Transcripts
1. Introduction: It's one thing to talk about, things that happen on the page, how to make logos
work on type iterate. But what about the things
that happened off the page? Females taxes, invoices,
communication, the stuff that takes
so much of my day up, that should be designed also. Hello everybody, Aaron James droplet here and my
eighth Skillshare. This one, it's about the
things that are off the page. The ideas as I make things and give them
to a client when they see that thing on the
page with the client isn't seeing is all the stuff
off the patient, right? Businessy things. If you have bad craft before
they even see your work, it's gonna be tainted
with that, right? So we're going to talk about
everything from emails, how you do your file structure, templates at a, an invoice. I'm gonna fumble through a
couple of anecdotes about tax problems I've had and how to use the
power of an accountant. Then let's just be real
clear here ahead of time. There is no financial
advice whatsoever anywhere within a within a
Portland mile of this chat. Sometimes you need
to ask for help. I want you guys to thrive. I want you guys to be
good at this stuff. I want you guys to
get in and get out, make a ton of money, and be thankful that
we get to do it. Being creative. I
would hope that this course is broad enough
that any kind of creative. And I know there's a
couple of goodies in here that will help beginners. And also season that. I hope this stuff
resonates with you guys. Thanks for being
here. Here we go.
2. Perfecting Project Templates: Okay, so before we even go on
the page, something really, really big to think
about is where are you even start a
document, right? Where I start inside
Illustrator is a really, really important thing because I start off with a template. So what we're gonna do
is I'm going to show you one of my templates. Looks like this is an eight
page template here it is. What I did here as you
can see how I work. Everything that's outside
of the page out here, that's where I'm
working on logos. I'm working on
things I'm iterating by the time it lands
on the page here, that's ready to go, That's prime time when we
spit out the PDF. That's what comes
out of the template. That's what's important
about this, right? Because those building blocks, you can just start
a new document, go right to that, and then have all
of your wayfinding material right there
to start with, what I've got here
is I've got my logo, I've got my company name. I've got the name
of this project. I've got the round we're
working in and then of course I've got the
date and the page numbers. What's important is this. When you start off a
brand new project, you are starting
off from a clean, crisp, logical place, right? So let's jump into Illustrator
and let's go build out that perfect first
page for a template. Let's start a new document and just have a
fresh, clean page. Alright, keep it horizontal, 8.5 by 11 horizontal. Think of your client, how they're going to
be using this stuff, flipping through it on a laptop, on an iPad, on a phone,
et cetera, right? That works. So I'm gonna go in
here and I'm going to grab all the data that we need on that on your page that you
were building out. Okay, so now when I paste
this thing in here, Command V, I'm going to put it down along
the bottom here. So this is going to build your first template
out. Later on. This is going to be your logo. So I'm gonna get rid of
this, my little DDC here, I'm gonna put a little blue
dot, That's your logo. Now we're going to call this
your company name, right? And then I'm gonna go through
here and I'm going to trick out each one of these with just sort of like a good starting point
for later on, right? Okay, when I call this first one project
name, there it is. I'm going to leave
the round where it's at because you can fill
this out later on. We'll go put it in a nice
clean set of numbers. Is 00. Pick a real simple typeface? I picked a few terrible because
it's just something I use all the time and all my
invoices and things and stuff. We'll show that later on. Alright, this is ready to
be saved as a template. So watch how I do this. Now, what I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna save this thing. And you have to be really, really simple how you
name these things. Because moving forward, this is where you're
going to start, right? So let's just call
it blank deck. Make sure you come down here to Illustrator template, AIT. And then we're going
to call it one page because it's just one
page in this deck right? Now, save this to the desktop. So close this thing
and then let's go find out where
these things live. So you have to go
into a new window, go into your applications, find your latest Illustrator, jumping here and find cool
Extras, EN us templates. And then this is where
you put your blank page. You can see I have all
my DDC ones in here. I'm just going to
plop this one in here now it's going to ask you, because you're putting it
into a software folder, you have to give
it the permission. So put on your
computers password. There it goes. Okay, now, now this is a couple of
steps, but check it out. Go back into your Illustrator. Quit the thing
because you have to let it restart and show
this thing, right? Start illustrator backup,
Command new to start a window, go into your templates
in the bottom left of this dialog box, and you'll find that thing. And where is that thing
