, well, if you're as long as you're in business, you're gonna have books, you're gonna need bookkeeping. And so it's a very sticky type of service. You're saying, oh, no, I pivoted away from that to do more of this one-on-one training.

45:59But in doing so, did I just hurt myself from the recurring revenue standpoint? Like, well, here's a creative way to add it back in, kind of a monthly membership model. Yeah. And the thing about it is it really became, even when I niched in FreshBooks, at that point, I was still thinking monthly clients were the way. But the truth is, I'm just not built that way. And there are people who are built that way. And so I think I have a much more teaching spirit. I don't like like not really communicating with my clients that like, I want to, I want to help people learn like how to excel in their business.

46:28And I was finding that the bookkeeping clients I got, even though they were maybe, you know, I was charging them$300 a month for their books. I didn't think I was like really coaching them that much. Maybe that was my problem, but it was like, I did the books. I sent them the reports. Lots of times they didn't want to talk to me because I did what I was paid to do. And they could have called me and asked me questions, but they didn't want it. So I don't know. There's, there's pros and cons. My personality is like not a typical accountant. I didn't grow up in an accounting firm. And so everything about my business has a little bit of a twist to it anyway.

46:58But lots of people will still like that monthly recurring, like larger client that you're responsible for. But I don't want a busy season in January when bookkeepers have like this crazy busy season, like not my problem. These people like I'll help you, but you're your own bookkeeper. Did you find there was an industry or type of client where the service really resonated with? Like, was there, there was a niching down on the software side and say, okay, well, we can piggyback on the popularity of the FreshBooks tool. But like, was there any further niching of like, well, we do FreshBooks, but for freelance writers or something like that?

47:33So there's probably room to do that. I just haven't been able to pull that off. I've thought about maybe I could get a client, like one of the members of the group to like, take me to an industry conference. That's kind of like the, I was like, what if I went to like the Salesforce Consultant Industry Conference, because one of my guys is like a big Salesforce consultant, you know, then I could just be the Salesforce FreshBooks bookkeeper. But I haven't done that. I haven't executed on it. I take anyone who FreshBooks is good for. So FreshBooks has forced me to niche, kind of, because FreshBooks is so limited in who it serves.

48:03Yeah. Talk to me about the YouTube strategy, because this is one that we've seen over and over again. If I can create the tutorial content, if I can create the Q &A content, the comparison content on YouTube for these certain tools. I don't need to go viral. I don't need a ton of views. But if somebody is watching this video, and I'm looking at some of the, this is the Fix Your FreshBooks YouTube channel, closing in on 2000 subscribers. So it's not nothing, but it's not huge. And we see videos on topics like FreshBooks versus QuickBooks, or Getting Started with FreshBooks, or FreshBooks versus Wave.

48:38And these kind of very specific titles that have a tendency to show up in search. People are looking for this exact information. That's a pretty well-qualified lead if they're watching to the end of this video. Yeah. So actually the ones, those comparison videos that you're talking about, those are probably not where my leads are. My leads are actually from the really more obscure, nerdier, lower views that you might not even be seeing on my home screen yet, because people need to know how to issue a client refund or how to split an expense. Like really small, small things. But yeah, but like legit questions that users of the tool may have.

49:12They don't know how to use it. And so literally, like if they watch to the end of the video, they love me. And so that is the strategy because no one is going to watch those videos who doesn't need me. And by the time they're done with this five minute nerd fest, they're going to say, I got to call Kate. And that's what happens. They watch my videos and I don't even tell them who I am really until the end because I just know that if they get to the end, I'm in. I'm their girl. Is there a call to action at the end? Like, hey, book a consultation call or sign up for XYZ service? Yeah, I have a free discovery call is the typical thing.

49:46I have a weekly checklist they can download. At the end of the year, one time I made like a year-end checklist video. So there are some calls to action, but really it's just like heritagebusinessservices.com. And they can book a 15-minute call from there, but I don't even always have to say that. They're desperate for me by the time they're watching these videos. Just solve my problem. make the pain go away. Exactly. And you're right. It doesn't take a ton of views to build a business on the back of that. I think that's really cool. Well, any other updates for us? I know you have the bookkeeping side hustle.com, what you call the accounting influencer side of the business.

50:21Anything new and different and exciting over there? Yes, I do have a community called the bookkeeping side hustle community. It's grown. It's largely on Facebook, but I would say I'm probably less active in that group, Nick, than I was when I talked to the first time. I've switched to a pretty consistent writing every other Saturday on Substack. So I have a bookkeeping side hustle newsletter, and I basically am building in public. That's how I serve that audience of other accounting professionals. I'm telling people the good, the bad, and the ugly of what it's like to build heritage business services.

50:53I make mistakes. I switch software for invoice, like all the things. And I'm just telling people my processes and wins and losses. and that community is going great. I love it. It's like my labor of love and I have been doing it for a long time. I mean, I don't want to do it more often than I'm doing it, but I'm doing it twice a month and I have ads on there now. And so like your content and like the way you think has inspired me so much to think about, okay, I'm in this industry. What else can I do to start making some money? And I'm comfortable writing. I had an audience. And so let's see if we can monetize that.

