The Twentysomething Guide to Creative Self-Employment Making Money While Keeping Your Freedom Jeff Porten This work is Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/byncnd/3.0/us/>. You may redistribute the complete work freely, but you are not li censed to use portions of this text in your own work. If you wish to reuse any portions of this work for commercial purposes, or if you want to thank the author with a donation, an alternately licensed version of this work is available at http://www.stilltwenty.com. That Creative Commons Attribu tion 3.0 license allows you to remix and reuse the content of this work for any purpose, personal or commercial, provided you attribute the original work to Je Porten. The Still Twenty website <http://www.stilltwenty.com> provides the latest version of this ebook, a blog with a Creative Self Employment tip of the day, and other resources. This book is dedicated to the memory of Bettina Pruckmayr, who should have bee able to attend my first book party. We miss you. Contents Preface to the Ebook Edition Acknowledgments 1 Out of the Rat Race My Ticket OutPerhaps Yours Too Knowing a Fortune When You Find One Deciding to Take Control 2 Don’t “Just Do It!” Can You Hack It? Our First, Last, and Only Writing Exercise HalfAssed Eorts and Complete Asses 3 What to Do Before You Start Step One: Bliss Quest Step Two: Think Like a Mercenary Bastard Step Three: Inventing the Job Step Four: Fallbacks 4 Getting Down to Business Selling Your Soul for a Little Longer How to Be on Your Own Without Going Alone The Form of Your Business 5 The Basics of Raking in Cash Bargain Basement PricingA Bad Idea The Goalposts on the Price Playing Field Getting Your Money’s Worth in Services Getting Your Money’s Worth in Products Getting Your Money’s Worth, Six Months Later 6 The Plan Business Plans: The Most Useless and Vital Tool You Can Have Don’t Let It Scare You Reading, ’Riting, and ’Rithmetic ResearchHitting the Books and Asking the Experts Components of the Business Plan Crunching Numbers The Pro FormaThe Devil’s in the Details Plotting It Out The Key to EverythingCash Flow Fixing the First Draft Into the Future Building the Grubstake The End Product 7 Thinking and Acting Like a Pro It’s Not What You Know, It’s Where You Are The Clothes Make the Money Getting Wired Papers? We Don’t Need No Stinking Papers! Playing the Blue Cross Blues Acting Like a Good Capitalist Citizen 8 Full-Time Diets on Part-Time Incomes Temp WorkThe Harpy of the 1990s Schlepping Food Rent Your Body to Science Barter Secrets to Cheap Eats 9 Marketing Is Not Advertising Sell, Baby, Sell! What Are Your Customers Buying? Targeting Your Market Small Is Beautiful Fast Marketing Still Pays O Slowly Marketing Your Business by Marketing Yourself Going Ape over Guerrilla Marketing 10 The Care and Feeding of Chutzpah Aggressive, Yes! Confrontational, No! Chutzpah in Action Chutzpah in Business Theater Chutzpah on the Telephone Making Your Luck and Making Your Fortune 11 A Walk Through a Successful Sale Step One: The Contact Step Two: The Pitch Step Three: The Close Step Four: The Service Step Five: The Invoice Step Six: The FollowThrough Step Seven: The Overview When Things Go Wrong 12 Expansion Without Stretch Marks Cutting the Deadwood Adding Brainpower Hire Contracts, Not Bodies No Choice, Gotta Have ’Em 13 Staying on Top This Isn’t the Telephone Ma Bell Used! Road Warrior Telephone Tactics Information Organizers Controlling Your Time Stemming the Paper Tide AnalCompulsive Record Keeping 14 Keeping Unbalanced The Goals You Will Never Meet Risk Without Insecurity 15 The Big Question: Are You Successful Yet? 16 Read This in One Year Appendix A: Print Resources Appendix B: Workers of the World, Eat Pasta! Preface to the Ebook Edition Thank you for reading The Twentysomething Guide to Creativ SelfEmployment. It’s been long enough since I wrote it that I’m creeping up on fortysomething now, and while I’ve reread it several times, the editing work I’ve done to create this version is probably the most thought I’ve given it since I first put it to paper. What I found surprising if you’ll pardon a moment of pride was how much of this book I found to still be useful. Yes, there many things I wrote when I was 25 which make me wince todayand how did I ever live on so little money? But I’ve got to hand it to young