The Self Employed Mom

Thankful for self-employment success

Salary.com’s 2006/2007 Employee Job Satisfaction and Retention survey reported that over 60% of people plan on looking for a new job over in next few months. It’s really no surprise to me that so many people are unhappy with their jobs.

A couple of weeks ago I addressed how I no longer accept certain projects because they make me miserable. I’m much happier that I made that decision and have been able to focus on projects I enjoy.

But it’s not just the type of projects I maintain that contribute to my overall happiness. It’s the industry I’m in which continues to amaze and surprise me, the people I work with and meet each and every day, the ability to work remotely, the fact that I’m constantly reinventing my job and the incredible opportunities that cross my path.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, here’s that list again with a bit more gratitude.

I’m thankful for:

• My clients – I have a fresh roster of interesting clients all of whom are enthusiastic about working with me now and moving forward in 2008.
• My industry – I stumbled into online marketing in 1997 when I barely understood the implications of banners and search engines. Now, nearly 11 years later, I’m still learning new things and I’m very grateful to be in the thick of it.
• My Colleagues – I have as diverse and interesting a group of colleagues as anyone can want. I work with people in Manhattan, San Jose, Seattle, Florida and England. I’d never have met any of these people if I was stuck at one company full-time.
• My House – I’d be remiss in saying that I wasn’t grateful for my home, which is also my office. I’m thankful that I can make a decent living right here where my kids play, and my husband bakes and the trees look so gorgeous in the fall.
• My Flexibility – I’m taking most of Thanksgiving week off and plan to take a week off in December for the holidays. I’m doing this without apology and without asking permission – and for that I am extremely thankful.
• And finally, I love the constant flow of new opportunities that comes from being self employed. The projects and clients that have crossed my path in the years since I’ve been on my own keep me enthusiastic, inspired and, above all, thankful.

American Girl doll not worth the high price

As a mom and a marketer (in that order) I’m acutely aware that the holiday marketing train left the station a full three weeks before Thanksgiving. This is earlier than usual as reported by CBS in a piece titled “Deep Discounts Arriving Early This Year” which states that popular discount stores are offering promotions much earlier than the typical “Black Friday” sales that crop up after Thanksgiving.

The most ubiquitous bid for my attention comes in the mail, in the form of catalogs and store coupons that tempt, plead and cajole me into opening my wallet. This year, amidst all the mailbox clutter, one catalog in particular stood out. The American Girl doll’s holiday book arrived sometime before Halloween. At fully twice the size of all the other catalogs, its glossy pages are filled with picture-perfect dolls, outfits and accessories my children can’t resist.

My daughter Ana got an American girl doll from her grandmother for her birthday in May. Since she already owns one, I assumed I was off the hook for the holidays. Wrong! The items Ana circled in the catalog added up to about $500. I’m not averse to buying the kid an outfit or an accessory, but the $65 plastic horse and the $175 doll trunk she circled blew me away.

I work hard and I fully intend to buy a couple of big ticket items for my kids this holiday season. Still, I don’t intend to spend my money at American Girl Place this year. While I love the idea of American Girl dolls, I think they set a bad example. Priced out of the comfort zone of many families, I believe (and this is my opinion) that they promote unrealistic ideals of beauty and wealth. I wonder how many little girls are excluded from the “privilege” of owning one of these dolls because of their high cost.

As both a mom and a marketer, I’m unnerved by the aggressive marketing and psychological tactics Mattel (who owns the brand) uses to “hook” children as young as three into the buying cycle. I’m confident that their strategy is deliberate and the appeal of these dolls lies with the brand name, and the need for little girls to fit in with their peers. This seems underhanded since the dolls cost so much.

Add to this that American Girl dolls are manufactured in China, and the whole phenomenon feels phony. Ultimately I’ve decided to spend my hard earned money elsewhere this year. The challenge is getting my six-year-old to understand why.
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Gifts I recommend for little girls (and boys) under 12, but over 3:

The 10,000 Pound Healthcare Gorilla

As a sole proprietor in New York state I don’t have many options for comprehensive health coverage. I currently get discounted health insurance through a local chamber of commerce, an option available to all businesses including self-employed individuals.

