Nancy Greene – The Fictorians

Let’s be clear.

I’m crazy.

Yup. Off my rocker. Certifiable. Nuts.

I was raised as part of the generation of women told, “you can have it all” and swallowed the line, hook and sinker.

My last year life in brief:

Happily (no really) married for nearly 19 years.
Matt and I have two amazing sons, ages 17 and 15.
We live on a 5 acre horse farm including two horses, a dog, three cats, a pool, woods and a creek. My dream made real in cooperation with Matt aka “The Hubby.”
I’ve been published, am getting ready to self-publish and am finishing an alternate history novel.
I’m a staff member for Superstars Writing Seminar.
I read slush for an online magazine.
I wrote a guest post for Grammar Girl’s podcast!
I’m a founding member of this blog.
I’ve owned my own law firm, and grew it to the point I had to join another firm.
With the help and guidance from the amazing people from EWomen Network, I’m launching a YouTube Channel about legal tips for business in May, 2016.
My book on business law for real people is scheduled to release in May, 2016.
I speak 6-15 times a year about using the law to protect your solo or small business and help it prosper.
I have some amazing strategic alliances that allow me to help mid-sized businesses transition into BIG businesses.
I am humbled and honored to call some of the most generous, wonderful and supportive people on the planet my friends.

So, I have it all, right?

Yeah. Truly, I can’t complain about my crazy busy life. Well, sure, I can complain about things – like the orange cat shredding and eating (literally) my papers. But really, this is a trivial problem. I’m a pretty A-type personality. I love being in motion. A week of doing “nothing” is not my idea of fun. I’m also a bit of a perfectionist. (Stop laughing, Matt). “Having it all” is a lot of work.

So, here’s the truth about “having it all” and the myth of the “work-life balance:”

You can have “it” all; you just have to decide what “it” actually is.

I took far too long to come to that epiphany. I’ve felt guilty about success in one area of my life, as mommy, wife, writer, lawyer, speaker or farmer, because that success came at the expense (real or perceived) of another area of my life. To “do it all” I’ve had to accept sometimes, being a lawyer meant I couldn’t be a writer right then. I’ve had to let go of one of my favorite sentence stems – “I should be…”

I’ve wrestled with the “I should be…”s and related “I’m a bad…”s all my life. See, my Mom “did it all” too. She worked but she always made us dinner and came to our school events. I called her shortly after my oldest was born and asked Mom how she “did it.” I didn’t remember that she worked part-time until I was too busy with school to come home before 7 pm. All I remembered is she and my Dad had been there when it mattered. I remembered dinner was at 5 pm; learning how to cook in her kitchen; studying Latin with her and math with my Dad; Dad waking up at 4 am and taking me to a horse show; and the hours he and I spent fishing.

Still, that simple and profound lesson took years to sink in:

Others don’t see the things that worry us so very much.

Balance is a myth. No aspect of my life ever balances out in perfect proportions. I don’t spent 1/6^th of my time wearing each of my hats and in many years the garden is ruled by weeds. But I accomplish a lot.

My tips for having it all:

Let go and accept.

Sometimes we must prioritize one area of our lives over another for a time. That’s okay. That’s just life. The needs will change and if you’re paying attention over a life time the scales will balance the way you want, even if that’s not totally equally.

Lists. Lots and lots of lists.

I know myself. If a task, appointment or whatever doesn’t hit my to-do list with a deadline it isn’t happening. Because I’ll procrastinate if I can do the task “whenever,” every task has a deadline whether real or Nancy created. I try not to beat myself up when I miss the fake deadlines. Now I just reset them to my next best guess.

When you can hire people to deal with the administrivia.

Time is best spent on income generating activities (for me, doing legal work or writing a story) or fun (watching movies with my 3 boys) rather than on unproductive tasks like mailing out my invoices. I can pay an admin $15 an hour to handle those necessary distractions. There are things only you can do. Do them and nothing else. Use money to make time when you can.

Focus on what you accomplished rather than what remains to be done.

If your to-do list something even Superman and Wonder Woman would fear? When I focused on the 15 things that weren’t humanly possible to do in the day and I, surprise, didn’t finish, I was a grumpy gal. Now, I try to end the day remembering what I accomplished. I’m less likely to dread the next day.

Sleep is for wimps.

Just kidding. Sleep really isn’t optional.

For me, finding balance meant accepting there are limits to my superhuman strengths (Again, stop laughing Matt or I might revise the “happily married” point). Don’t get me wrong. I still hear the deeply fearful part of me repeating her “not good enough” and “I should be…” mantras, but her voice has grown softer over the years and she’s getting easier to ignore.

Oh yeah, and when getting the work/life balance right, it helps to be downright crazy.

Welcome to Legal Month at the Fictorians!

Writers are business people. We own our enterprises and are responsible for them. While we often focus on the craft of writing on this site we felt a walk on the business side was necessary. We’re going to spend much of March looking at issues writers, and all business owners in fact, need to know about the law such as taxes, necessary record keeping, agents, contracts, indemnification and reversion clauses, copyright, creating your business, creating publishing company, and much more. An important note about this month: We’re not providing legal advice and if you have specific questions about the law and how it applies to your situation, please contact an attorney where you live.

