#140: What’s Going on With the Freelance Economy? A Look at the Numbers with Robert McGuire

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there.

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 140 and those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as links to resources mentioned during the show. We really do live in interesting times, you know, as freelancers, we get to work on a wide variety of interesting projects. We often work with clients we've never physically met. In fact, our clients might be in a different country altogether, thousands of miles away. We get to dictate our own schedule. We get to work from the comfort of a home office, make our own business decisions, and set our own fees. Now, of course, that's the ideal we strive for, right? Not every day is going to be perfect. Sometimes we're trying to get to that level, and the pain of getting there doesn't make things feel that great. But I would say that for many of us, it would be hard to give it all up for traditional employment, even though not every day is great. And sometimes it's a struggle. And sometimes we ask ourselves, what are we doing? At the end of the day, it would be very difficult for us to go back to cubicle hell. I know that when I went solo in 2006, it was freeing. It was freeing to finally just make my own decisions, do my own thing. But I also remember the reaction of many of my friends and relatives. They had no clue what freelancing was or that anyone could actually earn a living doing work from home on their computer, that anybody would get paid to write for businesses they didn't even know that was a thing. But over the past 10, 11 years or so, there has definitely been a shift in that mindset. There has been a ton of information published about the freelance economy. Freelancing and consulting no longer mean that I'm between jobs, right? And experts and economists are finally recognizing that we're a real and growing segment of the labor force, not a temporary fluke. I think if I were to quit my day job today, I wouldn't get as many confused stairs as I did back in 2006. Now, the real question, going back to this idea of all these studies and all these statistics that have come out, is how many people are really freelancing out there. And are the big numbers that we're reading and hearing about an accurate representation of the freelance workforce? Because some of these numbers are staggering. I mean, 30, 40, 50% of the workforce, you hear that, but then you look around and you don't know anyone else who's freelancing. So what gives? What do these numbers and projections mean for us who are already out there freelancing? Well, that's the topic of this week's episode. And My guest, Robert McGuire, is going to pull apart these numbers and predictions and give us his take on what's really happening in the gig economy. Robert has spent a lot of time just pouring through all of the studies and reports over the past few years that talk about the gig economy and who's in it, how many people are in it, what are they doing, what are they earning, who's doing well, who's not doing well. And he's consolidated all of this into some very meaningful information. So I hope you enjoyed this discussion and I hope it sheds some light on what's really going on out there and where the gig economy or the freelance economy is heading. Hey, Robert, welcome to the show. It's great to have you back.

Thanks very much for having me back. It's been a pleasure.

You know, it's been, yeah, I guess it's been about a year since you and I have connected. And I'm going to definitely link to our first interview here in the show notes. But you know, I always like to start with a quick intro, so why don't you give us some information on what you do. I know there's a couple of things that you're involved with, but give us a basic overview of what kind of work you do, what types of clients you work with, and then a little bit about this passion project of yours that we're going to be discussing today.

Oh, sure. Thanks. Yeah, folks have a chance to listen to that previous episode. You know, they'll learn the long, sordid story of how I grew from, from a baby newspaper reporter into a freelance writer and then started what is now really my content marketing consulting business. I provide kind of the overall project management for content heavy projects and act as the managing editor for those projects for my clients. And then I put together a curated team of freelancers to execute on those contracts. And my specialization, my niche is education, technology startups, online learning and higher ed. So I provide tons and tons of blogs and white papers and ebooks for my clients in those areas. And like I say, I'm Managing kind of a team of freelance writers who I subcontract to for most of that, and editors and designers and so on. And along the way, you know, what we were talking about last time was how I kind of got into that by accident through this demonstration project when I was started just out of personal interest, a site on online learning. And in the meantime I started just out of personal interest and passion, a site on the business side of running as working as business side of working as an independent contractor. It's called Nation 1099 at nation1099.com and the 1099 obviously is a reference to the tax form that most of us in the US are very familiar with once we become independent contractors.

