Three Eras of Work

I’ve been through three generations of work, so far, in my lifetime. The bootstrap era, the authoritarian era, and the era of free agents.

The Bootstrap Era: When I was young and jobless, seemingly talentless, and officially skill-less, my grandparents would describe the world of work: You go where they’re hiring, you do what they’re needing, you do what your boss wants, and you never bite the hand that feeds you. Those were the rules. If you got out of the military, like my Uncle, and “they were needing” computer scientists, you did that. You didn’t ask what you loved to do, you didn’t search yourself for the answer like all the morality plays of the time where the promising kid runs off to be an artist only to learn that his place was in his father’s footsteps. You asked what “they” were needing. It was never specified who “they” were, of course – “they” were the unacknowledged nexus of corporate, military, and political interests – but for my grandparents, loyalists who didn’t bite the hand that fed them in the great war, “they” were just “society” – or “the world”. If you were like me, 17 years old, your talents cast aside for the necessity of a job, any job, and when those talents surfaced – they had no explicable ‘resume’ of acceptable contexts to prove themselves, you went where “they were hiring” and “started at the bottom” and “worked your way up”. Supposedly, a job sweeping or tossing fries at a burger joint would result, with enough hard work, in a respectable position like assistant manager some day, and if ever “they were needing” managers, you might just, if you kept to the rules, become that (and get a house, wife, car, retirement plan, and all the things that give one’s life meaning). But the world *did not*, in fact, work that way. By the time that advice was given, the world had already changed. Fry cooks didn’t become managers. Managers came from a special centralized school, and needed at least a college degree. To my grandparents, college was for the well to do, the ones with trusts funds, so this just didn’t compute. Keep scrubbing those floors, and somehow loyalty will make you ascend. But the era of loyalty being rewarded as such had died with the pension fund.

The Authoritarian Era: When I was a bit older, I got a succession of jobs working in a business shirt and tie. My parents ‘ generation were the source of advice then: don’t make waves, please your employer, and give the corporation what it wants. But did it know what it wants? The mythical system of boss and bootstraps was gone, to be replaced by the near anonymity of the faceless attitudes steering a corporation. Reputation (which came from everywhere and nowhere) was everything, because it was a system of waiting for rewards in exchange for which you provided uniformity, nobody sticking out or sticking up too much, compliance, and moral ambiguity. The idea was to maintenance the career, maintain the resume, keep dirt off your name, and look for ways to climb. But the needs of the corporation are limitless, and demands often increase in response to the talent one brings, and they do not in fact necessarily allow one to remain uniform and quiet – they often sense and demand the exploitation of talent in a variety of ways that challenge character and potentially transform individuality and personality. The results, also, are not always clear cut. You might succeed at producing exactly the results requested, and wish you hadn’t. For example, you might be asked to educate internal execs on the use of a new software package designed for them by an outsource company, but those execs might find the software package they purchased does not in fact deliver much of what they had understood or been promised when they purchased it, and then the corporation is actually unhappy with the result, and looks upon the diligence and fulfillment with ill favor instead of appreciation and satisfaction. The moral ambiguity means right and wrong are relative to the outcome, not necessarily fulfilling what is asked. A corporation is often confused about what it wants can provide no assurance of the means of success. The corporation, too, had come to combine so many disparate communities and interactions that it could act almost like a body without a head. It could cry out for talent but reward mediocrity, only to punish mediocrity with layoffs shortly thereafter, retaining the talent and then demanding more mediocrity, which would be employment suicide. By the time the parental advice was given, authority had already become so ubiquitous that it was disconnected from purpose, and the system was taking on its greatest sources of talent from contractors who could draw the occasional firm, logical line in the sand: “Yes, we can do that; it’ll take more money or more time, which do you prefer?” But at least you got results – in the contractor, leadership – authority – came attached to competence and purpose. The system was already rewarding not people who did what they were told, but Free Agents it brought in from “the outside” – that magical place that the people came from that always seemed to save the day – people who thought less in terms of loyalty and authority than of competence, clarity, and excitement.

The Era of Free Agents: Daniel Pink, of “Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live,” has said that Free Agents are “free from the bonds of a large institution and agents of their own futures. They are the new archetypes of work in America. It used to be that the bargain between employee and employer was that the employee gave loyalty and the employer gave security… The bargain now is that the individual gives talent and the organization provides opportunities.” What’s a Free Agent? A Free Agent is a professional contractor. Don’t think of a staff agency temp, once again cowed and controlled by two companies not one, no benefits, badly robbed of more than half their billable rate. No, a Free Agent contracts to bring in expertise, buys his own health care, funds his own retirement plan, and negotiates his own rate, which has to cover his taxes, benefits, and the rest. He bills back expenses and, at some point, in a worst case scenario, he is able to cut the cord if the corporation doesn’t hold to their end of the contract. Free Agents can work for Fortune 500 companies, for another one-person shop, on-site, remotely, travelling, locally, part-time or full or flex, and at nearly any level or type of talent or expertise. There are variations on this: some companies hire “contract employees” which basically means project workers with full employee benefits that drop off upon completion without further obligation. But in a troubled economy, hiring in any capacity has its own risks and headaches. You can’t build the core of a project team out of staff agency temps, though.  There are risks and headaches to bringing in 1099 contractors – one example: a lot of them are suing – successfully, because in most respects they’re treated like employees and argue they should be entitled to benefits – and now the IRS is cracking down with new rules on the contractor/employee distinction. It’s a dilemma, all right. I make no secret that I’m affiliated with Free Agent Source, the company that connects Free Agents with Client companies but with a corp to corp contract (no 1099), and keeps contractors in benefits and provides them a W-2 without taking half of it – Free Agents set their rates with the Client and FAS keeps a small, transparent portion to provide back office services, legal, accounting, etc. You can bring in just about anyone in any capacity as a Free Agent that way, without the problems attendant regular employment, staffing agencies, or 1099 contracting. But regardless of that being our solution, there’s a shift of culture, here, as Pink was suggesting. Whether the fabled economic “Recovery” comes one day, or the Kingdom comes first, there’s strong indication that this way of working may remain the fastest growing trend. Why not? When you’re up, it still makes as much sense as when you’re down. The Bootstrap Era is gone, and the results of the Authoritarian Era are mixed at best, and just not practical anymore (if they ever were).

Your view of the legitimacy of each successive shift will depend on what era you personally are currently living in. One of the things I hope to achieve is to live always in the next era. As an entrepreneur (a solopreneur – another new skyrocketing trend well before the bust), isn’t that the goal? To live with vision, with insight into where we are going, not mistaking the past for the present, but staking (a little exhilirating risk, to be sure) on what works rather than simply on what is and what was? Well, that’s certainly a key to prosperity for a lot of people whose version of Free Agency is self-employment. It’s an exciting time for work. Maybe I always liked to drum to my own tune, but that’s getting rewarded a lot these days – it’s what companies (like Google) actually say they’re looking for. Look at Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. One of the many signals social media sends to business is that talent and conformity are often inversely related. This is good news. This is the work I wanted to do when I was a kid – work where the person doing it defines it as much as the recipient, and where the line between recipient and provider is a little fuzzier.

I don’t fault my elders, incidentally, for living in their time. It’s just that now a lot of us are taking apart the clock and asking whether it really was always the inevitable way that things worked. Time itself will tell, but some of us are already forging our own solutions.

Employment, Robbery, and Sacrificial Koolaid

The assumption of employment is all around us. I’m not knocking employment. Quite the contrary:

Rule of Work: Your work is not the venue. Whether your work is best conducted as an employee, contractor, entrepreneur, or volunteer, pursue the venue where you can derive from your work all the meaning you are intended to have.

But it’s sort of like my friend who has a Doctorate of Philosophy in Patristics from Oxford. He used to get asked, as a professor, by prospective employers in the U.S. for his transcript. He was typically met with blank, inflexible stares when he informed them that Oxford is an 800-year old university – it doesn’t issue transcripts. 75% of the doctoral candidates fail – if you make it, at all, that is the transcript. The assumption was that education is everywhere and always has been mass education, and rather than having to write books to graduate, you need to prove yourself by appealing to grades. Oxford is pass fail – for the degree, not for classes. For those interested in this topic,  you don’t even have to attend lectures (classes) at Oxford. You can sit under a tree all week and read, if you like, or just stay drunk all the time. What they require is that you read everything in your field, and take a final exam at the end that lasts about a week and is 100% written (essay form), and that you defend your thesis (which is what your book is arguing – your dissertation). That’s it. Read everything, write for a solid week intelligently discussing everything, and defend your own original idea expressed as a book which takes into account your knowledge of everything, and you get your degree. No transcript. Is it accredited? No, it’s 800 years old… etc. It’s like pulling teeth getting past assumptions.

The assumption of employment, though, is similar. It’s already been elsewhere observed that employees can get a home loan lickety split with two paychecks under their belts, or one paycheck and a letter from their employer. A self-employed person has to show a history of substantial profits on past years’ tax returns. That’s how the mortgage system assumes employment as the standard. Conversely, the tax system rewards self-employed people only if they show the least possible profit and claim the maximum possible deductions. That conflicts with the mortgage industry assumption and leaves lots of self-employed people without access to a mortgage, while showing up for a job for a month results in a home loan. The system is geared toward assuming employment is the norm. What do all the forms say – government forms, bank forms, even forms at the gym? Employer. What do employment applications ask for? Past employer. Sure, you write in your own company, but most people don’t seem to be aware that the relationship you have to your own company, as an entrepreneur might actually not be that of employee. Corporate structures are varied, and you might get shares, not paychecks. You might contract for your company, etc. You might be a “member”, a “partner”, and so on.

A pronounced example I encountered was when the market ate half of my 401K, because I foolishly listened to the “stay the course” crowd (i.e. Vanguard and the traditional investor braniacs who couldn’t acknowledge reality, only throw out doctrine, and tell the rest of us not to be “immature” investors who pull out our funds too soon and don’t stay in for the long haul. In other words – the people who told us it’s better to go broke than to question the received wisdom.) Honestly, the amateur hour stuff was not smelling the brimstone in the Judgment Day that was coming down all around them. Little devils kept saying, “Nah, this is just a “fluctuation” in the economic climate.  Let’s say I had $9000 invested, and I lost half, so $4500. My employer had matched at least half of my contribution, so someone actually said to me, “Well then you didn’t lose $4500. You basically lost nothing, because you still have what you put into it.” Now THAT, my friends, is a blind, dogmatic assumption of employment as the norm. But wait, it’s worse than that. A person who sees his services as valuable, something he ‘sells’ an employer, at best, knows that the matching contribution is part of his COMPENSATION. It’s part of the package of remuneration for his work.

In other words, if your employer cuts health care, you’re getting a pay cut. If your employer assigns you added responsibilities without added pay, you’re getting a pay cut (or at least getting snowed). I like that phrase they foist off on people young enough and inexperienced enough to believe it (or just craven enough to pretend they do) – “you’re investing in your marketability in the company” . Ha. The only thing you’re investing in is your reputation for price cutting – selling premium quantities and qualities of work for the lowest possible compensation. You’re the Walmart of employees. Or there’s the similar one, “because you care about the company”. Hey, caring is a two-way street – it’s like a marriage. Would you ask your spouse to do 100% of the housework and keep a full time job, because the spouse “cares about the family”? Not bloody likely.

But this isn’t even a pay cut. My example is one of robbery. The abject, and outright robbery of the system by (well you know who is responsible, if you’re paying attention – sure it’s AIG, but it’s more widespread than that – it’s an entire sector of society stealing from the other sector) – robbery that resulted in a LOT of us losing half or more of our retirement funds. Losing all of it, for those who left their money in until it hit zero. What they stole is the same as if they stole my paycheck. That money wasn’t legitimately lost to the “fluctuations of the market” – it was robbed by the looting and devastation and plundering and pillaging of the market. I know pretty much where it is. It’s driving around the Eastern seaboard with European leather and a blonde trophy wife in the passenger seat. It’s stopping to refuel on the way to a resort and spa where I can’t afford to eat the moisturizing cream it took a bushel of rain forest plants and a dozen children making a penny a day to produce for 3000% markup and some penthouse-dweller’s name on it. And on top of that, someone has the audacity to say, “but it wasn’t really your money.” “You didn’t really lose anything.” “Your employer *contributed* it to you. Like a gift. You can’t get upset over a stolen gift, now can you?

Well, it’s not a freaking gift. It’s one of the types of paychecks. It’s part of the compensation, part of the deal. Keep in mind, it’s taxable. Now or later, but it’s taxable.

