“Make sure that you get your processes and your tools set up early so you’re familiar with them, and so they’re capable of scaling with you as your business grows. Having those processes, tools and the right accountant will help your business to grow more quickly. Think about those as an investment in your business and not a cost.”
Oliver Garside | Rounded
Us copywriters pride ourselves on being words people.
But when it comes to figures, well some of us aren’t so great.
And after all my years coaching copywriters, I’ve found it’s not the copywriting side of things that causes businesses to fail, it’s poor money management.
Fear about pricing.
Poor cash flow management.
Awkwardness about invoicing.
And naked terror at tax time.
All these issues can really drag a happy copywriter down.
So today we’re talking about mastering your money and getting some tips on how to feel fabulous about your finances.
Tune in to learn:
- Why freelancers often struggle with the money side of business
- Mistakes copywriters often make when starting out
- How accounting tools can save you time and money
- How to start tracking your business finances regularly
- How to be prepared for tax time
- Why having the right accounting tools and team is crucial to your business growth
- Olly’s top tips for transforming your business finances
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And big thanks to TheLambtonBookWorm from Australia for their lovely review:
“Invaluable for any content writer! Packed with inspiration and insight.”
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About Oliver Garside
Oliver is Co-Founder at Rounded. With a background in software sales and customer success, including a 5-year stint with LinkedIn Australia, he joined Rounded in 2016 to assist with the launch of the MVP version of the app.
He’s the chief evangelist for the company, building content and commercial partnerships, regularly presenting to freelance groups and industry associations and he’s been instrumental in establishing Rounded as an ethical company, dedicated to supporting and advocating for Australia’s freelance and sole trader workforce.
Connect with Oliver Garside
Useful Resources
Transcript
Kate Toon:
Us copywriters pride ourselves on being words people, but when it comes to figures well some of us aren’t so great. And after all my years coaching copywriters, I found it’s not the copywriting side of things that causes businesses to fail. It’s poor money management, fears about pricing, poor cash flow, manage. fears about pricing, poor cash flow management awkwardness about invoicing, and naked terror at tax time. All these issues can really drag a happy copywriter down. So today we’re talking mastering your money and getting some tips and how to feel fabulous about your finances. Hello, my name is Kate toon, and I’m the head copy beast at the clever copywriting School, an online community and teaching hub for all things related to copywriting. And today I’m talking to Oliver Garside. Hello, Olly.
Oliver Garside:
Hi Kate.
Kate Toon:
Good to have you here. I’m just gonna tell everybody who you are. Here we go. So Olly is the co founder at Rounded with a background in software sales and customer success, including a five year stint with LinkedIn, Australia. Oh, I didn’t know that. He joined Rounded in 2016 to help with the launch of the MVP version of the app. He’s the chief evangelist for the company building content and commercial partnerships regularly presenting to freelance groups and industry associations. And he’s been instrumental in establishing Rounded as an ethical company dedicated to supporting and advocating for Australia’s freelance and sole trader workforce. And Olly recently presented a masterclass in the Clever Copywriting School. And so I thought he would be a great person to talk to about this whole problem that I mean, it’s a freelancer problem. It’s a real copywriter problem as well, you know, that whole numbers and words, things don’t mix. In the stories we tell ourselves that we were good at English, therefore, it doesn’t matter that we’re bad at math, do you find that’s a common problem?
Oliver Garside:
I think you’re right. It’s not necessarily a copywriter problem, it is a freelancer problem. And the challenges I see are very often self-inflicted. And it comes from the narrative, as you say that freelancers tell themselves is, I don’t know anything about the money side, and therefore I’m going to bury my head in the sand, and hope that my accounting could sort it out, and that it will be alright on the night. And most of the time, unfortunately, it isn’t.
Kate Toon:
No, that’s it. And I think as well, there’s this whole general acceptance that if you’re going to be a freelancer, money’s gonna be shit, your cash flow is going to be awful feast and famine are part and parcel of being a freelance. And that’s just how it is. And that’s also not true. What I say to my copywriters and the people in my membership is stop thinking of yourself as a freelancer, you’re a business owner, whose product is copywriting, or design or coding, but you’re still a business owner. And when you change that mindset from being a freelancer, it’s also casual and flippity, floppity. To a business owner, I think that really helps a lot as well. It shouldn’t be accepted that you have poor cash flow and apps. You know, that’s not part it doesn’t have to be part and parcel of it. Right?