Very familiar with that. Unfortunately, sometimes not the kind I want to get. I want to get the money, I just don't want to get the tax form saying how much money I made. So let's talk about this, this project that you embarked on recently. Because I have compiled data, I have done some pretty extensive surveys on just kind of the, the state of the freelance nation, if you will. But it's been based on survey responses mainly from my audience and then some outside research as well, but nothing really comprehensive. And you took kind of a different approach to this. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you, what you've done?

Oh yeah. And if you've done surveys of your audience, please forward them along and I'll include them in the next update. You know, like probably you and all of your listeners, I see these headlines, you know, one third of us are freelancers or half of us will be freelancers by a certain date and time. And I just got curious about that because I'm curious. And also we needed to really get a handle on that because that's the audience for Nation 1099 is independent contractors, consultants, freelancers, people in the gig economy. And I just felt like we needed a clear idea of who the audience was. So I decided to dig into all these surveys and synthesize them. So it's sort of like a literature review or a meta analysis of all the existing surveys out there that you might have seen the headlines for upwork. And Freelancers Union does one every year. That's really terrific. MBO Partners does one every year, that's really terrific. But the headlines, they have really eye popping numbers. I sometimes wonder about them. So we decided to look into them more closely.

Well, it's interesting because considering the size of this audience, the size of the freelance marketplace, you think that this would be something you kind of run into all the time. So even though there's some great information these days out there, there's not a ton of it, which. Which I find a little surprising.

Yeah, well, you know, one of the things that we found, I gotta tell you, when I was thinking about writing, when I was thinking about starting the site Nation 1099, a year and a half, two. Two years ago, I was doing tons of reading about how to build my own business as an independent contractor, and I came across a book that some of your readers might be familiar with called Free Agent Nation. It was published in 2001. It's by Daniel Pink. Daniel Pink has since become better known as the author of Drive, which has been very influential in the startup world. I think that book Free Agent Nation might have gotten buried a little bit because it came out around the time of the 911 attacks and. And all of our minds were on other things. But I was reading that book 15 years later, and he talks about these trends, like how we're becoming a free agent nation, more and more people are kind of working as free agents. But it's really kind of this journalistic approach with lots of anecdotes. And he pauses for a chapter and says, okay, let's actually look at the numbers. And he has this long discussion about how you can't find any numbers because nobody's really counting them. And as I'm reading this, I'm thinking, you know, 15 years later, the same is still true, starting with how the US Government kind of tallies up employees and not different types of employment. So we're still kind of in the same situation that there isn't a lot of really good counting going on. There are four or five really good studies. But compared to the kind of workforce and economic trends that we usually study, that's a pretty small number.

Well, and I'm curious, why don't. And I agree with you, right? You start digging into the numbers from the government and they want to lump us all into kind of one big generic category, which I guess will make great headlines, but when you dig into it, it's not very accurate or very helpful. So why don't most governments track us very well? What's your best assessment as to what really the percentage of freelancers like us is in the US Economy?

Yeah, well, the answer to the in there is after we sorted and sliced and diced and read deeply into the studies. The analysis that we came with is that if you're talking about people who are independent contractors full time in lieu of traditional employment, then we're talking about approximately 11% of the US workforce and it's probably a similar number in the EU.

That's a very different number from some of the headlines.

Yeah, but still, really, it's still a huge number and it's doubled in the last 15 years. And the growth rate projections are something like 3.5% a year that the pool will grow by 3.5% a year. So that's how we get to something like 20% a few years from now. But yeah, it's a lot less than saying a third of us or a half of us. Those larger numbers are really referring to a big bucket that includes people who work for temp agencies, people who are landscapers under the table, getting paid under the table, people who might have turned on Uber as a driver once in the last year and are not really working in the gig economy. Includes all kinds of gig work, whether it's kind of the professional, highly skilled freelance work that you and your listeners are doing or more direct service based like house cleaning on an app like TaskRabbit. So those numbers that you see in the headlines, they're really good studies. And when you read into the studies, you get really good information. But the top headline is counting everybody in one big pot.

Well, let's dive into some of your findings. You uncover some very fascinating information and insight. So why don't you walk us maybe some of the more surprising data and insights that you uncovered.

