July 13, 2024 • 11 mins
Welcome to the latest episode of "In the Clinic with Camille," where herbalist and nutritionist Camille Freeman dives into a pertinent question from listener Oren about managing multiple business ventures. Camille explores the complexities of deciding when to keep different facets of your work under one umbrella and when to separate them into distinct entities.
Camille addresses both the business and community-facing aspects of this dilemma, offering thoughts on how to protect your personal finances, manage business risk, and present your work cohesively to your community. Whether you're juggling teaching, clinical practice, or other projects, this episode provides valuable guidance to help you streamline your business operations.
Don't miss Camille's tips on maintaining simplicity and avoiding unnecessary complexity in your business structure. Submit your own questions for future episodes at https://www.intheclinic.com
P.S. This episode does not address the question of whether you need a business entity at all when starting your practice. That's an entirely separate question, and one that's addressed in the Roots course 💚
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.
I am an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share little tips
and tidbits for other practitioners.
So today, I am really excited to bring in the first question that has been submitted
on my brand new podcast website by Oren. Thank you, Oren.
Before I answer this question, I just want to direct anyone else who's listening
(00:24):
who might want to submit a question to the website, which is intheclinic.com.
If you go there, you will see over on the right side, a little rectangular box
that says, actually, I forget exactly what it says, but something like submit
a question or submit a question to Camille, something along those lines with
a little microphone on it.
If you click there, you will open up a voice recorder and you will have up to
(00:46):
two minutes to leave a question for me.
I would absolutely love to answer your question relating to being in practice
as an herbalist or a nutritionist or something related to those things.
So if you get a chance, head over to InTheClinic.com and leave me a message.
To get on to Oren's question, I will admit that I have not gotten my technical
(01:09):
act together enough to figure out how to actually embed Oren's question into
the podcast itself. self.
So instead of doing that, I'm going to summarize what Oren said.
And hopefully in the future, I'll figure out this technological wizardry and
get it all sorted. But for right now, let's summarize the question.
(01:30):
Oren essentially asked me, at what point do you need separate businesses for
the different types of things that you do?
And Oren was talking about how many practitioners have different components
of our work, such as we might be teaching, we might have a clinic,
some people have apothecaries.
Oren has been doing some work with Ember Peters in creating programs,
(01:51):
and they've thought about maybe creating a separate website for a school for that type of work.
So at what point do you need to separate out some of these things?
And when can all of your work live under the same umbrella?
Now, as far as I have been able to think about this, there's really two separate
questions here, I think, at least two.
One of them is, at what point, from a legal accounting business perspective,
(02:15):
do you need to separate things? So do you need separate business entities?
Do you need separate bank accounts, etc.? So that's one part of the question.
And then the other part of the question is, even if you do choose to keep everything
under the same umbrella or different umbrellas, how do you present this in a
way to your community that isn't confusing,
it doesn't feel like a bunch of weird things are wedged together,
(02:38):
and it also doesn't feel like things are so separated that they can't figure
out all the different things you do. Yep.
So let's address those two components of the question separately.
Now, first of all, to talk about the business legal components,
I would like to again highlight that I am not a lawyer.
I am not a business professional other than having a business and working with people who do.
But this is not an area of expertise for me. So I'm only going to pass along my initial thoughts.
(03:04):
And I would really encourage anybody who's thinking about this to check with
a lawyer or at least some kind of business accounting type of person in your area of residence.
It's my understanding that from the perspective of like, do you need an entirely
different business, that there would be a couple of times when you might want to consider that.
(03:24):
One of them would be, of course, if you're going to open up a business that
does something totally different.
So if you are an herbalist and you decide you also want to open a bookstore
or, I don't know, start selling garden shears or something like that,
then you probably would want to have a whole separate LLC or business structure.
And those would be just basically like having two separate jobs.
(03:46):
Another time that you might want to think about it is if one portion of something
that you're doing is more legally risky.
The whole point of having a business entity or one of the points of having a
business entity is that you are protecting your personal finances and separating
them from your business finances when you have an LLC or beyond.
(04:07):
And if you have a bunch of things that have different levels of risk in the
same LLC, then they're basically all at the point of risk of the most vulnerable thing.
So that would be something to consider, something to think about.
There may be other times for tax purposes, etc., that you might want to think about it.
But I think for the vast majority of people, it makes sense as much as possible
(04:29):
to keep what you're doing under one umbrella.
Because a lot of us are solopreneurs. We don't have a big staff.
It's harder to do taxes for two different entities than it is one.