that there it is. Blank deck page one. So start from
there. There it is. Hit Okay. And see what just
happened just that quick. Now you have all your
stuff built out. If you wanted to just
change just this one, how you would do that is you
would go in there and you would know for me I would go in there
and I would say, okay, company name and I
would say drop in design company right now
for the project name, I would call it
Skillshare eight, DDC Skillshare eight, round one. We're in the date
we're at 0410 to two. And then now we are ready to start building up this
and now check it out. That's just one page. Alright, so let's go back into the template and
build out two pages, four pages, six pages, whatever you want to build out. But let me go do a couple and
I'll show you what I mean. Okay, So we've saved this one. Let's go start from
a template again. So now we're gonna do
is we're going to start another document
command, new templates. I'm going to grab that
blank deck page one. Okay, check this out. Let's make a two-page, right? So if you go into Option
Command P and then hit Edit Artboards and
drag this thing over. If you hold Shift
Option Command and drag the art board over that snaps it to the next one, release it. And now you've got
two pages built, but you have to go check
your numbers, right? Because this is
gonna be page two. Now, save this out to
the desktop, right? Save it out as an
illustrator template. Just going to call this
blank deck two-page. Ait. Save it to the desktop. There it goes. Okay, Done. Now while we're here, let's make a four-page
or a four-page template. So how we'll do this
one is going to grab Option Command P to get
to your documents setup. When hit Edit Artboards, we're going to grab
this page right here. We're going to hit Shift Option
Command and drag it over, snap it to the next one. There's your page three. Do it again. There's your page four. And now go check those
page numbers, right. That's page three and
that's page four. And now you've got
this blank template for a four-page starting point. Let's go do this
where we save it. Once again as an
illustrator template, you can just click on the other one that's
already weighing their call it four-page dot AID. Save it. Close those up, and now plug those back into
your templates folder. You have to put
your password in. But what that did is now
you've built a one-page, a two-page in a four-page. Just that quick. Really what it comes down to is a good place to start from. So depending on what
you need, you know, build out the basic
building blocks, right. One-page, two-page, four-page
maybe six, maybe 81012. I've got documents that go
up to somewhere like 4860, nice round numbers, 72 pages. Because when I'm done with
that thing and I'm gonna show iterations and
contexts and things. I have to do a save out
that PDF and it spits out that really clean PDF
with proper wayfinding. But the most important thing is the whole time we are
iterating outside of the page, on the page where the
rubber meets the road, that's where you're
showing the stuff that you're gonna show
the client later on. You shouldn't have to do that as an extra step later on because that's
wasting time, right? So we just built templates. Now you have a
whole template set.
3. Refining File Structure: If you're gonna get
hired somewhere, what you're doing
is you're leaving tracks all over the place. You send off a folder
with a crazy link to it, with all extra
characters and just, you know, bad craft people were. Remember that you have to be as elegant off the page as
you are on the page. And how you do that is by having simple logical folder names, filenames, and good craft
exhibited throughout, right? If we're talking about being off the page quite literally, how do you store your
stuff as a pro tip, if you aren't on the Cloud yet, you will be forced to be soon. It's a good thing. I had an intervention at
Dropbox in San Francisco about, about a decade ago
when they showed me a Dropbox link and
just a Cloud service, it dawned on me what
a privilege that was. I didn't have to drag
these hard drives and ******** and everything
else out with me. Know, it was all up in
the cloud safe now, you know, you have to trust it. But the idea was if I was on the road and I
dropped my laptop, broke it or it was stolen. I've had a water bottle
kicked over and splash into it and the thing just
fried right there on the spot. Everything was still in
the Cloud when I'm done with any of my projects
now, one of the things, one of the sort of safeguards I can give to my client and say, hey, I know you
guys meet whipping around with all these files
and products and stuff. But just so you know, everything is backed up
on my end as a service, if anything was ever to happen, I have everything backed up. That's a cool thing. And you'd be surprised
how many times people have come
back to me and said, We lost the files. And one creepy, clammy
little sweaty little Dropbox link that
I go and generate that quick and fire
back to them in a nicely worded e-mail. You'll continue to get jobs
with that kind of efficiency. So good on the Cloud. Big pro tip. Go, pay the price because you
want to protect your files, protect their files, and
protect the process, right? We're going to jump into
now is folder structures and why naming conventions. And then the power
of an underscore. When I'm about to show
is a way that you can name all of your projects
from here on out. I wish I would have done
