Roll Your Own Tech Job... by Erin Mullaney

Speaker 1: Yeah, so thanks for reading my first slide. Um before we get dig into the actual talk talk, I want to take a real scientific poll in the room. Um and ask you if you are compl raise your hand if you're completely satisfied at your current job and if you're in between jobs right now, think of your most recent job. So um again, really, really scientific Right. That's why. Yeah, that's why like we're we're with our coworkers and bosses. So yeah, not super scientific, but I know you're happy, Tim. So are you completely satisfied? That was I like looked around the room, that was maybe 30% of you, so not great. Um there was a Gallup poll in 2018, so fairly recently that

Speaker 1: asked a number of questions to US workers and fewer than half of them were completely satisfied. So I I think that's kind of a sad number But that actually job satisfaction isn't what brings me here today, isn't what made me uh into forming my own business. But let me give you a little background on me. before I dig into. I graduated college with a degree in computer science and while I was in college I was working as a web developer part-time since the year 2000 Um then I transitioned and started working at a university for about 12 years. University um Pennsylvania of in at Wharton, so a few Wharton folks here. Um that was a great job, but I ended up moving then to North Carolina in twenty fifteen to escape Philadelphia winters

Speaker 1: So my husband and I moved to North Carolina in 2015 and then I formed my business in 2017. So I moved to North Carolina, took a job at Cactus, another company that's here and they're another great company. um took a full-time position there before transitioning and becoming a contractor and working for myself. So I'm all that stuff on the right. I'm none of those things on the left So while I'm not a lawyer and I'm not an accountant, I work pretty closely with my accountants. So everything I do on a day-to-day basis, in fact I end up talking to him like maybe like sending him an email once a week. So he loves me, um sure. Um but I I just want to make sure that the IRS is happy with me So everything I I'm talking about today um has been legal for me and a lot of it has to do with US

Speaker 1: entities for what it's worth, but I have stuff that's kind of more universal as well. So this is an overall um overview of what I'll be talking about today. How did I get here, not here at DjangoCon, but here like running my own business for the past two plus years the decision making and the fear around that and how I addressed that. Then I'll get to the meat of the presentation or I'm vegan so I like to call it the plant-based meat alternative. The Which is the how to roll your own business. So the actual like the law stuff and the accounting stuff and all that stuff. Then I'll get to finding clients, hopefully, if I don't run out of time um which is like my most personal and my favorite part of this talk. I have a lot of stories there about how I've found clients in the past two years.

Speaker 1: And then I have some some free materials to send you all off with. Can somebody shout out what city this is taken? Yeah, everybody yeah, a lot of people know. Um this is the Painted Ladies in San Francisco So San Francisco figures heavily into my story of how I ended up running my own show. So in tw or late 2016 My husband got a um job offer and it was too interesting to pass up. We had lived in North Carolina for two years And he had always dreamed of living in San Francisco and we were kind of like adventurous. Like we had moved to North Carolina and started a new life there and I was like, look, if this is the job for you, like Let's like you you did this for me, let's let's take the next step, let's go to California.

Speaker 1: So we decided we're gonna move to California. Um And I didn't really think too much about my job other than in the back of my mind, I was like, well, I really like my job, so maybe I can somehow keep it. So we decided to move to California, to San Francisco, and um His job because it was in the school system there would begin in the following summer. So we had a long time to kind of transition out there and in the spring of twenty seventeen We went out and spent some time in San Francisco like gauging the neighborhoods and deciding where to live and we met up with a good friend of mine who had moved out there from Philadelphia for this like super high profile job at a social super high profile so social media company out there.

