This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Chris Guillebeau here, your host of "Side Hustle School," the daily podcast about making extra money without quitting your job. Of course, daily podcast means seven days a week. Every day we have a new episode featuring questions and answers, case studies, archival reports, field reports. I'm not sure what the difference is there, but basically reports from people on the front lines with their success stories.
And sometimes, in fact, every Friday, a report of something that doesn't go so well. We call this failure Friday. It is about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. You get to hear directly from a side hustler who has struggled to get something off the ground or otherwise had one of those big mistakes or disasters. Okay, so today kind of falls into both categories, mistake and disaster, or at least it's a big mistake.
This short story features Sherry. So Sherry is a new freelance bookkeeper. She's excited about her new business. She is recruiting clients, just trying to scale up a bit. And she makes a big mistake, speaking of scale, she makes a mistake that is quite scaled, I guess.
Well, basically what she does is she overstates the income on a client's return, a client's tax return. So this is a big problem, right? Because if you say somebody makes a lot more money than they did, then they're going to owe a lot more tax than they expected. So not a good thing to experience as a small business owner or as the bookkeeper who makes that mistake. Let's hear the story from Sherry.
I'll be back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
So as a new freelance bookkeeper, I was always looking for opportunities to gain experience and build my client base. So when I was approached by a small business owner to take on their bookkeeping, I was thrilled. Everything seemed to be going well at first. I spent hours pouring over the financial records, organizing them and making sure everything was in order.
But as I was working on the business owner's tax return, I realized I'd made a huge mistake. Or at least, eventually I realized I'd made a huge mistake. But I didn't notice right away. It turns out I'd accidentally ended some numbers incorrectly, which completely skewed the business owner's tax liability. When I presented the final return to them, they were shocked by the amount of taxes they owed.
I was mortified by my error and immediately apologized. I knew I had to fix the problem. So I spent the next day working tirelessly to prepare an amended return. Despite the challenges, I learned a few valuable lessons from the experience. Firstly, it's always important to double check and triple check your work, especially when it comes to something as important as a tax return.
A small mistake can have big consequences, so it's better to be safe than sorry. Secondly, it's important to be upfront and honest about your mistakes. I knew I'd messed up and the business owner deserved to know the truth. And by being transparent and taking responsibility for my error, I was able to build trust and strengthen my relationship with them. Overall, despite the challenges I faced, I was proud of myself for handling the situation with integrity and doing everything I could to make things right.
It was a tough lesson to learn, but it ultimately made me a better bookkeeper and helped me to hone my skills and attention to detail. [Music]
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. That's the theme of Failure Friday. Sometimes things go wrong, sometimes things go very wrong, and you have to work your way through it. You have to work your way through that defeat on the road to success, which is what Sherry, of course, is doing.
Sherry, thank you so much for sharing that story. I can just imagine how it feels to be in that situation. I've actually been on the other side of being the business owner and getting some tax records that weren't quite right and then having to sort that out. And it's very stressful. It's stressful for everyone involved.
So good work making it through. I'm excited to hear what happens next in your journey. Listeners, if you have a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions, today's notes, sidehustleschool.com/2211. And of course, tune in again tomorrow for a new episode. It's all completely free.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
from the Onward Project.