this back in the nineties. I didn't know yet. So let's
just save this file, right? Let's be logical
about how we save it. Let's make a new
folder, DDC Skillshare. Number eight, right? Okay, there's your root folder. Now when you go
inside that folder, Let's say this thing properly
because you're going to make changes to the
files and, you know, stair-step off of each one
of those as you save as, and save out from there, have a good starting
point, right? We're going to say
this thing has DDC underscore Skillshare
underscore, underscore, round one, right? So there it is. Now check it out. Let's just say the client
comes back and says, We don't like cyan and you say, Okay, well, let me change
the color up here. Let me, let me, let me What
do you what do you feel and all we want to see more
green or something, right? Right. You change everything to
green like this there it is, everything goes to green and then you save this thing out. Now watch what we're gonna do. Command Shift, Save,
you, save it out. And you're gonna say DDC underscore Skillshare
number eight, number to round to write. This is the second round
because we made a change, we change everything to green. So now we're going to round to, now you have a way
to walk this thing through and give it a
starting place and be logical where this is
going to come back to haunt you in a good way
is one year from now, if we go look at my
skill share folders and files from one year ago, you'll see that kind of stuff. It'll probably say
Skillshare underscore seven or whatever we picked. But you'll see how
that spills out. Get into this habit later
on if you have to go into a file and you're spending time digging around because
you can't find your way. That's wasting time, right? So this is crucial. Alright, moving forward,
there's just a couple little, little, little trick tips
of how to save that name. Let me show you this. Now if I go into Illustrator, just find a blank
spot to work with. Now, take a look at this. So this one we're gonna
do is we're just going to put a big goal, cyan be, okay, because
this is the bad file name. Alright, let's put
a big old Helvetica beyond there so we know
exactly what we're looking at. Now. Watch what I'm gonna do. Okay, so I'm gonna
save this the bad way. Here we go. Ddc, space, Skillshare, space eight, lets us go one step
further, space. And we'll call this one bad. Okay, there it goes, save it in there
and your folder. Now let's, let's put a big
old G here for G for good. Okay? Let's say this the right
way, but good way. Okay? So Save As now go back
up here in the save as put underscores where
all the spaces were. Okay? And we're gonna
call this one good. Now let's save it.
Now if we just go and review real quick and we
can see these things, you've got a big B for the bad, the bad file name, and you got a big G for the good
filename, right? So since I'm all
synced up on Dropbox, the beauty of this is once everything is in that Dropbox
folder and you're I mean, I know I'm like this
is an ad for Dropbox, but there's many, many
cloud services, right? Apple and Google and all kinds of Microsoft's
and stuff isn't, you know, here's
why it's amazing. You can see here,
if I go into one of these good or bad filenames
and I just simply do a right-click
and go down here, I can quickly grab that Dropbox and I
don't have to, like, I don't have to go and
generate a link that's in your clipboard now,
it's floating around. So if you go into an e-mail per se in your jam that
into an email. There's your link. Just that quick. Now when you check
this thing out, and I grabbed the Dropbox link
from that bad file per se. Copy the Dropbox
link. There it is. Bring it into my Illustrator
and paste it in. But see what it did here. It went through. And for every space
that you had, it made a little bit of HTML. So what that means
there is it's, it's, it's compensating for
that space character by adding this pretty dirty
little percentage to 0. So if we look
through the rest of the file name, check it out. That added that extra little bit of gobbledygook in there. But that's the, that's
not the right way to go. If we go back to our folder, we go to the good one, copy the Dropbox link and
you come back into here, paste that link in. I'll check it out. See what that did. That has the underscore
character in it. And it's not this extra
problematic stuff. And that's the way the filename looks at this little
link right here. That is just two or three k. So what I would say is that's a responsible way to get this
data transferred around. Don't just take
that PDF that you made in plop it into your
e-mail because that's going to take whatever the
size of that PDF is and plop it into the e-mail
size, use these links. That's the biggest pro tip I
can give when we talk about the Cloud is of course that
your data is backed up. But most importantly,
you're just not clogging anyone's
feeds up in C. This is all off the page. There's a whole world where
you're not even designing. That has to be as tight as when you're
actually designing things. My stubborn friends who
still won't do this, they're just wasting
their lifetime. They're wasting
their clients time. They're just wasting time. Learn this stuff, trust it. Get these things. Don't take the extra steps
and you're just going to have more time to actually
play, or how about this? More time to turn this
stuff off and go live your life when you're
really off the page.
