Posts Tagged ‘Entrepreneurship’

Jan 2011

Well, hello, you.

Those of you long-time readers have probably noticed that over the last month, I haven’t been writing a great deal, and perhaps you have been wondering if something was up. Had I given up writing? (as if ) Was something going on with me? Well, yes. Something has been going on with me. Something headspinningly huge, and awesome, and scary, and also something I wasn’t at liberty to talk about yet. So instead of writing, I ran around making a lot of appointments, and waving my hands around in panic and/or excitement, depending.

You see, the week before Christmas, I quit my job to go full time on APW. My first day of working full time on the blog was Tuesday. This is what my workspace looked like at 9:30am Tuesday morning:

And no, none of this has sunk in yet.

To answer your first question (everyone’s first question), no, David does not have a job yet (though he does go to court and wear a suit a lot, so we do count him as pretty lucky in this economy). But. There comes a time where the endless martyrdom needs to end, and the risks such-that-there are need to be taken, and leaps of faith must be made. So here we are, leaping.

Let me back up the time-line and explain things a little better, now that I’m not under contract for an employer, and I feel like I can. Continue reading Big, Enormous News! (And A Story)

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Life, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts, Reclaiming Wife | 314 Comments »

Feb 2011

Big News: The APW Book!!!

Dear Team Practical,

So, last month I told you that I’d quit my job to go fulltime on writing APW. Well. There was this one other small thing that I failed to clue you in on: I sold a book.

More specifically, I sold the APW book and it will be published by Da Capo Press, and imprint of Perseus Books in December 2011. (It’s actually due to the publisher on June 1st. JUNE FIRST!! Which is soon. Soon!) Now that the contracts are signed, and to the publisher, and and and (publishing is a slow industry), I’m finally FINALLY able to tell you all about it. Eeep! So let me back up, and walk you through all this.

The Book

First, what is the book, exactly, you ask? Well, when I started looking into writing a book two years ago, I was really convinced that the book that I wanted to write had already been written. I mean, it was such an obvious, sensible book, that it had to have been written, right? Well. After lots of digging around on bookstore shelves (which involved some horror, puzzled looks, and lots of hilarious laughter), I realized it really didn’t exist. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are a handfull of really good wedding books out there, but not this book.

I wanted to write a wedding planning handbook for normal people. A book for those of us that don’t have six figures to throw at our wedding and you know, have jobs, and don’t have infinite time for crafting. And I didn’t want to write a ‘budget wedding’ book, because it makes me irate to think that those of us who have worked hard for our budget (or whose parents have worked hard for our budget) are condescended to by being told that our wedding is a ‘budget wedding.’ I didn’t want to write a memoir, I wanted to write the no-nonsense, dead useful, wedding planning guide that I couldn’t find.

So the book, working title, A Practical Wedding: Graceful Wedding Planning That Won’t End in the Poorhouse or the Madhouse, is a how-to book, that walks you through planning a wedding in a super sane way. Like, for example, when you tell your parents that you’re not getting married in a Catholic church because you and your partner have talked it through and don’t believe in God, expect to cry a little, but know this is normal and good setting of boundaries. And, here are all the ways you can get an beautiful wedding dress for under, um, a grand. And here are ways to build a day-of wedding planning spreadsheet, so you know your wedding is organized and you can relax. And NO, of course you don’t have to feel guilty about not having X, Y, and Z nonsense because none of this was traditional in the first place. In fact, lets talk about what is really traditional…

Plus, there will be lots of quotes from wedding graduates, of course, so expect me to get in touch with you guys on that.

The bottom line is that blogs are good for lots of things. They are good for inspiration, they are good for community, they are a good real-time way to recommend businesses that are helpful. But they are terrible for actually helping you plan in a step-by-step way, because that’s not the way they are structured. Plus, you can’t hand a blog to your mom to calm her down when she’s freaking out about “what the books say”, and you can’t give a blog to your girlfriend when she gets engaged.

I started APW because I was planning a wedding, and I’d worked as a non-profit event planner, so I knew how to tackle an enormous event, plan the sh*t out of it, and get it to come out well on a ridiculously tiny budget. The book is my way to pass on a lot of those event planning skills to you, plus all the information I’ve learned writing APW for three years, boiled down in a way that makes sense, and you can reference easily when you need it.

Oh, AND I’M GOING TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR. So. Let’s talk about THAT.

How It Happened

{Valentine’s Day Weekend last year: Proposal writing begins}

I decided to tell you about the book on Valentine’s Day (happy Valentine’s Day!) because this is the one year anniversary of when I started, um, lying to you about what was going on. Continue reading Big News: The APW Book!!!

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Life, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts | 290 Comments »

Feb 2011

Working For Yourself: Month One (Getting Started)

Well, Ladies and Gentleman,

This is it. I’ve been working for myself for a month (actually a little more than a month, but details). Wheee! And also Ack. Sort of a wheee-ack, actually.