You're going to need to have two sets of business bank accounts and two sets
of accounting spreadsheets and all that type of stuff is going to be doubled
if you decide to separate out business entities. Okay, so that's one part of the puzzle.
(04:51):
The other thing to consider, though, is if you are going into business with someone else.
So, for example, if Oren and Amber decide they want to have a whole school together
and they want to have a partnership of some sort,
then that may make sense because each of them also have their own separate things
that they're doing that they wouldn't really want to co- what's the word I'm thinking of?
(05:15):
They wouldn't necessarily want to be partners for all of their clinical work
or teaching herb walks or things like that, but really just be these certain
programs that they want to teach together,
but they don't want to have one person who's doing it and just paying the other
through their business.
So in that case, maybe it does make sense to have a separate business entity
for the school, and then they would each have their own kind of private practice,
(05:39):
private business entities for whatever else that they're doing,
however they want to structure that. So that's something that I would think about.
And that way, again, you have when you go into a formal partnership with somebody,
you come up with guidance and rules for okay, what happens? How are we going to split the money?
What happens if one of us decides to step back or moves away from this business?
(06:02):
You know, all of that just kind of gets hammered out in the beginning.
And that seems like it makes a lot of sense.
Again, I am not a lawyer. I am not a business expert. So run that by someone
else. But that's something that would be on my mind if I were in that situation.
The next thing, though, which I think is perhaps more what Oren was getting
at, is around how do you present what you're doing?
(06:25):
And at what point do you need to separate things out so that maybe there's a
whole separate website for the school or a certain type of thing you're doing?
And other things can all live together under one website.
So how do you think about community facing descriptions of the different facets of your work?
(06:45):
And again, I don't think there's necessarily a right or a wrong answer here.
But what I would use as a screening tool is essentially anything that follows
the same mission and values could live in the same sphere, in the same website.
So for example, if your mission and values is about connecting people with plants
(07:11):
or connecting people with the nature or their bodies or whatever it is,
and you do that by teaching herb walks, leading herb walks in the community
and seeing clients one-on-one and teaching classes about how to make salves or whatever it is,
then all three of those things, while they are different and some people may
only be interested in one component of them,
(07:32):
they could all live in the same place because they all work together to the same end.
And I think that that would be okay.
If you have some part of what you're doing that doesn't really align in terms
of mission and values with the other parts of what you're doing,
then I think it may make sense to separate it out.
(07:53):
I do want to, again, just warn you that as soon as you separate something out,
you're adding an immense amount of complexity to your business because then
what you have is, oh, maybe you have a separate website, maybe you have a separate
email address, maybe you have a separate email list or social media accounts
or whatever it is. It just starts to get really tricky.
So if I had to go down on the favor of wedging a little bit too much under the
(08:17):
same umbrella or being too eager to split things off,
I would err on the side of putting a little bit too much under one umbrella
just for the sake of your own mental health,
trying to keep up with everything and manage it all because it just gets more complex.
That being said, if there is something that you're doing that seems like it
really is only relevant,
(08:40):
people might be interested in only that one thing and really,
really probably not the rest of what you're doing, you could have a very simple
second website or second email list or something like that.
What's probably going to happen, though, is one of the two is going to wither
a little bit because, again, you only have so much attention.
So just think really carefully about that. I'll give you an example,
(09:03):
which is that right now, as many of you know, I am writing a book about newsletters.
And while the book about newsletters is for herbalists and nutritionists,
which is what most of what I do is for, those are who the people for whom I
do most of my work, the newsletter book is going to be a little bit more broad.
It's really for anybody who's looking for more one-on-one clients.
(09:26):
And therefore, I am going to have a separate website for the newsletter book.
It'll be linked to from my main website, but I am going to separate it out because
I think that there will be interest from people who may or may not really want
to be hearing all my things about upcoming continuing education classes for
nutritionists if they're like,
well, I'm a copywriter, so I don't care about the nervous system deep dive or
(09:50):
whatever else. So I am going to do that.
And I probably will, again, have a very, very basic website for the book and
maybe a very, very simple newsletter that does not go out as frequently as my main one.
So that's the plan there. But I probably would not try to start a whole separate
(10:11):
newsletter business and split myself right down the middle trying to do a bunch
of newsletter content, this, that, and the other, aside from potentially just
around the promotion of my book.
So anyway, I hope that is helpful. Orin, if you have follow-up questions or
any other thoughts, please let me know.
And if anybody else wants to chime in, you can use the voicemail feature on intheclinic.com.
