Getting Around Your Facebook (Business) Page

Facebook pages are the business side of Facebook. If you want to market your business, product, or book this way, the good news is it will be indexed by search engines. Here is how to create your page. Log in to Facebook under Account at the far right and click on Manage Pages. In the blue bar to the right of your picture are five links:

• Get Started First, choose a name for your page keeping in mind how well it will attract search engines. Under your photo is a link to edit your page. This takes you to another menu of options.
  • Basic Information is about your business or product. If you are publisher, write about your company; if you are an author, describe your book.
  • Profile Picture is for your business photo. You can use the same one as your profile or select another one.
  • Marketing provides a list of ways to promote your business or product.
  • Manage Admins allows you to add another administrator to your page.
  • Apps are applications by Facebook or other developers you can add to your Page.
  • Mobile give you ways to manage your Facebook page on your mobile device.
  • Insights permits others comment or "like" your page.
  • Help is filled with topics, FAQs, and a place to ask a specific question.
  
  
• Wall Just like the Wall on your Profile, here is your opportunity to talk about what's going on in your business or what is new with your book.
• Info shows the information you filled in on you basic information page form about your business or product.
• Photos are for new albums related to your business or product.
• Discussions are opportunities to launch new discussion and invite comments from others.

In the left-hand column of your Facebook Page is all of your important information plus pictures of your friends who have indicated they "like" (endorse, recommend) your page. At the bottom is a Share link—another way to broadcast news or opinions.

The middle column is a guide to promoting your page. The right-hand column lets you invite more people to "like" your page.

Wearing My “Manager Hat”

I went into business for myself because I wanted to write and be my own boss. It was a long-time dream; the timing was right; and I was sooo ready. So, I took the plunge, having absolutely no idea what I was doing. That was a mistake. If I had it to do over again, I would know what I was doing before I found myself doing it.

Here are some of things I didn’t know:

• For every dollar that came in I had to put aside a certain percentage of for taxes. My accountant told me the amount could range from 30 to 50 percent, depending on my tax bracket. That meant for every three dollars I earned, I could spend two or possibly only one and a half. Those taxes had to be sent to the IRS every quarter before the fifteenth of the appropriate month.
• I already knew I was supposed to keep track of every expense, but I had no system for doing that. I either needed to create such a system or have my accountant do it. For years, I paid my accountant the extra money to do bookkeeping I could easily have done myself, if I had bothered to learn how.
• There was also, of course, the matter of tracking the time I spent on each client’s job and being sure I charged the correct amount. That meant deciding on an hourly rate, making sure the client knew what it was and agreed to pay it, buying and learning to use a time and billing program, and remembering to send invoices regularly and follow up when they weren’t paid. Every item on that list was its own individual nightmare.
• Then there were contracts, which I had no idea how to negotiate, write, or enforce. Consequently, there were holes in my contracts big enough to drive a jeep through. As for enforcing them — well, that was a joke. I tried Small Claims Court a few times before I found out it was an even bigger joke. (See Small Claims Court Revisited)
  
• Finally, there was the whole matter of determining whether or not I was making a profit and, if so, how much. To this day, I have no idea how to calculate that, so I never have.

The bottom line is this: I “went into business,” if you could call it that, like a kindergartner enrolling in college. I didn’t ask the right questions because I had no idea what questions to ask. I learned every lesson the hard way, often the very hard way. Some lessons I did not learn at all because, once again, I didn’t know there were lessons. Don’t ask me how; but, somehow, I have survived for 20 years. Much as I love what I do, though, managing the business has always been the toughest part for me.

What would I do differently if I could start over? In terms of wearing my manager’s hat, just about everything. The very first thing I would do is sign up for a small business course at the community college or one of the local universities. There are many such courses available, and I should have taken at least one. Learning to manage a one-person business is not like learning quantum physics. It doesn’t have to be the very hard way. It doesn’t have to be a mysterious or frightening. From what I hear, it could actually be challenging, growth promoting, profitable, and fun.

I have a little trouble with the fun part, but it’s possible, I guess.

Biz Basics for Writers

I just found some notes from a presentation I did a while ago for a group of aspiring writers. I shared the stage with my accountant, Jonathan Becker, CPA. The notes, taken in my particular brand of shorthand, are filled with great advice for owners of “creative” small businesses. That definitely includes freelance writers. The suggestions are still relevant, so I’m going to pass them along without embellishment.

• Bill by the hour. Bill for every single hour you put into your business.
• If a client isn’t willing to pay you for what you do, you probably don’t want that client anyway.
• When you raise your rates, don’t grandfather your old clients. If you do, you will begin the resent them.
• There’s a rule in accounting that every three years you should dump the bottom 20 percent of your client list.
• When you figure your hourly rate make it three times your expected or hoped-for income. Add to that 40 percent for what it costs to run the business. Divide that figure by 2,080 hours (working hours in a year), and that is what your hourly rate should be.
• Set up your books. Get help from your accountant if you need it.
• Creative people need to know how to reconcile a checkbook.
• Creative people should have a feel for what’s going on inside your business.
• If you’ve been business for two or three years and are going nowhere, it may be time to look for a job.

