O luxo de pensar a longo prazo

episode: 15 title: "Ep. 15 - O luxo de pensar a longo prazo, com Sofia Rocha e Silva" pub_date: "Mon, 08 Jul 2024 05:00:00 +0000" original_language: english source_audio: "63903d68.mp3"

Hello, welcome. I'm Rui and this is the The Wack Podcast. In today's episode, I talk to Sofia Rocha e Silva, designer and content creator in the area of financial management for freelancers and small business owners. I know it's a very unexciting topic for most creative professionals, but that's exactly why it's one of the most important. Putting a price on our services, knowing when to pay taxes and how to make good decisions when investing, are challenges that we all face and in this episode we open the doors to those issues. Follow my conversation with Sofia. Hello Sofia, always welcome. Hello Rui, thank you for the invitation. Thank you for being here. Look, I'm going to start by telling you something. I decided, from the moment I met you and decided that I had to invite you to the podcast, it took me essentially three minutes. The fact that you are a designer with an interest in management immediately aroused my interest, and then the list of books you read took that interest to the next level. However, there is a defining moment, which is that you know Michael McElwain's Prophet First. Yes. You are the only human being I've contacted that I know. So, I had to invite Sofia because she is not a mainstream author, and most of the people I know don't have a proper mind, because I'm a photographer. It's also an area where management and interest in management is not common, much less to know such a specific author of such a specific book. So, basically, I thought, okay, I have to get this person to talk to me about Prophet First, because this is super interesting and no one else knows about it. So, from now on, thank you and welcome. Thank you, Rui. In fact, I can say that I got to know this book through a designer as well, who has a program to help other designers and creatives, which is Joana Galvão, who I don't know if you know her. She has a program called Ambitious Creatives, which is a six-month program, and now she has a shorter one. And I got to know the book through the program, because she talks a lot about Mike. It's funny that you're talking about this, it's a recent discovery, it's only from last year. Yes, but the book, despite being 5 or 6 years old, I think, but I think it was last year that he did a book review, and it was talked about a little bit more. But when we talk about a little bit, it's really a little bit, because it's not a whole book, not an author, not a mainstream book. But I was just putting you on the spot, because for me it was one of those moments... Okay, I really have to talk to her. And for me it's a very interesting topic, but let's start from the beginning, which is, you're a graphic designer, you have two podcasts, and you like management. How did that happen? Actually, I think my nature has always been to make plans, the part of planning and organizing, and planning, from the jokes to the school projects, it was always the part I liked the most, more than executing. I think it's more, life took me more to design, instead of going more to that part of management, but that would be my most natural path, my personality. And I think because of that, it always irritated me a little bit, because I've certainly seen it, that creative people don't know how to deal with numbers, they don't know how to manage, it's not in their nature, it doesn't fit, because they only think with the right side of the brain. And that perspective of fitting everything that is creative professions in the same box, it's a bit, it's really reductive, and it's really frustrating, I think, when you want to start developing more of your work, and organize things in a different way. So it took me a while to mix the two things, because I never felt like that person, who only thinks with the right side of the brain, and who is very chaotic in everything that is backstage work. And then, I think I ended up finding a way to... You were talking about podcasts, I think there are channels that work better for me, which is the case of the podcast and the newsletter, although social media also appear there, but I think the formats that work best for me are the podcast and the newsletter, and I end up finding space to develop some projects that I like, because I think that ends up being a bit underestimated in our day-to-day, projects that we really want to do, even smaller things, and we have to give them space, little by little, to be able to develop that part. No doubt, but for that it helps to be planned, because you really have your work as a designer, you have the management of two podcasts, I have one, and I already understand the difficulty and the work it gives you, and then you still create the management content, I understand that this part is a... I imagine it's things that you live and problems that you have, and then you end up solving them and sharing them, but there's still a lot of work behind it. So, you really have to work on your planning to be able to do everything, right? Yes, yes. And the fact that I'm doing a doctorate is not included, and there are just a few things that are missing, having a small child, but I don't feel like I'm capable of doing everything, lately I've been trying to make smarter choices. In the beginning, I remember when I started the podcast, I made some choices that complicated my life a lot, and we're talking a little bit about this, about the structure of the episodes, and there's a series of choices that we make, and at least I tend to add more and more and more, I want to do more things, but I think I'm learning to try to draw the plans a little bit, and to try to understand what is realistic, on social media, for example, I realized that over the four years that I've been creating content, I have things that I really like to reread, and I really like to rediscover, and when we think about Instagram and the speed at which it's going, it's a 2021 post, it's buried there, and no one ever sees it again, so I've also tried to take advantage of things I've written in the past, and re-edit, and rethink, instead of always trying to reinvent the wheel, so it happens a lot, I think that as we have our plate fuller, we have to make smarter decisions, and we're not able to do everything, Yes, without a doubt, and you said that you have a small child, how old is he? He's a year and a half old. I also have a 17-month-old boy, but he's the third, I already have an 11-year-old girl, an 8-year-old boy, and now I have the third. And this is really, what you say about learning what to do and what not to do, is one of the things I can say that I'm only learning at the moment, the question of being able to say, this, for this phase of my life, is what I can do, it's the point where I get a balance, I feel like I'm working on all areas, or I'm focusing more on this, and then other phases will come, but that's a... It's difficult, especially when you're excited about what you do, and you want to make it grow, right? How do you manage to... How do you manage to cut the fat of the projects, keeping them exciting for you? Actually, I think it was about having made the opposite mistake many times, which is having been too ambitious, I think ambitious is not the right word, for example, last year, no, two years ago, when I was pregnant, I decided I was going to re-record all my online courses, and it was a monumental journey, hundreds of classes, all re-recorded, it was a lot of work, and I ended up realizing that I