Oliver Garside:
Oh absolutely, and I think even a few years ago, you know, even when Rounded started, there was an absence of the tools that were dedicated and built for freelancers to help them manage this stuff. Now, there’s any number of options that are built specifically for small business owners or freelancers. They’re priced accordingly. They have great support, you know, all you need is an internet connection, which thankfully most of us have access to. And so there’s less and less excuses for that, because these apps Rounded included, of course, simplify the, you know, the, what you need to do to manage finances. And the other thing I’ve learned over the last seven years is that for most freelancers, or most solo business owners, their businesses are quite simple to manage. And that’s easy for me to say, because I’m immersed in it every day. But actually, when you’ve got the right tools, it’s money coming in, and money coming out. And really, the most important bit is tracking that consistently.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, that’s it. I mean, now I’ve got a company, you know, and I’ve got like another company and all these bits, and it’s super complicated, no, like, but as you said, Really, these days, we can think about it as a pot where the money comes in, and then a few different pots where money goes out to different, different things. And I think you’ve made a great point there that when I started, gosh, you know, I’m trying to think back 13 years ago, there was a barrier to entry with accounting tools. They were restrictively expensive. They did far more than you actually needed them to do. They weren’t easy to understand or set up and these so people were like, well, I can’t afford that. I’m just going to have a spreadsheet. I honestly think, and this is quite a brutal thing to say. If you cannot afford $30-40 a month for an accounting plan. form that’s gonna make you look so much more professional manage or your cash flow allow you to reconcile, really, that’s a bit of a problem. You know, like, if you can’t even afford that much. I don’t know you probably spending that much on coffee a week. I think you can probably afford to spend it on an accounting platform. But let’s talk about the challenges. What particular challenges do you see we’re talking about copyrwriters? So let’s stick with the copywriters, copywriters facing when it comes to money. What are the big three things that you see chunk copying copywriters coming up against?
Oliver Garside:
There’s good news and bad news here, right? Most of the problems and challenges stemmed from not having a repeatable process. And so things get ignored, or, you know, the due attention is not paid to them on a regular basis. So the main challenges are things like expenses not being tracked, because they get forgotten about, you know, receipts get lost in email, or stuffed in the bottom of a bag. And then they fade or you forget about them, you know, even worse is when work is done, and invoices are not followed up on, which again, is a major cause of cashflow issues, they’re not followed up on because people are kind of maybe not confident in having those money conversations. Even worse, we hear quite often that people forget to send invoices. And so you’ve kind of got no excuse about cash flow issues, if you forget to send the invoices and sometimes these mistakes happen because of a manual process or a process where the discipline isn’t there to attend to it, it at a cadence that is right for you. Or the individual. So you know, we see Rounded users and some of them are meticulous every day, you know, every tiny little thing, and they might spend five or 10 minutes a day, just making sure everything is shipshape. Others might do it once a week, and they carve out half an hour or so at the beginning of every week or whatever. Others do it once a month. So it is does depend on what works for you. But keeping a familiarity with where your business is at is key to making sure that when it comes to tax time, whether that’s quarterly or annually, that the story that your business is telling you is familiar. And what we also see is that underpins and is the foundation of a confident business owner. And impostor syndrome stems from not being confident about not just the work that you do, or talking to clients, but also that, you know, I don’t really know where my business is at. You know, and I’m worried about the expenses I’ve missed. I’m worried about talking to this client about chasing up on an overdue invoice. So I believe that everything stems from that foundational aspect. And if you can get that right, your chances of success are greatly improved.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I really agree with that. I kind of tried to encourage my members to at least have a Money Monday. So Monday is the day where they sit down, they look at any invoices they can issue, they chase up any invoices that are late, but they also try and look six weeks ahead, you know what’s coming, I can see that I have no work in in three weeks time, what can I do today to mitigate that? You know, do I need to chase a client up? Do I need to, you know, follow up on that lead. So you’ve got that six week vision. But I every morning come in. And the first thing I do each morning is check my money, that’s the first thing I do is look at my money. And I love what you said there about confidence and imposter syndrome. Because if you’re not, if you don’t have a buffer or you’re not confident with your money, then when you’re talking to clients, you constantly feel like you’re on the backfoot that you are, you have to be obsequious and nice