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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
The DBA is Done!
So we’re almost legal-eagle here.
We have the DBA taken care of, and hubby is on his way to pick up the girls from preschool.
Wow, I remember when we worked like this before – pregnancy changes so much – and I’m looking forward to getting back to it.
Does this make me a glorified secretary for my husband? Yep. Am I okay with it? I’m working on it.
I also get to be the accountant, graphic designer, copywriter (of course!) and bookeeper…so my talents don’t go completely to waste! LOL
I’m starting to get to the place where I’m less scared and more excited. That’s a good sign, right?
Going Back to My Internet Marketing Roots
I’m back in bed after being up for a while, and I’ve had an epiphany.
It might be a fever-dream, but you know, sometimes those are good, too.
I’m going back to basics. Anytime I see a site where someone is selling Internet marketing services, I always think, “If they know so much, why aren’t they doing it for themselves instead of for someone else?” Because, you know what? If you’re good enough to be SELLING Internet marketing services, you should be using them yourself for more than getting people to your website. You should pick a niche and put your skills to the test.
So that’s what I’m doing. Not to prove a point, but because that’s where the profit is, my friends, and mama is turning over a new leaf in 2010. How much money can I make without having a client to answer to.
I’m not going to do it for anyone else. I’m going to do it for me. Treat myself like the best. client. ever and follow my own directions to the letter – and it’s going to rock.
Honestly, I’ve given away so much free advice in the last few years it could fill a book. A book I don’t want to write and that will become outdated too quickly. But, I will continue to give out advice to people who ask for it that probably have no idea that I’m handing them something that could change their lives.
But this year? It’s time to:
- Double the savings account.
- Pay off the student loans.
- Start working on paying off the house.
Standing in the way of my success for those plans?
- Me. (More specifically, my utter lack of consistent focus.)
I am my only hurdle.
Okay, me and the really loud kids I have. Sometimes I swear if the two older ones aren’t being loud the baby is crying. That hurts focus. But I will find a workaround.
I’m determined.
I’ve picked a few niches, some new, some old…all are totally unlike any from anyone else I know that has niche sites so we’re not double dipping or competing against each other…and I’m going to start writing tomorrow.
It is, in fact, game on like Donkey Kong.
Grumpiness, Business Systems, Theme Stuff
There’s nothing like having time on your hands to get all philosphical and grumpy.
My last two posts were both kind of whiny and complainy.
Usually, I try to leave the arguing and “I am right-ing” to others…people who do it way better than I do. People who only see their side of the argument.
Sometimes, seeing all the sides of an issue all the time sucks. This usually happens in politics, where people believe what they believe and that’s that. I wish I could be so sure, so strong in my beliefs.
But that’s not who I am.
Other than some very solid issues (usually involving children and consent) I’m fluid in my beliefs. Understanding that people come from different backgrounds and those backgrounds are what truly shape a person’s worldview.
If you were white and lived in a society where everything on televsion represented black as the standard of beauty, I assure you it wouldn’t take long before you were buying powder and foundation a couple shades darker.
Which is why in many countries (including this one) you can still buy whitening cream. The first time I found out about that it shocked and horrified me that anyone would feel the need to change the way they look, but then I looked in my medicine cabinet and saw hair dye and makeup and realized we all do it.
It’s why I’ll post about fat people on airplanes but am able to see it from the company’s standpoint. I mean, if I was in the marketing meeting about getting more money for the airline I’d target fat people too – It’s so in vogue to hate fat people that even a fat person with minimal marketing savvy would have picked charging fat people more money to be on the airline as the thing to do to make more money. And really, you can’t cry discrimination because they’re letting them fly – they’re not taking them off the plane – they just have to fly first class – where they (and everyone else, let’s be honest) want to be in the first place. But there are people that will complain that the fat people are taking their first-class seats…so we’ll have to see where this nets out.
