Step Up Your Bookkeeping Game With The Right Help! – Episode 329

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. On this episode of the Prosperity Podcast, we’re going to be talking about bookkeeping and how to keep your finances organized so you get the greatest result. Kim, we are here to pick your brain and to learn so much today. I am excited. Well, thank you, Spencer. This is a space that is really important and I am so grateful that I figured out a long, long time ago a way that works for me. And so I’m happy to share it and it is a complete bearing of the soul, if you will, because this is kind of interesting. Here I am a financial advisor and I don’t do my own books. So how did I figure out why and how to get that handled? So I think let’s set a principle about this conversation that I think is going to be

[00:56] really helpful for our listeners. And I’m going to borrow this principle from Dan Sullivan. And it works like this. It is called Who Not How. Would you like to explain that? Yes, that is a fabulous principle. Dan Sullivan, a strategic coach, has come up with and you can grab a book on Amazon called Who Not How if you’re curious about it. And it essentially says that you will want to, as an entrepreneurial thinker, whether you’re a business owner or not, as an entrepreneurial thinker, you will want to identify who can help you get things done that you’re not good at or that you don’t want to do, not how can you get them done, especially when they fall into the category of you’re not good at them or

[01:42] you don’t want to do it. And so we actually need to even back up and give Dan credit for another principle, which is unique ability. And that is figuring out for yourself. And again, this plays a role professionally, but it plays a role personally as well. And that is figuring out for yourself what you’re good at, what gives you joy and that you love and then what to do with everything else. Now for listeners, here’s what’s going to be exciting. We’re going to go through some of the who pieces and we’re going to go through some of the how. Now the how that we’re going to go through is going to be how from the perspective of principles and not as much the minutiae. So we might not be talking about software in this latest piece, but we’re going

[02:32] to be talking about things you can absolutely take action on. Is that fair to say? Yes. Well said. First off, you made this decision to hire a bookkeeper. Why did you do that? So this is 25 some years ago when I was introduced to the concept of unique ability that we just brought up and also the Colby profile, K-O-L-B as in boy E. So colby.com 50 bucks, best thing that you can ever do for yourself because it identifies how you get results. And one of the things that I learned from the Colby profile and going through the exercises is that I’m a very big picture thinker and I get results best by jumping in. And so as soon as I learned that, I realized that the nature of bookkeeping, which of course is very process oriented and very detail oriented was not something that I

[03:28] was good at, was not something that I enjoyed doing. And I could serve me and my family better. Again, this just started at a very personal level. It wasn’t even at a business level. I could serve me and my family better by not doing them. So you had enough intuition to say, okay, I’ve got to get someone else to do this. Correct. And this is before online banking, right? So bookkeeping at that time meant actually literally manually balancing a checkbook, taking a credit card statement and verifying everything and doing whatever work was necessary to manually create an income statement and a balance sheet. I remember those days and I hated them. Yes, yes. So now that you have a person, I guess we should back up and say, how do you find the right person?

[04:28] So you first just acknowledge that you need help in this area. And if it’s something that you can write a check for, then it’s way easy. But I’m going to share with you an idea if you don’t feel like you can write a check. So you go about finding the who, not the how, when you realize it’s an area of lack of interest or even distaste for yourself. I’m avoiding using the word hate, but I think it could apply in this category. In fact, I think you used it. So when you realize that you don’t like doing something, it’s a sign that somebody else can do it for you better with so much more joy. And then you won’t be miserable every Saturday morning that you have to sit down and do X, whatever it is. So again, if you have the ability to write a check, then you just pop on

[05:11] Fiverr or you Google it or you, you know, depending on what it is that you’re looking for, maybe you pop on TaskRabbit or you ask friends or you ask colleagues who can do this for me and make it clear. I’m not looking for how to do it. I’m looking for who can do it for me. And if you cannot write a check, then you can still go about all the same ways. Probably a personal recommendation is going to be a little easier to do this with. And then see if you can trade services. So at a really simple level, let’s say that you need somebody to do your books, but you don’t have the ability to pay money, but you’re more than happy to run errands or, you know, chop wood or whatever it is, then offer to trade with that

[06:01] person until you do get to a place where you can just write a check. And there’s a whole bunch of people that have said a statement, something like this, which is if you can pay for the solution to a problem, then you do not have the problem. Very well said. You’ve decided that there’s a problem to solve. You need to get someone to do it. You can either write a check and you can trade services to do it. You need to figure out at this point, what are the things that you’re looking for in that person? Yes. And being clear on that is important without a doubt. And so for the bookkeeping realm, of course, it’s somebody that’s detailed and that has a process. And in today’s world, it also is somebody that can handle all the

[06:49] online capability. And clearly, you probably want somebody that’s bonded and you do want to be referred in. You know, I wouldn’t recommend finding a bookkeeper on Fiverr, although you could and you just go slow and start small, which we’ve used that mantra so many times, go slow and start small. And I did that with our current bookkeeper. I just gave her one account and a little bit of work and then another and another and another as time progressed. And now I don’t handle any bills personally. I don’t have any idea what our balance is in our checkbook. I have a variety of company accounts and a variety of credit cards that go with each of those company accounts and personal accounts that she

