Starting a Business after a Layoff

Getting laid off is a worst-case scenario for many people in the current economy, but it doesn’t have to be. For some, it paves the way to a new life–as an entrepreneur.

In “How to Start a Business: First, Get Fired,” our latest story for the AARP’s Work Reimagined site, we offer tips from experts ranging from employment lawyers to a seasoned HR pro on how to negotiate a severance package.

Many people are blindsided by a layoff announcement and don’t even think of asking for terms in their severance agreement that might leave them in a stronger position to move on to the next chapter of their lives and prevent them from dire scenarios like losing their house. Sometimes, laid-off workers are hesitant to negotiate at all, for fear that their employer will hold it against them and avoid giving them a good reference in the future.

But, as these experts point out, many employers are prepared to treat you fairly after a layoff, as long as you are clear in asking for what you want and are willing to negotiate a bit

If you’re worried about issues like continuing your health coverage or whether you’re free to compete with your employer going forward, we encourage you to read these tips. They could help you get off to a stronger start on your entrepreneurial dreams.

 

 

Making the Break, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on October 10, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt Leave a comment

The One-Person Business on Steroids

Not so long ago, running a one-employee business was simply a way to create your own job, not a route to entrepreneurship.

But that’s changing, as New York Times writer Catherine Rampell noted in her recent story, “When Job-Creation Engines Stop at Just One.”

Many solo entrepreneurs are now growing their businesses by hiring contractors, instead of employees. Thanks to new, labor-saving technology and other factors, it’s become possible to be a solopreneur–and to run a “scalable” business.

For the piece, Rampell interviewed Mike Farmer, who runs a digital startup that offers a mobile search app, Leap2. Although he’s the only full-time employee, he runs the business with the help of seven part-time contractors.

The trend toward hiring contractors reflects the high cost of providing benefits, as Rampell notes. But in Farmer’s case, all of his contractors have access to healthcare, mostly through their full-time day jobs, so it doesn’t appear to be an issue for them.

Startups like these may not be good news for those who hope that entrepreneurs will provide the types of permanent jobs with benefits that many job seekers want. But there are many people who want contract work, either as a side gig or as part of a full-time freelancing career.  I’m sure his part-time freelancers appreciate the chance to earn some extra money after 9 p.m., when their kids have gone to bed.

This trend can be good news–but only if you’re resilient enough to make it work for you.

 

Growing Your Business, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on October 9, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt Leave a comment

Serendipity For Freelancers

I’m a firm believer in serendipity, which in the professional world goes under the guise of networking. One of the keys to building a successful career as a freelancer is being open to new opportunities. You have to allow your mind to leap to a possibility and then — this is important — take the possibility seriously.

Mark Helprin wrote about the way this works for a book writer in this essay in the New York Times.

Accident is as much a part of fiction as anything else, symbolic of the grace that along with will conspires to put words on the page. The craftless anarchy of the Beat poets on the one hand, and the extreme control of Henry James on the other, suggest that for most human beings, just as both freedom and discipline are necessary in life, serendipity and design must coexist in a work to make it readable. Fortunately, the world is rich in the interweaving of the two, which can be found almost everywhere.

It’s not enough to notice a connection. A writer has to put the thought on the page. As a entrepreneur, your job is to take a connection to the level of actually doing something. So, for instance, a couple of weeks ago when I talked to Marie Swift about writing for her. We fell into conversation about what it’s like to work at home … and soon I’d written a short blog post (or rather, interviewed her via email for one). Serendipity.

A similar connection helped us start supplying content for the AARP; one of Elaine’s friends introduced her to the editor. We’ve done a few pieces for the organization now and hope to continue.

There are ways of creating serendipity, of course. I’m a firm believer in the idea that doing a favor for someone opens the door to serendipity. Delivering just a little bit more than you’re obligated to is another way to invite it in.

Do you have examples of serendipity you’d like to share? Please do in the comments section below.