As for small business owners in my other whiny post, I guess I just want systems in place for all small businesses. So there is less of a gray area in all areas of business. That includes my business, too.
But I don’t have systems in place in my business, which has already caused me problems because I didn’t have a backup plan for my assistant currently stuck in bad weather in (I think) Colorado. So I wait day by day for updates. If I had a system in place that said, “On day three, call X and have her fill in” there wouldn’t be an emotional waiting quality to the process. There would just be the process, waiting for me to execute protocols in place for just such an emergency.
Of course I started looking processes for business up on the Internet and really couldn’t find one. There’s a lot about the systems you use daily – advice to write down what you do every day so someone else can take your place if that becomes necessary. I already have that, as well as someone to do it for me.
I don’t know. Maybe systems aren’t what I need. Or maybe they’re called something different.
I just want to go back to working the way I did before. Being philosophical is fun for the first couple days, but then I have too much time to surf the Internet and stumble across things I’d be much happier having never read.
Maybe I need a filter on my browser so I can only find pregnancy-hormone-approved websites.
You know, the ones that don’t piss me off.
I also need to figure out how to do previews of these posts so people new here can decide what post they want to read. It would be cool if there was an excerpt with a thumbnail and then you could click through to the full post. (But still do full RSS feeds, of course!) Can you do that without changing your whole theme?
Spring Break, Deadlines, and Accounting (groan)
My girls are off school this week.
Make. the hurting. stop.
Because (of course!) spring break coincides with some of the biggest deadlines yet.
We have to edit, insert keywords, finesse, and keep the kids from going insane at the same time. If the weather wasn’t so crappy out we could take the kids to the park for a couple hours later, but with all the freshly-melted snow that would be like taking them to a mud pit. Then we’d have to come home and have a bath and there’s five hours of my life gone for a visit to the park.
Instead, we’ll try to set up a mini-olympics or something later inside the house so they can get their energy out. That or put them on the treadmill. They’d probably prefer the treadmill.
Ok, my tortured sinuses and I are going back to work.
It’s difficult to believe that I’ll have all the April writing work done by the 10th of the month. There will still be the consulting and the building of the new business blog, but no more writing. Unless I request it. Which I might. Because I’m like that. But it might not even be available if I request more by the middle of the month.
The downside to all this work is that larger checks are held by my bank for five business days (thanks for nothing BoA!) so balancing the payments to contractors this month for payments that I may not receive (in some instances) until the May check from the company is an interesting balance. If you try to think of how to do a budget with incoming and outgoing payments it becomes mind-boggling pretty quickly. Because how do I account for the payout I’m making at the beginning of April that I won’t see in my bank account until the middle of May? Is there a way to mark that somewhere?
Because it always comes back to the budget.
Part of me thinks that the Dave Ramsey system is a little fudged for our purposes of running a business. Sure you have the emergency fund, sure you can have the hill and valley fund…but are the payments to contractors coming out of the hill and valley fund or a totally separate payments to contractors fund?
Oh – over on MommyBlog Reviews we just did a review for some adorable wall stickers. The videos of the kids (I think) are hilarious. Just sharing.
Who’s Economy Is Failing?
There are so many confusing statistics and it really is starting to feel like I can’t turn around without someone talking about the economy.
- 3 million houses applied for foreclosure in 2008.
- 4.5 million houses were bought in January of 2009.
Or how about this little nugget:
- 50% of the foreclosures of 2008 were in 32 counties in America.
These stats came from the Dave Ramsey show, so while I’m assuming they are accurate they may very well not be. I don’t know if he Googled it or paid a research analyst.
The big huge problem is one that really isn’t. The devaluation of homes. Now, for some people, it is a real and true problem. For others, like us, our home value has gone down about $1,174 from when we purchased it (according to Cyberhomes.com via Mint.com) – not a big deal. But I think the big problem comes in when you bought your house for a certain amount – an amount the purchaser thought was fair at the time of purchase – and now, because the tv and some websites are telling homeowners their house is worth less they feel they shouldn’t have to pay.
