Freelancer Bill of Rights? No, thanks.

My friend Katharine O'Moore-Klopf of KOK Edit posted an item about the Freelancers Union Freelancer Bill of Rights over at the EFA Yahoo Groups board, and I couldn't help but toss in my two cents. (Update: As Katharine notes in the comments, she is not affiliated with the Freelancers Union and was only providing information for freelancers to check out. My apologies for not making that clear!)

I confess I don't particularly groove on the language from their intro page: Freelancers have the right "to empower themselves to demand fair treatment from clients."

Really? *Demand*? I'd argue that fair treatment is earned, not guaranteed.

The list itself? Meh. Nothing you haven't heard before. Frankly, you can already do all of the items they outline if you'd like — but I come down in the camp of the commenter who said: "If every time I hired a plumber, electrician, or snow plow guy he came back with a 'Plumber/Electrician/Plow Guy Bill of Rights' I wouldn't do business with him." Bingo. My primary issues are these:

• A document such as the Freelancer Bill of Rights positions clients as adversaries rather than business partners. 
• Do you really want to come across as defensive and difficult to work with? Chill, breeze.
• As Lori Widmer riffed in "The Freelance Nevers" and "Writerly Misconceptions" this week, there are no absolutes.

Call me cynical (trust me, you won't be the first), but I believe this type of initiative actually holds freelancers back: Thinking that there's some sort of magic pill that'll make all the bad clients go away. Thinking a big brother like a union will enforce The Rules to protect you. Thinking that setting a minimum price will protect you from lowball clients.

As we discussed on Halloween, it all comes down to watching your own tail. You choose, every day, what you want to do, who you want to do it with, and how you want to do it. No like? Don't do.

Disposing with dignity

Hold on a sec. Not talking about eliminating dignity, here — I'm referring to throwing away things on your own terms.
We recently moved, and part of that process included disassembling my office over THERE and re-creating it over HERE (in a slightly smaller space). As I gazed upon the stuff that had accumulated over the years, I knew that there were a couple of Hefty bags in my future.

Which brings me to disposing with dignity. With some items -- boxes for electronics past their warranty, faded neon paper that I used for a long-ago direct mail campaign, several miles' worth of USB, Firewire and ethernet cable — it's not a hard decision to pitch.

But then you get to those things that may once have held some meaning but now just collect dust: stacks of photos that didn't make the cut into an album or onto a wall; silly awards; CDs of stale computer archives; and, perhaps most painfully and poignantly for a freelance writer, stacks of magazines, samples and old clips that are way past their expiration date.

I threw it all away. The "disposing with dignity" principle is something my wife and I formulated and have employed (usually when moving), and it comes down to this: As the owner/possessor of an item that has some emotional value to you alone, it's best that you are the one to throw it away. Not to go too morbid on you here, but if you were to die tomorrow, this is stuff that would be chucked away without remorse. In fact, it might only serve to annoy the people who wondered why you kept all that crap.

In any event, purging felt good. I had one final chance to pay my respects and reminisce on those things that I didn't really need anymore. I just heard the garbage truck do its pickup...but I still have my memories.

Curing writer's block

Before you get your hopes up that I've conjured up a magic elixir of inspiration, my post "Curing writer's block" at Freelance-Zone actually takes a more cynical view of what gets lumped into writer's block and why curing it really ought to be a non-issue for the professional freelancer.

Read it there, and comment on it there...or here! Sorry for being lazy and stealing from myself, but I've got two meetings and several deadlines before the day runs out.

