Starting A Business │ Business Tips For Freelancers & Entrepreneurs (Beginner Friendly) | Liz Creates | Skillshare
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Starting A Business │ Business Tips For Freelancers & Entrepreneurs (Beginner Friendly)

teacher avatar Liz Creates, Brand Strategist & Designer@OstaraStudio

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      2:52

    • 2.

      Class Project Calculating Your Hourly Rate With CODB Formula

      1:17

    • 3.

      Motivation: Start With Why

      4:42

    • 4.

      Market Research

      6:24

    • 5.

      Pricing Your Services

      7:44

    • 6.

      Branding

      6:15

    • 7.

      Managing Finances

      8:15

    • 8.

      Legal Compliance

      3:53

    • 9.

      Leveraging Networking

      5:03

    • 10.

      My Recommended Tools To Streamline Your Business

      10:00

    • 11.

      Final Thoughts

      4:22

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About This Class

Class Overview:

Are you ready to start your own business?

Yet have no idea where to start?

Are you a beginner freelancer, entrepreneur, or small business owner and want to make sure you have the foundational knowledge to start or continue your business with confidence and actionable steps?

Does pricing your business scare you?

You are in the right place.

In this class, I will guide you in building the foundation for your business, by offering easy-to-follow actionable steps across multiple themes.

What You Will Learn:

  • Why motivation is important in running a business and Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle.
  • Market research to help you understand the market.
  • Pricing your services.
  • The importance of branding and what you need to have to get started.
  • Basic financial management to get your business started.
  • Understanding legal compliance and leveraging client agreements.
  • How to leverage networking.
  • My recommended tools to streamline your business.

You will learn what the significance is of each element and have simple implantable steps. There will also be an actionable class project (Calculating The Cost Of Doing Business Worksheet) for you to practice.

Benefits of This Class:

  • It will enable you to start your business with confidence.
  • You will have easy implantable steps to follow in starting your business.
  • You will have confidence in pricing your services and business for profitability.
  • You will be able to network and build meaningful connections with potential clients.
  • You will be able to make better business decisions.
  • You will have access to tools that will help you streamline your business.

Who Is This Class For?

  • Anyone who would like to start a business, but have no idea where to start.
  • Entrepreneurs and freelancers, who would like to understand some of the topics covered in the class (like pricing services, leveraging networking, and exploring business tools that will streamline a business, and many others) in greater detail.
  • Small business owners who would like to empower themselves and be better at the business basics.

Note: this class is beginner-friendly, as it is a foundational class.

Resources:

TO BE ADDED STILL (to be used for the Class Project)

Connect With Teacher Liz:

Connect with Liz via her website

Ostara Studio YouTube Channel

Let’s get started!

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Liz Creates

Brand Strategist & Designer@OstaraStudio

Teacher

Hello students,

I'm Liz and I am passionate about brand storytelling.

My main goal on SkillShare is to help students become empowered in the topics of branding and marketing. To make sure you walk away from my classes feeling empowered and ready to implement what you have learnt, I work hard to make my classes easy to understand, practical, and actionable. I would like you to feel supported throughout your SkillShare class experience, so always feel free to connect with me in the Discussions of the class.

 

Get to know me:

I am a qualified brand strategist and designer, and after losing interest working for a single corporate for many years, I started my own creative design and strategy consultancy called Ostara Studio. At Ostara we help build, v... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hello, I'm Liz, a digital design lecturer at a creative Business School in Cape Town, South Africa. I'm also a design and brand strategists. My own consultancy called ostara Studio, and I've been running that business for eight years. Welcome to my class. Starting a Business, Business Tips For Freelancers and Entrepreneurs. As a Skillshare teacher, I help create a freelancers, entrepreneurs and small business owners to create and shape branded content with authenticity, meaning, and confidence. I'm also null helping you to start a business. I've been in the branding and marketing industry since 2013. And I've helped multiple corporates with the branding and the brand strategies, helping them to streamline their businesses and attract the ideal audiences. I am very passionate about teaching as electron also null, helping new designers into the market, teaching them digital design skills, helping them to find the own creative voices. As technology changes. As a Skillshare teacher, I now have the opportunity to bring those two worlds together. I'm bringing my knowledge of Business and I'm matching that with my knowledge of creatives and the creative industry. I created this class because I've noticed that creative Freelancers and Entrepreneurs having need to start their businesses in a way that helps them to set up that business for success. Let's face it. Running a business is a completely different skill set from doing creative work for clients. They, for this class, aims to help you to set up your business for success. I offer guidance and Business Tips across multiple topics like branding, pricing your services, leveraging networks, and many more. The lessons come in the form of bite-size, manageable chunks. This class is for anyone who is considered to start a business but has no idea where to start. It is also for creative freelancers and Entrepreneurs who are interested in any of the individuals topics covered across the Business Tips. This class is also for small business owners who want to empower themselves and make better business decisions. If this is intrigued you and you are ready to start a business or planning to start a business and the future. I'd like to invite you to join the class. Thank you for watching and I am excited to see you in the class 2. Class Project Calculating Your Hourly Rate With CODB Formula: Hi, hello. This is your class project. You will see in the lessons that one of the lessons is around pricing Your Services. For the Class Project, you will be focusing on that lessons specifically. And you will be working out the Cost of Doing your business. You have access to template, which you can follow easily along to work out the Cost of Doing your business. The template comes in the form of a Google sheet that you will be able to copy. You won't have direct access to edit rather than requesting access to edit. Because everyone won't be able to edit the same document, you would need to make a copy of the sheet. They are directions in the description box below. Help you make a copy. Please do feel free to share your project with us in the Projects section. It's a great way to get engagement from others that know what you're going through. And it's also a great way to get some feedback from myself for this class. So if you sharing your sheet with me, I can give you some advice. We're all learners here. This is a safe space for you to learn. So please do feel free to share. I am excited to see your project 3. Motivation: Start With Why: In this first lesson, we will explore motivation. It's probably one of the most key elements when starting your business and running your business is to keep motivated. How do you get up in the morning every day? What drives you to get up in the morning every day? In talking about motivation, I'd like to speak about Simon Sinek's Golden Circle code or method. Essentially, Sinek explains that the Golden Circle is a method that leaders that have inspired people use to communicate their message. He says the most inspiring leaders use the same methodology. So essentially you can think of it like a target. In the sense of the target is why. In the next Circle, it's how, and in the outer circle it's what. Now it says why some people are not as effective in communicating inspiration to others. They often start from what and go into why. He says that a lot of marketing professionals also do that. They talk about what they do and how they do it. And the wire is often neglected. Rather what he says these inspiring leaders do is they inspire from the inside Art. They Start With Why. As an example of this, I'll go to advertising to explain how this could look like. If we take a brand like Apple, which Simon Sinek also uses to explain the Golden Circle with Apple's differentiator is not in what they do. There are other competitors that do exactly what they do. They differentiate, it really comes in. They Why? Sometimes the house as well. But it really starts with the Y. That's where that resonance between Apple and its customers happen. So taking something like when they marketed and advertised the iPod, they didn't start with what? They didn't say, Oh, we've got a great MP3 player. We do this because we have a great device. That's the whole With so many various songs. Because we love creating these devices that's not as impactful as what they actually did. They've always said that they think differently, that they believed that they think differently and because of that, they can make an impact. They believe that going directly to a creative industry and using the own passion for music can help them to create something really unique and valuable to people. So they shave that, why they shave that they think differently, that they passionate about music. And as a result, they were able to create a device for so many songs that could easily fit into a pocket that was sleek and sexy. And that's why you need to buy this device. Can you see how these a real difference between starting with Y? Now this can be used in your own personal capacity when it comes to motivation and inspiration for yourself, rather than always focusing on the Watson, the house. You can focus on the y's. Start with the why. What I'd recommend you do is it's the why that gets you up every day in the morning. It's why you do what you do. It's why you started the business and make it visible for yourself, put it up some way within your space. Because having a great visual reminder will also subconsciously affect you and it will affect your day-to-day activities. If you constantly seeing that subliminal messaging in your space, you can even make it a screensaver. And for all things business, this Why factor really works super well as well. That's where everything in business should start. It should start with the Y factor. It should start with the real core motivation in branding, we call this the brand purpose, or purpose statement. The purpose statement is a brand's most meaningful reason for existence. It is valuable, it is meaningful. It creates clear direction for the brand. Some people even call it the soul of the brand or the essence of the brand. When you are clear on that, you will have direction for all the other elements in your business to fall into place. It all starts with Y. So