Back in 2007 I had the job of my dreams: a reporter at a
small weekly newspaper. I was writing 3-5 stories a week, laying out the paper,
and working with advertisers. Like most small organizations, it was all
hands-on deck as I learned everything I could about publishing.
Then the newspaper industry died. I no longer had a job.
I was very suddenly, and without much experience or
preparation, a freelance writer. I had never planned on being one – or any kind
of business owner – and suddenly was thrust into it out of pure survival.
Because not even waitressing (or my parents) were helping with the bills. I
don’t know if you’ve heard, but people don’t go into writing for the money.
Freelancing is even harder.
But I survived.
Barely, but here I am, successfully contracting and consulting 10+ years later. There’s been a brief time or two I tried full-time, but nothing really stuck. I guess I really was meant to be a business owner.
Now that the COVID-19 is putting everyone into quarantine, I
know a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs that are going to take a hit.
I’ve gathered all my best tips on how I survived the recession and the years of
being low-income while building back up. I hope this helps some of you find
your way in this trying time.
Tip #1: Cancel Software Subscriptions
While this seems like a no brainer, it’s actually quite hard
to do.
I’m currently writing in Microsoft Word, but I could easily
be doing it in Google Docs instead. Same with Excel and PowerPoint; they both
have their Google doppelgangers.
If you don’t have to use a specific software for client,
then try looking for cheaper or free options that provide the same abilities.
They’ll have a slight learning curve, but then you’ll have the extra skillset on
your resume AND you’ll be saving money.
If you can’t end them, switch to monthly (or pause if you
can). That way if you’re not using them for projects, you’re not paying for it.
Use free trials.
For artists/designers, it’s hard to live without an Adobe account, but there are free trials. Not that I can condone it, but I heard you can even do it multiple times with different emails.
Tip #2: Better Credit
Financing
Research what options are available with your current credit
score. Call all your credit cards and loan providers to see if you can get a
better interest rate or limit increase. Or maybe open a new one in case of emergencies.*
You may not have to use them, but it’s better to do it now
when credit is good and the debt ratio is lower. It’s much harder to increase
your limit when you are close to hitting your credit line. And better interest
rates can save you hundreds in just a few months.
*NOTE: Do not open one to spend regularly. It’s only as needed. I made the mistake of using one for everything and I’m still paying it off. It’s really there in case of emergencies or to build credit score for other potential financial assistance.
School Loans
Before you even feel the squeeze, put them in deferment or forbearance. Do deferment if you can (approval is harder); with forbearance you still need to pay the interest. If you’re anything like me, the savings add up quickly.
Small Business Loans (SBA)
If you don’t already have one, I’d suggest starting the process now. It can take 2-3 months to get approved, but if you are able to make it that long, this could help you hold over until business picks up again. Or it can help with tip #4 , #5, and #7.
This is probably my most controversial tip, as it can
quickly cause insanity, especially if there are kids in the house.
But take a hard look at Hulu, Netflix, Spotify, Audible. . .
do you really need them? Most of them have a free version (or competitors have free
versions) that make you watch/listen to some ads in return for using the
service. Watching an ad every now and then isn’t bad if you’re saving $50/month
(they really do add up).
Personally, my guilty pleasure are digital subscriptions to
newspapers, so I’m going to narrow it down to just one. Every little bit helps,
especially the longer this goes on.
And you really don’t need that fancy coworking space. Libraries (when they are available) have most of that stuff for free (i.e. meeting rooms). Plus, during quarantine, you’re not going to be there very often anyways.
I’m hesitant to say cancel networking subscriptions or professional memberships. If they’ve been working for you, keep them. But now is definitely a time to consider if your $200 membership fee is actually helping your business.
Tip #4: Find a Community/Barter
While this is good practice at any time, I suggest
partnering up with people whose businesses are tangential to you and share your services.
Have a salon? Work with specific makeup artist who can recommend you for events.
Are you a copywriter? Have a designer you can recommend for the print/digital design.
Do you build software? Pair with a UX designer, so if she is designing something, she can recommend you build it.
You may also want to barter your services. Say you do want to try a new revenue, but you need help editing videos. See if there is another small business who can edit your videos and in return you can offer one of your services instead of paying cash for it.