The assumption is so strong that employment is the norm, that one easily forgets that the lingo you hear around the office isn’t real. A contribution isn’t really a gift. Caring isn’t really caring, it’s working for free. Marketability means gullibility. And ‘market fluctuations’, if you happen to work in the financial services sector, means causing a blackout, then coming to your house and stealing your TV set, then kicking you out of your house and taking that too (we don’t have an ARM, don’t worry), selling your home, and then offering you a credit card with a mafia-like interest rate so you can “rebuild” your “good standing” with the financial services industry. Oh, and lastly, telling you that none of what you lost was ever really yours in the first place. Equity meets late fees and cost of foreclosure. Finally, you blame it on an act of God, vibrations, hiccups, tremors, and “fluctuations” that no one could have prevented. So now you can’t even go to Church and pray about it without looking at your priest suspiciously, and he’s thinking “What did I do?” Good thing he lost his house too, but you’re all going to be moving into his apartment because you just lost your job, and your 401K is so devastated that pulling it out should just about cover the government “penalty” for pulling it out. Prison is starting to look good, but your Priest doesn’t like that idea, and they just told prisoners they have to pay for their own healthcare. You take your unemployment check to the bank, but they won’t open an account anymore without pulling your credit, and you know where that leads, so you give a chunk of that to the check cashing place, fill up with gas at double the price when this started, and drive home to watch TV shows about people living “successful” lives (as though nothing happened in the TV universe), and you figure all those guys work for AIG or had stock in munitions. And you fall asleep hoping you’ll get that temp job you applied for, where they “try on” employees, one after another, without having to give you healthcare or retirement benefits. And your only hope is starting your own Youtube reality show, except that everyone else is in the same boat and what, ordinarily might be fascinating, is now just banal and taken for granted.

Ahem. Yes. Well, the point is this:

Rule of Work: Nothing is true if it confuses an exchange of value for value with a gift given to either party. See Ayn Rand. Corollary rule: If you got something as a result of honest work, taking it away from you without a fair exchange is always theft – calling it something else turns wages into slavery.

Yes, the assumption of employment as the normative form of work relationship prevails, but some of what comes with that assumption isn’t employment, it’s at best what the old South used to call “wage slavery” and, at worst, is just plain robbery, snake oil, machination, and exploitation. There’s nothing wrong with employment, if it’s honest, if both parties are exchanging fair value for fair value with their eyes open, in a transparent environment. But treating employment as a privilege, as though one should aspire to it independently of compensation, accept it as normal without reference to the entitlements governing every other form of trade (rhetoric venerating “the market” aside), is an additional set of assumptions that amounts to drinking the sacrificial Koolaid.

It’s bad enough to assume that life, ‘legitimate’ life, revolves around punching a timeclock or getting a salary, in contrast with the work itself. It’s unacceptable, though, to swallow down the notion that it’s really all about the love, and what’s in the contract is just Christmas gravy. Dunno about you, but I can get a turkey anywhere – I’m up for the gravy.

Confessions of a Quiet Home Office Worker

I do project work and consulting, and my office is one of the largest rooms in my home. Like a lot of home office workers (I prefer “home office professional”), I always have multiple projects at once. So working all the time is just part of the deal. If I’m not working on a client’s project, I’m working on one of my own. This is not a complaint – far from it.

Blast from the Past: Rule of Work #1: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing as work. It’s a good life. A life of constant meaning.

That said, it can be hard to convey the particular circumstances of it to people looking in from the outside. It might be explaining to someone why you aren’t treating e-mail like chat and responding instantly, or why you’re selective about volunteer work and need to get paid for your core competencies (you know that auto mechanic who is always getting hit up to help with friend’s cars?), or just that yes, as a home worker, you are entitled to sleep, go to the gym, and spend time with your family – you’re not giving that up and sitting there waiting patiently for any word to drop from your various contacts, clients, and colleagues. My wife and I recently had to establish for her business that yes, it’s OK, and absolutely necessary for a hairdresser to take a couple of days off per week and get enough rest and down time. But aside from the basics – what your work is (avoiding mission creep), and when you do it (avoiding the “on call” nightmare),  the simplest way to define your work environment and work process is to outline your approach to the atmosphere of constant communication. So here, in brief, is how one office works. These are the terms of my self-employment:

Hours Flexible: I might be working at 3am or in bed by 9pm. I might sleep until 4pm, which might be sleeping 5 hours or 15. I work off of appointments. I make them, keep them, and then the rest is up to me. Of course there are deadlines, but they’re flexible. We’ve all heard “under promise and over deliver”. That’s deadlines, too. If I say something usually takes two weeks, it’s because it usually does. But if a blizzard wipes out the internet or power, then it is what it is – we don’t swear by deadlines, and we don’t miss them. Also, with any kind of project work, your own deadlines have to account for client deliverables. If clients hear “usually two weeks, assuming all your deliverables in place to start” and they send their pieces 13 days in, you tell them “about two weeks from now”. If you get it earlier, well and good, but fixed deadlines are a source of ruin – our deadlines are like our work hours – they’re movable feasts. Hours flexible and by appointment means too that I avoid phone tag. I set phone appointments and I don’t miss them (I’ve missed only one in the history of my business, it was with a friend, and I’m still embarrassed by it). There’s nothing worse than burning time for everyone by getting together with clients “whenever”.

Not On-Call: Personally, I never answer the phone, unless it’s my wife. I know that’s radical, but it works in my line of work. For one thing, I’d never get anything done – I’m actually working on clients’ projects, after all. For another, I’m a consultant, so I charge for phone time, and so I call outbound only, by appointment. Other than that, voicemail messages are transcribed instantly and sent to e-mail, where I respond to them while multi-tasking, without interrupting scheduled projects. I set appointments by e-mail, so everything goes smoothly. When I picked up the phone and answered all my inbound calls, I got unplanned (so un-billed) calls 24/7 – picking my brain, asking for advice, seeking a “how to” that “shouldn’t take long” (“you’re a mechanic, can you just listen to my engine for a sec – I know it’s a weekend…”), and I lost tons of hours I’ll never get back to “I just prefer to work exclusively by phone” – even for the most trivial matters. So I stopped. I’m not a call center. I can always hire one, but then the price has got to see a 400% increase. Seriously – I save bookoo buck for my clients by NOT putting Suzie or Jim or Karesh on that phone 24/7. So now when someone calls my business line, I get it as e-mail, and that also weeds out the spam calls, which is a nice bonus. And it converts a synchronous medium (“I want you *right now*!”) into an asynchronous one (email response: “I got your msg. The answer is yes.” or “Thursday works better for me – how about 2pm or 4pm your time?”). Besides, frequently I can actually respond faster – instead of wasting everyone’s time playing phone tag, I often get an e-mail response out without missing a beat (but again, I don’t promise it).

Blackberry Not Included: I don’t use mobile devices. Again, if I did, I’d never sleep, eat, or anything else. I’m not part of the Blackberry culture, and not because I’m somehow technologically challenged or old-fashioned. It’s because I don’t want to be stalked by every little concern, wish, or personal observation everyone in my “network”  might have. You’ve seen those commercials where someone introduces the crowd behind them: “this is my network”? Really, that’s exactly what it’s like for a lot of people. I can’t get work done that way. If you were in an office, would you hire the person who is always on their phone to work on your team? Neither would I. How about this: do you take your “device” into the john with you? That’s what I had to do when I answered my phone all the time – if I took e-mail along too, I’d literally have to shower with it. E-mail is in one room and waits until I see it. When I leave that room, it’s family time only. I don’t promise clients always-on response time, I don’t send out a general announcement just to take a day off to myself or with my family, and I don’t apologize “for just now getting back to you” after 8hrs because a lot of people treat e-mail like chat, spend all day in Facebook, and keep their earpiece on and Mobile e-mail vibrating in a holster. I treat myself as the busy president of my company, not the Blockbuster cashier of my company. The results are, I communicate effectively, selectively, and I accomplish things my clients need, generally by the time they have to ask. And above all, I get peace in my work.

Rule of Work: It is always, always the goal to work on, by, and according to your own terms. You’ll compromise, but if there’s no end to that, it’s not work, it’s servitude.

Terms of Self-Employment: So, when I hired myself full time, those were the terms I accepted and I have insisted on abiding by them. It’s different than how a lot of self-employed people work, I know. I don’t begrudge them their e-mail holsters, as long as they’re not doing it while driving – and then of course I think they’ve got a screw loose (look at how they’re weaving over the line). We’ve each got to define our own office rules – the terms of our own self-employment – how free we are, how harried, how much of our lives belong to who and what. How effective we’re going to be vs. how thinly spread. My wife finally deciding on two days off to reset, means she’s stellar all the time, not stellar for 10 hrs and tired for 2. Maybe, though, by drawing a circle and defining some time as exclusively ours and our families’, some part of our lives as immune to the interests of others – by not defining self-employment as a modified form of wage slavery, where anyone with a communication device can wind it up and make you jump as surely as a foreman in a yard – where you’ve traded one boss for hundreds – maybe we’ll all encourage one another to hold the line for the dignity of our professions in the face of all the incessant yacking. If you don’t think about communications, you’ll spend so much time on the phone and in e-mail that may have stopped doing what you love. And what good is that?

Rule of Work: How you handle communications will determine whether you do what you love or merely talk about doing it.

Freelancing vs. Mom’s Couch

CBS was talking this evening about the growth of freelance work – projecting significant growth over the next couple of years. What was striking was how negative the reporting seemed. One of the two people interviewed was saying “the important thing is not to be idle” and the reporter presented freelancing as being just one rung above collecting unemployment – with employment clearly being preferable to freelance work, the moment the former is available. The entire piece presented freelance work as a regrettable sentence, a misfortune, and implied that somehow it means less money. What are these people smoking?

What we’re seeing is a lull in the parental relationship between employer and employee, and I think that’s a good thing. But it’s like listening to 30-year old men complain that they can’t live in Mom’s basement forever. The idea that employee status is superior, is the goal, is in fact the pinnacle of success in our culture is assumed, as an unaccountable absolute. Didn’t we just learn the opposite? Apparently not. This is my biggest gripe with those who keep saying, “it’ll turn around soon” – like Napoleon – “this’ll all be over by Spring”. Besides the fact that they’ve been saying that for the last two years, a tiptoe through the tulips faith-in-magic kind of optimism that has no basis in how economics really works, there’s no real learning – no real sense of cultural repentance – it’s as if there were nothing wrong with the system as it was, and this is something that just happened to us. It’s like listening to a culture of perpetual adolescents who ruined their credit, present it as if they just had some bad luck – the universe didn’t smile on them, and are clearly going to be shopping like mad as soon as they can be, applying for that credit card the moment they’ve got a chance.

There are three lessons of this economic event for adults. By adults, I mean those of us who aren’t looking for yet more dependency on the cultural parents that failed us so spectacularly. The first is that you obviously can’t dump trillions into a global policy of invasion and not break the empire’s bank. This is not primarily a political blog, so we’ll just say that and set it aside, but if we don’t believe things just magically ‘happen’ to us, we’ve got to say the cost of hubris is a factor. The second lesson is that it’s your fault, all this, and my fault, and we all share in this fault in some way. It’s silly to explain it as just a few rogue bankers, or the entire lending industry, or an irresponsible bunch of poor people (if you’re that type). You did this too, and I helped, so adulthood means not blaming everyone *except* ourselves for “getting us into this”. The third lesson we’ve mentioned before – all the BS that gets parroted from previous generations about job security, education being the ticket to vocational wellbeing, economic stability being the same as having a job, etc – it’s hoodoo – and we can’t go on believing in the face of empirical evidence.

What this economic shift offers us, actually, then, is a chance to grow up – a chance to get ourselves a little cleaner – an opportunity to live soberly. It’s interesting to watch even those who pride themselves in the rhetoric of self-reliance wail about “jobs”, as though that’s all that matters – someone coming to bail us out as individuals, all the while lamenting the “bail out” of the banks (which we all generally agree is a looting). Jobs. What’s wrong with going freelance? The CBS piece linked it with the notion of a lowered wage standard in most jobs. Well, that’s likely true, wage standards are likely going to be lowered for some time to come. Partly because we used an unprecedented portion of our economic potency to take over a number of pipeline routes and petroleum deposits in the Middle East. But are we really saying that the big disaster is we might end up working for ourselves? Or freelance?

And the notion that freelance work necessarily pays less, I find dubious. At first, some of it will. After all, there’s the silly notion in some corporate circles that freelancers are less valuable, more transient, and somehow ‘deserve’ less than employees. Sensibly, the opposite is true. We pay our own benefits, our own taxes, our own expenses, and there’s cost involved just being freelance. On top of that, you survive by being superior. Someone wants to pay me employee’s wages, and the discussion is over – it’s got to be a lot more. Desperation is going to make some people foolish in what they’ll accept, and they’ll price sell. OK, for a while. But it won’t last. A lot of us are going to get strong, while they just get robbed.

First, think about it – shouldn’t you, if you were a freelancer, be entitled to what they’d pay a staffing agency for a temp? I don’t mean what they’d pay the temp – I mean what they’d pay the agency itself. You incur the same costs, so damned straight that’s what you should be paid. Probably more. The staffing agency won’t pay for your doctor bills – you’ve got insurance costs to cover.

Second, the shoe is going to shift feet. As the number of freelancers doubles, we’re going to find new ways to organize, connect, and consolidate resources. The Freelancers Union is seeing a nice influx about now. The growth of social media indicates that a coming trend is for any set of disconnected people fending and fighting for themselves to, as they grow, utilize the attitudes and techniques of social media, which in turn will further that growth, and in turn further consolidate their ability to support one another, act in concert – in mental, emotional, and physical unison. In other words, what’s coming is an initial feeling of desperation followed by a transferrance of clout – a shift of power – from the employer to the contractor and to the freelancer.