Speaker 1: Um and she had gotten a like moving package and a signing bonus and a pretty sweet salary and And she was like, Erin, what are you doing? You're moving out here and you're not even like looking at all these tech jobs. Um and I thought about that for like 30 seconds and I was like, no, that's okay. I I I know what's become of the tech interview because I've been doing them previously. I hadn't done any like really recently because I was pretty happy in my job, but I had a number of friends who would quit their full-time jobs in order to do tech interviews. Does anybody know anybody like that? So or have you done that? There's a really good talk at PyCon in 2016 called Has anybody seen it 100 CS Interviews by Susan Tan? Highly recommend that. Don't love about like

Speaker 1: don't love what's become of tech interviews overall So um so I said, all right, I really want to stay uh with my job. So I came back and I talked to my boss who's here. Hi and she was like, well let's see if we can make this work And uh we talked to HR and HR was like, yeah, this sounds pretty good, but then they looked into California tax law and of all the states, like California has the most complicated one and they were like Here's the thing, we could hire you as a contractor. You're probably not gonna like that idea. I had the exact opposite reaction from what they were expecting. I was like, whoa, like for real? Like I could I knew other contractors who worked there and it seemed like they could kind of do whatever they wanted. They could like pick the projects they wanted and work from home when they wanted. So I was like, ooh, that sounds interesting.

Speaker 1: Um so I I talked to every single contractor I knew. um emails, really long phone calls, took them out to lunches and was like, how do you do this? Um and then I just jumped. I just did it. Not to say that that didn't come with fears. And there's a like picture of someone writing because I think like writing down your fears is a is a good way to address them, but also just Like thinking through them. Fears are not a bad thing. Fear is there to protect you. Um and You know, you probably are gonna face some fear when you have a big life-changing decision like deciding to move to California or deciding to start your own business. I don't know if anybody watches Gilmore Girls, but I really like this. This is a 30-second clip from Gilmore Girls about

Speaker 1: this very subject.

Speaker 2: Well then what does everybody else do to get through this feeling?

Speaker 3: They run in the back, throw up, pass out, and smack their head on the floor. That's what I did on the first morning I opened the diner. Look, there is no button to push to get you through this. You just gotta jump in and be scared and stick with it until it gets fun.

Speaker 2: How long till the diamond got fun?

Speaker 3: About a year. Wow.

Speaker 2: And there's no button?

Speaker 3: Nope.

Speaker 2: How about a lever? Can I pull a lever? Turn a knob? Nope. You just jump?

Speaker 3: You just jump.

Speaker 2: I want to do it

Speaker 3: and you should do.

Speaker 1: So um I don't know if you caught at the very beginning there, but Lorelai asked him about how she felt so nervous about this decision to like start her own inn. And she's talking to her friend who's a local business owner and asking him like what did he do about all those fears? And he said, Well, for the first year I went into my storage room and threw up And you know what, that physiological response to fear is super re super super real. I've been doing this for a little over two years. I have not had a single time when I didn't have a contract, but I can give myself a stomachache by thinking about, ooh, where's my next contract coming from? Because It's just it's just part of the thing, you know. But um I also like that he's like super encouraging to her there, which is also the experience I had when I talked to every contractor I knew.

Speaker 1: And then you can always have this in the back of your mind if you are gonna, you know, start your own business If you decide to start your own business, if you decide to like roll your own and it doesn't work out for whatever reason, either you can't find the work or you don't like doing it. you can go back to W-2 work. There's nothing to stop you, especially especially as like most of us here or a lot of us here are web developers. Like our our tech skills are are highly highly in need. So almost nothing is irreversible in career land. All right, now I'm going to get to the how-to and I'm going to talk about startup costs because throughout this section where I'm talking about how to run your own business, I think it's super vital to keep your startup costs low. Because the best way to make money is to save money, right?

Speaker 1: So um gonna talk about a couple of different business entities. There are more than these two, LLC and sole proprietorship. But these are the two of all the contractors that I currently know, they fit into one of these categories. They either formed an LLC or they do it as a as a sole proprietorship. So quick definition, LLC stands for Limited Liability Company. It's a private limited company in the US. So it's purely a US type of institution. And it's actually fairly recent. A sole proprietorship is a little different because it's much simpler, but it's not a legal entity. So that's kind of like the huge difference between LL forming an LLC and all the work that goes into that versus just saying like, hey, I'm gonna be a sole proprietor today.

