[00:00:08] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Wendy Hill, and this is my podcast, confessions from the home office. Since 2005, I've been working from home in my home office, running a marketing consulting company while raising two kids and taking care of a bunch of rescue dogs. So this podcast is for you. If you have a full time job or you're working in corporate America and you're thinking about going out on your own, or you're out on your own, and you're a little lost on trying to figure out kind of how to set things up, how to be more efficient, get things done, and how to market things better. So each week, I'll give you insight on a different topic about working from home. And I hope that you'll subscribe and follow so you will never miss an episode. So this week, I'm gonna talk about all the job functions that you have to do when you're self employed that you don't have to do when you're an employee for somebody.
When I left the agency world back in 2005, I thought, I have all this control, I have all this freedom. I don't have to worry about HR. I don't have to worry about the billing department anymore. I don't have to worry that I didn't turn in my timesheets on time and all that stuff. So I realized quickly that there were a lot of things that I was going to have to figure out how to do on my own or get some help. So by the end of this episode, you're gonna know enough information. If you're thinking, this is too much, I can't do this, I'm just gonna stay put. Or, hey, this sounds neat, I might be able to do this, and this doesn't sound so bad. The incentive also is knowing all the things that you do have to do. And so when you get out, if you do start a business, you'll know of all the different people that you may need to bring into your network, either as contractors or employees or just somebody that you hire to help you once a year with something. So this episode is just an overview. We could dig into each topic into a separate episode. That would probably be just too much, but I wanted to give you a quick overview today. So the first thing we're going to talk about is something that business owners like to talk about can be stressful, but we like it is money. We're in business to make money. If you don't send out invoices to people, you have a hobby. If you're making money, you have a business. So when you own your own business. Who's your accounting and finance department? It's you. So here's a few things that you have to do. You have to invoice your clients. You need to figure out what system, how you're going to do that. Are you going to use Quickbooks? Are you going to use some other software? Is there something in your industry that's made just for you? I use wave apps and it's free. They do have an upgraded paid version now, but I've been using it since 2014. Haven't had a problem with it at all. I do have someone that generates my invoices for me now. They log in, we discuss what's going on. I send the information to them. They get everything ready, save them as drafts, and then I go through and send them out. This has saved me hours of time each month. I used to sit and work on billing for a day every month and just realized I was losing money by doing that.
The next thing is track expenses. So this is tough. When you're a business owner, you really need to keep your business expenses separate from your personal expenses. I try to put everything that's business related on one card and keep track of it that way.
You also need to keep track of expenses to see if you need a trim cost or look and see if there's things that you're paying for that you don't really need because your business changes, your needs change. And also, the biggest thing I think, with tracking expenses is there's a lot of expenses that you can write off your taxes. As a business owner, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a CPA, so I'm not going to go into a lot of details or tell you what's deductible and what's not. I don't want to get in trouble, but you do need to talk to somebody if you already have a business or you're starting one and making sure that you're taking all the deductions you can, and you need to track that very easily.
The next thing that I want to talk to you about is managing cash flow.
I've heard for years people saying, well, I couldn't pay this bill because this client didn't pay me or I got paid late, so I had to pay, so I had to pay this late. That's not anybody else's problem. So when you own a business, whether you're just starting out or later, you need to save as much as you can? Yes. Sometimes you've got to reinvest a lot of money back into the business or something comes up. But the best thing to do is to have money stashed away as much as you can. You can have them in multiple savings accounts, investment accounts, just in case the world gets crazy. But you shouldn't pay your bills late just because somebody else got paid late. You need to manage your cash flow, and if you've got an issue with that, get an accountant, get a bookkeeper, go talk to your banker, get that figured out. Don't get caught short on things, because then that your reputation will definitely be in jeopardy. You're a business and you're a professional. You need to keep moving ahead.
The next thing is paying your quarterly tax estimates, filing your tax returns. You need to find somebody that you can trust to teach you what you need to do or tell you what to do or take care of this for you.
