#9: YOUR WAY TO INDEPENDENCE DAY

In this special Independence Day episode of the Financially Adjusted podcast, I dive into the theme of freedom that business ownership can bring. I’ll share personal insights and experiences from my own entrepreneurial journey as well as some different types of freedom entrepreneurs can achieve. This includes financial freedom, time freedom, creative freedom, and physical freedom. I’ll also discuss the challenges of maintaining these freedoms and give some practical advice on how to create a sustainable and balanced entrepreneurial life.

Tune in and let’s go on this entrepreneurial journey together!  

Links related to today’s podcast: 

Brendon Burchard: https://brendon.com/

Check out his membership if you are looking to grow personally and professionally (affiliate link): https://www.growthday.com/?via=fo4rs

 Recommended payroll software (affiliate link): 

ADP: http://accountantprogram.adp.com/accept/?EID=5453c160-167e-4c6b-aedc-893d78fb3f87&type=ShareUrl
GUSTO (affiliate link): https://gusto.com/r/leslie4559

QuickBooks Online is my go-to accounting software. Get the best discount possible (30% off for 12 months) when you buy with my affiliate link below, through Complete Business Group. Message me at support@financiallyadjusted.com with any questions regarding signing up. https://completebusinessgroup.com/leading-ledger-bookkeeping-llc/

My favorite budgeting app w/ an amazing free version: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/ramseyplus/everydollar

My preferred business credit card with cash rewards (affiliate link): If you have healthy behaviors around spending with a credit card, this is a great one to use and earn cash back. It also links up well with QuickBooks Online. If you have unhealthy spending habits with credit cards, please avoid using one! You need to be able to pay it off monthly and not carry a balance. I use this one for my business and it makes paying bills simple. https://i.capitalone.com/Jnub3fUEX 

Check out all my FREE financial resources in one place

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Disclaimer: This content is for educational and informational purposes only. Please consult with an accounting professional for direct advice based on your specific business situation.

Transcript

Hello my entrepreneurial friend! Happy Independence Day! This is the Financially Adjusted podcast and I'm your, host Leslie Roth. Thanks for tuning in today I might not know you but I'm very impressed with you. You are showing up to learn and advance forward with your goals. There's something amazing about entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs. There is a special spark and tenacity in your character that I love and respect. If you own your own business or you are driving towards that in your life, it's because you love freedom and you're striving for your version of freedom in this life.

The release date of this podcast is the fourth of July, so I figured talking about the freedom that business ownership can bring is a very fitting topic for the occasion. Most business owners that I know have a deep desire to build a life that brings freedom on multiple levels. Financial freedom, freedom of time, creative freedom, physical freedom, and the list goes on. In today's episode, I'm going to touch on the good and the bad from my own experience and challenge you to reflect on how you can find your way to freedom with entrepreneurship and what you want that to look like for you.

 Many times, the time freedom aspect is the most challenging from what I've found personally and from what I've heard from other business owners. And as far as meaning freedom of time that you spend in your business and the boundaries that are there.

When we enter entrepreneurship most of us have that dreamy vision of working ten to twenty hours a week making the money we need and then some. The reality is that if you're not careful, you could end up working twice as much as you used to in your full-time job and have zero boundaries. I heard all the warnings before I started my own business, but it still didn't change the course of events for me. Hi, my name is Leslie and I'm a workaholic. Yep, I admit I have a terrible boundary issue, and I work too much. I am a work in progress in this area though. When I truly look at how I've set up my bookkeeping business, I realized that I've done it in a manner that would allow me to actually only work ten to twenty hours a week; however, I have perfectionistic tendencies, plus I genuinely just love the work that I do. So, I naturally gravitate towards it. I'm slowly trying to create boundaries for myself and I'm getting better at it. But I've recently tried time blocking in my schedule and I highly recommend this. It's helping me stay focused and efficient more so than when I didn't use it. Not every day is perfect but it's helping to guide me at least. I went hard with the hustle in the first three years of my business and I'm now realizing that burnout is very real. And it's not worth it. I want to be in this for the long haul and I want to create a sustainable and healthy business and life.