 

Uncategorized , , , , ,
Posted on October 8, 2012 by Elizabeth MacBride Leave a comment

Review: RocketLawyer’s Legal Docs for Small Business

Recently, I needed a privacy policy for a website.

I remembered I had a free trial with RocketLawyer, an online document provider for small business, in connection with a story I was writing about the company. RocketLawyer had asked me to try using the service so I understood how it worked. I knew the company was run by an attorney and decided it was worthwhile to give its documents a chance.

Creating a custom document was a pretty straightforward process, though not instant. I had to answer a questionnaire about the website and how it used information from customers. That took a fair amount of legwork, because I had to ask several other participants in the project for information on things like the website’s technology.

After I entered the information, I had an editable draft, which the program let me send digitally to the team for review. So far, so good.

There was another organization involved in the project, and its team had questions on the document that we needed help addressing. At that point, we had a private lawyer review the policy. Our attorney made a handful of changes and we soon had a final version that passed muster.

Based on this experience, I felt like RocketLawyer was, overall, pretty handy. I have used it for a couple of documents since then.

I should note that RocketLawyer advises users to pay for its “Connect with a Lawyer” service to review documents. In retrospect, I think that involving a lawyer in reviewing a first draft is a good idea.

That would, of course, add to the overall cost of drafting the document. However, I think it would still represent some savings, since it would probably take a lawyer fewer billable hours to edit an existing document than to draft one from scratch.

RocketLawyer offers free trials to prospective customers who are interested in its paid monthly legal plans, so if you’re curious about the service, it may be worthwhile to look under the hood the same way I did.

 

Growing Your Business, Reviews, Uncategorized , , , , , ,
Posted on October 4, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

Two Entrepreneurs Connect Bloggers with Advertisers

Rachel Ferrucci says she swept Deborah Mitchell off her feet when they met at a social media conference in New York.

Rachel Ferrucci

Mitchell, based in New York City, was a former television  producer for CBS News who had left a high-powered, 25-year career in TV in 2010. As she considered her next move, she was immersing herself in the world of social media.

Ferrucci had left a corporate career eight years previously. In addition to raising two now grown children in Connecticut, she had launched a bath and body products line and had, along the way, become an expert in social media who consulted for big brands.

Deborah Mitchell

For the next chapter of their professional lives, both were looking to do something entrepreneurial. “I didn’t want to go back to corporate America,” says Ferrucci. “I didn’t want to swim with the sharks anymore.”

They wound up talking for a long time at the event about their careers and aspirations. “It grew from there,” says Ferrucci.

In April, they launched The Blogger Connection,  a social media agency that has a network of more than 6,000 bloggers. The service helps connect brands with blogs to place their ads on, charging the big companies for managing the relationships with the bloggers. The service, which bloggers can join for free, offers them support in making their blogs better through an online forum and other means.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation about how they connected and launched the business together:

How did you come up with the idea for The Blogger Connection?

Ferrucci: I was already consulting for many companies on blogger outreach. And I wanted to find a way to really help the bloggers.  I also wanted to help the brands learn how to use social media in their marketing and help them with strategies. I thought that would be a great way to bring them together. When I met Deb, she brought so much more to it. It happened very quickly.

Mitchell: In working with CBS’s morning news, I would produce segments on a regular basis. I would develop relationships with PR people. I started going to blogger conferences. The bloggers were asking panelists “How do we get in touch with brands?” It’s very hard to connect with a brand. To get someone to pick up the phone to talk to you is difficult as an individual, especially as someone new, coming into the blogging world. I talked to a lot of the bloggers there and heard what they were asking for. I thought we could work together. I have access to brands and PR people.

How do your services differ from, say, one like Google Adsense, that puts ads on qualifying blogs? Can you describe your business model?