When I first started out, I had a good CPA and turned everything over to him. I've used, I think, two or three different people over the last 20 years, and I still have somebody that I can call. I'm a little crazy. I do all that myself. That's just one thing that I like to take care of.
It may not be that way forever, but right now I'm in the season where I'm taking care of my own taxes. But you need someone that you can trust who tells you when you need to do certain things, how to do certain things, and if you have questions, ask ahead of time. Don't ask when you're waiting to file your taxes, and taxes are due in a week, and you may want to interview a couple people and figure out who the best person is to work with you. And then the next thing with money, I think this is the last topic, is plan for retirement.
When you leave corporate and you go out on your own, you don't have someone who's talking to you about your 401 every year or what the corporate match is anymore. You need to roll that over and figure out what you're going to do. If you're self employed, you can have a simplified employee pension plan. I'm not a financial advisor, so I'm not going to say much more than that. I will say this. You need to find someone you trust. And if you feel like someone's not going to give you enough attention, or you're just one of many, many clients and you're never going to hear from them, don't use them because you could end up being extremely successful and need someone to help you figure out how to invest your money. So it needs to be somebody you trust and someone you feel like really cares about what you're doing and what your plans are.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Are you getting started or restarted with marketing? For your business, visit my site, wendyhill.com and download the Market Momentum Kickstart guide. Inside, you'll discover a step by step roadmap to launch your marketing that delivers results. Don't leave your marketing to chance.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Firing off bottle rockets is not great.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: For your budget or for your results. Grab your free market momentum kickstart now and launch your next campaign with confidence. Visit wendyhill.com to learn more. That's Wendy with an eye.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: So now let's talk about something close to my heart. Your marketing department. Who's your marketing department? When you work for yourself, it's you again. So without a company brand behind you, you need to figure out your branding, like your logo, your URL. Do you need a website or you just need a social media account? For now, I always think you need a website because as crazy as social media is, they could shut your account down anytime.
And you need to think about what marketing materials you need. Do you need just a website? Do you need like landing pages? Do you need a digital business card or just printed ones? Do you need something to hand out when you network with people? Do you need any specialty items? If all this is overwhelming, you get someone you can that can do this for you. But here's the thing. Unless you're starting out with a lot of investors, big company, you don't need to go to someone who's going to charge you 15 $20,000 to set all this up. You can get help for pieces, parts, certain projects. People should be willing to do it for you in phases as you have a budget. Don't go drain your bank account just to get your marketing set up. It's important that it looks good and it looks professional. But realize that you're going to have other expenses too.
And then think about do you need to build like an email list and a sales funnel? And you need to stay in touch with people and you need to let them know what you're up to, what your offers are. And then once you get someone interested, do you have a proposal template ready? Do you know how to price your products? Do you have already that? Do you already have all that figured out? I want you to think about having everything in place in case somebody called you tomorrow and they were ready to work with you. So do you need to get something designed? Do you need to write out what would be in a proposal. Do you need to figure out all your disclaimers and your terms? Get all that done. And so, you know, you need to have all that ready. If you start networking and you're looking for leads. Do you do online networking only? Do you do in person networking? I think you should do a mix of both. I do a mix of both and it works out well. Sometimes there's groups online that you can meet and talk to somebody and eventually work with them. I think it's great also to get in front of people face to face so they get to know you. It's just a different. It's just a different vibe.
So next I want you to think about who is your it department.
If you leave, you're probably not going to have an it department. It department when you're working in your house and if you have a computer glitch, what are you going to do? Are you already tech savvy so you can already figure that out? Some people are, some people aren't. I would go ahead and start thinking about what are you going to do if something happens to your computer and you need to keep your data backed up in the cloud or an external hard drive.