Yeah, well, I mean it might be surprising to people who aren't in this field. Your listeners are probably not surprised at all or many of them anyway, because it probably reflects their own experience. And I have to give full credit, we didn't do an original study. So this stuff, you can find all our sources in this article on our website on Nation 299. But it really comes from MBO Partners and the UPWORK and freelance union and study every year and field Nation. Oh, and McKinsey has a terrific study they did last fall looking worldwide. So I'm really stealing from them or synthesizing them. And some of the things they found. Well, one is the enormous, the growth in the total pool. How many of us are freelancer by choice? There's a perception out there that freelancers are kind of pushed out of the workforce between jobs, that they're kind of desperate to get back into the workforce. And that is true of a decreasing share to the point that for example, something like more than 80% of total professional freelancers, by which I mean freelancers are doing highly skilled creative or professional services. Freelance writers like us that more than 80% of them say this is their most preferred way of working. 50% say they would not go back to work in a traditional role at any price. MBO found this one interesting thing. They looked at the trends from the recession to current. They said, okay, yeah, after 2008, the Great Recession, a lot of people were pushed unwillingly out of the workforce, but as the labor market has tightened, they're not going back into the workforce. They maybe came out into freelancing unwillingly and now prefer it. In the meanwhile, a much larger number of people exit the workforce very willingly because they're so frustrated with traditional employment roles.

Interesting. Yeah. I remember seven, eight years ago when we were writing the Wealthy Freelancer, this was still a misconception, just kind of out there in terms of, well, if you're freelancing, that means you're really between jobs or, you know, you're unemployed. And I'm not seeing that as much anymore. You know, like I look around in my neighborhood and like, when I'll walk my dog around lunchtime, how many people in just this neighborhood.

Yeah.

Work from home either because they're traditionally employed and work from home, or in many cases they're just self employed, employed in some capacity.

Right, right. And that's a similar experience for me probably with a lot of your listeners. You know, I happen to live in the kind of community where there are a lot of creative people who are working as independent contractors in a variety of domains. And I should mention Nation 1099 is sort of domain agnostic. So it's not about freelance writers, it's. So if you're a writer, you might be reading on our site about software engineers or we have a list of over 150 different roles that are now being done, professional skilled roles that are now being done on a contract basis. But you know, if you walk around our neighborhood, it's sort of the same thing. And you know, when I go to coffee shops and to the bars and to the farmers market, I'm running into friends and we're talking about business like, you know, what are you doing to find customer clients? And you know, can you recommend an accountant to me? Or, you know, I just heard from one of my clients, I gotta get this legal paperwork done. How did you handle that? And it finally dawned on me. We're all like struggling to get these answers and there's no source of information for answers on this stuff, especially for independent contractors.

There really isn't you're right. Let's kind of take a step back and talk a little bit about some of these definitions because I mean, I think you can kind of go crazy here with semantics, but there has been an argument about the whole freelancer or I'm a consultant or I'm an independent contractor. What did you come across when you looked at all these definitions and people's preferences?

Yeah, well, there was no consistency whatsoever between one study and another. So I have my own sense of how to define each of these terms. And let's take the term gig economy, for example. I would think I'm working in the gig economy, you're working in the gig economy. My, my work is gig based. All of my subcontractors, their work is gig based in the sense that it's project based and short term and everything. But when you open the newspaper and you read about the gig economy, you're probably not recognizing yourself. Most of the action, most of the energy in the news is about direct personal services like driving and house cleaning and pet sitting and things like that. But that's really a fraction of the total of independent contractors. So I tend to think of all of these things are growing, the gig economy is growing. But if you can think of it as like a vertical where say traditionally it's been like in the world of publishing. Freelancing is very familiar. Right. There's nothing new happening here in the world of publishing because they've always used freelance writers and designers and illustrators and photographers. So you think of those kinds of creative services as the most traditional core of the gig economy. And musicians of course, where the term gigging comes from. But it's kind of expanding vertically, both downward and upward. It's expanding downward into those personal services where apps like Uber and Lyft and TaskRabbit and so on allow people to disaggregate personal direct services out of an employer employment role into this kind of gig role. And it's expanding vertically up into more management and strategy type of roles. And of course there have always been consultants who've done that. But it' really the, you know, the advising and strategy roles are now starting to include really management roles. And a lot of that is being done on a contract basis now.

