Biznik Blog

Today we concluded the first show in our new Biznik Live series Surviving & Thriving During Economic Uncertainty.  Though there were a few minor technical glitches, our interview with author Michelle Goodman went great overall. You can see the topics covered in the summary below.  

We have some exciting upcoming authors, including Van Jones -author of The Green Collar Economy and Timothy Ferris -of The Four Hour Workweek.  

Thanks to all who participated, we hope you enjoyed it, and please feel free to offer any feedback to hep us improve future Biznik Live shows.

• Download and listen to the archived mp3 of the show
• Listen to this streamed version over the web at BlogTalkRadio 
• Subscribe in iTunes or other podcast player

 

Show Overview

After hearing some basic introductions about the show, Michelle, and her upcoming book, we talked about:

• Is it wise to be a ‘free agent’ during these economically uncertain times?
• What key steps can be taken to maximize success during these times?
• What are some low-cost marketing ideas?
• What kind of balance to strike between traditional employment and self-employment?
• How to connect compassionately with clients during these times?
• What kinds of personality qualities make for a successful free agent?

Enjoy!

Transcription of Show…

(NOTE: We’ve been advised that the below transcription is far from accurate.  Add that fact to this being my first show, and there are quite a few confusing lines below.  We’ll edit this as soon as time allows.  Thanks!)

 

Leif Hansen: Hello and welcome to Biznik Live broadcasting from Seattle, Washington. Biznik Live connects you with nationally recognized authors whose powerful ideas will help make successful choices for your business. In just a minute we’re going to be talking with author Michelle Goodman in getting some great suggestions on how you can weather up with current economic storm.

I’m your host Leif Hansen and I’m honored that you’ve chosen to lend us your ears, they’re really tasty actually, and if we’re lucky I look forward to hearing your questions in the second half of the show. We’ll it’s been pretty rough right now on Wall Street this past couple of weeks and I know a number of friends and associates of mine that are feeling concerned about the future of their financial and vocational security. 

 

01:00

 

Regardless of the situation, fear has never been the best of advisers. In this upcoming series of interviews, we’re focusing on how free agents like you can make the best choices in order to help your business thrive during the present economic uncertainty. 

 

I’m proud to say that this first Biznik Live show is not only a Biznik member herself but is also from Biznik’s hometown, Seattle Washington. In addition to her recently released book, “My So-Called Freelance Life”, Michelle Goodman is the author of the “The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube”, an irreverent handbook for aspiring cubicle expats.

 

Her other diverse articles and essays have graced media outlets such as ABCNews.com, CNN.com, Salon.com, The Seattle Times, and many more publications. And though I could tell your more about her, I think we’d much rather hear from her herself. So are you there Michelle and how are you doing?

 

02:04

 

Michelle Goodman: I am and thanks for asking me to be on the show. I’m really excited about it and doing well.

 

Leif Hansen: I’m really excited to hear about all you have to share on how to save us from this economic storm.

 

Michelle Goodman: Oh yes, because I have a magic wand.

 

Leif Hansen: Yes.

 

Michelle Goodman: Possibly even make all the debt go away, all the trillions of it. [Laughs]

 

Leif Hansen: I’ve heard about your magic wand - its on sale for $5.99, right?  So you have a book that has just been released. You want to give us a brief summary?

 

Michelle Goodman: Yeah, that’s “My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire”. I’ve been working for myself as a freelance writer and editor for about 16 years now with the occasional longer term contract in the high-tech world turn in. The book is about 225 or 230 pages of much good stuff, tips, and anecdotes and ‘don’t do this because I may just screw up and let me stay here in doing this.

 

03:12

 

You know just all the information culled from my years of freelancing and you know, ‘where are my mistakes’, lots of troubleshooting tips, and you know, dealing with hell clients, contracts - what a hard stuff! So it’s just not for newly self-employed faux dealer and it’s not just for designers and writers, it’s for anybody whose already working for themselves or are interested in working for themselves. 

 

I’ve been having you know, my fellow, one time, journalist friends are reading it and they’re saying, “You see that thing you said in Chapter 5.” I’m thinking “Yes, and you could do that to.” So hopefully, it will appeal too economically.