Speaker 1: Like that's basically all it takes to start a sole proprietorship. So there's negatives and positives for both. Some negatives on sole proprietorship is that there's going to be no distinction between the business you form and you so should the worst thing happen should your business get sued like your personal assets are liable so this is you know this is a negative about sole proprietorship you you really can't get um separate credit lines and other businesses might not want to work with you if you form a sole proprietor so they might not uh take you that seriously maybe you know depending on the business You also can't expand. I mean soul proprietorship is what the name is. It's soul. It's just you. Um

Speaker 1: so all these negatives you might think like, why would I ever form one? Well it's simple and it's cheap Um and I definitely know most of the contractors I know have formed an LLC, but a few of them have been doing sole proprietorship for many years and it just works for them just fine. And it means they had a lot fewer forms to fill out and they had a few hundred dollars less of startup costs and so it works for them okay. So I would say of the two they're both pretty good but I chose LLC. I think it's the better one for me When I was talking to all the consultants when I was starting this whole thing, every single one of them said Foreman LLC. It's like having free business insurance. It's a way to separate yourself from your business So how do you form an LLC? These are the forms you're gonna need.

Speaker 1: So you've got your application for your EIN, which stands for employer identification number and that's the number that the clients that you work with are gonna need in order to pay you and like file their W9s and I know this is like the really exciting part of the talk. Articles of organization and these act as a charter for your business and say what you're gonna do in your business. The only time I've needed these are when I formed my LLC and when I signed up for a business checking account. I've never needed these any other time, so I don't really know what they're needed for other than to to like set it all up And then you're going to need your Secretary of State statement of information. So this tells your Secretary of State your business name and your registered agent, which I'm going to get back to.

Speaker 1: I use LegalZoom for this process. I liked them quite a bit. In some ways they had one huge negative, but I'll get to that in a moment. I would also say, you know, while I'm suggesting legal Zoom on this slide, I would also say consider talking to a local lawyer because then you get a then you get this like relationship with someone and you can use them again if you need them them and and it's kind of nice to have that. So I would say either LegalZoom or talk to a local lawyer if you can find one who's gonna charge you not too much because LegalZoom is pretty inexpensive if you choose like the cheapest wizard, which is what I did. Um choose a registered agent. So as I was going through that legal zoom wizard setting up my LLC, they said you need a registered agent and we have a really cheap service, so just use us.

Speaker 1: And I did a little Googling, not much, and was like, all right, I guess you guys are cheap and I have to have one. I have no idea what they are. Alright, you're my registered agent. And then I get this separate bill from LegalZoom for $300 And I called them and I was like, mmm, I don't want this. Um so I Googled it and it turns out you can be your own registered agent and you don't need to do anything fancy. It's not like you need to be a notary or anything like All you need as a registered agent is like a physical address where you can be found during business hours. So if you're working from home, that's your home address. So I guess you're gonna get a little bit more business junk mail, which is about the only negative I can think of of um you're a little more findable if you want to you know stay off the grid it's not great but um

Speaker 1: You're also going to want to open a business checking account. So this is super important, especially if you're forming an LLC and you want to take advantage of the fact that you are separate from your business. Because if you call me GoFunds, you're kind of erasing everything that you get from having an LLC. So your, you know, your clients that work with you through whatever payment system, they're gonna want your business checking account. They're not gonna want to pay you directly to your personal account. So it's a little different from being a W-2 and giving them your personal account and they direct deposit. They really want a business checking account. So For this, you're gonna need to have formed your business and you're gonna need your your employer identification number and your um your charter, your articles of organization. So

Speaker 1: However, you can save on startup costs here as well by Googling free business checking and finding any number of online banks out there that do free business checking or do like I do, which is I found a local bank I liked. I walked in and was like, what do I have to do to not pay for business checking? Like what what criteria do I need to meet to not pay for it? Like what what gets the fee waived? And yeah, like it's a lot of banks do it. So Um you're gonna want to choose a name. You absolutely have to do this if you're forming a business. You want it to be memorable, distinct, and easy to spell, and it has to be available in your state. So when I formed my business in California I checked an Aaron Rachel Consulting, which is my first and middle name, and what I'm doing in a very general sense.

Speaker 1: was available and I'm really not creative when it comes to naming things so that that worked for me. Don't ask me to name your band. But one other note here, um Registered trademarks are not allowed. So a friend of mine who is another contractor, he wanted to use the word Python in his business name. So capital P Python and I forget what the name was But he didn't look into it first and he just sent it off to the Secretary of State. So he had to fill out that form twice because the Secretary of State came back and they were like, nope. So you can't be like the Disney Netflix Bank of America coding emporium like gotta come up with something different Create a website. So I'm gonna really go over this. Yeah, I mean who doesn't have a website in this room?