I would not save it all on your hard drive and think, I'll move it over this weekend or I'll move it over next month because that's when somebody like me would pour a glass of tea on your laptop and fry it. So crazy things can happen even in new computers. I think you need to find somebody or a business that can help you. If your apple or your windows, where are you going to go?
How long does it take to get in to talk to somebody? How long does it normally take to get something fixed? You need to think about all these things because most of our businesses now, we rely on electronics to do everything. So over the years, I've had enough crazy things happen. I have backups, so I work off this laptop. I'm recording off right now. I have a backup laptop, an iPad and desktop. Everything's saved at the cloud. And if something goes down or I pour this tea on my computer, as soon as I finish recording this podcast, I can be back up in just a few minutes on another machine. Now, will I be mad? Yes. Will I have to go take this one to get it fixed or chunk it? Yes, but I think you need to have a backup plan for everything. I can't imagine telling my clients I can't work for three days or I can't work for a week because my computer's down. In this day and age, you gotta have a backup plan for everything. I'm fortunate enough that my son is in college. He's majoring in programming computer information systems. So if I have a question, he's my tech geek, but I also have a backup from that too, in case he's not available or it's something he doesn't know. But I would say that's something you need to think about. So if you're using technology and you're dependent on it, which just about everybody is, you need to have a plan.
So now think about who's your HR department?
No one's here to make the rules for you. You have to have the drive to set the schedule to get the work done, and you have to think about when are you going to work. So do you have the same work hours as your clients, or do you like to work late at night? You have to think about, you need to be available when your clients are wanting to talk to you. I think clients would be frustrated if they had, if it took two or three days to get in touch with you just because you're working weird hours on a regular basis.
My goal, I think if you listen to an earlier episode, I talked a lot about trying to stay ahead, and I think that's important. So people aren't constantly asking you to do things. It's more they know you're working on it. You're sending back something over to them to look at or think about, or this is the next thing that we talked about doing that builds trust and that builds confidence in you and will help your business more than you'll ever know. And you need to also think about who's going to train you. Like when I worked in the agency, we would have consultative sales training, or we would learn a new software or just interactive personal skills, things like that. So I'm an online course hoarder and I buy those and I'm absorbing that stuff all the time. I do education stuff every week unless I'm on vacation. I try to go to a conference, either local, regional, or national, once a year. If it's on a topic that I know it's something I need to know more about, or I know it's something that's really important to my clients.
And then the last thing when you think about HR is think about benefits. Before, once a year, you went and signed up for everything. They took care of it all, and everything just worked. When you're self employed, you've got to find somebody who can help you with benefits and all that. I found an insurance broker 1112 years ago, told him my situation and what my goals were and what my children and I needed, and he presented the options and signed me up. And I've been with him ever since. If I have an issue, I talk to him 15 minutes a year, which is fine. I, we go over everything and then if I have an issue, I contact his customer service department and they just take care of it. So that's something where you need to find somebody you trust, and it may be that you have to talk to a couple of people. If you ever ask anybody on Facebook who handles health insurance or life insurance, you'll get a hundred different responses. So you just have to go with your gut and, and look at people's reviews and see what people say, and you just need to feel good about it.
So now let's move on and talk about who's your legal department. If you're working for corporate, working for somebody else, they take care of all that. But you're going to have legal questions as a business owner and you need to have a good attorney. You don't have to keep somebody on retainer all the time, but you need to have a good attorney that isn't super slow and takes your business seriously and that you feel really good about.
There's always going to be questions about if you're forming a business or you want to add a second business and you have contracts or someone has threatened to sue or someone has breached a contract or you've been named in a lawsuit, or just there's a million different things, or I can't collect money from clients. Sometimes that comes up and it gets to the point where you have to go to a lawyer. And then there's the other thing of thinking about, how do you keep all your assets secure? You've got your personal assets, you've got your business assets. How do you keep all that straight? How do you make sure it's okay? How do you make sure that gets passed down correctly? And what happens when you decide to retire? If you don't sell the business, what happens to everything?
