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Some consider self-employment a soul-crushing grinda pit of despair one falls into after being laid off, or after graduating into a job market where entry-level jobs have evaporated. Chasing clients, following up on payment requests, and working into the night, all for little pay . . . its a stopgap until you find a full-time job. Who on earth would choose it? But freelancing doesnt have to feel like gig work. And in fact, plenty of people, especially Gen Zers, do deliberately choose it. If youre skeptical about freelancing or struggling to earn enough to pay your bills, it might be time for a mindset audit: Instead of thinking like a paycheck-chasing hustler, think like a CEO. That means defining your service offerings, pricing them deliberately, and targeting them toward the right clients, says freelance business coach Treasa Edmond, founder and podcast host for Boss Responses. She has 20 years of self-employment experience, and shes noticed something about those who do this well. The people who truly flourish at what they dothe ones who can make the incomes that other people only dream about or have the business structure that we all strive towardtheyve really dialed in on mindset, she says. Theyre confident about what they do and how they do it. Here are the steps you need to take to shift your mindset and successfully run your business. Let go of the scarcity myth The stereotype of the starving freelancer is similar to that of the starving artist. But self-employment does not have to mean lower income. Edmond, who shifted into self-employment from full-time work, earns more from 20 hours of client work per week than she ever made at her brick-and-mortar job. She also knows freelancers who make a full-time living from five hours of client work per week. Still, she offers a word of caution to anyone who thinks freelancing will be easy: Those professionals have spent years honing their business models, and most put in a lot of hours outside of their billable client work to develop that stability. To Edmond, the foundational building block for success is how you perceive and communicate what you do. If your pitching strategy feels like begging prospects for money, its time to develop a succinct way to express how your services can make clients lives easier. You have to understand where your value comes from, Edmond says. It has very little to do with what you actually do. Its the return on investment the client can get on the work that you do. In other words, freelancers earning potential comes down to how they think about their work, as well as how they frame those services to clients. Freelancers who devalue their expertise or talents will face an uphill battle securing the work volume and compensation levels they need to run a sustainable business. Tap into your inner CEO and approach discovery calls with clear, confident talking points. Youll likely find far more stability. Identify (and balance) your business personas Counter to the popular image of freelancers stooping over laptops in coffee shops, successful freelancing takes more than locking in and completing assignments. As a freelancer, youre essentially a team of one. Sales, marketing, and billing are just as much a part of your job as what you actually do. This is where thinking like a CEO becomes critical. Digital artist Caroline Beavon slips into boss mode by channeling her inner CEO into a persona she created since she went freelance in 2009. As Beavon describes it, the executive mindset can be like a hat you can put on. (She imagines hers is probably something like a bowler hat.) She sometimes wears hers while doing business management work like pitching, networking, and talking to clients. But like any well-rounded CEO, success also means knowing when to switch hats, and switch roles. There are some days when I wake up and I am not Queen Bee, and instead a worker bee, Beavon says. I do not have the energy, the focus, the time, the whatever, to be all dynamic. Yes, she could do it if she forced herself. But on those days, she sometimes finds its more productive to put her head down and get the actual work done. That balance is key: Lean too far into worker bee mode, and you might run out of work to do. Swing the other way, and you might not have time to finish all the work youve secured. For Beavon, financial management is a crucial tool to stay in the middle. She keeps her freelancing income in a business account and pays herself a set salary each month. By keeping buffer funds set aside, she saves herself a lot of stress during leaner monthsmaking room for the high-level thinking that her Queen Bee, bowler hat-wearing boss persona needs in order to thrive. Banish the employee mindset Even if youve never held a full-time job, theres a good chance youve come into freelancing thinking like an employee, not a big cheese. That can be a real problem when youre building client relationships. As Edmond points out, freelancers who think of themselves as employee substitutes often form lopsided partnerships where clients dictate everything like bosses. Freelancers should act like their own bosses: Set their own terms, prices, and ways of working. The client is the expert at what they do, and freelancers are the experts at what they do. Were working with them, were collaborating with them, we hopefully have a really good relationship with them, Edmond says. But were not working for them. Think too much like an employee, and youll stifle your inner CEO, reducing them to a demanding, overburdened middle manager, instead of an empowered advocate for what you need. But if youve painted yourself into an employee-shaped corner until now, rest assured that youre not alone. Breaking that employee mindset is hard, Edmond says. I know people who havent done that, and theyve been freelancing for 15 years. No matter what your working life has looked like until now, its never too late to rewrite the rules. After all, the chief reason to be a freelancer is in the name: Its the freedom to choose the working conditions that work best for you. As Edmond puts it: You are creating the business you need so that you can live the life you want.