What’s beautiful, from a freelancer’s perspective, is that they don’t see it yet. Opportunity is glowing in the dark, and they don’t see it. And this will help further the future of freelancing. The other thing that’s going to happen is an intellectual and emotional campaign to retain employer-like control in the context of contractor and freelance relationships. Be ready for it. Yes, it’s already there. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. But not to worry. The social media trends would seem to indicate an incredible likelihood of taking this out of their hands.

So, I’m not ready to lament about being out on my own, or wax nostalgic about mom’s sofa. I’m not sitting around and mourning the growth of freelancing and looking at it as a social problem. For one thing, some of us are thinking about how to make it a source of prosperity. For another, the freelancing trend offers genuine hope for a more mature, more self-aware, more ethical set of relationships – a more equitable exchange of value between service providers and service buyers.

Instead of standing out there shouting “jobs, jobs” with the obfuscators, the anti-benefits crowds, or the people who are just going along, why not ask for reduced taxes on the self-employed, and opportunities for access to the same kinds of benefits (especially group health care) that employees have long relied upon? The Freelancers Union, Free Agent Source, and congressional legislation allowing the self-employed to act as groups for purchasing healthcare all seem like positive directions for this.

I’ve only one thing to say to the CBS group about their report: I hope to remain *unemployed*. I’ve no problem with employment per se, but it’s not the holy grail – doing what you love for a fair exchange – that’s the target. I like being freelance, or self-employed, or an entrepreneur. I have no desire to trade freedom and prosperity for the illusion of security – if employment is an end in itself, rather than meaningful work, great pay, good benefits, and diversified sources of income, then why? Just because Mom has a nice couch? Relying on a single, canned income source wasn’t a good bargain at the start of this thing (just look what happened). It’s not a good bargain dealing with the fallout. You CBS guys should look on the bright side, or at least acknowledge that there is one, even if the cost was, in the estimation of many of us, unacceptable.

Supreme Court Rapes the Free World. Again.

Usually, I won’t make political comments, but in this case, they’ve walked into territory we’ve claimed as our own, so here goes:

The latest move by the Supreme Court to lift all corporate limits on campaign contributions is clearly aimed at preventing a repeat of the Obama election, who didn’t put them in office. Sure, he’ll be re-elected. But then the corporate stooges will make their next serious bid to regain executive power, and they’ll utilize the funds from the almost unlimited treasury of the very thing they’re about – corporate power. The wars of invasion the US is fighting are wars of corporate power. The wholesale elimination of environmental controls over the past few years have been acts of corporate power. Corporate investments in military contracting is so prevalent that it really doesn’t matter what we supposedly fight for – we fight, regardless, for making corporations richer and more powerful.

We’re looking at a successful corporate campaign, in this case, to regain near absolute control of the political engine and eliminate the last hint of genuinely democratic political power. It is no less significant than the Supreme Court ruling that invested corporations with the keys to the state in the first place, namely Santa Clary County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad which entitled corporations to full personhood in reference to the 14th ammendment (thereby making them super-persons). In that case, the Supreme Court (and we let them do it), made corporate dominance the law of the land in the U.S., and it has radically altered every institution, political, religious, social, that has any legal status at all, not to mention the lives of every person born in the U.S. then or since or wishing to become a part of the United States. Now, the very engine we prop up with our daily labor will make decisions about who is entitled to public office that are contrary to our very interests as laborers. Every drop of sweat we invest in corporate life is essentially invested in our own coffins.

And this, of course, is in our realm of conversation.

In our culture, corporate affiliation automatically conveys some sense of legitimacy. Try this on: “I’m a trainer for the Rand Corporation’s division of personnel….” What do you hear? Respectable – has health benefits and a mutual fund. vs. “I’m a freelance contract trainer…” Hear it? Probably out of work, scraping for just about any gig he can get. Now let’s modify that: “I’m a freelance contract trainer, currently working with Fortune 500 clients like IBM…” It’s a little different, isn’t it? It’s a lot different. Corporateness, corporatishness, corporatization, or whatever fun noun we want to make up, conveys not just the impression of financial stability, even after the last 4 years, but also respectability, prestige, something ironically akin to what once was called honor.

But with this master stroke in the Court, we’re feeling the first wave of what will, in some years, further marginalize anything independent, individual, or unaffiliated. Remember, we always acknowledge that, in our frenetic, reality TV, mass media culture of constant personal stimulation, that we don’t even have a one year memory anymore – we’re tired of hearing about Haiti after less than a week, though most of them will be worse off, not better, in that time, because the water will run out and they’ll be homeless. We’ll remember that we don’t have a memory, but we won’t remember why it’s important. And we won’t remember this wave, this point of launch as the revenge of the corps, when they have seized such an unparalleled and unprecedented level of cultural control that we’ll look back at the days when people commented on it derisively and think they were being too gentle. Or, if they’re as successful as they’d like, most of us won’t even feel it – corporateness will be our point of reference, our context for thinking about all problems – including corporateness – and we will be like the soma-eaters in a Brave New World, or more like the devourers of technological media in Fahrenheit 451.

Make no mistake, we’re looking at, if not reversed, the financial acquisition of the political system in the US. ‘It was already acquired long ago,’ cultural critics like Noam Chomsky will say. Quite right. No disagreement at all. And that acquisition makes this one possible. I’m only commenting on the blatantness of basically saying it’s OK to buy elections, local and national, and to purchase policy. If this were Sicily, and we took out the word “corporations” and stuck in “mafia”, we’d be appalled. But the testament to corporateness being the reference point of all our thinking, is that we are incapable of being appalled. In fact, we look at such statements as “extreme” (corp-speak), “exaggerated” (corp-speak), and we’re willing to put on our little pastel shirts, and shave our chins, and eat our crappy fern bar lunches (and think that’s food), like the effete wusses we have become, the corporate little boys we have made ourselves, and repeat the same kind of mantras we did before the financial collapse. Back then, the naysayers – and there were plenty of them – were just exaggerating, just overreacting, just extremists (when they wouldn’t shut up), and the resulting millieu is one in which corporations can’t be wrong even when they’re wrong. It was an “unforseeable” situation. And if we’re saying “No, they could have forseen, they were warned, and I’m mad as hell”, well we were warned too, and we should be mad, but what are we doing about it? Are we still just propping up the system, like a blind earthworm who bangs his head against the wall of the maze and never learns to turn right or left? Even an earthworm would have randomly gone a different direction by now. We’re caught up in it – that’s no lie. We’re all cogs in the corporatey pastel of our culture.

I don’t have a prescription, so don’t think I’m going to say lets write our congressmen. Hell, he’s one of them, more likely. Look at those dumb farks in Massachusetts who just elected another one of them. And every one of the self-employed among them should just turn around and shove their own foots all the way up their arses, because that’s what they just did to themselves politically. In the film, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” (based on the book), the premise is that places like Kansas, once populist centers where people pursued their own interests in politics, have become suburban sprawls where people are indoctrinated (often in their mega-churches and religious circles) with an ideology of defeat. They vote against their own interests, propping up the very institutions that deprive them of proper health care, sanitation (which is what environmental cleanliness is, of course), and further political opportunities – institutions many of them believe have some innate, divine, manifest right to power and to having their way. In other words, Kansas has become a corporate state.

No, no prescription. I’m not even obligated to offer a prescription, if I had one. I think the whole system blows. What I know to do is stand here and say that there is another way to think. That there isn’t just one way. It’s not that I’m making my opinion the gospel.” No, I’m not. I’m saying that almost all the opinions out there are coming from one thing, the presupposition of corporate life as the context, of corporate dominance as the basis of society (even if they don’t admit it, that’s what they’re saying), and that it is possible and healthy to get outside that context and point out how it’s harming the very people who hold those opinions. It’s like Scientology or faith healing. If we keep denying ourselves medical attention, because we’re not supposed to be sick in the first place (I’ve known people who just kept saying “I’m not sick, these are only symptoms” – That’s what symptoms ARE – indications of festering sickness!), then we’ve essentially invalidated our own voice – here, in the culture, everywhere. Rational people have no need to listen to us anymore; we’ve removed the ground of our own conversation; we’re reasoning in a circle: “corporateness is good because corporateness is good, so even if it’s killing us, corporateness is good”. Wake up and smell the turd pile, Kansas! If we can’t smell it after THIS freaking disaster, we’ve got too much corn up our noses! Either that, or our heads are buried exactly where a corporate-dominated US wants it to be – guess where!

My opinion is just that we need to be able to formulate opinions outside the context of pre-determined, presupposed, corporate life. If we can’t, everything we think is just begging the question – it was logically invalid before it started. And that isn’t really my opinion. It’s a basic tenet of all thought – so denying it is removing the ground of thought in the first place. We’ve got to ask the question from outside the assumption that corporate domination is God’s will, or some such thing. If we can’t, it’s just an ideological crack pipe, and we might as well all get high together, because life is going to be short, sick, dirty, and self-defeating. The Supreme Court ruling yesterday is a missile right up the arse of every free person in the US, and it will dictate elections where there is no incumbent candidate, and we’ll get our executive handed to us as a line item on our pay stubs, if we’re in the corporate world, and so will those of us who aren’t – the point: it makes everything the corporate world. Our grandkids will look back and wonder at the absurd, backwards arrogance of anyone who thought they should live as a free agent. And free agents? They’ll exist, but not like now – they’ll be just the outsource workers for an entirely corporate reality – a way to dump the tax and benefit burden on our shoulders and mine. I don’t have an action plan to fight this, for one reason: I don’t think there’s enough people who think any differently left. Prove me wrong. I’ll be more than happy, if you do.

Reclaiming the Meaning of Money & Time

A friend and I were talking the other day about how we’re so used to thinking, as employees, of everything as net. The company takes out taxes and healthcare, and what’s left – that’s what you live on. But when you’re self-employed, you pay self-employment tax on top of your income tax, and you have to bank that out of every deal. So If you made $400, you really only made $200. And then you’ve got to buy healthcare out of that. If you made $400 only 10 times a month, and sock away half for taxes, and pay $250 for your half of the insurance (that’d be really cheap),  your $400 is now $150 “net”. $150 of employee-equivalent pay.

A lot of employed folks would look at this as a good case for not going out on their own. It’s actually the best case for why freelancers need to charge high rates. You just can’t do it for nothing. And what, freelancers aren’t supposed to have healthcare, or savings, or be able to eat? So, the goal is to figure out how to bring those fees up. Seth Godin offers a great quotation (don’t remember his source): “There are two kinds of companies: those that want to lower prices, and those that want to raise them.” Those who shoot for the bottom, price-cutting, price-selling, appealing to price shoppers, and those who look for ways to add value, be the best, and raise prices. I’m with the latter. And I encourage my family members to hold the line on that, too.

I looked in on a conversation in LinkedIn where a person offered a service for $100, no conditions, to anyone, regardless of criteria. I provide the same service, and I can tell you it’s twice that, minimum, to do it right and do it consistently. I didn’t respond – no need – the entire community of freelancers jumped on him, asking if he realized that this wasn’t sustainable, that by aiming for the bottom he’s just appealing to the guy that wants it at $95, and encouraging the person who’ll do it for that, and not have healthcare, and not eat right. They ate his lunch – I couldn’t believe the amount of traffic pounding this guy down. He didn’t get it either. Bills himself as the president of his company but made a crass, rookie mistake in public, and should have copped to it quickly but wouldn’t. Who hasn’t done that kind of thing in one form or another? So you have to feel sorry for him, but wow – he made the 2nd mistake too: he just kept holding the line. “If someone doesn’t want my services, they don’t have to buy them.” He was missing the point.

A lot of us have had a prospect walk away because the price was obviously too low. And they’re right to. You can’t sustain good, consistent work that way, and companies that are in this for real want good, consistent work. They don’t want to watch a price cutter self-destruct, which is where it leads. A family member is a hairstylist, and a friend of hers comes from the Supercuts environment. The price difference is shocking. And you can’t invest in growing your business if you’re geared for the bottom. And once you do that, it’s really hard to break out of it. You can’t win, without retooling, infusing your business with some funds and a lot of effort, and changing the way you do business, willing to lose some clients. It’s a rough road to hoe if you’re taking care of a family and depend on repeat business; I don’t envy it. But that’s what Supercuts, superstores, super-anything does to an industry – it leaves its people scraping the bottom for the cheapest prospects there are, without decent health care, with an impoverished diet that takes years off their lives, and having to explain to people that work is worth something.

There’s a related principle. Not only is the compensation model for freelancers really fundamentally different than for employees… and we all know this, but when you’re rearranging your life accordingly, it’s something to meditate on and ponder… but so is this model for time. If you spend 8hrs at the office, your ‘work’ is presumably done, because your work is defined by the man. Your work is your job. But it’s really not done. You still have to pick up the kids, wash the car, buy the groceries, go jogging, and all the other things you do. What the freelancer realizes is that these are work too.

