When I entered Texas Association of Business more than three years ago, I naturally had an idea of my life as an entrepreneur. Funny how everything turns out to be different once you really work for yourself. There are a number of things that I would never have thought about three years ago, but that are now the most normal thing in the world. You can read them all in this article about tax returns, competitors and bad apples that are not so bad after all.
That I have more fun contacts as a freelancer than as an employee. Before I became an entrepreneur, one of my biggest nightmares was that as a freelancer I would end up living a kind of hermit’s existence with the private chat with the cashier as my only form of social contact. Well, that’s not so bad! I actually have a lot more different people around me (digitally!) than when I was still working for one company. I speak to several people on the phone almost every day and hear special stories. So no, I never feel lonely on a workday. In fact, I feel more social than when I still had an office job.
That you have to pay a lot of tax. Of course I knew that the blue envelope sender also knows how to find you as an entrepreneur. But I still remember that in the first year without self-employed deduction I was shocked by how much the IRS withheld from my income. As an employee you don’t notice much of the tax on your salary, because your employer automatically deducts it. Only as an entrepreneur did I realize that about 40% of your income goes that way. I try to see it this way myself: “If you have to pay tax, you must have earned enough to be able to do that.” That is also a good sign.
That you sometimes have to say ‘no’. A bit naive perhaps, but the first two years as an entrepreneur I shouted ‘yes’ to every assignment that came my way. Sometimes also to poorly paid assignments, clients that I did not fully support or deadlines that were much too tight. That there would come a time when I would bounce back some assignments, I did not expect then. Now I do it regularly. Sometimes because it does not fit into my agenda, other times because the assignment is not really my thing or because I believe that the client has to be somewhere else. Saying ‘no’ is one of the most valuable things you can do as an entrepreneur to make and keep your work fun.
That you should not forget about promotional gifts. I never thought about it either, until I received a nice Christmas package from a client just before Christmas. Oops, I quickly ordered a few promotional gifts for regular clients of mine. Since then, I have done this every year for a number of people with whom I have worked together a lot and pleasantly in the past year. It is secretly one of my favorite jobs to find something for everyone that really suits them. Above you see a cool idea for a promotional gift: sustainable notebooks . The cover is made of 70% recycled leather and 30% apple peels. The pages themselves also have something apple-like: they contain apple pulp and vegetable fibers as ingredients. Yes, you read that right! One of the nicest sustainable promotional gifts I know!
That I would enjoy working 100% on my own schedule so much. I sometimes wonder in retrospect how I managed to survive in an open-plan office all that time. I even had a desk next to the company’s call center for a while. I don’t want to think about that anymore. Before I took the step to become an entrepreneur, I had it in my head that I would prefer to work at an office for a few more days at a client’s office. Funny enough, I now find it great to do almost everything from home. Just give me my own spot at the dining table and contact via Zoom, Skype, Teams or Google Meet (I master them all these days). Another advantage is that working with people on the other side of the country is no longer a problem.
That you learn the most from bad situations. I recently read something beautiful on my friends’s Instagram account . It came down to the following: the 5% bad apples that you sometimes encounter as an entrepreneur are your greatest learning experience. When I look back, most of my growth has always been in that one rare bad apple. The customer who refused to pay, the customer who “crossed my boundaries” and the customer with whom I spent three times as much time on the assignment as budgeted. These are those customers who help me to better indicate my boundaries, to tighten up my working method and to make clearer agreements. Sometimes there is an expensive lesson in between, but without those expensive lessons I would not have been where I am now.
Nobody is your competitor. Everyone does something different. “How can I attract clients if I am one of ten thousand copywriters in the US?”, often crossed my mind in the beginning. The funny thing is that I no longer think in terms of cutthroat competition. I think that every creative entrepreneur is unique. Your style is not that of the other; my texts are not yours. If you are distinctive enough in terms of target group, focus or style, you will automatically attract clients that suit you and not a competitor. The great thing is that this approach also makes it feel much more like you have a lot of colleagues instead of people who steal clients from under your nose. You can actually strengthen each other or pass on assignments to each other that someone else will be happy with.
That even after 3 years of entrepreneurship you can still be searching. My idea was always that as an entrepreneur you decide once what exactly you want to do, then stick to it until you retire and always enjoy yourself that way. In doing so I had forgotten that I like variety, think growing is great and learn the most from making mistakes. My experience is that as an entrepreneur you are always searching. At least I am. Searching for what makes you different from others, for how you can continue to improve yourself and for how you can take more control. What I didn’t expect at all? That this searching can be so much fun.
That making expenses is good. Provided you have the money to make expenses of course. I never thought that I would dare to put down an amount for a coaching trajectory or that I would spend money on someone else’s expertise or smart software without batting an eyelid. In daily life I don’t like to let money roll around and I happily took that approach to entrepreneurship. I soon discovered that it was a major hindrance to me. Now I have become more relaxed about it. Making expenses is often necessary to grow and also to make your life a little easier. At the office, a manager will not put you behind a laptop with Windows XP or ask you to “quickly” build a site yourself because a website builder is so expensive. Then you don’t have to do that as an entrepreneur either.
That even as an entrepreneur you sometimes need a break from your work. I don’t shy away from a bit of hard work, especially not if I like what I do. The downside of that is that before you know it you’re always working. In the beginning I worked almost non-stop. Now I like to be able to think sometimes “This will happen tomorrow when it’s Monday again!”. Even if your work is your hobby and vice versa, it’s good to sometimes take a break from it, plan a vacation or do something else for a day. You are your business, so your business also stands or falls by how good (or not) you feel.