 

Leif Hansen: You’re just to give advice and actually following your own advice. 

 

04:01

 

Michelle Goodman: Yeah, well I just can’t be just the most perfect person in the world that I did a full 100% of everything I mean, some of the other things, there are things that I intend to do and in the book I’d say, you know, there’s just something I discovered about marketing and now I’m going to do it this way.

 

Leif Hansen: Yes. Kind of what experience comes from our mistakes, I think primarily happen.

 

Michelle Goodman: Yes.

 

Leif Hansen: Speaking of mistakes, I want to tease you here because one of the things that you’ve written about is human mating ritual? I know that’s not the topic that we we’re going to focus on but what’s that about?

 

Michelle Goodman: It was just a fun way of saying that I do a lot of career and self-employment writing, but I also do a lot of stories maybe right now through CNN on just quirky behavior stories, you know, how to apologize when you screw up and much of dating things, you know, learn to get vasectomies under age 30. So it’s just still leisure type dating thing.

 

05:01

 

When you tell your date that you have a deep dark secret, that’s what’s that all about.

 

Leif Hansen: In this context, when to tell your date that you are now massively broke.

 

Michelle Goodman: Right. Exactly.

 

Leif Hansen: You are–

 

Michelle Goodman: You have a hundred thousand dollars of credit card debt.

 

Leif Hansen: Yes. So well, believe it or not we need to just jump straight into, like I know, they’re time’s going to fly. So just for our audience, I’m going to ask a couple of just direct questions, having to do with this series and then in about 10 minutes we’re going to open it up to you guys to go ahead and ask questions. We’ll give the calling number and call that every time. 

 

So Michelle, I guess, I’m really wondering, and a number of us are wondering if, is it really wise to be self-employed, to be a free agent and follow your vocational vision during this turbulent times?

 

Michelle Goodman: Yes but with a caveat, but that caveat would exist on anytime. And let me tell you about the caveat first. 

 

06:01

 

The caveat is that I’d rather advice quitting your day job today and thinking you can have a full-time, independently employed, self-employed freelance work load tomorrow. I mean, it can take weeks or months, sometimes even more than a year to get to the point where you have the full-time schedule and work load that you want. So I would always recommend and I have recommended in books, doing it on the side, and the only downside to that is the lack of official life that might come with new lighting on top of a day job.

 

I mean to tell how much energy can be sustained and I know sometimes it’s hard to go about meeting with clients, and living and doing with clients when your tied up for somebody else during business hours. There is around you like getting up extra early and all that. 

 

07:00

 

So that’s one thing. But we do not have to get into that. But I would really recommend having a plan before you leave. Normally I would say having money saved but I know that just gets harder and harder but having some sort of fall back income, whether you’re going to keep a part-time job, you’re going to keep a contract job, whatever it is. So you’re not just relying on pulling any clients that you don’t yet have, to feed you. 

 

Leif Hansen: Right

 

Michelle Goodman: And lining up contacts and getting their portfolio, all pumped up, and all the groundwork to set up your business before you dive in but that said –

 

 

Leif Hansen: Given the assumption that one is at a sustainable place at this time, can you continue to sustain it, are we in a better or worse or same place with others who have typical jobs, and, what do you think?

 

Michelle Goodman: I don’t know if I’m economically qualified and often possibly the best economic evaluator in the country. We may not know who is in better state.

 

 

 

08:02

 

Leif Hansen: Yes.

 

Michelle Goodman: But I feel like it’s a great time to be on your own for a number of reasons. As a company you’re cutting costs. They are thrilled to not be paying benefits which they don’t have to pay the freelancers. Now, you know in some industries, along with the job cuts, they’re going to count freelance cuts but in other industries it might be seen in other costs saving, not if a company, that it has been for years.

 

I have a statistics here that a career build study of thousands of companies from last year and I note last year that I can’t imagine that this is going to completely current because I had been freelancing through a recession and I freelanced through the dot-com bust and the post-9/11 drop of work. If you like to completely go away, and every time you think the door closes, there are more opportunities.

