ADVOCACY ALERT
Hello, freelancer—or future freelancer. I’m writing this book so we can talk about the rules of the road I’ve learned from being the head of Freelancers Union for fifteen years and meeting thousands of freelancers. I’ve listened as they’ve shared the tricks of the trade they’ve picked up and perfected to get ahead. I want to teach you the strategies that work.
I’ve also heard about freelancers’ challenges and what they’ve done to meet them. I want to help you meet these challenges and grow. Most of all, I want to share the models for success that I’ve seen and provide tools you can use to make the living you need.
When you ask freelancers about their work, they’re likely to tell you about not just one thing, but five or six: accountant by day, singer by night, professional office organizer on weekends, accounting firm part-timer during tax season, bookkeeper for their local professional group—oh, and last year they started selling their special handmade jewelry on Etsy “just for fun”!
A freelancer is a different kind of worker from the “Organization Man” of the 1950s or the current cubicle crowd. In the cubicle world, you get an assignment, complete it, and pick up your next assignment. As a freelancer, you can and often do perform multiple kinds of paid work. You network and market to find the work, complete the work, and then bill for it (and, too often, fight to collect payment).
Once you’re paid, you switch gears and become an HR specialist, apportioning every dollar into accounts to cover regular expenses and pay taxes and benefits. You also need to know how to buy health insurance, plan for retirement, implement financial planning, and structure business ventures and deals.
Freelancing is a fluid work medium that rewards nimbleness and flexibility. When it’s working well, there’s no better feeling. The Freelancer’s Bible will help you find that feeling as you start, grow, and thrive in your freelance career. I’ll demystify the process and help you sort through advice that often conflicts from source to source or overwhelms with detail. Given that freelancers have to do so many different tasks to do their work well, this book, curated by someone who has done the sorting and vetting beforehand, will put the essential information you need at your fingertips.
We’ll talk about best practices for things every freelancer needs to know, from getting started to setting prices; from dealing with clients to dealing with taxes, health insurance, and retirement saving. I’ve also addressed lifestyle issues such as taking time for yourself, handling workload and work habits, and keeping connected with others.
If you’re new to freelancing, this book will help you learn the ropes. If you’ve been freelancing for a while, it’ll help you grow and expand.
I’ll also introduce you to the world of freelancing—a world where you can build a community that’s far more than a professional network. It’s what I call your “love” network: a family of fellow freelancers that shares knowledge, resources, encouragement, and the naked truth about what’s going on. Freelancing may be officially defined as working alone, but the super-successful freelancers know they’re not alone. Keeping connected is key to their success.
The most accomplished businessperson you know probably has a lot in common with the stickiest website. Mainly they’re helpful—with lots of connections, links, interaction, and information. They give. They build a following and enormous loyalty. You will be a freelancer with lots of links and great advice so people will come to you with ideas, help, and lots of work they need done.
Freelancers are at the center of a huge shift in the workforce that has finally reached critical mass—and that’s great news for freelancers:
As many as one-third of workers in the United States work independently.
How’d we hit that big number? In business days of yore, companies couldn’t accurately predict workflow, so they kept workers on staff, ready for when they’d need all hands on deck. As technology helped companies better predict workflow, they adopted a “just-in-time” hiring model, cutting full-time staff (reaping colossal savings in salary, benefits, and real estate) and hiring additional workers only when necessary. Those just-in-time workers are freelancers.
As a freelancer, you face challenges staff workers don’t. You’re not eligible for unemployment insurance between gigs. And while companies get slammed with penalties if they don’t make their payroll, no such protections safeguard freelancers from deadbeat clients. Freelancers also have to buy their own health insurance and fund their own retirement. We’ll talk about how to meet these challenges.
Since the just-in-time workforce first evolved mainly in media and entertainment (and later, technology), freelancing was associated with creative work and seen as a “lifestyle choice.” That euphemism conveniently allowed business and government to view freelancers’ challenges as “not our problem.” But the freelance wave kept growing: Between 1995 and 2005, the number of independent workers grew by 27 percent. In New York City alone, two-thirds of the job growth between 1975 and 2007 was attributed to self-employment.
