Would any potential clients pay to have you trained to become a great bookkeeper?
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Some of you reading this might be in a position where this idea could work.
Is there anyone in your life you could come on staff with to work as their bookkeeper and they PAY FOR YOUR TRAINING? Here me out…
You see, training a business staff is a business expense. If the course can become a business expense somehow, the the price of the course essentially drops because of the tax deduction. When you think of it that way, the after-tax price of the course might start to seem like an investment you can afford. (Note, in some of the examples below, the tax deduction argument doesn’t work, but there still might be a good avenue to get training paid for.)
Let me throw out some examples off the top of my head:
- Your in-laws have a bunch of rental properties. They keep mentioning that they are always behind on “the books”. They buy your bookkeeping training course of choice through their business because y’all reach an agreement where they are going to hire you to do their books and you agree not to be paid for the first 3 months (or however long y’all decide is fair).
- Your dad set out on his own as an electrician a few years ago. It was all hands on deck in the beginning -mom, dad, brother, shoot, even the dog was in the marketing materials. Your job while you are living at home in college is to file the Use Tax forms with the state. You had no idea what you were doing at first, but you figured it out. Well, now dad’s business is making sufficient cash and needs to up its bookkeeping game. “So dad, I propose that my Awesome Offspring Bonus this year be paid out via an investment in this bookkeeping course. I think it would bring a lot of value to the business, and allow me to reap great benefits outside of the work that I’ve been doing to help you.”
- You’ve been helping your wife with the filing and paperwork management for her new e-commerce business for a year now. Frankly, y’all are happy with the cash you see in the bank each month, but you know the back office tasks are dubious at best. Y’all make some changes to the budget and find room to pay for your bookkeeping training out of the business revenue and, voila, you get trained, the business finally will get a good bookkeeper, AND you might also have an automatic niche! Find other businesses that are in your line of work but not your direct competitors. Boom.
- You are part of a team that has started a non-profit. Things are going much better than y’all ever imagined. Y’all are at the point where you are thinking you were going to need to apply some of the funds you’ve raised to Overhead to hire a bookkeeper. What if instead, the non-profit paid for a bookkeeping training course for you, in exchange for you being the bookkeeper for free or for a reduced rate?
- You’re currently the church secretary for your congregation. Y’all have a free-lance bookkeeper you’ve hired out, but every one knows she will be having a baby in 5 months and has mentioned that she needs to train someone because she is unsure whether she will come back after having her child. Could the church budget include a moderately priced bookkeeping course that would allow you to manage the bookkeeping and also begin a freelance business of your own? Churches are a great niche!
Do any of these scenarios get your brain juices flowing? Can you think of way this might be possible for you? Can you start making notes about how you can present a form proposal to someone in your life to make this happen? You’ll have to WORK, remember. WORK to get someone to “hire” you in this way. And WORK at becoming an excellent bookkeeper for them.
Now what training should you take? Do you think you even need training?
For me, without having an accounting or bookkeeping background, I needed to invest in some SPECIFIC education that would help me build my bookkeeping business. I had already been to college and to graduate school. I didn’t need anything general. I needed a laser-focused course.
It is no secret that I highly recommend Bookkeeper Business Launch and wrote a full review of the course here. Come on over to the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Facebook Group and let me know if you have any more questions or if you plan to purchase.
If you are discouraged because you can’t think of anyone in your life who could make such a significant purchase, you could take a much more bootstrap approach and ask for some of these books in this recommended book list.