Posts filed under 'Balance'
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
By popular demand, I give you my online class for rookie and veteran freelance writers on how to handle clients from hell:
“Dealing with Nightmare Clients” is a four-week online course – starting Friday, February 5! — sponsored by the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA). Although I’ll be delivering the lessons right to your inbox, you can follow along from anywhere, at your own pace, even if your own pace means working through the lessons at 3 a.m. on a weekend.
In this class, I’ll discuss how to tame those beastly clients and editors who seem all too happy to stiff you, mess with your deadlines, and contact you at all hours of the night. Specifically, you’ll learn how to:
- Chase down MIA payments and ensure you don’t get stiffed in the future
- Handle runaway revisions and keep scope creep at bay
- Deal with clients who are always late with deliverables
- Set firmer boundaries with editors, project managers, and creative directors
- Bolster your contracts with clauses that can help prevent scope creep, deadline changes, and late payments
- Determine whether a troublesome client relationship is salvageable
Since we can all learn from one another’s trials and tribulations, I’ll devote the last session of the class to answering all your burning questions about any nightmare clients you’ve been dealing with. Additional details about the class:
When: Fridays, February 5 – 26 (four online sessions).
Where: Your computer. Each lesson will arrive in your inbox (also accessible via Yahoo Groups on the web), which means you can follow along on your own time.
Cost: Editorial Freelancers Association members $134; nonmembers $159.
Register: On the EFA website.
Questions? Feel free to email me.
January 13th, 2010
Feels like I’ve been writing holiday-themed articles for weeks and weeks. (Among my favorites: Survival Jobs You Never Thought You’d Be Thankful For and All I Want for Christmas Is a Layoff.)
With 2009 mercifully in the rearview mirror, I’ve joined the fresh-start bandwagon and have been furiously outlining my freelancing goals for the next 12 months. Not resolutions (habits you want to form or change), but goals (stuff you want to accomplish).
Reason I make this distinction is because while writing about how to stick to your New Year’s resolutions yesterday, I learned that humans are hard-wired to fail miserably if they try to change too many habits at once. So I’ve got one resolution for my freelance career this year: leave part of each Sunday open for work on my personal writing projects (books, essays, stories), something I’m doing with three other freelance writer pals for extra accountability.
As for the other stuff I hope to accomplish this year, I’m calling those goals. In the interest of sharing, I’ll list some of the biggest ones here:
- Give this site a much-needed facelift
- Finish proposal for book #3 by spring
- Pursue more custom publishing work (trade publications and the like)
- Sell an article or essay to the print edition of a certain beloved national paper
How about you? What do you hope to accomplish in this brave new year?
January 4th, 2010
…I’d like to interview you for my next ABCNews.com column. The skinny:
If you’re a full-time (or nearly full-time) freelancer or small business owner who keeps a part-time retail, clerical, cashier, dog poop scooping, or other lowish-paying job because of the health insurance, I want to know. I’d like to hear about both your jobs and how much money you’re saving in health care premiums by keeping the part-time mercenary gig. I’m also curious about whether your customers know about your part-time gig at the grocery/shoe/pet supply store — and whether your part-time employer knows that you double as a self-employed designer/copywriter/programmer. Do you ever get the “You’re folding jeans? But I thought you were a bigshot author!” treatment?
Please note: I’m only interested in hearing from self-employed folks working at least 25 to 30 hours a week on their freelance/entrepreneurial gig and making at least half their living from it. Doesn’t matter how many or few hours a week you work at your part-time mercenary gig. It’s fine if you want to be anonymous. If interested, email me here by Monday please. Thanks so much!
September 3rd, 2009
With everyone talking about career change these days, I thought it would fun to examine the work/life balance of those who’ve transitioned to some of the most coveted careers out there. First up, Erika Teschke, who in 2005 left her 10-year career as a legal professional to start her own dog walking and pet sitting business. I recently interviewed Erika by e-mail. Highlights follow.
[Photo courtesy of Erika's Pet Service]
Q. What’s your typical work schedule?
A. Mondays through Fridays I do dog park runs 5 hours a day, between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. I also do about 30 minutes of stopovers during the week, where I feed and visit a pet that’s home alone, either before 2 p.m. or after 6 p.m. On weekends, I’ll do about three hours of paperwork and stopovers. I try not to work before 9 a.m. and past 6 p.m., but I have to be flexible on this if I have a pet that needs medicine or a walk at a particular time.
Q. How has your work/life balance changed since starting your business?
A. I definitely have more personal time now. However, the anxieties are different. Whereas being in an office made me a slave to the man, now I am responsible for everything: income, business success, client development, dog safety, responsibility as a walker, giving back to the parks I use, to name a few. I also have to be available for clients. At first I made myself available at all times when I was trying to grow the business. But now, since my clients and I have well-established relationships and they trust I will get back to them in a timely manner, I feel more comfortable making the evenings my own. I still work many weekends doing vacation stopovers. It is just the nature of the business.
