Aug 13, 2026 · 11 min · 10 segments
Can we talk about how you get paid? The literal HOW - is it Zelle? Venmo? A check in the mail with the numbers all written out in letters? Is it possible that there's an easier way? Because it…
Jennet IngleHost
In my Happiest Musician incubator this summer, we're having a lot of conversations about how do we get paid? Like literally, physically, how do people pay you the money for the work that you do? So if you are teaching, for example, are you laboriously sending out invoices once a month, once a week? Once every like six to ten weeks as you remember or as you begin to run out of money yourself and then wait for people to pay you.
Do people have to send you checks or like look up, look your handle up on Venmo each time? Versus is there an automated way for people to just easily get Rebuild every month? If you are selling something from an e-commerce website, do you have a complicated workaround, again with Venmo or Zelle, to avoid paying processing fees? Or is it easy for people to just click in and purchase? If you are selling something with tiers or with complications...
Is it easy for your customers, your potential customers, to understand what it is they're buying and what their money gives them immediate access to? Is there a complication that is making it too hard for people to actually pay you for your brilliant work? I was at the Double Read Society conference a few weeks back and noticed as I roamed the aisles that people have a lot of different ways of accomplishing payments when they are not in their own home stores.
Some people literally had to write me out a printed invoice with like carbon paper below it.
Remember those? Written out in ballpoint pens, the things that I purchased and the amount, and then like with a calculator doing the sales tax and then I don't even remember what the credit card part was, scanning my card in some way.
That stood out to me because it's been a long time since someone outside of, you know, a mom and pop antique store needed to write down every item that I was purchasing on a sheet of paper with carbon below it so that they could give me a copy and keep a copy for themselves.
A lot of stores, of course, had square processors or stripe processors where it's so easy to just like tap my card on their point of sale device.
I myself had a little point of sale device that people can tap their credit cards on.
Your own complicated business, your own complicated store may require complications for any number of reasons.
Maybe you're doing consignment sales and it's very important that you be able to track exactly which item is selling and for exactly how much.
Maybe since your normal life is spent in front of your computer at home, an invoicing system makes perfect sense.
Maybe because you are working with kids in your own actual life and meeting with them at schools instead of at home with their parents, maybe the best solution is to send invoices or to have 12-year-olds try to remember to bring checks.
But I would suggest, and I submit to you, that even though you would prefer to not pay processing fees on the money that you are making, and I understand I don't want to pay 3% extra fees myself, maybe it's not about you.
Maybe the game is about how can this be maximally easy for the person who is trying to purchase products or services from you.
In my Happiest Musician incubator this summer, we're having a lot of conversations about how do we get paid? Like literally, physically, how do people pay you the money for the work that you do? So if you are teaching, for example, are you laboriously sending out invoices once a month, once a week? Once every like six to ten weeks as you remember or as you begin to run out of money yourself and then wait for people to pay you.
Do people have to send you checks or like look up, look your handle up on Venmo each time? Versus is there an automated way for people to just easily get Rebuild every month? If you are selling something from an e-commerce website, do you have a complicated workaround, again with Venmo or Zelle, to avoid paying processing fees? Or is it easy for people to just click in and purchase? If you are selling something with tiers or with complications...
Is it easy for your customers, your potential customers, to understand what it is they're buying and what their money gives them immediate access to? Is there a complication that is making it too hard for people to actually pay you for your brilliant work? I was at the Double Read Society conference a few weeks back and noticed as I roamed the aisles that people have a lot of different ways of accomplishing payments when they are not in their own home stores.
Some people literally had to write me out a printed invoice with like carbon paper below it.
Remember those? Written out in ballpoint pens, the things that I purchased and the amount, and then like with a calculator doing the sales tax and then I don't even remember what the credit card part was, scanning my card in some way.
That stood out to me because it's been a long time since someone outside of, you know, a mom and pop antique store needed to write down every item that I was purchasing on a sheet of paper with carbon below it so that they could give me a copy and keep a copy for themselves.
A lot of stores, of course, had square processors or stripe processors where it's so easy to just like tap my card on their point of sale device.
I myself had a little point of sale device that people can tap their credit cards on.
Your own complicated business, your own complicated store may require complications for any number of reasons.
Maybe you're doing consignment sales and it's very important that you be able to track exactly which item is selling and for exactly how much.
Maybe since your normal life is spent in front of your computer at home, an invoicing system makes perfect sense.
Maybe because you are working with kids in your own actual life and meeting with them at schools instead of at home with their parents, maybe the best solution is to send invoices or to have 12-year-olds try to remember to bring checks.
But I would suggest, and I submit to you, that even though you would prefer to not pay processing fees on the money that you are making, and I understand I don't want to pay 3% extra fees myself, maybe it's not about you.
Maybe the game is about how can this be maximally easy for the person who is trying to purchase products or services from you.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
