11 Incredibly Effective Rules for Success to know for Your App Based Business

We've been talking about strikes, about how Doordash is behaving badly, lower pay, hiding tips, all that good stuff. Or bad stuff.

It can feel like we're out of control.

But being in control is a matter of choice. This week we talk about 11 rules where you can take control of your app based gig economy business.

What rules would you add? You can comment on the episode page at EntreCourier.com

The rule that makes the other rules:

You are running a business.

Whether you deliver for Doordash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, Instacart or any of the others, or if you do ride share or some other app based gig contracting, you agreed that you were performing a service AS A BUSINESS.

The IRS taxes you like you are running a business.

The best way to succeed at running that business is to embrace the fact that you are indeed running a business. Treat it like a business.

These following rules will help you develop that business mindset.

1. Everything is your fault.
While it sounds negative, it's the most positive thing there could be. Because that means you're in control. You're not at anyone's mercy. You get to make the decisions, you get to operate your business in a way that makes sense.

2. Know your Why.
Understand your reason for getting into the gig economy and let that guide you.

3. Know the relationship with the gig companies.
They aren't our employers. They're not our bosses. They are our customers.

4. Running a business means your customer will try to screw you.
It happens everywhere. And businesses thrive. Remember that you're the one in control of the relationships you get into.

5. Think profit.
The money you make is NOT the money that gets paid to you by Uber Eats, Doordash, Lyft, Grubhub, Instacart or others. What you earn is what's left over after expenses.

6. Give Yourself a Paycheck.
Get a bank account just for your business. You can try Novo (affiliate link).  Save money for expenses, taxes and paid time off (Hurdlr has a great calculator for figuring taxes). Then pay yourself the difference.

7. Give your time a value.
Time is money! But how much money? Decide what your time is worth.

8. Set your price
Based on your why and the value of your time, set a standard for when gigs are worth accepting.

9. Make Business Decisions.
You decided your why. You set your price and value for your time. Make decisions based on how it impacts your business, not on emotion and definitely not based on anyone's ideas of how you should make decisions.

10. Be Awesome.
A key to success for any business is how great they are. Gig work is no different.

11. Have an exit plan
Laws could change. Your preferences could change. Start planning for the great "What's Next?"

A couple other rules came to mind:

• No one owes you anything
• Never rely on just one customer.

What rules would you add? Contact us at one of the links below to let us know:

Visit Entrecourier.com
Our Podcast page is at DeliverOnYourBusiness.com
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Transcript

