‘The Boss of You’ in Seattle

Hey Seattleites! My Seal Press comrades Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon — authors of this fine book you see to the left — will be in town this weekend for a book reading. The scoop:

Where: Elliott Bay Book Co (map)

When: Saturday, May 17 @ 4:30 pm

What: Book reading and signing, prizes, and a lively Q&A

I’ll be there. Will you?

Add comment May 15th, 2008

Guest post: What’s the deal with business liability insurance?

Lauren and Emira, authors of The Boss of You (which is getting rave reviews, by the way), are back with another guest post. A couple weeks ago, I was struggling with the question of business liability insurance — what I needed for myself as a company of one, and what to say about it in my new book. I asked them for their thoughts on the matter, and the result is this post. If you have any questions about small business liability insurance, feel free to post ‘em in the comments. I’m sure Lauren and Emira would be happy to answer.

For the first few years of our business life, we weren’t that concerned with liability insurance. While it would have been nice to take a “better safe than sorry” route, we didn’t really relish the thought of putting our meager earnings into insurance. At the time were a small company, without any staff, and our contracts state that we have no responsibility for our clients’ data and that our liability doesn’t exceed the value of any individual contract.

It was actually when we moved into our office space that liability insurance came up — our building required that we carry a minimum amount, as well as Errors & Omissions (E&O) insurance. Shortly after that we also hired staff, and while we certainly trusted our staff implicitly, things began to get a little more removed from our control, while ultimately if anything went wrong we’d be the ones holding the bag. At that point in time, we were really happy that we already had liability insurance in place.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve encountered a new situation with liability insurance that we hadn’t really considered when we first started out: we’ve been working with larger clients (particularly with government organizations) that actually require us to have liability insurance in order to be a successful bidder on any contracts.

We didn’t start our business with a vision of working with these kinds of larger organizations, but we know some people go into freelancing with the plan to work primarily with bigger organizations — often they actually come from having worked for a larger organization and move from a paid staff position to consulting after some time away, a maternity leave, etc. The point is, if you think you’re going to work with these kinds of larger institutions or organizations, you definitely don’t want to be trying to figure out your insurance while you’re replying to a 20+ page Request for Proposal. So, if that describes your target client, we’d strongly recommend getting some insurance in place from the get-go.

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Add comment May 10th, 2008

Guest post: How do I know when it’s time to hire some outside help?

Are you a business of one who’s wondering whether it’s time to hire an extra pair of hands? Torn between whether you should hire an employee or a subcontractor? Fairly certain that if you don’t start delegating soon your head will implode, but not sure what tasks to farm out, let alone where to find a capable set of extra hands in the first place?

Not to worry. Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears are here to help. Lauren and Emira started Raised Eyebrow Web Studio, Inc. in 2000, so that they could be their own bosses and continue to work with the not-for-profit and small business clients they loved. They became so dang good at it they decided to write a book — The Boss of You: Everything a Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business. So without further adieu, here’s what Lauren and Emira have to say on hiring your first employee…

There comes a time in every successful self-employed gal’s life when the question arises: How do I know when it’s time to hire some help?

The first step is to look for the warning signs that going it alone is not working out. For most small enterprises, there’s a good long stretch where you (and your business partner, if you have one) are your only employee(s). Of course, if you’re successful, you’re likely to get busier and busier, up until the point where you stop being able to juggle all the work you’ve got coming in.

We hit this point in our business about three years in, but we didn’t see it for much, much longer. It’s our hope that our tale of woe will inspire others to act promptly when the time comes to bring in an extra pair of hands.

See, between client work and the administrivia of running our business (answering email and phone calls, managing our books, and so on), we found ourselves working longer and longer hours and feeling like we were getting no further ahead. We were losing our weekends at the office, and losing sleep over the prospect of missing deadlines if we slowed down. Our success was killing us — the more work we did, the more referrals our clients sent our way, and we couldn’t keep up with the demand.

So why didn’t we hire someone right then and there? Three big reasons:

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5 comments May 5th, 2008

Homer gets a muumuu and other randomata

I am sleep deprived and drowning in deadlines. Posting will continue to be light until May 5th or so. For now, enjoy this freelancer-related randomata.

Here’s what happens when Homer Simpson decides to work from home. (Via Jezebel.)

Here’s what the New York Times has to say about charging your clients enough money. (Here’s what I — and some of you — have to say.)

Here’s what a recent study on individual health insurance found:

People who buy their own health insurance saw their average annual premiums rise 18 percent between 2002 and 2005, a modest increase compared to the 34 percent jump in average premiums for people insured through their employers, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Somehow that didn’t make me feel any better about the 30+ percent increase in my health insurance premiums this year. After all, I don’t have an employer to subsidize the monthly premiums. Instead, I raised my deductible so I can afford coverage. Lame. But a common problem in this country.