So how much does it cost to insure my family? Even with my Chamber membership, I pay over $12,000 per year. Again, this is a discounted rate. If I were to go directly to the insurance company it would cost me more than twice that.

In addition to my exorbitant monthly premium, I pay the typical doctors’ office co-payments, prescription drug co-payments, any out of network services and dental care for myself and my husband. My insurance plan (like most) doesn’t cover over-the-counter drugs or miscellaneous services (like speech therapy for my 3-year-old).

This is a big deal. I think it’s important to write about this issue, because it is an overwhelming obstacle for self-employed individuals. Between health insurance and taxes, fully 40% of my income is gone before I’ve even paid a single bill.

Besides getting benefits through a Chamber of Commerce, or paying an insurance company directly, I really have no options for health insurance. I’m not eligible for Healthy NY due to my income level. Even if my income was low enough, I’d need to go without insurance for up to 12 months before I could enroll.

My next best option for reducing the high monthly cost of insurance is to switch my plan from an HMO to a high deductible PPO. This cuts my monthly premium in half, but requires me to put money into a health savings account. It would mean I’d need to pay for all medical expenses out of pocket (through the health savings account) until an annual deductible of about $5,000 was met, at which point the insurance company would pay a certain percentage of my medical costs.

Am I missing something?

Politicians like Rudy Giuliani denounce universal healthcare as “socialized medicine” that limits free market competition. In a recent radio ad, Giuliani said, “You and I should be making the decisions about what kind of health care we get with our doctors, not with a government bureaucrat.”

Can he be serious? Doesn’t he realize that the 43.6 million Americans who don’t have health insurance have absolutely no decision-making power whatsoever? And those of us that are struggling to stay insured are hardly better off. My insurance does not cover out of network providers. That pretty much limits my healthcare “choices” to “stay in network and get reimbursed” or “starve.”
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This article was first published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, November 3, 2007.

How I stopped selling drugs

I spent the first five years of my online marketing career focused exclusively on one industry vertical - pharmaceuticals. Working with big name drug manufacturers was very exciting for me at first, but dealing with the strict rules and guidelines of prescription drug ads and focusing campaign strategies on sick, very sick or dying people quickly damped my enthusiasm and curbed my creativity.

When I worked full-time at an agency, I didn’t have the luxury of choosing my projects or clients. That added up to one soul sapping prescription drug campaign after the other. Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical spending reached over 2.4 billion dollars in 2006. This meant there was no shortage of work for me even after I got laid off in 2002. At that point I leveraged my pharmaceutical experience out of necessity, thus some of my earliest clients were in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry.

In 2005 I’d been self-employed for three years and had a variety of non-pharmaceutical projects under my belt. Things looked good, but I needed more money. So I caved and accepted a full-time position at an agency with a large pharmaceutical account. I ended up managing 70 hours per week of pharmaceutical projects covering everything from endometriosis to throat cancer.

For months I told myself I could handle the work, and that it wasn’t really that bad. But the truth was I hated waking up and going to work each morning, even though I worked from home four days a week.

The final straw came when a colleague of mine referred to cancer sufferers as “low-hanging fruit.” At that point I gave my notice to the agency and made the decision to stop working on pharmaceutical projects completely. It still took another year to completely eliminate all pharmaceutical-related work.

I’m happy to say that as of May 2007, I haven’t peddled a single drug. My client roster includes a major publishing house, a small magazine, an e-commerce site selling a diverse assortment of consumer goods, a major daily newspaper, and a smattering of small agency clients that call on me for ad hoc assignments in a variety of industries.