Five facts about the law every business owner needs to know:

FACT 1 – Anyone can sue you.

Legal disputes are part of the cost of doing business. For the fiscal year ending September 20, 2012 (the most recent one I could find statistics on), the United States Federal Courts had 278,442 new civil law suits filed. http://www.uscourts.gov/Statistics/JudicialBusiness/2012.aspx While this number represents a decrease in filings from the previous year it’s still a respectable number. Keep in mind too that this figure doesn’t take into account new cases filed in a state court. While there are rules against frivolous or harassing law suits it is often difficult to show that any specific case was completely baseless and the other side should have known that their claim wasn’t legitimate when they filed.

Litigation is VERY expensive. A bit of prevention (and expense) can save you thousands on the back-end. A business lawyer’s job is to anticipate what could go wrong and try to give you the best possible protection in case the worst happens. Nothing is perfect though, and the more successful you become the bigger the target on your back. Which brings me to my second point…

FACT 2 – Becoming a Corporation is Inexpensive and Provides You with a Level of Protection.

You are almost always better off operating under a corporate umbrella rather than being a partnership or a sole proprietor. Corporations are considered separate “people” from their owners under American law. As a general rule a person suing a company can only collect their judgment from the company’s asset, not the owners’. Incorporating also allows you to keep profitable ventures separate from more experimental ones or ones losing money. It is fairly common practice for a real estate developer, as an example, to form a new company for every project that way if project X fails the business does not have to use its revenue from successful venture Y to pay off X’s debts. The owners merely pay off as much of X’s debts as they can with whatever assets X has left without jeopardizing their or that of their other ventures’ financial health. Is it necessary for a writer to have a new company for every book? Not generally. Writing is not generally considered a high risk enterprise.

Another advantage to operating through a company is the ability to give yourself a salary and issue yourself a W-2. Being a W-2 employee has several tax advantages. It also means you qualify as an employee and not self-employed when the time comes for you to get a loan, whether business or personal.

FACT 3 – You Are Responsible For The People You Hire.

Employees are a mixed blessing. They are fabulous because they let you do the things you love doing about your business – like writing – and delegate the things you like least or take too much time away from your main focus – for example, maintaining a website or social media presence. The also present their own special set of legal challenges. But I’m to not going dwell too long on theses since that’s a several post long discussions. Let me point out two though.

Your employees are part of your public face. Their acting badly reflects on you. Choose your agents, publicists, editors, lawyers, accountants, and employees with care. In this highly visible world a stray (or not so stray) comment on a social media site can bring down an empire. After all, it only took the Doctor six words to bring down an administration.

Ensure you classify the people who work for or with you properly. While it might be tempting to classify your helpers as independent contractors spend time with a lawyer to make sure they qualify under the IRS guidelines. Understand that all exempt (from United States Federal Overtime requirements) employees are salaried, not all salaried employees are exempt. There are also state laws governing when an employee must be paid overtime. Again this is a classification issue and some up front time with a lawyer can save your business.

FACT 4 – You Will Be Deemed to Know the Law and What Your Contracts Say Even if You Don’t.

Ignorance of the law is not a defense. Don’t sign any document you haven’t read. If litigation results a court will deem you to have known and understood a contract’s terms. Lots of nasty upsets can be avoided simply by reading a contract. Know what you’ve agreed to. If you don’t understand, I mean really understand, what you are being asked to sign, DON”T SIGN IT and seek legal advice first. Renegotiate the unacceptable terms. Sometimes walking away from a bad deal is the best you can do.

FACT 5 – Words Matter.

This last one shouldn’t surprise you. After all, who knows that words matter than a writer? Fellow Superstar Attendee Mignon Fogerty aka Grammar Girl once asked me if it was true that lawyers litigated over the placement of a comma. The answer is “sometimes” as comma placement can change a sentence’s meaning. I’ve litigated the meaning of “unique”, and “exclusive” and, yes, exactly what a clause modified (i.e. did the comma mean anything?).

Do not accept a word you do not understand. Contracts, especially older ones, use the word “witnesseth.” When I’ve struck the word and asked the other attorney what the term meant…well, let’s just say I manage to get it struck most of the time. Why? Because it’s unnecessary. “Witnesseth” means “to take notice of” rather than to “witness” a document. Since the word comes before the signature lines it’s a bit obvious that the person signing has “noticed” the document. We’re going to have posts focusing on specific words in indemnification and reversion clauses so I won’t belabor the issue about the meaning of words here.

Keeping these principles in mind won’t guarantee that you’ll never have a legal dispute. But they just might let you know when to seek professional help from lawyers or tax professionals.

I hope you enjoy the upcoming month, and come back for more great information.

Disclaimer:

The materials available at this website are for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney
to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. No attorney-client relationship has been created. Legal information is not the same as legal advice — the application of law to an individual’s specific circumstances. Although we go to great lengths to make sure our information is accurate and useful, we recommend you consult a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is appropriate to your particular situation.

Tag Archives: Nancy Greene

The Work/Life Imbalance

Five Facts Every Business Owner Needs To Know About The Law