It feels like a much bigger version of me buying a computer from HSN on Easy Pay (I’ve done it before) and then during the fourth payment calling HSN and saying, "Hey, this computer isn’t worth what it was when I bought it. I don’t want to pay for it anymore."
Honestly I’m not sure why home values increase over time. Homes are objects that become run down and decrepit over time. Pipes get old, water heaters leak and burst, and wiring becomes faulty. Why wouldn’t the value go down over time? (I’m not a real estate whiz, so if the answer is simple please let me know!)
Wow, this post was supposed to go up last night but Randy and I got all sidetracked when I asked him the "why don’t houses depreciate like cars" question. He started talking about all the hidden costs of home ownership and I was all, replacing the engine and tires on a 1989 POS car doesn’t raise it’s value. It’s still crap. But people sell "flip" houses – the POS car of houses – for way more tan the car equivalent would go for.
Eventually I beat him into submission and he kinda agrees with me now.
I’m off to do some writing so I can work on the new business guilt free this evening! I have a title, a tag line, and what I’d put on a business card. The only thing I don’t have is a business name. Yikes.
Is That a Bird in My Hand or am I Jinxing my Budget?
It happens every month. At the end of the month the total receipts go through, the bills are paid, the new budget for the next month is created, and hope sets in.
Because (with the exception of January – the month after the husband was laid off) every month looks better than the last.
There are two ways to look at things:
- I should be doing more. More writing, more work, more clients. Preparing for a month that is not good. Striving to be better.
- Even the month that saw emergency rotor repair on the car and emergency oral surgery for the husband (a little over $800 for those two events) didn’t put us in a horrible position or empty our savings account.
I thought we were going to pay off the car last October. It actually got paid off in January. Every month I said, “This is the month we’re paying off the car!” Like clockwork, it turned out that was not the month we were paying off the car. I started to think I was jinxing the payoff by mentioning it.
So now, when I think we are so close to really having everything caught up, to having every bill be no more than the current month, to being at the place where I can start replenishing our now kind of pathetic savings account…I’m scared to talk about it.
I’m petrified that by invoking hope out loud I’m somehow offending fate and asking for unexpected things to happen that will keep my goal from coming to fruition.
Bottom line: I miss Randy having a steady paycheck.
But he can’t go out and get another steady paycheck, because then who would take care of the grammas? Sure, we could hire someone, but then we’re looking at paying someone (or an overpriced $50/hr. service) to take care of them and even if Randy got a job making $60/hr. we’d be paying out $50/hr. and he’d be making $10/hr. and that’s not going to make a lick of difference in the budget if you consider clothing, gas, and other excess necessities that make working out of the house more expensive.
So we are at a crossroads where no path is a good one. So we stay here.
I fear that my nausea, when it subsides, will be replaced with my other normal pregnancy symptoms. Lack of patience is the main one because it is the one that causes my business to stop taking on new clients. If I don’t have the patience to deal with people, to deal with conflict, to resolve things in a timely manner that is helpful to all involved – I can’t be expected to coddle a new client and work my way through how they do things.
None of this would be an issue, but Randy will only get unemployment so long. He’s an honest guy and has been actively searching for real work in order to not get in trouble with the state, but he hasn’t found anything yet. Nor am I sure I want him to. But unemployment will run out sometime this year – we’re not sure if it will be after 13 weeks or 33 – it depends on the state and how they process his paperwork to determine if he is worthy of the extension.
So he takes care of my grandmothers for 30 hours a week, helps me with my work and writing part-time, takes the kids to school and dance class, and I work on a seemingly never-ending list of projects while trying to keep my last meal down and trying to keep my brain unfogged by the hormonal bog that is trying to drown it.
