I’ve always objected to the notion that you need to take a year off to write a novel, paint a mural or record an album. Likewise, I’m equally bothered by the assertion that an artist with a day job is a sell out. Eating is a noble pursuit. So is learning valuable business skills you can apply to hawking your own creative wares.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for creative endeavors, be they full time or on the side. But I’m also for living like a grown-up, as opposed to, say, couch surfing or subsisting on Ramen-ketchup casserole indefinitely.
Of course, the rub is finding the time and energy to practice your craft while doubling as someone else’s employee. Same goes for keeping your resentment of that pesky day job at bay.
Summer Pierre, author of The Artist in the Office: How to Creatively Survive and Thrive Seven Days a Week, knows this dance all too well.
Before becoming a mother this year, the illustrator and writer supported herself with an administrative gig in the academic sector. But rather than view her day job as an obstacle to making art, Pierre came to appreciate it as a vital part of her creative life — and not just because of the paycheck that kept a roof over her head.
“Not everyone does well being isolated,” said the Brooklyn-based Pierre, who plans to return to part-time bread-and-butter work this fall. “I need structure. I need people. So the job for me was really providing that.”
But cash, colleagues and water coolers aren’t the only reasons published authors, gigging musicians and exhibiting artists cite for straddling the employee world. The next time you’re tempted to ditch your day job (or pooh-pooh another paycheck-earning artist), consider the following.
[Read the rest of this column on ABC News.com]
August 2nd, 2010
When I asked folks to chime in with their burning freelancing questions last week I wasn’t expecting to get so many. Thank you — both for playing along, and for continuing to read this site despite my increasingly infrequent posts.
The column I wound up writing on the topic – Suddenly Self-Employed? Seven Ways to Boost Your Income – makes the following suggestions. Many of you will have heard some of them before. But hey, when it comes to making more moolah, a little reminder never hurts, right?
1. Follow the money. Sometimes a snoozy yet lucrative gig can be a lifesaver.
2. Don’t let any one client dominate your time. Over the course of the year, up to 25% per client is my recommended time limit.
3. Track your project time. If that $750 article takes you 75 hours to research, write, and revise, you’re either doing too much work or getting robbed.
4. Stop reducing your rates. The worst of the recession is hopefully behind us. Slashing your rates to get more work (or agreeing to a client’s slashed rates in order to hang on to them) is not a viable business model. You’ll just wind up working twice as many hours to pay your bills.
(more…)
July 11th, 2010
Anyone have a question about how to take their freelance business to the next level? I’m looking for fodder for an upcoming article and would love to hear what issues keep you awake at night. Wondering how to raise your rates, tame a tough client, make more money? Want to collaborate with or subcontract to other independents but don’t know how? Covet an assistant but aren’t sure you can afford it? Do tell. Mama’s here to help.
July 2nd, 2010
Maybe you went into business for yourself because you had a million-dollar idea. Or you wanted to set your own hours. Or you wanted to exercise your right to turn away clients who wouldn’t recognize integrity if it slapped them upside the head.
Whatever your MO for going solo, you probably hoped to make that proverbial difference in the world, no matter how small. Chances are, though, your desire to pay it forward has led you to bite off more pro bono work than you can chew somewhere along the way.
Get in over your head with non-paying clients and, at best, your schedule and quarterly earnings take a beating. At worst, you realize you’re dealing with an ungrateful, opportunistic customer, at which point resentments flare, fur flies, and bridges burn.
So how much pro bono work should you accept? How should you choose the customers to whom you donate your services? And most important, how do you ensure these friendly freebies don’t land you in the scope creep sinkhole
[Read the rest of this article on American Express OPEN Forum.]
June 19th, 2010
The other day, a friend who’s halfway through a year-long contract as a technical editor said what today’s temporary workforce is never supposed to say aloud:
“My boss keeps telling me she wants to bring me on permanently, but I’m not so sure I want that. It’s funny how everybody assumes that’s my goal.”
Sure, my friend is thankful to have a decent-paying job this year, especially in the wake of her big, fat, soul-sucking layoff in 2008. But after a couple years of cobbling together a paycheck from various contract, part-time and freelance jobs, she’s no longer sold on the sanctity of shacking up with one employer — despite the promise of 401(k) matching and a group health care plan.
I can relate. I took my first contract job in 1998 and have yet to accept a temporary boss’s offer of permanent work. Some of the staffers I’ve worked alongside have said, “Why don’t you just do the permanent employee thing for five years, sock away a bunch of cash and then go goof off in soloville awhile?”
But I prefer my freedom now, even if it means paying for my own vacation days and owning a smaller house than my employee counterparts.
Of course, there are legions of contract, temporary and freelance workers who couldn’t agree less — and dire news reports of the ever-growing number of malcontent temps to prove it. They don’t want to have to find a new job every three, six or 12 months or fund their own health insurance premiums. Real or imagined, they long for the uniformity of one boss, one corporate culture, one employee manual year after year.
Entirely understandable. But in the decade-plus I’ve worked as a contract employee and freelancer, I’ve encountered many content temps who agree that contract work has its undeniable perks. Between the autonomy, flexibility and variety, many of the nation’s 10.3 independent contractors have no intention of returning to staff work any time soon. Here’s why.
[Read the rest of this column on abcnews.com.]
June 19th, 2010
Start the week off right with balanced eating, exercise, and a healthy dose of networking. Join me as I cohost a mediabistro party for Seattle-area media professionals this Tuesday. Connect with other media folks and share tips over cocktails.