remember, keep your wife factor close to your heart and fall back onto it when you've got a tough day. Remember you Why factor, remember why you're doing what you're doing. In the next lesson, we will explore the importance of Market Research 4. Market Research: In this lesson, we will explore the importance of market research when you're starting your business. Many people who have been in business for awhile haven't even done this. And it is really important because Market research allows you to really bold your business around the client and what the client needs. Rather than basing your business off of your own assumptions and biases around your client, you. My tips for market research. With market research, it is important to start with the client. This is about understanding what the client needs, what the client's lifestyle is like, why client would be supporting your business and making a purchase from you. Now, when you're thinking of market research, you might be thinking of large corporations doing market research. Focus groups might be coming Tim pine. And yes, that is often what Market research is associated with. You might be wondering, but I'm a small business owner. I'm a creative freelancer. How am I going to have the capacity or budget to run focus groups? Market research does not have to be complex. It can be fairly simple. You can run things like online surveys, social media poles, or you could interview a few people over Zoom. What's important here is to identify the perfect client and then incentivize them so that they can have interviewed with you. In that interview, you will be asking questions around the lifestyle, social media usage, around the needs and pain points, and really why they make certain purchases and how often they make purchases. So you're looking into what we call psychographics, demographics of a client. You could also, even if you've already got a few existing customers or clients, you could reach out to them and ask them for feedback. They could be the first people to interview if they fit your ideal target audience. Next step, when you've got all these surveys or interviews and the information that you've gathered from it. You want to compile it, you want to create something from it. This is when you will be creating a client avatar, user profile, or even a customer journey, you can do any of those things. A customer journey just focuses on the various touch points and contact points that are client will have with you and your brand and business before they actually make the purchase or the continued cycle of that. And the client avatar looks more about compiling all these interviews and creating a single profile. When you've got this one profile and this one specific person and mind, you will be able to market more easily to clients. In the Projects and Resources section, they will be a little resource for you around a client avatar. So there's an example they for you, just so that you can have a look and see what kind of things would be an a client avatar or what it could look like when all that information has been compiled. Another form of research that you can do is secondary research. Now, secondary research is what academics to refer to as research you do based on research other people have done. When other people have done interviews and surveys, or what other other types of forms of research it might be and they write up about it. You go and read that written section of work. A more common way of thinking about it is specifically in terms of statistics. Now certain countries run statistics. There's also big market research companies that really snippets of the reports online like Deloitte, Accenture, euro monitor, international. So there's these bodies that depending on what type of industry you're in, they release research around that. As an example, for instance, have vast who is marketing company or agency. They released reports on consumer behavior, so general consumer behavior. And in the recent years, the statistics have really focused on the ethical consumer. That doesn't focus so much on consumerism, but an ethical consumption and how they expect brands to be more ethical so that they can be more ethical. So that's just an example of that. You'll also see that lots of social platforms or social media scheduling platforms have the own statistics. Software like Social Sprout released statistics on social media, which can also be very useful to look at. Then lastly, you can look at what is happening in your market. So what I mean by this is that you will go and look at people who do similar work to what you do and you will go and look at what they do. Now the idea is not to copy the ideas, rather to have a look at they clients and potentially what people are willing to pay for. Because if that's an existing person in the market who's made money from a specific group of people. It will give you insights into that group of people and whether you want to shift or potentially also look at that specific group of people. You can look at your competitor on social media. You can look at their website, you can look on Google, and you can see who's following your competitor on social media. You can also access the Facebook ads library to see what kind of adds your competitor has run. Because that will also give you an idea of how they're communicating with their clients so that you can form insights around those clients. Remember, the idea is not to copy. Copying will never work because it's not authentic to you. This is really just an exercise to get more information around your target audience, What's relevant for your business. And also to give you insight into what's happening in the market. In the next lesson, we will explore the difficult task of pricing services 5. Pricing Your Services: In this lesson, we will explore pricing Your Services. It's vital to understand how to price your services because it will affect the profitability of your business if you're able to make better business decisions around pricing so that your business can grow. Then looking at pricing should be one of the top of the list things to look at. If you want your business to grow faster, you need to make better business decisions around Pricing. Let's start with the Cost of Doing Business. The Cost of Doing Business is essentially a little mathematic formula to work out your hourly rate. It looks like this. You will start with your monthly expenses. You need to think of all the expenses that you pay for and you need to put them altogether and have a lump-sum of your monthly expense amount. Then you'll look at the amount of hours you want to work for in a month. So For me it might be something around I want to work 40 h a month. What You will then do is you'll take your monthly expense amounts. So there will be something probably around, as an example, $5,000 and divide $5,000 by the 40 h. And that will then give you your hourly rate that you shouldn't be charging in order to be able to cover your monthly expenses. When you are calculating your expenses, you want to consider few things. Firstly, you want to add fluff. What I mean by fluff is that in your Expenses you want to cover for things like inflation and possible emergencies. So that's one of the things you will add to your monthly expense amount. The second thing you might be wondering is, but what about assets? Because they cause something to the business, but they're not necessarily a monthly expense. So there's a way to work that out into your Monthly Expenses. What You will be doing is that you'll take