Yeah, I'm seeing so much of that at those higher levels. It used to be years, 10 years ago, you know, if you were a, let's say a CFO for hire, that was pretty rare. And usually your business came, you know, through word of mouth, that kind of thing. And now sure that still comes through word of mouth, but they have websites, they're marketing themselves. It's crazy. I'm seeing so much of that even at those higher levels.

Yeah. Most of your listeners who are writers are probably very familiar with marketplace websites like Upwork and so on. What they might not be aware of is now these sites, especially for those kind of high level CFO type consulting, type strategy and management type roles. And we have a list of those consulting websites on Nation 1099 too. And all of this is what inspired me was this article in the Harvard business review from 2012. And as I was ramping up my own consulting business, I'm trying to understand better what exactly it is I'm doing. And there was this article called the Rise of the Supertemp. And Supertemp. In this case, the authors of this article, what they were referring to is like you said, those CFO for hire. In my case, more of like a. You know, I went from being kind of a writer to a. More of a marketing director for hire. And I think that, that, not that it never existed before, but the growth of it has been astounding the last 10 years.

It really has. Talk to us about your findings in terms of vulnerability. You know, when you kind of look at the different categories of freelancers, who is. I'll give you an example. Right. Uber drivers, there's this concern that they're being. It's a race to the bottom. You know, they're making less and less every day.

Like you said, those CFO for hire. In my case, more of like a. You know, I went from being kind of a writer to a more of a marketing director for hire. And I think that, that, not that it never existed before, but the growth of it has been astounding in the last 10 years.

It really has. There's a lot of those categories. Are we all in danger of that kind of pricing pressure?

Yeah. Well, the short answer is yes.

Talk to us about your findings in terms of.

Yes. We're always in danger of downward price pressures.

Vulnerability. When you kind of look at the different categories of freelancers, who is. I'll give you an example. Right. Uber driver.

I'm very enthusiastic about the possibilities of gig economy. And so I always need to kind of pause.

There's this concern that they're being. It's a race to the bottom. You know, they're making less and less every day. There's a lot of those categories. You know, are we all in danger of. Of that kind of pricing pressure?