4. Emailing Like an Expert: Alright, let's talk
a little bit about communication and
specifically email, because I spend my life on
email just like you guys do. And it's an art form,
like anything else. Take it seriously
because listen, if you're just talking
to your buddies, like you talked to
them on Twitter or TikTok or whatever the ****. Fine, That's one thing. But don't do that to clients. It's a privilege to have these jobs to privilege
they have their ear. Exhibit good craft. Understand that
spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and
things are really important. If you're spelling like a beast, they're going to see it and
they will judge you for it. If your punctuation is off, take just a little bit
of pride in your craft. I am not a certified
professional with my grammar, punctuation, syntax, and
all that kind of stuff. No, no, no. But I take pride in it. I tried to learn all the
time the proper things, the proper whatever can
look into grammarly. I think you got to
pay a little bit for it. But I love this thing. If I'm a little on the fence, I just plop in
whatever I'm nervous about to see how they react. Seasoned professionals, putting up against
these different style guides and stuff, That's cool. Or how about this? Just how you lay the
e-mail out is important. You don't just want
to hit the cursor and just run off some 19 sentences. Run-on sentence like people do. That is hard to read. Break up your thoughts, break up your ideas. A thing called the Spacebar. There's a thing
called a return key. Use that little bit of, that little bit of data, that little bit of space
to delineate things. Alright? Alright, let's
get into an e-mail and some basic tips for
how to build one out. First things first,
clear subject line. You know, it's craft. Explain what you're doing. Maybe at all times
just a quick dash to say this is round one and there's a lot of
ways you could do it. Be clear with your subject line, if we're doing DDC, Skillshare, eight, dash, round one, take the time to put
the names in there. Simple greeting,
clear and concise. Set the tone. Here's
the so-and-so. That's it, right? Instead of attachments
just to a Dropbox link, generate the link or cloud
link whenever you want to go, whatever your services, send a tiny little concise link
with a nice filename, right? That shows that you have
a command over the data. You're not wasting your
time and wasting any data. Now watch what I'm
gonna do here. I'm going to come down. I'm gonna put a
couple little dashes, space, dash space, four of them. I'm going to come in
here and say, you know, Adobe Illustrator link
exactly what it is. Copy and paste that Dropbox link in there,
come out of this. Put a little bit of
delineation there. Now that you've got
the link in there to say something quickly,
check those out. Hit me back with your thoughts. Now, thinking one
little step further, always let people know
where you're at, right? You know what I mean
by that is like, Don't play the game of
hiding behind the emails. Be be be confident to say, I'll be here another
hour. So let me know. Because what that
does, that means they have an hour to
react or whatever. Right. Always put
your name in there. I always put Aaron, you
know, so down below my name, I don't have signatures
necessarily ready to go in here, so I'll just go build one out. Now one step further, just give us a little bit
different color. So I'll go through
read or go with the orange maybe, I don't know. But here's the thing. Just this quick right here. You've got their
name spelled out. You've got your first
idea out there. You've got to a spot where
the link is living and it's not buried inside
one big run-on sentence. You've got space in-between your ideas and the way you would speak in real life, right? This is good craft. The next time you get this, you can go in there
and this is crucial. Say you, they react, you react. You send another link,
you said other file, and you jump in there and
you put DDC Skillshare eight dash round to what you're providing to the client
is you're providing this clearly delineated
set of emails every time. Don't just put the
little reply thing in there because it starts to
get this chain thing going. Start over with the next round. You owe it to yourself, you owe to them when you
keyword search your emails. This will come up a
little bit quicker. Clarity, clarity, clarity. You know, what you
don't want to do is send stuff off that people are going to have a hard time with and
make more work for them. Understand that that tells everything about you when
you send that stuff off, it's got your
fingerprints all over it. If you make it hard on people,
they'll remember, right? So don't do that.
5. Building an Invoice: Okay guys, for the
next lesson here, what I wanna do is I
want to walk you through the basic building blocks of building an invoice
for yourself, right? Why that's so important. If you're working for money, you have to go and be able to, you know, invoice properly. So let's just walk through what my invoice looks like and how I've done
that over the years. Alright, so here is
my basic invoice. Now you're gonna notice we did a little bit about jump
into some InDesign because I built out my template for my
invoice in InDesign. I don't know, back in 2008 or nine or ten or something and I've been using it ever since. So if we just take a quick
second here and zoom around a little bit and take a look at just the top bar here. I've got my name of my company. I've got what I do, design, heavy lifting,
advice, friendship, my address, my phone
number, my email, my website, all the basic
stuff that just lands there. When you get into an invoice for design
services rendered, I built this thing
out into two layers. So what you're
gonna notice here, all my type is built
on its own layer. So what that means is
all the wayfinding, all the lines and
the stuff below. Let's put that on another
layer. This isn't changing from
invoice to invoice. So I can lock these
two and now only go work on the type that the
client name where it goes. Not that gives me enough lines
to put in their address, phone numbers, emails,
people's names, whatever I need to put it
in there right there it is. I've got the invoice number. I've got the date. You can
see I've itemized out right. And then let's say
you might have to show your hourly rate, the job numbers, the
number of items. This is a big one. It says as directed by some someone
and their title. Because the more data you
can put on there that connects you to your
contact person. That's just that
much more official. I've got a place for notes. I've got a place for the total. When you're building an invoice. These are just the
parts and pieces. And the best advice I can give is own every little bit of it. So keep your invoice. 8.5 by 11 tall vertical format. You use really simple typefaces, but figure out what's
right for you. Remember, there's
a lot of different ways to build an invoice. It's gonna be tailored
to your needs, tailored to your sort of like how many aspects do
you need that you'll see invoices and
examples online. They have a thousand
things to input. Boil it down exactly
to what you want. Now if you do it through
all the software or online, more power to you. The idea is how can
you customize it? How can you own that?