4 business tips for freelancers...from Molly Maid

I know you're thinking, "Molly Maid? Really?" But hang with me here. A few weeks ago on a lazy Sunday, I contacted two cleaning services through their respective online forms. Here's how it went down:

1. The owner of the local Molly Maid franchise called me at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, while his competitor didn't call till later that afternoon. I know that there's a desire among freelancers to be perceived as busy and exclusive, but don't forget that there's considerable impact from being prompt and responsive, too.
2. The Molly Maid guy was brief on the phone. The other company's rep did way too much rambling and bragging about why his company is superior before he ever asked me about my needs. In the excitement of having a prospect, beware the temptation to gush information. (You'll have plenty of time to prove how wonderful you are once you start a project.) Ask questions instead.
3. The bid was presented as a range that would be finalized after the first cleaning. I'm a huge believer in "estimated ranges" for freelancers because they A) give the client an incentive to be easy to work with and B) give you an opportunity to reward that behavior. I was pleasantly surprised when our first cleaning came in at the low end of the range, whereas if he had just given a hard number and hit it, it wouldn't have thought anything of it.
4. A significant portion of Molly Maid's business comes from people weary of independent agents who were inexpensive, but inconsistent about how well they cleaned, or who would switch days and times, or simply not show up at all. So too, in many, many cases, a prospect for your creative services has been burned by a previous bad experience with Freelancerius flakius. Your job, particularly while mopping up someone else's mess, is to reassure them with professional reliability.

I've resisted the temptation in the headline and body text so far, but I can't any longer: Freelancing may be a Dirty Job, but these four tips can help you clean up.

An open letter to the White House "Jobs and Economic Growth Forum"

Dear Friends:

Perhaps my invitation to today's White House forum got lost in the mail, but no worries--I'm not the kind of guy to risk a felony by crashing a party at your place.

While you were jawboning at roundtables and breakout sessions, talking about not talking about 30,000-foot solutions, munching on bagels and sipping fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice, it was an average day out here in the real world. The vast majority of your fellow citizens were busy at our desks, in the fields, at chalkboards, behind the wheel, on duty or patrol, working on projects, prospecting for new business, keeping people healthy and safe, and, depending on whose numbers you believe, 10.5 to 20 percent of us were simply looking for gainful employment.

As some are fond of saying, let me be clear. I'm not writing to whine--I love what I do. The reason I wanted to drop you a line is because of a couple of conversations I've had this week among peers and associates. You've surely heard the old aphorism that "the market hates uncertainty," and I'd say that fairly represents the feeling at the grassroots business level. Those of us microbusinesses that don't really register on your radar (because we don't have lobbyists, lawyers, stock tickers, or labor unions), well, we're a little freaked out. We're scared that The Powers That Be are going to bail out another company, bank or governmental entity, fund alarmist "emergencies," hire more bureaucrats, print money 24-7, or tax the bejeezus out of us, or all of the above.

Meanwhile, we small fry don't have the luxury of spending money we don't have currently or won't have in the future. We know we're not going to get billions of dollars in bonuses (*cough* Goldman Sachs *cough*). We wouldn't be eligible for unemployment benefits, so we just keep figuring out what we need to do in order to pay the bills. There ain't no such thing as "too small to fail."

You want more businesses to hire people? Start eliminating uncertainty. Stop wasting money on crap.

Then again, the realistic side of me reckons not much will come out of your little summit. (I've been to my share of forums, so I know that the baloney gets sliced pretty thin, and have heard the 4 p.m. cry of "More coffee, stat!") Indeed, the most comforting item I saw about your exclusive confab was a single sentence tucked way down at the tail end of an AP story: "Administration officials said they don't expect major policy announcements from the forum."

But, just for giggles, I'll look forward to seeing the meeting minutes once you've typed 'em up. Thanks in advance.

Sincerely,
Jake Poinier
Boomvang Creative Group
Phoenix, Ariz.

Right said TED

A friend recommended this video over the weekend and I was riveted from the first moment. You probably know Mike Rowe from his "Dirty Jobs" show on the Discovery Channel, in which he serves as an apprentice in various dangerous, stinky or just-plain-gross industries. And you may have heard of the TED (Technology/Entertainment/Design) Conference, an annual 4-day confab of big thinkers who speak for only 18 minutes each--it's the event during which Bill Gates set free a jar of mosquitoes into the audience to illustrate a point about malaria. The event is $6,000 a seat, but you have to admire the fact that the organizers post all the videos on the web for free.

Be forewarned that Mike's opening anecdote is not for the faint of heart. But trust me when I say it's ultimately a deeply philosophical commentary about the nature of work, and that it's well worth the time to watch it--as are all of the TED videos.