Yeah. Well, the short answer is yes. And say all this comes with a caveat that I recognize that it's not all perfect, it's not suited. Yes, we're always in danger of downward price pressures. There are downsides in general. I shouldn't say this is a finding. This is more of a hunch that's unconfirmed from the findings, the salary data or the earnings data about professional freelancers. I'm very enthusiastic about the possibilities of gig economy and so I always need to pause and say all this comes with a caveat that I recognize that it's not all perfect, it's not suited for everyone. There are downsides in general and I shouldn't say this is a finding. This is more of a hunch that's unconfirmed. From the findings. The SAS sources the MBO Partners survey and they find really great things going on for people who are very highly skilled. More than 20% of us make more than $100,000 a year. The average freelancer who provides a professional skilled service makes more than the median household income salary data or the earnings data about professional freelancers. The best source is the MBO Partners survey and they find really great things going on for people who are very highly skilled. More than 20% of us make more than $100,000 a year. So it's something like $65,000. The average income for that kind of worker and the median household income in the US is something like $56,000. So we're beating that that threshold. But my hunch is that what is going on probably parallels what's going on in the economy. The average freelancer who provides a professional skilled service makes more than the median household income generally, which is things are terrible and really dangerous and vulnerable. So it's something like $65,000. The average income for that kind of worker and the median household income in the US is something like $56,000. So we're beating that threshold. But my hunch is that for people who are low skilled and service positions and that's true whether you are an hourly employee in a traditional role or whether you're doing on a gig based app. So all these folks who concerned it what is going on probably parallels what's going on in the economy generally, which is things are terrible and really dangerous and vulnerable for people who are low skilled and service positions. That's about vulnerability of gig economy workers on the apps. True. Whether you are an hourly employee in a traditional role or whether that's all true, they should be concerned about that. But it's not like the traditional employment roles are that much more secure for them right now. And what's going on with very highly skilled people providing strategy and management and consulting you're doing on a gig based app. So all these folks who concerned about vulnerability of gig economy workers on the apps, I mean, that's all true, they should be concerned about that. But it's not like the traditional employment roles are that much more secure for them right now. What's going on with very highly skilled people providing strategy and management and consulting and planning services is they can kind of write their own ticket and they can be very high earners as independent contractors. They can also obviously be very high earners in traditional employment, but the gig economy is now allowing them a lot more flexibility about how they organize their lives. What I think is really interesting is kind of that messy middle and planning services is they can kind of write their own ticket and they can be very high earners as independent contractors. They can also obviously be very high earners in traditional employment, but the gig economy is now allowing them a lot more flexibility about how they organize their lives. What I think is really interesting is kind of that messy middle of directly providing a creative service like writing or photography or graphic design. And this isn't confirmed by the data, but it's my hunch, and I think most of you directly providing a creative service like writing or photography or graphic design listeners have had this experience that it's a dangerous middle ground to be resting on, that there is downward price pressure. I mean, we've seen it with freelance writing, right? Prices have fallen, the floor has fallen out for a lot of folks. So you find, and this isn't confirmed by the data, but it's my hunch and I think most of your listeners have had this experience that it's a dangerous middle ground to be resting on, that they really work to help people sort of survive and then thrive in that environment. Like if the floor is falling out from underneath you, then you need to sort of find another ladder to climb on if you're going to survive in this situation. So I think that the date is kind of hinting at that, that you can't just kind of rest on the skills you have and on the market you have. You have to figure out a way to position yourself in the market differently.

You really do. I think it really stresses that in a big way. I feel like that's accelerating. It used to be you could kind of skate by for a while, but now it's kind of catching up to a lot of people. And this is why I always say, guys, you know, two things you have to specialize and target, because that's where the real value is. And an even higher level of value is solving problems and not being an overtaker. Right. Because that's a lot of people. Tell me what you need written, I'll write it. And that is you can, you can be at the higher levels, the higher brackets there, if you specialize in target very well.

Yeah. And that last point of yours is really a strategic point. It's like understanding what. What your value proposition is within the market. And that kind of strategic thinking as it relates to being an independent contractor is the part that I felt like was missing the most. So on our site, I think of it as like two major categories. Like we've got all this operational stuff, like how to manage your books, how to do a book, find a budget, how to get insurance, all that stuff. And then the other part that we have less of yet, but I'm most interested in, so, and please help me out is that strategy part, like how to figure out where I'm going to position myself in the market to know how I'm going to differentiate myself to make clear my value proposition. There is a huge library of that kind of strategic thinking as it relates to small businesses, medium businesses, and Fortune 500 companies. And there is not a word of it on how to do it as an independent contractor. And as I say, we are 11% of the workforce, so we really need this advice.

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, so here's my. My observation has been that as an, as a nation, as a workforce, we have very quickly been taken from an economy where we're. Our attitude is, tell me what you need done and I'll do it. Mr. Boss and Mrs. Boss, to one of. I need and all these skills that we weren't trained on, we suddenly have to acquire them and get really, really good at them. So it's not just the hunting, but also the, you know, like you said, how to position yourself and all the. In there really isn't a school for that. Our traditional educational system is not set up for that. It's set up for traditional employment. So when you think about all these years of this kind of indoctrination, it's very, very difficult to think differently.