Speaker 1: But you want to be able to be findable out there on the internet. There's free options out there Um but some of them might be a little unprofessional because they have then like ads. However, if you are starting small, like go for a free option, why not? One thing has ev has anybody heard of Unsplash or everybody heard of Unsplash? A few people. Huge fan of Unsplash. If you like the photos I've been using in this presentation, they were all from Unsplash. And so these are all Creative Commons licensed photos. It's a beautiful website. It's super easy to to like search and find really cool photos and because they're Creative Commons licensed you can use them in anything like social media posts or your website or your slides. I like to give the photographers props but I don't have to

Speaker 1: Do you need a logo? I don't know. Maybe. I don't have a logo, but depending on your business, you might need one. Who's heard of Canva? Not too many. Oh cool. Alright. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so Canva is a really great online graphic design tool. Um I'm not a graphic designer, but I can use it. So it's like easy. So it's it's really cool. My husband introduced it to me And first I was using it for like social media posts, like for personal reasons, but I've used it for some professional reasons now. It just makes it really easy. It is all free. They have a paid version with a few other bells and whistles, but the free version kinda covers you. So this is my like number one tip for starting your own business.

Speaker 1: I would say hire an accountant, like just find an accountant to work with you Um I have been working with my accountant since I formed my business and he's he's just so great. He is fantastic. He does my taxes and When you form your business, you actually don't have to necessarily do payroll because if you're just you, you can just like transfer, you can get paid into your business checking account and transfer money out, which is what I was doing in the very beginning. But then I wanted to have a solo 401k for my business, um my retirement fund. And um I talked to him about it and he said well the easiest and both m like most up on the up and up way to do that is to have payroll so you can then calculate how much you are like actually allowed to put into your retirement plan based on what you pay yourself

Speaker 1: So he does my payroll now too. Quarterly estimated payments. So I have a note about this. So if you're forming your business, so let's say you're forming your business this year And you've been a W-2 employee. So you absolutely, if you are, if you have your own business, you want to pay your quarterly estimated payments throughout the year, which are like January and like every quarter, you're gonna be paying the state and the federal level what you estimate you're gonna owe them at the end of, you know, m come April 15th So you absolutely must do that or you actually have to pay a fairly high penalty. I asked my accountant about this because I was like, do I really can I just pay the penalty? And he was like, he told me what it was and I was like No. So yeah, you wanna pay these. Um but for that first year that you

Speaker 1: form your business, one of my contractor friends told me this You as long as you were a W-2 employee also that year, you don't have to pay them that year. So I didn't. I just like put that money away. Like that's for me is a little more time I got to spend in in my savings account or my whatever uh brokerage account or whatever so something to know for sure if you're just freshly forming your business Also, he helped me decide to, you know, after I'd formed my LLC, he files me as an S-Corp. And this has to do with like how much money you make. If you file as an S Corp, you can save a little money too. I found my accountant on Thumbtack. Have you all heard of Thumbtack? Anybody interviewed there? They have a really good interview.

Speaker 1: So Thumbtack is um Have you heard of Angie's List? It's like Angie's List, but it's free and it's better. It's like got a better UI. So See you later, Angie's list. So Thumbtack is oh I hope they're not here. Um Do they still exist? Um so yeah, Thumbtack is huge. If you have like any service people that you're hiring in general, like highly recommend. Even for your like personal use. Um my accountant, I love them so much He loves me too, I'm sure. So one thing I do that I think makes him love me a little bit is I keep a running spreadsheet of my money coming in and my money going out And that helps him to uh figure out what to pay in those quarterly estimated payments. And then also when he does my taxes,

Speaker 1: he looks at that. And I'm gonna give you a free example example here. So you can find this. It's on there's like a whole page of links. If you go to bit. ly slash roll your own biz. Everything that I'm mentioning here today is on this page, but This is a like screen this is kind of a terrible screenshot of a Google Doc that I use. It's a sample of a Google Doc. This is not my real one, but as you can see I'm keeping track of a payment. So I when I you know I invoice out and I Once it gets once it goes into my account, then I track it here. I say like the the date that it came in and the amount that I invoiced. uh anything to do with my business. You know, I pay for a yearly subscription to Google Drive or I bought an Amazon headset. Like anything that I'm using for my business is an expense.

