30-Day Economic Stability Challenge: Financial planning 101

Often, people go into self-employment because they love doing what they do, says Sherrill St. Germain, MBA, CFP®, is founder and principal of New Means Financial Planning, a Hollis, NH-based, fee-only financial planning firm. She provides financial advice on an hourly, consulting basis.

"The thing is, the skills required to be a good writer or a good financial planner are often different than the ones required to run a viable business. Plus, they compete for your time and mindshare."

So how do you put on your business cap if you've never had one? St. Germain, who especially enjoys working with career changers to develop financial plans that enable them to transition to their dream job and the life that goes with it, answers some of finance 101 questions below.

If you haven't done all of them, don't panic. The point of this challenge is to learn and start applying the principles now.

Heather: How is managing finances different for a newly self-employed person than it is for people with full-time jobs?

Sherrill: Ultimately, it’s about taking responsibility for managing things previously managed, if not actually paid for, by your employer:

• Changes in the business’ ability to make money;
• Income tax withholding;
• Retirement savings;
• Health insurance; and
• other insurances, etc.

Further increasing the challenge, this usually has to be done in an environment with fewer economies of scale. So if, by self-employed, we are mostly talking about solo or very small business, that self-employed person will not be as likely to get a good a price as is offered to those buying in quantity, whether the item being purchased is insurance, widgets to be used in a product, or marketing materials.

The plus side: The self-employed have increased control over their financial destinies. In particular, as a full-time employee, you can be laid off at any time, resulting in income going from nice predictable stream to $0 almost overnight. As a self-employed (if you’re doing it right and not relying too much on any one customer), the loss of a single account hurts but you don’t go immediately to $0. Also, working harder/smarter has the potential to have a direct, fairly immediate impact on income, whereas a full-time employee may have to wait until who-knows-when to get a much-deserved raise.

What are the biggest challenges people face, and what should people do to address them before they become a problem?

It all comes down to cash flow, and I think I may have addressed how those challenges arise (probably ad nauseum!) elsewhere.

As far as what to do about it, the answer is to do cash flow projections on a frequent enough basis to catch a shortfall before it starts to cause ripple effects, such as bounced checks that result in angry suppliers no longer willing to provide widgets required for you to deliver product which results in angry customers or maybe former customers. This might be monthly, weekly, or even daily, depending on the kind of business and the size of the cash cushion.

Don’t like keeping a constant eye on the financials? Better have a bigger cushion.

What are the most common financial mistakes made by newly self-employed people?

Not doing nearly enough math to determine whether their plan will generate enough money in the time frame they need it to, in order to support themselves without a lot of angst, financial and otherwise. In my experience, people often want to shift to self-employment so bad, they avoid running the numbers (or they are overly optimistic) so as not to find out things aren’t as rosy as expected and be faced with a difficult decision.

My take: However painful it might be to delay a shift to self-employment to allow for the numbers to work, it’s always less painful than making the leap and finding out later, once thousands of dollars poorer and much more discouraged, that it won’t work. Here are some common gotchas:

• Making the shift to self-employment without enough cash to get through the lean beginning period, which can last 3 years or more.
• Not knowing how much income from the business would be enough, because you don’t know what you spend now or how it will change after becoming self-employed.
• Not keeping business and personal finances separate.
• Not keeping enough of a cash cushion in your business account
• Confusing sales (money you are paid by a client) with net income (the amount that you actually make AFTER you pay all the costs of doing business). For example, if you have a $15,000 contract but it costs you $12,000 to deliver on that contract, you only end up with $3000 as income. From that, you’ll need to pay a portion in taxes. The rest is yours to do what you like with: take as salary, reinvest in the business, whatever. But don’t plan on $15,000!
• Forgetting to set aside money for income taxes that will be due on any money you get paid, and getting an unpleasant surprise the following April.
• Not planning for the employer’s portion of payroll tax, a.k.a. the self-employment tax.
• Forgetting to save for retirement – No matter how perfect a fit your work, you will someday want or need to retire.
• Not getting professional liability, disability, or life insurance (or – God forbid – health insurance) if your family situation calls for it.
  

What advice do you give to freelancers about managing cashflow? What kind of system do you recommend?

Try to mimic the model of people with full-time jobs. That is, treat the business as a completely separate financial entity. This includes setting up a separate business checking account with enough cushion to allow for expenses to get paid during down, as well as up, periods. This might be something like $3000 – 5000 or more (depending on how big your biggest expenses are and how reliably and frequently new cash flows in.)

