The Solopreneur's Money Manifesto: How to Master Your Finances and Create the Life You Want

By Gabe Nelson

They are the questions that keep you up at night as a solo entrepreneur: Are there financial land mines I'm missing? Am I paying too much in taxes? Should I save more?

Will I ever be able to retire?

As your own boss and sole employee, it's easy to feel anxious and unsettled, even when you're making a profitable income. Maybe your goal is to grow your business. Perhaps you just want to enjoy life. No matter what your priorities are for the future, you can take steps now to guarantee peace of mind and control your happiness. In The Solopreneur's Money Manifesto, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional and independent small business owner Gabe Nelson helps solopreneurs secure a financial plan for the future and gain freedom to build the life they've always wanted. He takes you through client stories and a case study to show you the steps that others have taken to ensure their business—and personal finances—are on track. From the questions you should ask yourself to the evaluation that will help you see your unique situation clearly, this book is your step-by-step guide to create the right mindset for a rewarding life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781544521329

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The Solopreneur’s Money Manifesto

The

Solopreneur’s

Money

Manifesto

How to Master Your Finances and Create the Life You Want

Gabe Nelson, CFP®

Copyright © 2021 Gabe Nelson, CFP®

All right reserved.

The Solopreneur’s Money Manifesto: How to Master Your Finances and Create the Life You Want

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5445-2134-3

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5445-2133-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5445-2132-9

To Melissa, Lauren, Avery, and Lydia.

You make me a better husband, father, and man every day.

I love you tons upon tons.

Contents

Introduction

Part 1

Setting Yourself Up for Success

Chapter 1: Vision

Chapter 2: Getting Your Mind Right

Chapter 3: Goals and Habits

Part 2

Planning with Purpose

Chapter 4: Your Realities

Chapter 5: Retirement

Chapter 6: Taking Care of Your Family

Chapter 7: Taking Care of Your Money

Chapter 8: The Legal Side of Life

Part 3

Living Your Dream

Chapter 9: Case Study: Watt

Chapter 10: Baseline

Chapter 11: Projecting and Planning

Chapter 12: Active Steps

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

It was May of 2008, months before a global financial crisis that I did not see coming. I had a successful insurance and financial services practice with New York Life and more than a decade of experience behind me. But I had just gotten another email from the mothership, asking me one more time to explain the reasoning behind my approach in serving my clients and the fees I was charging.

It was the fourth or fifth email I’d gotten along those lines—I’d lost count, but it was one too many. That’s it, I said to myself. I’m done. I’m starting my own firm.

I went home that day and told my wife, Melissa. We had three daughters under the age of nine, and I was acting on impulse. I want to do things my way, I said, and I’m going to figure it out.

She chose to trust, which is only one of the many reasons I love Melissa. Okay, she said. Go.

I was pumped—and I was setting myself and my family up for trouble.

I started my firm on August 1. The financial world fell apart about forty-five days later, plunging us into the Great Recession. I threw myself into flat-out, move-my-clients, build-my-business mode. I was either going to make it or not, and I was scared to death. I hung on for dear life for a year with my staff of two, people I’d brought with me to make the transition. Finally, I was forced to let them go.

It was a close call. I was lucky to survive.

Today, I am proud and thankful to say that I have achieved financial success as a solopreneur. It is a blessing, many times over. I have achieved the control I wanted and the freedom that comes with it—freedom of time, freedom of destiny, freedom of income. And I’ve now built my business around helping other solopreneurs like me.

If you’re a solopreneur and you’ve picked up this book, regardless of your business and your stage in life, my guess is the same objectives in life animate you. I got there, but I made a ton of mistakes in my journey. The kinds of mistakes I see many of the people who come to me for help with their finances making too.

I wrote this book to help you avoid them.

Step by Step

During my career as a solopreneur and financial planner, I’ve learned that success begins with developing a vision of where you’re trying to go. Then you need to wrap your mind around doing what it takes to get there.