 

09:00

 

Anyway the statistics was that last year, 55% of companies in the surveys said they were needing freelancers, they’re planning to use freelancers. As much as that companies, much as the tech positions like, HR, design, and business development, finance, any type of position, and then they also said that there were 20% of them total are hiring more freelancers than they have in the previous year.

 

But another thing we need to ask is that I think about my friends who have been at the same job 2 and 5 and 10 years and you know when they get laid off it’s just like a rude awakening. They haven’t looked for a job in years and updated their resume and freelancers have constantly on their toes with the polished portfolio or website that were only changing, and we even we knew how to look for work, and we do it on a weekly or monthly basis so I feel like we’re more equipped to roll with the changes. 

 

10:05

 

Leif Hansen: Yes, great point. I think you have said to me, kind of putting it the succinct way that when you have just one employer, you are typically employed but when you’re a freelancer or a free agent, you got 50 employers. And now you got a number, sort of a loose web that you can get at a time.

 

Michelle Goodman: But I always have and I don’t know if it was born in every situation but I always have sort of like those clients that I haven’t been worked for a while but I know like there was go back to you know everything else dries up, not that they’re always going to be ready for me, but you just got to have so many contacts that it doesn’t take that long to drum up something else.

 

I cam on something and yesterday, that I’ve been working on for about 8 months and they’re going to be closing shop November, and I thought, well, you know, “Oh well, let’s just more room on my schedules. Find something else I’ve been wanting to mix it up anyway.” 

 

 11:06

 

So yeah, the multiple income coming in is definitely beneficial.

 

Leif Hansen: Cool. Well, just because I’m realizing we have just about 3 or 4 minutes before we take in calls. 

 

Michelle Goodman: I know.

 

Leif Hansen: What from your experience, your expertise, in the books you are writing, and what does that have to say about our current time? What advice would you give? What will be the top maybe 1 or 2 actions that free agents can take to better prepare themselves and work with at this time right now?  

 

Michelle Goodman: Well I think one of my biggest things is also one of our biggest things and that is you know if you don’t feel like you’re well connected and you don’t have a real tight freelance community, work on that. I mean and not just hanging along with writers, and designers and talking to designers but people across all vocations and you know look for ways that maybe you can team up together and approach clients or ways you can cross-refer to each other so much work. I mean most people get their works from word of mouths and lots of it comes from your fellow freelancers.

 

12:11

 

I mean I know a lot of people who like to operate in that clamp-down, work-is-scarce, with a competitive mentality, but I think there are many more people who have the opposite approach and rarely somebody who’s very territorial. So that’s one thing.

 

You know even though it’s kind of a little scary, when you necessarily pick the first thing that comes your way, if it’s not work that you have, that is not along the lines of your goals, and you know, obviously we don’t have time in this section to talk about meeting goals, and things, clients and all that.

 

But if you have the money to sustain you for your next week, I’m not advocating just going without and being so high, and snooty, that you’re just going to turn your nose down on anything that’s going to meet you.

 

 

 

13:07

 

But if you know, you get offers like $250 job that’s completely not the kind of work you want to do and it’s a one-off job, it’s not going to be repeat work.You know it might not be worth the couple of of hours you spend doing until the morning, you spend doing it if you know what’s your rates are. Your time might be better invested in looking for new client. So there’s that. You’re really picking in choosing..

 

Leif Hansen: Yeah, unless you’re both counter-intuitive like you say, a lot of people in fear mode get more competitive and they get it to say yes to everything and I hear you saying that it’s going to serve you a lot more to trust and cooperate and network with people and still stick to your goals and the same, noticing that maybe aren’t going to last in a long term. Is that right?

 

Michelle Goodman: Yeah absolutely. I mean, I must be starving. And somebody is going to give you 150 bucks to do something that you possibly, you normally never say yes to. You know I’m not going to tell you to not do that.

 

14:07

 

But I think you know what I’m saying. I mean, every client is an investment and we want it saving money when you’re specializing and focusing on a couple of different area, a couple of different subject areas, a couple of different segments in the industry. And there was one Biznik account and she does a lot of work with the real estate industry. 