because you desperately need this job. And therefore you don’t have a leg to stand on if they start to negotiate. But if you have that good cash flow that buffer that money management, then you know that it’s a meeting of equals and that they need something from you and you need something from them. I think that’s I think that’s a really positive message to have. So we’re talking about discipline and rigor and trying to not kind of see logging into your Rounded as something hideous to do but quite enjoying it. And one of the things I did like about when you came into the group, which the interface is so sexy, like it’s actually an enjoyable, it’s aesthetically pleasing, which I think is important, right? If you’re gonna be looking at it everyday, it needs to look nice. But we know you and I both know that many people will literally do nothing all year, and then panic about things when it comes to tax time. So why do you think it’s important to take care of your finances throughout the
Oliver Garside:
Tax time is the time when you reap what you sow? Right and I was talking to another group yesterday and you know, if you take the time over the course of the year here to make sure that everything is as it should be, there is no reason why on July one, you can’t invite your accountant to have a look at your data and submit your tax return immediately. With, you know, the software and the tools should allow you to, when you arrive at tax time, you, you reap the benefit of all of the discipline that you’ve shown throughout the year. And discipline is one of those words that again, can be quite intimidating for people. But again, it unfortunately, it does take discipline, it doesn’t take that much application. And when I say to new business owners, yeah, you know, there’s going to be in acclimatization process. At the beginning, like learning anything, you’re going to have to force yourself to think about it and force yourself to do it. But what happens is, once you become familiar with the story familiar with the business familiar with the tools, and every time you log into your accounting software, you can say, Yeah, I know where I’m at, like this is telling me the same story it was telling me when I logged in last time, it becomes much more subconscious. And you then do get to benefit from things like automation features that software like Rounded can offer. And you don’t you know, you can have the confidence to know that my my software is going to send the automated email reminder for an overdue invoice. And I don’t have to remember to do that. And my software is going to add that recurring expense that happens every single month, and I’m not going to have to do that. And I can connect my bank account so that I can go through my expenses every Monday in five or 10 minutes, rather than it taking me half an hour to pull all my paper receipts out from everything and, and do all of that. And then once you’ve you know you once you’re in control like that, and you see the story that the dashboard tells you, you know, it really is, you know, that simple, that when you get to tax time, you should be ready. Like if you’ve done the work, you should be ready. And you know, the other thing that somebody said to me the other day was, you know, if you’ve moved from a manual process, or you’ve had a nightmare tax time, and you spent the last 12 months getting yourself sorted, and you present your accountant with your beautifully structured and kept accounts, and they charge you the same for your tax return. You probably want to have a word with him, because you’re definitely not taking them as long.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think that’s it. The other thing about kind of that constant, or you know, and I think if you say discipline, it does sound scary. If you say routine, you know, as your routine in the morning on a Monday, you’ll just look at your accounts, you know, if you’ve got something like this set up, Pay Pal pulls in stripe pulls in, you know, you can have multiple bank accounts there. So you’re literally going through and going Tick, tick tick, you know, and occasionally there will be a receipt that you need to take a little snapshot of and enter that in. But you know why the receipts always disappear? The font disappears. It’s really weird, isn’t it?
Oliver Garside:
I don’t know the answer to that. But one that just as a tip. And you can check this on the ATO website that the ATO is happy to accept electronic copies of receipts.
Kate Toon:
Yeah.
Oliver Garside:
So if you are using an app and you’re taking a picture of receipt, and you’re storing that, that’s absolutely fine. And you know, if you’ve got it backed up in accounting software or in a Google Drive, there’s no reason for you to have to keep the paper receipts knocking around.
Kate Toon:
I take a photo as soon as I get it. Like as soon as I’ve done the post office transaction, I take a photo and then at least all I’m doing is pulling them out of there. But yeah, I think the other thing is we’re going to talk about common mistakes, what common mistakes we see a copywriters making in their finances and in tax time and one of the ones I think is very common is not realizing when you’ve crossed the GST threshold. And so you know, you’ve gone past that you haven’t charged us t and then you have to retrospectively go back and try and work that out. Is that something that you see happening?
Oliver Garside:
We have seen it and at this point, it’s probably good for me just to remind your listeners, I’m not an accountant, so I can’t give financial advice.
Kate Toon:
We’re not offering financial advice to your personal circumstances. Yes, yes.