Ferrucci: The first thing we do that’s different is we really help you grow as a blogger. We give you feedback on your site. Because the blogger connection has a forum and private [social media] groups, we help you learn about different ways to grow your blog, what kind of content you put on, homing in on what your niche is, different technologies. The support that comes from within the group itself, the other bloggers–it’s almost like a family. We also teach you how to work with brands. What is blogging etiquette? How do you write a good review? How do you talk to brands?

Mitchell: I’m always online looking for different articles the bloggers might enjoy reading. As I search through the online world, and I see an article I’ll tweet it out and post it. It could be anything from how much you should get paid for a post to different ways for you to make money blogging…to if you’re a blogger and are appearing on TV, what information do you need to reveal to the producers before you get on the show. I try to curate some articles a few days a week and post them, for the bloggers to read.

We work with the brands in coming up with the vision for what they want to accomplish through blogger outreach. We figure out what their budget is, how much money they have for social media outreach. Rachel and I come together and hand pick the bloggers that would be ideal for the campaign. We make them a part of the campaign.

Ferrucci: We don’t charge to join our forum or groups.

How do you make money?

Ferrucci: There’s the marketing piece. We strategize [for the brands].

Mitchell: Once we come up with the campaign, we manage the bloggers. We guarantee that bloggers are going to blog about something. We have to make sure it’s done on a deadline. We have to manage all of that.

If any of our readers are interested in working with The Blogger Connection, what do they need to do?

Ferrucci: If they are a blogger they can certainly come to our site and sign up in our forum.

If there are brands that want to reach out, they can email us. We’ll have a conversation with them to know how we can help them. It can really be anything that the brand wants. We figure that out once we talk to the  brand. We need to know what the brand’s needs are. What is the brand’s goal? What key message do they want to get out?

If a brand came to us and wanted to put an ad on the bloggers’ sites, then we would help each blogger do that.  If it’s one of 50 bloggers, maybe Deb and I or someone on our team would help the bloggers do it. If we’re doing a campaign with 1,000 bloggers and 1,000 ads, then maybe we’d bring someone in to help us.

Would you like to guest write a post for The Blogger Connection? Write to info@thebloggerconnection.com.

Growing Your Business, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on October 3, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt 2 Comments

Five Questions To Prepare Yourself For Self-Employment

If you’re considering bailing on your corporate job, here are five questions to ask yourself. The answers will help you prepare for the move. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to earn enough as a freelancer to live on for at least six-12 months, so the crucial first step is to do a cash-flow assessment that gives some a sense of how much you’ll need, how much you can make, and how much of your savings you’ll have to use. For more on this, see the 200kfreelancer’s post on the AARP’s site Work Reimagined.

These five questions will get you closer to that good cash-flow assessment:

  1. How much can you make?
  2. How much do you need, on a month-by-month basis.
  3. What will you do for health care coverage?
  4. How much cash do you have, and how much are you willing to burn?
  5. Are you willing to use your retirement savings or borrow against your house?
Making the Break, Uncategorized , , , ,
Posted on October 2, 2012 by admin Leave a comment

Celebrate the Freedom of Freelancing

One of the great things about being a freelancer is Mondays.

Yeah, you’ve got projects due and clients who want you to check in with progress reports. You’ve got phone calls to schedule and deadlines stacking up. You’re already behind and it’s only 9 a.m.

But you’re free from all of the things that make people hate going into the office on Mondays.

Free from commuting.

Free from bad bosses.

Free from office politics.

Free from staff meetings.

Free from the human resources department.

Free from having to work when you need to be taking care of something else.

Free from dry cleaning, for the most part.

If it’s bright and sunny outside, like it is in my town in New Jersey today, you’re free to go outside when your work is done–or even before it’s done–and enjoy it.

Sure, there are stresses–the work load you’re juggling, slow-paying clients, health insurance premiums, to name a few.

But all told, we freelancers are pretty darn lucky to have the chance to make a good living without all of the pressures that our corporate friends face.

We’re lucky to be free.

That’s something worth celebrating.