Speaker 1: So these are like paying my accountants, CPA fee. These are super obvious things that you might think like of course. But one thing that I didn't realize until I talked to all these contractors was you can also expense a portion of your rent or your mortgage. So and I'm seeing nodding heads so people know this already, but I think not everybody knows this. So up to I I think it's 25 %, depending on square footage. So it's very like mathy, but you have to take the square footage of your home and you have to have dedicated space to your office. So let's say you have a two-bedroom apartment and it's a thousand square feet and you have a 100 square foot room in which you do your business and that's really just like that spare bedroom is really just dedicated to your business.

Speaker 1: In that case, that's 10% of your square footage, so 10% of your rent each month or your mortgage or whatever can get expensed. So you can keep track of that. And that percentage also goes to utilities. So your water and trash and electric, all those things, you can expense them all You know, traveling for conferences, these are the kind of things that you might be thinking of, but that percentage is is a huge way to save money So as you are forming your own business, you're gonna have to roll your own benefits as well. And one of the things I mentioned earlier was I started my own solo 401k for my business And you may know that the maximum for employee contributions this year, 2019, was 19,000

Speaker 1: Sure everybody knows that, right? But the uh what you might not know is that employer contributions on top of that are 25% of employee compensation So would I decide to pay myself on payroll, I can take 25% of that and put that in my 401k too. So that's like way more money than W-2 employees can can put away Which is pretty great. Um it's a total it's a max from what I like read online, it's a max of fifty-six thousand, which is so much higher than nineteen thousand. Um but yeah, so I I'm not sure if that total is correct or not, but I found that on a website. Um you're also gonna wanna get your own health insurance. So I think this is actually what probably hangs most people up in the US from running their own show, right? Yeah, I'm seeing nodding heads again.

Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, when are we gonna get Medicare for all? No, it's another story, another talk. Um Don't at me. Um so when I formed my business in California, um So the California state employees, my husband was working for the school district there. The state employees have amazing benefits. Um they have Kaiser, which is you know really great they're also like striking which is awesome but they're they have Kaiser which is a really great health system um and I was able to get on his benefits for free in California which was sweet But then we moved back to North Carolina and I was like, I'll just be on your benefits again. And then we got the bill for like $700 a month. And I was like, uh, I think I can get cheaper health insurance and just like never go to the doctor So uh that's what I do.

Speaker 1: I have a high deductible healthcare plan, which is called the Never Go to the Doctor plan. Um unless you would have pay up to $7,000 in your deductible first However, you can also with a high-deductible health care plan, you can get an HSA, which is really nice. This is a little bit of extra funds on top of that money that you can do pre-tax as well. You can put up to this year it's 3,500 in your HSA as a single person. Um so that money can then be you can use it at the doctor's. I don't, I actually just invest mine because if you have up to It's a thousand or two thousand. I don't know the number. But if you have a s up to a certain amount in your HSA account, you can actually also invest that You're also gonna want to think about vacation and holidays. It's really important to not burn yourself out.

Speaker 1: So as you're planning, as you're working for yourself and you're like, oh, I can work every day. Like who needs Saturday and Sunday off? Yeah, you don't really want to do that in my opinion. So you you're gonna want to think through like what days you want to tell people that you're not gonna be available when you are working with clients Okay, so hiring an accountant, best decision. Determining your rate, hardest decision. 100% hardest decision. I don't know if you all feel like this is great, but I I think the best way to determine your rate is actually to kind of get a consensus. I think this is probably the best way. And it's my feeling that if you talk to other consultants you know and you tell them what you're charging. they're more likely to tell that tell you, you know, to sort of reciprocate that.