Here’s a story that made me feel better about the above. This kind doctor quit the medical rat race and started a clinic that serves people with no health insurance. 40,000 patient visits since 2002. Nice!

1 comment April 25th, 2008

Q&A: How’d you score THAT gig?

If you or someone you know is graduating this year or thinking about changing careers, check out Alexandra Levit’s brand-spanking-new book, How’d You Score That Gig? A Guide to the Coolest Jobs — and How to Get Them. Reading this book is like going on 60 informational interviews for some of the most coveted careers out there — boutique owner, inventor, video game designer, archaelogist, landscape architect, futurist, classic-car restorer, and on and on and on. Happily for us, Alexandra answered a few of my questions about writing this book and some of its most important take-aways.

Q. What prompted you to write this book?

A. The idea originated as a result of several conversations I overheard at friends’ dinner parties. It seemed that someone at every event always had a job that totally intrigued the rest of the group. People were completely captivated by this individual, and were always curious to know how s/he scored the gig, and what exactly it entailed.

Q. In doing your research for all these careers, what did you unearth that surprised you most?

A. First of all, because I tend to caution people against going to graduate school to prepare for a career they have no experience in and don’t know if they even like, I was encouraged to discover that so many of the dream jobs didn’t require a master’s degree for entry into the field.

Second, it was interesting to find that so many of the jobs I was profiling attracted similar types of people. For example, documentary photographers, travel journalists, news correspondents, and oceanographers are all rather spontaneous and thrive on new and varied experiences. This led me to develop my seven “passion profiles” — adventurer, creator, data-head, entrepreneur, investigator, networker, and nurturer — and place my 60 cool jobs into the appropriate categories. Readers can take a quiz at the beginning of the book to see what passion profile and corresponding jobs best suit them.

Q. Was there one refrain you kept hearing over and over in the interviews you did with these dream careerists?

A. It’s not about talent, it’s about persistence. Most of these careers are tough to penetrate, but not impossible. If you take the right steps and push hard enough, for long enough, you will eventually break through the wall.

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2 comments April 16th, 2008

Do you know where your quarterly tax payment is?

Happy tax day! If you’re a U.S. freelancer, not only is your 2007 annual tax return due today, your first of four estimated tax payments for 2008 is due too (PDF form here).

If you need a refresher course in freelance tax-paying, here’s a collection of some favorite freelance tax posts from this site (complete with bonus resource list!).

And if want a good chuckle, here’s a hilarious yet ever-infomative piece on freelancing by Salon’s Catherine Price.

See you in the post office line!

Add comment April 15th, 2008

The way freelance writers never were

Exhibit A: I’m sure you’ve by now seen the sensationalist New York Times piece that might as well have been called, “Blogging Killz!” While it’s tragic that three prominent bloggers have had heart attacks recently (two of them fatal), this article was a huuuuge stretch. It did remind me, however, that no career is worth compromising your health (as I write this at 5 am, said the insomniac).

Moral of the story: The webconomy didn’t invent workaholism, crappy pay practices, and on-the-job stress. Workaholics, companies with crappy pay practices, and stress bunnies did.

Exhibit B: It’s worth reading Freelance Fizzle! The Decline and Fall of the Writer in the New York Observer, which pines for a freewheeling freelance past (complete with expense accounts!) that died decades ago — and probably only existed for a handful of A-list writers anyway.

The Reader’s Digest version: Once upon a time, magazine writers in Manhattan supposedly had it made. Today they have dwindling markets/readership/budgets to content with, not to mention — cue scary music — the web. Believe me, it saddens me greatly that print pubs are in peril. (Just this week, one of my beloved print clients had massive layoffs.) But I can whine about it, or I can wake up and smell the new economy.

Moral of the story: Freelance publishing rates haven’t gone up in decades. And unfortunately print as we know it is rapidly becoming yesterday’s news. Writers who want to eat need to have at least a couple toes in the digital pool (and depending on how much money they need to make, perhaps a couple more in the copywriting world).

Exhibit C: Procrastinating writers, take heart! Now you can strip away all toolbars, inboxes, and web connections and focus on the blank page at hand. Two distraction-busting word-processing programs (Mac version here; PC here) try to recreate the supposed glory days of writing by typewriter or clunky 80s computer, only with today’s processing speed.

On the one hand, I’m sorely tempted to check out this cool-sounding app. On the other, I did a fine job of procrastinating in the 80s and 90s, first with a typewriter, then with a Mac SE.

