When you’re just getting started launching your business, expenses can be hard to justify. How do you know which purchases are necessary versus those that are less important? We’re told “You gotta spend money to make money.” While this is true to some extent, it’s counterintuitive to how you’ve managed…

Have you ever noticed that knowing how to do something and actually doing that thing are very different? I run into this with my clients regularly. Sometimes I feel like I’m being a bad coach. I warn my client that there will be things they can only learn by doing…

I’m writing this for us running self-employed businesses that leverage our own knowledge. I know that you will inevitably come up against this one question: Where’s the line between what I give away for free and what I charge clients for? This is a question I hear from nearly every…

I recently had a client display some toxic masculinity. This was frustrating, yet marked a bit of a milestone for my business. I had exclusively female clients for the first many years of my business. Since then, I’ve developed a healthy variety of men and non-binary clients. Now culminating in…

As a self-employed business owner, being able to talk confidently and concisely about your business is an essential skill. There are countless instances where you may need to explain your business. This could include networking events, cold calls, sales meetings, and interviews. Each of these instances is a potential opportunity…

Recently I’ve been ruminating on one of KC Davis’ key messages: “Care tasks are morally neutral.” It’s got me thinking about the moral neutrality of business and all the places where it’s not morally neutral. Thinking of multi-national corporations we can see that businesses can definitely cause harm. As consumers…

Are you ready to deal with unexpected changes? None of us really are, but there are practical steps we can use to handle such situations. This is a story from the front lines of a self-employed business. And this isn’t on my best day — oh no. This is an…

The most immense and universal hurdle of running a self-employed business is rejection. There’s the immediate rejection of a client deciding not to work with you. There’s also the larger-scale rejection by “the market” if your business should fail*. (*I detest the word “fail”. It’s a gross oversimplification that comes…

The average American is not an entrepreneur. 84% of the adult workforce in the United States has already asked themselves the question, “Is starting a business worth it?” — and come up with a resounding, “nope”. Why Don’t More People Start Their Own Business? I’ll start by sharing the top 5 reasons people don’t start a business: It…