Well, it happened. It happened WAY faster than I thought it would, too. So fast actually that I had to think about stuff I didn’t even realize I had to think about.
OK, first off the booking was for a client I never thought I’d have, let alone be my first one. Not that it was someone I didn’t want to work with (don’t think I even have any of those), it was just a surprise because … well, it was a church. Now, I’m not an overly religious person, but if I can lend my voice to something that inspires people and gives them hope and happiness, I’m 100% alright with that. Plus, if I didn’t want the work, I wouldn’t have even auditioned. It was actually really cool because when they accepted my audition, they gave me some great feedback about WHY they liked it. Apparently that doesn’t happen much (or feedback of any kind really).
The scampering around came after it was all done and my contact said “Alright, just send the invoice over and we’ll get you paid!”
I immediately realized that even though I had a Paypal account ready to go, I have NEVER invoiced anyone in my LIFE! Luckily Paypal had an easy-peasy invoice wizard thingy (and it worked, too and I got paid, so yay!), so I just used that.
It also made me realize I hadn’t taken any of the other steps to actually get the business side of things going … like … create the actual business, so I went ahead and did that whole “sole proprietorship” thing. It was super easy using the website for my state and I had it all done in under a half hour, I think; including my EIN number! So now I can invoice people with a real business name (they allowed 4 DBAs / FFNs on the application) and look professional!
Here’s to my first gig and hopefully it won’t be my last 😀