 

 

 

The Lifestyle , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on October 1, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt Leave a comment

Keyboard Poison Day And Other Tips For Managing The Remote Life

It took me years of working from home to learn how important it was to take breaks in the middle of the day. In an office setting, there are lots of opportunities for people to relax their minds and move a little. You go for walks with co-workers, chat with your boss about his weekend, and trade gossip with a friend in the ladies room.

Marie Swift takes at least one virtual coffee break a day. She’s also declared Sunday “keyboard poison day.”

None of those things happen naturally at home. You can build in coffee breaks or lunches with your neighbors who also work at home. I love those times and do try to schedule them into my weeks.

They don’t have quite the same value of the informal exchanges with your co-workers, where work ideas can be born, and where relationships that stand you in good stead in the office are deepened.

I was on the phone recently with Marie Swift, who started as a one-woman band in the marketing business, and is now the CEO of Impact Communications, talking about this problem. Impact is a marketing consultancy with a team of 12-20 people, some employees and some independent contractors, which produces content for big financial companies including Fidelity Institutional Wealth Management and Pershing Advisor Services. Swift has an office in Kansas City but travels frequently and works remotely from wherever she is, using using gotomypc.com, Skype, instant messenger, gotomeeting.com, teleconference services and other online tools.

She sent me these tips, via email, for managing a virtual work life:

• Take virtual coffee breaks.

“When a feeling of inertia or overwhelm sets in, I ping one of my team members on IM to ask if we can take a virtual coffee break. The coffee is real – and so is the conversation, which we typically do on the phone while taking a quick walk around the block or munching on a healthy snack. We vent, rant, sigh, confide, ask for and give advice, ramble about our kids’ fender benders, share vacation ideas, and so forth.”

“For the most part, I love working in my office alone. I get so much more done without the constant interruptions that are the norm in a big office setting. But it can feel lonely from time to time. So I try to take at least one virtual coffee break each day.”

• Stand instead of sitting.

“Like most small business owners and sole practitioners, once I get into my chair and start working, long stretches of time go by and I realize that’s not good for my health. I’ve heard it called ‘sitting disease.’ So pace while I’m wearing my headset and talking on the phone, I stand when I’m eating lunch, I run up and down the stairs a couple times a day, and I always stand or pace when taking a virtual coffee break — it’s good for the body, mind and the soul.”

• Declare Sunday keyboard poison day.

“If I touch a keyboard, I’m dead. This gives my eyes and my hands a break from the usual computer strain I encounter for long periods during the rest of the week. I’m always thinking about my business, even on Sundays, but if I sit down for even a minute to check on just one simple thing, I find myself hours later telling my family ‘Just one one thing and then we can go…’. Declaring Sunday as keyboard poison day has really helped, in many ways.”

Growing Your Business, The Lifestyle, Uncategorized , , , , ,
Posted on September 27, 2012 by Elizabeth MacBride Leave a comment

From Columnist to Ebook Author: Tina Traster’s Journey

I’ve worked with Tina Traster for the past couple of years as the editor of one of her columns, Hits & Misses, a chronicle of the dramatic highs and lows that come with the entrepreneurial life, for Crain’s New York Business. When I found out that she’d recently compiled her articles in a new ebook, Hits & Misses: New York Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Strategies, I was curious about how she did it–and asked her to share her know-how with readers of the $200KFreelancer who might want to do something like this themselves.

It turned out that she wasn’t a rookie when it came to self-publishing. In Sept. 2010, she’d released Burb Appeal. It’s a collection of her popular Burb Appeal columns for the New York Post–which she characterizes as “the antics, ravings and anecdotes of a city girl who moves to a quasi rural suburb in Rockland County, [New York] where everything is interesting, unusual and odd.”  She hired Hen House Press to help with layout, formatting and cover design and then published it through Amazon’s CreateSpace program. She came out with a new version of the book, Burb Appeal Too, through Hen House press in 2012. The book is now available in paperback and in an Amazon Kindle edition and in a version for the Barnes & Noble Nook. Under her arrangement with Hen House, she retains all royalties.