didn't focus enough on the course structure, on promoting the course, so there it is, it's the kind of mistake of not putting your energy into what really matters, right? And not making use of what you've built in the past, that desire that we always have to start over, and to do it again, and to try again, and now it's better, but we really have to get used to doing that, to try as much as possible to use what we already have, and build on what we already have. But I think that's where it comes from, having made that mistake many times, and having learned a lot by default, I'm always going to want to do something from scratch, something that's too complex, too big, something that happened to me a lot in college as well, and then what I realized in my colleagues and everything was that what worked best for me was simpler, because you had enough time to execute it well, and so there it is, I think it was many years of mistakes that led me to finally be doing this, I think it was also because I was a mother, even choosing what to do with my time, the free time ended with the feeling of infinity, and so it all culminated in that desire to make smarter choices, it's not a strategy, it's more about having done it wrong, several times, if I remember. Yes, but you're saying two points that I think are absolutely crucial, and one of them seems to be in my head, I like podcasts, and I started a podcast because I hear a lot, especially in the last years, the last 4 or 5 years, some of them because of the pandemic, I started, and the big question is, I hear a lot, I don't know if you've heard of, for example, Business Made Simple, which is a podcast about business, it started with marketing, but meanwhile it evolved to business in a more global way, I listened to 6 years of podcasts in a year and a half, it was a brutality, in the midst of others, while I continued to follow the others. The question that I later decided was for me, and I had to start a podcast, but there it is, I look at the examples I have and that I know, from Joe Rogan, to a completely opposite side, and then that one that is super structured, and then others like The Greatness School, I think that's what it's called, or Northern Wisdom, which are podcasts with a huge production. And I thought, ok, I want to start, but I want to make an amazing scene. But then you think, ok, the microphones cost X, the production takes this, you start thinking, and you procrastinate completely, until you get to a point where you say, ok, forget everything, I'm going to focus on content, and I'm going to start, and then we get better. And then what you say is, every mistake you make, you think, ok, after all, I'm going to do this, I'm going to improve this a little bit, and then it's just little steps. And then the other point, which I think is absolutely crucial, is the failure issue. You don't learn from success, you learn from failures. And the more you make mistakes, the more you learn, right? If you don't make mistakes, you don't learn anything, in reality. You were talking about podcasts, the big production and everything, one thing I like to do is go to everyone's first episode, or on YouTube, that also works very well, go to everyone's first video. Because you get the feeling, ah, ok, I'm closer to this, I can understand how this evolved. And go to the beginning of the person, to the beginning of the content that person created. Sometimes there are people who delete it, and you can't do that. But comparing yourself to the beginning, it helps, it's more realistic. And in podcasting, and in other projects too, I think we take a while to learn that. I don't think I've learned it yet, but just by starting, you're already many steps ahead of everyone who has never started. And in podcasts, when you see, I received this statistic from Spotify once, that you just get to episode 21, you're in the 5% of podcasts in the world, with more episodes, right? Then you just get out of episode 60, you're already in the top 1%. So there are so many people who give up. So sometimes it's just a matter of persisting, of survival. It doesn't mean the best podcasts in the world stay. Sometimes those who continue stay. That's it. I'm laughing my head off because that statistic, that comment, was exactly what made me start. Because I heard it and thought, ok, you just need 20 to be in the 5% of podcasters in the world. What do you mean? At this moment I've already recorded 15 or 14 of the 20 that will be in this first season. There will be 20. There's another numbering in the season, but the 20 seems like an extremely round number to me. And that was the beginning. I have to do this. And if I do 20, I'll feel incredible. And when you get there, because 20 is about 4 months, and if you have 4 months to do the same, or in bulk, but there's a weekly process, and if you have that consistency, then you'll continue. Because you'll fail, you'll realize, you'll have a return, you'll have that incredible snowball. And you'll get there. There's a quote from Denzel Washington, but I don't know if it's his, but he says Without commitment, you never start. Without consistency, you never finish. And for me, that's amazing. Because you need to be committed to start, but after you start, it's very easy to lose interest. And if you don't have the consistency to continue, this can be applied to anything, I think. It's absolutely amazing. It's one of the things that really motivates me a lot. Look, I'm going to open Instagram, because you have a part that I need help with, which I thought was great. In yours, and you'll see why, which is your book area. Ah, ok. I don't really know what's there, because when I did that, it was a series of stories that I did in one day, but let's see what you ask me. No, no, this is going to be funny. Ok. The first question, from Simon Sinek. I'm going to give up halfway. I'm going to give up halfway. It's very boring. I feel like I understood the idea. And he repeats and repeats and talks about Apple 134,937 times. This is one of my favorite books ever. Ok. But, what do you mean? Do you think he talks a lot about Apple? I think he talks a lot about Apple all the time. I'm exaggerating, I'm exaggerating. Even though I'm a fan of Apple, I think he could have been more competent or diversified in the examples he gave, because he's always talking about the same thing. But I really like the book, so let's talk a little bit. Then, Getting Things Done, by David Allen. I also listened to the audiobook. Then, Thiago Forte, Building a Second Brain. This was all great for me, because, there it is, that prejudice that you imagine when you have a designer, you only think about the right side. And everything I saw here, in your books, are super pragmatic and organized things. And for me, it was fascinating. Then, Dale Carnegie, How to Make Friends and Influence People. This one is incredible at all levels. But, in general, I don't know if you feel that, but I think the books of these categories tend to be a little bit long, and a little bit repetitive. And, by the way, one thing I like about Thiago Forte is that he is very succinct. So, but I think it can also be a requirement of publishers, or something like that, because you feel that it has a little bit more repetition than was necessary. I think so. I agree with you, but I think that, in some points, it is that question of repetition that makes some ideas come in more. But, to finish, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. One of the books that marked me the most. I can't finish. And it says here, I found it very boring and vague. Yes. But, you know, I think it