[07:27] handles all in its entirety. And when we need to go through something like get a mortgage approved or whatever, I have Carrie on the phone or handling the emails because she knows more about our personal balance sheet and income statements than I do because that’s her area of domain. It gives her joy. And she knows that I round numbers horribly. And so me doing the balancing of said checkbook is not a good idea anyway. Well, I’m going to surprise you with something. Yes. So here it goes. We’ve known about Carrie. I’ve known about Carrie for a long time. We’ve had this conversation about bookkeeping, but not in detail like this. Well, here it was probably two years ago. I was over at my friend Mike’s house. He

[08:07] owns a dog training business and he is a world class dog trainer. But you know what? He’s not world class at bookkeeping. It’s just disgusting to him. And I said, you know, I know a bookkeeper who can really help you out. Sent him an email with Carrie’s information. Guess what? Mike is now the happiest guy in the world because Carrie does his books. I love it. And now he gets to work on his unique ability. It’s wonderful. And Carrie likes dogs. So it’s perfect. Yes. So true. So now we should dive in a little bit more about the bookkeeping. And I think there are things that depending on how you operate as a person, you can come to your bookkeeper with more details or less details. What have you found that works for you?

[09:00] I don’t do anything. So I come to her personally with no details. Now, what do I do instead? Well, she has, and again, this didn’t happen overnight, but she has all of our online capability handled. She does use QuickBooks even for our personal books because that’s easier. It’s just a more proper accounting system, whereas Quicken is not a proper accounting system. And she gets a FedEx from us once a week with anything that does happen to be personal or business that’s in paper format. Of course, almost everything else is online, but you still end up with occasional physical receipts and that kind of thing. So all that stuff gets shoved into a FedEx and sent to her. She is licensed and bonded. I get reports every month and it works beautifully.

[09:49] And it is amazing how unbelievably freeing that is. Plus, the money that we spend on her, I guarantee you, is easily saved at probably an equal amount, if not higher, at our accountants at tax time because we’re so organized and totally ready to go. And we would not be that way if we didn’t have her help. You touched on the point where I was going to go, so that’s perfect. And that’s the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant. And for people that haven’t used a bookkeeper, you can often conflate the two and think that they’re the same, but they’re not. But what you said was the bookkeeper keeps you organized and the hourly rate of a bookkeeper is a lot less than the hourly rate of an accountant.

[10:43] And you get better results when you’re more organized and better feedback from the accountant. Yes, absolutely. It lets the accountant focus on what they’re good at, which is working on your tax environment. And then it’s the bookkeeper that’s doing the work all along the way. Your accountant should have a conversation with you maybe once or twice a year, whereas the bookkeeper, at least by email and reports, is every month. So that’s a critical distinction. And now both people are doing what they’re good at. Absolutely. Now, the other person that should be involved with this and that’s really going to help out would be the financial advisor because now the bookkeeper has things organized. The accountant has things organized. Now the financial advisor can look at it and say,

[11:31] okay, now I get a clear picture without a bunch of mystery. So does it help you when you see a client and they’re organized? It’s interesting because, yes, I’m sure that it does. And different financial advisors work differently. And because I am so big picture, I don’t tend to get involved in the nitty-gritty of bookkeeping, cash flow, expenses, et cetera, et cetera, or taxes. So while, yes, if somebody can come to me with a clean set of books, I’m not going to look at them. I just want to know the bottom line of what that information says. And while somebody can come to me for guidance on reducing their taxes in this year and I can actually help them with that, make some suggestions that have an impact on that, especially if they’re an accredited

[12:21] investor and we can actually make a difference, that’s good too. But again, I’m not going to get involved in the nitty-gritty of the taxes. That’s the accountant’s job. So what you said is accurate and yet it’s interesting to think about because I think when you’ve got your finances really well handled, which is what we try to help people do, they become so less needy, your finances become less needy, i.e. things are on automation and you’re tackling the really big important rocks and not dealing with the sand that is in between. Oh, that is so good. What a great way to put it. So in essence, it’s more of like a habit that is underlying, that’s creating everything else to be healthy. Yeah, well said.

[13:12] Good. Well, for our listeners, bookkeeping is one of those topics that you’re probably looking at and you’re saying it’s not the most exciting thing. It’s not like real estate investing or it’s not like looking at how to get into the oil and gas markets. But you know what? It’s really important. It is and it sets you up for getting the results in every other category. Absolutely. So one of the things that I think would be wonderful for us to do is to put an email in the show notes so that you can contact Kim with additional questions. And then would it be appropriate to put an email or contact information for Carrie or another bookkeeper that you suggest? Absolutely. Yeah, let’s put Carrie’s info in. I’m not sure what kind of room she has to take

[14:00] on clients. And yet I’m quite confident that just taking a peek at her website would be beneficial to somebody because it would help them know what else to find. And for some people, it’s going to be important that they find a bookkeeper that’s local, that isn’t relevant to us, although I did start out with Carrie when she was local. And so that’s an important distinction to make. Okay, that helps. So we’ll put that in the show notes. And for all of you listeners, if you like what you hear on the podcast, we’d love to hear your feedback. One of the things you can do is if you’re on Apple, make sure you hit that subscribe button and then leave us a review. We would love to hear what you think about the podcast. And please tell your friends, family,

[14:42] others that are looking to live a more prosperous life. Tell them about the show. That’s how we’re able to help educate additional people. So thank you for being with us on the podcast today. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.