So what I have found is the best combination is to find a business attorney that works with an estate planning attorney. And that way they can bounce things off each other. They're either in the same firm or they refer work to each other all the time. That way you can keep your personal assets, your business assets, keep all that where it's not going to be taxed crazy, or it's really clear if something happens to you, and then if something comes up on the business side, they're there to help you. Whether it's to collect money from a client or to work on a contract or redo a contract or a lease agreement, you've got them there, and they understand your business. Think it's a bad idea also to check in with your lawyer.
Maybe you sit down and have a once a year consult. I think it's worth it. And you can say, this is what's been going on with my business. Do you see anything legally? Is there any risk there? Is there anything I need to change? Is there anything going on that you see just to get another set of eyes and ears on it, especially if you have a small team or you just work by yourself?
So now let's talk about project management. I do a ton of project management with the work that I do. And who's the project manager in your business? So I have myself, and I have somebody who's also a backup. So I'm the boss of the business, and I have to make sure that I determine the priorities and make sure I know when things are supposed to get done, try to get them done ahead of time. I know that's not always the case, but I'm always trying to work ahead and really just try to manage the expectations that clients have so no one's there to bail you out. So if you need to work on time management and project management skills, you need to do it. You don't need to say, I'll figure it out, or, I need to read a book on this. You need to get moving on it right away, because there are a million people out there that can do what you're doing, and you need to make sure that you're managing your time, you're managing the expectations, you're getting things done, just talking about things and postponing it over time. Clients get tired of hearing about that.
So how do you, how do you work on time management, project management? There's a million books, a million classes, a million ways you can do it. If you are a list person and you're a pen and paper, you keep your list. We do both. I have my daily list of things, personal and professional, that I have to do, but we keep everything. In Trello, I think I talked about that on another episode where every client has a board. We've got master boards for things, and we've got procedures. So this client needs these eight types of things done. This is when they're done. This is how you do it. And so that way it's not just me. And if team member's helping me and they need to go in there and look, they know right where to look.
There's no questions. There's not a lot of back and forth about things.
So. And lastly, I want to mention about customer service. You're the face of the business, so you will handle client communications.
If there's complaints, if people are frustrated with something or they're wanting to change how you work together, you're going to be the one to handle it. You can't run to your boss anymore and pull them in and say, I need you in on this call or I need you to go to lunch with the client and with me. And you're the one who's responsible for building and maintaining the relationships. So you've got to learn how to read people and does somebody want to be talked to a lot? Does somebody just want emails? Does someone want to do a once a month check in? You've got to figure that out and make sure that you carry it out and really build that relationship and you'll go far.
So the last thing I was going to talk about is you can't really keep everything in your brain. I mentioned earlier about putting things in Trello. It's best if you go ahead and document every process that you have. And I know that's hard to do and you think, I would fall asleep if I had to do that. Do like a couple of week. And in a couple of weeks you'll realize how much stuff that you really have down. But don't just put it on paper, put it in the system, some type of project management or Google Docs. It can be something as easy as that. Because when you have great service and you take care of things for clients, it helps keep your business running and growing.
So just remember, being self employed means not your not just doing your job, you're running a business. You can't just sit down and work on just your list. You've got to think about everything, marketing it, the money, the legal, all of it. So again, like I said, this is not to overwhelm you, but this is just to kind of help paint the picture, picture of everything that goes on in a business. So that is everything for today. Today I feel like I probably overwhelmed some of you or you're thinking, this is crazy. It's really not. It doesn't all hit you at once.
You know, all in one day there's just going to be bits and pieces that keep coming up here and there. And like I said, I could dig into each, each topic into a full episode. I'm not going to do that right now. So as we wrap this up, what questions do you have? Are there things that stressed you out that heard of that you heard on this episode or things that you want to know more about?
Leave a comment or send me an
[email protected]. so this is the end of the episode for today, and I hope you'll be back for the next episode, next week.