Occasional clients think a freelancer should be waiting at his desk at all times, when they get back to their office, ready to respond in an instant. “Where were you yesterday?” You don’t take vacations, don’t take a day off, don’t go to the gym. You work when they work, and you work when they sleep, because 24-hour turnaround is in demand, too. But that’s not sustainable. What, freelancers shouldn’t get 8hrs sleep or go to the gym? You can’t hire an assistant to work out for you, or get proper rest so you stay healthy for another day. The real story is that the model of work has been distorted somewhat by separating it from the home. I’m not suggesting there’s something inherently wrong with office work, just that it doesn’t explain, describe, or account for everything. The truth is that when a freelancer cooks the meals, provides the transportation, goes to the gym to stay healthy, or just engages in personal hygiene (how long does your full regimen, day and night, take from your day?), that’s work.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Work is what you do when you wake up, and what you do before you go to sleep. Not that there’s not room to go read a book and rest, but that rest is part of the work, too. If you read, it’s fuel. If you rest, it’s preparation to work – it’s restocking the shelves. When you relax, it’s to be ready for the intensity and energy. Same thing if you blog, folks. That’s the truth. In my case, without it, I can’t think at the pace that’s necessary to do what I do for clients. We’re *whole* people, and we need a *whole* life, sustained by work, involved in work, and linked to our work. This is yet another reason work had better be a primary source of meaning your life.

Income, though, is not what’s left over after the things that sustain your life are taken out – like healthcare. Income is what you use to take care of your whole life, including your health. When you short the one, you’re shorting the other. Likewise, time for work is not the time spent on a task someone else makes you do, or a task that you have to drive to get to, or a task that directly impacts your client. Time for work is time spent on the entire person, the *whole* source of work, your whole life. It needs to be balanced, thought out, and reasonable – you can’t just sleep for two days every week and expect, in most freelance scenarios, to be successful. Even if that’s the sum of leftover time, what about riding your bike and, again, personal hygiene, etc.? Time spent on work is, appropriately, time spent on your whole life, precisely on *keeping* it in balance, keeping it functioning at optimum, and in keeping with the very things you need to get paid for. I get paid so I can buy healthcare. I spend time and the gym so I can stay healthy. You can’t throw either one over your shoulder.

Get paid a lot, work 16 hours, not 8 (or acknowledge that it’s work) and, though you’ll then realize that our taxes really are obscenely high, you’ll at least be able to explain what you do without feeling quite as harried. A little harried maybe, but not because there’s no reason for half of it. And no, you’re most likely *not* overpaid.

ROW Spotlight: Kiva – You Can Microlend

Have you heard about Kiva? Kiva is a free web site that lets you provide micro-loans (in amounts of $25) to impoverished entrepreneurs needing investment to make their businesses thrive. The entire loan amount goes to the entrepreneur and is facilitated through Kiva’s partnership with local micro-lending organziations in each country. The micro-lending organization collects interest and you are repaid the principle on the loan. You can voluntarily donate a couple of dollars to the Kiva site to keep it going, when you check out. These loans go to people with demonstrated entrepreneurial success, but who are so poor that they lack the means to get anything but an exploitative loan to invest in supplies, materials, or equipment, were it not for Kiva and you. When your money is paid back, you can re-lend it. We have a number of these loans in play and have been paid back many times and re-loaned again to new entrepreneurs. It’s a simple check-out cart system.

Example: Kossi in Togo needs $1200 for a new taxi (his old one is on its last leg). With this money, he’ll be able to feed his family for some time. He’s not looking for a hand out; he’s just asking to borrow a little and repay, because in his country the cost of a new taxi is pretty hard to come up with all at once. If he can keep working, because of you, me, and Kiva, he’ll be able to pay it back as he continues to earn income. (Update: The loan was issued, and Kossi is now at 92% repayment on this loan). You loan $25, and over the next week or so many Kiva lenders also put in $25. The total is reached very quickly, and the microlending organization is funded to provide and administer the loan. over the next 6months, year, or whatever the loan terms indicate (the terms of Kossi’s loan were 26months), the borrower pays it back, you receive the $25 back, and you can either withdraw it then or re-lend to a new entrepreneur. You can fund a loan with your paypal account, credit card, or other means.

Example: Surayo in Tajikistan makes women’s wear out of her home. As a contractor, her business has been growing, and she needs a loan of $700 to buy special material to increase her line. She plans to eventually open her own company producing and selling clothing, and she needs the material to make her own stock of clothes to move in that direction. You loan her $25. I loan her $25, and a lot of other people do as well. These are pooled into one microloan, which she gets as one sum, expands her business, and is able, with this kind of help, to get farther from poverty and closer to creating income that can not only sustain her but possibly employ others, while it contributes to her economy. Update: Surayo’s loan was issued and it’s 100% repaid now. She’s wonderful!

We’ve been lending through Kiva for a few years. It works, it’s honorable and straightforward, and if money is tight, you can lend with confidence, because the loan default rates are slim – most lenders repay, because they really are trying to build their business. What’s more they are building a business that’s thriving and in demand in their economies – they’re savvy, smart people who know what their clients are demanding, and just need some funds to be able to deliver it at the rate of demand. They don’t do unwise things like open a coffee shop in a farming community that already has two of them. At most, you risk $25 at a time (though you may want to fund several small entrepreneurs – it’s easy to fall in love with these people – they’re family), and you can make a dent in poverty by helping people get a handhold on something real – their work. Visit www.kiva.org and you’ll see what I mean. We’re committed participants.

What’s Wrong With Discounts?

I’m not a believer in discounts, unless they are part of a marketing campaign. Half-hazard discounts, just because someone asks for one, force you to work harder for less pay to justify your normal price. And you’re not giving them a reason for the discount, so what does that say about what you were going to charge them? That it wasn’t a fair value? I wouldn’t want to send that message. If you’re willing to cut prices, just make the discount your normal price. I think more people respect that.

Up Front Discounts: I think everyone that’s experimented with running their own business, contractor gigs, or freelance work, has at one time or another made the mistake of offering up front discounts to help close a deal – only to realize that that wasn’t what the client needed to say yes. I’ve been starting businesses since I was 12, and I was a Sales Trainer for some years. My experience, that I passed on to my students (which admittedly isn’t the gospel), is don’t assume a transactional sale – don’t assume price is your clients’ chief motivator, or even an essential one. It’s a lazy shortcut to being consultative. Consultative sales and marketing is about discovering your individual prospects’ true motivators and targeting those.

It’s the same thing I learned in education (spent a couple of decades in that field) – learners are motivated by different things – there’s not one type. What some people want is an extrinsic motivator (help their business, for example, and that’s as good as money), and what others want is an intrinsic one (it might be a sense of empowerment as you put more processes under their control, etc.). Where you add value is in satisfying motivators for different prospects, and where your marketing is successful is when you consult with these prospects and know what value they most want added, without over-generalizing.

Most people that tell me they’re only able to get business by slashing prices aren’t doing real marketing at all. They haven’t got well-defined market differentiators – unique areas where they add value. They aren’t being consultative with their clients to uncover subtle needs. They’re leading with price precisely *because* it’s easier than being consultative. Or so they think. It seems easier, but then they’re also working harder than their competitors, and for less pay. In other words, they’re efforts result in a less desirable situation, not more. Add value and earn the pay you really need to earn.

Campaign Discounts: A campaign that features a discount on one item or service for getting business in the door, and then charges fair, competitive prices (yes, full price) for other services – that can be part of a smart marketing arsenal. It should never be your only strategy. But as one tool, it can be great. For instance, if you want to give AARP, AAA, student, municipal worker or other corporate or membership discounts, those can work. They work *best* when you actually partner with such organizations or local municipal agencies or corporate partners and you get promotional benefit from it that they help you with. If they’re not willing to promote/market your business for free in exchange for giving their people a discount, stop wasting your time. There are plenty of people who will – focus on those. Don’t run a renegade, all on your shoulders, campaign with nothing in exchange for your discount. Be smart – give nothing away. That’s how you know it’s right – are you consistently getting something tangible in return for the discount. If not, get out of the deal and don’t get back in.

Referral Discounts: For the average caller, walk-in, referral, or whatever, don’t give discounts. Not even for referrals, you say? Isn’t that a justification for a discount? No, it most certainly is not and should not be. I *expect* referrals, just like I expect walk-ins and calls. I learned that as a young man from a colleague in the landscaping business (I also ran a landscaping company at the time, and he was my mentor). If I’m not getting referrals, I’m doing something wrong. They’re part of the normal process of my business – they’re one of the basic assumptions of my business model. I once told this to a couple of neighbors who expected me to work for almost nothing, because I had both of them as customers and they thought I could get one more in that neighborhood, if I did all three lawns for the price of two. I was a kid, but not a stupid kid. I told them what I’m telling you. I expect to get other clients in the same neighborhood – it’s part of my business model. If I don’t do that, I’m doing it wrong. That’s not a reason to provide discounts. There’s always someone who will do it cheaper, they pointed out. Exactly, I said. That’s why slashing prices is ultimately self-defeating. Adding value is the way to make out, not slashing prices. If you can’t figure out how to add value to your transactions – *that* is your first marketing move, not price-slashing.

Marketing for referrals, on the other hand, is different – that’s like campaign discounts. But that’s not the same thing as getting occasional referrals from satisfied clients. If you have a client or contact that can be reasonably expected to funnel a significant number (by significant number, I mean more than 10 people) your way, who has demonstrated this, and the prospects all fall under one demographic, you might consider offering a discount to that demographic when they are referred. You don’t have to offer it to the whole demographic, and you don’t necessarily have to offer it to the referring client or contact. That last may seem strange, but the value that client or contact is getting is a lot of promotion too, as someone who can arrange discounts through referrals. Don’t assume you have to deeply discount services for him. After all, you can also refer people to his business – trade referrals for referrals. Don’t trade free work for referrals straight up, or almost so. If your work is stellar, there will be enough people who refer you anyway that you don’t have to keep giving it away.

Expected Discounts: Often we might hear that people “expect” discounts. Yeah, that’s because people have sold them a bill of goods. We all know someone in our family or group of contacts who will drive 10 miles to save 5-cents/gallon on gas – someone who will buy an expensive advertised/brand-name item because of a 20% discount, when an equivalent item is available regularly at 60% of that price, without the marketing. That’s the world, you might say, so don’t we have to cater to it? Not exactly. You have to correct it, and still run your business effectively – you need clients and so do I. So if you’re going to respond to it (you don’t have to, but if you are) here’s how – you have two choices:

Method 1: Don’t offer discounts like that. Offer “every day low prices”. That’s the world, too. That’s what Walmart does – it’s their slogan. A jar of mayonnaise at Walmart costs the same at regular price as one on discount at your local Homeland Grocer. Why do people go to Walmart? Because the prices are perceived as low all around. None of us wants to do what we’d have to do to offer Walmart-like prices, though, not if we’re ethical. I certainly won’t. So let’s say Costco prices. They’re a great, ethical company and their prices are still lower than Homeland. We won’t be bottom of the barrel with this technique (no rained-on diapers lying around in our parking lots, and we don’t specialize in 10lb bags of cheese puffs for fifty cents less – you want Walmart – go to Walmart – not every client is my client), but we won’t have to lure people in by constantly red-tagging items and displaying them on an endcap, either.

Method 2: Offer premium prices on everything, and discounts to everyone that asks for one. Some people won’t ask (the risk is they won’t tell you they’re concerned about the price, if you’re not consultative enough to gather their concerns – or else you’ll end up offering a discount to everyone – that’s not the method – that sounds like apologizing because your pricing structure sucks – to do this properly, you’ll have to rely on your consultation skills or take the risk). This principle, though, is the same one that says you ask more for your house, car, or flea market item than what you’re willing to take, and you agree to haggle.

Every day added value, not every day low prices: Personally, I don’t use either of these method – I don’t like the bargain of “expected discounts”, though I’m constantly being told by both peers and other professionals and even clients that my prices are too low. So maybe I do have every day low prices – they’re certainly very reasonable. I have a niche partly based on a price break point, though, and I do OK. But what I like to think I do is charge one very fair price for my work – no discounts – I use a statement of work to define the scope of work – extras are extra. I have systems in place to do what I do, so I’m very efficient. I borrow processes from successful corporate models to maintain that efficiency. In other words, I cut costs. My profit margin is reasonable, and my clients get high value. Would I offer a discount on request? No. Would I offer one to an organization on request? No – not unless it was an offer to help me run a campaign that stood a demonstrated/proven  likelihood of bringing in at least 10 more clients ready for a full package. Would I let a customer go away because of price? Yes, I have done so, and I would do it again tomorrow. Even in this economy. Even if I were hungry. I want to add enough value that price is not the primary discussion.

Desperation Discounts: Even if you were hungry? I know, I keep making these radical-sounding statements. It might be hard to believe me, but here’s something I learned from a colleague (again, in the landscaping business). If you work for yourself, and you’re not making at least $25/hour, you’re working for the wrong person – go get a job. That was more than 15 years ago. You’re paying self-employment tax. You’re paying your own health insurance – yes, you’re darned well entitled to afford health care, so you’d better make sure you can pay for it. You’re paying for your own savings funds (let’s not kid ourselves by calling it “retirement” – the last generation to retire has already retired). You pay for overhead, equipment, supplies, services, and you’d better be spending something on marketing (a business will lose 25-33% of its clients annually to attrition – if you’re not growing, you’re dying, even if you don’t feel it yet – get your marketing in gear while you’re busy – don’t wait until you’re slow, when the pipeline will take potentially too long to build). You need to make a living wage. What, because you’re self-employed, everyone but you is entitled to a living wage? Fark no! Don’t buy into that discriminatory nonsense. If you’re thinking that way, or you’re willing to settle for that, you need to join a freelancers union or form a union of one and defend yourself  A living wage. [If you're a contractor or freelancer in Southern California, by the way, you might want to contact Free Agent Source ( I do some work for them). It's sort of like a union for freelancer/contractors, but without the politics.]