How do you catalog it? When you're building
these things out, you want to think about
the naming convention and how you're going to build up this folder structure
where your invoices go, keep them away from
your design files. Have a finance section
or something and a job about a week
ago where we had done a bunch of reprints
of things and I had to go back quickly because
we're on a chat. He's asking what did
you charge before? And I said, well,
let me go look. And within a couple of clicks, I had that invoice from
four or five years ago. We saw the price, we ramped
it up a little tiny bit, but I had a I had a
quick way to get there. So lots of things online
you can go look at. But the idea is this, build it, own it, and start that process. Okay, so you've
built an invoice. Now I want you to think of
it like a bit of a template. If they want an
estimate ahead of time, it looks like the invoice. If they want an
agreement talking about what we agreed to after
they sign the estimate, the agreement looks
like the next thing. They are all parts
of the same family. That is good craft. That's professionalism, right? Exhibit grace, off the page. Show them that you
know what your worth, you know what your value is. And people will take
you more seriously.
6. Refining Tax Forms: We all have to do a W9, right? And I quickly learned. I quickly learned. Nothing sucks more than when you fill out a W9 appropriately. And then someone
on their end puts the wrong Social Security
number, wrong federal number, wrong address in and you don't get your paycheck or
anything for better, or they put the
wrong address and then doesn't even get to
the IRS or something. That's not good. People
like to hand in W9. They sign them and they
filled them out with a pencil or a pen and they take a photo of that
and they send that in. That's just bad craft. Remember a humanist
processing that data. It's just all about controlling how you hand off your data. Use what we know how
to do to have clarity. Become front and center. Alright, what we're gonna
do now is wrinkled grab an IRS W9 form and download it from the IRS there it is right there right now, if I click on that
as an open PDF, now see how it allows you to fill in some of this stuff here. Now, that's cool and all. But here's a thing. As a nerdy designer never
liked the way it looks, right? So if you go in there and
you put in there, aaron, drop-in, like everyone
would never like. It's hard to read. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to take this thing and I want you to drop
this in Photoshop. Now it's gonna,
it's gonna ask you what page you want to import. Let's import it as a
gray scale, 8.5 by 11. Only the first page. Really what they need is
they need that first page. Okay, Let's open that thing up. You have to put
behind it in a layer behind it, a white layer. There you go. And now
flatten that thing. Okay? Now what you've got, you've got this pretty high resolution image of this thing. Okay, now, save this
thing as like a tiff, OK, and we'll call that the IRS W9, blank page. Save to the desktop. Okay, cool. Now, start a new
document in Illustrator. Make sure it's vertical, right, 8.5 by 11. There it goes. Now what you wanna do is you want to place
that image in there. So go and place on the first
layer off the desktop, the image placed it
up in that corner. Now that thing is
placed on the page, right on the first layer. Now go up above it
with a new layer. So you can check down
below there's the, it's on the layer down
below. You can turn it off. Now go up above, and here's
where this gets cool. Go grab a piece of type and tried to make
it somewhat bold. So just grab some really simple
typeface, Helvetica bold. Make it red or make it
turquoise, make it orange, make it something that's
going to really pop off of that black and
white background, green, something,
whatever you wanna do. And now you can control
the size of this. You're just having
complete control now of how this thing
looks on here, right? And then you have to hit
your classification. So you just want to get
a couple of X is going, I'll just make up a fake EIN. You gotta get those
numbers to line up, right? So using your tracking or your kerning or whatever
you're going to use, get those numbers to line up. This thing now is, it's making sense like it doesn't look
like everyone else's. And what I mean by
that, you can actually read it a little bit
easier to get your stuff. There's your date. But what we need here is we
need the signature. So what I'm gonna do is I'm
just going to show you this. I'm gonna go place
one of my signature. So here is a red one. And I lay that thing on there
and I multiply it over. Now check it out. When
you save this thing, to save it as a PDF. And you're going to call
it DDC LLC, W9, right. Save to the desktop. All
this is now it's a PDF. No one can edit it and
when can mess with it. It's got clarity. You controlled it. You can see the stuff. You're just lessening
the chances that something is
gonna go wrong, right? So that's a quick
hack with your W9.
7. Crafting Contracts: I think it's just good
practice that you have an agreement in place,
even with your friends. You want to make sure that
you have these things ahead of time and
you're synched up. Because you guys know, after all these
courses and classes, listening to me and looking
at all this, I'm loose. It's sketchy, it's whatever. But it becomes a little
bit of a power play. Because if you're
able to show that you are confident off the page, there's less they can mess with you on the page, you
see what I'm saying? What's important is to have it spelled out in the
agreement is there, and then the client
knows what to expect. And then when you
have this in front of the client, they sign off. That is binding in court, right? It's just good practice. Get it out in the open.