depends on the timing, sometimes. I think it depends a lot on the time when you find the book, you know? Without a doubt. Let me just say this. I understand everything you say, and it is this question of the moment of the book is everything. And, like everything, a movie, a song, but I think a book, as it is a bigger investment, the moment you read it, is everything. But, for me, what was interesting was some of these. For example, I look for your why. I think the idea is crucial. Not so much the book, but the questions it asks you and what it does in your head. If you listen to its TED Talk, which is like 17 or 18 minutes, it's enough. It was what they told me on Instagram. You know, you can't make a book with... Well, you can, but a book with 50 pages is not so much as a book with 200 pages. It's a bit like that. And then, in the case of Seven Habits, which, for me, was one of the books that struck me the most because it surprised me and because it caught me at that time. I read, or rather, I listened to the audiobook during the pandemic, while I was running. And I thought, by the title, I thought I was going to read a book about efficiency, time management, and all those related issues. And then, for me, it's like taking a life lesson. And those principles that it goes through, there it is, it could be... I know it's 450 pages, or something like that, but it could be written in less. It's vague and philosophical, but at that moment, it brought me a lot of things that I needed to hear. That's why it was spectacular. Yes. So, out of all the books, or any of these books, what was the book that struck you the most? Or the books that struck you the most, both in your life and in your professional career? Look, I can also make a remark. I think those are the books from this year and sometime last year. But, three years ago, I didn't read anything. I didn't read anything. If I read a book a year, I was very lucky. But, in the meantime, I was a mother and I bought an e-book reader. And that made all the difference in my life because we read a lot of books in times of death, like Sestas and so on. So, people who don't demotivate us, if they don't read, because everything is fine. Sometimes, our life is not for that, but we try to find other strategies. I think one of the books that struck me the most, of those you mentioned, was David Allen's. Because I was expecting a very rough book, and very... I think a bit contrary to what you were thinking about Seven Habits, which I think, when I started reading it, he was also expecting something more... more in the sequence of time management and all that. And that's it. I didn't want a life-threatening book, as you were saying. And David Allen's book marked me a lot. a lot because it made a lot of sense, you know? There were a lot of things that I already did, but I had never interlinked them. So it was like there were a lot of things that I already did and that I had already implemented, but that I had never glued to each other. So it was like a kind of passage of glue in all my ways of organizing and it had a lot of effect on my life. But those are some, but I always read some fiction at the same time. So I read all kinds of things. I also read Britney Spears' book, it's not there, right? But I'm not very exquisite in books, you know? I'm not afraid to experiment. If I don't like it, I don't care, but I'm not very purist in the content I consume. And did you read all of Tiago Forte's work, Building a Sacred Brain? It seemed a bit complex, his process. More or less, it's not much. I think a lot of it is due to David Allen. So if you already know the method, it's very familiar, because it's about capturing and organizing and all that. But I think it's a good addendum to... David Allen is a bit old, right? So it's not about the amount of information we produce today. And that's what makes people a bit anxious, the amount of bookmarks and everything that accumulates online. And Tiago Forte has a very... That doesn't have to be cataloged. Your second brain is not a library. It's not supposed to be a thing made up of colors, right? It's supposed to be an online site, where you can navigate the ideas you've been accumulating. And you can... While your brain is excellent, and it's the best machine you have, but it probably doesn't work on-demand, it doesn't have a search engine, and it will give you the ideas, and it will remember things as it pleases. The advantage of having a search engine is that you can relate and organize the ideas in a different way. And for those who work in creativity, and for those who produce specific content, you don't always have to look for older references, or in my case, when I write a newsletter, that's very obvious, because I keep things, but when I write a newsletter, I'm not there on the net looking for articles on this topic, right? Things that I already have saved, and that interested me, and that I already have notes. So it's like we were talking about at the beginning, you can build on what you already have, instead of always trying to start from scratch. And the idea of the second brain is very interesting because of that. And it's less structured than it might seem. It's a little abstract at first, right? Yes, but if I'm not mistaken, it was David Allen who said that our brain is made to have ideas, not to store them. Exactly, yes. And that's really the problem, that sometimes we store everything scattered, and its basic idea is to put everything together in one place, in the first phase, and then you'll figure out how to organize it, and how to get rid of it. But more than anything, it's about putting everything together here, and then we'll think about it. And then Tiago Forte takes that principle that's more associated with the current reality. It's not so much the current reality, it's more... Imagine, because David Allen... This is a world, right? This is a world of digital organization. But David Allen says... He has several places where you can send things, right? You have tasks, you have projects, you have the file... I could be saying something else, but I don't think so. You have the file and then you have the references. And the references here, I think, is where the idea of the second brain comes in more. Because many of them are things that are not... They're not tasks, right? They're things you want to keep, an idea you have, or a quote you find, or an image, or a podcast, an episode, a clip. All those varieties of format. And you don't have a place to keep them. You may have a folder on your computer with some images, you have a Pinterest, and then you have a bookmark of online articles, and it's all very scattered. And those things never have the chance to coexist digitally with each other. And you realize that they even relate. So, I see the second brain more as an addendum to David Allen's method, in that sense. To organize the references, and to be able to build and organize your notes. Because Tiago Forte is very strong when it comes to notes, right? You distill a lot of what you think about things, and it's worth having three lines about what you thought about an article, and saving the whole article to read later. Maybe you'll never read it. So, there's a lot of that thing of, you read the article, then you leave some notes there, and the second time you open the page, you underline what's most important. And the third time, you underline what's more important than what's already underlined. So, there's a lot of that thing of building on what you already have, and distilling the information until you get to what really matters. But it's more... There it is. I think