Sometimes living my dream means I can walk away from something I hate and, in doing so, discover something I love. That’s a big part of what self-employment means for me.
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This article was originally published in the Poughkeepsie Journal under the title, “Confession of an ex-drug seller”

Vacation time needed, even if it’s in small doses

Back in June 2007, an MSNBC survey revealed that half of Americans did not plan to take a vacation over the summer, and those that did intend to take a break, would spend less time away from work than a year ago. MSNBC reveals several reasons for this vacation deficiency which include financial reasons, crowded flights and flight delays and rising gasoline prices.

Shirking the statistics, I began planning my own family vacation back in June, while simultaneously cutting back my work hours over the summer so I could spend more time with my kids. Our big vacation blast was to take place at Florida’s Disney World in October 2007.

Things don’t always go as planned. As it turned out, cutting back my hours over the summer meant we didn’t have enough spare cash for the big vacation extravaganza. Luckily my 6-year-old took the news well (much to my shock) and my 3-year-old is too young to realize what she missed.

I’m actually not surprised that this trip never got further than my imagination. I rarely ever take vacations for a variety of reasons (mainly lack of time and lack of money.) But avoiding time off is bad for business - and it really took me a long time to realize this. Working nonstop for two years straight contributed to a very bad bought of burnout.

Even though a trip to Florida is not in my immediate future, I’m not ready to give up on my family vacation yet. Since I don’t plan on taking a full week off from work until December, I’ve begun planning a series of three-day weekends to incorporate some special and fun events to enjoy with my family.

The first event of the Dooley vacation tour will take place in Saugerties at the Garlic Festival. My kids have never been to the festival, but my husband and I used to go every year when we lived in Saugerties. We also got married in Saugerties, and plan to show the girls the park where we had our ceremony.

Then on Sunday, September 30^th we’ll all travel into Manhattan to walk for an organization called Forward Face which helps support families of children with born or acquired facial differences. My daughter Emily was born with cleft lip and palate and this is our second year attending the walk.

After our three-mile walk along the Hudson River, we plan to pay a visit to F.A.O. Schwartz and let the girls pick out a toy. While this is not a totally free activity, it’s a lot less money than the four plane tickets, one week hotel stay and theme park tickets would’ve cost us. Anyway, who needs Disney World when you live two hours from Manhattan?

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This article was originally published in The Poughkeepsie Journal on September 22, 2007.

Making good health a priority

One of my favorite working parent blogs is The Wall Street Journal’s, The Juggle  which covers a number of issues that parents face as they try to juggle work and family.

In a post dated August 23, 2007 titled, “Health Takes a Backseat to Babies, Work,” Mark Gongloff posted about how taking care of himself has been difficult since his twin boys were born a year ago. Mr. Gongloff’s post addresses the difficulty of fitting exercise and a healthy diet into a full-time work schedule when you have kids and the consequences he suffered as a result of neglecting his health (namely, he threw out his back).

Although I feel bad for the guy, it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who has developed less than stellar self-care habits since the kids have come along. Between sleep deprivation, poor eating habits and an innate aversion to going to the dentist, it’s a wonder I’ve survived the last three years with my health (and all of my teeth) still intact.

This summer when work slowed down for me, I decided to focus on getting my health back on track. I joined a gym, went to the dentist after years of avoidance and caught up on all my routine doctors’ visits. I’ve dubbed this new method of staying healthy the, “I’m-not-25-anymore” approach. I’m determined to keep it up now that my schedule is picking up and my two girls are back to school.

Naturally, this is easier said than done. Going to the gym in the morning means I don’t actually sit down to work until about 10:30 a.m. I could conceivably workout earlier since the gym opens at the absurd hour of 5:30 a.m., but that would mean missing the kids’ morning routine which seems counterintuitive. One of the main benefits of working from home is being able to spend time with my kids in the morning.

Still, I have to admit that spending time on my own health has a positive impact on both the work and home front and that’s worth getting a late start in the morning. I feel better about myself,  more confident in social situations and have more energy overall. Plus, I’ve discovered that going to the gym is an enjoyable activity that doesn’t involve slaving over my computer or wiping any runny noses (other than my own). You can’t beat that!