Then in 2008 came the Great Recession, an economic game-changer as none since the Great Depression. Layoffs and company closings spurred huge growth in the freelance community. According to one study, in the Great Recession the number of Americans starting their own businesses reached a fifteen-year high—and most were sole proprietors.
Today, freelancing’s gone mainstream. Employers rely more and more on independent workers to sustain and grow their businesses. Freelancers exist in all kinds of professions: the media, entertainment, manufacturing, health care, finance, real estate, nonprofit, and many more. They’re computer programmers and nannies, opera singers and anesthesiologists. They’re all ages, freelancing for all kinds of reasons:
• New grads freelance to start their careers.
• Full-time workers freelance to earn more for their kids’ education, save more for retirement, or transition to a new career.
• Laid-off workers freelance while job-hunting or go solo as their next act.
• Workers leave full-time jobs to freelance for greater work-life satisfaction or more flexible hours for school or training.
• Parents who want a flexible schedule to take care of kids and/or aging parents will freelance.
• People turn their hobbies into profitable freelance ventures, making money doing what they love.
• Seniors freelance to supplement their incomes and stay active.
Freelancers are everywhere in the new workforce, finally in a position to participate as major players as our country looks for ways to prosper in a changing world economy, and to drive the changes needed to build a new social safety net that will include them.
With all this growth, you’d think there’d be an official definition of a freelancer. It turns out there are many. And that’s actually a problem for your day-to-day freelance life.
Sam Prescott loves his job as a senior VP and the team he works with at X Corp. This morning starts like most others: He buys his coffee and toasted muffin in the company cafeteria and talks sports with Ted, the guy behind the counter.
In his office, Sam’s executive assistant, Tina, briefs him on messages and his calendar for the day. Then he meets with IT specialist Gordon, who has been doing troubleshooting around the company’s fulfillment system. Gordon recaps feedback from customer satisfaction surveys, analyzes financial losses from shipping delays, and makes recommendations for system updates.
After lunch, there’s an afternoon-long conference with Angie, who’s been working for the past eighteen months on a marketing campaign for a new product, now in the countdown to launch. Angie presents her team’s plan and press kit, which Sam puts in his briefcase to look over at home.
In all, a good day’s work. Now, here’s the catch: Only one person in this dramatization is getting a salary and benefits from X Corp. Everyone else is a freelancer. I’m sure you can guess the exception: Sam!
Let’s meet the others who are making Sam’s work life so successful:
Ted, a contract worker whose services are leased to X Corp. by another company.
Tina, a temporary worker hired through an agency to fill in for Sam’s assistant, who’s on maternity leave.
Gordon, a former full-time employee who decided six months ago to work part-time to care for an ailing parent.
Angie, an independent consultant or “permalancer,” previously a full-time X Corp. employee, retained by Sam after being laid off (by Sam!) in a company downsizing.
Angie’s team, a group of independent marketing consultants, copywriters, and designers to whom she’s subcontracted components of the product launch.
All of these workers are skilled professionals, all helping Sam reach X Corp.’s goals (and Sam’s goal of getting a juicy bonus if the product launch succeeds).
The list below, adapted from the Freelancers Union website, gives you an idea of the many faces of freelancing:
Independent contractor (aka freelancer, consultant, sole proprietor): You obtain clients on your own and provide them with a product or service.
Temp employee (via a temp agency): You work for a temp agency that assigns you to work at a client’s site.
Temp employee (direct hire): You work in a temporary position at a company but are not assigned through an agency.
On-call or per-diem employee: You’re called to work on an as-needed basis, usually to fill in for an absent employee or to help handle a heavy workload.
Part-time employee: You work as a permanent employee for less than thirty-five hours per week.
Leased employee: You work as a permanent employee for a client but are paid by another company handling payroll and benefits.
Contract employee: You work for a company that serves other firms under a contract. You work for one client at a time, usually on-site.
Day laborer: You gather with other workers in your industry and wait for an employer to pick you up to work that day.
ADVOCACY ALERT
STAND UP AND BE COUNTED . . . AND WHY IT COUNTS
As you flip through this book, you’ll notice boxes marked by various icons. The Advocacy Alerts provide often-surprising facts about freelancing and build solidarity among freelancers by clueing you in to key issues about indie life that could use improvement.