So no, if I got hungry enough, I wouldn’t cut my prices continually until people came with me for that reason alone. I would add value, and keep adding value, and I’d raise – now lower my prices. Yes, in a “recession”. Everything I’ve said, every assertion is counter-intuitive to the way I was taught business by watching small, medium, and big corporate businesses whose names I can’t remember, or who aren’t around anymore. But it’s also what I’ve learned from businesses that could survive anything and have. It’s aggressively self-assured business. It’s a plan you might say is founded on arrogance – but, if you’re saying that, I’ll let you in on a secret: That’s why it works. This is rain folks, and your business is an ark. Build it strong. Build it to float. One way of doing that is add value rather than slash prices. Make it lowest-common-denominator-proof. Because the denominator is going to get lower. You want to survive? Plan to thrive.

And yeah, finally, if I had to choose between working for almost nothing and getting a job, I’d follow that colleague’s advice. If I couldn’t make it work adding value and getting a living wage, I’d go work for a better boss, and think and learn and plan (and save) again, until I could determine and execute what I needed to do better. I’d get a job.

So, what’s it going to be? You’re your boss. I’ve given you my take on discounts. This was asked as a question by a client or colleague, so I’ve thrown in my volunteer voice on it. You’ve got to do what you know to do. My two cents isn’t worth anything in your business if you can’t believe it when your own voice says it. If you find something else that works well, and you’re getting a living wage out of it, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with me – because, while I’m willing to stick my neck out and talk, and model my business after my talk, I’m also willing to learn. Let me know, and I hope this helps.

No Mortgage for Freelancers?

Your local NPR or public radio station  “The Take Away” is running talk about how freelancers are treated unreasonably (I’d say prejudicially) for mortgage loan applications vs. job holders. Got an offer letter or a couple of pay stubs from a job? You’re on the fast track for refinance or a new mortgage. Freelancer? They want two years of tax return documentation indicating a high net. And freelancers are highly motivated to reduce net as much as possible, for tax purposes, by showing expenses.

So freelancers are faced with two horns – you either get taxed to death (don’t forget the extra self-employment tax) or you don’t get to own a home. The current society is structured to reward job holders and punish freelancers.

I hate this too. But it’s not going to stop me. Society is always in tension with the individual – I already figure society is not out to help me. I consider it a given, so I’m never suprised by injustice, shortsightedness, or the general bias if not downright persecution of the individualist. Sure, if you’re a large corp, you get a lot of breaks. As a sole proprietor or small LLC, they’re going to stick it in you as often and as far as they can. I take it for granted.

But if you didn’t catch our recent article on home ownership (and other fallacies) – Mount Olympus is Dead – you might want to, if this concerns you personally. I’m not so sure I *want* to be handed anything. I’m not so sure that what a lot of people call home “ownership” isn’t just a fairytale we tell ourselves while sleeping in homes that are 90% bank-owned, if they’re average. The notion that homeownership is the prize of success is still, in my book, a load of crumbcake. Especially if we live there by having our heads so far up our corporate boss’s butt that the job feels extra-secure. We’ve learned a lot about both homes and jobs lately.

That aside, effectively preventing a lot of self-employed from having home loans is a raw freaking deal. It’s retarded. It’s stupid. It’s shortsighted. And… <drumroll>… the good news is that it’s going to change. Don’t believe me? I’ll be here for the next few years, so I’ll be prepared to eat my words if I’m wrong. But I don’t think I’ll have to do that. It’s going to change, because structurally, the way in which work is conducted is going to change. Is already changing. I won’t beat that drum all over again here – we’ve said it in lots of other articles. But one line: Companies, if and when they come out of the economic disaster we prefer to call, euphemistically, “recession”, will include those that make the same stupid mistakes again, and those who have already irreversibly adapted to the new order – a more transactional relationship with workers – one that is contract-based, temporary (most jobs are destined to “become” temporary – they always were – we just pretended they were “permanent”), and one that requires individuals to take increased responsibility for negotiation and for securing needed benefits.

And, kids and kiddoes, the mortgage lending industry will respond to the changes. Perhaps slowly. Perhaps belatedly. Perhaps stubbornly (major finance companies have had their heads up their own arses over refinancing troubled mortgages and have elected to take losses rather than question their own morality and superiority – shooting themselves in the foot and homeowners in the head – we will remember this about them – we will remember it a long time). But they will, ultimately, respond – because it’s not up to them. The sheer pressure of the massive growth in more transactional workers along with the surplus of homes and overextended building will mean that if anyone does not yield, someone will simply start or create a business out of catering to the facts – financial elitism be damned.

In the short term, it may be a darned inconvenience. But so what? It’s part of the deal. It will be, regardless of whether you and I like it. And in the end, the world will have changed. I’m ready for some of that. The day we see the self-righteous lenders who denied refinancing to all those souls who could pay a reasonable rate, and kicked them out into the street, so the lender could take a stupid loss on the home because “they’re wrong – they’re bad – we shouldn’t have to refinance them – they shouldn’t be rewarded for not sticking to the deal we made with them” (yeah, those guys have publicly said all of that) – the day we see them hat in hand offering loans to woo them back, or their children back, without the traditional securities that didn’t mean a tinker’s damn anyway (their job and their car), some of us will be laughing. And we’ll know that, with the same negotiating power that those folks will have with income sources as the transactionally employed – contractors, freelancers, entrepreneurs – they’re better off and more in control of their live.

There are foolish people who will make foolish deals. There are predators who will prey on weaker understandings. That will go on, too. But it’s not going to be the whole story. I’m interested to hear how “The Take Away” topic plays out. But one thing I’m even more interested in – how it plays out in the culture of work.

Action Items: The Joys of Slicing Cheese

A colleague and I are constructing a new type of organization, and at times at the outset I felt overwhelmed and a bit paralyzed. It comes with having an enormous vault of ideas, and a need for speed, while needing also to quickly put up an infrastructure (in this case a marketing infrastructure) that is woven piece into piece. This weekend, I revisited my part of the plan, and used a GTD (David Allen) principle: I converted everything into action items. Nothing was left without a verb. If it was going to stay on ‘paper’, it would have a specific action and an assigned person. It’s the equivalent of something we’ve quoted before – when you read, don’t make notes, make action lists.

I came away with a feeling of calm and clarity. What was a pile of building blocks became a highway – a direction paved with specific, achievable, measurable exertions. Action items are the joy of achievers. It feels like swatting a mountain until everything is action items. Once that occurs, it’s more like slicing cheese.

Not only are action items good for me, they’re good for clients. It’s something borrowed from effective business in the corporate sector. Provide your client a list of deliverables you’ll deliver, and a list of specifics they need to deliver. All projects depend on both, because sound projects are ultimately collaborative. Then convert your own list of deliverables into specific actions. Don’t leave them alone as outcomes – list the steps, for yourself, to complete them. After that, it’s just a pot of tea and your favorite background noise, with clear direction on a clear day.

Prices: To List or Not to List?

Personally, I rarely publish prices for services, because I think it encourages price shopping, and creates a climate where I can’t add value, and so I can’t compete. That’s bad for the client, because they always get nickel and dimed with mediocrity. With pure price shopping, I’m competing even with unscrupulous and dishonest service providers and even with incompetent ones. I don’t want to make only what they make, and I don’t want my services valued according to the lowest common denominator.  You don’t either do you?

When someone calls and asks me off the bat what I charge, I ask “for what, exactly?” After all, I don’t even know if they want pure consulting or one of my more tangible services. And if they have no idea, either, they can end up getting the wrong thing, whether it’s me or someone else. That’s why there’s a client consultation. If they ask me what my minimum is, I say a dollar. Then I explain that it depends on what’s needed and what we agree on. I won’t talk price until we’ve done a consultation, because I’m not selling an interchangeable service that you can just pick up anywhere.

It’s not commodity selling. You’re not buying corn, where one bushel is like a next. The client doesn’t always see it before we talk, but I’m adding immense value, bringing unique competence, and part of that is assessing the real needs and shaping them if need be. Sometimes a client will actually ask for something they shouldn’t buy – not from me, not from anyone, but they’re missing something that would cost them less, and do more. I don’t sell things they shouldn’t buy, so I’m comfortable with telling them the truth. But to add value, I’ve got to assess their unique needs.

Plus, I want to be the guy they turn to down the road – not just a wham bam thank you ma’am. There are other things I can do for most clients, that they’ll recoup in returns many times over. I want them to have the benefit of that, and I want the repeat business. Price shopping on services is for a purely transactional sales relationship. It’s not for a consultative one.  And remember, anything purely transactional can always be outsourced to someone cheaper than you. You can’t win selling commodities – you can’t win producing commodities. Ask a farmer what it’s like. All service businesses that intend to stay not only competitive but lucrative, and yes do good in the world, need to be consultative in their culture, and add value rather than cut price.

The mentality that motivates consumers to price shop is the notion of interchangeability of services – something borrowed from the product-world. But a marketing plan or a creative design work or an appraisal report process aren’t really products unless you turn them into products. They’re services, and services allow for a wide range of added value.

The misconception is so prevalent that even clients will sometimes tell me their own services are interchangeable with everyone else’s.  That had better not be true, if you intend to do any real marketing. Seriously. The success of any marketing plan depends on  your market differentiators. And even if the criteria of what you deliver is defined by law – like doctors, lawyers, appraisers, and real estate agents – you can add value in ways the other guys don’t. Do you guarantee a reply to all queries in 24hrs? Do you offer proactive status updates? Do you have extremely refined professional processes that involve your clients? Do you give them extra technical or informative deliverables or documentation that enhances your service? Is the level of consultation you provide above and beyond the competition? Where do you add value? If the answer is “nowhere” or “I don’t know” then that’s job one. It’s the very first step to your marketing. Nothing else matters until then, because you really don’t have anything to sell that I can’t get down the street for a dollar less. It’s back to price shopping, driving value ever lower, until some smart individual decides to add value instead of cut price, and charge a living wage, while beating you on something that makes the difference.

Listing your prices for services can short-circuit your attempts to add value by skipping that discussion altogether. It’s like starting the conversation with a discount. Do that, and everyone expects a discount all the time. Besides, it’s hokie. People think, ‘why didn’t you just quote your real price, instead of acting like it’s got a discount bundled in’. People who add value to services don’t have to play those games. That’s a habit picked up from product vendors who use sophisticated supply chains to drive costs ever lower, and most discounts are in exchange for something. It’s not really appropriate as a regular practice for a service entity that intends to survive, let alone thrive. Don’t tell me the price is $600 but you’ll do it for $500. Tell me what I get for $600 that I wouldn’t for $500, and how the difference benefits me.

When I was in Inspector school, the owner of the business responsible for our education explained that he cost more than his competition, and had clients banging down the door. I don’t want to give away his whole farm. But I’ll tell you what he told us, and I’ve taken it to heart. He said when people call and lead with a price question, he tells them the number and then immediately asks (before they hang up), ‘Now I’ve told you my price, can I have 60 seconds to tell you what more you’re getting for that price.’ Then he tells them the three ways his company adds value. Those are his market differentiators. If you’re marketing to an internet audience, those differentiators had darned well better be on your home page, buddy. No mistake. And if you *are* going to publish prices, either make it easier to get the “How we’re different” part than the price list, or embed those differentiators into the list itself. That’s called packaging.

Don’t say I’ll do a 1004 appraisal report for $350. Say  you get premium 1004 service for $350 that includes: [list of your added benefits]. If it’s just the report, someone will do it for $325 any day of the week. And if I need 10 a month, that’s $250/month difference.

My wife is a hair stylist. She charges more for hair extensions, but the technique she uses lasts much longer with less damage and more flexibility, so the client is getting much higher value for slightly higher cost. She charges a bit more for hair color, but she uses a premium color line without the overpowering ammonia in the air, with less fade and more gray coverage. Again, added value. She charges more for hair straightening, but it lasts far longer.

What if you don’t have any market differentiators? Change your processes a little and create some – again, that’s your first marketing task. And not that I’m trying to pump my own marketing consultant services but, if you need help figuring out what that is, that’s part of what marketing consultants do, among many other things. Get one. Get me, if you like, for a few hours, and I’ll help. But if you’re lost, for goodness” sake, get someone.

Price lists for products? You pretty much have to, sure, unless (again) you’ve created unique, high-end products where the price isn’t the up front discussion but the added value is. Services aren’t products, though. Yes, it’s immensely frustrating to go to the store and find the things I need not marked. But you and I aren’t K-mart, are we? We’re not even a fish market, where it’s just about haggling. We’re consultants, you and I, or at least consultative, regardless of what service we’re providing.

Update: If you’re stuck in price compete mode, your choices are either upgrade (with some pain) your services, and potentially your clientelle, or get out and switch lines of work (or lines of product). When I ran my first computer business, back in the nineties, I built computers by hand, with individual high-quality components. When Best Buy came around, you get a computer with the same specs (with one integrated motherboard – i.e. lower quality) as the one with individual components, but for much less money. They sold on price, and it was a hard, hard sell for people who’d never seen a computer to look at anything but the spec sheet. I knew what they were getting, but they didn’t. Computers were the only major appliance you’d buy first and understand later. So I sold my inventory and switched industries. Sometimes you have to make a decision, but price selling isn’t a viable one.

