Biz has slowed to a bit of a crawl, so you’re looking around for something to do. No, it’s not time to update your Facebook status, it’s not time to play Mafia Wars or Farmtown, or spend the rest of the day Tweeting. And no, now is not the time for housecleaning, watching TV, or anything else unproductive. TV is for lunchtime and a short break here and there, and then it’s back to work.

Now is the time to do two things. I assume you’re already hard at work networking, because clients don’t generally fall out of the sky. So networking doesn’t count.

Now is the time to catch up on your paperwork and to get some learning under your belt.

Catching Up on Paperwork

I don’t know about you, but since I work at home, even though I have a space dedicated to my work (the corner of my bedroom and other assorted areas), papers tend to accumulate throughout the house. At least once a week, I like to gather these papers and put them where they belong in a stack of inboxes – one for each purpose – household, business, etc. Now that you’re between deadlines, start working your way through the inboxes. Pay bills, file papers (you ARE organized, right?), throw away junk mail. Clean out the inbox. Work your way through the next inbox, and so on. If this is not your cup of tea, find someone who is really organized and will do your paperwork for you. It’s important. It’s required for taxes. It’s required for your sanity. Unless you want to spend a half an hour looking for a manual to your printer while you’re on deadline and the thing just died because you couldn’t find 30 seconds to file the manual! If you’re really between deadlines, assess whether your organization is adequate and make necessary changes. Buy a book on it if you have to.

You Don’t Know Everything About Your Biz

Over the last couple of years or so, I’ve become unhappy with the level of my Photoshop skills (among other skills), so I got Visual Quickstart book on Photoshop CS3. As I’ve worked my way though it, I can’t believe the things I’ve learned! Not only have I become faster at using Photoshop, but it expanded my design possibilities as I learned more about what the program could do.

In our biz, you have to be in constant learning mode or you won’t survive. Our software and hardware is constantly changing. If you are a web developer, your programming and coding languages are constantly changing. Browsers are constantly changing. Search engine marketing is always changing. Social networking is always changing. If you are a graphic designer, you need to expand your skillset. Don’t know enough about marketing? Do you know what the latest equipment your printer is using? You should. If you do web and graphic design, you have plenty to keep you busy.

Time for Some Classes – Offline and Online

Look at your local community college’s latest schedule for the Fall or Spring. Can you swing a campus class a couple of times a week?

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Check out some online classes – I’m a fan of International Webmasters Association’s eClasses. They have four web certifications to choose from. Even if you choose not to go for the certification, they have many, many classes to choose from anyway. For $49 a year for membership, you get $100 off every class you can afford to take for the next year (the discount puts your price between $80 and $140 for a 6-8 week class).

Try the courses at Lynda.com. A $25 a month membership opens a world of courses to you.

For Adobe users, try Kelby Training. An annual subscription is $199, and a monthly subscription is $24.95.

If you love Photoshop, consider becoming a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) for $99 a year. On top of all the discounts you get, you also receive a subscription to Photoshop User magazine, and you have access to hundreds and hundreds of member-access-only tutorials.

Browse Amazon’s selection of books of different topics on graphic and web design, marketing, advertising, psychology of the consumer, etc., buy some books, and READ. LEARN.

If money is tight (and it probably is), visit your library. There are also thousands of tutorials online.

Read, Read, Read

Read design magazines and books, and especially the annuals, to get an idea of design trends. When you’re out and about running errands or seeing clients, be mindful of what catches your eye, and then look to see why it caught your eye.

What don’t you know abut your business? Learn it!

Summary

Then when business picks up again, your mind will be clear, your desk will be clean, and you will do better work than you ever have before, and make your clients happier than they’ve ever been. Happy clients refer you to other people. Happy clients often keep giving you work. It’s cheaper to get clients this way than any other way.

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We creative types forget that the taxman requires some bean-counting on our part, and they want their cut. If you’ve been an employee up until now, or you’re fresh out of design school, or your creative mind is so much in the ether you’ve never given this a thought, it’s time to learn.

IRS

In addition to your 1040 or 1040EZ, if you are a sole proprietor, you’ll need to file a schedule C, where you’ll deduct your business expenses and claim your business income. I know it’s tempting to claim just about everything you do as a business expense, because you live, breathe, and eat your business 24/7, right? No, the IRS doesn’t see it that way. If you take a trip for pleasure and discuss something about your business in a conversation over drinks, you can’t write off the whole trip. If you work in a corner or your bedroom, as I do, you CANNOT claim a portion of your rent or mortgage and utilities as an expense. You have to be working in an area that is totally dedicated to your business, like a room, or a partitioned area. Say your home is 2,000 square feet, and your office is 100 square feet. You get to claim 5% of your mortgage or rent and utilities as an expense. I’ll go into more detail about what you can and can’t deduct in a future article, but you should always talk to your tax preparer about this.

You’ll also file a Schedule SE (Self-Employment), and this can take an unexpected chunk of your money. Approximately 15.3% of your income is taken for social security and Medicare. If you are employed by someone, your employer pays half of that, and you pay the other half. When you are self-employed, you pay the whole 15.3% of your profit, not your income. You get to deduct half of that SE tax on your 1040 from your taxable income – not your total tax. The other half is added to the tax you’ll owe.

