Are you a freelancer or a business owner?

Turns out, you can be both.

Today I want to talk about why I care so much about business education for freelancers. This is a longer one, but I hope you’ll bear with me.

I’m in the midst of a financial mindset training program (so much goodness coming your way about this soon) and we were talking a few months ago about how to make more money. Kate Northrup, the coach who’s leading the program (check out her books Do Less and Money: A Love Story) offered up FOUR ways that people typically earn money:

Having a job

You work for someone else! You trade dollars for hours. You show up, do work, then (hopefully) step away. You do not have to deal with all the tricky bits of working for yourself, like taxes and business strategy. But you also may not have agency over your workflow, tasks and schedule.

Becoming self-employed

You don’t have a job, you own a job. You’re a freelancer, or a contractor. You work for other people but on your terms. You have a lot more agency than you would if you worked for someone else, but you’re also beholden to those pesky employment taxes (which are the highest on this list at 22–25%). You know you’re in this category if revenue stops coming in when you stop working.

Running a business

You own a system. You typically have some people working for you. You are not indispensable. In fact, if you are running a business, you are trying to make yourself dispensable! You can step away and things keep moving. Money keeps coming in. You don’t have to pay those high taxes, but you also have to deal with more business management versus doing the work yourself. The other big difference here is that all the money you earn is not yours. You’ll need to implement profit margins so you can make sure to pay your people on time.

Investing

Your money works for you!

(This model comes from Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad.)

I’ve been thinking about these distinctions a lot lately as I figure out how to market my new coaching membership program, which starts this month. Based on this paradigm, freelancers are not business owners…