Speaker 1: And I've I've found that really works You can also use this formula. I didn't end up using this, but I know uh some people do. So you take the salary of like let's say that position that you're that client you're working with, here's the salary for that kind of work multiply it by two and you divide it by the number of hours you would work for a year and that would be a rate. That would be a good rate. That that was way higher than what my clients were willing to pay. But it's a it's a it's a formula somebody's using. Uh you can ask your client, so you can go ahead and like if you were if your client is excited to work with you, they probably would tell you like the range. They might. They might they'll probably tell you the low end of the range anyway Um, you know, this kind of puts the negotiating in their court, so it's like, eh, I don't know.

Speaker 1: I did, I asked. Um just research. It's it's not, it's it's probably, I mean, other than healthcare, it's like a huge hang-up for running your own business When you're writing your contracts, you want to include pay you can include payment dates like within 30 days of receipt of my contract of my invoice I expect payments. You can consider putting language around a late fee in case they are kind of a client who might not pay you on time. This would get them excited to pay you on time. All right, so whoa, I blew through that. Awesome. Um finding clients. So this is like my most fun part of the talk to me. So there's I'd say that social media can be bad and good. I mean I think that's just like so generally true

Speaker 1: but um I mean the bad side is that you are now a little bit more public of who you are so like what you're posting is you know may make people unhappy. So you kind of want to think about that. But there's good too, for sure. So I have this example here I so this is when we moved. We moved in July of 2017 to California. We moved back a year later because we didn't want to stay there, but that's another talk too. So we we moved in July and I posted this on Facebook just like for fun, whatever. I was like, hey, I'll give myself two weeks off for this move. It's a huge move And next week I'm going to start as a consultant. And this was I was going to start working with with that

Speaker 1: company that I had been working with full time, but as a consultant now. And it got the attention of somebody at another former employer, um, the University of Pennsylvania who said like hey I've got a project too. I you know, you're just saying you're working for yourself now, so that means you're a free agent. And so this actually this turned into a project off and on since that time I've been working. on. Like I've been working with that team off and on. So I mean there's definitely benefits to being vocal on social media when it comes to running your own business. You might want to get published, so write a technical blog post and get noticed by that company that built that awesome CMS, you know, and like kind of like maybe work with them as a client.

Speaker 1: You might want to give talks. That's that I don't know that this has worked for anyone who I know personally, but I feel like you know anything you can do to get your name out there is really good Reach out to former employers and gratitude. So these are separate bullets, but I have a story about this as well. I had worked at University of Pennsylvania for many years and I had many good bosses there and I I feel like all my bosses have learned so many different things and have like been important to me at different facets But I had this one particular boss who was my last boss at University of Pennsylvania who was so great and he was like So technical when I needed someone to be technical in my career. Like I was at that point in my career where I was ready to advance technically.

Speaker 1: And then he was just like a kind person. So he was so great. And I had run into um someone who worked for him at a at PyCon and I was talking about him. Jason is the name of my former boss. I was talking about him to this like coworker and I was like, man, he was such a good such a good boss. I should really just like write to him and tell him that and um this former coworker was like yeah just do it and so I went home and I like wrote wrote this like long email and was just like yeah you were really great and he responded and it was 100% just like gratitude in my heart I was not I had work, I was fine, but I just wanted to like share that because he was so important to me. And he responded, and I have a lot of former bosses here, so you are all getting emails Um so he responded, um, wow, I'm having such a stressful day.

Speaker 1: That was like just what I needed. Thank you so much. Also, are you working for yourself now because we're transitioning this website to Django. So can you come back and work with us like as a consultant? And so yeah, I worked on that project for a year until completion. The project is now live and it was great. I loved working on the project because I had built it in Cold Fusion. I said it initially. And so I got to transition it to Django. Yay! Um, so that was just great. Um there are, you know, this is like I said, this is like my heart. Finding clients is is really is really the exciting part. It can be a little bit nerve-wracking, but it's also pretty great. It's especially great if you keep this in mind

Speaker 1: just as your mantra and I when I I hesitate to say like always be giving all the time of yourself because that's a surefire way for burnout Um but always be giving during the work, you know, during the workday. Um think of your think of the person that you're working for, whether you're a W-2 employee or you work for yourself think of what they need and ask them and always be giving and always be thinking of them and putting putting their needs um at the top, you know, or near the top of your list and you'll be surprised at what comes back to you. This is uh I mean it's such a simple phrase, but it's Alan Donnegan who started he formed this uh company in in England called the Pop-Up Business School and he helps like fledgling entrepreneurs who are pretty