(10:38):
All right, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
All right, before I leave you, also just want to remind you that I write a newsletter
for practitioners. It comes out every Thursday.
And I just share little tips, tricks, recommendations, that type of thing that
might be helpful in your work as you build and grow your clinical practice.
So if you want to sign up for that, you can go to camillefreeman.com and put
(11:02):
your name in and you will get the newsletter next Thursday.
All right, thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you soon.
Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.
I am an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share little tips
and tidbits for other practitioners.
So today, I am really excited to bring in the first question that has been submitted
on my brand new podcast website by Oren. Thank you, Oren.
Before I answer this question, I just want to direct anyone else who's listening
(00:24):
who might want to submit a question to the website, which is intheclinic.com.
If you go there, you will see over on the right side, a little rectangular box
that says, actually, I forget exactly what it says, but something like submit
a question or submit a question to Camille, something along those lines with
a little microphone on it.
If you click there, you will open up a voice recorder and you will have up to
(00:46):
two minutes to leave a question for me.
I would absolutely love to answer your question relating to being in practice
as an herbalist or a nutritionist or something related to those things.
So if you get a chance, head over to InTheClinic.com and leave me a message.
To get on to Oren's question, I will admit that I have not gotten my technical
(01:09):
act together enough to figure out how to actually embed Oren's question into
the podcast itself. self.
So instead of doing that, I'm going to summarize what Oren said.
And hopefully in the future, I'll figure out this technological wizardry and
get it all sorted. But for right now, let's summarize the question.
(01:30):
Oren essentially asked me, at what point do you need separate businesses for
the different types of things that you do?
And Oren was talking about how many practitioners have different components
of our work, such as we might be teaching, we might have a clinic,
some people have apothecaries.
Oren has been doing some work with Ember Peters in creating programs,
(01:51):
and they've thought about maybe creating a separate website for a school for that type of work.
So at what point do you need to separate out some of these things?
And when can all of your work live under the same umbrella?
Now, as far as I have been able to think about this, there's really two separate
questions here, I think, at least two.
One of them is, at what point, from a legal accounting business perspective,
(02:15):
do you need to separate things? So do you need separate business entities?
Do you need separate bank accounts, etc.? So that's one part of the question.
And then the other part of the question is, even if you do choose to keep everything
under the same umbrella or different umbrellas, how do you present this in a
way to your community that isn't confusing,
it doesn't feel like a bunch of weird things are wedged together,
(02:38):
and it also doesn't feel like things are so separated that they can't figure
out all the different things you do. Yep.
So let's address those two components of the question separately.
Now, first of all, to talk about the business legal components,
I would like to again highlight that I am not a lawyer.
I am not a business professional other than having a business and working with people who do.
But this is not an area of expertise for me. So I'm only going to pass along my initial thoughts.
(03:04):
And I would really encourage anybody who's thinking about this to check with
a lawyer or at least some kind of business accounting type of person in your area of residence.
It's my understanding that from the perspective of like, do you need an entirely
different business, that there would be a couple of times when you might want to consider that.
(03:24):
One of them would be, of course, if you're going to open up a business that
does something totally different.
So if you are an herbalist and you decide you also want to open a bookstore
or, I don't know, start selling garden shears or something like that,
then you probably would want to have a whole separate LLC or business structure.
And those would be just basically like having two separate jobs.
(03:46):
Another time that you might want to think about it is if one portion of something
that you're doing is more legally risky.
The whole point of having a business entity or one of the points of having a
business entity is that you are protecting your personal finances and separating
them from your business finances when you have an LLC or beyond.
(04:07):
And if you have a bunch of things that have different levels of risk in the
same LLC, then they're basically all at the point of risk of the most vulnerable thing.
So that would be something to consider, something to think about.
There may be other times for tax purposes, etc., that you might want to think about it.
But I think for the vast majority of people, it makes sense as much as possible
(04:29):
to keep what you're doing under one umbrella.
Because a lot of us are solopreneurs. We don't have a big staff.
It's harder to do taxes for two different entities than it is one.
You're going to need to have two sets of business bank accounts and two sets
of accounting spreadsheets and all that type of stuff is going to be doubled
if you decide to separate out business entities. Okay, so that's one part of the puzzle.
(04:51):
The other thing to consider, though, is if you are going into business with someone else.
So, for example, if Oren and Amber decide they want to have a whole school together
and they want to have a partnership of some sort,
then that may make sense because each of them also have their own separate things
that they're doing that they wouldn't really want to co- what's the word I'm thinking of?