that when you start to think in the way you were talking, like David Allen said, that we don't have to store things in our brains, you feel a lot more free. It's the feeling that you trust that everything is on the calendar, you trust that everything is in the task database, and you don't have to be nervous with the feeling that there's something on Monday, but forget it, right? I don't know what it is. Yes, because mainly in our... Although you're a designer, I'm a photographer, but these are areas that are touched upon a lot, because they're usually either individual work, or very small teams, and you do all the roles. We do all the roles in our profession. And it's very easy for things to get forgotten, or to get... And when you can store all the tasks in one place, all the references in one place, and that's why I use Motion, because the customization of that is really incredible. And when you can create all this and you have one place, it takes a while, it's a complicated learning curve, because it takes a while until you get into the software, or you get into the mindset of those plans, but then it's exponential. The time you gain and the organization you have, especially with so many areas, from accounting, management, things to pay for, the content you have to create, the tasks you have to do, all this, we have a lot of things, and it's very easy to lose some, and when we have this second brain working for us, our lightness is much greater. So, moving on to the question of your Instagram content, basically, for those who don't know you, you make a lot of content to help management, and accounting, and taxes, about freelancers and freelance professionals. What called you to create this content? Were it your pain, your battles? A little bit, yes. You've been working for a few years, so you recognize that... I started working ten years ago, more or less. Ten years ago, I wouldn't use Instagram, I wouldn't look for tax on freelancers, not even online, you wouldn't find anything else, but it was very frustrating. I remember that frustration, of struggling a lot with the information. And yet, ten years ago, I also founded a cooperative with people who worked with me, and it was me who ran the cooperative, and I ran it for five years. I made a lot of mistakes, but that also made me learn a lot, and I ended up, as I said, by my nature, I ended up being the person who, among my friends, was the one who asked questions, the one who people asked those kinds of questions. And during the pandemic, we all have a pandemic story, right? As I lost a considerable part of my income, which at the time was for culture, I ended up finding more free time, and I started sharing some things on my personal Instagram, which is still the same page as today. At the time, I only had my followers on my personal Instagram, about 300 or something like that. But they were people, they were designers, they were real colleagues from school and all that, so the thing was growing a lot based on the feedback people gave me, and also to understand where my limits were, because I'm not an accountant, I don't even want to position myself as such, so there's a border here that I try to navigate, and I think I end up adding something, not having that accountant voice, but, well, I also have the management part, and the time part, which I think are complementary, but that's where it comes from, yes. It comes from my frustration, remembering well how it was at the beginning, and from... Well, I'm also human, right? This year, I haven't forgotten an Iva declaration, even with all my own warnings falling on my email. That's why these things happen, and I recognize that a lot in the people who are starting, I remember well how it was, yes. Yes, but there you go, that's an interesting point, not being an accountant is an advantage, because it happens a lot, especially in these types of areas that start by being creative, and most of the time, of course not everyone, I think we're both similar cases, even because I entered economics, it was always a taste I had, I went to university for economics, then I didn't finish it because the course itself wasn't for me, but I already had that taste. But most of the people who meet in this professional state that we are in, are mostly creative, and mostly don't like this part, or never had an interest. And many times, if not all of them, of course not, but most of the time, accountants have a language that is too technical, which is normal for them, which is not easily translated to professionals, to freelancers, and I think that's a very big shock. And in a way, from what I'm following, you make this transition, this translation in a very interesting way. Simple things, one principle at a time, separated, and I think it's easier for people to get to that point, that is, your advantage, or rather, your feature, not speaking as an accountant, is an advantage, without a doubt, from the moment you're not lying, which you're not, it helps everyone. But tell me something, you also do some consulting, I don't know if on this path as well, if on this management point as well, but you also end up talking to your colleagues. What do you see, what do you think are the main difficulties that freelancers and professionals in this sector, or in this way of working, see or have? In the beginning, when we start, it's a lot about taxes and accounting. That scares a lot of people who are starting, and who realize that it won't make sense to pay an accountant monthly. That cost, for those who sell services above all, and who will issue few invoices per month, it's not very justifiable. Only at a given moment does it make sense to delegate that, because it's a light job. There's no better term. And then, when people go through that tax barrier, it becomes a matter of budget. When they go through that first fear, that first shock, it becomes a matter of budget. And I think that when it goes a little further, it has a lot more to do with communication with clients, dealing with clients, and thinking about hiring and that kind of thing. But this is already at a higher level. I would say that in the beginning it will be taxes and budget. And that's why I talk so much about it. I remember in the beginning, my budget problem was a word I hate, that I depend on, because there's a curse that we all suffer when we already have some experience. We know so much about all the circumstances that we know there's no round answer. There's no immediate answer. You can't say, look, this is the price of this. You can't give an answer that the person is looking for, the person who's starting. But that answer, it depends, it's very frustrating for those who are starting. Because it gives the feeling that you can't find the tip of the iceberg. You don't have a starting point. Nobody gives you that, you have to start here. Start here, explore and you'll understand. So I missed that a lot. I know it depends, but where do I start? When I think about difficulties, I think a lot about it. I don't depend on it, and I try to hit it a lot. Because I know it depends, but if we're going to take, as I was saying a while ago, take out the projects, if we're going to take out all the variations and exceptions and all that, what's left in the end? What's important to start with? So yes, difficulties are really prices, budgets and taxes. But taxes are more of a mental barrier than anything else, I think. Taxes? How so? Yes. Because it's a stank thing, the rules don't change in the middle. So it's something you learn once, and from time to time they change, it's true. Social Security changed in 2018 and it was