me: he asked a bunch of questions that are still very relevant to me today, and I’m glad to take the time to reanswer them. This edition of the book is largely unchanged from what was published in 1996. I’ve taken the liberty to fix a few typos that made it into the first edition, and I’ve deleted two appen dices which were completely out of date. However, you’ll find quite a lot of... historical information about the economy and the Internet in 1996 which remains in the main text. If you’re the type to be amused by such things, enjoy; if not, I assure you that plenty of what was true in 1996 about entrepreneurship is still relevant today. I hope you find this book as enjoyable as I didand that it’s as informative to you as it still is to me. Je Porten April, 2009 [email protected] Acknowledgments My life and this book owe a lot to a number of people, without whom both would be far more dreary. First up are my parents, David and Lois Porten. It’s common to thank Mom and Dad in this section, and as you’ll read in the book, they had a lot to do with my survival during the early days of my busi ness. Thanks, folks. My girlfriend, Heather Hamilton, has put up with the best and worst moods that my business and book have inflicted on me. My personality is a pain to begin with, and she’s qualified for sainthood for putting up with it and taking care of me when I needed it. I’d say more, but she’d rip my head o if I ex pounded in print. A fair number of people have helped me out along the way. Thanks to Shari Bart, John Bertland, Mike Blaine, Joseph Friedman, Matt Han, Daniel Helfman, Jerey Itell, Barry Le bowitz, Hilary Locker who got me thinking like an author in the first place, Marc Paul, Ken Ray, Leslie Soforenko, Dirk Tro jan, Steve Walsh, and Michael Weinmayr. Apologies to anyone I missed. My editors at Prima, Greg Aaron and Lisa Armstrong, have been patient and very helpful dealing with a first time author. It’s been as painless as possible and I thank them for that. Saved for last, my agent, Robert Shepard, is owed a great deal of the credit for this book’s existence. His professional services have been far above and beyond the call of duty, and his witty advice and friendship have been rocks of Gibraltar for me since the day we met. Thanks for everything. Chapter 1 Out of the Rat Race Ours is the first generation in the history of our culture in which most people think their own lives will not be better than their parents’ lives. The changing economy and the scarcity of good paying jobs have left many of us in a constant state of low level fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Sure, you’ve got a lot going for you. You’re in the prime of your life. You’re educated. You’re credentialed with a high school or college diploma. You’ve got a couple of years of full time or parttime work experience under your belt. You’ve got a range of skills you can call your owneven if not all of them are necessarily the kind that puts food on the table. You might even have a good job with a salary, benefits, and a 401k plan. And you’re restless. Welcome to occupation angst, 1990s style, the world where good people go years without getting a job, or settle for one way beneath their skillsand, more im portantly, way beneath their dreamswhere high hopes and big plans collide head on in what more jaded, more experienced friends and mentors call the Real World. You might be anywhere in the long chain of events that leads to the demoralizing, deadening conclusion that your life might not turn out the way you had planned. Some people hit it in college, junior year or thereabouts, when graduation is far o yet still a nagging concern, like an execution date set by a state with long appeals. Others get it a little later, senior year, when the job search starts full swing and the resume needs to be as polished as the shoes, with the scu marks on both hidden as 1 2 The Twentysomething Guide to Creative Self-Employment well as possible. Maybe it sinks in a hell of a lot deeper when it’s three months past graduation and the hunt is still on. And the job itself? Nirvana for a few, drudge work for the masses. Ask a hundred recent grads if they find their work ful filling, challenging, financially rewarding, and energizing enough to have them springing out of bed each morning with a twinkle in their eye.