0:00

Who's the boss? You're the boss. Who's the boss? You're the boss. Repeat after me. I am the boss. Well, hey, Courier nation. Welcome back. It is season two, episode four of the Deliver on Your Business podcast, where this is all about encouraging you and equipping you to take charge of your business because as an independent contractor in the gig economy, whether you're doing delivery, whether you're doing ride share any of these app based type things, you're running a business, and that's what this is all about, helping you to deliver on your business. Well, hey, my friends, it is good to be back. It is good to be back on the air. It's good to have you back here again this week here, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it this week. We just got through moving and moving is for young people, and I'm not young people, and we'll just leave it at that. So let's just dive right into today's topic here. I thought what I would talk about is eleven rules for app based independent contractors to succeed in the gig economy. And folks, I'll do my best to keep each of these rules short so that you're not hanging on to this for 2 hours because you're probably not going to hang on to this for 2 hours anyway. So let's get right down to it. Eleven rules that will help an app based independent contractor delivery, Grubhub, DoorDash, Uber Eats Instacart, maybe even Ride Share, Uber Lyft any of these where you're an independent contractor in the gig economy, especially in the app based world, eleven rules to help you succeed as you run your own business, and they all revolve around one big rule. And that one big rule is, my friends, you are running a business. And if you listen to me enough and especially this season, you hear me saying this enough, you're running a business. And here's the thing, my friends. When you signed up, when you signed up with Uber, or when you signed up with DoorDash or anybody like that, you signed or you agreed to the terms of service. That said, I agree that I'm an independent contractor. I agree that I'm not an employee, and you go through your contract and you're probably going to find terms about how you're providing services as a business, that this is a business to business relationship. I believe that DoorDash has terms in there talking about this being a relationship of equals. I think a lot of people don't see it that way, but that's the thing. Is that's what you agreed to. If you don't believe that, that's what it is, that's a different story. But you agreed to it. So here's the deal. Whether you agreed to it or not, you are running a business according to taxes, according to the contract, according to all of this, you are running a business. And I think the best thing that you can do. The one big overarching thing that you could do to help you to succeed is to embrace that role is to really take to heart the fact that you are running a business. And in light of the fact that you're running a business, these are the eleven rules that I've got. Okay, so rule number one, everything is your fault. I know it sounds like such a positive way to get started, isn't it? I probably lost half of my audience right there. Oh, wait a minute. Now you're going to be a Downer, my friends, that's not a Downer. I'm serious. This is not a Downer. This is, I think, incredibly powerful stuff. And this is a rule that I stole from Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary V. I've quoted this a few times that he said, when you're running your own business, when you're doing it yourself, everything is your fault. And that's a good thing, because that means you are in control. And this is the mindset that I think before you go anywhere else, you really want to start with this thing, say, I'm in control. And a lot of this ties into maybe one of my favorite things that I've ever learned. And that was from seven habits of highly effective people. And this idea that you put your effort into controlling the things that you can control and not stress over the things that you cannot control. And ever since I took that to heart, and that has been huge. That's just been a huge lesson right there. And there's a lot of stuff we can't control when we're doing stuff in the gig economy, but there's a lot of things that we can control. And I remember I had a boss when I was in telecom that, you know, I didn't like him at the time for this fact. Probably looking back, I still don't like him. Maybe that's part of the reason that I'm such a big person on being your own boss nowadays. But anyway, he did teach me something. I think it was a really valuable lesson. We would have something where you did everything you could possibly do, and the customers still unhappy about it. And it's just kind of like, okay, but how is that my fault? If something happens, there's nothing that you could have done to prevent it from happening. And it's like, how is that my fault? What right? Do they have to be unhappy with me? And a lot of times, customers do get upset with you for things that aren't your fault. But he was real good at kind of helping guide me through this thought process of. Okay, yes, you couldn't have done anything about whatever the circumstances were. But is there something that maybe we could have said differently leading up to it? Is there something that we could have done to set the expectation with the customers? Is there a better way that we could have communicated things when everything started going south. So just a lot of different things. And it came back to the same thing. There are some things you can't control, but what can you control? And it really made a difference in my approach to everything like that. And it really kind of comes into this whole idea now of this idea that everything is your fault. And while that sounds like a negative thing, it's really, I think a very powerful thing, because it really is that there is so much that we can control and that we can do something about. And if we take this mindset that, hey, this is all on me, you know what that does? It takes off a ton of stress about worrying about what is Grubhub or DoorDash going to do to me, because it's like I can't control that. But if I'm not worried about that, it really makes a big difference in my outlook. And so when I start to