In the end, you both save money and help ease financial burdens.
Tip 1-3 Do now. Even if it’s a short-term, coming back from a financial slump can make small problems seem much worse in the future.
Tip #5: Streamline and Simplify Processes
Most small business owners and startups have inefficiencies. When you first start your business, you get a ton of issues and decisions coming at you fast. When trying to find solutions – often without the help of experts – you pick the easiest (or cheapest) one to implement.
Now is the perfect time to look through all of your
processes and systems – especially if you have employees. Talk to your
employees and listen to ideas on how you can make their lives easier. Let them
share the responsibility and help research potential fixes. In the end, your
business will be more efficient and productive. (It’s also a perfect time to
try all those free trials.)
You will probably be surprised to find there were five different
ways an action was being completed because not everyone had all the information
or skills needed. You may find your software didn’t scale well and there’s
something better out there. As a sole proprietor, you may need to address the
different client intake forms and combine them to one (this is me).
Do not forget to document it
When there is a new way of doing things, ensure that everyone knows, has the right items needed to complete it, and that training and documents are accessible for all your current and future employees.
Tip #6: Time for Projects/Refresh
If you truly feel this is temporary and you’ve already made
moves to ensure you’ll be around for a while, this is the perfect time to
complete some projects that have been on the backburner as you’ve been dealing
with major clients. It’s also great time to look at the return on investment
(ROI) for projects you are currently doing.
This could mean a couple different things:
New website or new redesign (this should be done
every 3-5 years).
New branding/messaging (ensure you are
connecting with the audiences you want to).
Launch new service and figure out how to
integrate it into your current business (i.e. how will you support customers
once it’s live).
Heuristic/Project Analysis: find out what products or services are working or not (high or low ROI).
Plan how to focus efforts on those with the biggest returns or how to streamline to increase returns on others.
TIP #7: Learn/Sell New skills
When I worked at the newspaper, I would also lay out the
front of paper. It was simple enough: copy, images, advertisements. Give them
space to breathe. Stay within the margins.
Once I was out on my own, I continued practicing with layout
and design. I read some blogs/articles, learned more about how advertisements
catch people’s eyes, and further explored the difference between print and
digital. I soon was able to do a decent job at creating print and digital
designs as well as copy.
I then had people pay me to write copy AND lay out the documents (i.e. brochures, flyers, basic advertisements).
Eventually that became my selling point: I was someone who
truly understood how copy and design works together to tell the best story and
create the best customer experience.
Tip #8: Lower Prices
This is going to suck, but as time goes on, the situation
looks like this:
Everyone’s a little poorer.
People need money to pay bills, so they lower prices to beat out competitors.
Everyone races to the bottom to get more clients, because they need money to pay the bills.
Everyone gets more poor.
It’s an awful cycle, but I saw it happen firsthand during the recession.
Don’t rush to the bottom
Your skills and services have value. Take a look at your finances and decide how low you can go for the amount of work you’re getting. Decrease your prices slowly through different areas only when you have to (i.e. can’t find work).
Offer discounts when current clients say the may not be able to keep your services.
Offer discounts for new clients.
Offer discounts for service bundling/packages.
You may be working more for less, but hopefully you come out
on the other side as a survivor.
Tip #9: Believe in Yourself
Okay, so this is not a financial tip, but it’s one that we need to hear.
It’s going to be hard, but starting a business is never easy.
A lot of us became an entrepreneur because we believed we could do something better. We could make a difference in people’s lives. We wanted to follow a passion. And we worked hard to make it happen.
We are a scrappy set of people. We are resourceful. And boy are we stubborn. We will literally work 80 hours a week just so we don’t have a boss making us work 40 hours a week.
You will be okay. It may take awhile, but we will be okay.
We believe in you and will help you any way we can to make it through this. Because if #YouSurviveWeSurvive.
She said she would like to see my resume and portfolio for a content strategist job.
“Are you sure?” I wrote back. Seriously.
It’s not that I have low self-esteem. Maybe about my body, but not about my work. In fact, my work is the one aspect in my life that I’m absolutely sure about. I am constantly testing my skills (part of the job), reading every new book in the industry, and if I don’t know something, I’ll learn as much as I can until I get it right.