Yeah. And if you are thinking differently, like if you have kind of an entrepreneurial impulse or creative. And not just creative about the work itself, like I'm creative in the marketing content I write, or I'm creative in my photography and my graphic design. But if you're creative and about how are we going to run this business and you're a traditional employee, I think that you're decreasingly finding yourself engaged. And the studies definitely show that that employee engagement is headed the wrong direction. You know, every employer talks about the importance of employee engagement, but the statistics show they're making no headway on this whatsoever. That employee engagement is way down. And the same is true of work life balance. Every employer reads their HR magazines and HR newsletters every month with a million articles about the importance of work life balance. And that's another one where the metrics are all going the wrong direction. People are feeling like their lives are really out of whack and that's what's driving a lot of this. People want to feel a passion for their work and they're not feeling it oftentimes in a traditional employee relationship. So they go out solo and they're finding, like some of the surveys said, you know, not only is this my strongly preferred way of working, like I feel like I'm providing more value now because I'm bringing more passion. And your listeners might have had this experience, I know I have, where I'm one of the one member on a team, like a hybrid team with some internal employees and me and other consultants and customers. So all these stakeholders are coming around a short term project and oftentimes the consultants are much more passionate about the work than the full time employees are.

Yeah, it's really crazy. Well, here's the other thing I've found too. People who go in this direction and so they have to acquire a different set of skills and they have to get good at those and for some reason a few years later decide to go back into the workforce. I find that they're way better prepared to do that. Right. They're much more entrepreneurial. They're just, their attitude is different, their engagement levels are very different. So I think my point there is that I think it is a good thing. I know a lot of people on the fence say, I don't know. I don't know if I want to go in that direction. I don't think very little negative can come out of moving in this direction because what you'll walk away with, nobody can take away from you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels super risky. It is risky. I mean, you have a period of less income until you get established and some folks don't get established. So it doesn't pay off, but it pays off for more than you would guess. And one of the other findings in one of these studies that we cite is that at least in this professional, creative class. Right. You know, again, leaving aside kind of that personal services category where it's really vulnerable position that a lot of folks are saying they experience more income security. Not necessarily more income, though. There's that too. But more income security as well. A freelancer, because we all know that the salaries have stagnated for a generation, that the actual income for the population as a whole has been stagnant for a generation. So if you want to take command of your own fate, oftentimes going out solo is the only way to do that. Of course, if your income is dependent on one source, your employer, that traditionally has meant something very secure. But people are starting to experience that as insecure. And diversifying your income across multiple employers as an independent contractor might be the better way to go.

Absolutely. I find that. So in the survey that I did, and I'll send you a copy, and this is. Gosh, it's been five years now, I was surprised that the number one reason people went solo and they stayed solo was not income or income security, it was flexibility.

Right, right. They start for the lifestyle and they stay for the money.

Exactly. Let's face it, right? There's another dark side to all this. People complain about work life balance when they're traditionally employed, but this can very easily go down the wrong path. When you go solo and you start getting very busy, you can create a really, really bad job for yourself.

Yeah, that's true. It's true. And I've had phases like that myself, personally, where, you know, for three or four months I'm killing myself. But, you know, it's easier to move in and out of that than it is to move in and out of a tough job.

It really is. I want to get into your findings on who's actually doing well versus who's doing okay versus who's scraping by. You touched on this a little bit earlier with the M Partners study. What factors do you think are contributing to these categories? I mean, other than what we've just talked about? And what are the trends that you see here? Do you see things improving? Do you see people kind of recognizing that they need to shift to higher levels? I guess. What are your biggest insights there?

Yeah, again, this is a guess or kind of a hunch based on me reading a bunch of this. I was corresponding with an economist a couple weeks ago, and he said kind of succinctly what has been brewing on my mind, that in terms of income it hardly matters whether you're a full time employee or freelance that the difference in income is not terrific in those two positions, so to speak. So all the benefits or the dangers are really in other areas like work, life balance or how much job security you have. In a sense, I think that the trend here.

Do you see things improving? Do you see people recognizing that they.

Need to, income wise? And the explanations of what are happening income wise are roughly parallel between being an independent contractor and the economy as a whole. What explains why some of us are doing much better than the others is the explanation is probably the same with why we'd be doing better in traditional roles. It's having very high skills that are marketable, that are in high demand, that haven't really been disrupted yet by some tremendous technological change. I don't think copywriters in a salary role are making a lot of money necessarily any more than freelancers who freelance copywriters are. I think that freelance software engineers are making a lot of money the same way that salaries software engineers are making.

