I’ve come to believe that most employers are completely…utterly incompetent when it comes to dealing with workers whose lives (health insurance, vacation, work hours, compensation rates) they don’t control. It’s not completely their fault…the culture of work (at least in the U.S.), is, even with all the changes we’ve experienced in recent years, based around […]
5 Things They Won’t Tell You About Freelance Life
This post will help you with Phase 2 of the Black Freelance Foundations Workbook…if you haven’t started yours yet, download it now! When I started freelancing, I had zero concept of how freelancers lived. Entrepreneurs? Sure. I’ve got family and friends all over the place who’ve started their own businesses, but freelancers? As far as […]
Freelancing Changed My Relationship With Food
My father, being the Southern Black man he is, has zero qualms commenting on people’s weight. I’ve been horrified on multiple instances to hear him gleefully exclaim that someone was “gettin’ fat”…something that seems to be perfectly normal and acceptable conversation for his generation (they put less value on the amount of space bodies […]
Your Support Network Probably Won’t Look Much Like That White Guy’s You Follow…
This post will help you with Phase 1 of the Black Freelance Foundations Workbook…if you haven’t started yours yet, download it now! I ran into my youngest uncle yesterday. He stands a striking, but inviting 6’7″ and has always been nothing short of magical to me and my brother. He ordered suits from Japan and lived […]
Quick Thoughts: Getting In The Heads Of Your Clients
As bad as my 10+ year stint in traditional employment was, I did walk away with some skills that were particular to the work I did. One of those was following up. I’m not a natural “chaser”, so having to learn to officially schedule and plot time to run behind clients was something I had […]
Quick Thoughts: The De-punking Of Afropunk…It’s Not Just The Music
“Black people with a lot of piercings always throw me off.” This statement came from a heavily tattooed, bi-racial, White-acculturated friend of mine whose visual presence meshes easily with an Afropunk aesthetic. In response I mentioned the eponymous festival and my plans to go. He had no clue what it was. See I’d wanted to […]
You Don’t Need Experience To Get Experience.
This post will help you with Phase 1 of the Black Freelance Foundations Workbook…if you haven’t started yours yet, download it now! The catch-22 of needing experience to get experience is not a conundrum. It’s not a puzzle designed to frustrate new entrants or test for the most plucky or driven. It’s a signal. […]
3 Ways I Prepared Financially To Be A Full-Time Freelancer
This post will help you with Phase 1 of the BlackFreelance Foundations Workbook…if you haven’t started yours yet, download it now! Freelancing can be scary. As much as it’s true that jobs aren’t nearly as secure as they used to be, especially for Black people, they still offer a financial predictability that freelancing can’t really […]
Should I Go Back To The Steady Paycheck?
This post will help you with Phase 1 of the BlackFreelance Foundations Workbook…if you haven’t started yours yet, download it now! My transition to freelancing was a relatively easy one. While I didn’t make the smooth transition of building a side income slowly while fully employed (though I was building solo-employment skills), I did have […]
The Cost of Being the “Good” Black Worker
This post will help you with Phase 1 of the BlackFreelance Foundations Workbook…if you haven’t started yours yet, download it now! I freelance because I’m Black. I’m not saying that freelancing is universally great for Black people…it works differently for everybody. What I am saying, is that my experiences in racialized workplaces were a […]