Building solidarity is tricky when there are so many different types of freelance work that even the government messes up the count! For example: The General Accounting Office (GAO) has eight different categories of “contingent” workers, but the Current Population Survey only tracks part-time and self-employed workers. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose assessments are fundamental in policymaking, doesn’t even include independent workers in most reports.
While this apparently makes sense to bureaucrats, to anyone else, it’s obviously nuts to exclude one-third of the workforce from national decisions about wage payment, unemployment benefits, taxes, health insurance coverage, retirement saving, and other pressing quality-of-life issues for workers. And traditional workers are much better served in these areas than freelancers.
Thus the Advocacy Alerts. If freelancers don’t stand up together to be counted, they may not be counted at all.
The word freelance has been part of our language for so long that we don’t stop to question what “free” and “lance” have to do with working for yourself. Where does it come from, anyway? Like the flowing-tressed women languishing in the castle towers of Pre-Raphaelite art, it’s an invention. Free lance was coined during the Industrial Revolution of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England when factories and machines were changing how people lived and worked. The Victorians reacted against these dramatic shifts by longing for a simpler time and creating a romantic vision of the medieval past. Sir Walter Scott originated the term in his 1820 novel Ivanhoe, set during the Crusades, writing: “I offered (King) Richard the services of my Free Lances” to describe knights not owing allegiance to a particular feudal lord who would offer their services for payment. The term obviously struck a chord and fit a need, because it has endured and expanded beyond a reference in a popular novel to define the resolutely self-employed, from artists to zoologists.
When I started getting involved with freelance issues, I learned freelancers have long lacked the safety net enjoyed by other workers, and that differences between worker and government have been around at least since biblical times, when Pharoah refused to allow the Israelites days off for worship and stopped supplying the straw they needed to make bricks—while still (no surprise to any freelancer) expecting them to make their quota and deadline.
Even the multiname thing has deep roots. Freelancing has had many names over the generations: cottage industry, piecework, moonlighting, sideline, gig, kitchen-table business, home-based business, and paid hobby. More recently, we’ve added consultant, independent worker, self-employed worker, independent contractor, temp, permatemp, solopreneur, sole proprietor, contingent worker, flexible or alternative staffing, crowd sourcing, and even “Gigonomics.”
All proof that the workforce has always been more varied than the economy formally recognizes. But the numbers are greater now, and the economic stakes higher. As our Freelancers Union 2011 survey of more than 2,500 independent workers found:
• 79 percent of independent workers surveyed didn’t have enough work in the last year (2010).
• 44 percent had trouble getting paid their owed wages in the last year.
• 83 percent say that paying for health insurance is a challenge.
When you start freelancing, the roller-coaster ride of freelance cash flow can be scary and stressful. It’s important to realize that freelancing is its own animal, entirely different from regular paid work, with its own mindset and methods. We’ll talk in later chapters about strategies that can help even out the peaks and valleys, as this freelancer learned:
Four months into freelancing, I had as much work as I could do and was so excited! But contracts took months to finalize, and payments were tied to approvals on deliverables that also took months. My cash flow was dismal. I thought these big income fluctuations meant I wasn’t working hard enough—but I was going flat out. Finally, my husband, a lifelong freelancer, gave me some great advice: “You can’t keep comparing your work and income to people who have salaries. If you do, you’ll never feel good about yourself.” It made me realize that freelancing is a business model all its own. Freelancers have to deal with cash flow fluctuations as part of the job.
I’ve learned that everything takes longer than I think—from landing the gig to doing the gig to getting paid for it. So I never stop networking. I start prospecting for new gigs much earlier as others wind down. I pad my deadlines if possible. I assume getting paid will take longer than anyone says—so I keep close track of my expenditures against my income. And I ask other freelancers how they negotiate to get the best deals for themselves they can.
From listening to thousands of freelancers share their stories over the years, I’ve learned that while freelancers definitely face challenges staff workers don’t, the changes I’ve described also offer big opportunities, which we’ll explore in this book:
1 The opportunity of security: Leaner companies means more work for freelancers, more people being able to succeed as freelancers, and the potential to form a larger and more supportive community to share information and strategies.