decide, okay, everything is on me. The thing is, and I start to realize that my success doesn't depend on those guys. It depends on me. And when I start thinking of it that way, it is like I've got the power to do well, no matter what kind of garbage these companies pull. And that's a huge, huge difference in outlook. And I think that I'm going a little bit longer on this particular rule, and I'm going to on all the others, because I know you don't want to be stuck through 2 hours of me just pontificating here anything like that. But this is huge. It really is. Take the attitude that everything is my fault, and what that means is things don't go well. You can start to look for what could you do to prevent that? Or what could you do to better manage that if things do go south and that helps you to be better the next time. But the other thing is when you decide that everything is your fault, when you succeed, not if when you succeed, that's your fault, too. That's incredibly positive in my mind. Okay, rule number two for success as an independent contractor in the gig economy is know your why, decide what it is that you're trying to accomplish, and let that guide you. This was when I did the Courier MBA series to launch this podcast back in season one. My favorite episode in that was episode three, and it was all about this topic to know your why. And so I'm not going to go and do a whole podcast episode worth of talking about it here. But if you got an idea of what it is you're trying to accomplish and what it is you're doing with this, that makes a huge difference in helping guide your future decisions about this. I've been involved in a lot of discussions with different people. They've just got different philosophies about how they're going about this. For me, it is about maximizing my profit when I'm out and delivering. I know some other guys that they take every order and they're happy as a clam, and it's because they're enjoying the process. And neither philosophy is right or wrong. It is what it really comes down to is when you determine what it is you want to accomplish and what it is that's important to you and all of those things. And you let that guide you. That's when you've got the right philosophy. And so if your purpose is something different, then you shouldn't be listening to me pontificating about how you're supposed to do this. Because my why is not your why do you understand what I'm saying here with that? So get centered on what it is. Why are you doing this? Why is that important to you? Why is that reason important to you? Dig deep and determine what it is you want to do with this and let that be a central guiding force for everything that you do from that step forward. Okay. Rule number three for success as an independent contractor in the app based gig economy, I understand the relationship that you've got with these big companies. I think too often we look at them as the boss and we're the employee. Remember that main overriding rule that you're running a business. Remember the contract that you agreed to that basically says it's a relationship of equals. It's a business business relationship that you are providing a service as a business. Now, why is that important? The reason that this is important is that when you understand that and you lead with that idea that you're running a business, then you start to realize that DoorDash Uber Grubhub, Lyft Instacart. These guys, they're not your boss. They're your customers. And I know some are going to say, yeah, the people that you deliver to are the people that you drive around or whatever you do with your app based work, that those guys are your customers. But you didn't sign a contract with them. You signed the contract with these gig economy companies. And these gig economy companies are ultimately the ones that are paying you, and that makes them your customers. And that changes the relationship dramatically. It's not a boss employee relationship. It's a business to business relationship. Now, that means a few different things, you know, one, it means you don't have to accept their business. You don't have to accept everything that they throw at you. But it also means that you've got an obligation to do what you agreed to do with them. We'll get into some of that stuff later on, but it really does. When you start to look at this as they're your customer instead of your boss, I think that puts you in kind of a different frame of mind when you're going about everything else that follows from here. So remember that relationship and understand that these gig companies are our customers, not our bosses. So that rule leads us right into rule number four. You could almost call this A. Why am I trying to say rural? Okay, I'm talking too much. Maybe if I'm getting my words twisted. But anyway, you could almost call this rule three B or something like that. Anyway, rule four is when you're running a business, your customer is going to try and screw you. Think about it. If you own a store, you got customers that are going to try and shop lift. When I was in telecom, we always had customers that they wanted to knock us down to the very lowest price possible. If you've got a restaurant and people are going to ask for every single deal in the books, and they don't care whether or not you're taking a loss or something like that. They want to get by with the lowest price possible. And these big companies that we contract with are no disappointment to this idea. They're going to try and screw you. They are going to try and pay you less. They are going to try and get you to do more for what they're paying. And, you know, I don't want to sound like I'm defending these guys, but they're right as a customer to try and get by with as little as possible. But there's a flip side to that, and that is that it is your right as the business owner to say no. It is your right and your responsibility as a business owner to kind of guard against that, because that's just one of the drawbacks. If you're not careful in whatever kind of business you run, if you're not careful about the relationship that you've got with the customer, you could end up operating at a loss. That is true if you're running a store, that is true if you're running a contracting business, like as a general contractor, or that