Oliver Garside:
So check with your accountant. But again, this is where it’s really important to have the right tools and also the right team in your corner. Because your accountant will advise you when you approach that GST threshold, which is annual income or annual revenue of $75,000 a year from your freelance or solopreneur activities. So it doesn’t include any if you’re doing a side hustle and you’re also being fully employed somewhere else it doesn’t include employed income. So hopefully what happens is you have your accountant, and you can both your accountant and you can see it’s like well, this year has been pretty good. Like I’m pretty sure that I’m going across the threshold, you know, you well done. It’s fantastic. How do I manage that and then your accountant can help you with registering for GST with the ATO, which is fairly simple. And it takes a bit of a mindset shift as well because, again, your employer so your clients might be saying well, you’re 10% more expensive. And actually, that’s not the case. And the most important thing about GST is actually a mental one. And we always talk to our users about like, Don’t ever tell yourself, you’re earning GST. It’s not something you weren’t, it’s something you collect on behalf of the government. And so it also then takes a little bit more rigor in your accounting, because you at that point, then have to make sure that you’re setting aside not only the money for your income tax, but the money for your BAS, as well, which is a business activity statement. So again, it’s as you step up, and as your business grows, you, as a business owner have to step up and take, you know, take control and take command of those things that come your way. And if you don’t do it properly, GST can be one of those things that causes a challenge and makes you trip up, and then you have to go back and add GST to invoices. And often you can’t go back and ask clients for another 10%, which means that 10% comes out of your pocket. So you want you want to avoid all of that. So, you know, your accounting software like Rounded will tell you when you’re nearing that that threshold, and your accountant should be able to guide you on the transition process.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, and it’s not that big of a deal. I mean, you made it make it sound terrible. There it is. It’s not that big. I mean, often I recommend to my copywriters who just start, register for GST from the get go, because as you said, it’s, you know, often businesses. It’s a weird one. I’ve had businesses be you know, when people aren’t charging GST be a bit like, Oh, that’s a bit weird. Are you that small? Are you you’re not serious about this business. So it can actually bizarrely have a bit of a positive branding effect. And as you said, you just the GST is just being moved around. You’re paying it on suppliers, they’re paying on suppliers. It’s not your money. And I think you know, you talk there about, you’ve got to have that rigor to kind of collect your money for the taxman collect your money for GST. And then the next thing I think that is a big issue is expenses. So you know, you’ve got your money coming in, yeah, 100% coming in, you got to take 10% off that straightaway, put it in the GST pot, you’ve got to put your tax away. And again, another problem, I think with taxes that again, people have good years, and they don’t keep track of that, and then all of a sudden, they get a massive tax bill. Because again, that you know, maybe you’ve been saving 22% for the taxman and now really you need 27%. But you haven’t been doing that all along. And that’s where I think Profit First can be really helpful. Again, with tax, I know you’re not an accountant. But you know, some people pay their tax at the end of the year, some people pay it quarterly, what’s the deal there, like does Rounded help you prepare your business activity statement, that kind of stuff?
Oliver Garside:
it does. And so the way it will work is when you start as in your first year, as a freelancer, you will do a tax return at the end of the year. And it will be for that proportion of the year that you’ve earned income through your solo business. After you’ve done that, and you’ve told the ATO that you are working for yourself under an ABN, they will put you on what’s called quarterly installments. And you can set those quarterly installments, it will be based on the previous year’s income, but you can vary it if your income goes up or down. And the reason behind that is that you pay every quarter so that you don’t get that huge bill at the end of the year. I think the other thing as well, that’s really important when we talk about process is there’s a lot of a lot of new business owners start their business, and they may hear conversations like this, or they may see comments on social media for more experienced business owners. And they say, Well, I’m not there yet. I’m not there yet. And when I get there, I’ll worry about that kind of stuff. But for now, I’m worried about other things, and I don’t have a lot of business, I want to keep costs down. But what happens is that by the time you’ve realized that you’re too busy, it’s too late. And so it’s super, super important to make sure that you get your processes down pat early, and your tools early, so you’re familiar with them. And so that they’re also capable of scaling with you as your business grows, and having those processes and having the tools and the right accountant and everything else will in fact, help your business to grow more quickly. And so you should think about those things as an investment in your business and not a cost.