State

The state may also takes its cut, depending on where you live. Find out what’s required.

Sales Taxes

“What? I have to collect sales taxes? It’s not like I’m selling widgets!” Yeah, you probably have to collect sales taxes. Again, check with your state to see what you need to do. Here in the state of California, it’s the Board of Equalization, and their collection efforts make the IRS look like a bunch of teddy bears. The way they see it, you have a fiduciary responsibility to collect the sales taxes the state requires you to collect, and to remand those monies to the state at the required time. If you do not, they will happily empty your bank account(s), and they don’t care if it’s going to make your rent or mortgage payment bounce. I recommend collecting those taxes during the year and putting them in an interest-bearing account, such as a money market account, so you can at least make some money off of the state.

“But why would I have to collect sales taxes if I’m just creating a logo?” Because you are creating “tangible personal property,” and that’s taxable in the state of California. Download their audit manual, chapter 11. WARNING: It’s nearly incomprehensible. For some of you designer types who failed math and English, it will be incomprehensible. Get over it. Read it anyway. Call up the BOE and ask lots of questions. This is a business you’re running, folks, and it doesn’t run solely on your creative juices.

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No Shoeboxes – Getting Organized

I do not accept that because you’re one of those artistic types, you just can’t do better than throwing your stuff in a shoebox, which you hand to your tax preparer at the end of the year. I am a graphic designer, web developer, fine artist, and textile artist, and I don’t do this. First of all, your tax preparer is going to charge you more money to prepare your taxes (on top of their hating you slightly). Second, if you aren’t keeping good records and filing things properly, how do you know you’re charging enough for your work or saving enough or spending too much? Third, if you do get audited (that spare bedroom for your office you’re claiming just increased your audit risk), how will you prove your expenses are legit if they’re shoved into an empty drawer in your dresser for the last 5 years?

Get a file cabinet, some hanging folders, and some manila folders (get the pretty colors if it floats your boat – they’re more expensive, though. I like the pretty colors better myself). Set up a filing system for your personal finances and your business finances. I use a single folder for every tax line item.

Do your bookkeeping in Quicken or QuickBooks or hire someone to do it. Then, at tax time, you hand your tax preparer a tax report from your program and copies of any year-end tax papers you receive, like 1099-Misc, and they’ll do the rest.

I’ll go into more detail on these topics in another post…

Have any of you used Safari 4.0? Have you activated the Develop menu? Have you seen the list of user agents you can view a page in, including PC versions? If so, how accurately does the “user agent” reflect what is truly displayed in that agent on a real PC?

Still looking for something that will automatically run the page through the W3C validator.

There is a web inspector, which does some kinda funky stuff and looks like it’s trying to be a validator. However, it doesn’t always give you the line numbers for the errors, and even if it does give the line number, when you view the source code, there are no line numbers there…then again, Firefox doesn’t have line numbers either. OTOH, in FF’s web developer extension, I can validate the code via the W3C interface and show source, which does give me line numbers. I also like that I can validate my CSS and my 508 in FF’s web developer extension, and I’m not seeing that in the Web Inspector – which is kind of confusing, anyway. More digging…nah, I’m becoming disenchanted…web inspector has the form of something cool, but not enough substance, and surprisingly, makes less sense than the W3C output.

Plus, I don’t want to have to mouse all the way up to my menu bar on my 30″ display just so I can see the source code. I like the source link in my browser window, thankyouverymuch. Yeah, I could do the shortcut (option-command-U – I can never remember what the symbols for shift, control and option are, and which is which), but I already have to remember all those shortcuts for Adobe CS3. And it’s getting harder and harder for my fingers to do all these 3+ key shortcuts.

I still love the way FF handles the bookmarks, which lets me view the list in a dropdown menu over the page I’m still looking at, instead of booting me out of my page and into the bookmarks page. Who likes it better that way? No, FF’s way is not as elegant as Safari’s, but elegant doesn’t necessarily mean more user-friendly.

Do love the cinema display of web pages most looked at.

If you’re in business for any amount of time, you’re going to make mistakes. Customers are going to get upset at you, or they’re going to tire of you.

What if they just slip gently into the night? You have no idea why they went away. “Was it something I said? Can we just talk about it?” In this biz, doing one-hit wonder work isn’t unusual. In this economy, maybe their own finances went south and they decided to try to do their business cards or website on their own.

On the other hand…are you brave enough to find out why? And if you are, how do you do it?

I’m thinking a survey…but I want clients to feel comfortable about answering, so something that is hosted privately. SuperSurvey’s Knowledgebase gives some thoughts on customer service surveys.

I’m checking out some places that have online surveys. I wonder how much it will cost?

How about you? Can you look in the mirror of your client’s opinions of you so you can become better? Because you CAN be better. We all can.

I’ll keep you posted…

NEVER discuss color with a client without having both versions of the Pantone Color Bridge in front of you. Maybe you won’t lose the client on top of that, even if you do the right thing and pay to have the whole job reprinted and still on deadline.

Doesn’t matter how long you’ve been doing something – there’s always something else to learn. There’s always something else to add to the ever-growing list of things to learn. For me, it’s learning how to design and create templates for WordPress and ZenCart.

What’s on your list?