When I first started camming and shooting clips, I was in a position where most newbies are — I had no experience in running my own business. I had always been an employee but never the boss. The idea of running your own business is what most people dream of, but when placed in that position it becomes a bit more daunting.
Many words of advice have saved me from making huge mistakes during my career, but the ones that gave me direction were the most helpful. The following advice is what I have deemed “The Golden Rule” of running your own business, not just in this industry, but in any industry. This advice was given to me by Master Cecil of The Woodshed, a dungeon in Orlando, Florida. In this article I will break down what this saying means and how you can put it into action. So, without any further ado, here it is: If you treat it like a job, it will pay you like a job.
Running your own business is giving orders to yourself as the boss and following through as the employee.
Read it one more time. If you treat it like a job, it will pay you like a job. Seems pretty cut and dry, right? But there’s a little more to it. What that statement is telling you is that you aren’t just the boss, you’re also the employee. In this job, you will always be wearing both hats. You will always be making the rules and carrying out the orders. Understanding this is crucial for starting up your company and being successful.
If you think about it, accepting The Golden Rule takes some of the stress off of your shoulders because we’ve all been employees. We all know what’s expected of us when we’re working for someone else. You have a set schedule, you complete the tasks given to you, you deal with customers and you’re always learning how to take on more responsibilities. Running your own business is giving orders to yourself as the boss and following through as the employee. It’s setting a schedule, making a list of tasks that need to be completed, then completing them. The more efficient you are, the more you get done and the more you get done, the more you earn.
Another good thing employee experience gives us is that we’ve all had bad bosses and have seen (or sometimes have been) bad employees. Sometimes learning what not to do can be just as effective if not more effective than learning how to do something the correct way. Always keep those examples in the back of your mind to help you to not become that kind of boss and employee. Be honest with yourself. Listen to yourself when you’re giving orders and actually do them. Take days off. Celebrate successes and keep pushing on after the setbacks.
Let’s take a moment to focus a little bit more on listening to yourself. One of the most important factors of job efficiency is communication. More specifically, how you communicate with yourself and how you listen to yourself. You’ve probably noticed that it’s a lot easier giving advice than taking it. The same can be said for managing yourself. If you know you have something to do and you keep putting it off, that is a weak point in your line of communication between the boss and the employee sides. A good way to fix this is to remind yourself of what’s at stake if you don’t get something done that needs to be done. Procrastination can lead to loss of income, clients and self-employment. If you can’t follow your own rules, you cannot be your own boss.
Anyone can retrain themselves and their habits with self-discipline. You may have just made an audible groan after reading that but trust me, I know what I’m talking about. The technique that was most effective for me when I first started was making my work into a game. If I needed a lot of bookings, I color coded my calendar with green being the color of paid gigs. I played a game where I tried to get the majority of my calendar green and seeing if I could get it even greener the next month. If I need to get work done, I create a to-do list and challenge myself to see how much I can get done in a day and try to out-do myself the next day. These games might sound silly, but it’s all about tricking your mind and making things seem fun until they actually are fun, and you enjoy doing them.
If you use these methods to navigate your business, your raises and bonuses will appear naturally with time in your earnings. The more you stay at it, the more money you’ll make. Because if you treat it like a job, it will pay you like a job.
Goddess Valora is an XBIZ Award-winning content creator who can be followed at Clips4Sale.com/Studio/104604/Goddess-Valora and @GoddessValora on Twitter and Instagram.