I also like the idea of paying yourself a salary, e.g. setting up an auto-transfer of a certain amount of cash each month (or every 2 weeks) to your personal account for use in paying the mortgage, etc. It might not be possible to do this out of the gate, but it’s a great goal, as well as a strategy for insulating your personal finances from fluctuations in the business.

In this credit crunch, do you recommend people use credit cards? Why?
I’m a big proponent of “pay it off in full every month” credit card use for both business and personal, because I so rarely see an interest rate that’s reasonable and that sticks around for long enough. In a pinch, if someone can make a clear business case for using a credit card for an expense (i.e. “I’ve done the math, and it’s going to cost me more NOT to buy this big piece of equipment than it will to pay for it + interest on the credit card debt.”), then it might make sense.

How can self-employed people make reasonable budgets for themselves? What do they need to include?

There are two ways to consider this:

Personal
If you mean personal budgets, I’d recommend they start with an inventory of what they’re currently spending, either by reviewing Quicken data or using my Career Changer’s Cash Flow Worksheet (in Excel). The worksheet has columns for before, during, and after calculations across typical spending categories, including the ones that people often forget because they don’t happen on a predictable monthly schedule, e.g. real estate taxes, vacation, etc. I’d also recommend they include a figure, maybe 5 – 10%, for “unexpected” or “one-time” expenses. Turns out these are never really “one-time” – they’re just different from year to year.

Next, they need to ask the question: “Can I reasonable expect to cover these expenses after a shift to self-employment?” (Again, not forgetting taxes and saving.) If the answer is no, then they need to take a pass through the list of expenses and decide what things they can/want to cut out in favor of opting for self-employment. Best resource for this: Your Money or Your Life, a book that helps readers sort out what’s worth paying for and what isn’t, in alignment with their values and short- and long-term goals.

Professional
The goal for a self-employed person, once the business is established, is to have a budget that is a solid, say, 10% below the average monthly income (after taxes and savings) that can reliably predicted on an ongoing basis. So for example, say you are confident the business will do well enough for you to pay yourself $4000, $1000, $3000, $7000, $1000, $2000 in the first 6 months of the year, for an average monthly income of $3000. A wise self-employed would plan to spend no more that $2700 per month. Then if things go better than expected and there’s a surplus, great problem to have: Buy those things on your “maybe” list, or further beef up your cash reserve. If they don’t go as well, you’re better positioned to survive.

Prior to getting established, you will have to cover expenses with money from other sources besides your self-employed income, whether that’s a spouse’s paycheck, savings, part-time work, or some combination. It’s important to do the math to determine how much will be needed to fill the gap and identifying where it will come from (savings, loan, etc.) before making the leap to self-employment, while you still have a chance to save more to cover shortfalls.

Anything I didn't ask that you want to add?

The number one biggest stumbling block I see with self-employeds is accepting the fact that you’re not just a writer, financial planner, marketing consultant, social worker, whatever, but that you’re running a business and need to put on your business owner hat on a regular basis. Even when you have plenty of business. This means planning time to think about things like:

• Business planning – How will I structure my business to make money? How will I monitor and, if necessary, adjust that plan on an ongoing basis before things go awry financially?
• Marketing – How will I attract enough clients to make that plan work?
• Sales – What process will I follow to ensure that those who are interested and a good fit end up deciding to go with me?
• Operations – How will I deliver on commitments made, and do it efficiently and accurately enough even when things get crazy busy?
• Finance – How do I make sure I have enough breathing room so that, if cash comes in more slowly or goes out more quickly than anticipate, I won’t suddenly be out of business?
  

…and all the rest of those things that larger businesses know they have to consider to be sustainable.

Yes, they can be done on a much smaller and more informal scale, but ignoring any of them is likely to result in financial trouble eventually.

Photo by borman818.

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Get Yourself Connected

How's your networking?

That's the question posed by UpMo, a marketing coaching program that helps you set and track marketing goals, including marketing. They have a great free networking self-test to get you thinking about all the forms of marketing and how involved you are in your network. (If you must procrastinate, this is a great way to do it.)

A few tips I learned from taking the test myself:

Don't just meet people. Help them.
There's a difference between knowing a lot of people and having colleagues who respect your work so much they'll recommend you to editors. A great way to gain their respect--ethically--is to be of service to them. Send along stories that may interest them, mention markets and editors that might be right for their idea and generally offer to help.