is true running a restaurant. And that is true as an independent contractor. So the deal is the customer is going to try and screw you. But you've got the power to say no to that. I keep thinking that maybe I should hire an announcer or something like that to come in with a real deep voice, and I can kind of plug them in in the middle of this where you get this deep how to Rule five, I don't know. What do you think? Would that make this any more fun to listen to? Anyway, rule five for success as an independent contractor is to think profit, not revenue. To think in terms of profit, not the money that you're getting from each of these companies. What that means is that when you're running a business, the money that you are making, the IRS looks at it this way, and in reality, you should be looking at it this way to the money that you're making is what's left over after your expenses. And so that's kind of hard sometimes because you know, you come in at the end of the day and you're thinking, oh, hey, I made a 1000.$1,000 in a day would be awesome, wouldn't it? I made $1,000 this week. But if you're not stopping and thinking about what did it cost to do that, and if you are treating that money that you made, this is all my money. You're going to run into problems. You're going to run into tax problems. You're going to run into vehicle problems if you use your car. And so what you want to do is you want to get into a mindset that the money you're making is the money that is left over after your expenses. Think in terms of profit. Do that early on, and that will help you to make decisions. Some that we'll talk about here in a few minutes that will help you make decisions that will allow you to be successful as you go down the line. So think in terms of profit, not of just the money that you get from these big companies. Okay. Rule number six, it's another one of those that is kind of like a sub rule of the one right before. It just kind of follows from that. And that one is to give yourself a paycheck. I told you to think about in terms of profit. Here's what I do. I take I take about $0.30 a mile each week, and I put that aside into an account for my vehicle expenses. And what that did then was on my old Buick. It allowed me to for one thing, it allowed me to cover some of the bigger ticket expenses that did come up because it was a 20 plus year old car. And the other thing that it did was it also then kind of help build up a little bit of a slush fund for when I did decide to retire that car and replace it, I could get something a little bit newer, because the thing is, when you use your car for your deliveries or for a ride share, you're going to wear the dumb thing out. And when you put a lot of miles on your car, you're going to get a lot less, a lot less money for your trade in or when you sell it or something like that, then you would get if you hadn't been putting so many stupid miles on that thing, we wear those cars out, and too many people are not prepared for that. But if you're looking at the as an expense, the moment that you drive that mile and you put the money aside for that, you avoid those surprises. You avoid the crisis of oh, my gosh, my tires are bald, but I can't afford to buy tires. You know, you're prepared for that. Put money aside for your expenses and put that into it. You would call that a operations fund, maybe, and put money aside for your taxes. And there are a lot of ways you can go with how to do that. I've got articles. I'll put a link down as far as how you can save or how you can plan on what to save. Or you can use a tool like Hurdler, because if you're using Hurdler, that's a great tool for I put a link for them as well. They are an affiliate partner, but with Hurdler, they've got a little thing in there that will calculate what your taxes would be based on factors like your filing status, other money that you're receiving. If you're filing married, you know, the money that your spouse is receiving, all those different things. And so it makes a much more accurate calculation than like a tool like Stride, which basically all they do is just do a flat 30%. But whatever you're doing, you find a good way to determine what you're doing, save your money for taxes. And then the third thing you should be doing is especially if you do this full time is give yourself a paid time off fund. You know, I set aside, like $50 a week, and that then allowed me when I want to take time off for vacation, that allowed me to just take money out to cover the bills for when I'm not driving. And I didn't have to stress about having to all of a sudden go up and make up for the lost time. And when the pandemic happened, man, that was huge. It was absolutely huge for me because there was a time where I thought I needed to take some time off and just sit it out for a little while. And I could afford to do that without having to ask for the DoorDash Relief Fund or Grub Hub fund or any of those things. And all the headaches that people had trying to get reactivated after taking that money. I didn't have to worry about that stuff because it already taken care of it myself. So those three things I really recommend you do, set aside money for your car, especially if you drive a lot. That's just a huge thing. Set aside money for taxes. And if you do this a significant amount of time and you really rely on this money, set aside money for some paid time off. The best way to do this is get your money deposited into a different bank account. Don't put it all into your checking account. Don't touch that money until you've set those things aside each week. And then the money that's left over after you do those things. Now you transfer that over to your checking account. And it's just like giving yourself a paycheck. And it really makes a huge difference in being able to manage your money and also being able to take care of the things that are a nasty surprise for a lot of people. So give yourself a paycheck. Okay. Rule number seven for success as an independent contractor is put a value on your time. We're always saying time is money. But if I were to ask you if you told me time is money, okay, how much money? How much is that five minutes costing you that that you have to wait longer at a restaurant. Or how much is that costing you the half