51:27So like there's four advertisers for each edition And there's, you know, some affiliate revenue as a part of that as well. And I do that and love it. And I'm helping people like bookkeeping changed my life and changed my family's like financial trajectory from being a military spouse with no job, having a portable business. And I want to by building in public, if it helps some people get even a little bit of what I've gotten, I want to be able to offer that to people. Well, we're happy to link up the Substack newsletter in the show notes for this episode as well. this is, you know, free ad supported newsletter or they're like paid tiers here too.

52:00So I haven't turned on payments in Substack. Nope. Everybody's free. I'm kind of raging against the email machine. Like I think of Substack as like almost like a blog where people don't even have to subscribe to read it. The whole archive is like there. So I'm often answering questions like in my Facebook group. If someone asks a question and I remember, oh yeah, I wrote about that in April. I can go grab that link and say, oh, here's that answer to your question. Or here was my experience. And I really like it to be more like a blog. It happens to get emailed if you're subscribed, Even if you're not subscribed, please read it and I don't have to clutter your inbox.

52:29Yeah, I like this call of kind of, you know, it takes a lot of extra effort to do this build in public thing, but it builds so much trust and credibility with the people who are following along to be like, oh, she's just one or two steps ahead of where I'm at. And it builds that relationship and credibility of people will start to buy the things that you recommend, will start to sign up for your consulting services, join your memberships. There's lots of benefits of doing that in exchange for that kind of like, well, I'm not getting paid to do any of it in the very early days. Well, and I'll say like, I still think like the sky's the limit, like even on the influencer side and on the real firm side, like one day these are going to connect.

53:10Like in my in my mind, the vision I see is I'll sell FreshBooks courses to accounting pros. Like FreshBooks is getting better. More accountants will want to use that software. And so I'm the expert. Like I 100 % in America, I have seen the most FreshBooks files than any accounting professional. And I'll be equipped to start doing course sales or paid webinars to, you know, convert your QuickBooks desktop client to FreshBooks and people will pay for that. Yeah. You comfortable sharing like what the pie chart looks like in terms of like, well, the heritage business services side be like the business client servicing side versus the, you know, influencer side between the newsletter sponsorships, the affiliate revenue over there.

53:49Yeah, sure. So I use a billing software in my bookkeeping business called Ignition, and it predicts what I'm going to make for the year based on any recurring stuff I have. And so for this year, I might make, I think I'm going to make probably between like, I bet I'll make about 80 to 90 ,000 in client services. Like I do real accounting, y 'all, for real, for real. But then I would say the bookkeeping side hustle side is, you know, it kind of bats at that level. So I'm making a great, I mean, an amazing, amazing income doing actual technical work. So it's about 50-50 at this point? Yes. Wow. I mean, I like transparency.

54:22So my newsletter ads are$600 for the title ad and about, well, there's two different tiers for the classified ads, but either 120 or 200 for that. And then there's usually other like call to actions that I recommend per newsletter. That's like, how many people you got subscribed to this thing? That's great. Seven to 8 ,000. Oh my gosh. Am I ever undercharging for a newsletter spot? But it's real niche. It's real niche, man. It's true. It's so, it's super, super niche. Yeah. So who, like, give me an example of a sponsor. Who wants to get in front of this audience? Accounting app vendors. So my audience is a lot of new entrepreneurial accounting pros.

55:03So they might be a 20 year CPA, right? But they're just now deciding to like do their own business side of it. Yeah. So there's a lot of tech stack choices that happens for that person. That person is choosing, how am I going to manage my practice? What apps am I going to use to collect receipts? And then there's like people who serve bookkeeping professionals, like people who want to build websites for bookkeeping professionals or people who sell courses to bookkeeping professionals. Those are the advertisers. Well, that's incredible. I love the story. I love the progress that you made. Hey, look, we're going to do, you know, between the client facing side and the so-called influencer side, the build in public side, we're going to do over 150 grand this year.

55:39and that whole second half is just the unlock of being able to put yourself out there and kind of share your experience of doing this thing even early on. I don't have all the answers, but I'm going to learn as I go when I figure this out. Super, super inspiring stuff. Anything else that you want to leave us with before we wrap on this? Where are they now edition? Yeah. So I'll just say this is maybe more on the influencer side. I want people to know that I think bookkeeping is really hard. And so, you know, if this inspires you and you know that you have that like accounting bent inside of you, I have noticed that I think there are some people who think, oh, bookkeeping should be easy or anyone can do it.

56:15Or it's kind of like maybe just a step above a secretary. And it is not that. And so that's part of my message to, as I'm building in public, like, holy crud, like payroll liabilities are like really hard to do. And it's someone's livelihood, right? Like their books are really important. So I just think of this as a very serious side hustle. And I do work completely part-time. Last summer we moved to Texas. I was like, I barely worked last summer. I am part-time, but I'm serious about the business. And so that's the mentality that I want people to have if they love accounting. Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that.

56:48You got to know what you're doing. Otherwise you can really screw up somebody's livelihood here. Exactly. Definitely appreciate that. Word of caution to people getting into it. But bookkeepingsidehustle.com is where you can find Kate. We'll link up the YouTube channel as well. We'll link up the sub stack, heritagebusinessservices.com if you're a FreshBooks user and need some help on that front. Kate, thanks so much for stopping by, for sharing your insight, for being willing to jump back on and give us this update. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.

57:24Thanks for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.