I have a passion for what I do, but if I don't allow myself to rest properly or take care myself, I've realized I’ll end up resenting my business and want to run screaming from it. This is not part of my dream. My advice to newbies is to try to zoom out and see the big picture. And allow yourself to rest. Be intentional about setting up your schedule to include rest periods. Whether that's having a certain morning routine that helps you ease into the day or having your timer set for every hour so that you purposely get up and walk away from your computer stretch, grab a drink of water, whatever that looks like for you. It's healthy to schedule that in so that you make sure you're taking care of yourself. But I think it's pretty normal to be fine with the hustle and that hard driving attitude in the beginning when things are new and exciting, but do a reality check every few months. I'm telling myself this as much as much as I'm telling you. But if your self-care and your health sucks, you're doing it wrong and there's a good chance your dream is going to eventually turn into a nightmare if you don't course correct on that. I recently listened to podcast by Jenna Kutcher and something she said struck me. She suggested adopting this mentality of “have I rested enough to do my best work” versus “have I worked hard enough to allow myself to rest”. And that's not word for word I don't think but that’s the gist of it. It hit home for me big time. I realized I am unnecessarily neglecting my self-care and then just not showing up as my best self in my business. I'm pushing too hard and then I'm not focused and I'm not efficient. And I need to remind myself why I started my business. I'm a hundred percent able to be flexible and allow myself to rest but I just wasn't doing that. And this is something I've been changing a lot over the last three months and I've made a huge difference in my own life and my own health. And this is something you have to really be intentional about. This is a pretty common trap among business owners and I'm definitely no different. So, this is just a warning from an entrepreneurial friend to make self-care a priority in your life. 

I've mentioned GrowthDay before, but I want to mention it again because it relates to this topic and has helped me so much. Growth Day is a personal and professional development membership that Brendon Burchard created. And it's honestly been a game changer for me.  I ended up getting it, I think about three months ago, and it's helped me with development around my mental and physical well-being by focusing on high performance habits. So, he wrote a book called the ‘High Performance Habits’, which I read first and then found his membership. You can always read the book first and then see if that resonates with you and go from there but he touches on these different high performance habits to focus on that will help you enhance your life and that means professionally and personally. I cannot recommend this enough.  I will link the book below and the membership link also in the show notes. But it is definitely worth the read.  It's one of those books that I listened to on Audible and then I just decided to purchase it because it's one I'm definitely going to be reading over and over again. 

I touched on being a workaholic but it's also important to talk about the flip side of that and what I absolutely love about the freedoms that I've been able to create in my business and that you can too. I absolutely love that I can travel any time that I want and work any hours I want. This is incredible and I appreciate this even more because I had a career in the past (or a few different careers in the past) that never allowed for this type of flexibility. And I've also been able to be there so many different time for family at the drop of a hat because I keep my own schedule.

This is one of the biggest blessings I could ever have hoped for. I don't have any children but I'm extremely close with my nephew who lives near me and I've been able to be present for his school events that I never would have been at before, sporting events, award ceremonies, you name it. I've also been able to show up for family like my mom and all other family members that have needed me or there was an emergency situation that I could be present for. I’m also able to do more around the house since I work from home and depending on the day of course, I can just have that flexibility to be here for a delivery or something that needs done at our home.

Next, I'm going to talk about the physical freedoms which is another huge freedom for me. And this may look very different for you depending on your situation but for me physical freedom has been huge. I used to work as an ultrasound technologist, and even though it was just such a rewarding career on so many different levels, it beat me up physically. I had to do all kinds of weird shifts and be on call at night. And I feel like I never slept enough, and I never slept well. It did this for over thirteen years and it definitely took its toll. But I'm now able to care for myself physically just so much better than I used to. I sleep from about nine PM to five AM every day which is so natural and so good for me. That may look very different for you but for me that's my natural schedule that I gravitate to for sleep. And I'm so thankful that I do not get calls anymore in the middle of the night to go into the hospital. And I feel much less like a zombie these days. Also, if I have a rough night of sleep there's a much better chance that I can take a nap or just close my eyes and rest if I need to. 

