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Nov. 21st, 2014 11:50 amBeing self-employed in a creative field, I often suffer from a tug-of-war between my inner accountant and my inner artist. Years ago, I made the conscious decision that the artist would win any argument, and that the role of the accountant was to figure out how to do any given endeavor rather than tell me why I couldn't. In effect, I took a tool from my superego and gave it to my ego, and the three years since have proven good to me.
I pride myself on the ability to give myself permission. I struggled with the timing to quit my last day job until my at-the-time wife told me to go for it, and I will forever owe her a debt of gratitude. In the years since, I've grown to the point where encouragement is still extremely helpful, from those who encouraged me to make my first leap into European busking, discussed my CD repricing (to which I ascribe a much lower decline than my colleagues), to my ideas for South American tours, but the ultimate permission comes from inside myself.
It's deeply liberating, and I'm extraordinarily thankful.
That's the high-level, meta stuff. The reason I was inspired to write this post, aside from a very invigorating conversation yesterday, is because right now I'm looking at a specific way the accountant enables the artist.
Whenever I set my budgets, I take a very conservative approach to profit projections: I look at the lowest of my last three years, take off 10%, and then round down. If I'm trying something new, I use this process by analogy (modeling San Diego busking off of Seattle, for example, or extrapolating Argentina tips from Italy). Once I can tailor my expenses to meet that projection, the artist off and running!
I pride myself on the ability to give myself permission. I struggled with the timing to quit my last day job until my at-the-time wife told me to go for it, and I will forever owe her a debt of gratitude. In the years since, I've grown to the point where encouragement is still extremely helpful, from those who encouraged me to make my first leap into European busking, discussed my CD repricing (to which I ascribe a much lower decline than my colleagues), to my ideas for South American tours, but the ultimate permission comes from inside myself.
It's deeply liberating, and I'm extraordinarily thankful.
That's the high-level, meta stuff. The reason I was inspired to write this post, aside from a very invigorating conversation yesterday, is because right now I'm looking at a specific way the accountant enables the artist.
Whenever I set my budgets, I take a very conservative approach to profit projections: I look at the lowest of my last three years, take off 10%, and then round down. If I'm trying something new, I use this process by analogy (modeling San Diego busking off of Seattle, for example, or extrapolating Argentina tips from Italy). Once I can tailor my expenses to meet that projection, the artist off and running!