So when I asked, “Are you sure?” it was more about the job itself.
When she sent me the job description and I was like, “While I’m honored to be considered by Facebook, I’m not sure I’m the right fit. I haven’t been focused on writing for a while; I’ve been doing mostly information architecture and interaction design for the last few years.”
She said that she’d like me to send my stuff over anyways.
Any kind of information you digest is considered content:
Copy
Images
Infographics
Video
Unfortunately, some companies think they want a content strategist when what they really want is a UX writer or editor. UX writers are incredibly good at creating and labelling content, but their focus is mostly on the words – telling stories and instructing users.
Content strategy is not. just. writing.
What a Content Strategist actually does:
Analyze content (finding out what content users are interacting with)
Organize content (what type of content goes where)
Manage content (how it’s updated and who does it)
Govern content (ensuring it stays within company’s brand)
Market content (assists with types of content used and editorial calendar)
There’s more, but these are the top five elements.
Now Facebook’s description was very vague. The description also seemed to emphasize content, not strategy. Especially concerning the types of samples they requested- a lot more copy-centric then how/why we made decisions.
The Interviews
Even with my hesitancy and unclear expectations, I sent in my stuff. It is Facebook after all, so I would at least get a cool story or blog posts about it. (Running poll: Can I put this on my resume?)
Phone Interview
Pretty standard. The woman asked me questions about my background and my skillset. She mentioned that there were many “villages” at Facebook – meaning it wasn’t a big corporate structure. Each team worked on specific parts of Facebook.
I asked for a more detailed description, and she said they were vague on purpose because they were potentially filling up to 50 roles.
50?!? Yea, knowing the number does make one feel slightly worse about not getting the job.
But why so many? I have worked on some big websites, and I’ve never had more than one content strategist. Maybe two or three, and I often do some of the work as an Information Architect as well, but that seems like overkill.
Strategy is about the big picture, overall direction towards a goal, and the steps to get there. If there’s 50 different villages that are getting their own strategist, who is in charge of organizing the strategists’ strategies?
Video Interview
Since I’m pleasant enough on the phone, I was then scheduled a video interview. The interviewer was a super nice guy who worked at instagram. We talked and joked about how no one really understands what we do.
I had sent in samples that were mostly strategy related; personas, flows, digital campaign numbers. The one he wants to talk about? The user interface copy that was highly regulated by legal.
I, again, asked about the role, and he talked about how the different groups are like their own separate villages. I’m beginning to see a pattern here.
Didn’t have to wait long, as I got a call that night to talk about the next step.
The Design Challenge
A design challenge is a way for companies to get new ideas without paying people for it. I’m kidding (sort of).
A design challenge is a way for a company to see what your skills/thinking/process are before hiring you (much like a portfolio). They’ll ask you to complete a task or two (without data or research) and you come up with a solution in the vacuum (thus not really understanding your thinking because you have no data to analyze).
Facebook gives you two days to do three tasks. Two of these tasks are issues you decide you want to fix (one desktop, one mobile) and then one task they give you.
Design Challenge Example
I’m going to share only one of my solutions with you, and mostly so when they come out with it in a 8 months, I can have proof it’s my idea (kidding, sort of).
Problem: Not All Users are the Same
I really, really hate it when I (accidently) end up in a facebook argument, or some other heavily commented section, and I lose other notifications in the craziness. I’ve also previously been a mod in a group and it would be notifications ALL THE TIME. Anything else would get lost in the mess.
The worst of it: I am both a personal user and a business page user. My biggest pet peeve is that whenever I get a BUSINESS notification it’s mixed in with all those political posts notifications, so even if I didn’t want to care about work in that moment, I am now back in business mode.
Solution: Differentiated Profiles and Notifications
Restructuring information on the home page, specifically the navigation and notifications, so that different users (i.e. traditional user and business user) can quickly access the information/task they want.
Simplified: I want a separate experience for my business page vs. my personal page.
First, you’d have different profiles that you could switch between with a tally of their notifications. Much like how twitter does it now:
Second, it would be separated by the type of notification; newsfeed (conversations/posts), friend requests, messenger, groups, events, and marketplace.