Traster, a freelancer since 1999, got interested in publishing her first ebook when she realized she’d written 50 essays on her foray into suburbia–and wanted to do more with them. She didn’t think it would be easy to find a traditional publisher for a collection of material that had been previously published so she looked for other options. She fortunately had retained the contractual rights to her material.

Traster is still experimenting with the best route to publishing her work. For Hits & Misses: New York Entrepreneurs Reveal Their Strategies, she used Hen House Press as her publisher. Beyond helping her prep the manuscript, the firm is involved in helping her on the sales front–and shares royalties.

Traster had to invest both time and money in these projects. Organizing her columns by topic was a big part of each project, she says. She estimates that the up front cost of self publishing an ebook and print-on-demand paperback book combination is about $1,500. But there’s been a decent reward. She estimates that she derives about 5% of her annual income from her efforts to date, primarily from Burb Appeal Too.

“What has surprised me is the endurance of the sales,” she says. “I’m not saying there are huge sales every month, but there are sales every month. That is without any kind of intentional marketing effort for the last year or so.”

“No one is going to get rich on this,” she adds. “The point is that it is viable and continues to sell.”

Traster also points to another benefit of publishing ebooks: She believes that her increased visibility helped her to win a contract with a traditional publisher for an upcoming book she is writing about adopting a daughter, now 10, from Russia. “It’s a story of a mother’s hope, pain, love and redemption,” she says.

Wondering if it’s possible to turn your previously published articles into an ebook? Traster suggests that, in coming up with a concept, that you consider the question: “How do you make the whole greater than the puzzle pieces?” The key, she says, “is to find the focus.”

It helps, of course, if you’re already writing a column about topic that you’re passionate about and want to “own,” she says. If that’s the case, she advises: “Think about how to pour everything into it every way that you can so eventually 5 or 10 columns becomes something bigger.”

 

 

 

 

 

Growing Your Business, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on September 26, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt Leave a comment

Survey: Freelancers Thrive in 2012; Optimistic about 2013

Traditional job seekers may be taking a beating in the current employment market, but for freelancers, the picture is a lot rosier. At least that’s what an annual poll released today by the Elance suggests. Results are based on a survey of 3,000 independent professionals in late August.

Among the freelancers, 57% reported their incomes rose in 2012, with the average increase at 47%.  (A significant 19% reported doubling their freelance income in the past year). How do they manage this?  Sixty-two percent reported juggling two to six projects at any given time.

These free agents are very optimistic about their financial future. The survey found that 67% expect their earnings to rise in 2013. The average respondent expects to see a 43% increase in earnings next year.

What areas will see the most growth in 2013? Those surveyed predicted that freelancers with skills in web programming, mobile apps, graphic design, online marketing and content marketing will find themselves in demand.

Some of the most interesting findings concern millenials, whom the survey defined as those born after 1981.  Nearly half of those surveyed (46%) freelance full-time, while 26% freelance to supplement a full-time job. “In part, we attribute it to lack of job prospects and underemployment,” says Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance, in an interview with the $200KFreelancer. These freelancers might be pursuing other career options in better economic times, given that 79%  have earned a bachelor’s degree and 27% have a Master’s degree.

However, Elance does not believe that it’s youth unemployment alone that’s driving the trend. More people seem to be turning to freelancing because they are excited about the career prospects, says Rosati.

“We found increasingly that they are looking at it as something they really want to do,” says Rosati.

Perhaps one reason is the high satisfaction levels among freelancers–who seem to have escaped the misery that their corporate counterparts have reported in recent surveys.

Seventy percent said they are happier working as a freelancer than as a full-time employee, and 79% reported being more productive.

Those stats are worth pondering if you’re getting tired of the corporate grind and are considering going out on your own.

 

 

 

Growing Your Business, Making the Break, The Lifestyle, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on September 25, 2012 by Elaine Pofeldt 1 Comment