Mediabistro cocktail party – Tuesday, April 20
When: 7 to 9 pm
What: Cocktail party for media professionals – freelance, staff, and those between jobs. Admission free; cash bar with drink specials, plus complimentary appetizers. I’m cohosting with freelancer Crai Bower.
Where: Grey Gallery & Lounge, 1512 11th Avenue, Seattle
RSVP: Required. RSVP on mediabistro.com.
April 18th, 2010
When Vanessa Troyer and Chris Farentinos launched MailBoxes4Less.com in 2000, they didn’t give much thought to how they’d exit the online mailbox distribution company.
All that changed in 2006. Recognizing the huge growth potential in manufacturing high-end mailboxes for builders and retailers, the Los Angeles couple decided to channel all their efforts into a second business, Architectural Mailboxes. This meant selling the highly profitable MailBoxes4Less.com to free up the necessary funds.
It wasn’t a scenario most entrepreneurs envision when they think about exit strategies.
“No one was sick,” says Troyer, 45. ‘We didn’t want to retire. Investors weren’t saying ‘I’m done.’ There was no reason to sell the business.”
But sell the couple did, garnering more than $1 million for the venture they’d founded eight years earlier with just $25,000.
It was the right move: Today Architectural Mailboxes continues to grow, with products in every Lowe’s store in the nation and more than half of Home Depot’s locations. Amazon carries 140 of the company’s products. And, Troyer says, the business is on track to grow by 38 percent by the end of 2011.
Hoping to follow in Troyer and Farentinos’ footsteps? Experts say the best way to ensure you leave your company when and how you want–with money in hand–is to start plotting your exit strategy now, even if you’re still developing the business plan. Sadly, study after study shows that a majority of entrepreneurs have no exit strategy whatsoever in place.
If this sounds familiar, don’t fret. You’re about to get a crash course in preparing for two of the most common ways to successfully exit a business: turning the reins over to a relative and selling the company.
[Read the rest of this article on Entrepreneur.com.]
April 7th, 2010
Hello, happy freelancers! I’m writing an article for Entrepreneur.com about the pros, cons, and WTFs of throwing your hat into the crowdsourcing ring on sites like Helium, 99designs, crowdSPRING, iStockphoto, and Threadless – and I’m interested in interviewing freelancers who’ve participated in the design contests, writing contests, or other crowdsourcing cattle calls on one of these sites.
Note: I’m not going to delve into project bidding sites like Elance, oDesk, and Guru in this article, just sites that feature content contests or otherwise require freelancers to create work on spec before money even enters into the equation. So please only respond if you have experience with these on-spec/contest sites.
Any takers? I’d like to hear about your experience trying to land work, clients, or money through these sites, be it good, bad, or downright fugly. I’d prefer to talk to you on the record, but I don’t necessarily have to say which site you’ve used if you’d rather keep that detail quiet and I don’t need your clients’ names. My deadline is Friday, 3/19. If you’d like to be interviewed, leave me a note in the comments or email me. Thanks so much!
March 14th, 2010
For some reason, Girl Scout cookie season has always screamed ”Love is in the air!” to me — way the heck more than Valentine’s Day ever could. (Yes, I have a bit of a Thin Mints issue. What’s it to you?)
In honor of this lovey-dovey-est of seasons, I recently went on something of a writing-about-couples-who-work-together tear (here, and here). I hadn’t given much thought to whether and when domestic partners in business together should reveal their coupledom to clients — that is, until one of these articles led me to interview spouses Kris Hoots and Steve Thomas, founders of Oneicity, a Seattle-area consulting firm that creates fundraising solutions for non-profit and religious organizations.
Kris and Steve initially opted to keep their relationship status on the down low until clients and colleagues got to know them better. But once they realized that many of the clients and vendors they worked with were also shacked up, they decided they could afford to be less tight-lipped about their personal partnership. While the couple doesn’t exactly come right out and flaunt their marital status in their company’s marketing materials, they have blogged about it on their business site.
How about you? What’s your take on mixing love with business — and letting your customers in on the nature of the personal relationship you and your partner share? If you and your sweetie are in business together, do you play up your relationship status in your marketing materials and new client meetings? Or do you go out of your way to cloak your personal relationship from customers, vendors, and colleagues? Has your relationship status helped or hurt your business image, or has it not made one bit of difference?
March 14th, 2010
Like many entrepreneurs, Adam Levy expected to do well with the music equipment company he started in 2002. Armed with an MBA and pile of money made in the late-nineties technology boom, he invested six figures in his new venture and waited to cash in.
Only things didn’t go as planned.
His business partner, a music industry mastermind, abandoned ship within the first 18 months and the company floundered. Seven years later, Levy still wasn’t making a living wage and was six figures in debt. Out of cash and out of choices, he filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
“If I had known then what I know now, I would have just cut my losses, swallowed my ego and moved on,” says Levy, who’s based in Hoboken, N.J. “I didn’t and it almost cost me my marriage.”
Slash Your Budget
Of course, declaring bankruptcy — which experts say should be a last resort — isn’t the only way to stop the bleeding. Reducing your spending should be at the top of your list.
“Getting out of your office space is one big thing I’ve seen people do,” says Dan Olszewski, director of the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Wisconsin School of Business. Same goes for trading in that gas-guzzling delivery truck for a smaller vehicle or selling off that five-figure color copier and learning to love Kinko’s.
[Read the rest of this article -- including resources for negotiating both business and personal debt! -- on Entrepreneur.com.]
February 25th, 2010
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