3 Tips for Anyone Starting a Business

When I started freelancing over a year ago, I made the decision not based necessarily on desire (although I’d been thinking of going full time freelance for a while), but because it was the only option available to me. I’ve written about falling into freelancing before, so I’ll save you all the details. But one big thing I didn’t realize when I started freelancing was that I was essentially starting a new business, with myself as the CEO.

I didn’t really consider it a business—it was just me! I just needed to work to keep paying my mortgage. I also wasn’t selling anything—just providing services based on my years of agency experience.

The truth is being a freelancer is starting a business. Whether our work resembles a business owner that sells a product isn’t necessarily the point… What is the point is that freelancing, selling products, blogging and making money are all businesses. And if you started one, you’re a business owner.

Here are 3 tips if you want to start a business, are a freelancer floundering with what you need to know about running a business, or are just curious about what running an independent business is like.

1. Speak to Accountant Now (and Create Your Team)

The sooner you talk to an accountant, the better. Why? Because paying taxes as an individual proprietor is confusing at best. If you are starting a business, there is a lot of info you’ll need about collecting and paying taxes, registering your business, and more. An accountant won’t have all the answers, but they will be able to help you find those answers.

This leads me to sort of a second part of this point: create your team for your business.

Even if you don’t have employees quite yet, your team will still consist of people who help you run your business. This might include:

• Your mentors: a group of people you can ask your dumbest questions (like, am I stuck up shit creek without a paddle if I forgot to mail my individual tax estimates??) and get good advice back

• Your accountant

• Your bookkeeper (or your bookkeeping software)

• Your lawyer (if you need one—and you never know if you will need one)

Once you have a few go to people that you can always shoot an email with random questions, you’ll be good to go.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Try Something New

When I first started freelancing, I had a lot of ideas about what I specifically wanted to do. I wanted to get back into strictly copywriting; I was tired of working in social media.

It should not surprise you that I haven’t landed a single copywriting-only client.

I do a lot of strategy. I do a lot of social media writing and strategizing. I also added a relatively new service for me: VA services. (VA is a virtual assistant.)

A lot of my clients already have either a marketing person or an agency. However, their agency charges too much for them to implement the materials—like scheduling emails or blog posts to go live. So, I take on a lot of the busy work, like scheduling, tracking analytics, and more. This helps small businesses offset the costs of marketing while still getting high level work.

If you’re starting a business, you might find yourself falling into work that you never expected. Maybe you make a product for fun that ends up taking off. (I actually always tell clients about American Eagle’s American Beagle April Fools joke from several years ago—that was so popular that they ended up making a dog line of clothes a real thing!) Don’t be afraid to switch up your services or products based on what ends up selling.

3. Protect Your Time (and Keep Your Boundaries Firm)

I’m big on setting boundaries. And especially when you run your own business, you can very quickly erode your own boundaries. Trust me, I know from experience.

The first 6 months I worked freelance, I didn’t establish boundaries. I answered emails when I got them; I answered texts when I got them. Sometimes, I didn’t raise my head from work for hours. Thankfully, Forrest was in school for that time. But once the pandemic hit, I knew I needed to get my shit together.

I couldn’t be both a mother and a freelancer and not have boundaries.

If you’re a business owner, I recommend my guide to setting boundaries. However, as a short summary, here are 3 boundaries that you need to make sure you have:

• Set your work hours and work days. On this note: Communicate with your team that you understand their boundaries and want to respect them. Make sure you note your team’s working hours and days.

• Create a space that is just for your business. An office, a corner, whatever works.

• Write an FAQ in advance to provide to potential clients and customers so you don’t end up answering the same questions over and over.

The Truth About Time Management

It’s 9am on a Tuesday. Maybe you’ve already started your day; you’ve had your coffee and your breakfast, you’ve taken your kids (if you have them) to daycare or school. If you work at an office, you’ve arrived, dressed and ready for the day, and settled at your computer. If you work from home, you’re in your home office, ready to start your day.

But then, you don’t. You chat with a coworker, send a few texts, scroll through Instagram. You check your email, maybe answer a few. Your to do lists sits beside you at your desk, or stuck on your computer screen, but you aren’t paying attention to that.

Time management looks different to everyone. You might be naturally very good at it; when you need to get something done, you just do it. Procrastination isn’t part of your world! Or maybe you struggle to stay on track; you get easily distracted by coworkers, chat screens, Instagram, or other tasks that are important, but not high priority. You might think that people in that second group need to take a note from the first group. But what if I told you that both types of people can struggle with time management?

I am a to do list follower. I write a list every day and I do my best to get it done. But I’m always very easily distracted. While I’m cleaning the bathroom, I might just start reorganizing my closet (my walk-in closet opens up from the bathroom!) or I might start reorganizing and cleaning out my make up collection. When I’m mopping the floors, I might sit down to order some of that stuff you put under rugs to keep them from the sliding all over. I’m easily distracted by secondary or tertiary tasks. When I’m writing social media for a client, I often find myself auditing their lifetime social media, which is outside the scope of my work but sometimes a necessary evil. These tasks aren’t unimportant, but they’re not the task I am trying to accomplish.

It’s hard to stay on task so to speak—and that’s where time management often comes in.

So how can you improve your time management skills? How can you actually accomplish what you mean to?

I think the first step is working on prioritizing your tasks, narrowing down your goals, and putting your time where it matters most. You don’t need to manage your time if you focus in and have tasks that don’t leave you bored, overwhelmed, or frantic.

Using the 5/25 Method for Prioritizing

For the past few months, I’ve been using what’s called the 5/25 method for narrowing down my to do list when I feel particularly overwhelmed, frazzled, or easily distracted. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Write down 25 things you want to do, feel like you need to do, or have to do. This can be your existing to do list, but anything else that’s been nagging at you.

Step 2: Cross out 20 of those items. Be ruthless and don’t spend too much time thinking about it.

Step 3: Rewrite your list with the 5 items you have left. These are your TOP priorities!

That’s it. That’s the entire method! It’s simple, quick, and very effective. In the process, you might notice there are items on your to do list that simply aren’t serving you or your goals. A prime example, for me, is that I’ve had “make a spreadsheet for expenses” on my list for months. Yet, I haven’t done it… because I track all my expenses in Quickbooks anyway. Why do I need a separate spreadsheet? It’s already done for me! I crossed it off my list for good at that point.

I find this method particularly helpful because it requires you to address a few specific needs:

• what you need to get done

• what you want to get done

• what you have the capacity to do

• and what tasks are serving your longterm goals

Let’s look at another specific example. One task I always include on my weekly to do list is posting on LinkedIn and sending follow up messages to my connections. This is a part of communication as a freelancer that I struggle with, because it’s a soft skill I’m working on actively developing. This is something I need to do and prioritize in order to grow my business and develop stronger connections with my peers—but doing it often falls to the bottom of my list. However, if I follow the 5/25 method, I recognize it as a high priority task and it becomes one of the 5—whereas things like “buy storage bins for under bed” and “clean laundry room” get crossed off in comparison.

Using this method day-to-day can help you determine how to best manage your time and meet your goals.