How to set up your business entity:

• Sole proprietor (on your own and doing business)
• LLC (Limited Liability Corporation limits your personal and family exposure) Set up your LLC with an attorney, and register with the Missouri Dept. of Revenue.
• Add umbrella protection to your homeowner’s policy.

Income tax:

• Fifty percent of incomes goes to taxes.
  
• Deduct anything that pertains to your business: Internet access, website, magazine subscriptions, supplies, equipment, consultants, accountants, attorneys, and so on.
• Any items deducted reduce taxes by 50 percent.
  
• Work with your accountant on what to deduct.
  
• The IRS does very little auditing at the small business level.

Marketing:

• Get on TV or radio to talk about what you know.
• Follow up on every lead.
• Return phone calls that day.
• Respond to e-mails.
• Identify your market. Network. Join groups.

Basic? Yes? Important to your financial success? Also yes.

It Takes a (Virtual) Team

In my dream of being a freelance writer, I could picture myself conducting interesting interviews, attending stimulating meetings, and sitting alone at my computer for many hours, doing what I love most. That was as far as my dream went. If I ever gave a thought to how I would manage finances, client relationships, or the myriad details of operating a one-person business, I don’t remember those things being part of my fantasy.

I confess that I made the same mistake many creative people make: I believed that if I could earn a living as a writer working for someone else, I could do the same thing working for myself. It’s a flawed concept in that writers and artists and people who bake the best cookies in the world may be masters of our respective crafts, but that is only one-third of the equation.

If I had taken courses in how to run a small business, I might have learned that earlier, but, alas, I did not. I just plunged in and began without having any idea of what I was doing. At first, I was very lucky, landing great corporate clients an earning nice fees. It was a heady experience, proving that I had made the right decision.

It is 20 years later (amazing!), and here is what I have learned, with the help of a dog-eared little book called The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Berger. The E myth is exactly what I believed when I began: if I could do something well, I could run a business doing it. I was, and am, what Berger calls a “technician” — not too glamorous a label. To be a successful businessperson, I also had to be a manager (to run the business) and an entrepreneur (to dream big dreams and grow the business). In other words, every one-woman band really has to be a three-woman band. If I’m not strong in all three roles (and who is?), I must hire people who are. Right. At those times when I was barely scraping by, hiring two other people wasn’t a very realistic idea.

Fortunately, one learns or one perishes. Some years are better than others; some things are more fun to learn than others. I will never like accounting or collecting money. On the other hand, I have grown to love marketing, especially Internet marketing. I have continued to expand the other two sides of my virtual team because I know that, while I’m busy turning out prose, someone has to let the world know I’m here, buy stamps, send out invoices, file the endless reams of paper I generate, and dream those big dreams.

Rethinking the Business Model

I have been in business for close to 20 years, and I must admit that for most of that time I have led with my heart instead of my head. I often give away the company store, so to speak — advice, information, time. All of that equates to money, money I never see because I don’t bill for it.

I trust people. I believe they are sincere and well intentioned. When they ask me what a project will cost I tend to underestimate and over deliver. It’s the perfectionist gene I guess. Everything I do must be the absolute best it can be. I never seem to figure that into my estimates.

I am never prepared for the instances when clients simply don’t pay. In fact, I am blown away when it happens. I have actually taken people to small claims court, only to discover that, even if I win the case, there is no enforcement of the verdict. Sometimes, the client is so illusive that the process server can’t find him. (The next day of course he is seen at Starbucks having a grand old time)

Teaching at the community colleges is not a get-rich-quick scheme, either. They pay $20 an hour — a teaching hour. That does not include preparation, materials above and beyond what the school will copy, gifts or meals for speakers who generously donate their time and talent, custom-made bookmarks, and parties at the end of each session. Money is obviously not the motivation for teaching.

I have friends who are sharp business people — right brained, practical, cautious. I promise myself that I will become more hard nosed and tough. Then, someone calls (who knows a friend or found me on Google or is on my website that very minute), and I cave in, forgetting all my promises. I answer their questions, share my knowledge, and get cauliflower ear from holding the phone. When I hang up I wonder if there is some deep psychological reason beneath my inability to say, “You know, the clock is running” or “This is what I charge for consulting.”

It may be as simple as having a mission, which, in my case, is to help writers write. On the other hand, many successful people have a mission and still manage to charge people for their expertise. Generosity is a lovely trait; being foolish is not. I think it was Einstein who said "If you keep doing what you've always done, you're going to keep getting the same result." (If he didn't say it, he should have.)

I think it's time to do things differently and see what the new result might be.