Inspired by And Kathleen (Have you read her month-by-month series about working freelance? You must.) I decided to write about owning your own business, month by month. To be picky about language, I should say, I don’t really consider myself a freelancer. I work on one particular project all the time, and while I have advertisers and readers, I don’t have clients. So, while my life is really similar to my freelance sisters in some ways, it’s also different. Which I’m sure will come up.

Some of you, undoubtedly, don’t care a whit about this new series. Bring on the weddings, you say, and the marriages. To you I say, shush. And also come back later this afternoon, where we’ll discuss pie-pops. That said, APW has focused on independent businesses for a long time, and I’ve always written about my life here, so it makes sense for me to talk about my new self employed life a bit.

So. The first month. Actually, let’s back up.

Before You Go Full Time

First, let me throw this out there… you have a lot of work to do before you quit your day job. Maybe you don’t have quite as much work as I did, because I waited to quit my day job till I could comfortably support two people in (expensive) San Francisco. Also, I worry obsessively about poverty, so I really over prepared. While you might not need to go as crazy as I did, you still have a lot of work to do. So!

Here are some things you should do before you ponder quitting:

Decide that you actually love your project: Once you’re working on your project full time, it will go from being ‘that delightful dream you were distracting yourself with’ to ‘your job.’ If you don’t adore it, you should seriously consider doing something where you are not personally responsible for paying all of the bills and providing all of the benefits. I’ve had a huge variety of work situations, and working for someone else is not the enemy. The enemy is working for yourself, doing something you don’t like very much, and always being broke. Turns out though, I did adore my side project, and I still do. That gets me through the interminable afternoons and the feeling of always being behind.

Get a business license: Yes. You need one. I found out, two and a half years into running APW that I was two and a half years minus one month late for getting my San Francisco business license. That was embarrassing. So get one before you quit, ok?

A business savings account: Ok, you don’t actually have to have one of these, but I suggest it. Cash flow issues suck. Avoid them if you can. Plus, it’s going to be harder to put a business savings account together once you’re paying yourself, so do that now.

A budget. For the year. Yes, you need one. I know it’s hard. You’re still not off the hook.

The Team

Look, there is a delightful sense of independence in the phrase, “working for yourself.” But while you may work for yourself, you’re not going to do it by yourself. If you want to work for yourself and not lose your mind, you’re going to need a support structure of people that you pay. I suggest that you find good people who focus on smaller businesses, and then pay them respectably (even if that feels like a lot of money to you). You will always be able to find people who will help you out…. for super-duper cheap. If you fall into that tempting trap, you’ll often find yourself digging out months later, realizing A) They never delivered what you needed, B) You paid them for a whole lot of hours, and C) Now you have a huge mess to clean up. So, if you can, skip that bit, and hire someone who’s charging a living wage.

This is what my team looks like: Continue reading Working For Yourself: Month One (Getting Started)

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts | 102 Comments »

Mar 2011

Working For Yourself: Month Two (Getting Focused)

{Me at work in my office, by Emily Takes Photos}

It seems baffling to me that I’m writing about month number two of working for myself (you can catch up on month one here), because, well, it feels like I’ve been working for myself for six months. Things have been a little intense around here, to say the least. So let’s chat about that.

The Happiness Factor

The New York Times wrote an article recently about who would be statistically the happiest person in America (male, tall, Asian, lived in Hawaii, observant Jew, worked for themselves), and then they went out and found this person. While the tall, Asian, Hawaiian, observant Jew, who was self employed, thought the phone call was a practical joke, he was, in fact, quite happy. While I’ve only got the last two of those things going for me, two months in, I can say without reservation that working for yourself is a boon to happiness, but maybe not for the reasons that you’d think.

{Happiness: A lunch meeting at a Taqueria, by (and with) Emily Takes Photos}

Myth #1: There is a common misperception that working for yourself involves very little actual work, which is flat out not true. I probably work about 50 hours a week these days, which sometimes makes me so exhausted that I look like I’ve been run over by a freight train, and sometimes looks a lot like me having a blast. It all depends, but either way, it is work, and I’m doing a lot of it.

Myth #2: There seems to be a feeling that people who work for themselves are happy because they hit on some lucky fluke, since the only proper jobs are working for other people. This is nonsense too. It takes a borderline-absurd level of believing-in-something-and-acting-to-make-it-true-while-very-few-others-believe-in-it to make working for yourself a reality, which is a nice way of saying, people who work for themselves are not recipients of some lucky fluke from the universe. In fact, they may be some of the most disciplined and willful people around (which is so much nicer than saying that those aiming for self employment are delusional, yes?).

{Happiness: Hanging out on my fire escape at the end of a long work day}

Truth: So why does working for yourself make you happy? Well, years ago, there were some studies (Which I have no links to. Grad students, do you have links?) that said that one of the main lifestyle issues leading to long term health was having control over your life. If you worked long hours, or had less money, you were ok, as long as you had a fair amount of control and autonomy. And that, fundamentally, is why working for yourself has made me generally happier. I may have a lot of work to do, but it’s my choice how late I work at night, or if I take a nap or go to the gym in the middle of the day when I’m not feeling productive. (Plus, I don’t have to take care of other people’s silly requests, but that’s another story.) This basic level of self-care and choice makes a huge difference in my life. A crazy, crazy, huge difference.