Don't play any games. Be fair about it, be ethical. So you can sleep at night. People mess with this stuff. That's not good craft. Being honest, being
on top of ****, That's good craft, right? Basically what I was told, I was shamed into it. I was working on a larger
job and let's just say it was ten grand
or something above. I sent the invoice
off after we're done, I sent the invoice off. And one of the handlers, they said, you know, where all your terms you know, your terms to how to conduct
the payment, the timing. I didn't know what that meant. So of course I wanted to
ask a couple of friends. One guy sent me his contract, he said Cut and Paste it. That was scary to me. So what I did was I
hired a lawyer when I needed help getting my terms
and agreements and stuff, intellectual property
protections in place. I don't even know what
those things are, you guys. But the right move
was to call a lawyer. He walked me through what
each little section meant. If we go on screen real quick. What I'm going to show
you here is I have sort of like one of my
letter of agreements. It's kind of off that
template of my of my invoice. I had a blur out
some stuff because that's what my lawyer told
me. He said, You know what? You don't want to show us, stop. You don't want people just
copying and pasting it because it might be
only tailored to your very precarious
situation in your backyard, air and drop it,
right, right, right. Right. But as you're
digging around here, it's got the date job numbers to line up with the invoice. You get to this
middle section here. It's your summary, the scope
of all the work, everything. But the deliverables are what the estimated design fees are, what the payment terms are. Remember, your lawyer
can sort of like, you know, suggest what
appropriate terms aren't. My lawyer went through
and drafted up just the very basics of what happens if
there's a dispute. It's never happened. But what if it did, at least
we have some steps for that. We all can agree on or intellectual property,
who owns what? It's all spelled out. Me, a lot of the
jobs I work with, I relinquish that the
IP to the client. If you don't want
them to have the IP, you'd have a lawyer
help you draft the right word,
right resolution. So you can plug that
in as a component. When you hand off a logo, can they use it
forever or is there a term limit that's
up to you to sort of figure out and then have an agreement on this is
what we're getting at. Go and ask for help, like going invest in this stuff. Invest in yourself. No different than equipment, no different than software. But you need to go ask
for help right now. Remember, as another
cool trick tip, There's all kinds
of stuff online, Legal Zoom things, stuff. Some people have different
confidence levels. Mine was pretty meek
because I don't want to be the person
that was lucky to get a head and
head resources and then undercut myself because I tried to go and just
download some quick form. That works also. But once again, maybe
you do that and then hire a lawyer to look
at it for 15 minutes. See, I'm Sam, I hire this guy every couple of years
just to assess where I am in my life and
where I am with my clients in the
projects and the things. And then he'll just
make little tweaks based on where you're at because sometimes this
stuff can change. I think it's just
good craft to really understand where you're
all getting into. How it on paper, have it binding, have
a professional, right? So that's like the
best foot forward. I just know that you seem to have some
protections in place.
8. Optimizing Accounting: Alright, so I don't have a
lot of stuff to show here. So what I want you
to do is go get a nice warm glass of milk and wrap yourself up in
your rumble DDC blanket. And just listen up
because it's important. So what we're trying
to do here is to try to be a little ahead of everything and just
talk about taxes. Here's the deal. You are responsible for
every buck that comes into your bank account
to have it taxed, right? Very simple things. I mean, we all know this well,
here's the thing. My relationship to
taxes is always been like heartbreak because
I was afraid of it. It was tedious and it didn't need to be the way the
information was given to me. It's like when I got in trouble, there's stuff that
I might have pulled off that I shouldn't
have been pulling off because I just
didn't even know. I just want to tell
a little story. I don't know what year it was. It was like 2006 or seven
or something in every fall, I would go on these
big road trips. And by the time that I
would get myself back out to the West Coast and
it would be winter. I'd always be backed up. Too many jobs, too much
stuff, that road trip, whatever wonder would finally
come down to tax time. A couple of months
outside of April 15th, I would get a letter
from my accountant. In the letter would always say
Aaron, last time we spoke, you told me about your
road trips and how fast you're going all
these jobs you're getting. That's great. So what I've gone and done is just to take a
precautionary step. I've got you an
extension on your taxes, so that means he's got
an official extension to the IRS after April 15th, that gives us six months to
submit this stuff by October, whatever the extension is. Well, one year I come back 2008, something 2009, I come back