an acid like a computer. And with that computer you'll look at the computers lifespan. On average, I would say a computer should last you three years. That would be 36 months. Then you take the Cost of what you paid for the computer and you divide that by the 36 months. And that will give you the monthly amount of the computers Cost that you will add to your Monthly Expenses. Now, important to note what the Expenses you really need to think of anything and everything that would be costing you money. So you're thinking about software cost. Do you think about rental? You thinking about travel, you thinking about the education you pay for some initial treated like an acid that you pay maybe four over here. And fact in the education, because education means experience and knowledge. You'll even think about things like the coffee and tea that you keep in your office. Even if you are working from home, that is stolen Expense your business because you are consuming coffee and tea when you are doing business. And then the last thing to do with this calculation is to add profit. If you want your business to grow, just covering Expenses won't be enough. You would need to have some kind of profit margin that you will be adding to that. Next up, I want to talk a little bit about value because there are other things that you can be adding to your hourly rate. Then on top of that, once you've got that Hourly Rate, a business strategists called myelin k-mer, explains that your self-worth equals your net worth. Now, you need to look at the value you add to your clients lives. You need to look at your own experience. You need to look at your own knowledge, your own unique value add that you offer in your business. Because that will cost more, that is worth something and that should be added to your hourly rate. Specifically, if you've been doing something for a very long time or you're very talented if you're not adding that talent and value on top of your hourly rate, you're missing out essentially, if you're, for instance, have done something for very long time, you might be faster Doing it. Should you be charging less because it takes you faster to do something? No. So add additional fluff to cover for that in pricing, also consider the psychology of pricing. Now, there is a psychology of pricing around how people think about money and purchases and how it impacts them and they decisions that they make. So it's really interesting to go and get knowledge and insights into how people think about money and adapt your pricing slightly to account for that. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about this. But in the Projects and Resources section of the class, you will find a resource. There's an article around the psychology of pricing. In that article, I speak about the center-stage effect. I speak about odd and even pricing. And I speak about why you often see so many nines in pricing, like $99 or $5.99. These are very specific reason for that. Go to that resource and have a look at that as well. I've got two more Tips for Pricing Your Services. When you're pricing, be very careful of negotiating your prices. You should not need to negotiate your prices with clients. They should just note your pricing or and then support you because of the value add. Of course, there are situations we, you might really want to work with a specific brand and they might not be able to afford you. In those cases, you can set a goal for yourself and lower your pricing for very specific goal. What I mean by this is they have been brands that I've really wanted to work with, who I've approached. And I've offered to give discounted rates for them because I really wanted to work with them because essentially I want it to be associated with that brand and with the publicity. That's not the same as when a client comes to you and tries to negotiate your prices down. It does something psychologically if you constantly discounting your prices. And if you're not working on yourself, remember your self worth equals your net worth can have lasting impact on your business and not in a good way. Sustained, stronger new boundaries and your prices away from the serious kind of talk around pricing years. One last step, go and have a look around what is going on in your industry and a new market. Look at the country's standard. A lot of countries you'll see pricing really differs from country to country because of what's ever going on in that country. You don't want to be the most expensive. So it's not about the most expensive, but rather about being relevant and realistic within your market. You might be in the wrong place or your clients you might need to look for in a different place than if you want to raise your prices higher. The point of this is also not to come and lower than your competitors. Because essentially that's what a good differentiator. They will always be someone that can come in lorem, this is really just to get an indication of whether your prices are realistic and relevant. Hope this has given you some newer thinking about pricing and has given you clarity on how to do pricing. In the next lesson, we will be speaking about one of my favorite things as a brand strategist and that is branding. See you in the next one. 6. Branding: In this lesson, we will talk about branding. Branding is obviously one of my speciality is I'm really excited to share some tips around branding that will really help you in your business. Now branding is really, really important because if we're thinking about branding simply in terms of the visual look and feel, we're thinking about the brand's first impression. And first impressions matter. They've been studies done way when people meet other people for the first time, what they look at first and one of the things people notice first, our shoes and then they make an impression base of the shoes people way. You can think of branding as businesses shoes. And then obviously when people meet, then they hear someone's voice and then Make another type of impression, end assumption about that person. And that's when we're talking about things like brand messaging. So first impressions matter. Branding is really about how a brand positions itself in the market, how the brand and business wants to be perceived. It's vital to get branding right. The first tip I'd recommend for branding is student faced in brand strategy. Now when we're looking at brand strategy, we're really looking at how brand positions itself in the market. We're looking at things like the brand's purpose, the brand's vision, the brand's values. We're looking at the brand's position, but we're looking also at things like the brand's personality and how it will make an impact in the market. Those things are really good and vital to understand even before considering the visual identity of the brand. Because when we have the strategic understanding and understand the value of a brand, we will know what type of logo resonates with our markets and also resonates with our authentic solves. A lot of people only invest in brand strategy much later on. And then they find out that they need to change the brands, that maybe the brands on optimal for the position in the market. So to start off with brand strategy is really good because it will help you grow easier in your market. The next thing, of course, is to invest in your brand identity, the visual identity of the brand. Now, of course, when we have budget constraints when we Starting out of business, it's easy to choose the five-dollar logo. But once you've got to fit