This is common courtesy and something I notice many freelancers do intuitively. But this remains a good opportunity. Are you doing all you can to help your fellow freelancer?

Staying abreast of the industry counts as networking.
To stay nimble in today's scary market, you've got to be able to bob and weave around ailing markets and towards ones that are thriving. To do this, read up on changes in your coverage area. How's health doing? What about business? Or shelter pubs? And how do you get most of this info? Chances are, you'll find it by sharing experiences with other writers.

Join writers groups, participate in email boards and as your favorite writers to lunch or coffee.

Diversify, diversify, diversify.
Just as you should strive to have lots of different clients in order to weather market changes more easily, you should have lots of different types of people in your network:

• People who are at the same level as yourself for commiseration;
• People who are where you want to be in 5, 10, or 15 years;
• Editors;
• Publishers, etc.

The list goes on. The point is to stretch outside your comfort zone. Take a look at the industry folks you talk to regularly. If none of them intimidate you, you've got some work to do on your network.

The bottom line

Just like with any marketing effort, you should have a plan.

How many times a month will you strive to meet with editors? How many times a month do you meet with other writers? How often do you talk to former colleagues or editors for whom you haven't yet worked?

Strive to do some networking every month.

As I've written before, I rely heavily on my freelance network. I started a freelancers' group on LinkedIn. I belong to two writing groups. I have an action buddy to encourage me to take scary steps in my business.

Stumped on how to find fellow freelancers? Our friend Jenny Cromie has a great post on The Golden Pencil laying out just that.

When I looked at where my income came from last year, I found that nearly all of my new clients came from referrals from those in my networks. It's a great feeling to be attached to so many people, especially when you work most of the day in solitude. And for those connections to be profitable is even more wonderful.

How do you network? Where do you want to expand your network?

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Creating a marketing plan that works

You know I'm a big fan of business plans. And I have my own methods of marketing. But I'm also completely in favor of getting more information.

In that vein, I wanted to alert you to an upcoming free marketing tele-seminar being put on by Karyn Greenstreet, a self-declared self-employment expert and blogger at one of my new favorite blogs, The Self-Employment Blog.

The details:

90-Minute Marketing Plans That Get Results
1p.m.-2 p.m. EST
Feb. 5, 2009
To register: http://www.passionforbusiness.com/calendar.htm

Maybe we'll both learn something from it and check back in here after.

Photo by James Sarmiento.

30-Day Biz Planning Challenge: Forget the Plan, Not the Planning

At this point, we're getting to the end of our challenge. You've seen how I do business plans and how others do business plans. You've seen every module (practically) you can include in a plan. And one theme comes up over and over again: Don't just write it and forget it. Business planning is an ongoing thing, a living organism that gets bigger and better when you focus on it. Today, guest blogger Erik Sherman, who taught me to do my first business plan and who is offering a new class on business planning in January, explains why making business planning a practice rather than a product is essential.

In the business planning for writers class I sometimes teach, I've often been asked about writing a business plan. "Don't bother," I say.

That probably sounds strange, but it actually isn't. Over the years, I've found that most companies and people write business plans for one of three reasons:

• They think they're "supposed" to.


• They want to get someone to give them money.


• They're taking a class on business planning.

I've worked on my share of business plans, and they can be a good exercise. At some point you need to think about what it is that you want your business to do, how you plan to market it, who your market is, whether you can realistically make enough money to stay afloat, and what the potential for the venture is.

But the problem with the way most people undertake business planning is that it becomes nothing more than a formal activity for a period of time. The result, a paper document, gets shoved into a metaphorical (or sometimes real) desk drawer to sit. Then the plan authors go off, start trying to make a go of it, and forget all about that plan they devised.

That is a largely useless expenditure of time and energy because the planning has now stopped. According to experts--and my own experience in a number of areas supports this--planning should generally represent a good 80 percent of a project. You put all that time into planning because you want to maximize your chances of achieving what you set out to do in the time you allotted. You start with anticipating as much as you can, and then as things unfold, you continue to refer to the plan, modifying it as circumstances change and periodically seeing if you are still on track and, if not, whether you can get back on.

But if the plan has become a fossil in a drawer, you quickly lose any benefit from it that you got. What if one customer segment turns out to be the best fit for what you want to accomplish? It might be that unexpected expenses will increase the amount of money you need to make to be
self-sufficient. A sideline offering might overtake what you thought would be your main line of business.