and there's all my mail. There's a letter
from my accountant and i'm I didn't open it. I didn't open it because
I thought, well, he's going to do another
extension and then we'll come crying to him
sometime this summer. I'll get everything
ready to go and shoe boxes will add it all up. I'll make my
payments little bit, maybe a little bit of penalty, and it will send it
up the way we've done these last
three or four years. I don't hear anything
from this guy. Come September or even October. So I call my accountant
in the line is like dead. It goes to like a
disconnected number. I try sending an email. Nothing bounces back
from the e-mail. I go back into all my paperwork and stuff and I find
this unopened envelope. I opened it up and it
says on the letter, Aaron, It's been a
privilege to work with you. You're a wildcat, you're this, you're that I've
loved watching you take off as graphic design
and all this stuff. But I'm retiring. And you're going to
have to find Council on new accountant for the
next upcoming round. The guy retired and I had
nothing put in place. So what that meant? I was officially six
months after that April in the failure
to file category. And that's not a
good spot to be in. There was no extension. There's no nothing. I had a big year in 2009 or eight or whatever
it was at a big year. More money than I
thought I would make. And that year I screwed
up to the point where I owed something
like $20 thousand. It shouldn't have
been that much, but I had screwed up. I had let it go. It had gone past the
April 15th thing. You're supposed to have
the extension filed. I don't even know if I'm
using the terms right here. And I apologize. But
the thing is this, that's not good craft. The idea is this. You need to be proactive. It can catch up to
you in bad ways. Get out ahead of
it, understand it, and then get some get some help so you're protected, right? That's the pro tip
of this fable. Alright, so don't
learn the way that I learned that whole time. I clearly understood,
even if we relate, understood the power of a
well-designed set of folders. Now, I can't really
show you this stuff, but I can just tell
you this much. It's like if you're coming
up on your next year, you need a folder for your 1099 possible W9 to
sign out receipts, invoices. There's lots of ways
to do it now listen, I'm at a point now where
I pay a good chunk to an account and
she does all of it and QuickBooks, That's amazing. Before that, I was a
little bit older school. In an essence, I
was getting piles of receipts and it made sense to me to not do it at the end of the year and
take three days to do it. But over the course of the year, did a couple of
shoebox is going and delineate it out into software, equipment, meals, all
this kinda stuff. Because with every year I asked more and more
questions, right? And I got more and more help and I got more and
more educated to understand what was right
and proper under the law. And then where I was also fudging it and I didn't
even know any better. I mean, I can tell
you funny stories of friends who haven't
paid anything. And then when it
caught up with them, It's not funny at all. Your wages can get garnered because the
taxes are just taxes. I mean, that's what it
costs to live in America, right? So be creative. Be curious, get out ahead
of it and ask for help.
9. Protecting Your Business: Moving along though,
was I even a business? That's what I want
to talk about next. It can be a sole proprietor, which is just using your name and your social security number. I'm sure a bunch of you are
already doing that or you can become a business
and become an LLC, go through the state,
go through the city, whatever, however you do it. I had to learn that I wasn't working as Aaron
drop on and I was actually working as a drop on design company. I
had to learn that. Remember, I've been making all these funny
shirts and stuff from my friends and for things and for stuff for lots of years. Well, we're not
client would hire me and they think I'm the
drop in design company. I'm going to get that after
I do an agreement and estimate and the invoice
and all this stuff, and I would get a paycheck
and the paycheck would say grappling design company where I learned I was not a business, wasn't I tried to cash that check done at my
Wells Fargo account. Right. It got bounced back
because it didn't say Aaron droplet got bounced
back and I had to go inside. I'm relying on every
penny of that paycheck. I go inside. In this kind of a gruff
bank or woman says, I can't catch this,
you're not a business. And I said, Well, what do you
mean I'm out of business? I got to check. I didn't even know there was a thing
called a business account. Now, you have your
personal account, you have your business
account, guys. I didn't know about
this growing up and there's no one punching
me in the face with it. So I'm learning as I go. So here's the thing. She wouldn't catch it for me. So I went to another branch and the woman kinda knew me there
and she just cashed it. It just kinda slipped
through and went random. I Aaron drab on account. Maybe she doesn't even look. But that's not
good craft, right? Next check comes in. It's right around the time I get this call from the
City of Portland. And the woman on the phone says, where's your business license?