The Book

But really, let’s talk about what I’ve been doing, which is, in short, writing a book on a deadline, while running an active website. When I got a book deal, I did not have the brilliant idea that it would be really fun to write 60,000 words in five months, but that’s how it worked out. Wedding books hit the shelves at the beginning of the year, because that’s engagement season, so my options were to write a book in four months or to write a book in five months. I picked five. I like to sleep at night.

{What book writing was like this month. On the left, the stack of books I was plowing through for research. On the right the amazing Saipua flowers I sent my agent after I got the first book advance check}

The first month of working for myself felt like a crazy whirl of activity. Everything was new, and I was traveling a lot (because I could, without asking permission). At the end of month one I realized that A) This had to stop B) I had to get focused and C) I had a book due really soon. So I went into hyper-over-drive-focus. Even though I have an office, I basically didn’t leave the house for two weeks. I woke up, I wrote, and I wrote some more. And it worked. I finished some key chapter drafts, and I was really happy with them. I also realized that, over the long term, I probably should leave the house slightly more often…. Continue reading Working For Yourself: Month Two (Getting Focused)

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts | 99 Comments »

Apr 2011

Working For Yourself: Month Three (Letting Go)

I’ve been talking a lot about entrepreneurship and APW the last week, so I’m going to keep this month’s Working For Myself brief. But first, can I just say, Month THREE? When I went to write this post, I was sure I was supposed to title it Month Four, at least. Time has been flying by, and it’s been wonderful (if maybe a tiny bit stressful and crazed). So, what happened to me this month?

I finished writing the APW book, just about.

I’m saving writing the last chapter as my final act before I finish the book, but other than that, the words are on paper. I’m not done, mind you, I have some heavy editing and some serious deadlines ahead of me (May 1 for the first half, and June 1 for the second half), but hey, words on paper! For those of you keeping track, that means I wrote a 60,000 word book in 12 weeks. I’m not sure what I have to say about that, other than, you write a book by just showing up and doing the work… at least every other day.

David gave me a funny backhanded compliment the other day. We were talking about the editing process, and about how, unlike 99% of the known universe, my husband included, I actually kind of like when people edit my work (I actually hired a local friend to help me edit my book as I was writing it, so yes, I actually paid cash for extra editing). So David said, “Well, for some really strange reason, you don’t think of yourself as a wonderful writer, so you’re really enthusiastic about people helping to make your work better.” And I said, “Of course I don’t think of myself as a wonderful writer, why would I think of myself as a wonderful writer?” And he looked at me like I was the dullest person in the world, and said, “You write for a living. And not technical writing either.” Of course I started grinning, because my husband had just back-handedly called me a wonderful writer.

But he nailed it. That’s exactly what I think. Continue reading Working For Yourself: Month Three (Letting Go)

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts | 79 Comments »

May 2011

Working For Yourself: Month Four (Go, Go, Go)

{Me in my office, on half book deadline day}

This month, you get my working for myself post a tiny bit early. Why is that? Well, as those of you who follow me on Twitter know, on Friday I turned in half of my book manuscript. All 108 pages. Whoa. (The other half is due in a month.)

It was a strange sensation, handing in something you’d worked so hard on. The last hours were spent sitting next to my friend Kate, who has read and copy edited every single draft (that’s her computer sitting next to mine in the first picture), doing one last round of edits. It felt a little like giving birth, and a lot like letting go. David, who used to work in a literary agency back in our previous life in theatre, reminded me, “A book is never finished, it’s just abandoned.” Which is true. I got to the point where I was changing tiny things, and then changing them back, and then looking at the document blankly, and that’s when I knew I was done (which is good, since it was the deadline anyway).

It’s hard to have any perspective on your own work, other than the perspective that you put your all into it, and you’re proud it’s done. Book writing is like a marathon (one I’m not done with yet… I’ve got one more month to go), but it’s not magic. It’s just showing up and doing the work, over and over and over again.

So this month was finishing half of a book, and juggling a million business tasks, and going to New Orleans for a much needed two days at a conference, spending time with girlfriends. This month was crazy.

Kathleen, in her series on freelance work, has written a fair amount about her systems for time management. And this month I used all of those and none of those, while I scrambled to just get it done. I was juggling a book deadline, some changes in the APW ad program, continuing to adjust to managing a small staff, and managing the blog’s content. And most weeks, it seemed like everything needed to be done at once. So I wrote lists, and lists, and lists. Every day I tackled the thing that seemed the most urgent first, and then everything else next. I didn’t (and haven’t) finish my lists. I worked on Sundays (and sometimes Saturdays), I worked nights. I did what I had to do to get it done. And you know what? The big stuff got done. But you know what else? I need a nap. Continue reading Working For Yourself: Month Four (Go, Go, Go)

Posted in: Entrepreneurship, Meg's Thoughts, Personal Thoughts | 21 Comments »