FreedomWorks

When my brother and I were young, we bumped into an entrepreneur at every turn. My father and his siblings were business owners. My dad owned a grocery store in our small southern village. My aunt owned a gift shop. My uncle owned a heating and air conditioning business. My father’s oldest brother was a doctor at a time when physicians still made house calls and could enjoy a good living via a small self-owned practice. He’d used the G.I. bill after serving in World War II to go to college and to medical school. Perhaps inspired by all that productivity, my mother put us to work early on.  My brother and I became agricultural entrepreneurs.

Behind our house there was a large pecan grove. Each year when the pecans ripened, we were charged with gathering them and packing them into large burlap bags. There was a wonderful tool—we called it a “pecan picker-upper”—with a long handle descending to a wire basket. You pressed the basket on the ground and our young backs appreciated the quantity that basket could grab in comparison to our small hands. My mother would take us to a local wholesale company where we were paid a small amount of money per pound. Leaving that wholesale house, we would rub the coins in our pocket and celebrate what we had accomplished. We saved part of our earnings; we spent the remainder. A portion went to our parents; after all, they owned the enterprise that made our earnings possible.

That upbringing provided the foundation for my enthusiasm for business. I worked in my aunt’s gift shop when I was in high school. I had grown up toddling around my dad’s grocery store, part of the reason I learned to accept people of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds. It came as no surprise to my family when I decided to launch my own business, but some had concerns about what I planned to sell and about the great job I planned to discard.

I worked for an award-winning magazine, a fulfillment of my dream of becoming a writer. I enjoyed travel, meeting people from all over the nation, learning about the nuts and bolts of publishing. But there was an itch that recurred no matter how hard I scratched. I wanted to write whatever engaged my spirit, and I wanted to do it on my own schedule. After working at the magazine for a couple years, I began to draw up a plan to become a freelance writer. I had some concerns too—after all, a writer figuratively hangs a shingle that could come straight out of a Peanuts cartoon—“Words for Sale.”

My mother, never one to mince words, reminded me, “Writers usually get famous AFTER they’re dead.”

While I had my job, I’d go to the library on my lunch hour and study all the magazines and newspapers. I studied the advertisements too—I learned about advertising from my part-time college job when I worked for a small businessman who was a retail clothing genius. I had watched him grow a small investment into a fortune. I often told him I should have paid him tuition for all he taught me about bookkeeping, advertising, corresponding with vendors and public relations.

Those jobs at a large retail outlet made a big difference in the lives of his full-time employees and in part-timers like me. For one thing, he paid us more than the average wage. When I began to work for him, I was making 95 cents an hour in a college work-study job. He offered me $1.91 an hour and I thought I had struck gold. Employees also received a sizable discount on clothing purchases.

He didn’t offer health insurance, but he made an arrangement with a local doctor to treat employees at a discounted rate. And each year, we all received a sizable bonus—my first year bonus was $150. That doesn’t sound like much now, but it was a lot of money then, especially to a college sophomore. The retail operation supported numerous other enterprises—the accountant who prepared the taxes, vendors who supplied goods, contractors who made improvements to the building, various creatives who handled store displays and advertising design, the truckers who delivered the goods, charitable donations and of course, different levels of government receiving taxes and license fees. My boss was also very generous when donating to charities.

Sometimes I speak to writing groups and there’s always at least one person who asks me how I became a freelance writer. First I talk about risk. “My husband and I didn’t really have much to lose—we owned one piece of tangible property, a car.” We didn’t have children, so if my plans tanked, I could always go out and get a job working for someone else. Before leaving my full-time job, I saved every available dime so we’d have a small cushion if I failed. In those days my income was critical to our survival.

As my freelance plan shaped up on paper, I began to project an income stream. I listed each magazine or editor who might purchase work from me—well-laid plans. Some of those plans did work out, but like all business owners, I began to see opportunity I didn’t anticipate.

In the city where I lived there were no formal writers’ organizations when I began my business, but there were groups for owners of advertising agencies and publishers. So I attended a couple of meetings—basic networking. My husband always says I never meet a stranger, and that came in handy one evening as I left a meeting. I struck up a conversation with a young man clutching a bundle of papers. He asked me whether I worked for an agency and I told him I’d just launched a words business—freelance writing. He fired off a few questions, and then told me he needed an editor for a monthly trade magazine. We set up a meeting for the following week.

I sold him on my skills, we drew up a contract, and I appreciated the chance meeting that had landed me what every self-employed writer needs—a regular account yielding a consistent income. Another chance meeting at an informal coffee for a few writers in my city produced a second steady account, writing for the Sunday insert of our daily paper. As the work progressed, I began to provide ad copy, direct mail insert copy, technical copy to government agencies and narratives for business plans. I saw first-hand what all those small businesses contributed to the community. Every business I provided services to created jobs and generously supported local and national charities. Every business owner I came to know accepted the long hours and rigorous demands as the price of their American dream. I’ve never met a business owner, or a CEO of a large corporation for that matter, who could work a simple 9-5, Monday through Friday.