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This article was originally published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, September 15, 2007 with the title, “Gym time worth the inconvenience.”

For more impact on clients, pick up the phone

In today’s hyper connected world more and more people are working from home at least some of the time. In fact, in May of 2004 the U.S. Department of Labor reported that nearly 21 million persons worked from home at least once a week as part of their primary job. About a third of these home workers (or 7.1 million) were categorized as self-employed.

This same report states that 8 out of 10 people use a computer while working from home. This is no surprise to me. In fact, it was the heavy reliance on my computer that inspired me to want to work from home in the first place.

My former day job required me to spend up to eight hours a day (often more) hunched over my computer, communicating with people via e-mail, instant messaging and (less often) phone. Even those people in the very same office as me!

When I struck out on my own, I really expected the transition from full-time in-house employee to full-time remote freelancer would be seamless. But I never accounted for the value of on site collaboration with colleagues, clients (and other adults). Nor did I plan for the daily challenges I face as a remote worker.
Too much focus on email

My biggest mistake was relying too much on e-mail instead of picking up the phone to follow-up with people. I was very dependent on my computer for companionship. It became my coworker, in a sense. We were inseparable. I spent long laborious hours crafting e-mails to clients and explaining things via instant message.

There’s nothing like plain black text on a white background to completely strip all personality and dimension from a person. When you don’t have facial expressions (other than yellow smileys), voice inflection or eye contact then it can be difficult to move any relationship forward, even a professional one.

My aversion to picking up the phone was a problem with bigger clients, in particular. Large organizations with a lot of on-site personnel are driven by the culture of face time. For example, the larger a company gets, the more internal meetings it seems to have. Often these meetings are the catalyst for moving projects forward.

I eventually realized that picking up the phone was my next best option to the internal meeting. It’s easy to ignore an e-mail or three, but it’s hard to ignore voicemail and e-mail requests for information or follow-up. It’s still a stretch for me to consider the phone as essential a tool to my business as the computer, but I’m getting better at it.

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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, September 8, 2007.

Time for back to school regimen

Planning for a new school year is not unlike planning for a new business year. Creating a budget for back-to-school spending, structuring my hours to accommodate school, organizing paperwork and coordinating everything with my husband are all pieces of a complex plan I’ve put in place to keep things running smoothly.

I’ll need to work a minimum of 35 hours per week to recover from the financial hit we took by reducing my hours at the beginning of the summer. I worked about 20 hours a week since June, which means I’ll spend 75% more time in my office starting next month. In order to accomplish this without too much fallout, the entire family is going back on a fairly regimented schedule.

My husband created a weekly dinner menu which ensures we sit down promptly at 6 pm and we’ve agreed to put the kids to bed by 8:30 pm, latest. My alarm clock goes off at 7:00 a.m. sharp, even if I don’t have any place to go, so that we’re all up and moving around at about the same time each day.

Budgeting for extra expenses is also an important part of getting ready for the school year. A good friend of mine gave me great advice for sticking to a back-to-school budget. Namely, don’t set foot into any store without a list. I budgeted $150 for each child’s back-to-school needs including clothes, shoes, school supplies such as bags, pencils and paper and I’ve really challenged myself to stick with this budget.

A quick word about organization

When my daughter started kindergarten last year I had no idea how much paperwork she’d bring home with her each day. Every available surface in our house was buried beneath a pile of memos, artwork, homework and critical school forms that I spent way too much time hunting down.

My preschooler also brings home lots of paperwork and between the two girls, my business and our personal mail, it’s a wonder I can find anything. To combat the growing tide of paperwork, I spent an entire weekend updating my files and devising a system for handling what’s sure to be a mountain of new papers. Most importantly, I communicated the new system to my husband (who prescribes to the paper bag method of filing).

Hopefully this means that the phone doesn’t get shut off again (which happened TWICE in the last year) because the bill was lost in a pile of artwork, and neither girl misses the opportunity to go on the field trip of their dreams because I forgot to send the signed permission slip back.

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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, September 1, 2007.

