The freelance lifestyle in Seattle, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, is not for everyone. But for those who are prepared to deal with paying the overhead of expenses like insurance and B&O taxes, promoting and selling themselves, collecting the bills, and living what can often amount to a solitary lifestyle, there’s a uniquely Seattle venue to meet and converse with others like themselves. That juncture is a combined Listserve and Website called FreelanceSeattle.net. Since its inception in February of 2000, the online freelance community has grown to well over 500 members.
The founder of FreelanceSeattle.Net is Mr. Denis Du Bois, a seasoned marketing advisor who somehow manages to find time to moderate the list when he’s not conducting his active consulting business (or hiring freelancers for it) known as The P5 Group. Since arriving in the Northwest in 1987, Denis has adroitly marketed his way through a merger for Accountants Microsystems Inc. (which became SCS/Compute), and an IPO for Applied Voice Technology, (which is now called Captaris). He’s had the requisite Internet experience — a Seattle B2B ecommerce company called VisionLink (only 2 years ahead of their time), and directed marketing for Nobletec, a well known marine navigation company.
Without touting his own generous pro bono contribution, Denis gives credit to Drizzle.net for hosting FreelanceSeattle.Net and improving it, upgrading the list from Majordomo to a new multi-featured software package called Mailman. We asked Denis about what makes the Seattle freelance community click…especially on FreelanceSeattle.Net.
Seattle24x7: What makes a good freelancer?
Du Bois: People who have sat down and done some assessment of what their own brand promise is. What do I have to offer, they say to themselves. And they come up with an answer. I believe they should think of themselves as they would think about one of their clients. What business are you in? What benefit do you give to your client? What makes you better? The three B’s.
Seattle24x7: That sounds like good advice for anyone, freelance or W-2 warrior?
Dubois: Tom Peters recommends that you look at yourself as an entity that your customer is buying. The primary target of his message is actually people who are working on salary at companies. People who need to understand that they’re not just a soldier in the trench, you are your own little army of expertise. Figure out what that is, what you’re bringing to the table, what keeps your company employing you day to day, and then build that so that you’re the best at that of anybody you know. Then make sure people know about it.
Seattle24x7: How did you make the transition from staffer to freelancer?
Du Bois: I had been working in high tech marketing management for about sixteen years. At a couple of those companies I was the only marketing employee, or one of two. So we had to rely on outside services. It actually worked out very well for us economically. I developed quite a Rolodex of freelance people that I relied on day to day to get things done. I asked them a lot of questions about the pros and cons of being independent and they gave me very honest answers.
Seattle24x7: Is it fair to say the pros outweighed the cons?
Du Bois: I heard two common threads of complaint about being independent. One was that, paradoxically, marketing people really don’t enjoy marketing themselves. The other is that when you work freelance there’s a certain aspect of it that isolates you from the social environment of a workplace. And there’s no formal support group for freelancers, there’s no community that you can easily identify with, you can’t go someplace and be with other freelancers.
And yet I felt that people were willing to be very supportive with their advice about going independent (in spite of the fact that they were helping others who could be competitors in some cases) Where do you get insurance when you’re on your own? What sort of business policies should you enforce? What kind of payment terms are the best ones to follow? Where do you find customers? What was lacking was was a formal community where you could get answers. An online discussion list was the answer.
Seattle24x7: The flip side of that is that clients can use the list to locate and hire freelancers?
Du Bois: Potential employers have found that the list is a place they can go if they need something very specialized. [For example], a company could be trying to launch specialized software for something in agriculture. You can go to freelance-seattle.net and post a query for that and someone who’s marketed software in agriculture will answer you. By its very nature the list attracts people who can talk to you about everything from aerospace to zoology, because they’ve worked in those fields as writers, designers, business management consultants, finance experts, everything under the sun. Anything you can imagine, there’s somebody out there doing it independently. And if they’re doing it in Seattle, chances are they belong to freelanceseattle.net.
Seattle24x7: Recently the list was divided into two parts, one for discussion and one for project requisitions.
Du Bois: Right, there are some people who didn’t fancy the discussion and just wanted to learn about new projects. Others loved the discussion. So we split the list into two parts.
Seattle24x7: What have been some of the more memorable discussion topics?
Du Bois: It’s always lively when working for Microsoft comes up. Recently, there was discussion about whether you could only go to work for Microsoft if you went through one of the agencies that serves them. A number of people on the list have worked for Microsoft as vendors and so they wrote here’s how I did it, and here are the things they look for, here are the requirements. It was interesting that here were people who are in an enviable position of working directly for Microsoft (as a vendor) and yet they’re willing to share their secret with potential competitors. The fact that the loyalty of the community is greater than the profit motive surprises me on a weekly basis.
As far as discussion in general, it’s all been very valuable. Let’s say, and I’m being conservative, 500 subscribers, and each one has an average of two years of experience. That’s ten centuries of cumulative experience that you can reach with one E-mail.
Seattle24x7: What other advice would you offer about freelancing or employment in general?
Du Bois: Think of your time as your venture capital. Venture capitalists go into a company that they’re considering investing in and evaluate it from the perspective that they’re going to write out a million dollar check. Your years with a company are your investment. So when you consider taking a job, think about it not as signing up for two years with a company, but writing out that million dollar check. Think about what you’re going to get back out of it.
Seattle24x7: Thanks for the investment advice, Denis.
Denis Du Bois has created the Seattle Community for freelancers – FreelanceSeattle.net.