running, really do try and get a re-brand as soon as possible and invest in a good designer who will look at your brand holistically and will create a logo, not from an aesthetic point of view, but from a strategic point of view. Again, remember the shoes, first impressions matter. And it's all about being memorable for your specific client. The topic of the brand's visual identity. Ensure that you receive a brand guide. A brand guide is really vital and helping you to stay consistent with your brands look and feel. A brand guide generally has elements like fonts, color breakdown, and elements like image or icon style. And it will also show you how to use your logo in different situations. It's also important to have a brand guide because let's say eventually you're creating a website and you don't know the color or the funds of your brand. And the brand card doesn't have what the brands is really about, like the brand story or the brand messages. Now this website designers expected to create a website and they might not know how to really interpret your brand. So when they have access to their brand guide, they can also more easily bold something like a website for you. This would also work for copywriters or other types of creatives that would benefit from having a look at your brand. Another tip I have is to ensure that you get a vector file of your logo visuals or your logo files. The reason I suggest this is because if you're a digital business owner and you just received digital logos, that's fine. However, I've been in many situations with clients, we feel years down the line. They need to use the logo in a different way. They might, they might need to change the logo style or they might need to go and print signage. And then the digital logo might not suffice. What a vector file essentially is. It's a file that not like a PNG. When you stretch a PNG at pixelate and the quality dissipates a vector file. You can stretch and stretch and stretch. And the file and the visuals integrity and quality will remain. Generally a vector file comes in the form of illustrator PDF, or it comes in the form of an EPS file. Just inquire from your designer. They will give you what you asked for January. If you don't get it, don't be afraid to ask because this is industry standard, this something you should be getting. Then lastly, but I would almost like to say most importantly, remember to keep your brand consistent. You don't want to create confusion in the minds of your clients or customers. If you are using different templates, like different Canva templates. Or if you not sticking to your fonts and colors and constantly switching it up, you creating confusion. Your brand will not be memorable. Want to always be associated with your colors and fonts and Image.all because that will be what will make your brand memorable. Think of it like Coca-Cola for instance. Coca-cola doesn't constantly change. Coca-cola font is generally the fonts are the colors they always use. They use it for very specific reason. And it's to create that consistency and that Memorability. They make it easier for the clients to remember them. In the next lesson, we will explore managing Finances as a creative freelancer or business owner 7. Managing Finances: In this lesson, we will explore how to manage your finances as an entrepreneur or a small business owner. Now quick disclaimer, I am not accounting or financial professional by any means. I have ever been running my business for many years. So the Tips I'm sharing, it's from my own experience. It looks more at a top Overview of managing Finances rather than getting specific details related to finances. So always approach a financial professional for specific advice on your situation. Managing your finances is really important. Because if you're not managing your finances, you likely lack control and focus when it comes to your business is Finances. If you can manage your finances, it gives you a bit organisation and you can make better business decisions when it comes to the money in your business. So let's jump into the tips regarding managing your finances. First and foremost, I'd recommend to keep your personal and your business bank account separate. What this allows you to do is that you can simply track your finances when it comes to your business. So you can track your income, you can track your expenses for your business. You don't want to model that up with your personal expenses. Many sole proprietors use their personal bank account for the business income that they're receiving and expenses as well, in those cases, get two separate accounts. It really helps you just to look at your finances with a different perspective. Next up, I would like to recommend that you always research financial compliance within your country. This will obviously be country dependent gate. Every country has specific legal requirements when it comes to registering a business or Doing business activities within that country, it is important to know that the business activities that you do are legally compliant and financially compliant. It is your responsibility to research what you're countries requirements are. It will also give you peace of mind. So if you know that you're compliant, you have nothing to worry about and you can continue doing your activities as you're doing them. Something I learned that was really valuable for my business was this idea of outsourcing. In the beginning of can be quite stressful to outsource to others with it is because of lack of control or because you might not have the budget of Finances really to pay other vendors. But really it's one of the best things you can do in your business to spend money and outsource on tasks that really don't sit your soul on fire or that you aren't good at, allows you to grow your business in a way where these people who really loved doing what they doing, Doing it for you in your business, so your business can grow better. To see an example of my own type of outsourcing, I do work with a lot of creative freelancers and my business. But one of the first things I outsourced was five senses, funny enough. So I outsourced my accounting. That just gave me peace of mind because I'm not a financial professional and then I know I'm financially compliant. That's just allow me to know that I'm financially compliant and not missing something up that I have no idea how to do in my country. One of the financial compliant examples would be things like filing tax returns, paying income tax on my personal tax. So those types of things, obviously, that is part of financial compliancy. But I really went and researched just to have a bit of overview to understand why I'm doing it and what it's for so that I know, even if I'm outsourcing my accounting, there are understand what its full form, good financial habits. This will be unique to you and you might trial and error a few different things just to see what really works for you when it comes to good financial habits. Essentially, what it means to have a good habit is that, that good habit has a positive influence and impact on your business. If it's a bad habit, it doesn't have a good influence on your business. So that's how you can gauge when you are attempting different things to see what works for you in terms of habit forming. That's how you can engage with It's good or bad. A few examples of good financial habits is to pay yourself, to pay your vendors or other Freelancers timelessly NTD your monthly bookkeeping consistently. The faster you form good financial habits, the smoother