It is easy to get lost in the daily process of running a business. Without keeping an eye on what you want to achieve and the plans you put into place, you can easily head off in a wrong direction. This is akin to driving without a map in an area that is unfamiliar to you. Getting caught up in the specifics of where you are doesn't tell you if you're getting closer to the ultimate destination.

When I teach planning, students do start with some exercises that help establish where they want to go. But most of the class focuses on how to make planning work in operating the business. That includes measuring success, pinpointing weaknesses, and otherwise working smarter, not harder.

I'm not saying never write a business plan. But make sure you know why you're doing it. If you're not setting a framework to help you make better decisions and to keep the business headed the way you wanted in the first place, then you're keeping the drudgery and losing most of the benefit.

30-Day Biz Planning Challenge: 2009 Modules

This is the third in a series of modules you can choose from to start making a business plan as you go. The first post laid out modules for your values and mission. The second laid out modules for assessing 2008. And now for the fun part: Planning and strategizing for 2009. Why do I say this is fun? As Emily Dickinson has said, "I dwell in possibility."

Planning for the coming year lays out all your possible paths and ways for you to get there. To get to the solutions, first you have to figure out your needs. That's what today's modules are about.

Remember: You can start anywhere. I've suggested an order, but please don't let it stop you. Pick one, do it, and go back to work.

Capital Spending 2009
Had your computer for five years already? Is your printer making a weird sound? Planning a move? Need a new desk, chair, laptop bag, digital recorder, memory or software? Make a list and spend a few minutes tooling around Amazon or other sites to get a rough average of expenses.

Make sure to include personal spending, because your business will have to support your personal life, as well.

Check on Your Emergency Fund
Mine has about $200 in it right now. For real. My goal is much higher. In this module, come up with a range you want to have in savings by the end of the year.

Estimate Taxes
Plan to set aside between a fifth and half of your income for taxes, depending on your tax bracket. Really. To find out your tax bracket, you can ask your accountant or check the IRS's Web site for self-employment tax information. I know this makes you want to hide under your bed, but including in your plan is essential to keep you out of crisis later. It's just a number. It really can't hurt you.

Income needs for 2009
Carry forward your current cost of living. Then, add in:

• Capital costs you've come up with above;
• Your savings goals;
• Your tax needs;
• Any scheduled increases in expenses, like health premium increases.

Now tally it all up. That's your need every month. Again, this is just another number, and if you don't make it, it really won't kill you. I can attest to this personally. I didn't hit my income goal for 2008, but having a goal got me a lot closer than I would have been otherwise.

Hourly rate
Take that number you came up with above and, if it's monthly, divide it by four weeks, then by about 20. Twenty is about the number of hours you can expect to spend on assigned work a month--at a maximum. Some freelancers spend as little as 15 percent of their time on income work. The rest goes to marketing, admin and bill collection. Really.

Does this all sound daunting? Of course it does. This is the scariest part of every business plan and the part that keeps people from doing any of the rest of it. If you don't have the stomach for it today, then hold off. Get a friend to do it with you, or at least sit with you while you try one of the modules.

For more help with this resistance, consider a post I did last year on business planning resistance: Righting the Resistance.

30-Day Biz Planning Challenge: How Katrina Does It

Day 8's goal: Learn from others.

There are as many ways to do business plans as there are creative professionals. But you wouldn't know that looking at the business planning section of your local library. So in this challenge, I've enlisted some friends and colleagues to describe the way they found their business plans and what works for them. I'm hoping one of them will inspire you.

The first comes from Katrina Ramser, who divides her time between teaching swimming to kids and adults, writing about automotive, outdoors, swimming and personal finance topics for magazines and Web sites, and writing her own blog, SquidKid. How does she keep it all straight and keep herself motivated? It turns out it came to her while on walks and while talking on the phone.

I've written formal business plans using software and I've written informal ones on napkins. I've found the plan that reads as personal as a journal entry or a letter to yourself yields the best results. You want to feel the lifeline behind your goals, or there's just no heart there to get things done.

I stumbled upon the creation of my business plan by accident. Information tripped out of my head at unreliable, or what I know now as organic, moments, such as suddenly realizing in the middle of a phone call I really wanted to accomplish X; or that I should spend more time doing Y while taking a walk.

What started out as a simple Word document with a scattering of unorganized, lonely sentences became, over time, the bones for all my now-overflowing yearly business plans.