 

I don’t know how it’s going for her right now, I don’t even talk to her about it in a while, but before, the buy-out of the real estate market, it was just self-sustaining thing that referral upon referral and that in that subset of the financial sector that she’s working with. I’m not to say, and this is costly counter-intuitive too, do we have time for one more?

 

Leif Hansen: OK Let’s do one more and let’s open the questions.

 

 

 

15:00

 

Michelle Goodman: OK, maybe people ask few of my other stuff. I would just writing down before we talked, I think it’s important to ensure that we are charging the rates we want to rate. I think we ought to charge what we want. I think we all have our clients where we’ve been needing to ask them for more money because we’ve been working for them for a year and someday all those paying client because we’ve got other better and higher paying work.

 

I have a client like this  and I was  going to ask him for more money and I got really busy and then Wall Street imploded and I thought, “Oh no, how can I do that now.” Actually I feel like I’m going to do it now anyway because who knows it’s going to happen with our economy. It might be perceived even worse, months from now. And I already say you know, take stock and maybe the way by ensuring, you’re getting paid enough by all your clients is to if you know you can’t ask, or if you ask then it goes nowhere, then maybe the way is to just move on to somebody else that you know you can make more money from.

 

 

16:09

 

But really, just make sure you’re doing good enough for your time because I mean you can’t waste the hours you have to work like crazy, when you’re being underpaid. And that’s what we’re really careful about taking those, that you got paid so much in promotion jobs. Because those could get real drained and it’s not even worth it.

 

Leif Hansen: Yes, you need to think–

 

Michelle Goodman: More often than not.

 

Leif Hansen: It’s direct payback and stand up for your right. Well Michelle, we are going to move in to some calls. If you are the first caller now, but before I take you, caller from the last number starting with 3474, I want to tell other people, you can call in using 347-884-8009 directly. You can use the BlogTalkRadio chat and ask your question there or if you use GoogleTalk, you can send the message to the biznikcatalyst@gmail.com. 

 

 

17:00

 

Alright, so I’m going to go and take our first caller. Thank you so much Michelle for that great advice. And so first caller from, looks like Seattle ending 3474 are you there?

 

Caller 1: Hello can you hear me?

 

Leif Hansen: Yes we can hear you now.

 

Caller 1: Oh I am actually just listening in, I didn’t have a question so I don’t know how I came up in the question cue, but I’m really interested in what she has to talk about so I am just listening with attention. 

 

Leif Hansen: Oh no problem, that’s great. Well thank you for listening. If something does come to your mind, then please feel free to go ahead and ring us, and we will be happy to answer for you alright? I’m going to go ahead and we’ll take the question from next caller or message on the site here. Jeff from New York is asking a question from Google Chat with us here. 

 

18:01

 

How do you connect passionately with clients during this times when they’re fearful?

 

Michelle Goodman: It’s interesting and I’m not sure if he’s talking about money or just meeting with financial needs or addressing their financial concern or just meeting all the business needs. I think it’s really smart to just play it like, you know, we’re all humans and, you’re client is not necessarily going to be your best friend and you’re not going to be talking to them how much you drank last night even your feeling problems. But, when having delicate conversations about the future of the project or whether the project is going to go on next month, I think you can just sorely say something like, “I know I don’t think they’re pretty up in the air right now.”

 

19:00

 

I mean, most finances have been with the client for a while usually that sends us what’s going on, you know, politics, I mean I worked with a lot of newspapers, so there  has been, I had some client that have been laid off. And I was like, trying to say “Hey I hope you’re doing OK. Let me know if I can help you with anything.”

 

There’s this really smart business guy who has a syndicated web radio show and he talked about how it’s actually not such a terrible time to say, “Let me know if I can do anything to help.” And if there in the middle of some sort of restructuring, then learning these possibilities that he might the person they say will actually know something you can do. 

 

And you know, when it’s still out, changes or lay-offs, just to the complete overhaul, that’s the way they are outsourcing, if you are sort of in there, talking with them, saying your willing to help and work with them, you just might be one of the first people they set working with, one of the most important people, they set working with.