(05:15):
They wouldn't necessarily want to be partners for all of their clinical work
or teaching herb walks or things like that, but really just be these certain
programs that they want to teach together,
but they don't want to have one person who's doing it and just paying the other
through their business.
So in that case, maybe it does make sense to have a separate business entity
for the school, and then they would each have their own kind of private practice,
(05:39):
private business entities for whatever else that they're doing,
however they want to structure that. So that's something that I would think about.
And that way, again, you have when you go into a formal partnership with somebody,
you come up with guidance and rules for okay, what happens? How are we going to split the money?
What happens if one of us decides to step back or moves away from this business?
(06:02):
You know, all of that just kind of gets hammered out in the beginning.
And that seems like it makes a lot of sense.
Again, I am not a lawyer. I am not a business expert. So run that by someone
else. But that's something that would be on my mind if I were in that situation.
The next thing, though, which I think is perhaps more what Oren was getting
at, is around how do you present what you're doing?
(06:25):
And at what point do you need to separate things out so that maybe there's a
whole separate website for the school or a certain type of thing you're doing?
And other things can all live together under one website.
So how do you think about community facing descriptions of the different facets of your work?
(06:45):
And again, I don't think there's necessarily a right or a wrong answer here.
But what I would use as a screening tool is essentially anything that follows
the same mission and values could live in the same sphere, in the same website.
So for example, if your mission and values is about connecting people with plants
(07:11):
or connecting people with the nature or their bodies or whatever it is,
and you do that by teaching herb walks, leading herb walks in the community
and seeing clients one-on-one and teaching classes about how to make salves or whatever it is,
then all three of those things, while they are different and some people may
only be interested in one component of them,
(07:32):
they could all live in the same place because they all work together to the same end.
And I think that that would be okay.
If you have some part of what you're doing that doesn't really align in terms
of mission and values with the other parts of what you're doing,
then I think it may make sense to separate it out.
(07:53):
I do want to, again, just warn you that as soon as you separate something out,
you're adding an immense amount of complexity to your business because then
what you have is, oh, maybe you have a separate website, maybe you have a separate
email address, maybe you have a separate email list or social media accounts
or whatever it is. It just starts to get really tricky.
So if I had to go down on the favor of wedging a little bit too much under the
(08:17):
same umbrella or being too eager to split things off,
I would err on the side of putting a little bit too much under one umbrella
just for the sake of your own mental health,
trying to keep up with everything and manage it all because it just gets more complex.
That being said, if there is something that you're doing that seems like it
really is only relevant,
(08:40):
people might be interested in only that one thing and really,
really probably not the rest of what you're doing, you could have a very simple
second website or second email list or something like that.
What's probably going to happen, though, is one of the two is going to wither
a little bit because, again, you only have so much attention.
So just think really carefully about that. I'll give you an example,
(09:03):
which is that right now, as many of you know, I am writing a book about newsletters.
And while the book about newsletters is for herbalists and nutritionists,
which is what most of what I do is for, those are who the people for whom I
do most of my work, the newsletter book is going to be a little bit more broad.
It's really for anybody who's looking for more one-on-one clients.
(09:26):
And therefore, I am going to have a separate website for the newsletter book.
It'll be linked to from my main website, but I am going to separate it out because
I think that there will be interest from people who may or may not really want
to be hearing all my things about upcoming continuing education classes for
nutritionists if they're like,
well, I'm a copywriter, so I don't care about the nervous system deep dive or
(09:50):
whatever else. So I am going to do that.
And I probably will, again, have a very, very basic website for the book and
maybe a very, very simple newsletter that does not go out as frequently as my main one.
So that's the plan there. But I probably would not try to start a whole separate
(10:11):
newsletter business and split myself right down the middle trying to do a bunch
of newsletter content, this, that, and the other, aside from potentially just
around the promotion of my book.
So anyway, I hope that is helpful. Orin, if you have follow-up questions or
any other thoughts, please let me know.
And if anybody else wants to chime in, you can use the voicemail feature on intheclinic.com.
(10:38):
All right, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
All right, before I leave you, also just want to remind you that I write a newsletter
for practitioners. It comes out every Thursday.
And I just share little tips, tricks, recommendations, that type of thing that
might be helpful in your work as you build and grow your clinical practice.
So if you want to sign up for that, you can go to camillefreeman.com and put
(11:02):
your name in and you will get the newsletter next Thursday.
All right, thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you soon.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides.  Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer  Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.