I applaud entrepreneurial software devs who sell their creations one download at a time, so I’ll skip the snide moral of the story here. And if anyone’s tried an app like this, I’d love to know what you think.

2 comments April 10th, 2008

Ask the cubicle expat: Should I lower my rates if a client can’t afford me?

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with their burning freelance questions last month. I really appreciate it. This question really stuck in my craw, so I decided to give a quick answer now.

Frustrated Freelancer asks: I recently was negotiating a project with a client I really wanted to work for. After I told them my price, they came back with, “We think this could turn into a lot of ongoing work, so would you be willing to come down?” It made no sense. If they are going to come to me with more work (and therefore take up a higher percentage of my time, which is then unavailable for other projects), why would I lower my price? Maybe there is some logic to lowering your price for some situations? I’d love to know.

I answer: Your instincts are right. “We will give you more work later” does not justify a haggle-down now. It’s a pretty weak argument for the client to make. Not only are you forfeiting 5, 10, or 20 percent of your earning potential now, you’re doing it month and after month if you continue to work with this client. And since you’d ideally want to raise your rates in another year or two to keep up with the cost of living (a topic for another day), you’re starting out wayyyy behind where you need to be.

The client’s tentative language (”Would you be willing…?”) indicates they’re just bluffing and trying to save a few bucks. Something more hard-and-fast like, “We’d love to work with you, but $xx.xx is the highest our budget will allow” lets you know there’s no more wiggle room (say, because you’re negotiating with a non-profit organization or a small company with limited funds for outsourcing projects). So my answer would be, “No, but I could do [a price midway between what you initially suggested and what they’re now offering].” If you’ve padded your first offer by 10 to 20 percent of what you actually want for the job and a haggle-down ensues, you have a much better chance of coming away with a price you like.

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14 comments April 3rd, 2008

The cat’s out of the bag

I told myself I wasn’t going to post the cover of my new book on the site until I’d put the sucker to bed. The manuscript’s not even due till next week. But then Kristen Fischer kindly did this infomercial about me Q&A with me on Freelance Switch, which means the 22,000+ people who subscribe to the mother of all freelancing blogs now have the link to my new book (not that I mind). So I thought it was high time I let the cat out of the bag here too. In addition, I’d like to mention five things you probably didn’t know about my new book:

1. It’s called My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire, and it’s due out this fall from Seal Press.

2. I interviewed several of the working class heroes I mentioned yesterday for it.

3. Kate Basart, the fab designer who’s responsible for The Anti 9-to-5 Guide’s good looks, did my new cover too. (Clicking the image at the top of this post will make it bigger, in case you were wondering.) Note the recurring post-it motif! Also, note that those are not my feet, though I do own a pair of pink flip-flops.

4. Just a hunch, but I suspect publishers like to announce their books on Amazon as early as possible so their authors can’t weasel out of their deadlines.

5. The book is available for pre-order on Amazon. I’m just saying…

22 comments March 24th, 2008

Who are your working class heroes?

I recently did a Q&A with Cat Morley of the UK-based online craft community Cut Out & Keep. Cat asked me who my working class heroes are, and I liked the question so much (it was a first for me!) I thought I’d post my answer here.

I love the same funny writers everyone else does: David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, Anne Lamott, Steve Almond… But I’d have to say my real heroes are the freelancers on the rise whose work I’ve come to know and love in the past few years, several of whom I’ve come to know personally: writer Judy McGuire, who’s as snarky and funny as they come; writer/illustrator Ellen Forney, whose performances of her work impress the hell out of me; writer Diane Mapes, whose ongoing news of book deals, newspaper columns, and assignments from enviable publications keeps me reaching for more too; writer/instructor Angela Fountas, who got a couple of kickass grants [last] year and does a tremendous job of giving back to emerging writers; writer/blogger Ariel Meadow Stallings, who’s got the online social media thing down; illustrator Nina Frenkel, who’s one of the most talented and prolific thirty-somethings I’ve ever met; erotica writer/editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, who besides being mind-bogglingly prolific is pretty dang fearless — I mean, if writing erotica isn’t literally putting your ass on the line, I don’t know what is.

I don’t think someone has to be a stranger who’s been pulling in six figures for the last decade to be a hero. The successes all these women have achieved feel accessible and within reach to me, which I find all the more inspiring. It’s not as daunting as comparing yourself to, say, Michael Chabon or J.K. Rowling and thinking, “Will I ever be that brilliant or rich, will I, will I?”

What about you gals/guys? Who are your working class heroes? Your mom? Sis? BFF? Fave blogger/designer/photog/coder/translator? Let’s hear it. And if you want to read the rest of my Q&A with Cat, it’s here.

4 comments March 24th, 2008