At some point our income will drop by the amount of unemployment he is receiving. At that point? I have no idea where we will be financially – I have no idea what our savings account will look like. I said this to a friend of mine and she said, “It’s because you freelance.” I replied, “You don’t know if you’re going to get laid off next week. This is just life.”
My friends love me when I’m a total, utter know-it-all.
While I think it’s a good place we’ll be at, part of me is worried, because even by saying it out loud I’m worried that I’m making the bird in the hand fly away and that I am jinxing myself to ruin. (Yes, melodramatic was my minor in college – how did you guess? LOL)
Image Source: sveres
No Amount of Planning Can Change Someone Else
Even though I work from home, I work very hard and sometimes under amazingly short deadlines.
I am expected (nay, required) to produce just the right magic the client wants in whatever time period necessary.
No problem. I’m used to the pressure and even thrive on it just a bit. It’s how I work and I’m successful and blah blah blah. Ok, enough about me…
I received my monthly check from my biggest client and it was short.
It was short by over $1600.
So, being a totally professional writer, I called my editor in the middle of the initial panic attack and asked her what happened and where the accountant was and what we were going to do and didn’t breathe once during the entire freaked-out tirade.
She, being one of my biggest fans, started to freak out too and said she’d get to the bottom of it. The verdict turned out to be – clerical error.
Seems the amazing accountant on staff had left the company and they were back to the previous accountant. The one that had me tracking every word I wrote with an excel spreadsheet…just in case.
Well, I didn’t have a full accounting of what was owed so I had to jump off the phone and start going crazy with a calculator, my inbox, my invoicing system, a legal pad and a pen. I figured out exactly how short the check was and called her back. She had me send another invoice and I got her to promise they’d send that second check out this month.
My budget doesn’t take human error into consideration. It assumes that everyone on the other end of those accounts is doing their job correctly. I don’t think this is a bad assumption – I do my job correctly – why shouldn’t everyone else?
But it doesn’t matter, because when someone else makes a mistake, I’m the one that pays. Or doesn’t pay (har har) until I get the check.
It’s frustrating, but just another interesting bump down the road of freelancing.
I even found a bright side! Last month I subcontracted almost a thousand dollars’ worth of work (remember hubby’s toothache and my earache?), and the check I did get was only a dollar shy of the amount I needed to pay everyone. My number one rule of business is:
You always pay your subcontractors first. (If you ever want help in the future!)
…so at least they are taken care of while I wait and try not to bite my nails.
What Happens to Your Digital Footprint When You Die?
Sorry, I’m really not trying to be morbid, but if you get the Lens of the Day newsletter from Squidoo – you may have thought the same thing.
The opening paragraph was about an active member of the Squidoo community that passed on, leaving 56 lenses behind.
Now, Lens of the Day is not intended to be an obituary so I don’t know if the lady is survived by anyone or if there is someone she can, um, bequeath her lenses to.
Can you bequeath your social media presence?
Squidoo lenses make money. Sites like Associated Content make money, however little. If you spend time putting your articles or opinions out there – what happens when there is no more you and only a profile remains? If she does not have heirs and she was having her money go to charity, would it still go there? What if she was having a check sent?
Will a time come when we can bequeath our digital legacy to our children?
Don’t get me wrong, Squidoo is probably not the best example in the world because Seth Godin is a super-stand-up kind of guy and I’m sure he’s going to do something that others will emulate and those sites and people will probably be just fine.
But what about Facebook? In 200 years will it be an ancestor repository? Or will they clear out old profiles and just keep it young and fresh.
My legacy (in general) will last as long as my kids and their kids can afford the domain names and web hosting. But that doesn’t cover the MySpace page, Facebook page, articles all over the web…you know…the rest of my digital footprint. The places where I didn’t pay for my own space on the web.
I wonder if, in a hundred years, this will mess up literature classes…there will come a time when a book is not open to interpretation because the exact interpretation will be given by the author on a website somewhere. So weird to think about.
I wonder if that’s a sign I’m getting old. *grin*