In the state of Oregon. And that's when I
learned that you need things called business licenses. I didn't even know you
haven't had to have one. I got in trouble with it
a little bit and she said that you need to get a business license for
the City of Portland. It costs a 100 bucks. The state of Oregon,
that's when I became the draft when
Design Company LLC. When I became an LLC, not only did that start to
protect me in certain ways, I took that piece of
paper with my EIN number, which is federally given your employer
identification number. You have to apply for
that through the Fed's, through the
government and stuff, and they spits it right out. And that's what you use
to do your tax status. Number one, it's a
pro tip to get that because you're not using
your social security number. But I took that number down to the bank
account and by the way, they opened a business
account for me. On that business account it says draft and Design Company, LLC. In every single time ever since, any money that comes into my life from making work
with graphic design, it goes into that
business account. For a number of years. I operate as the drop
and Design Company, LLC. Okay. What that meant was, you know, I'm paying self-employment tax, I'm paying Social Security, I'm paying state tax, I'm paying feds and
all this kinda stuff. Portland city tax. It's a lifelong list, right? And you're accountable
to all that. So at the end of the year, my accountant would see all
the money that came in. I had money put away. We would start doing
quarterly payments. We started doing things
to offset certain things. Sometimes they
have a big refund, some I have a little refund. Sometimes I owed money, but it was all about
how much I made in a year and every year it was kinda going up and up and up. And that's called, I
guess being successful. I've had a great run, you guys. I'm so thankful for every merge purchase and
everything else, right? My next step of the evolution was when I had a bit
of a stern talking to when I was handed over to a new accountant because
I was just a simple LLC. It turned out that was
the wrong way to go. The right way to go is
to become an S Corp. Now listen, I'm not
going to even try to even explain what this thing is. The important part because I
knew to ask for help, right. I had an accountant.
She may mean S Corp. This is all under the law. I'm a corporation that drop on design company as a corporation. And Aaron dropped one works for it in the first year alone, she saved me a pretty good chunk of money when you become
an S Corp, there's a lot, there's little more fees
because you are having bookkeeping and payrolls
and all this kind of stuff. It's a bit of a dance.
But the thing is it's important because if you offset the fees and costs for what you're
saving on the tax, that's money you could donate
to help with people and stuff to help people who
are in need or whatever. Some of the things
I do, I still don't really understand it,
but I know this much. It's the right classification
for me and my situation, my age, what I'm, what I'm earning, It's
gonna be different for you. But the important thing
is to go ask for help. That's all there is to
it. Getting accountant. Explain your situation. Explain what you've make, educate yourself to
understand what you need. Something to jam in here
is just a real quick talk on this stuff called
E and O insurance. It's called errors
and emissions. Go talk to an insurance agent, ask them how it applies
to what you do. And you might want to
get a policy if you have a big job coming
up that requires a bunch of printing because
if there is an error in the printing and
that got sent over, wasn't even of your
control of someone screwed up at the printer and
it gets to the client, you're responsible
for that, right? I have insurance for the
drop-in design company that protects like if someone comes here and twist an ankle
and stuff like that. Or when I go on the road, sometimes I have to
get special policies for like being
around the public. You have to call an
insurance agent and get it. Here's the thing.
Get out ahead of it. Called insurance agent and
ask them to explain to you eNO insurance and how it
applies to your business. I don't have the right
answer on this stuff, but if you go ask for
help, that's the pro tip.
10. Final Thoughts: All right, you
guys, thank you for sitting through all that and
listen to all those things. I hope those were
interesting tips and pro tips and things
and exercises and new ways to think off the page to protect
yourselves, right? It's so important
if you're getting mired down in the
stuff off the page, you're just asking for trouble. You gotta get that stuff
on lock so you can just move fast,
move efficiently. You have to understand
how to save things. You have to understand that sometimes you have to go and
ask for help. It's okay. Be at legal help, be at whatever tax status
and all this scary ****. You're not gonna get a
rounded face it head-on. Asked for a little bit of help, get that stuff synched up out of the way
and you can get to designing and enjoy the stuff
like we're supposed to. We're so lucky to do any of it. Now listen at Skillshare, they love to have
you show the stuff. And I can jump in there and leave some comments and stuff, but this stuff is really tricky. I don't want you putting
your W9 up on that page. I don't want us to
show invoices with your own no social
security numbers and things and stuff and heights and weights
and all that stuff. But maybe build out the templates and show us how
you trick that thing out. Let's see that. Let's
see how you built it. Let's see what your
filenames look like. Zoom back and do a
screen grab of that because we'd love to see it. I'd love to comment on it and feel free to
share that stuff. You guys, thank you for
taking this course. It's not lost on me
how lucky I've been these last seven
years in Skillshare. You guys from the first
one, which was so fun, talking about how to build
logos and things all the way up all these seven years
later to this eighth one. Now, talking about things
that happen off the page, It's a privilege to
be able to show you some of the things
that have helped me get out of the hole. That's what we're
showing here today. It's a privilege
to have your ear. Thank you for taking this class. We'll see you again soon. Everyone, stay
curious out there. Stay healthy, stay
safe, stay cool. Thank you for this.
We'll see you around.
Aaron Draplin, Designer and Founder, Draplin Design Company