A lot of money.

I think that the explanation really comes down to skills and how those skills are valued in the marketplace.

One of the things you and I corresponded about was the fact that companies are very unprepared for this trend. I'm curious if you can maybe expand on that a little bit because I kind of get mixed, mixed readings on that statement.

Mixed readings for me or no mixed.

Readings when I read that. It seems like some companies really are clueless and some others totally get it, but are struggling with the cultural impact of having a completely virtual workforce. It's just there temporarily.

Yeah, well, so there are a few things happening. One, work in general is becoming more project based versus role based. Work is starting to happen more on a team basis and the teams are often hybrid or blended with folks both internal and external. In the meantime, if 11% of your potential talent pool is freelance and has no interest in an employee role, if you've got a talent shortage or if you're in a talent war, if your company is trying to find software engineers and 11% of the total pool is just basically remove themselves from consideration, that's something you got to account for. Your biggest competitor is not the tech company next door. Your biggest competitor is self employment. If all of us were added together, all of us who counted ourselves as independent contractors, categorized as self employed, if all of us were under one employment umbrella, we would be the biggest employer in the country. We'd be bigger than the federal government, bigger than the standing US Military, bigger than Walmart, bigger than the state university system in your state. 11% is the biggest group of employees or of talent of workers in the country. But everything in our economy is organized around role based employment. Our health care is organized that way, our taxes are organized that way. The job classification issues, the way that software sold is based on seat licenses and assuming full time employees. So one way that employers are unprepared, and I think I have this experience all the time, probably your listeners do, is how lousy they are at engaging with us and onboarding us. So when a client hires one of us, it's like they've never dealt with. They don't have no idea what to do with this. They don't know where to forward the contracts, they don't know who needs to sign them. So that whole on onboarding process that they have down like pat with traditional employees for 11% of their talent, they really have no process existing whatsoever.

You know, it's interesting you say that because my perception is that it really depends on the type of talent we're talking about for creative services. For some reason in most organizations it's very disjointed, it's very haphazard. Like you said, there's no real process. You're kind of leading the client through this and, and it's okay, but you have to be prepared to lead the client. I'm not seeing that as much with software development, for instance, where you have companies with just teams of freelance developers and they have someone in fact in charge of, they have a full system in a very specific onboarding process and so forth. But I guess it depends on the category. My hope is that, that this will seep into from the development side to the creative side and some of the others. Because I agree with you, it's kind of a mess.

Yeah. And they often, I think a lot of us have the experience of sort of being treated almost like this necessary evil and really holding us at arm's length in ways that are counterproductive. Like I can do my job better if I get a peek at the existing work product, if I'm introduced to other team members, if I really understand the vision of the organization and the strategy, if they hired me as an employee, they sit me down, they say this is our vision, these are our values, this is the goals, this is our business model, this is the value proposition we have for customers. But as a independent contractor, it's almost like they deliberately keep it secret. If I know that I'm somehow going to make them Vulnerable. That is a totally counterproductive way to work with your independent contractors. Because I can provide a of lot, lot more value if they clue me into that stuff.

Well, and that actually leads me to my next question, which is about culture. It seems like a lot of organizations are worried about, well, if we go in that direction, you know, what about our culture or about our team environment. If, you know, let's say a third or half of a workforce is here for on a project basis only, you know, are you seeing much of that concern? I know that used to be a big concern out there for a while, but I'm wondering if companies, companies have been able to figure out how to circumvent that.

Well, I haven't looked into it much. My advice is to think of it as a opportunity rather than a threat. Right. If you think, okay, well, 11% of our prospective talent is out there. We're eager to work for us on this consultant, contractor basis. And if our internal employees are becoming.

More product culture, it seems like a lot of organizations are worried about, well, if we go in that direction, what about our culture? What about our team environment? If, let's say a third or half of a workforce is here on a project basis only, are you seeing much of that concern? I know that used to be a big concern out there for a while, but I'm wondering if companies have been.

