Fearless Money

Months into my new life as a small-businessman, I still stumble on the old question "What do you do?"

But I am getting better. This weekend, at the Beltane party, I started to answer "I’m a programmer…", but then caught myself and said, "Actually these days I am a small business owner. I went into business for myself earlier this year with a couple partners."

I really love identifying myself this way. It has something to do with the fact that my father was a small business owner, which I always admired and knew I wanted to emulate some day. It also has something to do with the fact that people don’t seem to glaze over quite so quickly when you talk about starting a business.

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One of the benefits of getting organized is taking the occasional day completely off. Without guilt.

Yesterday, I went with the family to a Beltane party at a friend’s house. I took the picture above after the maypole dance, which is something I haven’t had a chance to do in years. I was always too busy, or felt that I was. That’s just foolish, life passes too quickly, especially so when you never take breaks.

I’ve also been "too busy" for this blog, and I want to remedy that. So, I’m going to let it get a bit more personal and chatty, while I make an effort to get back in the swing of writing regularly here and at programming blog.

Technorati Tags: maypole, portland

Since I started taking clients for my business last fall, I’ve been careful to track my time. I don’t usually charge by the hour, preferring the simple honesty of flat-rate prices for tasks, but even then I still track my time religiously.

Until now, I’ve been using a combination of MarketCircle’s "Billings2" application, and the Harvest web time tracking application. I had to use two apps because neither was capable of doing what I wanted by itself. Billings couldn’t handle a simple weekly time entry or summary. Harvest can’t track bills or anything but hours.

Yesterday I got fed up with the pain of keeping two systems in sync, and began looking for a new time and billing app. I’ve found what appears to be nearly my dream application in Cashboard.

(Note, this is not a paid review, and I won’t receive anything for the following almost 100% positive review.)

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This year my taxes were quite a bit more complex than they’d been before. With the business kicking off and all the tax issues about home-office, depreciations and the like, I just didn’t feel comfortable doing the taxes myself.

I chose one of the CPA firms recommended by my bookkeeper and just brought in everything I could think might be needed. Of course, I missed a few documents, but email and fax cleaned those up quickly. It was almost painless.

Waiting a couple weeks was painful, mostly because my rough calculations showed I’d owe at least a few thousand. Dustin had not filed the proper number of exemptions on her W-2 and so no money had been taken from her paycheck for a year. I’d made some decent money in the business, and paid no quarterlies. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use the tax-reserve I’d established for 2007 taxes.

But instead I got an email a couple weeks later, went in and paid a reasonable fee (just a few hours at my normal rate, really), and was incredibly pleased to discover that I had thousands coming to me. Wooo!

Seriously, if I had thousands coming, I am sure I would have gotten some back by doing it myself. But I wouldn’t have been certain, I would have spent more time in hours than I could’ve earned on projects, and I would have been angry/frustrated/stressed by the process. In contrast this was easy and if not fun, at least straightforward.

Here’s to not doing my taxes anymore. I am a convert.

Technorati Tags: taxes, accountant, cpa

During tax time, I become extra aware of just how much money it costs my family to live in Portland. Not only are state taxes high, unfairly burdensome for small business owners, but there is also a county tax to pay on top of all that. But I now have a reason to mind that last tax much less.

You see, I’ve discovered Portland’s Charter Schools. For a fair background about our Charter schools, refer to this Portland Mercury article, and for an overview of the charter movement, see The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

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Synchronistically to my post about business being a noble calling, I found someone who really hit the nail on the head. It is from the winter Cato Institute Letter, and is titled "Entrepreneurs Are the Heroes of the World."

During the last 100 years, we have created more wealth, reduced poverty more, and increased life expectancy more than in the previous 100,000 years. That happened because of entrepreneurs, thinkers, creators and innovators.

Thanks, ExtraEagle for the link.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneurs, heroes, cato

Every once in a while, I take a picture of the books I’m currently reading. It gives an almost uncomfortably accurate picture of what is occupying my mind right now.

Descriptions and reasons why after the jump.

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Business is a noble calling. There, I said it. For some reason that is a non-mainstream way to think, but it is a truth that I’ve only recently come to terms with.

I certainly haven’t always felt that way. I can recall a time in the not too distant past when I agreed with my fellow “downtrodden white collar workers”, arguing that executives should be limited to some set multiple of the wages paid their lowest level employees. The only way to support such a foolhardy notion is to demonize business people, arguing that they are merely exploiting people, that they are basically parasites.

I certainly put other, more obviously selfless folks above business people in the moral-scale-of-worthiness I’d constructed in my head. Firemen, doctors (the good ones, not plastic surgeons), and teachers all seemed infinitely more important to society than businessmen.

What I never asked myself was, “who is going to pay the salary for these people?” Who will contribute to the volunteer fire department? Who will enable the volunteers to feed and clothe their families so that they may spend time in charity work?

Business, that’s who. Government can’t do it, at least not by itself, as it is also supported through the industry and sacrifices of business people.

In the last century, the U.S. has gone from a primarily agrarian economy to a vastly more interdependent and commerce oriented one. Where in the past, the basic supporter of society might reasonably have been seen to be a farmer, I argue that today it is the business people.

We are the bedrock of society. We provide the base that allows others to carry out their own passions and lives. This is no Objectivist praise of selfishness, this is the simple observation that we are the engine that drives the modern world. Without us, there can be no noble teachers or doctors.

It’s not just a noble calling, its a full on spiritual one. Serving society with every ounce of energy at my disposal, I am proud to be a businessman.

Technorati Tags: business, philosophy

Yesterday, I went in for a long-delayed touchup on my right leg tattoo. I think it says something about my mindset that I found myself applying ideas learned from the sales and consulting books that I’ve been reading lately.

The idea was sparked by the fact that tattoo artists usually do not charge for touchup appointments. This seems odd to me, since every other part is strictly hourly. I’ve never heard of a shop which charges by the piece, except for perhaps little pieces of “flash” from the wall which might have a minimum charge or a standard rate. But no one charges a flat rate for the custom jobs I always get.

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When I talk to peers about my new Web Design Consultancy, I often get the same warning. It seems that many people have tried consulting, but simply find it too difficult to maintain a steady stream of clients. The typical pattern seems to be a crushing load of work, followed by nothing for a while, repeat.

Taking this warning to heart, I’ve been systematically building processes and tactics into my business to deal with the problem up-front. Planting seeds of success, doing one thing every day to help bring in future business, is a great discipline. Another tactic I’ve been developing for some time now is fairly unusual for programmers and web-folks.

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