very chaotic for a lot of people, but they are very fixed, very established things. It's a matter of learning what applies to you and repeating it over and over, every month. Paying Social Security, every two or three months submitting a declaration, the IVA Treaty, submitting the IRS, it's always, always, always the same. Difficulty is something much more like bumping into the unknown and realizing it's a very important thing because there may be fines, because adults pay taxes, there's a whole mental thing here, but it's really, and you were saying earlier, a lot of people who go to creative areas are also running away from math, so there's a ghost there who doesn't understand any of this, doesn't know how to do math, and forget that these are just sums and subtractions, most of the time, it's very basic math, it's much more understanding what suits us, forgetting that we don't have to know the entire tax code, we don't have to know all the sections, we have to know what suits us and our situation and what we sell. And then it's just repeating, so it's really a barrier that we feel at the beginning because it seems very big, impossible to scale, but from that moment on, you realize that it's just, you just have to learn once. It's true, yes, without a doubt, but there it is, because what you say about Depend is really very interesting, especially when you put the question of individual or company businessman, and then you say, Depend. You can even give the two examples, this makes sense in this context, this makes sense in this one, but it's always that, I understand, because it's really frustrating, you don't want to give bad information, but at the same time, it's good to give some information, because otherwise people get frustrated, right? And it's interesting, because that's really what it is, and I've been an individual businessman for many years, I also have a company, and they are different worlds, they are different problems, they are different routines, they are very different issues, that you don't need to have, but despite everything, it's a routine. Of course, in the first months, the first few months, maybe in the first year or two, you're there a little bit struggling and breaking stones, but then, it's just another year, it's just another month, if there's any change, then your accountant, even if it's not a monthly cost, you have to have someone to accompany you in this process, but when there's a change, he says, look, now I need to pay this at this time. I joke a lot with this idea that the accountant is supposed to be there to prevent you from going to jail. He's the one who will remind you when you have to pay what and when you have to pay. Because then, the problem I see, one of the issues I see, is the differentiation between accounting and management. Accounting, there it is, the accountant has to prevent you from going to jail. Management is, where do you want to go? What do you want to do with your business? And this is where this book comes in, this concept that I told you at the beginning, which is Profit First. And making the connection to the question, how do you interpret it? Or rather, if you want, make a first summary of what the concept is, for those who are listening, and then what you think of it and what you found interesting. The concept also comes from the idea of Pay Yourself First, right? But what I like about Profit First, which is the idea that we have to think or we have to take first from our accounts part of the profit, is that no one remembers the profit. When you start, I see people making budgets at the beginning, the profit is a kind of, maybe, surplus. And I think it's a very simple concept to have a very important effect in the way you think about your accounts. Because the profit will hit a lot in the question of creative work. Many times we also feel that, well, we like what we do, we do this for pleasure, money is a secondary thing, right? You have a whole series of beliefs around money and they are a little bit inflamed by the question of being a creative work. And when you start talking about profit, those beliefs also start to be challenged, right? Because just the question of have you ever thought of having profit with your work sometimes puts people a little bit to think about the subject, how do I make profit? I make my money, but it's not the same thing, right? So, when you start to introduce this... I think more than the profit first, the profit first challenges you to think about profit in the first place, but just the idea of, have you ever thought of having profit? It's very challenging and for those who are starting it can even be a little bit intimidating to think about, right? Because sometimes they just want to pay the bills or they just want to get a salary. But the profit makes all the difference to people. when you work alone, because that's what will allow you to build anything. And when you start, when there is this change of mentality, you realize that, ok, I work for myself, it's not synonymous with poverty, it means that I have to play the role of the person who is hiring, I have to take care of myself at that level, right? I have to get the benefits that I would like to have in a job for another person, I have to get a vacation subsidy for myself, I have to get a health insurance, I have to get Netflix paid, I don't know, there are so many benefits now that the companies offer. And I think it's kind of a game of realizing that you can bring what you want, right? Virtually what you want, for you, to be your job security and your working conditions. What is the work contract you have with you? What are the contracts that you are offering to yourself? And if we think beyond taking the money from my account to pay for my expenses, things start to win in a different way and you start to gain a very different perspective of work and prices too, right? You start to feel a lot more responsibility in relation to the prices you make, the way you communicate with the client, I think it all goes hand in hand, just with that little idea that your work has to generate profit, because you have to be able to support yourself, but also to create security, to grow and build things for yourself. You have a little post, which I think is the basis of everything you are saying, which I think is the great difficulty for most creatives, and not just creatives, I think everyone who starts working as a freelancer or as a freelancer has this great difficulty, which is, and you defined that very well, when you start, when you collect, when you start working, two entities arise. People know that this happens with a limited company, or a city by quotas, but they tend not to realize that it is also supposed to happen when you start working alone. Two entities are born, one is me, Rui, who is supposed to receive a salary because he is going to photograph. The other is me, Rui, manager and company, who is supposed to receive a profit for the work that is not photography. And because when you start working alone, you are a designer, I am a photographer, you can be a gardener, you start working alone, the salary, for me this is my interpretation, the salary is what will pay you for your main activity. The profit is what will pay you as a partner, manager and manager of a company. And that's why people end up getting demotivated, because they have a lot more work than they thought, they are doing a lot more things than they thought they were going to do, and they don't feel like they are being paid for it, because they are not. Because they forget, when doing prices and all that, they forget to control this