Speaker 1: like pretty like small scale. He helps them like figure out how to run their businesses and and there's a good podcast where he's interviewed that I I link to on that page that I sh I'm gonna share again. So always be giving. So I did earlier talk about rolling your own benefits, but there are definitely benefits to rolling your own job. You can work when and where you want. I have a friend, one of the many contractors who I had a phone call with. He works once once a week. goes he travels by Uber or Lyfts. He takes a lift into the city to work and he opens up the back in the back of the car he like opens up his laptop and answers emails and that's billable time for him.

Speaker 1: And I'm like, that's great. You're turning travel time into billable time. I don't want to work in a car, but it works for him. That's great. You can set your own hours. within reason. So you are still going to be working with clients who are, you know, in the office during office hours and they probably want you available. at least part of that time. But you can scale like like you might want to scale back to thirty or thirty-two hours or, you know, whatever. And um you can kind of set that set that schedule where you feel like you can put in that number of hours at a computer and still feel human. I think that's super important and one of the biggest benefits to me for sure So and you can you can turn away projects. So basically you can you can get a I have turned away a project.

Speaker 1: It was for like a like muscle farming or something like Um yeah, yeah. I know it's like I'm a vegan, so I don't really want to like help someone kill mussels. Like are they even alive? I don't know, but I don't want to eat them. They're ghosts That's gross, no thanks. Um so you can work for who you want and like I actually yeah, and uh a positive side of that would be like there was a company I really wanted to work with and so I got to work with them too for for like a little stint and so that was that was really fun for me. Oh wow, I'm going so fast. That's amazing. Yeah, I am definitely gonna have time for questions. Um little contracting by the numbers. So this uh NPR did a whole thing on contracting in 2018.

Speaker 1: So you can go to that link that I'll share again and find the NPR section on contracting that they did like uh little mini radio episodes and things like that and they also gather data and one in five US workers are contract workers. So I thought I feel like that's really high. Like I did not figure that would be that high. In our industry, it seems like about right, but I I was actually like really surprised by that less surprised about this that 65% of those contractors are are male. So going back to that story of calling and emailing and having lunch with those contractors, every single one of them was a man I've since met some female contractors, uh, which is great, but um I'd like to

Speaker 1: I'd like to equalize this a little bit. If you're a man, don't let that like hold you back. But yeah, I'd like to equalize this back a little bit. We get 50-50, that'd be nice. Me even some further reading and listening on the topic. I mentioned Alan Donegan earlier. He was interviewed on the Choose at Bye podcast. That is my absolute favorite podcast out there. If anybody's familiar with the fire movement, it's like probably one of the biggest ones about that. Journey to launch is another like fire related fire stands for financial independence retire early. It's not a cult, but it it is. So Journey to Lunch is another like FI like related podcast and episode 38 is a pretty good one of that.

Speaker 1: I think that's where she interviews an accountant and so I actually got a lot of tips for by day to day and also for this talk from from that. That was a really great episode. Highly recommend that one. I mentioned Susie Moore's book, What if it does work out a little bit during this talk? And it was it was like I read it on a plane ride, so it's a short one about how she decided to like slowly transition to working. for herself from being in an office and like staring longingly out the window. Money Splend podcast. Money Splant is a podcast that's like super short form. I like episode six, but really all of them are good. Episode six is called Freelance Isn't Free. So that's a good one. NPR has a that I mentioned that poll there and and they have a few other articles and things

Speaker 1: All Up in Your Business is a YouTube channel and it's an accountant and she's just so fun and relatable. Highly recommend her. And then, you know, these are the other free resources I mentioned during my talk that I think a lot of you aren't familiar with, which is great. So now you are. Canva is that free graphic design tool Thumbtack is that um free service search Angie's list better than Angie's List site. Unsplash is that Creative Commons license search engine website that's just beautiful and has lots of cat pictures. And then these are all mentioned on my website page there. So if you go to bit. ly slash roll your own biz B-I-Z you can find all these links and all the links to the podcasts that I love

Speaker 1: and also like a link to like did I miss any podcasts or things that you love? Like reach out to me. So you can reach out to me on Twitter I'm somewhat on Twitter. You can find me on my website. I want to leave you with this. line from a poem by Mary Oliver um with these two with these two poems, sorry. Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life And then we've got poet Nail, age six. The tiger, he destroyed his cage. Yes. Yes. The tiger is out That one makes me cry, so I saved it for the end. Um so thank you. And um I think we do have maybe a minute for questions. Okay, great.