Project based versus role based. Anyway, that's another trend is in a sense, even in the salaried or hourly wage roles, the work is starting to look, the people are starting to behave more like freelancers in the workplace. I mean, you can make this a good thing. You can say, okay, it's exciting and provides a lot of value and provides a lot of energy to an organization. If we put together these fast moving hybrid teams and if we really let people in and make them able to.

Figure out how to circumvent that.

Well, I haven't looked into it much. My advice is to think of it as a opportunity rather than a threat. Right. If you think, okay, well, you know, 11% of our prospective, part of the culture, they're going to add to our culture and they're going to stick around and we can use these contractors again on other projects. So I think that the companies that will win in the future are the ones who are going to think this through. That's not the only way to do it. I mean, you should be cautious. You got to be aware of some of the risks of having strangers walking around. You have talent is out there. We're eager to work for us on this consultant contractor basis. Building right, which is kind of what's happening. But if you just kind of react against that, rather than having a really deliberate talent management strategy that accounts for the way this trend is going, you're going to be much better off if our internal employees are becoming more project based versus role based. Anyway, that's another trend is in a sense, even in the salaried or hourly wage roles, the work is starting to lose. Look, the people.

No doubt this idea of staff on demand. I mean everything that I'm reading, especially Silicon Valley saying this is the only way to really scale and to do some of the big things that innovative companies are trying to do, right? Not the only way to work, but meaning that's the only way they can actually accomplish what they need to accomplish.

So here we're starting to behave more like freelancers even in the workplace. I mean, you can make this a.

Good thing to stay. And this has been a very interesting discussion. Robert, thank you so much. Before we take off, where can we learn more about Nation 1099? Of course. And where can we find the metadata that you kind of consolidated regarding all these studies?

Yeah, great. We have, you can say, okay, it's exciting and provides a lot of value and provides a lot of energy to an organization. If we put together these fast moving hybrid teams and if we really let people, people in and make them. If you go to the sitenation1099.com the site in general is business advice for independent contractors. Like I say, domain agnostic. So not just riders, so writers, you can kind of learn, you can hear what people in other domains do in their lines of work and learn from that. In the upper right, there's a resource part of the culture. They're going to add to our culture and they're going to stick around. And we can use these contractors again on sources section and that that's where this literature review is with all this study. It's called the Ultimate Guide to Gig Economy Data. We also have some great lists of freelance websites and so on there. We're on all the social networks. So I hope you'll join us at Nation 1099 on Facebook and places like that.

Robert, thank you so much for coming on their projects.

So I think that the companies that will win in the future are the ones who are going to think this through. That's not the only way to do it. I mean you should be cautious. You got to be aware of some of the risks of having strangers walking around you. Thanks very much. Thanks for your, for what you're doing with your clients. Ed.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher.com.

Building right. Which is kind of what's happening. But. But if you just kind of react against that, rather than having a really deliberate talent management strategy that accounts for the way this trend is going, you're going to be much better off.

No doubt. This idea of staff on demand, I mean, everything that I'm reading, especially Silicon Valley, saying this is the only way to really scale and to do some of the big things that innovative companies are trying to do, not the only way to work, but meaning that's the only way they can actually accomplish what they need to accomplish. So here to stay. And this has been a very interesting discussion. Robert, thank you so much. Before we take off, where can we learn more about Nation 1099? Of course. And where can we find the metadata that you kind of consolidated regarding all these studies?

Okay, yeah, great. We have. If you go to the site nation1099.com the site in general is business advice for independent contractors. Like I say, domain agnostic. So not just writers. So writers you can kind of learn, you can hear what people in other domains do in their lines of work and learn from that. In the upper right there's a resources section and that's where this literature review is with all this study. It's called the Ultimate Guide to Gig Economy Data. We also have some great lists of freelance websites and so on there. We're on all the social networks. So I hope you'll join us at Nation 1099 and Facebook and places like that.

Robert, thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks very much. Thanks for your, for what you're doing with your clients. Ed.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher.com moment.