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[2023-02-23 09:45:18 PM] : Now that taxes are done my business budget is officially reset for the year :smile: Would love to know: What are the tools, products, courses, etc that you invested in and used for your business last year that you loved?
5 Replies
[2023-02-24 11:00:06 AM] : I do something pretty similar! I followed the Profit First system of setting up multiple accounts, where one is the Tax account and it gets 33% of income, and the Operating Expenses account gets 8%, and then I pay for services/etc out of OpEx. It’s nice to feel like at a high level things are roughly in control, and to be able to know that taxes are always gonna be fine.
[2023-02-24 12:16:28 PM] : Products i love: canva, webflow, fastmail :grin:
[2023-02-24 02:06:14 PM] : I think all (but the perilously desperate) self-employed people I know do some variation on this, but there is such wide variation on the percentages—I think it reflects some underlying outlook. :smile:
I do something quite like Dave, except the accounts are all fictitious now: I started using You Need A Budget for my business in the last year (I'd been using it for my personal personal finances a year or so longer). It's a little duplication on the "real" books that my accountant does, but I find it's nice to have a cash-flow view of the business as well as the accrual accounting. YNAB's a great tool, though it's quite opinionated, so it takes time to adapt to.
[2023-02-24 02:22:00 PM] : I never resonated with Profit First because my problem was never spending too much. It was spending too little.
By saving 50% and then using the tax return as the yearly business budget for the following year, I allowed myself to feel psychologically safe with spending way more than I used to.
[2023-02-24 02:22:43 PM] : Thanks for the product recs, Nicolás Gómez! I'm a big fan of Canva too. Webflow isn't something I need right now, but I'll look into Fastmail
[2023-02-24 03:26:42 PM] : Interesting! I may have that problem too :grin: I felt like a lot of Profit First was aimed at someone who was not me… I didn't feel like I had a hard time keeping track of money in and out, but I did like the system of accounts so I took that part! I should probably revisit the percentages at some point.
[2023-02-25 04:01:35 PM] : Here are some of my business expenses from last year that worked for me:
• Zoom Paid account
• Plausible analytics
• Fastmail (been using it for years)
• Quicken for Mac
• Hover for domain names
• ConvertKit
• SavvyCal
• Obsidian Sync
• Ecamm Live
• Scribd
• Setapp
• Updown.io
• Parity Deals
• Tailwind UI
• Stream Deck
• Canon EF-S 24mm lens
• Apple M1 Mini (bought on eBay for testing my Ruby on Mac script)
• USPS PO Box so I don't have to reveal my home address in my ConvertKit emails
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[2023-02-27 04:33:45 PM] : Great list, monfresh!
[2023-03-20 01:46:50 PM] : Tools I love... (catching up)
• Canva (so many uses: makes my thumbnails look pro)
• Fastmail
• SavvyCal (much preferred to Calendly, etc.)
• Descript (I use it for almost everything)
• SetApp
• O'Reilly Learning subscription (pretty much every tech book all for one price)
• Buffer (it's the only one that can post to Mastodon)
[2023-03-21 12:08:36 PM] : • Canva
• Fastmail
• Notion (for second brain stuff)
• Meet Edgar (social scheduling)
• MailChimp (but may switch to ConvertKit)
• Calendly
• Pressable (WordPress hosting)
• ChatGPT
• Namecheap
• UPS Store for a mail box
• Google voice
• Google forms and Typeform
• Sparktoro for market/customer research
• Stripe's incorporation services (back when I had an app in the app store)
I'd love to see reco's for alternatives to Google Analytics.
[2023-03-21 03:55:49 PM] : I use Plausible.io and am happy with it (though I don't ask for much from my analytics). Fathom (UseFathom.com) is the other one I was looking at. I set up my server so that it looked like the single tiny JavaScript file came from my domain (but really comes from Plausible), so even the Brave browser wouldn't block it.
Plausible Analytics
Plausible Analytics
Plausible is a lightweight and open-source Google Analytics alternative. Your website data is 100% yours and the privacy of your visitors is respected.
[2023-03-21 03:57:29 PM] : Oh, I also use:
• Railway.app for deploying my real and toy applications (replacing Heroku for the most part)
• Netlify for hosting my 11ty-based site
Railway
Railway
Railway is an infrastructure platform where you can provision infrastructure, develop with that infrastructure locally, and then deploy to the cloud.