Cast your work/family doubts away

by Jacqueline Dooley 

A by-product of being a working parent is self-doubt. When I’m really busy with work, I worry about how my absence is affecting my kids, if it’s worth it to be away from them so much and what our lives would be like if I didn’t work at all (I could devote an entire column to that last scenario.)

On the flip side, when the pendulum swings more toward parenting, and I seem to be spending large chunks of time in the backyard rather than in front of my computer, I worry about my work ethic, my ability to get things done and my commitment to my business.

I think achieving a nice balance between the two is the perfect solution. It’s also a superhuman goal akin to climbing Mount Everest or fitting into my prom dress again. Sure, some women do it, but you can cross me off that list.

When I talk (complain) to my mother about my hectic schedule, she sighs and says, “I think the women’s movement sold you a bad bill of goods.” To which I typically reply, “So it’s your fault!”

When the stress of the moment clears, I have to admit I don’t blame the women’s movement that I’m a working mother. On the contrary, I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had in life. I’m continually amazed that running a business is an option for me and that - through all the doubt, stress and uncertainty - my family and I are managing to make it work.
 
With choices, decisions

What really bothers me is working mothers, myself included, can’t seem to break out of the mindset that now we can work full time and have a family we should do both things equally well at all times. That brings me back to the self-doubt issue again.

Combining work and parenting causes much doubt for most of us working moms. We doubt our abilities in the work force, worry about being judged by peers as less invested in our jobs and often question whether it’s all worth it because of the constant strife, stress and anxiety at home.
 
Then when we’re home, we doubt our abilities as parents. Are we taking out our work frustrations on our children? Does being great at our jobs and loving what we do mean we lack parenting skills?
 
You know what? I think it’s OK to put motherhood before work sometimes and vice versa. For me, there’s no real solution to the issue of self-doubt, so what I try to remember is I’m only making this stuff up as I go along. We all are.

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This article was originally published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, August 25, 2007.

Inspiration’s Role in Staying Motivated

Motivation plays a critical role in keeping my business running. It’s what helps me stay focused and avoid temptation. It gets me out of bed at a decent hour and prevents me from giving in to the temptation to work in my pajamas five days a week. 
Inspiration is another story. Without inspiration, my business can’t grow and change. I’ve struggled with both inspiration and motivation for the entire summer and I’ve finally realized that it’s the former that’s the reason I’m having trouble with the latter. 

It can be difficult to find inspiration when you work on your own. To some extent isolation has become typical of the summer months, when people are on vacation and work slows down. Add to this that the kids are home and my focus is suddenly more on family than on work, and it’s understandable that staying motivated is more difficult. 

Since I don’t have the luxury of daily client and colleague interaction to stay focused (and inspired), I’m learning to look in new and unexpected places for much-needed doses of inspiration. Here are a few things that have helped me over the last couple of months. 

I’ve relocated my office to the library. It’s very easy for me to get all the information I need from newsletters, blogs and web sites, but sitting in front of my computer during a bright summer day and listening to my kids play one floor below me is the perfect way to destroy my motivation. 

Working at the local library which has free wireless and affords a gorgeous view of the Hudson River has been a great way to get inspired. There’s something about being surrounded by books, magazines and rows of expectant computer screens that puts a spring in my step. 

Lunch dates, play dates and getting together with friends has helped fill my need for social interaction. When work was just a part-time endeavor and taking care of my daughter was the focus of my life, I adjusted to the isolation of being home by setting up play dates, inviting friends over for dinner and going out for drinks or coffee whenever I could. I completely stopped doing these things when my business turned into a full-time gig. This summer I’m trying to turn that trend around because I’m learning that talking to my friends about everything from work to potty training has a positive effect on me and thus, my business. 

New business development and cruising the job boards is perhaps, not unsurprisingly, very inspiring. I find that looking around to see who is hiring and what positions are in demand gives me great business ideas. Making new connections, keeping my resume up to date, and pursuing new business leads is always fun and exciting. Plus, I admit, I love the chase!