part. Is that the struggle you also see? Yes, yes. Because when we think, I want to be a designer, I want to be a photographer, we don't think about the time we are going to be managing our work, sending emails, all the little things, accounting, just contacting clients, meetings, etc. And that takes up a part of the work, the work ends up not being just creating, that's the dream they sell us, but then there is a part that is real. And, of course, you can choose to hire that part. The part of strategy and management that is more profound should not be subcontracted, otherwise you end up losing your business, it is the business of that person and you are the photographer. But there are all these little tasks that can be subcontracted, eventually, invoicing and all that. But yes, I am an adept at counting all the time the projects, by categories, everything that is management, everything that is revisions, everything that is even the conception of the project, and evaluate those values ​​in the end. It is not something that has to be painful, because from the moment you have a tracker, you put play, that creates your accounting file, so one day you decide, you sit down and do the analysis of I don't know how many projects at once. But because we are terrible at estimating both in money and in time, we are terrible at estimating, so it's better to have numbers and look at the numbers and make decisions based on concrete things. And that's where you start to realize, okay, I'm giving this budget, but I'm working many more hours than I thought, so there is something here that is not working. I am an adept at looking at the numbers to make decisions, because we are terrible at making decisions with feeling, in this thing of time and money. Without a doubt. Look, but then, now that we have defined this first part, of the two entities, how do you see the part of taking the profit first? I think this is great, but how do you interpret the thing? So, I think it's easier to think about this issue when you have a company. When you are an independent entrepreneur, dealing with everything alone, I think it's necessary for us to make some adaptation and try to... It's a kind of inverted engineering of prices, of being able to understand how we are going to get there and how the price is solid with all these components. I think a good way to think is to have to see that the price has to include both your work, and here, it's the part where people get confused, because how do I count the cost of my work? But I think it helps to think about the salary issue, which I think is an example, which is in the form of profit first, it's really in salary, in payment for us. So, the price has to include the cost of our salary, it has to include the tax margin, which has to be there, we can't add it only at the end, or whatever it is that is then withdrawn. You have to pay for everything that is expenses and keep your business running, because if you have income to pay, you have other photographers to pay, you have relocations, you have all that, you only start making money from that moment. It's a feeling of making money, but you're not, because it's being deviated to keep your business running, to keep the door open, and then you have the part of the profit, which is external to all that, and that has to be independent. I like to see the price as layers, considering that the profit layer, which is the difference, can't be at the end, the profit layer is not negotiable, so I would say that the ideal order would be to think first, you have to have a basis to think in percentage, because I think that the profit ends up being useful to think in percentage, to have a way of calculating, or you think in terms of price duplication, hourly or something like that, but I think it's useful to have a percentage, so having a basis, you start with the salary, you have the part of the expenses, you have the part of the profit, and then you add the taxes at the end, so you have a margin that can be more or less synthetic for the price to survive, but none of them is negotiable, it has to be there for everyone, otherwise the thing doesn't survive. And then there's another side of the principle, which is super interesting, which is the management of the money when it comes in, because that's also an important part, because the principle he says is let's use simple values. And here there are some authors who took a little bit of what he does, at the beginning of it, and gave him some retouches, and then naturally you adapt a little to what works for you, because Mike's principle is there are 5 or 6 accounts, and then the money goes to a place, and naturally every 15 days it's distributed by others, which for a single professional is not only expenses, because nowadays almost all accounts have expenses, because that doesn't justify having 4 or 5 accounts, but I think 2 or 3, and here is the advantage of not being a company, because, for example, if you have a company, I only know a platform that gives you a company account for free, which is Revolut, which is what I use right now, besides my main account in the box. But you, as an individual person, you can have N accounts that are not paid, Mowi, Revolut too, ActiveBank, there are a number of them. And then the interesting thing he does is, you have an account where the money goes in, and from there it is distributed. And then I do the thing in a simple way, I don't do it in a religious way, 100% structured, but I'm trying to do it like this, you receive the money in one account, and then I put, for example, 30%, in the case of the company, I put 30% in the other account, because if I received € 1,000, 23 will be VAT, and the other 7 are profit. That is, I put 30% there, 23 are not mine, and the 7 are mine for later. And these 700 that remain, this 70% that remains, is what he calls OPEX, Operating Expenses, which is your company, the rest works with that, and that money has to pay everything else you talked about, the costs of work, your salary, and all that. And the interesting part of this is, then you reach the end, either quarterly or monthly, or monthly or annual, you take what you accumulated in the second account, you pay the taxes, and how do you put, when you put 23% VAT there, you will always have some that you will deduct, so you will never pay the 23%, maybe you will only pay 20%, that is, you reach the end, in addition to the 7% of profit that you predicted, you can still have some more, that is, you reach the end of the year, or quarter, or whatever, with a super interesting cut, and there it is, and that's the profit, and that's the company's gain, not just your salary. And this is certainly an absolutely brutal concept for anyone who is listening, like, what do you mean, I reached the end of the year and had a set of money that I wasn't expecting? This is not nonsense, this is not always easy, and you won't suddenly have that money that was left, you won't get rich with that. But, mentally, it's amazing, because for me what works is, when it's time to pay the taxes, when I receive the VAT account, I don't have problems because I know I'm already there. Sometimes I say, hey, I don't have money, how am I going to get out? So much VAT. It's already there. And this is a brutal lightness. And then, as it distills the thing even more, it really puts a separate account just for profit. I don't touch that one, I never touch it, except at the end of the year. That also needs another account, and it's a... it didn't justify it. But the mental principle of this money system is brutal. It's the same principle when it applies to personal finances