Bring joy to your business.
In my freelance budget, I like to differentiate between critical and non-critical expenses. Critical expenses are necessary to run my business, whereas non-critical expenses fall into the “nice to have” category. If I had to, I could cut them from my budget.
But there are a few non-critical expenses that I would be very sad about cutting — because they make my work so much better or more enjoyable.
Here are my favorite non-critical expenses. And as a bonus: business expenses are a tax write-off!
I live in a house with five people, including three kids. While the kids are at school, my days are filled with client work. My evenings are filled with family responsibilities.
I set aside time for non-client work during the week, such as planning my social media content or sending invoices, but it’s a lot harder to fit in bigger projects that I want to do for my business. I simply don’t have large blocks of time to sit and focus.
To give myself that time, I check myself into a hotel for the weekend. I plan this for a three-day weekend (like when Monday is a federal holiday). This gives me several days of uninterrupted time, which is invaluable for my prodcutivity.
I maximize my time by planning out what I want to accomplish in advance. I’ll also buy food and some snacks to put in the room fridge, to minimize the number of times I need to leave. I even have a portable monitor that I can use with my laptop so I have dual monitors in the hotel room.
For example, during one trip I was determined to get my social media scheduled out for several weeks so I wouldn’t have to think about it. By the time I left my hotel room, I’d scheduled more than 300 posts across my different channels. I’ve also planned workshops or created free resources during my weekends alone.
I’m always overly ambitious with what I want to get done. But I also have a running “hotel list” of things I want to do on my next trip. Ideally, I like to do this once per quarter.