All Freelancers Are Chickens

Clients are pigs. Freelancers are chickens. Let me tell you why.

I’ve heard the following metaphor so many times that I have no idea where I heard it first. Probably some marketing, business resource guru wrote a book about it and that’s why I’ve had to hear it repeated in so many business meetings. Either way, it goes a little something like this:

Either you can be a pig or a chicken. When it comes to making breakfast, there are two levels of involvement. The chicken is pretty involved. It creates and passes an egg through its hoo-haw. Then, it donates it to the  breakfast cause. However, the pig is extremely dedicated. It lays down its life for breakfast. While a chicken will go on to be a part of many other breakfasts, a pig has everything riding on this one.

Photo Credit: Raindog via Flickr

When you’re talking about this overused metaphor, we freelancers are the chickens. We’re invested in a project but we eventually move on to the next one. If we are talented enough, stubborn enough and fortunate enough to stay in this game for the long haul, we will work with companies, publications and projects than we can count on all our fingers and toes. (Otherwise, they’d call us “employees” instead.)

Chickens Care Too

The other day, I checked my site analytics to find that somebody searched for “freelancers don’t care” and found my site. I know that the keyword hoo doo that search engines pull brought them here so that didn’t concern me. Instead, I was wondering why anyone would think that. And then occurred to me: some people think chickens don’t care.

But we do care. We put our names on those projects. If it sucked, you’re associated with suckiness. Word of mouth works both ways, too. No one wants a reputation as the freelancer who slaps down whatever because it’s not her project. That’s not conducive to repeat business or sometimes even getting paid for the rest of the gig if you go half and half on your contract payments. Even if the client doesn’t realize it sucked, when someone asks your client where who wrote his webcopy, he’s going to say you. In the freelance world, your eggs can come back to haunt you if you don’t care enough to put your very best into it.

No, just because we’re the chickens of the breakfast table doesn’t mean we don’t care. The creative process can be a lot like laying an egg: it calls for us to create something new and get it to a point where we can share it with the world. And the process can be painful sometimes. (Note: I’m not sure if it hurts when a chicken lays an egg, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t feel like a warm bubble bath.)  You don’t go through all of that and just not care. In fact, there are some freelancers who have a hard time being objective about their work. But I’d rather care too much than not enough.

Princess Jones

Princess Jones is the evil genius behind Diary of a Mad Freelancer and P.S. Jones Communications. She blogs about freelance life, copywriting and being self-employed. She can usually be found tweeting away or rambling over on Google Plus.

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