that they call Pay Yourself First, right? As soon as you receive a salary, and for those who are listening to us and are not an independent entrepreneur, which doesn't motivate us, because there is also utility here, when you receive the salary, you automatically take a part that goes to you, and for you, in this sense, will be the savings and investments for projects, or long-term, or whatever you want to do, and that part comes out first. Exactly because, in the end, there's not enough, right? We can never trust that logic that, in the end, you put something aside. There won't be enough. So, it's taking right at the beginning, or automating right at the beginning, to have that fund being built without the risk of being your own enemy, and, in the end, you don't have anything to put aside. Yes, because the truth is that this principle is 10% of personal finances, and the truth is just one. You live exactly the same way, with 90% of the income as you live with 100%. I really think that, regardless of your salary, 90% and 100%, you live exactly the same way. And when you take the 10% and you accumulate it elsewhere, you're earning, you're accumulating for a few more years, for the future, for a rainy day, and I think it's a point that we often overlook. We think everything is fine, and then a pandemic comes along, and it's not that easy. That's why it helps to have those accumulated points. But now, let me ask you another question. You, in this issue of price construction, you're talking in a pragmatic way about the slices, right? How can I ask you? How important do you think the role of the investor syndrome is in this price definition, especially for creative professionals who work alone? Well, it's a bit like what we were saying about us having very strange beliefs about money, which get even worse when our work is creative and we grow up with this idea that it's important to do something that I like, right? We're the children of the 90s and the late 80s, so it's a bit like that, right? We can be whatever we want, it's important not to work one day in life because we do what we like, so we live a bit in this romantic idea that what matters is to be fulfilled. And money comes in here as a kind of ghost that we don't really want to deal with. And the investor syndrome will affect that a lot, right? Not only do we feel, on the one hand, there are those who feel that they don't deserve or aren't able to pay that price because their work isn't that good, because there are better people, but these are always things in our heads, right? Joana Galvão, who spoke to you at the beginning of the podcast, also gave us a message that was very, when you have those thoughts, try to find proof. Where is my proof that everyone is better than me? Where is my proof that I'm not able to pay this price that I think is fair? If we try to push it on the rational side, if we try to use logic and try to find proof, it doesn't exist. We see amazing people every day, amazing online work, and we feel like we're the only ones who are feeling that they're not able to do so much. And when, to answer more directly to your question, when we're making prices, if we do it by intuition or if we just see what others charge and do more or less, we can fall into all these traps. It's very easy. We're tendentious. We're going to use what we feel is true, regardless of whether it's really true for everyone or not. It's what we feel about our work and about our accounts. That's why I say again that we have to make accounts by looking at the numbers. That's an infallible basis. We can have all kinds of subjective issues with creative work, having a very high price, all these things. In the luxury market, there are very high prices. But forgetting all that, forgetting all that subjective issue, the first thing is to sit down, make accounts and understand what the minimum sustainable is and consider that you have to have a sustainable business. From there, you can think about the dependency and all the variations and how much others charge and all that. Until then, until you realize how much you need to charge for your business to continue to work and to be able to have a percentage of profit, it's not worth even looking for other opinions. That's why only then can we try to let the investor syndrome enter and start giving their opinions. But only then do we look at the numbers and that's the tendency. Of course, there are people who easily undervalue themselves, but that's the exception. I think we all have the tendency to do the opposite, to charge less than we should or because we like that client or we feel sorry for him or because we feel that there is another person who is better and we have to lower the price. These are all things that when we verbalize, I'm deaf. You're listening to me and I'm thinking, this doesn't make any sense. But at the time, when we think about it, it's very real in our heads. That's why there is a lot of pollution of what we think of prisoners. You know, this is a podcast aimed at the marriage community. In other words, we work with our client. They are couples, in love and very cute. You can imagine the amount of colleagues. We've all been through this once or twice. We think, I'm going to offer or I'm going to make a discount. They're so cool. It's the wedding. I don't want to be there. And honestly, everyone I've met and who told me they've never been through this, I honestly don't believe it. You always think, they're cute, it's the wedding. I don't want to be creating a bad wonder. Now I'm going to ask for money for this or for that. It's so easy to do and I do it all the time. But then you forget, in our specific case, you forget very easily that this cute and in love couple is having a luxury party. Even if it's a cheap wedding, the wedding party as we have it, even if you spend 15,000 euros, which today is very little, if you spend that, you're doing it. You're spending 15,000 euros because you're putting a photographer, a videographer, a carpenter, a restaurant, a decorator, everyone working exclusively for you. If it wasn't a wedding, you'd say it was a luxury party. In other words, we're sorry, in a way, we're sorry for a client who's having a luxury party and we're afraid to charge him a little more. Whether it's fair or not, it's a whole other conversation, but you're afraid to charge a little more because you think it might not be justified. In our area, we live a lot with this syndrome, not only of the investor, but also of this difficulty of not necessarily imposing, to a point, yes, but not always, but to a point of, okay, I have to impose what is the least sustainable for me. And then we have, and I also believe that your profession can also... You can have a good part, but it's very easy to get married and work on the weekend. You have your normal job during the week and you go only on the weekend. And I don't know, give me an example of what you want. Maybe on average, right now in Portugal, a good photographer, or at least a photographer with a little bit of experience is charging 2,000 euros to get married. It's very easy if you work a week and you have your schedule of 1,000 or 1,200 euros. If you charge only 1,000, you will be, in a day, in quotes again, you will be working a day to earn half the same as you earn in the whole month at your job. Your perception of that money is completely different. The problem comes later, which is when you have to make the transition or you want to make the transition and you say, OK, so now I'm going to leave my job Monday to Friday and I'm just going to do this. And then it's over, because all that extra