Without my willing to toss away ideas on how a business plan should be, I wouldn't be able to give you the following solid direction:

Begin by asking yourself what the top items on your goal radar will be for the year. It could be anything, from launching a blog to bringing in 4 new clients to getting out of debt -- stuff that is first and foremost on your mind.

Bullet point them.

Now move onto more specific categories, such as Finances, Career, and Personal.

Under Finances, for example, I might have my income goal, broken down my types of services or clients and just what I expect to make from each of them. I strive to get real about locating each dollar. Here I'll also place a reminder to get my credit score or deposit $1,000 in an online account for a vacation.

What really keeps you honest and alive is following up each month.
Below these categories, leave room for the 12 months, and type in your successes. In April, for example, I accomplished doing my own taxes, securing a new client, and 400 hits on my blog.

No goal is too modest. We have a tendency as we get older to be more critical of ourselves, and that's where the business plan motivation gets lost. Record, record, record.

Here's another way to break down your doings:

Halfway through the year and right after June's success, insert the following "check in" exercises in your plan:

• Do a Reality Check. Wake up call statements;
• a Give Yourself Some Credit. Pat-on-the-back tidbits; and
• What's Really on Your Goal Radar. What you think you care most about in this 6-month reflection.

Bullet point all realizations. And at the end of the year, I also follow up with bulleting My Top Highlights; Shortcomings; and Top Items on Radar for the next year.

Your business plan is an on-going conversation you are concocting with the best parts of your selves.

Our Next Challenge: Writing a Business Plan

It's December, and that means, for me, that it's time to update my business plan.

Don't have one? You're not alone. So often, the conversations I have with other writers include questions like, "How much should I charge for this?" or "Where should I pitch that?" These are questions that a business plan can answer, and I look to my plan to tell me how much to charge, where to direct my marketing and how I want to spend my time.

But it wasn't always this way. When I started freelancing, I was a bit panicky. Sure, I'm always a little panicky, and starting your own business will make anyone even more so. I was lucky that I stumbled across Erik Sherman's Planning Your Writing Business Class. I forked over the $149 and answered questions--and even though I hadn't been freelancing for more than a few months, I came out the other side with a plan.

Since then, I've refined it and now I look at my business plan as an opportunity to expand and plan the exciting new directions my business will take next year. Do I really want to expand out into podcasting and video journalism this year, or is that just a passing fancy? Do I want to apply for fellowships? Which ones? What topics do I want to focus on next year? Do I want to go to any conferences?

By the time this 30-day challenge is over, I'll have the answers to all those questions--or at least an educated guess.

I invite you to come along with me, ask questions, propose your own answers and get a rough business plan together by Jan. 1.

So what's stopping you from creating your own business plan? If you have one, what works for you?

30-Day Organizing Challenge: Flow Through Work

Day 22's goal: Create a workflow plan

Every Sunday night I sit at my computer in the quiet of the waning weekend (can you tell I don't have kids?) and fill out my plan for the week.

I started doing this because of a very big problem: I was coming up against deadlines and realized I didn't know what I needed to finish. Or, I'd forget that edits were likely on stories I'd already filed. I'd turn in a story and become resentful when I needed to drop everything to make a few follow-up phone calls.

Now that's crazy. Edits, as any writer knows, are a very important part of the job.

What I realized was that I didn't resent the work. I resented myself for not allowing time for it. When I started this challenge, I got a lot of questions about creating time for marketing, time for invoicing and other administrative work like scanning and shredding or addressing mail, time for the gym, and time for personal things.

This chart is how I make time--and make my priorities.

My method is very basic--a Word document marked with eight columns. For you, it might work better to do it in Excel, in ACT or in your Blackberry's calendar function. The key is that whatever system you will use is the right one for you.

This is my low-tech solution, and these are what the columns include:

Column 1: Client/assignment.

On my form it comes out something like, "Chron-nabe" or "TMG-GINA." Any shorthand that helps me easily identify the project.

Column 2: Final deadline.

Self explanatory. It allows me to include both stories I've filed but for which I have expected edits and those for which I haven't invoiced. Everything stays on there until I send the invoice.

Column 3: This week.

Under this heading, I list what needs to be accomplished this week. For stories I've turned in, I always write, "Poss. edits"--possible edits--to remind me that work is not done. For stories I haven't begun, this usually means researching or contacting sources.

Columns 4-8: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

For each day, I write what I expect to accomplish or what I need to accomplish to stay on-target for my deadline. It also allows me to see that if I have three deadlines, as I do this week, I need to stagger writing them. That way I don't end up frantic and trying to draft three stories in one day.