2 The opportunity of sustainability: The timing is perfect for freelance life to take off. Technology can literally put your office in the palm of your hand, so you can stay productive wherever you are, use online tools to streamline your work, and market yourself around the world. Add this to the many other rewards freelancers love: the chance to choose your clients, no long commute, no corporate meetings or politics, flextime for what’s really important to you, and savings on clothes and meals, to name just a few.
3 The opportunity of leverage: The freelance surge gives freelancers clout in national decisions about taxes, wages, and benefits. When freelancers withdraw their value from the workplace, it hurts. When they withdraw their votes, that hurts, too.
4 The opportunity of community (“a hive that thrives”): With the leverage of numbers, a more stable income, and a fulfilling lifestyle, there’s the opportunity for what I like to call “the love.” This is the camaraderie independent workers have long extended to each other to inform, support, engage in healthy and ethical competition, and foster a climate where freelancers succeed. At Freelancers Union, we call it “a hive that thrives.” This unity, I believe, is the foundation for building long-term sustainability for freelancers as individuals and as an organized, recognized group.
Whether you found freelancing or it found you; whether you left a job or were let go; whether you fled to freelancing or fell into it—the freelance life can be the life for you. Millions have done it, millions are doing it, millions more will. You can be one of them. Setting yourself up for success is what this book—and Freelancers Union—is all about.
It was a combination of father/daughter insomnia, a smart mom, an activist granddad, Quaker schools, peeling potatoes and breaking dishes, living on a kibbutz, law school, and being misclassified as an independent worker that made me so passionate about freelancers.
When I was a kid, my father and I loved to stay up late talking politics (we really were insomniacs). Having spent his life in and around the labor movement as a labor lawyer, he was fascinated by all things pertaining to work—history, policy, and people—and so was I. And because of his age (he was born in 1918), he brought alive the social movements from the 1930s through the 1960s—the pivotal decades of the New Deal and the civil rights movements.
To that, my mother added what I think a child needs most: a hug and a push. An independent spirit who left home at a young age to live and work on her own, she was scrappy. She let me know in the most loving way that a) I had things to do in life, and b) she expected me to do them. From her example, I developed a mantra that keeps me going through tough times at work even today: “Take a deep breath, get a glass of water, and put one foot in front of the other.”
Although he died before I was born, my grandfather, Israel Horowitz, lived on in the family lore for his longtime activism as vice president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU)—and for his fondness of another phrase every dedicated worker can relate to: “Excuse me, but I’m allergic to bullshit.”
I attended Quaker schools, where there was a pervasive idea that global change through individual effort was not only possible, but necessary. I went on to study labor issues at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell, where I became involved in labor and union work. There I learned the fundamentals of organizing and mobilizing groups (my first assignment involved unionizing the kitchen staff at a nursing home—long story involving lots of potato peeling capped by a dessert-tray crash of biblical proportions—I was a far better organizer than kitchen aide).
Then I lived for a time on a kibbutz, where I saw, essentially, a model of the hive: individuals working according to their strengths for the betterment of the whole. What struck me most was the beautiful fluidity and seamlessness of it: The parents saw their children a lot more, taking meals and breaks with them. I also noticed the sense of well-being from a life lived doing work you love: I’ve never seen seniors happier, healthier, or more engaged. It was so different from the segmented model most of us grew up with: Go to school, get a job, maybe take a break to have kids, retire.
All this reached critical mass when, after law school, I got a job in a small law firm that misclassified me, with some others, as an independent contractor! As you’ll learn in Chapter 6, companies that misclassify workers as independent workers when they’re doing the work of full-time employees gain huge tax savings. For the worker, however, it means no health benefits, no unemployment insurance, no retirement plan, no wage protection. When it happened to me, I was livid. We dubbed ourselves the Transient Workers Union. We even made up mock letterhead—and my fellow members named me president.
I wanted to know why things like this could still happen. Why are so many workers in the new economy underrecognized in so many ways? How can we set up systems that answer the needs of the new, fluid workforce, help nontraditional workers help themselves, and prevent their exploitation? I went to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on an intellectual sabbatical of sorts. By the time I emerged, I had the beginnings of the structure that would become Freelancers Union.