Kate Toon:
I literally will say that the first two things I did as a business owner was get a finance app and get an accountant. Those are the number one and two things in my business. And I’m talking about before I even got my logo designs, you know, like money is everything to be honest. And I think the biggest headache for anybody in business is not having enough and being terrified. You don’t want to have that anxiety. I also think that if you’re not using tools and have a good accountant, it will hold you back because you’ll be the things like well, I only want it I’m only going to earn 73 grand a year then because I don’t want to go through all the horror of registering for GST. It’s not a horror. I don’t want to have to do BAS. So I’m gonna you know, I’m going to do this. I don’t want to you know, you kind of hold yourself back from making big moves because you’re frightened of the financial implications when really they aren’t that bad. I held back for a long time registering for a company, I know that’s not the scope of this discussion. Because I was like, oh, it’s such a faff, and I’ll have to do two tax returns and blah, blah, blah. It wasn’t a faff, it makes no difference. And it’s given me lots of other opportunities as a company that I didn’t have as a sole trader. Did I do that year one? No. But I held myself back because I wasn’t financially literate enough to understand that it wasn’t that big of a deal. So I think it is super challenging. I was going to talk about expenses. And I think, you know, again, if you just have one account that maybe you share with a partner, or even if it’s one account for your business, it can be very hard to really have a clear vision of what money is yours, you know, in the Profit First mentality is that, you know, you put 10% or 1% away for profit, maybe 25% ish for tax, you got GST coming off that, and you want to have a maybe about 20 ish percent for expenses. But when you’re starting out as a freelancer, it’s an exciting time, there’s stationery to buy, there’s branding, you can do, there’s a million apps you can buy. And I find that a lot of people spend a lot of money on personal development, they become course junkies. And then at the end of the year, they look at their expenses. And they’re like, actually, I made no money. Do you have any advice for copywriters on how to think about expenses in their business?
Oliver Garside:
Well, yeah, there’s probably there’s probably two things, I think the first point that you made was about what if I have an account that you know, like a joint account with my partner and everything else, the number one thing that I would say, even before you get your finance app, and even before you get your logo and everything else, the number one thing is get a dedicated business banking account. That will save you 25% in admin, just by doing that, because you’re not going to have to sift through a whole heap of personal expenses, and coffee shop, and weekly Woolies shop, and all of that Netflix and all of that sort of stuff. So once you do that, and you know that you’re looking only at business transactions, then you can start thinking more about your expenses. And the way expenses work is that every legitimate business expense that you claim, reduces your taxable income. So if you earn a total, gross total of $70,000, in the year that you spend $10,000, on expenses, the tax office will only base your income tax on $60,000. So every single expense is money in your pocket. And I encourage our freelancers and Rounded users to think about, you know, expenses, often the difference between profit and not. Because if you’re forgetting, if you’re not putting everything down, that you can if you’re not maximizing the claims that you can make in a in a completely legal way, of course, then you’re leaving money on the table, and you’re being taxed by the tax office when when you shouldn’t be. And you know, especially in the early years, you know, the right you know, you’ve got to focus on the business, maybe there’s some professional development that needs done infrastructure, branding, all of that stuff. And so disposable income may be at a premium. But expenses could be the difference between, you know, a little bit more disposable income and not.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it, because obviously, you do get that tax reduction, but you don’t get all the money back. Like I think people think, Oh, I’m gonna spend $1,000 on this, and I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna get that all back, you don’t get all of it back. It just reduces your tax liability, and therefore people can go a bit crazy. And I think, you know, sometimes things we think are claimable or not, I remember in my first three years, I built this little shed that I’m in and I was like, great, I’ll be able to claim the $13,000 back, but you can’t, it’s a depreciating asset. So I can’t claim it all. And you know, these are things that you are not expected to know unless you’re an accountant. So it really is having that accountant that you can ask these questions or we’re lucky in the Clever Copywriting School, we have a dedicated accountant in the group who can ask questions of can I claim this t shirt that I bought? That’s got a typewriter on it, because I wear it when I’m copywriting? Probably not. So I think expenses are an interesting one. I think you need to monitor them. I always managed to keep my expenses, about 20-23% When I was a freelance copywriter, and I stuck to that, and that meant that I was, you know, relatively profitable. Look, I think at the end of the day, we are all terrified of tax time. And obviously we’re about to hit it. You’re in the middle of tax time too. It’s coming. You know, maybe some people are gonna go look, it’s too late for me this year. This year, I just have to go with what I’ve got. How can people do a better job next year? What are your top tips for transforming your business finances next financial year?
