The mentorship program at QB Community Live! on FB Week 6

Hey, Stephanie!

Hi, Linda!

Nice to see you again. Week 6! Holy moly!

Welcome back!

Welcome back for more torture!

No, it's fun!

So, this week is— and we get— we're getting 2 weeks in between now. This week is about review and adjust. So, this week, you're going to talk about how the mentorship program is going for you so far, Are your expectations that you set in the beginning, are you still keeping them, meeting them? You know, are you comfortable asking me questions? It's also a good time to revisit your goals, your milestones, and get ready for a new challenge or a struggle or something. It's always good to talk to your mentor about adjusting goals, 'cause really, goals do need to be adjusted along the way. You might think you have a great goal in the beginning, and then all of a sudden you kind of have to pivot. So it's always good to think about them and kind of look back at them. I know I did have to adjust some of the goals I had. And then just talk about your goals and how you think it might need to be adjusted. So go for it.

Okay. I feel like I have lost a little bit of momentum in the last maybe week or two, maybe week. I think it just happens. I'm not worried about it. I feel good, really good today. So I think I'm back on track. My goal was to gain 10 new clients to year 10. year-round clients this year, and I've gained 3. I, so I've just been doing some kind of behind-the-scenes stuff. I did start an Instagram page for my business. I haven't published it yet. I haven't because I'm waiting on my new logo. So I'm changing the name of the business to The Art of Bookkeeping, and I've had a round 1 of some draft designs for a new logo that a graphic designer is, you know, showing me and stuff. So—

Mm-hmm.

I'm kind of working on that. And sort of, this is a little bit off topic, but I'm cleaning up my own books Because I just sort of neglected things and I'm starting to use Mint and I'm getting used to that and stuff. So just been kind of doing some paperwork organizational things, I think, more than actually working to gain new clients.

It's almost like it's 2 days after tax day and even though we don't do taxes, it's kind of like the pressure's on because we get the clients that want everything from us because they're in a big hurry to get their tax return done and 99% of them that are pushing hard at this time of the year actually go to extension anyway. Because if they're coming to us, you know, even if they're an LLC, if they're coming to us, or sole proprietor, they've written, you know, they're going to file April 15th. If they're coming to us on April 14th or 13th, we can't get the work done in time to get it to the CPA or the tax professional. So there's just— and sometimes, I don't know if you're like me, I kind of put all that on my shoulders and I'm like, oh, I got to get this done, I got to get this done. And I think about it for a moment. I have to keep my regular Client— paying clients all year round, happy too. I mean, they're my bread and butter. I mean, it's nice to have the new ones that might be one time, and then, I mean, we all get those ones. I'm sure, maybe other people can ring in here, we all get those ones that come to you at this time of the year, and they want all their work done, and then you get it done, you do a great job, and they say, oh, now I'm gonna change my ways, I'm gonna be different, and then you don't hear from them for a year, and they pop back up again at the same time next year, and you're like, what happened to that?

Yeah.

You know, so, and that's just the nature of the beast or the nature of the business anyway.

Yeah.

I saw something with your name changed somewhere.

On Facebook. I got Facebook to change that. That was a little bit of a struggle because they didn't think it was the same business. So I had to appeal and write a thing and stuff like that. But so they did, Facebook did change. I had to add an NY to it because there's another one. But yeah, that's all good. So I'm just waiting, you know, to kind of make it more official and make it, big announcement or something. But, you know, talking about what you were just talking about brings me to my first question, which is I have a client that was the one who's sort of straying from the IRS guidelines, that same one, and he hasn't done shit for all year. And now here he was 2 days before tax day and he wants stuff and that, but he's not doing his part. And then he went into the books. I know this is a nightmare for every bookkeeper, that he went into the books and changed some things. And then I don't really know what the outcome was. I jumped through hoops, semi jumped through hoops, communicated with him via email and text so he knew that I had done what I needed to do and the rest was up to him. And then he went on vacation the day before tax day, so I really don't know what his outcome was. I kind of want to fire this guy. He doesn't pay his invoices. He's way behind on that. You know, he's just bad and I don't like working with him. I don't trust him. So I'm wondering, my question I guess is, is that a good enough reason? And I've kind of been reading up on how to disentangle, but—

I think it's hard to let go of a client. A little bit easier when they don't pay you. I always get paid upfront, and that's kind of part of that value pricing and all that that I do. I don't start working on any file anymore because I've been burned over the years. It's always those people that you feel bad for, your heart goes out for, they're the most Time-sucking ones out of your, out of your list. And you want to help. So if you come from that place of giving, wanting to help, and then they take advantage, they go outside of the scope, we call that scope creep. And they want more from you than what they actually signed up for. And then if they're trying to push, you know, you can go by your gut. I really think your gut is the best place to go through, go by. And if you have a client that you're just sitting back, I know you have a goal of 10, but you've got a whole year. I mean, this has been a short period of time that you got the new ones. Right. And if you think he's just not a good fit, just tell them in a nice way. And I've got, I've got a really good letter to disengage. I'll share that. I'll share that with you.