When I founded Freelancers Union in 1995, freelancing was viewed as either a euphemism for being unemployed or for being a slacker dude hanging out at a café with a laptop. But times have changed. As mentioned, one-third of the workforce is now independent. As this book is published, membership in Freelancers Union, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving and advocating for independent workers, stands at nearly 200,000 nationwide. The numbers are there for a true movement.
We define Freelancers Union as “a federation of the unaffiliated” because we seek to combine the independent spirit and diversity of freelancers with the community that freelancers savor and, we believe, need in order to flourish. We also aim to develop and implement programs to help freelancers enjoy a more stable life as they pursue work they love.
To that end, in 2001, Freelancers Union started offering health insurance to freelancers, and in 2008 we launched Freelancers Insurance Company, providing health insurance in New York state. Freelancers Union has also been selected to sponsor nonprofit health insurance companies called CO-OPs in New York, New Jersey, and Oregon in 2014. The Freelancers Retirement Plan, the first 401(k) plan for freelancers, was launched in 2009.
Freelancers can’t rely on companies for training. They have to be self-starters and mentor themselves and one another. So we offer seminars on everything from taxes to marketing. Freelancers connect, collaborate, and share info via our job board and discussion groups. Our Client Scorecard lets members rate clients and alert unsuspecting fellow freelancers to potential problems, and our member-sourced Contract Creator helps freelancers negotiate an agreement that’s fair to them.
On the advocacy side, the leverage of our growing membership helps us lobby for fair treatment for independent workers, from cracking down on misclassification to pushing for tough punishments for deadbeat clients.
Our symbol, the beehive, reflects the ideal we hold for the freelancer’s world: a community of individuals where the well-being of all and the well-being of each are one. Helping freelancers achieve well-being, singly and collectively, is my mission in writing this book.
Much has been written about employees navigating the demands of work and home. It’s a pretty artificial distinction these days, as people bring work home on weekends, check in with the babysitter from the office, and make phone calls to boss, clients, mate, and kids during their commute. Many will tell you that feeling pulled between the domains of work and home is a big stressor.
Those domains don’t exist in the freelance life, where your home may be your office, your family may be your staff, friends may become clients, clients may become friends, and fellow freelancers may become coworkers.
It turns out when that artificial work/home boundary is dismantled, as happens for freelancers, life can get a lot richer and more satisfying.
The Freelancer’s Bible is structured to reflect the full spectrum of the freelance life:
When you look at them in the graphic below, you might see that you move back and forth on this spectrum a lot during a typical freelance workday.
Here’s a possible example: You spend the morning working on a project (Getting Work). Then you head out to a doctor’s appointment, where you answer emails while you wait, and run some personal errands on the way home (Your Business and Your Community; Managing Your Business). At home, you finish and send out your monthly email newsletter (Growing Your Business) and call a few freelancer friends for negotiating advice on a contract (Getting Work). Then you pick up your child from school and make a run to the grocery to pick up supplies for a cookout, where you talk with several parents in your neighborhood about setting up a babysitting co-op to trade off after-school and weekend child care (Your Business and Your Community).
Sound familiar? Some days it might feel like you’re scrambling to keep up. But on the good days, it’s invigorating, liberating, and fun. And you wouldn’t trade your freelance life for anything.
My goal in writing The Freelancer’s Bible is to help you have many, many good days.
TALK TO US!
Almost everything I’ve learned about freelancing has come from freelancers themselves. We want to hear from you—your experiences and opinions about the freelance life, your questions, your problems, and how Freelancers Union can help. Here’s how to reach us:
Freelancers Union
20 Jay Street, Suite 700
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Tel: 718-532-1515
Fax: 718-222-4440
freelancersunion.org
The freelance world is constantly changing. While I’ve made every effort to provide current information as of this writing, the story of freelancing is fast evolving. To find the latest news and information, please visit the Freelancers Union website (freelancersunion.org), as well as contacting the other organizations and resources listed in this book, as we continue to advocate for the recognition and positive change that freelancers deserve.