 

20:05

 

Leif Hansen: That’s a good point. That’s a really good point.

 

Michelle Goodman: When things change, yeah. 

 

Leif Hansen: I got a question here from Joe on the BlogTalkRadio Chat. Joe asks, what advice do you have for lowest cost marketing?

 

Michelle Goodman: Lowest cost marketing, yeah, I am not a fan of spending big bucks on marketing because, just not. And you know, you have health insurance to contend with and I just feel that there are so many free avenues out there definitely working the web. Or really make sure if you don’t have a cheesy website, but there are new freelancers who are working to build their portfolio where they learn to cut your price break and competent management tools like WordPress, obviously make having to say that you can maintain without having to rely on somebody to update every little link. 

 

 

 

21:01

 

They just make it easy. But I do external marketing just through online. So it’s like different social networks and I’m not a big, I’m not on Twitter or in every possible social network. But I am on some sites but it didn’t make a lot of connections that way like through Biznik and LinkedIn and even Facebook, whoever uses Facebook. But I mean more sites like that, but you know there’s this lots of different tools, professional associations. My goodness, there’s just so many avenues for them. I mean they go either have some kind of cool fun happy hours, or they have discussion lists.

 

And honestly, so many freelancers that work through this free discussion was the lists they belong. I know extensive writing when in town and you know in ABC or freelance service with said contractor, the potential client will just post, they’re looking for someone to hire and that might be the only place they post that’s not Craigslist or anything else.

 

22:00

 

So those are often great ways but you know, you have to get a fine tune to see people and, you know, if there’s not in industry event that you like, although I couldn’t imagine they are not being interested, there’s so much in town. I mean if you go to that website seattle.org, there’s tons of events that is on Biznik. So yeah, just getting out and meeting people.

 

Leif Hansen: Just getting straight out. You know it’s interesting because you find people who do spend a ton of money on traditional marketing, net marketing.

 

Michelle Goodman: Yes.

 

Leif: Hansen: And it goes nowhere. When they could’ve maybe just spent an hour and just go on and actually met some people face to face find a few connections.

 

Michelle Goodman:Yes, and that’s what you see you should just count it and there are some people where they are sort of part of the business - lots of wedding photographers, advertising, that’s just kind of the way it goes because their job is so like one shot deal. It’s not they are going to be re-hired by the same person within a year, at least you hope not.

 

23:00

 

But you know I mean there are some tools that, I’m a big fan of postcards. You know, I just figure out what your budget is and ask other people what works for you, people doing what you do and forgot where you’re going to put your time and money because you couldn’t just be marketing infinitely. 

 

Leif: Hansen: We got a couple of other questions here. Jen Kraus from Chicago, (hold a second here I just lost the email, I’m going to come back to that). I’ll get another one. One the BlogTalk site it says, how do you deal with a client who wants to cut your services to save money when you can see it will hurt them more in the long run?

 

Michelle Goodman: That’s interesting. 

 

Leif: Hansen: That’s a good question.

 

Michelle Goodman: Yes. I think it’s a great question, and I guess that’s that fine line between sounding like a petulant salesperson, it’s like but no. But I would just say it’s hard to know without knowing the exact example of what’s going on, but you know, I would just say, ‘You know, I understand that times are tough and why don’t you tell me, you know, what is your budget and maybe I can work with that. And when you cut some things back, you know, because I just feel that if you cut out the editing of your website, which is critical stage in a website development, and you have all kinds of typos on your site, basically website’s doing you no good because it looks so unprofessional.’

 

 

24:29

 

You know, it is in diplomatically telling them what you think the shortcomings are. I don’t know, be creative, and maybe there’s a way you can meet them halfway. And you know, there might not be because clients dry up all the time and you know, for it’s not just your time to replace that chunk of income with somebody else. But I would definitely try and talk to them.

 

Leif: Hansen: OK great. I did find the email from Jenny, she says “Well many people are looking for traditional–”, (I’m not reading this right). I’m sorry Jenny for hacking your question. 