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E-Commerce
Netflix is declining to raise its offer to buy Warner Bros. Discoverys studio and streaming business, in a stunning move that effectively puts Paramount in a position to take over its storied Hollywood rival. On Thursday, after Warners board announced that Skydance-owned Paramounts offer was superior to the agreement it had previously struck with Netflix, the streaming giant said the new price it would have to pay to acquire Warner would make the deal no longer financially attractive. We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros. iconic brands,” Netflix’s co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said in a joint statement. “But this transaction was always a nice to have at the right price, not a must have at any price. Sarandos and Peters also thanked Warner leadership. Warner had repeatedly backed the deal it struck with Netflix since Decemberand even when announcing that Paramount’s latest offer was superior earlier Thursday, the company said its board stood by its previous recommendation in favor of Netflix. Paramount and Warner did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Netflix’s choice to walk away. Thursday’s news arrived after Paramount upped its rival bid for the entire company to $31 per share, in addition to other revisions. A Warner Bros. Discovery buyout would reshape Hollywood and the wider media landscape. And unlike Netflixwhich only wanted to buy Warner’s studio and streaming business for $27.75 per shareParamount wants the entire company. That means HBO Max, cult-favorite titles like Harry Potter, and even CNN could soon find themselves under a new roof. Paramounts CBS has seen significant editorial shifts, notably with the installation of Free Press founder Bari Weiss at CBS News, under new Skydance ownership. And if Paramounts acquisition of Warner is successful, critics warn of similar changes at CNN. A Paramount-Warner combo would also combine two of Hollywoods five legacy studios that remain today, in addition to their theatrical channels. Beyond Harry Potter, Warner movies like Superman, Barbie, and One Battle After Anotheras well as hit TV series like The White Lotus and Successionwould join Paramounts content library. Paramounts titles include Top Gun, Titanic, and The Godfather. And beyond CBS, it owns networks like MTV and Nickelodeon, as well as the Paramount+ streaming service. Executives at Paramount have argued that merging will be good for consumers and the wider industry. But lawmakers and entertainment trade groups have sounded the alarmwarning that a Warner takeover would only further consolidate power in an industry already run by just a few major players. Critics say that could result in job losses, less diversity in filmmaking, and potentially more headaches for consumers who are facing rising costs of streaming subscriptions as is. Combined, that raises tremendous antitrust concerns. The U.S. Department of Justice has already initiated reviews, and other countries are expected to do so, too. Netflix, Warner, and Paramount have spent the last couple of months in a heated, public back-and-forth over whose deal has a better regulatory pathand offers more value for Warner shareholders. Thursday’s announcement arrived shortly after Paramount upped the ante on its offer. Beyond increasing its proposed purchase price for Warner, the company also agreed to a regulatory termination fee of $7 billion. And Paramount pledged to move up a previously promised ticking fee. The company initially said it would pay 25 cents per share for every quarter the deal drags on past the end of the year. Now its agreed to pay that amount if the deal doesnt go through by the end of September, Warner said. But Paramount is taking on billions of dollars in debt to finance its offer. And David Ellison’s father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is heavily backing the bid for his son’s company. Foreign sovereign wealth funds have also provided equity for the offer, drawing scrutiny. The Ellisons also have a close relationship with President Donald Trumpbringing more politics into question. Trump previously made unprecedented suggestions about his involvement in seeing a deal through, before walking back those statements and maintaining that regulatory approval will be up to the Justice Department. The push to acquire Warner also arrives mere months after Skydance closed its own buyout of Paramountin a contentious merger approved just weeks after the company agreed to pay the president $16 million to settle a lawsuit over editing at CBSs 60 Minutes program. Still, Trump has continued to publicly lash out at Paramount and 60 Minutes since. By Wyatte Grantham-Philips, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Grating coworkers, tone-deaf bosses, a ninth ask for revisions on a PowerPoint deckas the workday annoyances pile up, its only a matter of time before every worker hits a boiling point. And when they do, they often hit up a trusted colleague to vent to in a direct message on a platform like Slack or Teams. So often you’re sitting in a meeting, you’re hearing something, and you’re like, Am I crazy, or are they contradicting themselves? Did they change the strategy again? Can you believe they just said this thing? says one former employee at a consulting firm, who agreed to speak to Fast Company anonymously. Sounding off to coworkers in DMs feels like both an outlet and validation: It’s for your mental health, right? The problem: While this act feels like the equivalent of a private, hushed conversation in the hallway or sharing a drink at happy hour with a confidante, theres a risk in kvetching on your companys official corporate communications channels. Your bosses have ways to get their hands on your