Speaker 4: Yes we do. Thank you so much.

Speaker 5: Thanks a lot, Erin. That was really interesting. And it seems that your bosses have been really important and valuable to you all along. But How how good is your current boss at helping you along?

Speaker 1: She's pretty chill. She's pretty chill, yeah. I don't really have to like ask for vacation. I just take it. Yeah, it's pretty great. I do miss having a boss. Like leaving Karen was super hard. So yeah.

Speaker 6: Hi Aaron. Do you have any tips for getting out of pajamas in the morning, keeping the motivation up for that and avoiding isolation?

Speaker 1: Why get out of pajamas? I don't know why. My pajamas are super comfy. Um I mean get outside like the first thing I do most days is I go out for like a walk. I am I have a trail behind my apartment, so I I think like exercise is probably like the best way to start a day, but that's like if you work for yourself or don't work for yourself. I think that's true. Just get outside and exercise a little if you can. And Philly it's hard with those winters

Speaker 7: Uh hi. Uh I I also have a LLC that I'm running, uh, but I'm definitely doing something different. So I just wanted to get your opinion. You might have researched this topic Uh I don't have accountants. So what I do is that I have uh online QuickBooks that is linked to my business accounts and the credit card accounts and it will fetch all my uh transactions and it will create a balance sheet for me in the end of the year. I'm gonna do it myself. So but you said that it's number one tip is like hire accountants. I was wondering am I missing anything anything so just

Speaker 1: uh no I mean if you are comfortable doing it yourself like I'd say do it yourself. Um I I tried um I tried like a QuickBooks competitor I forget what they were called, but I was just like that is way too much overhead for me. I'd rather just keep that that spreadsheet that I I have like an example on this page That spreadsheet does everything for me as far as like tracking my expenses. So one thing I didn't mention is it's super important to keep those receipts and bills. So I keep all those in Google Drive. So that's why I pay for Google Drive. too. So hang on to those receipts. You never need them hopefully, but they're there. And I have been asked about QuickBooks before. I find it to be like way too much overhead for me personally and I'd much rather just have an accountant who I can trust.

Speaker 1: But I mean if that's working for you, no reason. No.

Speaker 7: Hi, thank you for the talk. I wondered if you know of any complications between being based out of multiple places, multiple states, or moving while you're contracting.

Speaker 1: That's interesting. Um, I think you just form your business where you form your business and that's like where you buy all your taxes, but ask your accountant because yeah, um yeah Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's like where you form your business is where you file your taxes.

Speaker 4: Um, I actually have a question. So um I have a small business where I'm working mostly with clients that are not in the tech industry and I find it really hard to get Keep myself updated with the big tech company advancements because when I try to go on the web it's overwhelming and I don't know where should I be focusing on Do you have a few resources for people to stay up to date with the recent technology or investment advancements maybe in Django, Python or specific websites that we should keep ourselves updated with?

Speaker 1: I think this goes back to the question that Tim had about like not isolating yourself. So I've been fortunate enough to work on I've I have yet to work by myself on a project. Well that's not true. I have like one project that I've worked by myself on But I really prefer not to. Prefer to work in teams and I prefer to like get to know the teams. And I think it's really nice to Try to like connect with them as much as possible like even if it's only Slack but if you can if you start a client project and you know I was talking to someone about this today and you know you're gonna be working with them for four months Is it possible for you to go visit them for just one day and get to know them? And I think communicating with other team members is is just I mean I work with cactus a lot and I work with the University of Penn a lot and like

Speaker 1: I am able to kind of keep up just by like seeing what my other people around me are doing.

Speaker 4: All right. Do we have any more questions? Okay, um she will also be available in the hallway if you have any extra questions or comments. But let's give her a big round of applause for the information