 

25:12

 

I think what she is basically asking is, you have mentioned people who were working full time, who were kind of wondering if they should leave and you were saying, don’t jump ship right away. She’s in an opposite position where she is self-employed, and she’s flirting with the idea out of fear, with going back and looking for traditional jobs and she’s wondering if that’s a smart thing to be shopping around for more “stable jobs” or are they really that stable? Hanging on to your question Jenny, hope that’s OK.

 

Michelle Goodman: Yeah, I mean I guess, you know, there’s no crystal ball that’s going to say, that if you get a full time job, it’s going to still be there. You know hopefully you would research the company and you know if it’s in a financial sector you might think twice or real estate right now.

 

 

26:00

 

But, hopefully that’s going be around, and next year, I don’t know. No but research about the company and talk to other people that has worked with them, google them, look what people say about them. If you don’t know anything about the stock market, maybe you could have somebody who does tell you whatever the financials you need to know about this company. I’m not super-savvy in stocks. I have flirted with coming back to the cube and I learned about this in the new book many times. 

 

And it seems like I get offers a couple, once or twice a year. Usually when I’m at my economically most vulnerable or you might consider a happy medium which is taking right the contact job for six months a year. Because when you’re not beholden to be an employee, sometimes you can even get these permatemp job is that you can sometimes negotiate a flexible schedule whether it’s flexible hours or t and you can keep your three quarter time and then you can keep a freelance or two or you know the jobs you prefer to keep, the best ones. 

 

27:11

 

So that’s an option but you know a lot of freelancers go in and out of employment. And some are easy to invigorate your love of freelancing, and it reminds me how much I love working at home. It sucks to anyone else. Freelancers do get burned out. So sometimes it can be a nice break. And then if you leave, people you work with, some are becoming clients.

 

I don’t think it’s a failure or anything like that. I don’t think I could promise that’s safer than freelancing. I mean, if you’re feeling like you just not getting any financial traction.

 

Leif Hansen: It’s a nice kind of in-between option.

 

Michelle Goodman: Yeah.

 

Leif Hansen: I think that’s a good point. 

 

28:00

 

We have time for one or two more questions. Again you could call 347-884-8009 if you want to ask a question of actually right XX we have somebody here though.

 

Alright, I’m taking a call from someone whose number ends in 6655 you are on.

 

Hello can you hear us?

 

OK, I’m going to meet you last chance, caller from 6655, are you there?

 

I can hear a very tiny bit of a voice but I’m going to have to cut you out there, because I can’t hear much otherwise.

 

So I’m going to take one more question from the chat that we have here and then I know, Michelle if we have time, you said that you had one of your readers of your blog that…

 

29:01

 

Hope we do have another call, let’s try this one. You are on the caller from 3296, can you hear us?

 

Caller 3: Yup.

 

Leif Hansen: Listen Joe can you hear me? Hi Joe! Hey you have a question? 

 

Caller 3: Yeah, just one question, what personality or quality would you say are absolutely necessary for people longing to succeed in as a free agent?

 

Michelle Goodman: Flexibility, and good humor. 

 

Leif Hansen: And of course humility. 

 

Michelle Goodman: Yes humility. Also you got to be able to light a fire under your own butt. I do admit to be lazy. I love to slack. I love to sloth but you’re client aren’t going to do it for you so flexibility is probably the most important one.

 

Excellent. Let’s cut it off there as we’ve been more into it by 10 seconds. 

 

30:02

 

I just want to say that you can find out more about Michelle at her website Anti9to5.com is that right?

 

Michelle Goodman: Anti9to5guide.com. And if you are in Seattle, I’m having a Q&A and lunch party at Office Nomads next Thursday night and that’s on my website on events page.

 

Leif Hansen: Excellent and we look forward to seeing some of you at the party. Michelle thank you so much for giving us your time today. All the listeners, thank you as well.

 

Michelle Goodman: Thank you.

 

Leif Hansen: We look forward to seeing the rest of you at Biznik.com, Collaboration Beats Competition. It is true and thanks for confirming that Michelle.

 

Michelle Goodman: You’re welcome, thank you so much.

 

Leif Hansen: Alright, I look forward to talking to you all later, thanks for your questions Joe. OK Bye.

 

Michelle Goodman: Bye.

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