By the time we had our first child, I was out-earning my husband. I still remember the look of incredulity when we’d meet with the accountant who did our taxes. She was amazed that I could produce an above-average income with a small amount of business space. From time to time when projects threatened to overwhelm, I hired temporary help.

Over the years, I diversified my services, pretty much writing whatever a client requested. We had our second child and the company my husband worked for continued to offer him opportunities. As his income increased, and as my duties to family increased, my income became secondary. I could finally take another risk and turn my attention to exploring all the things I really wanted to write—poetry, creative nonfiction and content for all those sites blossoming on the Internet. When a publisher brought out my first book, I quickly realized that was the beginning of a whole new process—marketing a tangible product for a reduced profit because the publisher had assumed more risk. Therefore, he received more of the profit.

I explored public speaking, marketing my own writing brand, and constantly strategizing to keep revenue flowing. Ironically, I made less money. I had achieved a creative dream for sure but royalties didn’t translate into the sorts of fees I’d made for what amounted to piece-work and contracts for serial content.

At the same time the marketplace was changing. Newspapers began to see bottom lines decrease, and freelance fees began to decline as well. I began to do some serious entrepreneurial soul searching. My husband often told me, “It doesn’t matter how much money you make. Don’t work so hard.”

But the environment I grew up in had so instilled a sense of purpose, I couldn’t take his advice. My children were no longer small—what else would I do with my time?

There was one area that had always intrigued me but I had deliberately stayed away from it as a matter of protecting my brand. I followed politics and I liked to read about politics but unlike many of my fellow journalists, I didn’t see the world through a left-wing prism. Members of the professional organizations I’d earned my way into by meeting the publishing requirements would probably take a dim view of my own views. So I resisted the strong itch that continued to recur, the itch to speak out about the direction my country was going in. I had contracts for wire service work, for regular articles in various publications and for website content. I did a freelance writing residency for an arts program. And with each passing day technology seemed to reduce the value of the products I created. Technology was doing the same to tried-and-true national brands that had historically thrived.

And then came the 2008 presidential primary season.

As I watched media coverage, I began to feel that small itch morph into a growing fury. As a veteran producer of news, promotional and marketing copy, I saw the level of bias in a manner most people wouldn’t. The careful placing of modifiers in print copy, the select editing of photos and visual clips, spontaneous responses such as former Democratic staffer Chris Matthews with his famous leg shivers. Often facts were grossly misstated. News outlets were brazenly acting as advocates for a candidate. That’s fine if you’re part of a political organization, but if you’re selling a product as news, it should be real news, not carefully propagandized narrative. And I realized that whoever won the presidency would have a definite impact on capitalism, not the least of whom was then Senator Barack Obama who openly pledged to “spread the wealth.”

One night I told my husband I wanted to move my platform into politics—and not only with profit in mind. I wanted to advocate for small businesses, and track policy decisions and legislation that might affect them.

There was a telling moment during one presidential debate when Sen. John McCain, in a slip of the tongue, called then Sen. Obama, “Senator Government.” Unguarded moments often yield unexpected truths.

I realized changing my platform to politics carried immense risk. For one thing, I could no longer in all good conscience do straight-up news writing. That wouldn’t be fair to my reader. I could still do other freelance work unrelated to politics, so I hoped that content would subsidize my new political platform. Ironically the time had come when I wanted to be brazenly open about my politics—a sort of coming out of the political closet.

The troubling matter, though, was the revenue model. Large newspapers and magazines were falling by the wayside, imploding revenue models because of the abundance of free content on the Web. Even book publishing had fallen on hard times. After a lot of consideration and planning, I decided I’d build an information store with content delivering stories ignored by establishment and pop media. I projected a timeline of two years. If it took off and was worthy of revenue, I’d be happy. If not, I could always go back to the drawing board.

I studied websites and blogs, in search of a host for my new business model. I found a host that had snappy templates with flexibility in design options. By now I’d built a few trial sites and taught myself enough coding to know how to take a decent photo and refine it for the Web, and I’d learned technical skills by writing content for websites and news services.  I set up the website and waded into the marketplace, adding 3rd party advertisements in hopes the revenue would help offset the expense of paying the host for my website. I continued to do freelance features and articles for some existing clients, and I pulled together a manuscript for a book of essays about writing. Those I hoped would act as supportive income streams.