your business will be going. Invest in good accounting software, depending on where you on the Wald and your personal preferences, how big and small your business is? That one form which type of accounting software you need. But I really recommend to do it quickly. For years as a designer, I used to create my quotes and invoices on Adobe InDesign. Now the template CC look fabulous. However, I guess it's been always quoting people because having that custom design software, just let me do a lot more custom quoting. And I used to spend hours typing things at the moment I transitioned to an accounting software. I could send quotes out very quickly and fast and my invoicing was a little bit more streamlined. Also with the accounting software, I can now track my expenses. I can also track how much income I make. I don't have to go and manually calculated. The software, does it for me. And that's really a bonus. Investing in good accounting software really streamline your business the next step, and it's really a key tip, is to plan and strategize, set financial goals for yourself. This will be dependent on your own personal style. You might want to do this yearly. I don't like doing it yearly because there's so many months that it almost becomes like a New Year's resolution that just never gets implemented. I like to look at sitting quarterly financial goals. And then I have a monthly target as well that I aim for in planning and strategizing, I like to use smart goals. Smart stands for Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time years. I like using that method because it's almost like a little mini plan of action within the goal. So I can easily create tactics around sitting a smart goal for my business and for myself. And lastly, I want to go back to one of the good financial habits examples that I mentioned. And that is to pay yourself. I'd even go so far as to say pay yourself first before you pay your expenses. It does something psychologically to pay yourself lost. Which many entrepreneurs and small business owners do? They wait for all the expenses to be paid and then what's remaining? They will go and look and pay themselves. Subconsciously, you're telling yourself that you are not valued and that you come last. So forming that financial habit where you paying yourself almost forces you to work a little bit harder because, you know, if you're paying yourself first, the Expenses need to be covered. This might not work for everyone. However, I always want to recommend this trip because it has changed my life personally. And I think back to that pricing. Listen, we have said unit width equals yourself with and that really is at the center of your businesses and you'll Finances. If you are taken care of, your business will be taken care off. In the next lesson, we will explore legal Compliance 8. Legal Compliance: In this lesson, we will explore legal compliance. Now, like with the previous lesson, I have a disclaimer to make. I am not a legal professional. I would always recommend that you go in see a legal professional for your specific legal situation. I am yet to talk to you about business advice and just mentioned on oversight around legal compliance. Firstly, live with accounting. Legal compliance will really depend on the country urine. So you need to go and investigate legal compliance within your country. Ensure that your business is registered with the appropriate bodies within your country. When you're registering your business, you are ensuring that you have all the licenses and permits needed to do business activities within the country that you operate in. The next one is to ensure that as a creative entrepreneur, you understand the differences between trademarks, copyrights and patents. When you understand the differences between those three, you are essentially Understanding different laws around ownership. In this is vital when you're working with other people, designing things for them, giving it to them, we ownership starts and stops. It will also help you to create better contracts with your clients when you understand the differences between patents, trademarks, and copyrights, the next step is to understand laws around data protection. Daughter has a big thing right now. Specifically when we're marketing our businesses, we need to know what it means to protect someone's data and that we actually have a legal responsibility around that data that they share with us. If we're collecting e-mails, if we're tracking on websites with things like cookies, it's really important to understand where our responsibility lies as business owners with the daughter protection of our clients and beads. This will be dependent on country as well. Some of the laws and policies that I recommend you go and look at is GDPR, CCPA, all GPD and puppy. Lastly, let's talk about contracts and agreements with clients. Contracts and agreements are essentially an agreement that's in place between you and your client to cover the parameters of the relationship between you and the client. An agreement might cover things like payment terms, cancellation terms, terms of work, project scope. These are all things that will influence the health of their relationship you and your client have. And it also ensures that you are legally compliant and covered, as well as your client's rights are covered. A terms and conditions agreement is essentially an example of such an agreement. That really is an agreement that covers the terms you have that a client would need to follow to be able to work with you. Sometimes clients will provide their own agreements to you to sign. Are the examples could be things like NDA's non-disclosure agreements or MRAs memorandum of understanding, other policies, smaller types of agreements that you might be familiar with if you're running an online business, shipping policy would be very important. Data protection and privacy policies would also be important to set up as actual agreements to help you and your clients Art. To summarize these steps are the to really help you to understand your rights and also to understand the rights of your clients. In the next lesson, we will go through leveraging your networks to grow your business 9. Leveraging Networking: In this lesson, we will discuss the importance of networking. Now, networking may be an opportunity for sales, but generally people don't like the pushy sales techniques. And some people might even say that a lot of networking events feel cold. They feel superficial rather than importance of networking comes to play in building community. Running your own business can be a lonely venture. So networking really helps you to connect with like-minded people who know what you're going through to have that level of support can be very important within your business. Networking can also be a great way to be inspired by others. So when you meet other people new year, they amazing stories that can impact your own journey. For me personally, the reason that I liked network is because it pushes me outside of my comfort zone socially. And I know that when I'm out of my comfort zone, change happens. When I'm in my comfort zone, change doesn't happen. So that's why I like Networking. You are my tips for leveraging networks. First and foremost, listening a severely underrated, and talking is severely overrated when it comes to networking. There's this perception that we should be filling the silence spaces with words. And that we should be talking about what we're doing. Listening actively to someone else is really a key tool