hour that it takes you to get started on deliveries because you're kind of piddling around or different things like that? Have you ever put a value to your time? You know, the thing is, the reality is, in the gig economy, a lot of people try and distance. Themselves from this idea of tying your time to your money because making so much per hour, that's an employee thing. Well, I'm going to tell you that it's a business thing, too. I've run businesses. I've been part of it. And the deal is you've got so much time. There's a limit on how much time you've got no matter what you're doing. And that translates into your time. You're trading time for money and so many different types of things. And the gig economy is a trading time for money type of thing. Now, Kevin Ha, he's been a guest on the podcast here. He runs a Financial Panther website, and he makes the argument. He says, well, you're not really trading time for money. You're trading tasks for money. And there's a lot of truth to that. You're trading this delivery for a set amount of money. You're trading this ride for a set amount of money. You're trading this whatever it is that you're doing for a certain amount of money. But those tasks take a certain amount of time. So you want to kind of keep keep a hold on. What is that money? What is that time actually worth? And the first time that I decided to try and do that, I think I started with about$20 an hour, and I dropped it to $18 an hour because it was real easy to measure then because$18 an hour was $0.30 a minute.$0.30 a minute was $18 an hour.$0.40 a minute was $24 an hour. And lately I've bumped up to $0.50 a minute or $30 an hour, so you can kind of start with, okay, what is it that you're trying to accomplish? How much are you wanting to get for the amount of time that you're putting it into it and break it down to a minute by minute type of thing? Because then when you're starting to look at things like, okay, I'm kind of dragging my feet, getting started. Okay. Well, that half hour is costing me now $15. All of a sudden, this idea that time is money becomes very real. And if a delivery is going to mean that you got to wait a little bit longer, time is money. And now you know what that money is? And that ten minute wait at the restaurant now is basically if you're at $0.50 a minute, that's $5. Now that you're not making, that you would be making if you're out doing a different delivery that was meeting that price that you said or something like that. So put a value on your time, and that will help you with future decisions. Okay. So we are on to rule number eight out of the eleven rules for success for app based gig economy contractors. And this is another one that could be maybe a sub rule from the rule before. And this one is set your price. And if you put a value on your time, it makes it a little easier to set your price. Because here's the thing, if you owned a store and you were selling widgets and your widget needs to sell for $5 for you to make enough of a profit to stay in business, pay your employees, keep the lights on all those different things. And a customer walks in and says, hey, I want to give you $3 for all of your widgets, $3 a piece for all of your widgets, and you're going to say, no, I can't do that. I can't make a good living selling widgets if I'm going to sell those widgets at a loss. And I think too often we feel an obligation, we go back to this employee mindset. We think that we got to take this offer because DoorDash sent it to us. We've got to do this because this is what Lift expects of me or whatever, and you lose money because of it. My friends, here's the important thing. And that is that these companies made the decision to contract with you as a business. They decided not to bring you on as employee. They decided they didn't want to pay for all of the things that you got to pay for to have an employee. And they wanted to bring you on in a business to business relationship. When you're running a business and the customers not offering you enough for you to run a profitable business, you've got the right to say no. So set your price. And the reason that I said that this is kind of like a subset of the rule number seven, where it's put a value on your time because it's that value that I put on my time that I use is my price. When I'm evaluating deliveries, I use a 50 cent rule. I say this delivery needs to be paying me $0.50 a minute or more. I try and estimate, how long is this delivery going to take? How much am I going to make? Is this going to meet my 50 cent rule? And that helps me decide that's my price. And it's not cherry picking. It's me deciding what I need to make to make it worth doing these deliveries. And at some point, maybe no more deliveries will ever come that will meet that price. And at that point, it's time for me to make a decision. Do I lower my price or do I move on to something else? And so once you've decided what your value is for your time, then you can set a price. You can evaluate whether or not you're going to take this offer. You're going to take this ride. You're going to take this delivery based on is it going to meet your price? We are moving right along. We are on rule number nine for success as an independent contractor in the gig economy. And rule number nine is to make business decisions. And this goes back to a couple of rules. This goes back to that one overriding rule. You are running a business. So think of it in terms of whatever you decide. And this could be whether to accept offers, whether to accept tasks, to accept any of that stuff, whether to accept a ride. This could be whether or not it makes sense to go out and deliver on a certain day. All these things you start off with, you're running a business. You start off with rule number two, which is to understand your wide to understand your purpose. How does this decision support your ultimate purpose? And we'll use the example, I guess, of, let's say, a two dollar and 50 cent offer. I know guys that they just love doing deliveries, and it's just it's a great way to get around. It's a great way to make some extra money. They don't want to get stressed out about all that. Okay, how much am I banking? I'm just going to go out, enjoy the heck out of the process. And that's their purpose. And so