Freelancing. Geeze, I was almost over the nightsweats and flashbacks and then Chucky the Freelance Penmonkey had to go and do a blog post. And I had to go and comment. And ol’ Chucky pointed out that I might as well have written my own blog post, so long winded was said comment, and I thought you know, the boy has a point. I barely keep my own blog turning over and here I am wasting 300-some-odd perfectly good words on his.
So yeah, I freelanced. I did twenty years, 1986 – 2006. Actually got over the hump and had a pretty good business humming along. You gotta have a niche, and the Chuckster’s whole vampire/gaming niche sounds like a lot more fun than mine. I did marcom work for professional service firms, accounting firms mostly. You needed 3500 words explaining what tax treaty changes in the EU meant for US companies’ transfer pricing strategies? I was your guy. Yeah, OK, it was boring. But I was past the where’s-next-week’s-check-coming-from stage. Arthur Andersen was the biggest accounting firm in the freakin’ world, and their HQ was right here in Chicago and I was dug in like a tick. Ads, newsletters, collateral, web copy, even speeches for the executive team. What could go wrong?
Oh. Enron. Well, OK, there’s that.
Sure, I had other clients, but Andersen was more than half my business, gone overnight. And suddenly their whole marcom department was out on the street looking for gigs while they scrambled for jobs, calling all the same people I knew, and it’s not like accountants don’t understand the whole supply and demand thing, so the average hourly rate (and don’t get me started on hourly rates, either) went from around $100 an hour to $50 if you were lucky.
Oh, and those how-do-I-break-in-to-freelancing-calls? Gotta love those.
“Dan? This is Marsha, the entitled bitch? I know your wife from the mom’s group at school? Say, I’m a pretty good writer, and I’m looking to get back into working, but something that doesn’t take up too much time from tennis and stuff, ya’know? I thought maybe you could give me some tips on this freelancing thing.”
“Screw writing Marsha. How do you feel about selling?”
“Selling?”
“Where do you think the jobs come from Marsha?”
“Oh. But you must have lots of contacts.”
“And you want me to share them with you?”
“Well . . .”
“You want me to call up my contacts and say ‘hey, those projects you send me that pay may mortgage and feed my kids, go ahead and send some of those on over to Marsha, OK? I can always dig up some more work somewhere else.’ Do you know what I went through to get those clients, Marsha? Do you know how much arcane business nonsense I’ve had to internalize to do the damn work? Do you know what MACRS is, Marsha? Or the difference between LIFO and FIFO? Or what the PBGIC is and why an HR department needs to care? Of course you don’t. See, even if I gave you my contacts’ names, you wouldn’t be able to do the work.”
“Well . . .”
“You see Marsha, I don’t want you freelancing. I don’t want anyone else freelancing. I don’t encourage competition. And when I find new competitors on my patch, my new goal becomes to shut them down, to steal all their work. To go to their homes and burn their offices and to sow the ashes with salt so that nothing ever grows there again.”
“Well . . .”
“Say hi to Floyd, Marsha.” Click.
I was almost over it. Almost.
Yep, I just love those “Hey, can you just give me a chunk of your livelihood ’cause I’m asking? Kthanxbai!” calls. If there was only some way to give those people really terrible advice without them recognizing that it’s really terrible advice.
I’ve never felt more understood than I have in the past 30 minutes reading yours & Chucky’s blogs. I’m in Chicagoland also & I’ve been freelancing full time since 1995. The past 24 months have been the worst of my entire career – clients not paying on time…or at all…going from six figures to poverty level. It sucks. Back in the early 2000s, I was the outside one-person agency for First Penn-Pacific Life Insurance Company, outscoring their mother ship (Lincoln Financial Group) on my copy & creative in print ads; then LFG reabsorbed the company cannibalizing their customers, and so it goes. That taught me to stop giving one company all of my time and attention. Then in 2007 I took on several small retailers – the mom & pop shops I really loved helping with marketing strategy and creative. Once gas hit $4/gallon in July 2008, I lost every single client like dominoes, including my Fortune 100 client who was based in transportation & logistics. I just hope that one day, I can recapture the joy and unbridled optimism mojo I once had. I feel like such a cynical curmudgeon anymore.
Dan, you’re badass. You know it, I know it, and everybody else does too. If I had huevos as big as yorn, I’d be walking funny.
But goddamn, I’m glad I have the balls to have keep a steady job – and it does take balls, I have to say. If I didn’t have kids…well, it’s best I don’t think about that. I need the comfort and security of a regular paycheck where I don’t have to fuck with taxes because I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to money, other than spending it. I guess I’m pretty good at making it too. I just haven’t got the knack for managing it well.