Q. Still, a 30-hour workweek sounds pretty great. What’s the catch?
A. I make about $25,000 less than when I worked at the law firm. [Read the rest at NWjobs.]
July 10th, 2009
When fitness buff Amanda Furgiuele began teaching pole-dancing classes after work two years ago, she didn’t broadcast it to colleagues at her day job as a television producer.
“Although I know that pole dancing is a legitimate fitness pursuit, most people still refer to it as ’stripping class,’” said the Maui, HI resident, who has never worked as a exotic dancer and does not allow nudity in her classes. “I was kind of worried about the social stigma. I didn’t want to appear unprofessional.”
Despite her discretion, it didn’t take long before Furgiuele’s coworkers found out.
“One of my student’s cousins was my office manager,” she said. From there, it was only a matter of minutes before her evening occupation was laid bare before the entire office.
“After a thorough round of teasing and a few moderately inappropriate comments, it’s mostly smoothed out at my day job,” Furgiuele said. “I’m glad everyone knew me as a person before they knew my ‘other profession.’ I’m not sure they would have been so understanding had they thought of me as a pole dancer first.”
According to a January survey conducted by The Daily Beast, 23 percent of those polled have more than one paying job. Some said their second job was a hobby that had morphed into a money-making operation. Others said they needed the extra income.
So does the fact that we’ve become a nation of cash-strapped moonlighters mean that your employer will support your after-hours vocation? Or could fessing up that you’ve been serving cocktails, driving a limo or designing canine outerwear on the side jeopardize your reputation, or worse, your day job?
The short answer is, it depends. [Read the rest at ABCNews.com.]
July 5th, 2009
Last week I asked if anyone wanted to weigh in on my ABC News column on how layoff gossip both helps and hurts office workers. (You can read the column here; it ran yesterday.)
But employees aren’t the only ones who grapple with layoff gossip. As a freelancer and contractor, I’ve recently had to temper my monitoring of the downsizing rumor mill about several of my clients. On the one hand, you want to stay informed of budget and headcount cuts so you can plan accordingly (save your pennies, find new clients, be sensitive to editors enduring employment upheaval). On the other, you don’t want to fall so far down the rumor rabbit hole that you can’t think straight.
In other words, you don’t want to be like the freelance journalist I interviewed for my column who said this:
“I get obsessed with the gossip to the point that I become unproductive. Instead of pursuing the work I have, I’m chasing down the latest choice tidbit on whether this other business is going to close. I’m on the phone with colleagues, I’m reading all the blogs, tuning in to the TV, to Twitter, you name it. It’s probably all a waste of time, but hope springs eternal and all that.”
I can relate to this. As a reporter, I love a juicy story too, especially when it affects my own life and livelihood. I’ve certainly lost a couple afternoons in recent weeks tracking the latest newspaper body count. But I’m trying to remember that if I don’t do the work that’s already on my plate I could be next in line to get the boot.
How about you? How do you deal with the layoff rumors swirling around your star clients?
March 13th, 2009
Let’s play a little game of open thread. Rather than talk about how we all want to land a pile of dream clients, sell more articles/photos/illustrations/tea cozies, and make buckets of cash in 2009, I thought we could discuss something that’s been near and dear to my heart lately: how to streamline the mountains of admin work that can plague self-employed professionals (as well as those working for the man or simply looking for that one decent gig that will get them back into the workforce after being laid off).
If you read my new book, you already know that I’m a spreadsheet junkie. A couple other things I’ve done recently to cut down on the thicket of admin work on my plate so I have more time to focus on writing:
- Hired a virtual assistant to help with some of my book promo activities. This has been a godsend. Thank you, Jackie for saving my hide time and time again.
- Hired a WordPress designer to make technical updates to my blog instead of trying to figure out the blasted code myself. (Duh. I should have done this ages ago.) Thank you, Liz of CMD+SHIFT DESIGN.
- Added a somewhat strident FAQ to this site’s Contact page to cut down on the many, many requests I receive for free product plugs on this site and free career counseling. (It’s working so far — and may have even landed me a couple new consulting gigs.)
A few more things I plan to do in the new year to further streamline my admin work:
- Hire a blog/social media intern. Stay tuned to this blog for the job listing. Or if you can’t wait, email me. (Note that this will be an unpaid position. For this reason, it may be best suited for a student.)
- Have the fabulous Liz continue to improve this site — something I’ve been threatening to do for months now.