How Many Rows?

I include a row for each assignment, from inception to invoicing, but also have ongoing tasks that get their own rows--so named because that's what I list as the deadline. It's not that they're not important. It's that they're always due. These include: Querying, Gym, Networking, Admin and Personal.

It reminds me that 1) these are real priorities and need to be scheduled in; and 2) I need to find time to do them every week. This is not optional.

In those "ongoing" rows, I include what days I'll hit the gym or go to yoga, include lunches scheduled with editors, days to scan clips and file old docs, etc.

How It Could Work for You:

Organize your rows.

Start by listing your deadlines by date. On my current list, I have an assignment that was due on Sept. 12 and one due Dec. 16. On the former, I'm waiting for edits, and I use the schedule to remind myself to drop a note to the editor. On the latter, I remind myself to get started this week seeking sources so I'm not slammed as people leave for the holidays.

After the deadline rows, I have the ongoing rows. On those, I remind myself to draft the update to my Web site, write posts to this blog and remind myself that my friend's birthday is on Thursday and need to buy her a present.

Get specific

It's not enough to just say I'm going to query this week in the query row. For me, it helps to list the specific query I'm going to send and the queries I'll follow up on.

The same goes for contacting sources in the deadline rows. I try to write which sources I'm going to call (listed by abbreviation to save space). That takes some of the crisis out of figuring out what to do next when I'm busy.

Make it visible

After finishing the chart, I print two copies. One goes on the bulletin board above my computer monitor, where I can look at it all day long if I choose. The other goes in my planner. It's small enough that it fits just fine.


Do it daily

The real gift of this list is that it saves me time when I make my to-do list for the day. (Not a list person? Sorry. This is the only way I can ever hope to get anything done.) When I fill out my to-do list for the following day--I write mine in the evening so I don't have to think about it when I get up in the morning--I transfer what I haven't accomplished today along with what my chart tells me I need to do. That way, I have a fighting chance to stay prompt with all my work and out of chaos and drama.

This, my friends, is the real source of much of my work serenity. Include everything, schedule it, and try your best to stick to it.

What works for you to keep yourself on-track in work and life?

Serenity Tip: Recovering from Overwhelm

It's Friday. Are you more relaxed, looking forward to the weekend? Or maybe you feel your throat closing ever so slightly as you stare down a long list of things to do, and recognize several as things you didn't get to yesterday, the day before or the day before that. And don't forget that deadline coming up today and early next week.

Welcome to overwhelm.

A friend of mine called me last night with the following symptoms:

* Obsessive worry about confrontations and projects he'll have to handle next month.
* Regret that he didn't get to some projects earlier this week and that they were building up.
* Sadness and shame around some stuff in his personal life.
* A general sense that it was impossible to catch up, that there was too much to do and it all needed to be done right now.

Sould familiar?

Yeah, me too.

I so know this feeling. I'm the queen of overwhelm, with a habit of being very dramatic about it. And since I also work hard at being productive and professional, I've also come up with some ways of coping with it. Here are my favorites:

* Focus on these 24 hours: That project due in a month? That confrontation you're dreading? If it's not happening today, shelve it. I don't know about you, but I often use worry as a replacement for planning, so I end up working myself into a tizzy because I think it's somehow protecting me from that thing I'm dreading doing next week or tomorrow. The truth is all it does is steal precious energy I need for today's looming deadlines and the hard work in front of me right now. Don't do it to yourself. Just focus on today.

* Trust the future: If you have a spiritual practice and believe in some kind of Higher Power, now's the time to focus on inviting that power into your life. I know it sounds hokey and/or frighteningly religious if you're not, but bear with me. The point is this: You don't need to worry about how you'll handle projects in the future. You can trust that the Higher Power of your choosing/tradition/understanding will help you make the right decisions when the time comes. It's not all in your hands and never was. Relaaaax.

* Get clear: Remember that worry-as-a-replacement-for-planning? Now that you've let go of the biggest weight of overwhelm, you can focus on just those things on your to-do list that are important today. These can be personal deadlines, client deadlines or anything else. Really take a look at your to-do list today and set some realistic priorities. You may find that you don't have all that much that absolutely positively has to be done today. Weed out the things you're doing out of pride instead of necessity and focus your considerable energy and skill towards those things that are helpful to your clients.

Do these tips work for you? What are the other things that overwhelm you in your business?