Bookkeeping Side Hustle Guidebook

I admit that when I first heard “side hustle,” it brought to mind nothing but negative connotations: unprofessional, unimportant, circumstantial, and temporary – but mostly it feels like it just means making extra money on the side beyond your full-time job.

Many side hustles have those properties, but Kate’s work is the opposite. In “The Bookkeeping Side Hustle,” these jobs are a journey, not the destination.

I myself started my bookkeeping business as a side hustle, even though I did all the formalities to make it look official, such as setting up my form of ownership (LLC), creating a company logo, securing logo shirts, business cards, and a website. I still had a full-time job that was very much needed for me to sustain my family, which at the time included my wife and a newborn. It would have been financially impossible for me to quit my full-time job at the inception of my bookkeeping business, especially because my wife had just quit her job because she chose to become a full-time stay-at-home mom.

Many people’s side hustle endeavors have similar origins. When my wife and I started our bookkeeping business, it was simply a path to make extra money while having work/life balance and raising a family. For some time, our business was like a side hustle: My wife worked intermittently while the baby slept and house chores were completed, and I came home at the end of the day to have dinner, kiss the baby goodnight, and work with her after hours on our clients’ bookkeeping. Thankfully the internet, remote-work tools, and patient clients allowed us to work in this manner.

In this book, Kate does a beautiful job pointing out the struggles and challenges every entrepreneur had to learn the hard way when starting a business, especially without a mentor to provide guidance. Take every piece of advice from this book, from building your organizational infrastructure and a brand identity, to embracing the cloud and leveraging technology while adapting the business to your lifestyle, personality, and the purpose of your life.

There are many ups and downs in this journey, but as long as you can set and fulfill your purpose, you will naturally see your side hustle flourish into a successful career in accounting and help build your clients’ success.

Your true purpose will vary based on who you are, your experiences and circumstances, but as long it evolves beyond just making extra money and turns into a passion for helping others build financial security for themselves and their family through bookkeeping and accounting, your clients will be able to leverage you to focus on their purpose, whether that’s building great products or performing great services for their customers. You will, by extension, enjoy both the spiritual and financial reward of your labor.

Although bookkeeping/accounting involves the practice of measuring money and the material value of things, there’s spiritual meaning to this work if you choose to see it. The best bookkeepers don’t simply perform the most accurate work, but give their clients trust that their financial reports are a solid foundation to make management decisions.
A great bookkeeper doesn’t just make sure that receipts are entered and archived, but gives clients the peace of mind of compliance. The best bookkeepers don’t always reconcile their clients’ bank accounts to zero, but gives them confidence that every penny earned is accounted for. The best bookkeepers enhance their clients’ lives and businesses.

Bookkeeping is a means to an end. So is a side hustle.