Work – Page 2 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

BENCH MAKES TAX TIME A BREEZE

Look, we’ve all got out strenghts and weaknesses.

Since I’ve been self-employed since 2006 (18 freaking years), I’ve never really been great with the whole taxes thing. All the expense tracking. The forms. Writing off all those tiny bank fees – those all add up!

I used to do everything in Freshbooks, and it was a MESS. Always. So much manual input. Or some months I’d just not clean up my books. I was a wreck.

Three years ago or so I bit the bullet and signed up for Bench. They connect to your bank accounts and do your bookkeeping. They used to shuffle your books over to another company for taxes, but now they process and file your taxes, too.

They also have this messaging feature through their website, too. So you can ask all sorts of questions about books, expenses, and taxes, and it’s CHILL because it’s just CHAT. With REAL PEOPLE.

If needed, you can book a call with them to talk about your books and taxes. It’s all included, and I LOVE IT.

Now… halfway through last year, I “streamlined” my operations and cut a bunch of expenses, so I thought, eh, I can manage my books myself!

Then it was the xmas holiday, and I still needed to process my books from November, and then December was lurking, too! I dreaded even getting started.

So I came crawling back (had great phone conversations with their team), and got re-started.

Here’s the thing – they have a “CATCH UP SERVICE.”

So they got connected back to my bank account, I uploaded some bank statements, and then they got my books settled from June-December.

It wasn’t free, of course, but it was WORTH IT.

Everything was updated, all books current. It was great.

Now, I just reviewed my taxes today, April 2nd, and we’re like, good to go. All done. In years past I’d get to filing my taxes in like, AUGUST or something, cuz I just kept pushing it off. Hell, I didn’t even file my 2019 taxes because of the whole COVID thing. Yeah… tax stuff is my weakness!

If that sounds similar to how you treat tax time, I highly recommend them. Check out Bench (affiliate link) and see if they might be a fit for you.

IMPACT

Had a wonderful conversation with a dear friend today, about life and work. And the big thing that came up was about impact.

That while money and the bank account are usually the biggest factors in our work, sometimes it’s impact that counts for most. And to somehow be in a position to seek opportunities for impact, that’s the dream. The bills are paid, there’s food in the fridge, and that opens up space for impact, and I gotta say, it sure feels nice.

“Establishing trust this year in your name will ensure you have income in 10 years.”
CJ Chilvers

NO GOING BACK

Here’s the terrifying thing about the state of music in 2024 (from The Verge):

“The tech industry’s introduction of MP3 slowly felled major retailers. Behemoth music stores went belly-up in the 2000s: Tower Records, Virgin Megastores, and Sam Goody. FYE bought up the rest. Ads from those retailers vanished, too.”

Like, that happened 20+ years ago and we’re still recovering. All the music knowledge, the time we spent going to those stores, the jobs that were cut and lost… the digitization of music is an atomic bomb that I don’t think we’ve recovered from.

Back when we paid $16 for a CD, yes, music review sites were crucial. And of course, yes, music critics are of course needed, but they’re not valued (as we can see).

There was a time you could write for an online outlet and make a few bucks. There was also a time when you could write for a newspaper and pay the rent.

Ernest Hemingway was paid $1 a word in 1936. That’s more than $21 per word in today’s dollars. The maximum I was ever paid to write for a glossy magazine in print was $2/word, in 2021. No one (and I really mean no one) in media makes $21/word. That compensation just doesn’t exist.

That’s from Defector (above).

When I ran Noisecreep in 2008 we were paying writers $50 a post.

A few years later, I was writing posts for $5 a post.

Now Yahoo for Creators isn’t even paying per post, but they “offer a competitive 50/50 ad revenue share from ad placements in your articles as well as e-commerce benefits like affiliate revenue share.”

CPM display ad placements. On blog posts. It’s 2005 all over again.

Never be afraid to say, “thanks for your time,” and walk away—not as a bargaining chip, but as a source of sanity and professional growth.
Merlin Mann

TRY AND LIVE IT OUT

“We also, by the way, need family, friends, colleagues, customers, clients, everyone around us to help us understand what it is that we do better than anybody else because we can’t really get there by yourself. You can’t do thinkism, you can’t figure your way there, you have to try and live it out.”
Kevin Kelly

Yes, the “1,000 Trust Fans” Kevin Kelly.

I love this part so much:

“We can’t really get there by yourself. You can’t do thinkism, you can’t figure your way there, you have to try and live it out.”

Maybe some folks can figure it out on their own, but holy moly I’m pushing 48 and I’m finally starting to feel like I’m getting close to what it is I really seek to do.

And how did I get there? Like Kevin Kelly said, “friends, colleagues, customers, clients…”

“Although I live in a huge house, I keep a hotel room and go there at about 6:30 in the morning. I have a Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, a yellow pad, and pens, and I go to work. I encourage housekeeping not to go in, since I leave at about one in the afternoon and never use the bed.”
Maya Angelou

Via ‘Apples, Baths, and Bestsellers: The Rituals of Creative Minds‘