There's also this physical freedom for me of not having to be physically present somewhere to run my business. I run an online business So if I have my laptop with me, I don't have to be into one physical location to operate. This ties into the time freedom I talked about four. But in your business, this might not apply. I'm sure for many of you it will. If you're someone who does have to be physically present in your business most of the time, it'll be important for you to work intentionally on setting up your business so that you have backup and set things up in a way that allows you to step away from the business and still have it run well. And this can be difficult to do and something that really takes time and effort depending on your situation but definitely worth it. For example, if you're a chiropractor or another kind of medical practitioner, your long-term plan could be to hire an associate doctor or somebody that you know does what you do, to back you up for those times that you want to walk away from the business and take some vacations some time for you. And for chiropractors, that would mean an associate doc or two associate docs so you're not the main provider when it comes to treating patients. This could allow you to set up your business in a way that allows you to step away for longer periods of time, whether that's for fun travel experiences or focusing your effort on a new business or opportunity that you wanna pursue. 

Lastly, today I am going to talk about financial freedoms, and this is a financial podcast so that's pretty fitting, right?  Life is about so much more than money, but I absolutely love how business ownership can take you to a place financially that you never even imagined. It's not typically going to happen overnight, but the sky is the limit with entrepreneurship. In most W2 jobs you're capped at a certain salary range. But you have so much within your control when you own a business.

You can add new revenue streams and manage your money in a way that helps you win financially. In the beginning of my business, I felt like it might take ever to get to six figures. And I really couldn't imagine that happening for quite a few years, but I was able to thankfully reach that within a little over the year mark and was blown away. It opened up my mind to even more of what financial freedom can bring with business ownership. Being able to donate more to charities that I believe in is one of the biggest benefits. The more time that passes while running a business, the more hairy and audacious my goals become and I'm here for it. It brings me to life and opens up a world of possibilities. I challenge you to dream bigger and come up with your own harry, big, audacious, crazy goals in your business and in your life. The bottom line is that the sky is the limit with business ownership versus a J-O-B.

You are the one that calls the shots and makes it happen and I know that there are J-O-Bs out there that are amazing, and you don't necessarily have a cap. You might be able to earn commissions in a position that you're in if you're in sales and you could keep really growing your income and there are amazing careers out there nut many careers have caps on them if you're a W2 and it's quite different than if you own a business.

It's not necessarily going to be easy running a business and it definitely takes more planning and intentionality. It's always easier to plan and budget with a W2 type job where your income is fixed. But with a business it does require more effort when it comes to making things happen and budgeting. Running a business is a lot of trial and error. You might think that you're going to be more profitable in one area of your business but sure more profitable in another. Some years you might reach profit goals and not reach them other years. You might blow your own mind with how profitable you’ve been in one area. There's no doubt that you'll have some financial ups and downs when you're running a business, but it is a hundred percent worth it and there's no limit really to where you can take it. You are in charge of everything and that sounds like freedom to me.

Entrepreneurship takes grit, courage, and perseverance but you've got what it takes. I recognize that this isn't what everyone wants and there's nothing wrong with that.  So many people are happy with their W2 positions and have amazing employers and salaries and that's awesome. I'm rooting for them too. But I'm here to cheer for entrepreneurs like you and to walk alongside you on your path to freedom with your business.

If there's ever a topic that you want covered or questions you want answered email me at support@financiallyadjusted.com I am here for you and I want to hear about your struggles and your wins. I absolutely love meeting entrepreneurs and hearing your dreams and stories. So please reach out to me. I'd love to hear your freedom stories. Or just let me know what your freedom aspirations are with your own business. I'm here for it!! Happy Independence Day everyone!

Disclaimer: This content is for educational and informational purposes only. Please consult with an accounting professional for direct advice based on your specific business situation.