So do you remember how a while ago I was like "blah blah blah you don't need to spend money to make money"...yeah...
I was wrong.
So wrong. Well, not entirely long. I mean if you make far more than you spend, you're probably ok to not have to invest in your own business. If you're a start up, not so much. Or at least, don't plan on buying anything. This is the first time I've done business stuff at tax time and I'm not going to lie, its not pretty so far. I mean its not bad, I thought I had done a good job of balancing everything (I have a positive balance in the business account) however I just got a lovely form in the mail called a personal properties assessment that is $300 just to file it! It doesn't matter if the business doesn't have any property, as a LLC it still has to be filed.
I should really rename this blog confessions of a newbie design firm (hmmmm....maybe i will still...) but this blog isn't just to be about designing, its really sort of the documentation of this company growing. Plus if there are any other startups reading this, I really feel like this is super important information!
So my dear audience, I have a question to pose...I originally intended for this to be a semi-weekly blog about the company/progress/etc. However, there's really not a lot going on now, so I'm thinking of making this blog a little personal and a little business. Otherwise, it will be a bit of unsteady flow since right now my main focus is getting ahead on school more than the company sooooo I'm thinking a bit of a mixup may be in order. Thoughts?
Showing posts with label freelance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freelance. Show all posts
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
I'm back!
I truly never meant to not blog this long. Actually it was a goal of mine to blog twice a week every week this year and the second week in, BAM I got an awful cold. Which led me to realize that the best tissues are in really ugly packages and that the medicines that I pick, I associate by color (red=for coughing, orange=for congestion, purple=tastes good but isn't really that effective...) which makes for a bit of a hard time when trying to get someone to pick you up the right medicine from the store. The cold is mostly gone and I believe that I'll be adjusting that resolution to be blogging twice a week for 50/52 of the weeks of the year. Let's get real. Stuff happens.
Which is what today's post is about. Stuff happens. Life gets in the way sometime. With freelancing, its not as easy to have a fluke as a normal day job (which btw I was fortunate enough to have some paid time off to cover the time I was off for my cold). In all honesty, Sunday was the first time I thought in a week. I'm sure you're going "What does that mean?!" Well I'll tell you. The Sunday before this past one, I was very groggy after waking up from a nap which either means that I A. overslept or B. am getting a cold. Of course I didn't realize this until Monday when I started making my "I'm sick" face at people, getting told I looked awful and all around felt like that. In fact that's what my loving boyfriend (we'll call him T.) started calling me and asking lovely things like "How is Death doing today?" But I digress.
As a freelancer, when life gets in the way there's only so many options that you have when things come up. You can be honest with the client and say that you really can't do your job due to X, you can lie to them, or you can just hope that they don't notice something is wrong.
I had a fantastic teacher in college who made it clear that it was important to follow through with your clients and meet deadlines no matter what and that the only time she hadn't met one was when she was in the hospital and she had another designer finish the project. That my friends is the type of work ethic I would love to be known for.
I'm not there yet though. That might not be the best thing to admit, but I pride myself in being honest about my work. Its hard for me to manage school, full time work and freelance work. I have this theory that only 75% of your life can go correctly at a time, the other 25% slips over time. For example, if your love life rocks, your work rocks and you're balancing all your relationships well...it might be hard to manage getting to the gym because you're spending all your time balancing everything else. The same certainly applies to me. I'll admit that I'm playing catch up on some schoolwork that I had loosened my timeline on to make time for freelance work. It will be a lot easier once I only have work and freelancing but right now I feel like a bit of a circus doing all this juggling. So when a client asked last month if I had time to work on a project the next week I said no. I explained I didn't have any openings until mid-January but if he got in a pinch, I recommended a few freelance bidding sites. Why? I guess I wanted to be honest and even though I was hoping he wouldn't jump to a bidding site (which he didn't) when life gets in your way and you have a client, you need to not through a rock in their way too.
So yeah, here's my first post of the week, which means that I need to either do one tomorrow or Saturday to hit my goal. I've totally got this!
Which is what today's post is about. Stuff happens. Life gets in the way sometime. With freelancing, its not as easy to have a fluke as a normal day job (which btw I was fortunate enough to have some paid time off to cover the time I was off for my cold). In all honesty, Sunday was the first time I thought in a week. I'm sure you're going "What does that mean?!" Well I'll tell you. The Sunday before this past one, I was very groggy after waking up from a nap which either means that I A. overslept or B. am getting a cold. Of course I didn't realize this until Monday when I started making my "I'm sick" face at people, getting told I looked awful and all around felt like that. In fact that's what my loving boyfriend (we'll call him T.) started calling me and asking lovely things like "How is Death doing today?" But I digress.
As a freelancer, when life gets in the way there's only so many options that you have when things come up. You can be honest with the client and say that you really can't do your job due to X, you can lie to them, or you can just hope that they don't notice something is wrong.
I had a fantastic teacher in college who made it clear that it was important to follow through with your clients and meet deadlines no matter what and that the only time she hadn't met one was when she was in the hospital and she had another designer finish the project. That my friends is the type of work ethic I would love to be known for.