Eventually, if I could drive enough traffic and backlinks—websites that link to my content, thereby raising my rank with search engines—I figured I could eventually do a book of essays and perhaps do some public speaking for pay as I often did on the topic of creative writing after my other two books had been published by someone else. I aimed to maneuver my way into publishing in different media, and perhaps into a product line comprising t-shirts, coffee cups and other items suitable for political motifs.

I was excruciatingly honest with myself about the outlay and the return, especially at first. I’ve survived two decades in this business by adhering to a solid principle: hope for the best, plan for the worst.

I built my site, announced it to select readers, and began to write a daily column. I watched my statistics in the same manner I’d watched over my children when they were babies. I tracked the revenue from ads and made a diagram of the traffic I would need to actually produce a decent income. An ongoing marketing plan became a fact of life. Meanwhile, a new company formed offering writers a contract with royalties in exchange for syndicating website content. I opted in.

I’m in the 10th month of my entrepreneurial experiment with politics, and so far I am enjoying it wildly but I’m challenged every day. I promote my brand as a site bringing the reader stories mainstream media ignore. Several contributors also write for my website; I insist on paying them an honorarium. I find it an irony of the highest order that so many blog directories that promote ideals such as wealth redistribution and union organizing do not pay their own contributors. Owners of those sites usually build themselves a platform for selling books and garnering talk show appearances, achieving that platform on the backs of unpaid, unskilled labor who aren’t union members because there’s little revenue for the writers’ union to draw fees from.  Readers and political junkies often don’t see commercial ideological websites as businesses, but that’s exactly what they are. Someone receives a tangible monetary benefit for the expenditure of labor and risk—capitalism at its purest.

It’s too early for me to determine whether my model will work. I have no idea whether I will be able to achieve the revenue I set as my goal.  I believe I will succeed, however, and I work towards that goal every day. I prepare solid content. I network in political circles by covering meetings and presentations in person. I’m always looking for a means of compensation, still relying on 3rd party ads, and I’m considering adding a donation button as so many other websites are doing. Judging by my email, I am convinced people value the content I’m providing. I’ll have a new book out soon, but this time I’ll publish it through the press at one of the professional organizations I belong to, thereby increasing my profit potential. I still do my regular freelance work, though I can’t do as much of that because the website I built requires long, dedicated hours and a great deal of research and fact-checking.

I often tell friends the Web is the new entrepreneurial frontier because at the moment it isn’t heavily regulated or taxed, though that will probably change with time. Government is forever searching for new pockets to pick; the Web will endure the process soon enough.

I have come to realize how much my business is like the pecan-gathering endeavor my brother and I undertook when we were kids. It’s hard work, but I stand to gain in the long run and others will share in those gains.  Frequently there’s new technology—social media like Facebook and Twitter, photo and video programs that are user-friendly but offer amazing latitude in content creation, and mobile applications that enable others to read my content on their cell phones.  Those are the equivalents of that “pecan picker-upper” we thought so highly of as children.

Despite a publishing marketplace that seems to be fracturing, I believe there is opportunity for those who create a model that provides a benefit for the customer who will then tender a fair price for what he or she has received. Tangential to my own efforts are the businesses receiving payment for the tools and services I myself need—my website host, my email host, my Internet provider, the graphic designer I send work to when a project is too sophisticated for my own skills, the writers and future writers I will pay for content, the retail outlets where I purchase supplies and equipment. Those engagements are the essence of entrepreneurial endeavors—when one entity prospers, others prosper as well.

My father and his siblings provided jobs and commerce in a small town years ago when the world was very much different, but there are standards that will never change. Those standards are at the heart and soul of the entrepreneur no matter what industry he or she engages in and no matter the size of the entity. Those standards—honest exchanges of goods and currency—are at the heart of what made our country a great land of opportunity. From the pecan harvesting of my youth to the political marketplace in my adulthood, my American dream is mirrored in the dream of any person who decides to leverage risk in hopes of not only earning an income but providing benefits to the community and to the country, a perfect circle of giving and receiving.

I realize I am a small cog in the wheel—my business is not your typical enterprise. But every year when I file my taxes, I am reminded of the value I have created. And when elections roll around, I am reminded of how glad I am that I created a shop of words that may have a positive impact on those who come to my website and perhaps click on my ads or purchase a product. Sometimes an editor contacts me to provide content for pay, so the returns on my website are truly diverse.

It always surprises me, when I speak to groups, how many people want to start up their own shop of words. I tell them, “What you need is a good business plan and a small capital outlay. The rest is up to the capacity of your entrepreneurial commitment.”

The labors of those crisp afternoons when I harvested pecans as a child have served me well. From pecans to politics, it has been a remarkable journey, not only of the intellect, but of the spirit—one American dream, like millions of others, come full circle.