for them, you know what? To take a two dollar and 50 cent offer, it meets their business purpose, and that regard that's their business decision. You know, for me, it's about running a more profitable business. And so my decision is going to be whether or not it meets my price. And for me, that's my business decision. My business decisions don't equate to your business decisions because my business is different than your business. And at the same time, your business decisions are different than mine, because your business, your purpose, the things that you're trying to accomplish are different things. And so there's really there's two things I think that come to mind out of this idea of making business decisions. The first one is they're your decisions don't feel obligated to file or somebody else's formula. Don't feel obligated to do things because somebody tells you to decline. Now somebody tells you to take so much per mile, or somebody tells you not to be a top dash, or somebody tells you to be top Dasher or any of that stuff. Don't let other people make your decisions for you. You can make your own decisions. You're a grown person. You have to be to be old enough to be able to be an independent contractor. So you're a grown up, put on your grownup pants, make your own decisions. And that's incredibly freeing, because you don't have to worry about what any other independent contractor thinks you should be doing. What they think doesn't matter what you think. What your business is is what matters. The other side of this making business decisions, things that I think is really important is make them business decisions and not emotional decisions. And I think that will free you up a lot, too. So an example is I used to get emotional because maybe somebody wasn't tipping to the point that it didn't matter how good the delivery was going to pay. If I saw on Grub hub that the customer didn't leave a tip, and all of this is getting paid through Grubhub, I was going to decline it. That no tip, no trip thing. And it dawned on me that I'm, like, ready to pass up on a good paying delivery because I'm getting emotional about whether or not hey tipped. And I think when I got to the point where I took this attitude that it was like, you know, it's kind of like it's between the customer and the delivery company who's going to pay how much, and I'll let them go back and forth. And I really don't give a crap whether, you know, DoorDash pays it all, and a customer doesn't pay a thing, or the customer pays it all. And Uber Eats only pays me $2 in the end. To me, it didn't matter if the order was good enough to take it's good enough to take. And that took a big load off my shoulders. When I changed to that attitude, I didn't get so emotional. I didn't get stressed out or anything like that. And it was just the more that I got into this idea that my decisions were based on business decisions, business rationale and not emotional things. I was emotionally in a much, much better place because it was like, okay, if it satisfied me, I'm satisfied. And I wasn't going to worry about those details. I wasn't going to worry about my feelings about whether or not somebody didn't respect me enough for something by not tipping enough. And so it's that kind of thing that it is like, make your own decisions because no one else can tell you. No one else has the right to tell you how to make your decisions and and then make decisions based on your business. And I think you're going to find yourself so much happier. Okay, so we are counting down the rules for success for independent contractors in the gig economy, and we got nine down two to go. Rule number ten is just be awesome. You know, if you want to run a good business, be awesome at what you do. Because I think, you know what? It's so easy just to kind of take this idea. Well, I'm an independent contractor. I can do whatever I want, and then you start feeling I don't have to worry about quality. I don't have to worry about anything as long as I deliver the food here and there, and I get my money and I'm good. And usually that's the fastest way to not being able to deliver anymore. And here's the thing. And maybe it's just me putting my values in or whatever. But I think integrity is one of the most important things to running a good business, and it is an integrity by that. I mean, do what you promised to do. You promise to get this food to the customer. You promise to provide good service. You promise all of this kind of promise is just implicit in your agreement with them. Be awesome at it. You know, go out there and act like a business as providing good service. Here's the deal. It's like there are places that I will always do business with. When we were getting our house ready to sell, and there were some people that came in, I just did an incredible job. And I tell everybody in the neighborhood about them now because they did it. They were honest. They were fair and excellent workmanship and stuff like that. And it's just like, you do a great job at what you do and you have a much, much, much better chance of staying in business. And honestly, I think the same thing is true in the gig economy. And if you do a crappy job, you got a much better chance of your customer finally decide. You know what? I don't think I want to do business with you anymore. I know a place I know of a restaurant that has gotten into all sorts of public tiffs with people. And they have well, I want to say they but it's the owner has just, like, all over social media about all sorts of things. And guess what? I go by his place and there's nothing happening there. This guy is not going to survive very long. And so it's like, you know, the best thing you can do, I think, is just be awesome. And I was almost going to make this another rule, but it really is kind of another sub rule. Okay, I didn't do subrules before. So why am I doing that now? But this fits, I think, and that is be awesome. But don't be stupid. And I shouldn't have to say stuff like this. Don't eat the customers food, don't cuss out the customers when they didn't tip you. Don't do stupid stuff, be awesome in what you're doing business and avoid stupid, and you're going to be in pretty good shape. We are finally down to the eleventh and final rule for success for independent