When you own your own business, you don't have the luxury of filling out a quick form and handing it into your boss for reimbursement. You are the boss. And there are a lot more things that all of us entrepreneurs need to take into account when filing taxes for our small business. One of the major things that gets forgotten or not taken advantage of is deductions. Today, the amazing Amy Northard, the Accountant for Creatives, is filling us in about deductions!

There are so many deductions available to small businesses that it’s easy to overlook some of them. While you’re working on your taxes, keep these deductions in mind so you don’t miss out and overpay.

We all know that it can be difficult to work for yourself and that stress and burnout are real concerns. As an entrepreneur, you often have to deal with unusual working hours, time pressures, risk of failure constantly looming, irregular money coming in, and limited social interaction.

The number of new small business owners and entrepreneurs is rising every day, and prioritizing your self care is an integral part of success. Self care is any activity that you do voluntarily which helps you maintain your physical, mental or emotional health. It can help you feel healthy, relaxed and ready to take on your work and responsibilities. Sounds like something we all need, right? But I wonder how many of you are engaging in enough self care to balance out the incredible stress that comes from running your own business.

If you own a business, especially if a portion of your prospecting is done online, you have undoubtedly been asked, “What do you do exactly?”. We’ve struggled with this question ourselves in the past, and used to find ourselves stumbling over our words, feeling like we needed to adjust our elevator pitches based on who we were talking to at the time. It’s easy to become a little frustrated, although you can’t show it, because even though you understand your business and your business model, not everybody else does. Plain and simple, people are not in your head. They don’t read everything you write. And they definitely have no idea what you’ve already said to other people.

When selling a product or service, you are automatically categorized. You might be the local boutique or the big-box name brand, but these are just categories. And once you’re in a category, people compare you to others in the same category. Instead of making yourself or your business what you “think” you are supposed to be like, make it more about YOU.

Today I want to teach you how to use link triggers in ConvertKit to make things crazy easy for already-existing subscribers. Obviously there are 1.493723 billion things you could use a link trigger for so this is just an example.

Let’s say you’re hosting a webinar and you want to send an email to your list telling them about it and asking them to sign up but because they’re already on your list (aka, already given you their email address, name, etc) they could really skip the whole sign up page thing.

Woah! What a way to start the year. January was a total whirlwind. In just a few short weeks we launched a new program, started a podcast and Emylee adopted Penelope! We definitely learned a lot, pivoted and restructured a whole bunch — so read on to see all the strategies we started to implement in January of 2017.

Why we do income reports?

In an effort to be as transparent as possible in our own business we have chosen to make 2017 the year we showcase the good, the bad and the ugly. That means we talk about money on months we bring home the bacon and on months we’d rather not discuss finances. We hope you learn a LOT from these reports. Replicate and tweak our strategies to use in your own business. Get inspired, learn from our mistakes and grow your own online business.

Flashback 2 years. I was completely unhappy. I didn’t like what I was doing with my life. I didn’t enjoy work anymore. I was totally burnt out. I would fall asleep at 8 p.m. and I was still consistently (and constantly) exhausted. I knew I had to do something about it.

Since I could walk I have always been one to take action. If someone scraped their knee on the playground, I would run to get the nearest teacher. If someone was struggling in school, I would offer to help them through their problems. If friends are struggling with a dilemma, I listen and give advice. But the moment the tables are flipped and I am the one who needs help, I am typically floundering.

Owning a small business is challenging on so many levels, but taxes seem to be a big stressor on the minds of most creatives. While talking taxes is never glamorous, getting to know the basics of tax can save you time and money down the road. Here is a small list of the things you should consider when you’re thinking about your taxes.

So, this ain’t your first Trello rodeo.

You have Abagail and Emylee’s boards. Your business is insanely organized. You spend your days doing the things and moving the cards to the right, to the right.

Like Beyonce on opposite day.

Anyway, you spend most of your day in Trello and love it that way. But is that really a good thing?

I mean, I get it.

The app is a-mah-zing for planning and organizing, and that stuff is so important. But you need to focus on the doing, not just the planning and organizing, so maybe you need to find another way to get that stuff done.