in building a relationship with someone else. Next step would be being inquisitive and open and curious. Ask questions. If you are shy person, asking questions can be a great way to take the attention away from you and focus on the person that you're talking with. Most people would like to talk about themselves. Specifically, if you're asking meaningful and thoughtful questions, asking questions goes hand-in-hand with active listening. Because if you're active listening and asking questions specifically to what the person is talking about. They will feel more special and there's a greater chance for a meaningful connection to be formed. Next step, my favorite tip, be uncomfortable, get okay with being uncomfortable. Networking events can feel awkward. It's after all, a bunch of strangers often meeting and connecting. But everyone knows it. Everyone is they to connect. So simply leaning into the discomfort can really help you to move through it. And eventually you'll get to space where it won't feel like that anymore. Lastly, have a money pit redeem. Although I do sometimes discouraged talking too much about yourself. Of course you are the to connect and share what you do with others. People do want to hear what you do. However, I'd like to recommend that you focus less on the watch you do and focus more on the Why you do it. So going back to that motivation and what Simon Sinek's is about Why is really being the attracting factor rather than the what you do. Shade that. A technique I like to use to do that is the I help clients to statements. Essentially, you are sharing how you help clients. And often the Why will naturally fall into that rather than what you do. It also takes the focus away from you and puts the focus on the client so that the people, if they are potential clients for you, they will feel special if they know how you can help them specifically, it focuses on the needs. When you say, I helped clients to share an example, if you are ashamed, my general go-to, I help clients to statement minors that I help clients to authentically communicate the brand messages. I help them to get clear on who they are, on what they purposes. And then I help them to communicate it to other people. And by doing that when they're clearly and confidently and authentically communicating who they are and they're communicating the values and what they do. The people who need to be in touch with them, they potential leads can then contact them with ease because they will be resonance on an emotional level. So remember, when you are sharing your pitch, It's not about droning on and on. It's rather about sharing the value you offer to clients. And in that way, people can connect more easily to you. In the next lesson, I will be offering some tools that I've had a look at or that I've used my business to really help streamline a business. See you in the last lesson. 10. My Recommended Tools To Streamline Your Business: In this lesson, we will discuss some tools that are recommended to help streamline your business. Tools that streamline your business can be really great because it essentially means that it's easier to operate your business. Let's first talk about social media tools. Now, many people might be familiar about scheduling tools that helps you to schedule social media content out there. There's many, many on the market plan Lee later, HootSuite. I personally prefer the Facebook business manager to schedule from when it comes to Facebook and Instagram. But HootSuite is also really great because we'd suite covers things like LinkedIn. The next social media tool that I really liked have a look at, is to look at the Facebook ads library. It's a great tool to really look at the types of ads that are running and to look at what type of ads competitors are running specifically. I also like to use the actual social media platforms when it comes to data and to review the analytics. So investing in the paid version of LinkedIn, for instance, or looking at your statistics on Instagram or Facebook. And TikTok can really be useful to have an understanding of what's happening with your social media content and to review that. In regards to content creation tools, canvas, obviously first and foremost, the tool most people would recognize and be familiar with Canvas, a really great tool to create any types of professional content with its social media content designs, or whether you're planning proposals or presentations. A video app that I really like to use is in short, this is a great app specifically for reals or tech talks. In terms of photo editing, I really like Snapseed. Obviously, if you're creative, you might be very familiar with the Adobe suite of products to create content. However, these types of smaller apps and platforms are very simple, user-friendly to use for the day-to-day types of content creation that you might be considering. Now, website tools. So let's discuss WordPress Furs. We'll press is great to design your website on. Specifically if you're using a boulder like Elementor, DV or Beaver Builder. These are all kinds of Boulder add-ons plugins that you installed WordPress and it makes it user-friendly and simple to design your own website, even if you are a layman. If you prefer something a little bit more simplified. And that doesn't have that extensive functionality in the forms of plug-ins that WordPress does. You can look at Wix or Squarespace in terms of other website tools that you might be considering using for marketing. Specifically, if you do have a WordPress website, the Yoast plugin is really great for SEO management. Such a great tool to really help you with your own search engine optimization. If you're a layman, you can then also use Google itself with your business listing, with running paid ads, Google really has a lot that can help to support your business when it comes to marketing your website. Next up, email tools and final tools to consider. I prefer the email tool called mailer lights. I like to use mailer light because it's free up to 1,000 subscribers. And also there's a lot of functionality that you often need to pay for on other platforms regardless of how many subscribers you have. So things like email automations, things like landing pages, that's free on the initial beginner option. All these platforms tend to be very similar nature and they work very similarly. So it's up to personal preference. I'll mention a few others. You get MailChimp, GetResponse, lead pages, active campaign, and convert kit. You can use any of these tools really to create a funnel with a landing page, an e-mail sequence afterwards, were you sharing potentially a freebie? They all kind of work exactly the same. It's just about personal preference. You might want to look at project management tools, specifically if you're managing bigger projects for clients with time tracking is important, or other freelancers are important and schedules and deadlines needs to be set. Some of the papilla tools are Asana, trello, Mondays end up sotto. My favorite tool to use as ClickUp, because I really feel that ClickUp is a beast when it comes to functionality. And it's just simple to use them to integrate with other tools. As we had a lesson on market research, I'd also like to mention some market research tools specifically related to collecting questionnaires and surveys So the three ones that I've worked with and that I really enjoy, or Google Forms, type form. And then Survey Monkey. Since many of us are working online and remotely, video-conferencing tools. Webinar tools for finals