When I came across this post by a blogger named Phil Gyford in the UK, I knew I had to share it. Being a freelancer is hard in so many ways, that anytime there is someone willing to share so much truly valuable information about it, you can’t help but share it as widely as you can.As Phil states in his post, there are some UK-specific details and some details relevant only to web designers, but overall the lessons within hold for freelancers of all types (designer, photographers, programmers, writers, etc)

Specific things he covers are:

1. When to start freelancing
2. How to sell and market yourself
3. How to be your own boss
4. Managing the accounting, expenses, pricing and invoicing (This is the one we’re hoping to help with)
5. How to be the project manager
6. How to manage a variety of other things such as: client relationships, legal concerns, IT needs and all aspects of your burgeoning career.

Lets face it, being able to do all of these things well is hard. Very hard. Some of these activities are easy for some people and difficult for others, and vice-versa. The key to being a freelancer, however is to be able to do all of them somewhat well. For those who cannot do all of these things, they often find success in identifying their weaknesses and hiring out those aspects of the job.

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(Photo courtesy of jessicafm)

The Carnival of Business is up at the MineThatData Blog. Be sure to check it out!

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Most small businesses of a certain size can certainly benefit from a fulltime bookkeeper, however not all of them require one, especially the smallest of businesses. For the smallest of businesses, all they generally need is a way to invoice customers, get paid and to pay their own bills. To be clear, I’m talking about tiny businesses with less than a handful of employees.

Invoicing customers for these businesses can be as simple as using Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel to format your invoice, and then printing and mailing them off (or sending them via email for a more electronic experience). The most important aspect in invoicing is having professional-looking invoices sent out in a timely manner and neither one of these tasks requires the help of a bookkeeper.

Receiving payments is where the rubber meets the road. Great looking invoices are important, but formatting doesn’t matter unless your customers actually pay them. One way to expedite payment is by making sure your customers have a variety of method to pay. Checks are still very important, but electronic methods of payment are becoming more and more popular. Payment methods such as electronic credit card payments, and services such as Paypal have gained a lot of traction with these small businesses and they can increase the speed at which you can book payments. Again, doing collections, especially for businesses that have taken a more electronic approach to getting paid, does not require the assistance of a bookkeeper.

Paying bills is another crucial task that can be easily managed on a weekly or monthly basis using either a banking website directly, a dedicated online bill payment website, or one of a wide variety of simple software packages. Depending on the complexity of the business, managing payables can be a time consuming task and could require the assistance of a bookkeeper, but it is usually managed in-house at a tiny business.

To summarize, bookkeepers certainly have their place in small businesses. For the smallest businesses, quarterly or annual trips to a bookkeeper to help with taxes are usually all that is required. But as a business grows to a certain point where the volume of invoices, bills and other receivables and liabilities warrant meticulous tracking and reporting, bookkeepers take on a much more important role.

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One of the great things about blogging is the sense of community, and one of the best ways to join a community in the blogsphere is through blog carnivals. So what is a blog carnival? From
Blogcarnival.com:

“A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks.

There is so much stuff in the blog-o-sphere, just finding interesting stuff is hard. If there is a carnival for a topic you are interested in, following that carnival is a great way to learn what bloggers are saying about that topic. If you are blogging on that topic, the carnival is the place to share your work with like-minded bloggers.”

Following are a few blog carnivals that have some affinity with what we are trying to accomplish with SimplifyThis. Over the next few weeks and months, we intend to join and contribute to several of these carnivals.

• Carnival of the Capitalists Overview / Current Edition (From 10/23)
• The Carnival of Business: Overview / Current Edition (from 10/23)
• Carnival of Entrepreneurship: Overview / Current Edition (from 6/16)
• Carnival of Home Business: Overview / Current Edition (from 10/24)
• Working at Home Carnival: Overview / Current Edition (from 10/27)

If you know of any other carnivals that we should be aware of, please drop us a line.
(Photo courtesy of tanjila)

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There is a good article on the Wall Street Journal’s “Startup Journal” that gives some advice about starting a business as a 20-something. The article basically calls out a few tips that budding young business starters should consider when starting their business. Although the advice holds true for new businesses of all kinds, I have to say, it’s quite refreshing to read an article about starting a business that is different from the next big internet idea. The article gives the following three pieces of high-level advice:

1. Get professional help. Basically, hire out things you are not good at. Accounting, Legal concerns and other specialty skills fall into this category.
2. Don’t live like a millionaire at 25. This is a critical piece of advice, especially in the age of richly valued internet startups. Many young people start new internet-based businesses in hopes of being the next Google, but, many of the big internet successes happened due to a lot of being in the right place at the right time and having the right product at the right time in the evolution of a particular market (i.e., Search, Video sharing, Internet retailing, etc). Don’t get ahead of yourself and expect to be like this guy or this guy, or even these guys. Build your business slowly and deliberately and with the right amount of hard work and luck, your success will follow.
3. Build your resume — fast. Simply put, use some strategies to help your business seem more credible. If you surround yourself with your high school friends, you probably won’t be taken seriously.

Starting a business or even a side job takes a lot of time and effort. The advice provided makes sure you are making the most of your efforts and ultimately are positioned for success. After all, most people that start new businesses aren’t trying to be the next Microsoft or Yahoo, they’re trying to have more control and freedom in their lives.
(Photo courtesy of ozzie)

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JLP over at allthingsfinancialblog has an interesting piece about the characteristics of entrepreneurs. It’s interesting because if you read closely, you’ll pick up on the fact that not all small businesses are run by entrepreneurs. Although most entrepreneurs often start small businesses, not all small businesses are run by or even have all of the same goals as entrepreneurs.

The post calls out entrepreneurs as 1) risk takers, 2) those who know their strengths and weaknesses, 3) like to go from concept to business, 4) those who want to be their own boss and 5) that they tend to be serial business founders. Ultimately, I think you find small businesses are often started in order to take control of one’s fate or to be one’s own boss. If they are successful, they tend to ride the success and settle into a comfortable lifestyle after the business is established. And although many small business owners tend to have a few side businesses, they don’t tend to be serial business founders like their entrepreneur counterparts.
(Photo courtesy of obeth1)

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Ok, the time has come for us to put up a blog to begin discussing what we are doing. We hope to keep this blog updated with topical content relevant to small businesses as well as to keep you informed about our progress with the development of our new Service.

So, what is SimplifyThis?

Simply put (pun intended), SimplifyThis is an intuitive web-based service that you can use to easily invoice your customers and get paid faster. No more forgotten payments, No software to install, no help manuals to read. Simple solutions for age old problems.

SimplifyThis is currently available as an invitation-only beta. The team is working feverishly to straighten out last minute kinks and to incorporate feedback from our early adopters.

Great, so when does it launch?

We are working hard at putting the final touches on the application and expect to have a public beta by the end of 2006.

Who’s blogging?

Great question. Currently there are two people blogging: the two co-founders of the company:

• • Sanjay Kumar
  • Mauro Lombarda

Please subscribe by RSS and we look forward to engaging in a meaningful discussion with you over time.

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