Oh, good.

It's really professional, polite, you know, and just to the point that I'm sorry, this isn't working out. And, you know, we're not a good fit. You can refer them back to the ProAdvisor site to find a new bookkeeper.

Oh, that's good.

You know, anything like that, or, you know, you hate to even push them on to somebody else, but There's always going to be somebody that'll take them on. But if it's not working out for you, you just got to let them go. You'll feel the weight of the world off your shoulders, and then you're going to make space for somebody else that's good.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, and the funny thing is, I did have another client who needed something for tax reasons. I like her. I jumped to it. I was happy to do it. You know, so yeah, I think I'll give this some more thought. Sounds like I'm heading in the right direction with letting him go.

Yeah, we have— I'm using a new program for my practice management called Lissio, and it's funny.

Yeah, I saw that.

One of the pages on it is that you can rate your clients, and the only— the best way, and I forgot who said this, but the best way to rate a client is when you see the phone ring and you see their name, and you— do you pick it up and go, hey, how you doing? Or you look at it going, oh, I don't want to talk to them, I don't— I can't deal with it today. That's kind of your first kind of level of whether or not it's working out well. And I thought that was a good— that's a good analogy of whether or not you should continue with a client. If you just dread Taking that call and you push it off and you procrastinate with it for whatever reason, that's kind of telling you that it's probably not a really good fit. And yeah, or whatever, you'll find that that's a client that you're probably not even making that much money off of either.

Well, most of the money I'm trying to collect from him is due to the previous owner. So, you know, I haven't even been with him that long. But yeah, he hasn't paid me, but he hadn't even paid the guy before me, you know.

Are you accepting credit cards? I found that that freed up my cash flow.

Yes.

Time by then. So yeah, then all right then. Yeah, get rid of him.

Yeah, and I know there's no reason he hasn't paid me, but anyway.

Do you have any other questions? I think you said you had maybe 2 this week.

So my, my other question is, I did, um, I did my taxes and my partner's taxes, um, and then I ended up doing my son's and his girlfriend's recently. Now I don't mind, we use TurboTax. I don't mind it. It's, it's kind of fun. It's— I'm impressed with how user-friendly it is. I haven't used it in a few years. We've been having someone else do our taxes.

Mm-hmm.

And when I put in my occupation as artist, it gives me suggestions related to my field. It's so smart. They've done such a good job. My question is, however, I have a friend who was a friend— he's a client, but he was a friend before he was a client. And he's computer literate-ish, you know. He's worried about who's gonna do his taxes next year, and I'm telling him that he can do them. I'm explaining how user-friendly it is. and stuff like that. So my question is, I don't want to do tax returns, that's not my thing, but what is the liability, or what is the— like, if I did them for a few friends sort of on the side, I don't know what to think about any of it. I haven't offered anything except to my family.

Did you get paid to do them?

My family's? Mm-hmm.

No, right?

No.

So there's no liability there if you didn't get paid. They can't really— and you know, there's that— you can pay an extra $100 and they have that audit shield. Which is, you know, I mean, I wouldn't— if you're not going to go down that road, I wouldn't. There's a program called Halon that if you wanted to incorporate tax returns in with what you do for your services, really great program. Actually, I haven't taken the step to do that, but I'm in that program right now because it's really great program just to go through all the pieces. I really recommend that. I'll put that in the links too.

Good.

Chris Reagan is the one who does it. He's actually a local to me, and he created this program, and it's a program where you get— you can have tax returns, even corporate ones, you can put it in, and it's through his company, and it's got all the insurances on it, and they guarantee it, and there's the CPAs behind it. So if you're interested in going down that road, I highly recommend just taking his courses, though, because it's really It's a good refresher for accounting. And it's also a good program to go through to help you with— it has a ton of templates.

Okay.

And it's got a lot of really good tips. I'm really enjoying it. And I wasn't sure if I was going to like it, but I did take a QuickBooks Connect course with him in 2016. And I, out of all of them, he was like my favorite one out of all of the sessions I took. He was that good. So yeah, I mean, if you want to take it, it's right now the course is free, but at the end, if you don't join, you know, you get— you have to pay for it. I paid $149 for it.

Okay.

