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Change of Plans

I was all ready to sell my casa when a realization hit me – Moving Sucks. Moving, uprooting, packing up your life and starting brand new someplace else requires a lot of energy and resources – and to what end?

I want to move to be closer to family and friends, but will that really help me change my life? Shouldn’t I be able to make new friends and start my own family here in Plano?

So I decided that what I need to do is go back to work full-time or at least find a part time job that is flexible and brings in some stable income that will help me to feel a little more secure. I don’t think running from my problems is the answer, however, I have to find balance between being responsible and being delusional.

So I’m stepping out in faith. I’m going to try to stay here until I’ve got a solid reason to leave. Yes, family and friends are a solid reason, but I have friends who are like family here in Plano too.

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I’m Selling My House

I’ve been contemplating selling my house lately. Why? I’m afraid I’m turning into my real dad.  Working in my living room all day surrounded by nothing but the sound of the TV and the click-clack of my keyboard.

I’ve successfully isolated myself into a world that is filled with only the exact people I want in my life, but most of those people live in Denton and if I don’t move I will continue to drift alone out here in this big brick box that is as empty and hollow as my love life.

Selling a house is such a big decision, especially after just two years of owning it. But, I only bought it because I thought I would be working at Texas Instruments for the rest of my life. Now that thought seems depressing. Working for someone else for the rest of my life? No thanks. But… what if I can work for myself for the rest of my life and start now by investing in me? Cut my overhead, simplify the excess, and just take care of myself and a handful of responsibilities instead of two hands full.

Say a prayer for me. This is a big decision and I have no idea where I will live in Denton.

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DJing is Harder than You Think

“Can you play some Scorpions or Def Leppard?”  The man asked without thinking of anyone other than himself. “Here, I’ve written down a list of 10 awesome songs for you to play!” Says the goof who doesn’t know anything about good music.

This is what people do at DJ events. They request songs that they want to hear not realizing that their requests reflect on me. No one realizes that I am playing a song to make someone happy, instead, they think “Why is this DJ playing the Chicken Dance?” – because your mom requested it.

I’m not complaining about my work at all. I FREAKING LOVE IT. But… I spend hours downloading music and putting together playlists. I have to make follow-up calls and meetings in person with wedding clients to go over details and reception flow. I have to constantly stay up on the hottest trends of music: Frat Rap, Emo, Alternative, Country, Rock, Reggae, Oldies, Motown, New Age, the list goes on and on.

But on the upside, I get to learn about new music, I get to spend hours listening to new tunes, mixing together great songs, looking at beat counts and knowing what song will flow well to the next and how to transition a party smoothly from a rocking bump and grind fest to a slow romantic waltz.

I think this is where the art of DJing comes in – knowing how to mix a set of music that keeps the party ever-escalating while still keeping the dance floor packed.

What you do is play songs for each group in the room. The single dancers, the kids, the rockers, the old lovers who want to cuddle and the hip-hoppers.

As someone who LOVES to dance, every now and then even I need a break. If you play hit after hit after hit then I want to dance to all of them and I just get tired. Instead, I like to have a few hits and then a few slow so I can take a break between my hip thrusting and gyrations.

So this is my life and I love it. Even the part where I tell people “No, I can’t play that song”.

DJing is harder than you think, but it is better than any other job I’ve done in my life.

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Control Those Emotions!

Emotions… they have been a topic on Posted Note so many times that I should just change the name of this site to “Emotional Posted Note” or something else touchy-feely.

This morning I received a certified letter from a client that wanted documented proof of hours spent working for them. Granted, the invoice that I sent them was dated August 3rd and so I haven’t received payment for that work and now they want to hassle me about my hours.

My first impulse is to rain fire and brimstone down on their heads and make threats of how I am going to do everything I can to ruin their business because they are ruining mine – literally.

When you are self-employed you obviously rely on your paychecks to pay your bills, but even more than that, you need money to make money. When you work for a company you just show up and use their resources, not your own, and so you just get a paycheck and call it day. For me, I have to buy software for the computer work I do. Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop – these are the tools of my trade for my day job. But then there is my DJ business as well that requires me to purchase music, lights, tablecloths, speakers, microphones – the expenses just keep adding up.

So when I don’t get paid not only can I not pay my bills, but I can’t make more money – or as much money as I could have made.

Also, when you can’t pay your bills on time you get incessant phone calls by automated systems that call your phone twice a day. Citifinancial Auto likes to call you twice a day, every day, from two different numbers asking you constantly, “When are you gonna pay? WHEN? WHEN!!!” and I keep telling them, “Just as soon as my 6,000 arrives from my clients”.

This type of stress makes me very emotional and I have to do everything in my power to control it, to stuff it down and to make it go away. I have to be professional and courteous and instead of getting upset, I can be the one to make phone calls and send emails and write letters to customers who don’t pay me. If it works for Citifiinancial, then it should work for me right?

In the end, I have to wonder what other people do in these situations. If you are self-employed, what steps do you take to get your money from non-paying clients?

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Laid Off. Self-Employed. Entrepreneur.

I’m still adjusting to working for myself.

When I was laid off in January 2009 I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with my life. Since I was 12 years old I have been working at some sort of job – for someone else. I always had dreams of owning my own business one day, but taking the giant plunge was just too scary.

In the Renz household you worked for a living – sometimes two or three jobs. Our motto was “If you want something, work for it.” That meant 2 a.m. paper routes, cleaning churches and schools, working for a horse ranch, being a bank teller, driving a special ed school bus, running the register at a gas station, cleaning houses, cleaning the post office, working for Boeing, Custom Food Group, Texas Instruments, Ericsson. Yep. Those are all the jobs that I have had and they weren’t short term, many of them I had for years and some of them I worked while working another job and going to school full-time.

So when I was suddenly out on the street looking for a job I decided that after doing all of those jobs and none of them being really what I wanted to do that I wasn’t going to take another job unless I really enjoyed doing it. So I’ve now been unemployed/self-employed for 7 months and I’ve been doing just fine on my own.

Now I still work 2-3 jobs to make ends meet, but they are things that I like to do and they have amazing flexibility that allows me to live a non-traditional life. I don’t work 9-5 days or 80 hour weeks. I don’t sit in traffic or rush through my lunch, but there are trade-offs as there are to everything in life.

I don’t have any co-workers and there isn’t much opportunity for advancement unless I bust my butt and make it happen myself. Clients don’t always pay on time or pay at all. I’m home alone a great deal of the time and that can get old.

But that upside is that being your own boss is the best thing in the world and worth every sacrifice. There is also the joy that comes from making it on your own. There is also that little twinge of fear that keeps you motivated to keep working hard and busting it so that you can still pay your bills.

If you are looking to start your own business then I say do it. Start small, start networking, get a website, do some small jobs to get your feet wet and start building your network of friends while you still have full time work. This is probably a good idea even if you don’t plan to start your own business.

And lastly, I never could have gotten to where I am today without the support of great friends and family. And if you are looking to keep up with more of my work life, then check out my business sites: http://www.soundandshow.com and http://www.eddierenz.com