Working on: Blogging and event planning at Cupcakes Take the Cake, bookkeeping and social media consulting, volunteering at the Vendy Awards, public speaking. Nichelle is hosting The Red Velvet Cake Debate on October 14th at New Work City.

Independent since: October 2005

Before that: Doing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance at a large firm

Her story:

How many people do you know who have an accounting degree, a bookkeeping consultancy, and one of the premier cupcake blogs on the internet? I know one. Her name is Nichelle, and she’s as special as her resume.

Nichelle has been blogging about cupcakes since before cupcakes were cool. Hell, she was blogging about cupcakes since before blogging was cool. Why cupcakes?

“I started writing about cupcakes because I love them and enjoy sharing them with people.

“People keep saying that cupcakes are a fad, but that’s not true. Cupcakes make people happy and happiness is not a fad.”

After graduating from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Business with a degree in accounting, she was took a job with Federated Department Stores as an internal auditor. “It was a perfect first job,” Nichelle said, “I got to travel a lot.”

Nichelle bounced between several jobs at large firms over the next several years, and started her first blog, Cupcakes Take the Cake, in 2004. Less than a year later, she was working for herself full-time, doing consulting gigs and blogging constantly.

Her last day at work was on site with a client. “They were pissed I was leaving,” she said. “I was trying to do the handoff and just make it through the day.” Her last day working for someone else wasn’t marked with any fireworks or fanfare, nor was the following day.

“I just got right into hustle mode. It didn’t hit me until later.”

She joined Paragraph, a sort of coworking space for writers, as one of their first members. She built a base of clients, first with bookkeeping gigs, and eventually for social media gigs, mostly from word of mouth. LinkedIn and Craigslist, she found, were problematic. “They didn’t want to pay me what I was worth,” she said.

What kinds of challenges do independents face?

“Rates are a common problem,” she said. “People email me, asking how much they should charge. I say do a retainer, less project and hourly stuff. You’ll always underestimate.”

On the administration side? “There is no Quickbooks killer,” Nichelle said. “It’s a huge opportunity. Quickbooks is great for accountants, but accounting language is different from regular language.” In fact:

“I have a feeling a lot of people are just doing Google searches and winging it.”

Proper bookkeeping isn’t exceedingly difficult, Nichelle notes, but many are ill-prepared to manage it well, and helpful tools are hard to come by.

What’s your morning routine, if any?

Nichelle is up by 7:00-7:30. She’d rather not get up that early, but her morning centers around stirring up her social media channels first thing in the morning. Optimal timing for posting things and engage communities vary by context, but she has at least one client for whom the morning is the best time.

Her phone is her alarm clock. Checking her messages is the first conscious thing she does.

Her computer sits near her bed, where she opens up Hootsuite, asks some questions on Facebook, and looks to see if any interesting stories are brewing. She retweets anything she finds relevant. She checks her Cupcakes Take the Cake Flickr group, which has over 100,000 photos of cupcakes on it, and blogs anything that might have shown up in the past day that’s noteworthy.

Two of over 100,000 photos from Nichelle’s Flickr group.

She opens up a new Evernote note, and documents anything of significance that happens that day. “I don’t write down everything, just the highlights.” Which vitamins she took, what she cooked, and generally what she got done. The objective? At the end of the day, she receives an email from IDoneThis, which simply asks what she got done that day. She copies her notes from Evernote and pastes them into IDoneThis, which simply records her response and keeps track of her performance.By 9:00, she’s already put out a bunch of content.

“It’s a bragging rights thing,” Nichelle explained. “I’m pissed because I missed one day, and lost my streak. It was 70 days.”

How does one know when to make the jump?

“The most time I spent at one job was two years. So many people stay at jobs a lot longer.” Nichelle notes:

“An indication of you hating your job is when you would prefer to be sick than go to work. There’s something wrong with that.”

If you find yourself in that situation, what next? Trash the boss’s office and leave photocopies of your resignation letter everywhere? Not so fast.

“Don’t quit your day job,” Nichelle warns, at least not right away. She’s seen too many people get burned leaving their jobs in a bad economy without a game plan. “Some have the temperament for this, some do not. Have a plan. Know how to make money with knowledge and skills you have.” Paraphrasing the bestseller Never Eat Alone: 

“Build it before you need it.”

Follow Nichelle on Twitter and check out her thoughts on finance at Keeping Nickels and on delectable things at Cupcakes Take the Cake.

Nichelle’s favorite resources for independents:

Betterment - NY-based index fund. “It’s the easiest way to put aside money for people who are self-employed.”
FreelanceSwitch - A treasure trove of information about making it as an independent.
LifeHacker - Productivity and good articles on technology for non-techies.
Outright - Web app that helps you organize business finances and monitor cash flow