Where and how do you want to live? How much free time do you want, and how do you want to spend it? When do you want to retire? What do you want to do for your kids’ education? What are your goals in paying taxes?

What do you need to do with your business so it supports your vision and goals?

How do you build the personal habits that will foster success? How do you translate your ambitions into a financial plan that will ensure you achieve them?

How do you take your first steps toward putting that plan into action? How do you adapt as your life and circumstances change?

Some of the most successful solopreneurs I’ve met haven’t thought these questions through. Others don’t have the time or the knowledge to manage their personal finances. In the pages to come, I’ll outline a step-by-step guide that goes beyond managing your finances to mastering them and—here’s the real bottom line—creating the life you want to live.

I can’t guarantee that your business will succeed; no one can, and in any case, this isn’t a book about how to build your business. It’s a book about mastering your finances as a solopreneur. It follows a methodical, structured approach I’ve developed in serving my clients. And it works.

A Life of My Own Making

Melissa and I were students at South Dakota State, a year apart, dating, and serious about each other. You know, she said to me one day, you’re going to graduate next year. And as you start looking for jobs, you need to understand something. I don’t want a husband who’s gone all the time. I don’t want to raise the kids all by myself.

I didn’t want to be that husband either.

During college, I worked mornings for a guy named Dave, who ran a vending machine business. I’d get up early to drive around town with him, filling soda, candy, and cold food machines. After classes I’d head back out on my own, placing hot coffee machines in businesses. It was my own gig, and so much better than working for someone else. In school I was studying economics, but it’s coffee machines that taught me the business skills I needed to succeed: how to sell and how to build relationships.

I paid most of my way through school, but I really didn’t know my career path. I just knew that I wanted to have as much freedom as possible to make the money I needed to have a great life and spend the time with my family that I wanted.

One morning Dave looked at me as we sat in his battered van and said, You should be in the insurance business.

What?! The insurance business?

I’m serious, Gabe, he said. The State Farm agents are some of the wealthiest guys in this little college town, and they are some of the happiest too. They’re always at their kids’ activities. They’re always doing things in the community. You should look at the insurance business.

I took his advice. My first stop after graduating in 1995 was with American Family Insurance, where I began as an insurance agent. Planning was always part of my work, but it wasn’t my focus. I was young, I was foolish, and ambition carried me to the home office in Wisconsin with dreams of a life in management. I lasted a year, having learned two things. First, I’m not cut out for the culture of corporate America. Second, Melissa, who was pregnant with our first child, wanted to be home near family in South Dakota, not chasing promotions around the country with me. Achieving that goal led me to a job with New York Life in 2000, where I spent two and a half years recruiting and training agents. I wasn’t great at that either, and by then I knew where I wanted to focus.

I earned my credentials as a financial advisor, returned to the field, and was on my way. It’s work I love; it’s work I’m good at—and I lasted five more years with New York Life. But the corporate emails took their toll. I was still working for someone else. I wanted to serve clients and build relationships on my terms, not someone else’s.

That brings us to 2008, when I struck out on my own into a worldwide financial meltdown—and nearly struck out myself.

I endured, and as time went by, my business began to do really well, growing right alongside our recovering economy. I could have coasted along comfortably for the rest of my career—but that’s not how I’m wired. I grew bored, so I did what entrepreneurs do: I began to break stuff so I could fix it. (Sounds familiar?)

In 2019, I joined a coaching program for financial advisers called the Limitless Adviser Coaching program. It’s tremendous. Their mantra: elevate your thinking and accelerate your growth. Their message: if you want to achieve a great lifestyle, find a niche and serve it better than anybody else.

I struggled for ten months in 2019, trying to pick my niche. Nothing I came up with felt exciting. Then the question came to me: where do I have the most fun? I took a look at my clients and realized that it was in helping people just like me: solopreneurs. I live in their world. I think like they do and I speak their language. I know how to fix their problems. I’m perfectly suited to help them identify their goals and manage their finances.

That fired me up. I had my answer. I had been serving solopreneurs for many years, and now it would be my focus.