Oliver Garside:
Yeah, great question. So number one, as I said before, if you haven’t got a dedicated bank account, get that. That’s the first step. If you want to take that a stage further, get yourself a savings account as well. Where your GST and tax income goes. Some people even have two savings account, one for GST and one for tax. Again, it’s kind of up to you how quickly you want to do that I’m very much out of sight out of mind. And again, so if that money’s not in a bank account I’m looking at daily, it’s kind of a bit safer than it would be if it wasn’t. The second is to make sure that you are saving electronic copies of all your receipts. Whether that’s in a accounting software, like Rounded, or whether that’s in a Google Drive folder, whatever works for you, just try and automate that a little bit. Number three, obviously, get yourself some accounting software like Rounded. That’s, that’s specifically for Australian freelancers. Number four, get an accountant, you need somebody in your corner to give you the advice that you need to know about things like the instant asset write off, and what you can claim and registering for GST. Number five, again, a scary word, but do a budget. Even if it’s just, and a budget doesn’t have to be anything frightening, it can literally just be a list of your expenses that you have most months with the associated costs, so that you can say to yourself, I know on balance, you know, that I spent between, you know, x 100 and x 100 every month. And that helps you understand like, what do you need to earn to maintain your lifestyle? You know, like, how hard do I need to work so that I can go on holiday to the Gold Coast or wherever it may be, and also pay my tax and also, you know, keep food on the table and buy the kids whatever they need and everything else, it’s really important. Number six is put money aside for tax. Do that religiously, so that you aren’t caught short, the tax office aren’t going to forget that definitely coming see definitely need to do that. Now, number seven, this is sort of verging on financial advice. But there are also tax breaks and tax benefits associated with regularly paying yourself super, there’s limits on what you can do. Please speak to a financial advisor and accountant about that. But it can be very tax effective and great for your retirement to make sure that you’re regularly paying super. And I think the last one, and this is about getting in the mindset of being a business owner is pay yourself regularly. Now, as an ABN sole trader, you don’t have wages, you have owner drawings. But if you are seeing regularly in your personal bank account, a transfer from your business bank account, no matter how small that may be to begin with, you know, a regular wage that allows you to see the fruits of your labor. Again, it comes down to mindset and confidence knowing that I am going to make sure that I rewarded for the hard work that I do. And you know, there may be some ups and downs to start with, you may have time, you may have a little bit of boom and bust. But if you if you go through that process, if you if you’re regimented about it, if you’ve got that routine, the ups and downs are going to be largely to a great extent smoothed out. And you know, hopefully what you’re ending up with is the opportunity to really focus on building your business, to get some great clients to do really great work. And to, you know, every Freelancer wants a lot. It’s a lifestyle choice, isn’t it? And hopefully, you get to realize that that lifestyle choice, that vision that you had when you left corporate world, and you took that leap and you went to work for yourself.
Kate Toon:
Jolly good, I kind of wanted to interrupt you there and a few of those points and ask a few questions, I might just go back on a few of them. So the first one you mentioned was savings accounts or having a savings account. And I think one of the things that works really well is if you just set up a direct debit to go out each month. So you know you kind of look at especially if you’ve been in business for like a year you can look at last year, do I want to earn the same amount? Okay, well, roughly what tax did I pay? Okay, so roughly, I’m gonna have to put aside this much a month each month and maybe get a direct debit going out so that it just goes to another account. And I love what you said about having it, maybe even a completely different bank account. So you don’t look at it every day and kind of borrow from it. I love that. The budget thing I think is super important, setting a budget and also that you mentioned earlier in the episode about discipline. And so I’m looking at that budget each month and at the end of each month saying how did I do and that there was another one there a little tip from me. Subscriptions. If you’ve been in business for over a year, and you’re using subscriptions, you bought them maybe on an app sumo deal and you’re like I love it. Have a look at them. If you’re still using them and you’re happy with them, call the company and see if you can negotiate an annual payment rather than monthly because it’s often a lot cheaper. Sometimes you get two months off. So if you know you love them, then you’re going to use them for the whole year. See if you can get some reductions there. What else did you mentioned super. We’re not giving you financial advice, but I feel like that’s I think salary and super for me are the thing that we talked to me when we talked about feast and famine. They’re the ones that help you get through like if you can look at it and pay myself salary, that’s such a big step. And then I don’t think I didn’t pay myself super for like the first nine years. So I’m really behind. I’m also British. And so it’s a bit of a different thing here, isn’t it? Olly? We don’t we don’t have to do this in the euro. Yeah, so super is a big one. And you mentioned the tax benefits, definitely something that you can talk to your accountant about around now and say, look, it’s coming up, is there any benefit of me putting some money into my see, because I’m gonna get a tax deduction and blah, blah, blah. And I think I’ve wanted to finish on two other things. One is the accountant, not all accountants are created equally, are they? So some accounts just don’t get freelance life. Any advice on choosing an accountant?