Not only does this separate business and personal use, but it’s also great for group moderators who will be quickly aware if there’s a fire going on. And why wade through game invites when all you want to know is an event’s posting?
The strategy is also translated for business pages (this is the mobile version of it).
There would also be additional changes to layouts on both desktop and mobile, so that the whole product works together well, but for a weekend, I felt like this was a good start.
Again, I must mention, this is without any analytics, research, technical constraints, etc., so I don’t know if any of this is wanted or feasible. My driving force was empathy and a strong instinct that business users and personal users are coming to Facebook for two different goals and tasks – thus should be treated differently.
I Will Not Be Working at Facebook
Interviewing at Facebook was definitely an unique experience. I was giddy with excitement, wrecked with nerves, cried from disappointment. Why didn’t they choose me? I’m not sure. Maybe I didn’t fit the role. Maybe they could tell I wasn’t in love with Facebook. Maybe they saw this tweet from 2015:
Overall, I think three rounds of interviews is pretty good. It made me realize I want to do more. To work on bigger projects. To continue on the strategy of creating and implementing new ideas and solutions.
And hey… if Google wants to interview I won’t say no. I have some great ideas about education and Virtual Reality.
Public Speaking is often named as one of the most common fears. Unfortunately, as an entrepreneur, doing presentations is most of the job. From pitching new clients, to pitching new ideas, to pitching yourself at the umpteenth networking event…
Before every pitch I think of what can go wrong. Is there something in my teeth? What if I forget what I’m going to say? Can they see me sweating? Should I have worn the red shirt?
If that’s how I felt in front of people who thought I was smart, I could only imagine what it would be like in front of people who didn’t know me. But comedians do this all the time. They tell jokes. To strangers. Sometimes they don’t laugh. Sometimes they are laughed at.
Which is why I decided to try comedy. I figured if I faced this fear, then every other presentation would be a breeze. It worked. Sort of. After months of bruising my ego, I finally picked up a few tricks that improved my public speaking skills.
Don’t Imagine the Crowd Naked
I don’t know how this started, but this is the worst advice. First, I believe most human resource departments would have a few problems with it. More importantly, you should have problems with it. Do you really want to imagine Bob from accounting in boxers or briefs? How can you talk about this month’s figures when his figure is now permanently imprinted in your psyche?
The better advice is to pay attention to a few people in the crowd. Find a few connections; someone on your team, someone who seems to be interested in what you’re saying, or at least a friendly-looking face. Pretend you’re having a conversation with the few of them. Periodically look around the room to make eye contact with others and/or find another connection, but then come back to these people when you’re feeling exceptionally nervous.
Tell a Story
One thing stand up, improv, and sketch all have in common is that they tell a story – this is how you connect with the audience. I have to use facts and figures to tell clients why I’m the right one for the job. I used to give a sales pitch. Now I show them how they can be the heroes in their own company or field.
The story doesn’t have to be funny, but it should be interesting. It should be genuine. If you don’t believe the story, neither will your audience. I’ve seen comedians exaggerate and extrapolate on and on, sometimes with no jokes for minutes, but the audience is hooked. They want to know how the story ends. So find a way to tell a story. One way to do so is to say, “yes, and.”
Yes, And…
In improv, every time a member interacts with another, they must take the character or plotline that was given to them, and then add to the idea or move onto the next one. This is their YES (accepting the premise) and their AND (adding to the premise).
Use YES, AND if there’s any type of interruption or distraction. Instead of ignoring people or getting rattled, think about how you can move on with it. This works with anything.
“I agree with you Mike, penguins do look like they’re wearing tuxedos. Speaking of cold things, our December numbers are quite hot!”
Overall the main thing to remember is that you’re not alone. Seriously, you’re in front of people so try not to mess up. I’m kidding. You’re not alone because everyone knows that public speaking is hard and terrifying and never goes as planned. But if you remember to connect with people, tell your story, and add to what people are saying, then the most of your fears won’t happen. Just remember to wear the red shirt next time.
Morgan Landis is an entrepreneur, author, and activist. She is the owner of Contented Design, an agency focusing on storytelling, user experience, and systems/design thinking. She’s been published on a variety of different subjects including her personal background in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul III. Her favorite talking points are about how people interact with each other and technology, and how we should all treat each other better.