- Finally automate my expense tracking (beyond the Excel spreadsheet I’ve been using) with a program like QuickBooks. (I know, I know. I’m old school.)
- Set up more rules in my inbox so that every last press release, newsletter, and media list (that is, those I actually want to receive) goes to a special “to read later” folder far, far away from my inbox.
- Finally read Gina Trapani’s Upgrade Your Life.
How about you? What tangible steps do you plan to take in the new year to optimize your worklife?
December 16th, 2008
My email pal Ian Sanders and I are running simultaneous interviews with each other this week on how men and women approach the self-employed life differently and what we can learn from each other. Ian owns a creative agency in London and is author of LEAP! Ditch Your Job, Start Your Own Business & Set Yourself Free and Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life. He’s also a dad to two toddlers. Part 1 of my interview with Ian follows; part 2 headed your way tomorrow. You can read Ian’s interview with me on his blog.
Q. Do you think men and women are driven by different factors in business?
A. Essentially I think men and women are both driven by being enterprising; they may have different approaches but they want the same goal: success.
Q. What do you think self-employed women can learn from men?
A. As soon as we start talking about gender differences we are of course generalising! With that caveat, I would say women can learn something about having guts to “just do it,” which sometimes men posses to a greater extent. Having that self-belief to be bold. I think women are better team players than men, so when they are working for themselves it can be tougher if they are not part of a team.
Q. What do you think self-employed men can learn from women?
A. Self-employed men can learn a few things from women, as I think women can be more adept at juggling a mixed portfolio and have the bandwidth to handle the varied tasks. Men are better at one thing at a time (apart from me of course!). I think blokes can be good at going out and winning business but sometimes lack the ability to simultaneously be across everything, the trivial and the detail. Women can also be better team players – personally, I find working relationships with women co-workers can be more stimulating and fruitful than with men.
Q. Do you think either men or women are better (in general) at separating work and play and keeping a balance between the two?
A. I think men are better at separating work and play; women are used to mixing it all up. Incidentally I think that mixing it all up is the way forward, and I’m no good at separation.
Q. What is your single most important survival tip for freelancers and people making the leap to self-employment?
A. My single most important survival tip is Focus. Focus on building revenues; focus on one area of business at a time, then diversify and build once you have foundations in place; focus on delivery of a project. Because a project not executed is just an idea.
December 15th, 2008
A couple weeks ago, I was interviewed by personal branding guru Dan Schawbel on his Personal Branding Blog. We talked about everything from getting started as a freelancer to using a pseudonym to the personal branding benefits of collecting bylines. We also talked about how on earth a person can start freelancing on the side when they’re required to be at a day job from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. five days a week. Because I get asked this question several times a month, I’m posting the answer below. For the rest of my Q&A with Dan, click this here link.
Dan Schawbel asks: How could someone manage to write, while having a full-time job?
I answer: Because it can take weeks, months, or longer to build up a solid, full-time client base, keep your day job for as long as humanly possible. Some part-time freelancers do their writing and research before work, some do on the bus or train they take to work, some do it during their lunch hour, some do it evenings and weekends, and many do a combination of all these.
Last summer, I worked a part-time contract gig for four months because the opportunity and pay were too good to turn down. Fortunately I could do 75 percent of the work from home. But when I had to go in the office, I edited my stories on the commute (if I was bussing), came up with article introductions that I saved via digital recorder (if I was driving), snuck in interviews with sources during my lunch break (from the cafeteria, complete with Bluetooth and laptop), and worked again after dinner when I got home. When you cut back on “Law and Order” and lengthy phone calls with your BFF, you can accomplish a lot. You just have to be disciplined.
I hear single, child-free people lament all the time that they’re stuck in a cube from 9 to 6 and couldn’t possibly meet clients or look for freelance work. These people haven’t tried hard enough. I have yet to meet a majority of my clients, as many of them live 3,000 miles away, and we do the bulk of our business via email, not phone. If you can shop online, IM your friends, and update your Facebook status at work, then surely you can research new freelance job leads, hobnob with other self-employed professionals online, and email potential clients. Just make sure that you use your own computer or mobile device and that you do your freelance work during your lunch hour or scheduled breaks. If this isn’t possible, then you’ll have to learn to wake with the birds. It’s the only way.
Bonus answer: I can almost hear those of you who work 60 hours a week and spend every other waking hour tending to your children saying, “But what about me? How can I possibly freelance on the side with my schedule?” Let’s be realistic. You can’t. Unless you’re one of those rare freaks of nature who doesn’t require downtime or sleep. That old saw “You can do everything — just not all at once” applies here. The only way someone in your position can find the time to freelance is to reduce your hours at work (not always possible, I know, especially given the crappy economy) or find a less-demanding day job.
November 21st, 2008
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