would be something you might be considering. My personal preference for video conferencing and webinars is Zoom. Zoom is great to have those smaller meetings or larger meetings with clients. And it's also really great to do webinars when I'm running funnels related to specific educational content. Another webinar tool that is really great to use Webinar Jam, But that's really great if you have a specific apps all. You can also look at a platform called Loom, which is great for sharing video messages and also videoconferencing. There's also some general operational tools that are likely to recommend that don't fall within a specific category. Firstly, I'd like to mention the G Suite. So Google's G Suite, which really covers all kinds of types of platforms and software that you can really use to make your business thrive. You don't necessarily need Microsoft Word Excel PowerPoint. You can now use Google Slides. You can use Docs, you can use sheets. I like it because it's quite integrated onto your Google Drive. So everything is centralized. I know that Microsoft also has its Cloud option with centralized. But I just like the more UX friendly approach that Google offers. If you're looking for storage other than Google Drive, you can also look at WeTransfer and DropBox. There's an app that I really enjoyed. My phone called CamScanner. It's an app that I used to scan documents right to my phone. And then lastly, another app that I really like is Tomato Timer, which tracks time. And you can see how long it take Doing things to see if you're actually being resourceful with your time and energy. Then most importantly, the best philos would be tools to use to inspire. So these are not directly responsible for any kind of streamlining within your business. I feel that these tools of vital for me and my personal business, because I feel good using these types of tools. The first tool is Pinterest. I like to use Pinterest for inspiration. I use it quite a lot to also break away from my own design patterns so that I can see what other people are doing. And also just to be inspired and motivated about all the beautiful things that are out then what other people are creating. I used to use Instagram like that as well. But now that Instagram is more video unrelated, I've stopped using it for that. I love listening to music. Spotify has a mass for me. I like to have music on Iran me when I'm working. Music helps me to focus. It helps me not to get so distracted or hung up on specific things when I work because the music has really calming to me. I do like to listen to specific types of calm soundtracks are playlists that really helped to calm my nerves when I work. Youtube is a great resource, specifically, education-wise. There is so much knowledge out the shade freely on YouTube that you can access. So if you need to know something specific for your work, if you just like to learn, YouTube is just a great platform to use within your business. Then lastly, if you'd like me, you might like to listen to audio books, or you might like to listen to podcasts. In terms of podcasts, they are so many great platforms. You choose the one that works for you and that's really on your device, like Spotify, Apple podcasts or Google Podcasts. If you want to get some tips on which podcasts to follow, I listened to quite a few creative ones. So do feel free to ask me in the discussion sections for podcasts related to your industry and I will gladly share those with you. Thank you so much for watching. I hope that this lesson was really resourceful for you, that these are tools that will help you. It was really great making this lesson because I had to really list out and go through all the tools I've used in the past years. It's been FUN. In the next lesson, I'll share my final thoughts with you and some key insights of all the lessons we've already done. See you in the last video. 11. Final Thoughts: Thank you for watching this class. I hope that it has been a very valuable class and is provided many insights for you on general business practices and approaches that can help you in your business journey. In this last video, I just want to offer my key insights on each lesson. So in the first lesson, we spoke about the importance of motivation in running your business. The key insight here for me is really to Start With Why. Always remember your why and keep it close to your heart. In lesson two, we focused on market research. And the key insights for me and market research is that Market research is really the for you to move away from your biases and to understand your client better. Because if you understand your client better, you can serve as your client better and your business and brand will be stronger for it. In lesson three, we discussed the importance of pricing your business properly. Essentially, the key insight is that it shouldn't be something that scares you. It should be something that excites you because it's essentially the way you will receive income. And it's also the way in which your business will grow and thrive. So you can make better business decisions when you price your business properly. In lesson four, we explored branding as a brand strategist. You know, by now that this is probably the one I get the most excited about. And for me as a creative, you probably know how to create beautiful things. So rather than focusing too much on the visual side of things, my key insight would be to focus on the strategy side of branding that will really enable you to grow your business and to bring that why in more easily in your branding and messaging. In lesson five, I discussed managing your finances from a top level perspective. The key insight you would really be to plan and strategize, set financial goals for yourself that you can work towards. That will help you to grow your business and the long run. In lesson six, or shade information on legal compliance. It's all probably very important because we have to be legally compliant. The key insight that I'd like to recommend is to really pay attention contracts and agreements because that will make your business runs smoothly if you've got good contracts and agreements in place. Lesson seven explored networking tips. And for me, the key insight would be really just two. First and foremost, be yourself and not take things so seriously when it comes to networking. See it as something find, lean into them, uncomfortableness and just get going. Just go and both community and have FUN connecting with people that know what you're going through. And lastly, in lesson eight, I shade some business tools that you can use to streamline your business. Definitely, the key insight here would be to find tools that really just work for you and that help you personally within your business. The tools are they to make your life easier? Feel free to ask me any questions related to the class and remember to share your class project. I really do want to encourage you to share your class project because pricing your business is really important. It's a vital step in the profitability of your business and the growth of your business. If I can be of service and provide any feedback and help you in that process of doing the costing for your business. I'd really like to do so and help you in the Projects section. I'd also like to request that if you've enjoyed this class and it's been helpful for you, please do leave me a review and helped me improve on my classes. Thank you so much for watching. I am so grateful to have had you here on this journey. See you in the next class.