Mount Olympus is No More

When I was a kid, it was very clear what my parents and parents’ parents expected of me. Acquisition. After WWII, words like “security”, “stability”, and “financial independence” seemed so important. But then, you had to give up your financial independence for a mortgage, stake your stability on a job, and trust your security to an insurance company, a retirement fund, and lots of men in uniforms.

And what has happened to that world? Not only have housing prices relative to income soared, but the mortgage has turned out to be a curse in many cases. Your 401K or your mutual fund may be worth a negative (you won’t be making that money back that way), and health insurance is so obscenely priced that if your employer didn’t pay most of it, you couldn’t afford it on a “middle class” income. And finally, the security once gambled on individual employers is gone. It was gone before this bust (it was perception, not reality), and it’ll have been long gone afterward. No one retires anymore at 50-65 with a gold watch and a pension. If you aren’t already an executive, you can forget it.

The wisdom, in other words, of the generation predicated on a world war and a cold war, has become a disproved religion, a mantra for those who prefer to live in old movies. None of us can afford, any more, to live in the world we inherited – we have to live in the world around us. The old, tried and ture system has become the ponzi scheme of contemporary economy. So what’s changing for us?

In a brilliant article, recently, wisebread detailed the fallacies of home ownership as an investment. It’s not diversifying your investments. A mortgage, they argue, is a foolish form of renting -  like putting a car on a credit card. Most of your money is lost to interest, and the growth barely exceeds inflation – most decent investment funds can do much better. The return at sale from appreciation doesn’t even touch the the costs of upkeep, improvements, insurance and taxes, and that’s with the tax deduction figured in.  If you broke even at sale, in reality, looking at all the math, that would be amazing. And we have tons of historical data on the performance of housing, when applying the same rules as other investments. The money saved from renting, invested in something else, is likely to make you more financially independent than a home owner with a mortgage – says one economist, “You’re supposed to diversify as much as possible — put your money into stocks, bonds, many different geographies — and then use the income to rent whatever you like.” There might have been an argument against this 40 years ago. There isn’t, anymore. You use the money saved on upkeep, insurance, and taxes to pay your rent.

The traditional job, too, we’ve said is a dinosaur. Working for one company isn’t diversifying sources of income. It’s putting all your eggs in one basket, and look where that’s got us. The future of smart investment, for your work (and if  you’re not treating your work as an investment, why not?) is contracting. Whether as a free agent or someone who’s self-employed. If you were running a business, would you want just one client? “But that could make you rich,” you hear all the time, “if you could just get Walmart to buy in”. There are just as many broke, bankrupt souls who will correct that misguided notion who went down highway 71 to Bentonville (or went down because of it). Those stories needn’t be recounted here – you can find them anywhere. So if you wouldn’t want all your income dependent on one source as a business owner, why as an employee? A century of history with the company store, that takes care of everything, has taught us that eventually it doesn’t, and certainly it’s not the most stable investment, when looked at as an investment, fairly – like any other. Have you looked at how much you’re giving away by being an employee vs. a contractor? And if not, why not? If not, your security is more likely in the mythology of joining, and not demonstrably mathematical security at all.

But the world is changing with or without us. Not only is loyalty not rewarded, it’s punished. Even for those staying in a traditional job, if you stay too long, you hit a ceiling at which confidence in your ability wains, and you find contractors or outside candidates taking your next step. And you won’t be getting that gold pen, either. We’ve already talked about how contracting is widely replacing traditional employment – from the employer’s point of view. The sound investment is in yourself – not just as a feel-good mantra, but in actuality, in genuine economics. Right now, there are still people saying “but I’m scared, and it’s more comforting being a… whatever” – they’re saying that now, but it’s about to get scarier being a whatever than at least having other irons in the fire. It will be gradual, yes. But gradual economics is not like gradual geology. It will be in your generation, and mine. Even small employers will be preferring contractors to employees.

What we will tell our kids, if we’re looking ahead, with vision, is that financial independence is not summed up in a mortgage and two cars with payments in the driveway. Security is not in a fund your employer picked out for you, and you’d better open a savings account, because insurance, unless the current government succeeds, will belong to the rich. Unless you’re starting out rich, start saving. And lastly, stability is not rooted in placing all your faith in the company, the organization, the corporation that is quickly distancing itself from what it was and still is portrayed as in popular culture. Stability is in a preponderance of investment in your multiple talents in multiple venues with multiple sources of income – not one. Whether work, or bonds, stocks, funds, or whatever. The internet geeks that have been telling us, amidst the scorn of their elders, to cut the traditional ties and live free, be mobile, be flexible, be responsive, be in more than one place, ditch the land line, the permanent address, and ditch keeping your life in file cabinets – be able, at least, to travel the world – those bratty, brash, bravado-mongers – those are simply the ones that realized, before you and I did, that the myth was just that. A Mount Olympus from someone else’s dreams. And it’s not bleak to discover this – it’s immensely freeing and empowering. It’s as if the answers come into your head at last, and the world is one of science – it begins to make sense.

Love your and honor the bygone generation, but don’t live in their story. It’s far more interesting to see past Olympus to the other side.

The 2-minute Resignation Letter

Here it is, time to write another resignation letter for a family member. This is sort of my role in our family. The reasons for leaving are employer incompetence, but naturally I reach for the most tiny, most dull, most trivial format there is. Yes, I’d like to say, “you people are tards who are running your own business into the ground by rewarding mediocrity and using some of the dumbest attempts at emotional manipulation there are – what were you thinking?”, but no I won’t say that. The best response to a business that’s no longer worth your time is to just take your participation elsewhere or else build a better one – not necessarily a bigger one or one as big, but just a better one. Even if it’s just one person and honor (and a laptop), it’s better than one with all the furnishings and none of the ethos that makes any size business great. Greatness isn’t always in the best location, and frequently it answers its own phone.

Still, in my ongoing search for ever more minimalist templates for firing an organization and letting a company go, I came across this one. What the letter says (not how it reads) is that I dictated it to my small child, who is sharper than the recipient, and I included drawings in case you get confused. Now that’s a very good letter, for when you really mean it.

I’m not sending that version, but I’m also not sending the kind that worries about leaving a lasting, but false, impression. What my version will boil down to is the following elements:

1. Effective Date: With your last words, demonstrate your effectiveness. For yourself. They probably don’t realize what they’re losing, and won’t.
2. Explanation: “Positive” but indirect. Not “I’m going somewhere better” but “I’m needing to take the next step in my career”. There. You’ve just said that you’ve realized that better doesn’t exist where you are. But you didn’t say that exactly, you said you were taking care of business.
3. One positive thing about where you worked: Even if it’s just “I learned a lot”. That can mean anything. Courtesy is the least you can do for yourself. Always opt to feel civilized, regardless of whether the place you’re leaving is civilized. That way you don’t take any of it with you.

Onward and upward. That’s the resignation letter I favor. If you can’t write it in under 2-minutes, it’s too much.

Blog vs. Debt

One of the things I like seeing about this economy is the spirit of resistance and, often enough, of triumph that is coming in response. You can see it in the blogosphere. There’s a lot of BS out there, about how it’s going to be ‘over’ in a few months. I don’t think so. We’re never really going back, folks. It doesn’t matter what people will say when they feel it’s safe to go back into the water of gratuitous waste, dishonest lending, foolish borrowing and general overextension of everything. It won’t be ‘over’ – it won’t be ‘recovered’ – it’ll be different. And I believe different is already here and here to stay.

One blog I found recently really turns me on: Man vs. Debt. It’s written by an amateur and that’s one of the things I like about it. Not every post is a winner, any more than it is here. Some are stellar. It’s real. My favorite is the one on how he decided to sell anything in his house that wasn’t nailed down – from diaper pins to soap dispensers – on ebay and in garage sales. A family member told him that surrendering their possessions would feel like “going backwards”, but he said that being in debt is being backwards – getting out of debt is moving forward, and they can always buy the things they really want again with cash once that happens. What a radical break that is with most of society in the West!

Aside: I live in a part of the United States where the value system is to get as big a house as you can (almost everything centers on the acquisition of a house), on the most land you can own, and then spend the rest of your life shopping at Pier One Imports or Walmart to fill it with as many things as you can (no empty space – it’s not allowed), and then die and give it all to your kids, so they can have an estate sale, and use the money to rinse and repeat.

It’s Noah’s Ark syndrome. Build or acquire a really big structure and fill it with your own copy of everything – two of each. You need a dining room table, and a little kitchen table too. You need two cars. You need at least two TVs. Two telephones. And so it was that all the Noahs signed mortgages, as if theirs were the true ship into which two of every kind of possession must go, and they filled it with two of everything, and closed the hatch. And one day they died in there, and I bought their TV at an estate sale for $20, watched it for a year, and then sold it for $10 in a garage sale.

I don’t think the rain is coming to wash away all our possessions. I don’t think we’ll never see furniture again, if we don’t acquire more of it. And what I like is neither do people that write blogs like that. They’re busy casting things out of the Ark! Swim! Swim, you useless curios and pieces of fiberboard crap! Swim back into the stream and be gobbled up by people who are building arks for the end of the sale!

Another example of some amateurs going at it is the spunky, youthful Five Girls Ditching Debt. Might as well be Spice Girls in my book. Ooo la la! No sooner do you click on these babes’ site than you see pledge #1 – follow David Ramsey’s Baby Steps. Darned straight. Those rules got me out of credit card debt. Think of it like an exercise journal where  you maintain the will to victory by the sheer chutzpah of posting your goals and your progress on a public wall for all the world to see. It’s like talking trash to yourself. Yeah, I’m going to kick debt’s arse! You hear me debt? Watch me! You got something you want to say? Yeah, I’m telling the whole world how I’m going to take you down after school. You’re mine, debt. What, is that a tear in your eye?

No, these girls aren’t bullies. Bullies are just pussy cats who can’t deal with their inner softness. These girls are gym-kata fighters with the foo of debt erasure. They’re roller derby debt erasers. I wouldn’t bet against them. The five are keeping it real. Gutsy gals, all of them.

I love what people are doing to revamp their lives, hack society’s assumptions, and rethink the world of excess. It’s a revival of sorts, folks. And you can see the little conversions, the little salvific acts appearing all over the place. There’s a revolution goin’ on. I’d like to see Thomas Friedman shocked one morning to wake up and have to amend his friggin 37-CD set on the “Flat World” by saying that the US is starting to outdistance Japan as a nation of savers and investors. Not because I’ve got a flag up my butt and I’m waving in the patriotic wind, but because it’s good for us, man. The times they are a changing.

The new wind is get up and liberate yourself from the bondage to debt. Paul Simon should make a new version of his song – call it “50 Ways to Leave Your Banker” – “Just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free.” These guys (and at least five girls) are the drop outs from the economy of economic serfdom – the burn your credit card  anti-debt protesters of the new economy (today the draft card is your credit card – it sends you off to Sam’s Club for a three year stint facing down the enemy of interest). These are the radicals. Don’t underestimate their potency. Hear them roar.

1-Click Refurbish Your Business PC

As we talked about in an earlier post, you can’t afford technology slow-downs (let alone melt-downs) with the equipment you use for work. There are three tools that are superb for keeping it lean, mean, and screaming faster than the day you bought it. What all of these do is clean your registry which, if you’re a Windows user, was full of crap from the moment you got the PC, and has grown exponentially more crap-filled since then. Some of them clean other things which get just as junk-filled – like your temp folder. Some go farther, scouring your hard drive for the detritus of software installs and software baggage. The criteria for each of these is simple: in my experience, they have cleaned thoroughly and consistently without doing damage. I won’t swear by any piece of software, but my experience with these has been quite positive.

Ashampoo Winoptimizer: This is the Swiss army knife of system cleaners. Great value, and they frequently offer this for $10 if you watch for it, though it’s worth the original price of $50. Try a free demo – you won’t be disappointed. Advice: don’t get crazy with all the tweaks this thing will allow. They’re good if you understand what you’re doing. If not, use it to clean, clean, and clean. The best thing they ever did in these later versions is include a “one-click optimizer”. I keep it on my taskbar. If I think I’ve lost any speed, I click it once, and keep working. By the way, it’s fast!

PC Onpoint: This is a single-function utility and it does it singly well. It cleans the registry. It has always seemed rock solid, high-end, professional (what some of us might tongue-in-cheek refer to as “corporate grade” – except, honestly, have more respect for it than that – this is good technology!).  It seems a little slower than Winoptimizer, but just a hair – a hair mind you – more thorough. Also, it has no tweak panels for you to hose your settings if you get click happy and aren’t geek savvy. My experience isn’t with the latest version, perhaps, but these comments were true as of a year ago.

Advanced System Care Free: This is a full-featured cleaner/optimizer that is also dead simple, once  you get the interface. Follow the ‘bouncing ball’ around the dial, so to speak, and it more or less takes care of everything for you, without you having to know any terminology. I have this installed on a family member’s PC. As a single, comprehensive, cleaning solution – especially since there’s a free version – it’s quite impressive.

