An honest review of my purchasing process of an investment property (as well as my first property) as a single self-employed woman during a pandemic.
Note: I am not a financial or real-estate expert. What shared below is my personal experience, and should not be taken as advice.
In September of 2018, I had a meeting with my friend Beth who is a Real Estate Broker in Toronto, Ontario.
Continue reading “How I bought an investment property in the middle of a pandemic”
How do you manage projects with your clients?
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m a big fan of Notion and have recently moved all of my client projects into Notion so I can keep everything in one space. This is how I organize my own client tasks, as well as all of my business operations. I’ve used a ton of project management methods and tools for client projects, and honestly the best one is the one that is easiest for you and your client to use.
Often times, this ends up being Google Drive for clients who are new because that’s what they are familiar with. I’ve tried many times to train new clients on different systems but they often end up emailing me everything anyway out of frustration with the platform.
My suggestions would be GDrive if they are a new client or solopreneur, but if they are growing quickly and need to wrangle a team, it’s worth organizing the projects early into something like Notion, Basecamp, Asana… so tasks can be assigned accordingly. When you work with larger corporate clients, they often have their own software setup so you may need to adapt to using that. Since this can often mean that client projects can be in different drives and portals, I would suggest having a main dashboard somewhere for yourself to be able to manage your own timelines and pipeline, and give you a birds-eye view of your business at a glance.
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Freelance Friday!!
How do I get clients?!
Along with pricing, this is one of the most common questions that I get asked. Luckily, we have an episode all about it on the Business of Freelancing podcast! Check out how the panel attracts and secures leads, as well as my top 3 ways I have built my client base.
Hint: They all revolve around forging relationships with professionals in complementary industries, as well as being willing and visible to take on work from those a couple steps ahead of you.
Episode Link: https://www.businessoffreelancing.com/podcast/getting-freelancing-leads-101/
Ever heard the term POD when it comes to online stores and wondered what it means?
POD stands for Print on Demand, and it’s a type of dropshipping. It’s often used for creators who sell merch on typical items like tshirts, hats, mugs and reusable bags. Basically, POD allows the shop owner not to have to carry any inventory. The advantage is low overhead, the ability to test the market, and a ‘touchless’ supply chain.
However, without eyes on the full process you can lose a lot of the quality control over the products, as well as customer service.
To mitigate those issues, I would suggest:
— Extensive product testing (make sure to order every variation in samples)
— Extensive manufacturer testing (test different companies — there are MANY!)
— Supply chain/shipping tests (for speed, loss and accuracy)
The bottom line is, to get a well functioning POD store, you need to have eyes on every aspect of production. POD can be a good testing ground for products that you intend on mass producing, and fulfilling internally.
POD has its place, but needs a lot of initial assessment and experimentation to run a high quality POD shop.
Hot Shop Tip!
If you have a Shopify store, and Etsy shop or a Woocomm shop and live in Canada, you’ve got to checkout Chitchats. Cheap reliable shipping, and they are always expanding their service (dropoff points…). chitchats.com
Link: https://chitchats.com/
In season one of The Business of Freelancing, we had the pleasure of speaking to Adam Davidson’s from NPR’s Plane Money about his new book The Passion Economy.
We explore what it means to start and run a business based on your passion and knowledge, as well as look into the ever-changing landscape of entrepreneurship.
Links:
Episode Link: https://www.businessoffreelancing.com/podcast/episode-3-thriving-in-the-passion-economy-with-adam-davidson/
Book link: https://www.amazon.ca/Passion-Economy-Thriving-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0385353529
Do you want to start a business or even a side project, but struggle to come up with ideas?
There’s 3,300+ waiting for you on a site called ideasgrab.com
If you’re looking to hop on an idea and build out your MVP (minimum viable product – the simplest version of your product you can take to market), I highly recommend searching up Doc Williams on YouTube and watch him build out business MVP’s in real time.
Resources:
Have you ever wanted to write a letter to your past self? How about your future self?
There’s a neat website that allows you to write a note to your future self called https://www.futureme.org/
I’m going to do a few for the 1 year mark to checkup on my goals, but could also be a really nice reminder from yourself why you chose the path you did, because it can be hard to see clearly when you’re in the midst of something challenging and feel like giving up.
Also, DM me https://www.instagram.com/margreffell/ your email and I’ll write you a nice note for the future!
What does planning typically look like for you? I’ve been a die hard paper-planner for most of my life.
There’s something about physically filling in all the blocks with different coloured highlighters that gave me immense satisfaction! I’m trying to move everything into digital this year, and I’ve finally found a program that I can get the hang of doing that in. Notion!
Here’s a glimpse into my dashboard, and how I organize it. I will also be accompanied by a wall calendar where I can see the entire year at a glance (hasn’t arrived yet).
Shoutout to (handle at) @mariepoulin for her guidance in how to best optimize Notion.
I’m planning on moving all my project management over as well, so I’ll definitely share any workspaces I put together for that!
