My fifth expert guest for the Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship series at IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com is Michelle Goodman — a great freelance writer in Seattle. She’s written for Salon, Bust, Bitch, Bark, the Seattle Times, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and now she’s released her first book — The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube — to help wage slaves transition to flexible, alternative work, and help “cubicle expats,” as she calls them, avoid the mistakes she made early on in her self-employment. Check IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com for our discussion about the book and about women in the workplace, but here are a few extra questions with Michelle, for your reading pleasure:
Tell me all about your book The Anti 9-to-5 Guide.
The Anti 9-to-5 Guide is about working outside the typical mind-numbing 9-to-5 office grind. In the first part of the book, I tell people how to figure out what they want to do instead, research a new career path or business idea, network like crazy, and infiltrate an industry they have no experience in. In the second part, I tell people how to find and negotiate flextime and telecommuting work, start your own business, work from home without losing your mind, survive as a temp, move from corporate to nonprofit work, and work overseas, outdoors, or in a male-dominated trade. I wanted to cover as many nontraditional career paths for women as I could, from freelance writing to firefighting to flying to Japan to teach English for a couple of years.
Wow, that sounds like something I should read! Why did you write this book?
I’m a freelance writer who’s been working for herself for 15 years. I’m not a career coach per se, and I don’t want to be one. But ever since I began freelancing in 1992, people have been asking me how I continually hustle for work, woo new clients, deal with having to pick and pay for my own benefits, deal with unforeseen lags in income, stay motivated while working from home, stay connected to the rest of the world while working from home, negotiate my rates, make sense of my contracts, avoid freaking out about my lack of a steady paycheck, and on and on.
I wanted to put as many of these tips as I could into a book, essentially to write the book I wish I’d found when I first started out on my own and felt like I was feeling my way in the dark. Sure, I took a couple of business classes and glanced at a couple of “how to work solo” books back then, but I felt like the conversation was directed toward mid-lifers with money to burn, not some twenty-something who could barely afford her lunch the next day, let alone a career change. I wanted to tell people how I — and dozens of other alternatively employed women I interviewed — survived and thrived without having a benefactor, rich boyfriend, or winning Lotto ticket.
Tell us more about flex-time. What are your thoughts on the move toward work-life balance? What implications might these workplace trends have on women and men?
I love flextime and I’m happy to see Corporate America finally starting to understand that happy, less stressed-out workers make for more loyal workers, which ultimately saves in hiring and training costs. I recently was offered a several-month contract gig (i.e., temp job) out of the blue and I bit. The job was too good to refuse — and after my year-plus of writing and then promoting a book, I need money in a big way. But before the hiring manager and I even talked money, we talked about where and when I would work, because those are also deal makers/breakers for me. Here’s what I negotiated: 30 hours a week, 60% from home, Fridays off. So I will still be able to do my freelance articles, too.
As more and more Boomers retire, companies are going to have to pony up the flextime if they want to attract younger workers, working parents, and stay-at-home moms looking to return to the workforce. For some moms and dads, flextime can mean the difference between being able to work outside the home and not. Even if you can afford childcare, there are still carpools and babysitters and doctor’s visits to coordinate, and this doesn’t neatly happen outside the 9-to-5 (or 8-to-6) window. And for many people, family now comes wayyyyyy before company, so being able to be there when your kids get home from school is the number one perk.
Sometimes the need for flex hours is a bit more extreme. One woman I interviewed for an article last year had an autistic son who was very low-functioning and had seizures often. She was always having to go to his school to pick him up for one medical reason or another. But unless she could find a job that was ultra-flexible, it was going to be hard for her to work outside the home. My point is, whatever the reason, for many workers — parents, people with health issues or medical conditions in their family, or creative and office-allergic types like me — flexibility is commerce. So hopefully more and more companies will continue to show us the proverbial money.
[...] 21 Success Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires posted at The Secret To Life. Cody McKibben presents Interview with Michelle Goodman, Author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide posted at Thrilling Heroics, saying, “to help wage slaves transition to flexible, alternative [...]
[...] McKibben presents Interview with Michelle Goodman, Author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide posted at Thrilling Heroics, saying, “Michelle Goodman helps wage slaves transition to [...]
[...] Interview with Michelle Goodman, Author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guide [...]