Incidentally, I’m not intentionally excluding any other tools. I’ve tried a lot of them. But frankly, these in particular have been the most thorough, without causing damage to anything of mine, that I’ve experienced. In my experience, they’re the best.

That’s it. This is not primarily a blog about business tools, but when I find tools I like, I relay the information because what this blog is actually about is caring about your work. A friend and I looked at each other one day when lamenting a horrendous software choice on the part of a corporation and said, “in our own businesses, we won’t do things like this”. It isn’t just because we have a doctrine of technology. We do, but that’s beside the point. It’s because our work is a vehicle of meaning, as I can be accused of saying too often, and that means that we approach it, from a technological standpoint, differently than if our meaning came from some part at the expense of a whole – one project budget at the expense of a company, or whatever. So, if you’re using a PC – nothing wrong with a PC – remember, Microsoft didn’t invent them – they just dominated them for a long time, and that day is fast ending, then tools like these can help make using it more like driving a Mazda 3 or a Minicooper, and less like sputtering along in a Kia Sephia (ooo, mercy).

The real question is how many of you are going to go rogue and slip these onto your crawling, corporate workstation for a quickening test drive. Careful, Wilbur – there are eyes in them thar hills.

Freedom Wears a Watchcap

What is home-worker fashion? One of the things I’m curious about, for those of you who work from home all or part of the time is: what do you wear for working? Pajamas? Overalls? Tuxedo? A speedo?

One of the wonderful things about working from home is that you can eat what and how you want. No more bowls of office candy or cold pizza delivery in the break room, if you don’t want it. If you want crab salad on crackers, that’s what you can have. If you want peanut butter on apple slices, you can go for it. Working from home is an opportunity to be healthy, pleasured, and comfortable in what you eat. You can even take a break at the gym or on the exercycle (or keep working, if you’re one of those with the netbook mounted on the handlebars). Likewise, if your thing is a mug of coffee with Irish Cream and a pipe, you’ve got that too.

You also get to listen to what you want in the background. Everyone realizes that. If you want wild, wailing women, they’re right there with you. Not the kind in your HR department, but the kind on your CD. If you want Dillon and Springsteen, they’re your work companions. If you want Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers in the background on NPR, they’ll happily keep you company.

One of the most comforting things, to me, is that you can also wear what you want. I’m currently wearing sweat pants, a painter’s t-shirt, a fancy warm overshirt, a cashmere muffler, and a watchcap. Why this getup, you might ask, and would I really answer the door in it? Yes, quite confidently. The watchcap because, if you’re from the North, you know that if your feet or hands get cold, you put on a hat. I keep the house barely heated to stay alert and save money, and I wear a hat to start, because I won’t want to stop and get one later. The sweat pants because I think men’s pants should move with you, not against you, when you work (think uncrimped), and I’m sitting in an office chair. The muffler because, besides the fact that I personally am incontrovertibly stylish, it keeps my neck warm. If there’s one thing that’s distracting to a brilliant thought in formation, it’s a chill at the neck. And the rest because it’s just comfortable.

So what do you wear? Do you do the tie at your desk no matter what thing, because it helps you with the psychology of it all? I did that when I was in sales, and I think it works. I felt professional, and I acted professionally. Clothes are a part of the mind’s picture of itself. They contribute to mood just like food and music do. Dressed to the nines, I felt confident, cool, sharp, deliberate, and sexy. Yes, sexy – that word we couldn’t say if there were an HR department in our home office. Sexy, despite the Victorian hypocrisy that prevails in corporate settings, is part of being effective too. If you feel sexy, you feel effective, potent, able to accomplish what you want and able to obtain what you desire. So dressing to feel sexy is a good idea too, as long as you don’t chase that rabbit too far and end up at your corner store hitting on cashiers during your break. I have friends that should slob up a little before they go out.  At least the married ones should.

Wear swim trunks and put the laptop by the hottub? Is it TV trays and night shirts? Are you “business casual” and, if so, do you have casual or Hawaiian shirt Fridays? Do you hammock up, like “The Todd” in Scrubs? Do you work in the nude? Is your attire now reflecting every sports team you’ve ever adored, from football jersey to fitted baseball cap? Do you wear whatever you passed out in the night before? Is it your chance to put on sequins and pearls? Are you dressed like Ozzie Nelson or Kramer in his apartment? I don’t actually want to know, tho if you want to leave a comment and tell the world, that’s fine. I’m more interested in whether you’ve thought about it.

What’s it like to be free? How does freedom dress? What does freedom eat and drink during the day?

In case you were wondering, I’m having minted green tea and have a movie  Sex and Death 101 keeping me company in a little window on my left. No, it has nothing to do with what I said above – it just happens to be my latest pick. Yesterday morning’s was a really awful horror flick, and earlier I was listening to an up and coming new artist (one of my wailing women).

Freedom. Here, freedom wears a watchcap.

Sell more than you save

Rule of Work: If you must choose, sell more rather than save more. Both are good, but it’s a matter of priorities.

As I contemplate “quitting the day job” (OK, so I’m not quitting – the project is at completion and I’ve finished – but I’m referring to not replacing it with another one), I am automatically cutting costs, and preparing to cut others. The obvious large chunks. Some of the small ones if they take no effort to dismiss.

The other night I spent an hour to save more than $100 in the coming year, for instance, and am feeling pretty good about it. It’s money I had no need to spend.  However, let’s analyze that. At $100/hour, someone who does contract work might be feeling pretty good. In fact, it might be tempting to say it’s better than $80/hour working. I’m not so sure. Cutting a cost didn’t enhance my marketing. It didn’t send me referrals. It didn’t add to my portfolio or create the potential to add value for added fees. All it did was remove something.

To further illustrate this, who of us hasn’t spent more than $100 on our marketing? If not, what are you waiting for – this isn’t Field of Dreams. How much would you spend to get a client? Per client? $100? I might. Especially if I was hungry, I might. So which would be better – saving $100 or getting a client?

I’m a fan of cost cutting. I respect cost cutting. I have to engage in cost cutting or my business will die and I will end up working for someone else’s business, helping them… hmm…. I won’t be helping them with cost cutting. Most likely, I’ll be helping them sell. That’s the only reason to hire me – I can sell at a time when businesses are cutting costs.

So the point is to turn that ability into an asset for one’s own business. All of us can sell, or else we employ really good people who can sell for us. But we’re all in the business of selling something. Products, services, or just our charm and good looks. Well, actually I don’t have much charm. It’s a question of focus. The focus, especially now, especially when this economy can rear up and try to scare us, and the temptation to make it about cutting costs pokes at us. Again, if we focus mainly on cost cutting and not sales, we’ll be out selling someone else’s widgets before long. This is exactly the time to be selling our own – to spend our “off” hours not dozing, not lazing around, not waiting for clients, and not even searching for that last penny to save. It’s time to beat the bushes harder than ever.

You remember the parable of the talents. I hate to use a religious metaphor so soon after having used another one, but it’s that or a reference to Disney, and they’re not making metaphors as well as they used to. You can bury that talent in the ground, and not spend a darned dime. You can cut costs so low that nothing costs you anything, and hang on to what you have. Or you can do what the righteous do. You can go out and invest. Invest in your business. And seek the reward that comes to the faithful steward. Remember, your business is something to which you have a responsibility to be loyal, faithful, dedicated. You owe it, in the same way you owe praise to whoever cooks your dinner. So  you can’t just bury the coin and sit on it. Faithfulness to your business means tend the crops, thresh the grain, bring in the new wine, and so on.

For those of you who are religious, I’m not saying your business is the highest good in the universe. It’s just the highest good when it comes to your work, if you happen to be a business owner, precisely because it belongs to the Chairman of the Board – and I don’t mean Frank Sinatra. Food is meant to be eaten, it’s for the good of your body and soul – it’s not for putting in a glass case and gawking at. Same thing with your business. Nourish it, tend it, and let it nourish you back. At least, that’s what I’m going to do.

I’m not really giving advice, even if I seem like it. So don’t go thinking I know anything about where the market’s going and all that. I’m pretty pessimistic about that. I’m optimistic about where I’m going, and partly because I choose to see this market as an opportunity. I’m really writing so I can ponder the things I’m going to do to not merely ride through, but to try to prosper during a flood. And if I borrow a religious metaphor or two, it may be because I find myself praying quietly “Lord have mercy”, because it’s an awfully audacious thing to set out to do and, if there’s something I’m afraid, of it’s pride. Arrogance? No. But pride, yeah – that’s one expense I can’t afford. What I can afford is the determination to market my work with more effort than I use to protect it or myself. It’s a risk, but this seems like a moment when gamblers bank on rules like this one which,  put another way is: sell yourself long when the chips are low. But I like to keep my rules metaphor-free: sell more than you save.

The Unseen Light

You know, the agonizing thing about knowing you can build a business, knowing you have the courage, the intelligence, the talent, is not having the right idea. Don’t get me wrong, I have a business, and it’s the right idea, and it has been, for where I was, where I am, and for a while yet where I’m going. It’s the right idea because any business that works is currently the right idea. But you know what I mean. I mean that one idea that’s stellar, that you’ll give yourself to and promote when nobody believes in you, about which you are willing to be arrogant (some will say obstinate), even in the face of all the people that say “what if” and “yeah but” and “you’re living in a fantasy world”. I don’t know whether that’s the voice of your parents, spouse, siblings, religious group, or whatever. If all of these are supportive, you probably have it all figured out already and don’t need this article. My confidence and sense of adventure and obdurate insistence on determining for myself how to see the world painted an early target on by back. So I’ve had to pretty much work on the great liberating idea while under fire.

The idea is everything, you know. That’s what we know, those of us who are still trying to come up with it. The idea is everything. If we could just have that one idea – the one that no one has ever had, or ever followed through on or, if you settle, ever done quite right. We know what we want. We want the unprecedented. And when we have it, that idea, firmly fixed in our heads, and when we know that it’ll succeed no matter what anyone says, then we’ll act accordingly. That’s when we’ll act.

But I have a theory. It’s a theory I’m working on, anyway. My theory is that all kinds of ideas are the right idea, if you are committed enough. Put a different way, I’m not sure that the idea comes first, and that you will have that certainty, that absolute certitude, and then you will press on against all odds. Sure, it has happened that way now and then. But my theory is that perhaps, most of the time, instead of this, instead of just knowing, and so being committed, you commit first. You commit without knowing. Not just without knowing your idea will succeed – but without even knowing what the idea is. It sounds crazy, which is a word ordinary people use to mean counterintuitive – against common sense – unprecedented. But that, tonight, is what I think. At least I’m willing to explore it. I think that you commit to going forward, with and how you can, to being governed by an idea and, if you don’t have the exact one yet, to going forward anyway with what bare, meager ideas you have. You choose the one that isn’t guaranteed to make you rich, isn’t a sure thing that you can see whole and pristine against the sky. You go forward with wherever and whatever you have and, I think, you find the idea while you’re in motion, not while you’re waiting for it to dawn on you.

Now I can’t prove this. It is quintessentially the example of non-linear thinking, and I for one am not the biggest fan of what a lot of people call non-linear thinking. But what’s the alternative? The alternative is to stay put and bleed or, if you’re slightly less dramatic about it, stay put and do absolutely nothing at all. I’ve seen animals that stay completely still, because they’ve been injured in some way, and they’re bewildered – they don’t know what to do. They will starve like that, and I venture to suggest that if you’re the kind of person that responds to this kind of writing, so will you. It boils down to either paralysis and stasis or else going forward without the slightest guarantee, but more than than – without that pristine shining beacon, that mountain of enlightenment, that tinkerbell of sanity standing out in front of you like the vocational nirvana that it surely is. I think, again I’m not sure, that some of us may find what we’re looking for by feeling our way around it a bit. And besides, some of us can’t wait. When the lightbulb of all lightbulbs does go off, if we haven’t built the groundwork, by building businesses, by venturing forth bravely against the advice of others, we won’t be the kind of people that will recognize the lightbulb and distinguish it from something dangerous and threatening.

All ideas, when you’re not acting on ideas, seem dangerous, seem like a threat to our safe ground, because all of them presume the courage to change, the willingness to risk what we know for what we don’t. All ideas, at first, seem like walking out over water with nothing but faith. But when you are living in them, when you have walked among the storms already, then you know. You have the assurance of things hoped for, to quote a saint. And that’s what we mean by the certainty that the idea we alone can fully see, despite the fog of naysayers, is true, will succeed, and merits our undying effort and commitment. I think, first, before we’re entitled to that pillar of cloud going before us, showing us the way, that radiant lightbulb of genius, we must respond to the small fire in the bush, the small inklings that our lives are more than we’ve made them to be thus far, and must take those first furtive steps into what seems like the desert, and barrenness, living perhaps only on the manna of our own self-belief, and deference and humility before whatever god we think turns the dawn into darkness and strides the heights of creation.

So. So, I commit to going on, into this sandstorm. Going on when a part of me wants to cry out “where is my food going to come from?” Not insanely. I’ll gather what I can each day, and conserve and preserve all that I find like the dearest friends. But the alternative, to continue to borrow a religious metaphor, is bondage back in Egypt. I don’t know how I’m going to live in the desert exactly, a year from now. But I have food for today, the courage and commitment to go forward, and I have what talent, what intellect, and what hands God gave me. Who really, of us, has more than this when, now more than ever, all illusions of security are being shown for the false prophets and dead idols that they are? I’m not going back to chains and servitude, to the lash and the mundane ordering of my life by the clock kept in corporate board rooms, building monuments to a foreign god who isn’t my own. Remember, this is just metaphor – I’m not preaching a sermon. But the beauty of religious history is that it lends itself so readily to a perennial understanding of the problems we face.