I'm not there yet though. That might not be the best thing to admit, but I pride myself in being honest about my work. Its hard for me to manage school, full time work and freelance work. I have this theory that only 75% of your life can go correctly at a time, the other 25% slips over time. For example, if your love life rocks, your work rocks and you're balancing all your relationships well...it might be hard to manage getting to the gym because you're spending all your time balancing everything else. The same certainly applies to me. I'll admit that I'm playing catch up on some schoolwork that I had loosened my timeline on to make time for freelance work. It will be a lot easier once I only have work and freelancing but right now I feel like a bit of a circus doing all this juggling. So when a client asked last month if I had time to work on a project the next week I said no. I explained I didn't have any openings until mid-January but if he got in a pinch, I recommended a few freelance bidding sites. Why? I guess I wanted to be honest and even though I was hoping he wouldn't jump to a bidding site (which he didn't) when life gets in your way and you have a client, you need to not through a rock in their way too.
So yeah, here's my first post of the week, which means that I need to either do one tomorrow or Saturday to hit my goal. I've totally got this!
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
The Truth
The truth isn't always the easiest thing to explain but it does certainly leave a good foundation if nothing else. This is not the usual style of my blog to admit something that I'd rather not admit but here it goes.
The truth is that I never meant to start a freelancing company. There. I said it.
I'm sure you're thinking one of three things. Either:
1. Who cares (well you're the one reading this, aren't you)?
2. Why would you admit that (it goes to the foundation laying...just go with it)?
3. How did you "accidentally" start a freelancing company?
The third answer is a little more complicated. I had no intention at all of starting up a company but it more or less ended up being a bit of a necessity. I have a friend that works with a furniture company who called up in summer 2010 and asked if I would be interested in some freelancing work. The answer I should have given would have been no, I'm swamped with schoolwork and adjusting to my fabulous new job. But this is me, little Miss Entrepreneur, so I had to say yes. Its like I enjoy not having free time or something. So the first meeting something came up making the meeting relatively unproductive. The second meeting was better until the owner was saying that he would need my EIN. My who? Fortunately, I have an acquaintance who is an accountant and was able to inform me all about getting your EIN (also known as a business tax ID number...if you want to know how, just ask) and on my way to deciding between a LLC or a sole proprietorship. Again...note the dumbfounded stare. So before I made my choice, I did a bit of research online and basically here's the difference (please note I'm not a lawyer or do I know all the little details...this is simply the blog of a graphic designer):
If you get sued by your customer (let's hope not but just in case)...
...a LLC license (in Maryland at least) will cost about $100 and the suer can only go after your business assets. Mine are still at a laughable amount, although I'm a big believer of the "better safe than sorry" theory.
...a sole proprietorship costs you nothing but the suer can go after all your belongings...personal or business.
Now there are some instances where you might not need that protection. I personally prefer it though because while I have an iron clad contract with my clients and am very careful of copyright laws, I don't always know that they will be. Not everyone is familiar with copyright laws and attributions on images for example, so while I make a best effort to find out the licensing on provided image, nothing is there to stop a client from simply pulling a picture off Google and saying its legit! Like I said, better safe than sorry.
So that is the story of how Line-ily LLC was born. Not the most romantic story in the world, however I had always thought about becoming a freelancer on the side of my full time work (I love working with a group of people more than by myself so I will always have a full time job outside of freelancing), I just didn't expect it to fall into my lap so suddenly. There is obviously a far longer story than this of the start up of Line-ily LLC, but that is another story for another night.
The truth is that I never meant to start a freelancing company. There. I said it.
I'm sure you're thinking one of three things. Either:
1. Who cares (well you're the one reading this, aren't you)?
2. Why would you admit that (it goes to the foundation laying...just go with it)?
3. How did you "accidentally" start a freelancing company?
The third answer is a little more complicated. I had no intention at all of starting up a company but it more or less ended up being a bit of a necessity. I have a friend that works with a furniture company who called up in summer 2010 and asked if I would be interested in some freelancing work. The answer I should have given would have been no, I'm swamped with schoolwork and adjusting to my fabulous new job. But this is me, little Miss Entrepreneur, so I had to say yes. Its like I enjoy not having free time or something. So the first meeting something came up making the meeting relatively unproductive. The second meeting was better until the owner was saying that he would need my EIN. My who? Fortunately, I have an acquaintance who is an accountant and was able to inform me all about getting your EIN (also known as a business tax ID number...if you want to know how, just ask) and on my way to deciding between a LLC or a sole proprietorship. Again...note the dumbfounded stare. So before I made my choice, I did a bit of research online and basically here's the difference (please note I'm not a lawyer or do I know all the little details...this is simply the blog of a graphic designer):
If you get sued by your customer (let's hope not but just in case)...
...a LLC license (in Maryland at least) will cost about $100 and the suer can only go after your business assets. Mine are still at a laughable amount, although I'm a big believer of the "better safe than sorry" theory.
...a sole proprietorship costs you nothing but the suer can go after all your belongings...personal or business.
Now there are some instances where you might not need that protection. I personally prefer it though because while I have an iron clad contract with my clients and am very careful of copyright laws, I don't always know that they will be. Not everyone is familiar with copyright laws and attributions on images for example, so while I make a best effort to find out the licensing on provided image, nothing is there to stop a client from simply pulling a picture off Google and saying its legit! Like I said, better safe than sorry.
So that is the story of how Line-ily LLC was born. Not the most romantic story in the world, however I had always thought about becoming a freelancer on the side of my full time work (I love working with a group of people more than by myself so I will always have a full time job outside of freelancing), I just didn't expect it to fall into my lap so suddenly. There is obviously a far longer story than this of the start up of Line-ily LLC, but that is another story for another night.
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