That's $149 I paid. I mean, it was— it's a great program and it's got a lot of great tips in it. So I think it'd be great for you starting out in this field. I wish I had this, you know, had it way back, but I'm still incorporating pieces of it. And I haven't decided if I'm going to go down the road of being— doing tax returns with Halon or not. But some of it, I get a lot of clients that are small, really, really small. And it's, it's It's expensive for them to go to the tax professional.

Yeah.

You can get hooked up with a couple of people that you know are tax professionals, maybe an EA or even a CPA that wants the referrals. I mean, if you can get somebody good that you can trust, then if you don't want to do taxes, I mean, I get it. I don't really want to do taxes. But, you know, if you're doing your own, if you're doing the books for somebody, you know everything's accurate and the tax return part is pretty easy. And his program actually does the work like TurboTax, but it will do it for businesses.

Okay.

All right.

So you might want to look into it. I got a guy, actually. There's a— I was introduced via email from one of my clients who got a new CPA, and he reached out to me that he wants to get together after tax season. I think he wants to refer some smaller clients to me, and then I'll— I actually have been referring tax return clients to him. I don't know if he's even taking new, but I'm hoping that relationship is going to develop, you know, for that reason too.

So That's how I started my business, that way. I had a CPA that I adored. He's since passed away, but he was the nicest man, and we just back and forth. He didn't want to do bookkeeping, and I didn't want— and I had nothing to do with the taxes. And let me tell you, best relationship ever.

Oh, that's smart.

For referrals, you know. And he was good. He was really good when I first started, because you don't know a lot, and he was really good about answering my questions. He was never, um, you know, we'd go to lunch every once in a while and talk about the clients and the work, and any question I ever had, I could ask him. And he used to do my business return for free. Nice. Have a nice relationship. Because I fed him a lot of— I fed him probably more clients than the other way around. But yeah, he just did that for free and he was really good. He really would go and talk to the clients. You want to find that CPA— so hard for the tax professionals because they get thrown a deadline and they get all this work that they don't have time to have the relationship that we do with the client through the year. So a good bookkeeper and tax professional relationship is so key. If you can get that and you can work with somebody that, you know, I'm lucky that I got to meet, you know, some nice CPAs on my Intuit Advisory Council. I've got some really great people there that I know I can always refer to. And it's— they're just— I just know they're good and they're the cream of the crop, right? They've been asked to be on the Advisory Council. So I know these guys have been— Intuit thinks a lot of them. And plus, I get to know them as people. And it's just— it's nice to have that relationship where you can actually—

Yeah.

Work one-on-one with them, and, and then they know that their work that they're getting back is good too, which is, is important. And if they see something that's not right, I would hope they would tell you that, hey, Stephanie, this isn't what you should do. And, you know, yeah, you grow, right?

Yep.

That's part of it. But yeah, any more questions?

It's like my mentor relationship with you.

Yeah, that's right. Well, I've been doing this a long time, but I can still learn, right? So I'm going through this program, and I'm learning things. You learn everything, even As much as I complained about having to take the test with Intuit and take the refresher test, I learn every single time. I learn something that I— maybe a new feature I didn't know. So I might complain about it, but then in the long run, you have to sit back and go, okay, you know, I did learn from it. Yeah, yeah, that's what the testing is for. So, you know, if you can get the certification— so you might want to think about— did you take the test yet?

No, no, not yet. No.

It's not the time, but if you do take it, if you can take it in pieces, I recommend doing that. And don't do what I did and take it all in one big lump sum.

Oh, okay. All right, good to know.

Don't start at 4 PM. That's the other tip, because that's what I did. I started at 4 PM thinking I was just going to fly through it. Yeah, and there was a lot of pieces you had to go through before you even get to the test. So that was not too bright on my part, but that was the refresher test. I'm not sure what the online one was, what it is, but I actually told my daughter the other day, you better take it, because if you don't pass it this year, you have to take the full test. It's dumb. Once you pass it, The refresher one's not as bad. So, you know, get past the big first one, and then as you do the subsequent ones, they're shorter. That's a no-brainer.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, good. You're doing really great. Of course, anytime you can reach out to me, and I really appreciate that you're helping and doing this, coming on with me and recording all this, and hopefully that will help somebody else that maybe— just so they can see what it's about, right?

Yeah, yeah, very helpful. And our communication through Messenger couldn't be easier.

Yes.

Perfect.

I know, I kind of just was like, hey, want to do it right now?

Yeah, yeah.

So she was like, yeah. Thank you. And I'm sure it's helping other people in the group, so that's the most important part too. So we'll see you probably, I'm going to guess 2 weeks, because that's what it's been flowing through. But yeah, I'll probably make a liar out of me now and it'll be next week.