And aren’t we already a little arrogant or obstinate (or courageous) to think we’re the special people, the chosen people, the people who will break the mold, who will conceive of a life lived outside the cubicle walls, of an economic force that comes from our own fire, our own engine, and of an ethical and metaphysical determination, freedom, and self-actualization that comes from breaking with the world as most people describe it to us – from the stories of a people not our own – like Abraham coming out of Ur. And if we are that arrogant, why not a little more? Why take one self-righteous step forward and not be willing to take another? Why shout out freedom and tremble at pulling free of the chains? Let the silent stay in Egypt. Those of us who find in ourselves a voice that dares to say Pharoah doesn’t own us, to the wilderness! I don’t see the lightbulb with my physical eyes, ladies and gentleman. I’m not a liar. But I see it, there, just where I’m going. I see it with inner eyes, and know with a kind of stretching of the imagination and creativity and desire that it’s real and that, if I press on, I will have it in my head and and in my  hands and it will come out of my mouth. You can say it’s wish fulfillment but, actually, what’s wrong with wish fulfillment? I intend, I plan on fulfilling my wishes. That’s what I’m in this for.

I’m not a believer, as you skeptics are likely to label me. I’m more arrogant than that, remember? I have certitude. Obstinate surety, indifferent certainty – counterintuitive, unprecedented vision of something that doesn’t yet exist, and a theory that can’t be demonstrated to the minimal satisfaction of any empirical analysis. I have what some of you would call faith – though those of you that know me know that I don’t do anything on faith, and have no faith – but I’m not afraid to accept the analogy.  For those of you who, like me, tend to shy from anything the world calls faith, I’ll give you an insight. It’s not faith at all. I know something the skeptics and critics don’t, and it’s not contact with the spirit world or a high tech ouiji board – I leave that to the economic analysts of our time.  No, the thing that I know that none of the skeptics know, is myself. I know who I am. I have known for a while how I operate, and how I’m put together – how I work. Knowing how things work, that’s a kind of special interest for some of us, whether it’s for tinkering or just academic interest. I know how I work, and what I’m made of. I’ve taken it apart. And because of that, I’m not basing any of this on faith – I’m basing it on a kind of vocational insider trading, where the key component of the market is self-knowledge and self-determination.  I’m betting that some of you who read this have access to the same inside knowlege and, while I don’t intend to stick around in one place to find out, it’s my sincere hope you will make use of it and corner the market on amazing by continuing to take the first  steps toward awesome. I will see you, quite gladly, on the other side. I’ll see you in the promised land.

Fear, Loathing, Escaping the Cube

So when I first started building my business, I took a ‘day’ job. It was partly fear. It was. It’s hard to turn down a steady paycheck, healthcare, and the lascivious knowledge that somehow society supports your decision, where they seem to be bewildered by people who  break away from corporate life. It wasn’t a terrible decision, though. A job is a great way to capitalize your business. It’s a great way to shore up your resources, build your emergency fund, get your feet under you, and lend capital to your startup.

It was supposed to be for 10 months. A “contract” job, by which they mean you get benefits, you’re a full-time employee, but it’s essentially temporary – for a project. In this case, right up my alley – designing and training software and processes and being the face of the software rollout on the ground with the end-user population. As these things often go, though, it became two years. The business suffered. It suffered because I had to turn some clients away. I didn’t get to give it the kind of attention it needed. I throttled its growth, so I could keep doing what I was doing.

When the day gig started winding down, the temptation to look for another job was strong, I can tell you. For the same reasons. After all, you can never have enough capital, never really have enough in the emergency fund (it keeps getting hit by life’s emergencies), and when your primary peer base is employees who support what you’re doing – being an employee – you start sort of feeling the pressure to cave.

At some point, though, you have to cut the cord. Corporate life is like a mother that feeds you, true enough, but also ensures you never stray outside the front yard. As the project started ending, people would get sort of gentle and weepy-eyed on my behalf – you know, the kind of sympathy you get at funerals. “Are you going to be all right?” Imagine that too quiet, too soft voice like someone has died.  I have a low tolerance for that. What makes anyone think I’m all right being an employee? Is that what it means to be all right?

People respond differently when you tell them you’re leaving corporate life to do your own thing. Some like to insert the if’s everywhere they can. “IF you’re able to make it float. IF you’re able to last in this economy (they don’t realize that every economy is an opportunity).” etc. Others like to sort of glaze over and patronize, as though you’ve told them you’re quitting college to be an artist, or running away to join the circus. They figure it’s a phase, an expression of despair, loss, and grief at “losing” your job. Have they never been in a contract before? The whole point is for you to finish it, and for it to end. But the point is that they think you’re doing something self-destructive, like moving in with your mom and drinking a fifth of vodka every day, while you refinish wooden boats. Come to think of it, if it’s good vodka, that could be a business.

The thing is, at some point you either have to keep strangling your own business, or business plan, keep relegating it to the theoretical, actually lending creedence to its fairytale status, or you do in fact have to sack up, cut yourself loose from the dock, and float your boat out to sea. The sea is choppy, the sea is wild, that’s what they warn you about. It’s true. So true. But if you listen, what they’re really saying is, “the sea is scary”. They’re asking you to be afraid. They’re asking you to share in their own fear, to be afraid with them. After all, if we’re all afraid together, huddling in our cubicles – our cells, dreading the axe, the chances are some us will get a pardon. Gosh, I just can’t bear any longer to look at the world of work that way. Work is the fruit of a man’s loins, so to speak. Work is the product of his heart, his head, and his hands. It’s a glorious, sacred thing. The notion that fear enters into it, or somehow helps us, protects us, keeps us sane, stable, and safe is for the fainthearted who plan to spend all their lives living on another man’s dime.

Don’t get me wrong: if someone wants to be an employee, that’s fine. Some people prefer that you give them their work. I’ve no qualm with it, ultimately. I much prefer to be a contractor or self-employed or both. Contractors *are* self-employed, if they do it right. But the notion that the employee has to choose being an employee out of fearfulness cheapens being an employee. If you’re that, and you want it, do it without fear. When you’re laid off, when your project is finished and you have to move on, when your company goes out of business, you know that’s part of the deal. Don’t be afraid, be ready for it. Be on top of it. I’ve seen successful employees do this. I’m not knocking it. I’m knocking terror in the sacred place of our talents and the product of our souls. People say they don’t feel afraid, until you see the boat start to rock, and then it all comes gushing out.

But in the same way, fear has no place in the heart of a contractor or a self-employed person. It’s an enemy, a slow poison. Sometimes, not so slow. It’s like being chained to some invisible, impotent thug who only wishes to be a weight that holds you to the mundane, stifles your imagination, and does its best to convince you to be like other men – to join and imitate the huddle. And that fear will stifle your business, where taking a temporary gig to fund it and build it, in and of itself, won’t do so.

To those who are shaking their head in sadness for my departure – you can rest assured I’ll be fine. Quite fine. I’ll land on my feet, because I know where they are. And if I ever get hungry, I’ll see you again, using a job to pack my bank account for a business makeover, or a rebuild, or a new birth. But the very idea that I’d fail presumes only one thing – that I lack the heart to keep running at it, determined to prosper. I have a much harder time buying that fairytale. I don’t even see *how* one can fail if you only determine never to stop, never to give in, never to let up, until you have what you are after. And what’s the worst case scenario? That someone like me does this all his life, running at it, making a new start, pushing at it, building, building again if it gets knocked down, until his last breath. Frankly, that’s a heroic way to live. I’m pretty comfortable with that. I don’t plan on that to be the story, but I wouldn’t mind it and, honestly you don’t have the emotional stamina to put yourself to work if you don’t have the heart to work that hard.

I do. You do, some of you. Or want to. How on earth do people think these things get done? I’ve heard the myth – every business that survives and enriches its owners is the creation of pre-existing wealth or is an accident of history in a far off place where someone else – always someone else – stumbles accidentally upon an idea or a process that makes them ‘successful’. It takes a lot of faith to believe fairy stories like *that* one. Any decent survey of startups that have lasted a few years will show you that it’s *not* true. That happens, yes, but a lot of businesses, quietly making it, are just the product of someone so cantankerous, so obscenely arrogant, that he wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t stop, and didn’t care what you thought about him (unrealistic dreamer and blowhard), even if he seemed pleasantly congenial during “team lunches”.

To those who think I’m unrealistic, what is real? Isn’t it what someone is actually doing? What I’m doing is real – it’s not imaginary. And what I will do will be real when I really do it. I’m not asking you to believe anything, let alone believe in what you can’t see. I’m not asking for anything at all. That’s the point. Be sympathetic, if you want. Be dubious, if you like. Just don’t be in my way when I’m working, because that and only that will give me concern. Just don’t call me late for dinner, in other words.

Now, in a blog about work, I’m not the point, per se. Not really. Nor is my personal history, and that’s not why I’m recounting it. Nor am I the paragon, holding himself up to suggest you live the righteous life that I myself am living. I’m writing a somewhat personal story because I think many of us are in the same boat, sharing the same goals and are surrounded by many of the same attitudes and… sympathies. And if nothing else, this is about more than encouragement. The blog is called Rules of Work. It’s about the principles of what we’re doing, and how we achieve it. We’ve written about fear in the past. “The mind killer”, as they say on Dune. So I won’t articulate that rule again. People who don’t get it just say “yeah, whatever, blah blah blah” (yes, I got such an e-mail). People who do, just need to know that many of us are unafraid. That courage is there to be found, to reach for. And that the fears of others aren’t the rule that must govern our lives. We are free of others’ anxieties, if we want to be.

You don’t have to burn every bridge. Like I say, I’ll get a job again, if I get hungry enough, and I’ll use it to fund a rebuild of my business. But you also don’t have to stay in the big “safe” boat (the news anywhere lately should tell you it was never safe and certainly isn’t going to be any time soon – smart people at least put a second iron into the fire). You can cut the rope, including the rope to all that emotional baggage that comes from other people, and just serves as an anchor to weigh you down. Nothing profound, perhaps. Just an alternative story – a different mythos than the one that’s coming over the top of the cubicle walls, or is in the mournful goodbyes if you’re leaving your gig. Be a rock star. Leave the stage just as well as you walked on.

Social Compact for Work Changes

Frankly, I find it hard to think of a recession only in terms of the numbers that matter to the people that got us into one. It’s still a recession, or worse (we don’t like the word depression), if people are hunting for jobs for 16months, qualified people with degrees are still losing their houses for not finding work, and applicants are having to go through eight interviews just to get a rejection letter. Replacing employee relationships with temp jobs isn’t a stabilization of employment (without employee-like benefits), either, so the numbers can’t always be taken at face value.

It may well be that what has happened to the workplace for job holders and job seekers is not temporary at all – but is unprecedented and isn’t going away, not really. Hard to predict at this point, but signs that some changes may be more permanent are the reduction in employer funded retirement plans with widespread elimination of matching, and reduction of health care benefits with widespread use of contractors to avoid such entitlements. Pay cuts might be temporary, and it might be just belt-tightening to cancel the company picnic or the Christmas party. But eliminating health care and retirement – that’s changing the employer-employee relationship substantially.

Now even employees, in some cases, are really just ‘contractors’ with unemployment insurance. If that! Cut someone down to four days a week instead of five, and they’re not full time anymore. They may not be entitled to much of anything.

Some shifts in the employer-employee relationship have been building for years, but the recession, by making companies acutely cost-conscious, has accelerated them.

“I think we’ve entered into a fundamentally new era,” says David Lewin, of the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. He describes employers as “leery of long-term commitments,” including both benefits and pay increases. . . .

In some cases, employers keep workers, but not on the payroll. Last December, staffing company Spherion Corp. laid off Roberta Marcantonio, a 14-year veteran who sold franchises to local operators. It brought her back as a contractor paid by commission. “We didn’t need the fixed costs, because of the recession,” says Spherion’s chief executive, Roy Krause. “But we needed the skills when she was able to sell something.”

[Wall Street Journal, Oct 20, 2009]

When you combine a trend toward ‘trial employment’ arrangements, with the growing practice of filling out workforces with contractors on a larger scale, and the reduction of the kinds of benefits that signify a long-term relationship (the equivalent of an engagement ring for an employee), it seems as if the relationship of employee to employer may itself be obsolete, at least in some fields, in some jobs, for some populations, and that what we’re witnessing is a work-culture shift, not a setback, not a minor adjustment, and not perhaps a temporary redistribution.

The contractor ranks are swelling. After all, even the unemployed are what, ultimately? Contractors waiting for a gig. The question will be whether this is empowering, for most, in the sense that it’s more like running your own business, or whether it will be debilitating, so that being a contractor is just another word for full-time employee with no benefits. If the latter, it may essentially ruin contracting for a lot of people who thrived with it.  What I hope, with glass hope,  is that it’s more the former, and that a shift to enhanced fulfillment from work, and from the very character of a traded, value for value relationship, will enliven the world of work for more people than ever before. We’ll see.

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