Our 24/7, 365 days a year sports culture had me laughing the other day about term, "Free Agent." There is nothing "free" about being a free agent; it means only being free of the tyranny of working for a company that legally contracted you to provide services. At a certain point in your contract, you are free to shop yourself to the highest bidder, assuming your services are worth bidding for (but that, my friends, is another post for another day).
So when a mentee sent me this article, I read it with gusto. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll know how much I have written about working in the land of the independent contractor. I've spent less time with those who have traditional jobs (with health benefits) and probably should assist more. There are challenges even for the gainfully employed nowadays, but for now, millions remain out of work or underemployed and I feel of more value talking with them.
I just wrote about assessing who is in your circle and why are they there. If you are working as a free agent or independent contractor, it's important to remain connected to good people who are also connected to good people.
As the article states, there really is no way to assess who is and isn't a free agent, as the traditional means of measurement ("The Labor Department put the nation's unemployment rate at 9.3 percent today...") because we really don't know what that means. In 1997's
Free Agent Nation, author Daniel Pink goes so far as to say that one day the U.S. workforce will be almost entirely working independently, cubicle-free, with no need for a company I.D. to get past security.
It's 2011 so let's look around. How many coffee shops, restaurants, book stores and even fast food places are encouraging you to come in, sit and stay a while? How many people who were once gainfully employed are now working to start their own company? Ridership is up on the D.C. subway system in what were once called "off-peak" hours. Where are all those people coming from and where are they going? To a meeting, of course, with laptops, smartphones and tablets in hand.
You know If I ran a brick-and-mortar business, I'd offer wifi... for free.
*Chantal de la Rionda edits this blog