contractors and the gig, the app based gig economy. And that rule is, have an exit plan, decide what you're going to do whenever you're done with this. You know, the reality is this isn't a long term thing now. Maybe for you, it is. I mean, I've been at this three and a half years, so it's longer term than a lot of jobs I've had. I guess maybe it's longer term than I realized. But, you know, there are just a lot of things with this. For one thing that I think there's a lot about being an independent contractor and the fact that you are running your business when you take this on correctly, it's like it opens the door to other things that you could do. It gives you some skills. It gives you some experience that you could put to work in other types of things, whether that is moving on to be an employee for somebody, if that's the way you want to go, or whether that means moving on to starting a different business, that feels like even more like a business, you know? And so I really encourage you to think about, what would you do? What would you do if you decided you didn't want to do delivery anymore? Where do you want this delivery experience or ride share experience or whatever your gig is? Where do you want that to lead? What would you love to do with your life and start working on how to get to that place. You know, is there a career you really want to get into? Start now asking yourself, how do I get there? And there's a lot you can do with your free time that can help get you in that direction. What happens if, you know, legislation comes about that says, okay, you can't be an independent contractor anymore. Now, what do you do if you've got an exit plan? It's not as scary, you know? And so start thinking about what's next. What's the next? Great opportunity. I look at Gig economy work as a gateway drug. It is it is an exposure to certain aspects of being an entrepreneur. And so it has helped me tremendously in starting to build my website and the podcast and different things like that to where I'm building a business on that side. And a lot of that came from this gateway drug of being an independent contractor. And so I think one of the greatest values of doing this is it introduces you to the idea that you can do so much more. And even that goes back to that very first rule that you're running a business, because I can guarantee that for most of you, you weren't thinking of that when you signed on as an independent contractor where you you weren't saying, hey, I want to run a business. He's just saying, okay, I want to make some money. But the thing is, there are aspects about this that are very much running a business, and it gives you experience. It gives you a feel for what that really is like. And it helps you identify is this where you want to go next? So be thinking about what's next? Well, hey, car your nation. What did you think? That's eleven rules. And there is a temptation to create the title that says the eleven Most Important Rules. And if I threw that most important part in there, I think I'd be lying because I'm sure that there are things I didn't think of. In fact, as I wrap this up, I thought two more. And I thought, well, maybe I just kind of pretend that I never said eleven and just add those two on or something like that. But here's two that just came to mind that as I'm going through all of this one of those is, you know, I could call this rule number twelve. Nobody owes you a stinking thing. You're not entitled to anything. When you run a business, there's no minimum wage. There's no guarantee. Nobody can force people to come into your restaurant. Nobody can force customers to come by from your store. It's your responsibility. Okay, maybe that's actually something that just fits under real number one, that everything is your fault. But there's a two episodes ago I talked about this DoorDash strike that was supposed to be happening on July 30. I kind of ranted about that. That it's like if you take seriously the fact that you're running a business, you don't go on strike against your customers. And so you make decisions to work around the fact that rule number four, the customer is going to try and screw you. That was one rule that came to mind. Here is another one that came to mind is you should never have just one customer, and that one I should have put in there. But like I said, I already had the eleven written out. And that's one of those things. And all these things kind of come back to this idea that remember that you're running a business. Think of this running through, run your thoughts through this filter, that you're running a business, that these companies or your customers, and you'll probably come up with a lot of good rules yourself. Because once you've got that mindset in there that you're running a business, it kind of informs a lot of other things about what you're doing. And I'd love to hear from you. I would love to hear what you think of these rules here. But even more like I said, I can't call these the best eleven rules, because I already came up with two that probably fit in just as well as the others. And if that happened, I know that there's other things that I missed. So I'd love to hear from you. And you can email Ron at Entre Courier Com, or you can go to you can go to the show notes, and I'll have contact information there. You can go to entrecourier.com/s2-e4, which is kind of the show note page on the website. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. And from there, then you can leave a comment on that page. Let me know, I guess anything that you would add. And I'd be glad to pass on any great ideas that I hear from you guys. And you know what? While we're at it, I'd love to hear what you want to talk about. I'd love to hear any ideas that you've got as far as what should we be talking about in future episodes, because that always helps out a lot. I'd love to know what you guys are thinking. You know, in the meantime, as a wrap this up, I think I've said all these things here about all these rules. And the bottom line is all of this stuff wraps up into that first thing that I said, you're running a business. And all of that wraps up into this idea of you're not an employee. And all of that means that maybe the most important rule of all of them is to be the boss.