Oliver Garside:
Yeah, look, it’s actually really important. And you know, that there’s, I think the advice is, find out the typical client that of the accounting that you’re talking to, and often, you may be able to tell, if they are really, absolutely non negotiable about you have to use this piece of software. And that’s coming from a place of probably they run their entire accounting business on that, and all of that clients are on there. So for them to maybe have to work out how to use another piece, it’s not really worth their while. Second thing is to understand and this may sound pretty brutal, but freelances for an accountant are really hard to make money from. Because their business requirements aren’t particularly complicated. So there’s no opportunity to upsell all the fancy accounting stuff that they might do for a small business that that needs a bit more. And that means that, you know, some accountants are much more focused on small businesses or businesses or, you know, with employees and all that stuff. So definitely find out because ultimately, if you’ve got an accountant that isn’t used to dealing with sole traders or freelancers, the chances are, they may not be able to give you the tailored advice that you need around building a freelance business and how to structure things. So that works for you as a freelancer, and for those of you that are in, you know, online Facebook groups, and that you’ll know that there are a number of different accountants there that focus on the freelance use case. So there’s people out there, you just got to make sure you’ve got the right one.
Kate Toon:
The right one, and also, you know, find accountants that are willing to talk to you. Because, you know, part of working with account is being becoming more educated, being able to feel like you can ask questions, that you’re not being annoying, you know, and I think it’s just, you know, avoid leaving everything to the last minute and then going to that dude who sits in the, you know, the shopping plaza with your box of receipts, you know, you want a relationship with your accountant, because also a good accountant should be able to see your potential, who knows where it’s gonna go, maybe you won’t always want to be a freelancer, maybe you will become a business and they can upsell all that fancy stuff. And then the final thing you mentioned was was the salary, you know, and you know, the Profit First methodology is about 50% of what you bring in is kind of owners pay. And I think even if you think of that mentally, that every dollar you earn, about 50% of it is yours. I think that gives you a bit of perspective. But I also like to do think about a little bit of profit as well, little bit of profit. And even if you start with 1%, and that goes into a different account as well, that creates a bit of a buffer. And as a freelancer buffers, everything. I like to call it f you money, and I won’t explain what F U stands for. But if I have three months worth of buffer, sitting in a little account that’s going to cover my expenses and pay my basics, not my sexy stuff. It’s going to pay for my Netflix, but not my Stan and not my Amazon Prime, like my basics. But then if I get a client that starts to really kind of dick me around on pricing or delivery, then I can go you know what, I’m all right, I’ve got my fu money. So no, I’m not taking you on client. And I think that’s a real thing. So you know, salary super and fu money, other goals, and then that will even out that feast and famine and that feeling of panic. You know, I think the rewards for putting the effort in even if you don’t like the sound of it of the discipline and the financial literacy, or that you literally just don’t live in a state of constant panic every time tax time comes around, you know, so great, Olly, amazing. Now we where can we find out more about Rounded, obviously, we can just google Rounded one hope that you’ll know is good.
Oliver Garside:
Yep, Rounded.com to use our website. And the other thing that we have is a brilliant ultimate Freelancer guide to taxes, which is downloadable from our website. So for the show notes, I’ll send you the link to that. And that’s free for anybody who would like to look at it and it is a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about doing Freelancer taxes. So, you know, that’s a great resource that’s available.
Kate Toon:
Fantastic. Now, you know, I’m not gonna get all evangelical here, but when we got Olly into the group to do his presentation, I don’t know if he was disappointed or happy that so many of our members were actually already using his stuff. It wasn’t really a client acquisition, promotion, but all so many of our members are already using it and they all were obsessed with one of your customer service team. I can’t remember who it was. Was it Michelle?
Oliver Garside:
Michelle Roxanne? Yeah, they’re our stars.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, and I think that’s the other thing that the real point of difference I think with around that is a dedicated to the freelance market, you know, you’re not going after the big corporates and be the customer service. The feedback I got in the customer service was outstanding, and that’s rare in this SAS market. You know, you usually start with some bought. So, you know, I think that’s wonderful. Ali, thank you for your time today. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you and yeah, we’ll speak soon.
Oliver Garside:
Likewise, Kate, great to be on. Thank you.