that you had to do at the wedding is no longer possible because now you have 12 months, or ideally 14 months, to survive. In other words, this is really the great difficulty that people have, is to do all those accounts, as you say, define a minimum, but then attack upwards, right? The accounts have to be done, because otherwise you get into that issue, right? Because you want to quit and you find out that you have a hobby and you don't have a job. And you won't be able to survive with the prices you're practicing. In addition to being mining the market, right? Because you're practicing prices that are not sustainable for people who really do that profession. And then we also get into people who initially have a social security exemption, level exemptions and all that, and they don't influence the price, which at first may seem incredible, right? Because they get a lot of work, because they have a much lower price than the market, but then suddenly they start paying taxes, and they end up with a much smaller slice, because you still work for the end customer, so the VAT is the same, if it were a company, you would say, look, now I'm going to start charging VAT, the company might say, okay, I'm going to deduct it, but for a final customer, he doesn't care, right? He cares about the price you're going to pay in the end, and suddenly you start paying taxes and your price drops a lot. So, this feeling that I can lean a little, because I'm at the beginning, ends very quickly, right? And it's a trap, because it will motivate there, because suddenly you start finding a client and another and another, who are always the same type, they recommend each other, right? And they only bring you clients who also want to pay less, and then you can't get out of that cycle, it's very difficult to break that cycle. Do you think that, in this initial phase, I imagine you also work with, I mean, you do this consultancy with professionals who are in a phase, perhaps a little more initial, intermediate initial, I imagine. Do you think there is a long-term vision of who is starting? Very little, very little. I think it's very easy, I think, first, there are those barriers that I was talking about a while ago about taxes, right? That it looks like an impenetrable wall and that you can't see anything. Besides that, I just think, I have this difficulty that I can't break. I think that just by starting to dig a little bit of those initial walls, you start to think in the long run. Even because, especially at the beginning, there are a lot of people who have more support, or who are making a smoother transition from one job to another, to self-employment. But at the beginning, there is a very black cloud, which is the cloud of the need to make money urgently, right? And that cloud, for some people, that pressure is very positive, but for most people, no, it just creates a sense of urgency that makes it more difficult to make good decisions, that you will accept more complicated clients, clients who pay badly, because you have that emergency, that urgency, which is normal, right? To pay the bills. And that part of the transition is very difficult, because that urgency prevents you from being able to think in the long run. If we had that feeling of not being able to live until the end of the month, you can't think about ten years from now, right? Only if you have a hyper-worked mentality, but you won't be able to follow the rules, because you are focused on your current needs. And that's the difficulty at the beginning, to get some financial security, right? To give you the luxury of being able to make long-term plans. I like it, security to have the luxury of making long-term plans. To finish, Sofia, where are you going? What is your vision? What is your future? Actually, I've been thinking about it a lot. I think that having children forces us to think a little bit about our work, and what we want to do, right? When we have the resources for that. I know that I like the podcast format, I like the newsletter format. I want to write more, I want to record more. I have to finish the doctrine as soon as possible. And I like to investigate, that's why I work more in depth. Maybe move away a little bit from the more superficial content of social media. I want to continue producing, but make smarter choices, as I said at the beginning. But being able to write more and produce more things in depth, and projects that I want to do, will always affect that a little bit. I like to be a designer, but I really like to do projects, right? That I remember, like the podcast I have now with my classmates, which is being very good to record. That's why it's a little bit to go for what I feel like doing, with that perspective of trying to bring some people with me, and help those who are starting to try to demystify and de-dramatize this world a little bit. Because there is a lot of pressure, and it can be very intimidating. But, I don't know, I think we all have a... As I was saying a while ago, we grow up with that idea that you have to find a job that fulfills you, that satisfies you. And some of us, it's not my case, but some of my colleagues were the first ones to go to university, their families and everything. So there is always a pressure of success, and to reach a certain level. And then you become an adult, and you start to question that a little bit. What is success for me? What do I want to achieve? What does it mean? And, well, I think it's part of, at least in my case, being in my thirties, and asking all these questions, trying to find answers without great haste. There is no plan, but there is a direction. I wish I had had such a global thought as you have now, when I was 30, I always had it up to a certain point, but I wish I had had it in a more global way. So I think you are quite young, and you are already starting to... I'm already in my mid thirties, but I'm already in my thirties. But look, I realized now that you asked the wrong question. I ruined everything. I had written this to be as impeccable as my question was. And from now on, where is Sofia going? Because from now on, it's the name of your podcast. Yes, yes. And I ruined everything. In a while we'll have questions like, what happened from now on? Exactly. The next time you're here, I'll ask like this. Look, as I said, the podcast is very in-depth, I have invited a lot of people to get married, so you're going to appear here a little bit unknown to those who listen to us, so I wanted to invite you to tell us where people can find you. Website, Instagram, and those things. So, on my website, my Instagram is Sofia Rocha e Silva, so you can find me which I suppose you're going to write in the title of the episode. Website, etc., you can find me at luscofia.com You can find me, I'll give you the newsletter, I'll give you all the things from there. And through Instagram too. Sofia, it was a pleasure. Sofia, it was a pleasure to have you here. And I think these... I've had a lot of conversations interesting and mostly philosophical, ideological, but I think this was a pragmatism that we all need when we start, and I think my marriage community, with a lot of people coming in, a lot of people struggling to start, I think they needed to hear it, and you always have very interesting and very filtered and well-filtered advice. So I think it's going to be very valuable for a lot of people, so thank you for me, thank you for all the people who listened to you, and see you next time. Thank you, Rui. See you next time. We've reached the end of this episode and if you liked it, I ask you to subscribe to the podcast, and see you next week.