The Economy of You: Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur and Recession-Proof Your Life

237 Pages·2014·1.4 MB·English

by  Kimberly Palmer

YOU
THE ECONOMY OF
Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur and Recession-Proof Your Life
KIMBERLY PALMER
American Management Association
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Palmer, Kimberly.
The economy of you : discover your inner entrepreneur and recession-proof your life / Kimberly Palmer.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-3273-0
ISBN-10: 0-8144-3273-5
1. Part time self-employment. 2. Entrepreneurship. 3. Small business. I. Title.
HD5110.P35 2014
658.1'1—dc23
2013016370
© 2014 Kimberly Palmer.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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Printing number
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION: Do the Hustle
CHAPTER 1: Give Me a Reason
CHAPTER 2: The Master Plan
CHAPTER 3: Banking on It
CHAPTER 4: Finding Friends
CHAPTER 5: Putting It out There
CHAPTER 6: Time Is Money
CHAPTER 7: Dust Yourself Off
CHAPTER 8: Karma
CHAPTER 9: Endgame
EPILOGUE: The Future of Side-Gigs
THE ECONOMY OF YOU HANDBOOK: Exercises and Worksheets
APPENDIX A: The Top Fifty Side-Gigs
APPENDIX B: Star Side-Giggers
APPENDIX C: Five Common Pitfalls to Avoid
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FREE SAMPLE CHAPTER FROM THE ACCIDENTAL ENTREPRENEUR
For Kareena and Neal
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN OFF THE GROUND WITHout the generosity
of the many side-giggers who shared their experiences with me. I'm so grateful
to each of them, for talking with me, sharing their days with me, and allowing
me to tell their stories.
I'm deeply thankful to my colleagues at U.S. News & World Report, especially
Kim Castro, for providing such freedom and support to write about the
constantly changing world of personal finance. The idea for this book grew out
of a series of stories on mastering the new economy that I wrote for U.S. News,
which is also how I first met many of the side-giggers mentioned in these pages.
Many researchers, librarians, and fellow reporters also helped me as I tracked
down key data on moonlighting. I especially thank Steve Hipple at the Bureau of
Labor Statistics and Jenny O'Shea at U.S. News, who knows her way around the
Oxford English Dictionary better than anybody (and she has the magnifying
glass to prove it!).
Ever since first meeting my agent, Melissa Sarver, I've felt lucky to know
such a ceaseless advocate for books and writers. Her ideas, energy, and help
made this book possible. I also thank the wonderful team at AMACOM,
including Irene Majuk, Debbie Posner, and Michael Sivilli, and especially my
editor, William Helms, for believing in this book and providing constant
feedback, suggestions, and encouraging Tweets.
My family gives me the love and support that keeps me going—my parents,
Chris Palmer and Gail Shearer, have done so since birth, along with my sisters,
Jennifer and Christina Palmer. My grandmother, Janet Shearer Johnson, another
source of unconditional love, also helped me with my research by sharing news
stories on side-gigging with me. My husband, Sujay Davé, has been my best
friend and biggest supporter ever since we met, and our children, Kareena and
Neal, give me the motivation to keep going—and also excellent reasons to stop
and play.
Introduction: Do the Hustle
I REALIZED SOMETHING HAD TO CHANGE AS I WAS DRIVING HOME from work on
the way to pick up my daughter from preschool. I had spent much of the day
missing her—her giggles, her made-up words, her new attempts at running—and
even though I enjoyed my work projects, my mind had frequently wandered. If
only I had more control, I thought, I could rearrange my schedule so I worked
intensely in the mornings, when I was most creative and productive, and spend
afternoons playing dress-up and pretending to be a monkey. Then, I could
complete the day's work after her 7 p.m. bedtime.
To make this happen, I needed two things: more power and more money. As
flexible as my boss was, she couldn't grant me a half-day schedule without
disturbing the well-oiled machine of office life. And I couldn't risk rocking the
boat too much because I needed my salary—badly. The sorry state of the
journalism industry (and the economy in general) was impossible to ignore;
meanwhile, the demands of our mortgage, childcare costs, and college savings
weighed on me. Because of those major (and relatively new) responsibilities, I
worried constantly about getting laid off; it was one of my frequent nightmares.
The only way to really get what I wanted was to go outside the traditional
economy that runs on full-time jobs with set hours. I needed to become
financially independent by earning extra money on top of my full-time job, so I
was no longer vulnerable to a layoff and could, eventually, work for myself and
set my own schedule. It was really about so much more than money. I wanted to
be in control of my life.
Soon, I started seeing people on a similar quest everywhere: When my
favorite deli down the street from my office closed down, the owner's son
ramped up his own custom cake business, which let him keep his customers and
replace his income stream. In my own office, I discovered a coworker who was
running a social media consultancy, another who ran a print shop, and a third
who maintained a productive honeybee farm in his spare time.
Through my work reporting on the economy, I met others who also
maintained their side-gigs and full-time jobs alongside each other indefinitely,
creating a stable, hybrid income for themselves. Many realized, as I did, that
their full-time jobs could disappear at any moment, and they were keenly aware
of how devastating that would be. They wanted to protect themselves and their
families. A laid-off architect posted a few state-shaped cutting boards she had
made for her wedding on the handmade marketplace website Etsy.com, and
within months had sold thousands and turned her hobby into a full-time
business, giving herself and her family more job security than she ever had as an
architect. A bookstore manager, frustrated with her long hours and $28,000
salary, realized she was never going to afford the kind of life she wanted for her
family without making a drastic change. So she launched her own
entrepreneurial coaching business aimed at creative and crafty types. Within two
years, her annual income shot to $150,000, and she gained complete control of
her schedule.
These aren't your typical entrepreneurial success stories. Most of us don't even
think of ourselves as entrepreneurs, and we didn't start out with the goal of
becoming self-employed. (Some of us never plan to leave our full-time gigs.)
For the most part, we were forced to invent a new plan for ourselves after the
original one began to wobble. These are our stories of survival.
Taken together, they underscore a fact about our economy that few people can
afford to ignore any longer: We all need more than one source of income today.
Relying solely on a single employer is a surefire way to end up struggling, as so
many Americans do. Even as the country crept out of its most recent recession,
over 8 percent of Americans looking for work still find themselves unable to
land jobs. For young people and seniors, the unemployment and
underemployment rates are even higher. And those of us lucky enough to hold
onto our jobs face pay cuts, benefit reductions, and longer hours, along with the
unsettling feeling that those jobs could disappear at any moment. A 2012 Gallup
survey found that close to three in ten workers worry they will get laid off, while
four in ten fear a reduction in benefits. It's hard to go about our normal lives,
picking up groceries and planning vacations, with that kind of anxiety hanging
over us.
At the same time, life keeps getting more and more expensive. The prices of