I think it’s my duty to warn you.
Yesterday, I finished up my commitment to any kind of employment outside my own. Yup, I am now 100% self-employed. I did it. I quit my day job. Took me 10 years to do it, and I did it very gradually. Actually got laid off involuntarily twice during that time. That was God trying to gently push me out of the airplane. And that was me, fingernails digging into the door jam, terrified of letting go. Until now.
I realized I had to make a decision. I was down to working part-time – after the second lay-off I met God halfway and did not take another full-time job. But even after cutting my part-time hours back to the barest minimum, I couldn’t manage my life. Balls were getting dropped in the business. I wasn’t keeping up with housework at home. There was tension in my marriage – my husband is also my business partner, and I was leaving him with the brunt of the business. I felt like I wasn’t there enough for our daughter, who is only 6 (but thankfully is a very easy child.) And I felt like I whined a lot. Not that it was annoying my friends too much – I barely saw my friends anymore! I was scheduling my sleep to make sure I left time for it. Something had to happen. Either I was quitting that job or I was quitting the business.
So I took the final leap. I gave my two weeks’ notice. My last week I worked probably 30 hours for my part-time job, as they loaded me up for one last hurrah. I wasn’t just leaving a job I didn’t want anymore – I was leaving a career I held for 32 years, since I was barely 15 years old. It seemed like it should have been a bigger deal that it was, but I was just so tired. I just wanted it to be over so I could get on with my life as an entrepreneur, already.
I’m not sure how I got through this last week. My healthy eating plan went out the window – too tired to do anything other than order take-out, and I needed sugar to get through the day. I kept up with my gym schedule except for that last day. I didn’t think I could get through my final eight hours at work unless I caught up on some sleep. When it was finally over, I took my family out of town for a mini-vacation. I had enough credit card rewards points to book a free night in a hotel, so we luxuriated at one of the better Comfort Inns and went out for a nice dinner of gourmet pizza and several craft beers.
As we nestled into the king-sized bed I drifted off to sleep – only to wake up some thirty minutes later, heart racing. Sweating. I felt this only a few times before in my life. The last time was in 2012, after I’d been “laid off” from the full-time job I’d held for nearly 11 years. Eyes wide open, my heartbeat in my ears, breathing quick and shallow. A panic attack.
I forgot to pack my melatonin. Shit. I’ve had anxiety insomnia a couple times this year, and that always did the trick. Not sure if it would help a full-blown attack, though.
The weirdest thing is, I didn’t feel like I was panicking. I knew intellectually that leaving that job was the right decision. I knew that if I ever really wanted to go back to my old career, I could, because I knew enough people. I knew that if the business could not support both my husband and I after all, that I could get a job to get by. And I knew that our business has more than just a fighting chance of succeeding. The odds are actually in our favor. But I couldn’t tell any of that to my pounding heart. Something deep inside my psyche wasn’t buying it. And that’s what they don’t tell you about in those motivational business books!
I took deep breaths. I prayed. I counted to 100, at least 3 times. I unplugged the hotel fridge. I shut off the heating unit. Total silence helped, but still no sleep. I was sweaty so I got up and took a shower. That seemed to do the trick. I snuggled back down into the sheets and pillows and started counting to 100. Mercifully, I didn’t finish.
I’m a little tired today, but other than that, there are no lasting side effects. A little online research told me things like sugar, caffeine, alcohol and lack of exercise are all bad for panic attacks. My coping mechanisms I chose to get through the week likely brought this on. So tomorrow, it’s back on the diet, back to the gym, ease up on the Starbucks (I’m actually at Starbucks, writing this blog post!)
This week starts my new life as a 100% self-employed real estate entrepreneur. This blog is about to get verrry interesting.
OK, so now I’m self-employed. Now what?
Steve and I didn’t start a business on purpose. We bought an apartment building in 2008 when we were both gainfully employed full-time, and it snowballed from there. When we started having problems with our gainful full-time employment we realized rentals alone were not going to provide us with a living wage, so we expanded. Now we flip houses, wholesale to other investors, and renovate other investors’ properties. Steve has people lining up who want to pay him to teach them everything he knows about real estate investing, so we will likely be adding consulting to our lines of business. This prompted me to schedule an emergency meeting with our accountant on Friday.
I’ve been trying to meet with an attorney since the first of the year to discuss our company structure. Right now we have 9 LLCs, 7 of which own property. We met with a SCORE mentor who pointed us in the direction of an attorney friend, and we met with that attorney. I thought it was a good meeting, but he never called us again. After several attempts to contact him, I took the hint.
There are a few other avenues I can explore, one of which is the local Small Business Development Corporation. They operate out of Wilkes University, and I plan to give them a call or even pay them a visit this week.
Steve and I need a better record keeping solution, and the accountant we’ve worked with for years is also a Quickbooks Pro Advisor. She can set up Quickbooks desktop customized for what our business needs for record keeping, so all I have to do is the data entry. So I thought I should pay her a visit. I was lucky to get an appointment during tax time!
She’ll set it up for us the week of April 17th, when that madness is over. And she wants us to set up two of our LLCs as S-corporations, effective June 1. An S-corp is an entity that allows a small business many of the same benefits as a C-Corporation. We’ll save the self-employment tax by paying ourselves a salary right out of our S-Corp with payroll taxes sent to the various taxing authorities.
Of course, this means I have to sit down and figure out what those salaries should be. I can’t just take a lump sum out of the company account every month and hope to settle up with the tax man later. Those days are over – there’s too much money coming in (and going right back out again) for that. The monthly payroll draw will be larger than it is now, because taxes will have to come out of it immediately. There has to be enough left in the check for our family to comfortably live in.
And if the business doesn’t make enough money to cut us that kind of salary? It’s going to have to expand to fit, because I ain’t gettin’ a job!
Come to think of it, maybe a panic attack was in order!
More next week. Let the adventure begin!