messages. On Slack, DMs can be accessed if the company provides Slack with a reason for the download. With Teams, your historys pretty much accessible whether or not a DM is private. Plus, AI is making it easier for companies to snoop on DMs as well, with at least one tool that can track employee sentiment and trends in public (and otherwise private) chats. You may think switching over to personal text messages is a safer method. After all, in the U.S., policies prohibiting extracurricular conversations are rarely legal. But complaining about a coworker may not come with a ton of protection: States with at-will employment rules provide companies with a wide berth for when and why they fire employees, which can include no-texting policies. In these situations, companies can treat backchanneling as a violation of company rulesor simply fire you without tying your termination to outside communications. Backchanneling beyond the gripe Venting is a big part of backchanneling. There’s complaining about the guy who always cooks shrimp in the microwave, or ranting about a boss who tells you to hire a babysitter so you can come to the office during a blizzard But in other circumstances, you may move off company-sanctioned comms platforms when you need to support coworkers during turbulence at workor even let them know when their jobs might be at risk. In such cases, backchanneling may be less about talking smack, and more about sharing vital information. When the consultant’s company initiated mass layoffs, few staffers knew what was happening. The company made no internal announcement, which led to most employees sharing and finding out details through conversations on anonymous networking app Fishbowl. When [they] finally acknowledged it, they provided absolutely no details. They said, We don’t know when we’re going to do it. We don’t know how many people it’s going to be. We’ll keep you posted, says the former employee. Thats when the information sharing began. Both partners and contractors began posting what theyd heard on Fishbowl, rumors of which departments could be impacted, and even when the rollout would begin. If I didnt have that, I would have been in the dark completely. […] I knew what day to wake up early to see if I had the email for the meeting that was going to lay me off, the source continues. Some employees also choose to backchannel for other important reasons, such as communicating about real, problematic workplace conditions. That could be toxic or abusive management, discrimination, or any other serious violations. While most private sector employees can be fired for any reason, including no reason, says Jason Solomon, Director of the National Institute of Workers’ Rights, having unsanctioned conversations with your coworkers about unfair, even illegal work environments fall into the situations in which you may be legally protected. It cant just be venting. It has to be more like, Were talking about this, and we might do something about it. The National Labor Relations Act calls these conversations concerted activity. This typically covers discussions ranging from reporting unsafe working conditions to union organizing. Even though you may theoretically be protected by law, only a few cases make it to court. That means that if employers find out about backchanneling, they might not hesitate to ding you for the messagesor worse. At-will employment, standard in the U.S., allows employers to fire you for any (or no) reason, which in many cases can create soft barriers that might make you think twice about hitting send. If you find that your conversations with coworkers are bringing up real issues, however, there are two things to keep in mind. First, remember that official channels do exist for filing workplace complaints. But if youre not ready to go that far, there may be strength in numbers: Try to enlist as many of your coworkers as possible, Solomon says. The boss is not going to want to fire everybody. The point of going off company-sanctioned channels is so you dont have to watch what you say and how you say it. But experts say you should still use discretion. You cant ever exactly know where your communications could end up, even if you think theyre safe at the time. In 2011, the NLRB sided with an employers decision to fire a bartender for venting in a Facebook DM about not getting raises and being forced to share work without tips, among other complaints. Although the message mentioned workplace pay practices, the NLRB decided it wasnt protected concerted activity: No coworkers participated, and no group organizing was considered. The message never went beyond private venting, so it was fair game for termination. What complicates things even further is a post-pandemic workforce. With the rise of remote work, more things are forced to be put into writing, since many workers simply spend less time in person. It takes so much longer to get to know peoplethat element of trust, says the former consulting employee. Pre-Zoom, it would be a walk-and-talk. In the past, a venting session used to be a muffled conversation in the breakroomnow, its become a video call, chat, or other documentable forms of communication. On the other hand, some workers have given up on griping altogether, even if theres plenty to discuss. Another worker at a software company tells Fast Company, I only do it with people who are no longer with the company. I consider that to be safer. They have worked with their company for four years, and arent interested in taking any chances with their career. You never know if peole can turn that against you. Not everyone is going to be your friend. If you say something that might offend people, that is going to travel faster than light.
Category:
E-Commerce
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