The Read

Hello. Welcome back to The Read. I took a week off and it was great. Let me tell you, I've got a lot of sympathy out there for people with a podcast that's longer than 10 minutes because given the amount of time it takes me to do this one, It must take days for people with a two hour podcast to get theirs done, given the hours I spend a week.

Only on these 10 minutes, getting them just right. It must take other people days to record their podcasts and get them perfect. There's no way they. Record them and then haphazardly release them mistakes and all . Foisting the editing work onto some poor, underpaid assistant who doesn't even care themselves enough to really listen to the whole thing.

That would be a shame. So surely, it doesn't happen.

Anyway we are mid-month now. I had wanted to do a themed month of reads, but since April is halfway over and I don't wanna wait till May, we are going to do two themed half months themed the same way back to back. We're still gonna call it a theme month. In fact, we're creating our own month. It's the last half of April together with the first half of May, and we call that Readtober. This Readtober, we're gonna focus on what I like to call the "Van Stack."

These are all products I use, that I use together in order to accomplish the many tasks that I do. So in the past we've had some products that I have said I don't use, and we've had some products that I have said I do use. These are all products that I use and they're products that work together.

And if you want to go out there and be me, well, I'm sorry. First of all, that's one, impossible and B, my condolences. No one should have to be me other than me. It's hard enough for myself and my wife. But if you did want to try and replicate some of the things that I do and duplicate some of the processes that I've discovered to efficiently manage my many, many, far too many side project. Including this podcast, The Read. Well then Readtober is gonna be your new favorite month. 

So that brings us to today's sponsor. It's how I keep track of how much all this nonsense costs me. It's my accounting software. Today on the read. Xero.

Hey there listeners. Before we jump into today's episode, I want to tell you about a game changer for small businesses, our sponsor Xero accounting. As a small business owner, myself. I know how crucial it is to have your finances in check. And Xero has been an absolute lifesaver.

Xero is a powerful, easy to use cloud based accounting software designed specifically for small businesses like yours and mine. It helps you run your business smoothly, keeping your records, tidy and compliance a breeze. With Xero, you have everything in one place, including your invoices, contacts.

Accounting all accessible all together all online, but it doesn't stop there. Xero also connects seamlessly to your bank, syncing your financials to the cloud. Plus Xero is highly customizable, so you can connect other apps and add ons and create automations that let you tailor the software to your unique business needs.

It's great for those who love options because Xero offers over 1000 3rd party app integrations, such as integrations with Stripe, Shopify, Gusto, and Zapier. You can check out the Xero app store and you'll find apps you probably already use that can connect with Xero and make running your business even easier.

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So I do think they expected that to be read at the top of a show that then went on to have a bunch more show. Rather than read towards the middle slash end of a show and encompass most of the runtime of the show, but either way, I think it made for a good ad read. , Just to talk a little bit about Xero and how I use it and how it fits into, what I have been calling the van stack.

What makes a Xero much better than QuickBooks or, certainly much better than a human accountant is it allows me to automate accounting tasks. the assigning of categories to things, dividing up receipts separating, the sales tax from other things, separating the shipping that a customer paid for something on the bug main store from the cost of the item. Because those actually go separate places. On. The bug main LLC taxes. Which I have to fit in. Doing between a hundred other things on a full-time job.

Because, let me tell ya, Bug Mane's not going to do them. And. My name is on the corporate registration documents. Because he wasn't going to fill those out either. So the buck just stops with me. I really couldn't do a lot of these things without automateable accounting software that has API hooks and speaks with all of my other software directly. when I started doing some of these things years ago, I used to try and explain what was going on to a human accountant. And they just didn't understand that I don't do just one thing. I do anything. Everything. If it's a thing I going to try and do it.

That's the other great part is it's not a person. I don't have to speak to a person. Anyway. I will be back next week. My break ended up being about three weeks rather than one week, but I gotta tell ya I am fired up and ready to do more episodes. Come back next week. you're going to hear about another piece of software or product or website that I find invaluable. It's Readtober. I'm Van Robichaux and this has been The Read