the law of the changing landscape

Our JILLS have great things to say and we're so happy to share it! 

In this post, Paloma Kenney, JILLS Member and Attorney and Principal at Kenney Law LLC discusses the explosion of the Freelance Economy and the legal and legislative conundrum this future of work is having in the U.S.  

"Legislative Changes to Transform the Corporate Gig Economy Leaving Some Workers Out in the Cold"

In May of 2017, an estimated 85% of workers had at least one side job, and, among them, 54% worked two. (1) A trend that's likely to continue; LinkedIn predicts that, by 2020, 43% of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers enabled in part by technology. (3) The desire to increase earnings or gain unique work experience helps drive the gig economy; and, for many young people, it's often a way to make ends meet. (4)

The sudden explosion of the "side hustle" has, in some ways, made the gig economy the wild west of flexible employment. States lack dedicated laws to help govern and protect freelance workers many of whom lack benefits and health insurance. In response, many workers' groups are beginning to lobby for new tax legislation. (5) Earlier this year Washington introduced a bill that would require employers to pay into a benefit fund for independent contractors. Similarly, New York is beginning to introduce a ride-transaction fee for the same purpose. 

This new tax may be beneficial for gig workers "employed" by large umbrella corporations, such as Uber and Airbnb, who can afford to pay the tax and would be required by law to contribute to the fund; however, for those out on their own, there's only more uncertainty.

Will solo gig workers have the option or be forced to pay the tax/fee like a corporation in order to gain access to the larger benefit pool? Or will solo gig workers fall outside the tax/fee requirements leaving them to continue to fend for themselves as self-employed?  

Even if legislation is successfully passed, the new tax/fee may cause a widespread shift among those corporations already dipping their toe into the gig economy. Corporations may decrease their use of gig workers in an effort to avoid paying a tax similar to worker's compensation for a group of transient and often rotational workers. 

For example, if a corporation often hires giggers to write blog posts or modify their graphics, would that corporation simply begin to look internally for talented employees interested in garnering company-wide recognition for such a unique and visible project? 

One of the largest legal issues pertaining to the gig economy is worker classification. Dan Eaton from the San Diego Tribune argues that regardless of whether legislative changes are made on a state or federal level (a separate topic up for debate) lawmakers should resist making a classification that falls between employee and independent contractor. (6) He believes this change could cause a cascade of legal claims since workers already litigate for employee re-classification. Unfortunately, re-classification may be the only way a line can be drawn for tax or fee purposes.

The inability to classify solopreneurs, giggers, and freelancers has implications beyond employment taxes or benefit fund fees. For instance, reporting employment history and making sense of wages is key when filing for unemployment, renting apartments, purchasing a home, and applying for loans and credit cards. While Eaton may have good reason to warn against a third classification, it may be a necessary evil to help alleviate the uncertainty and inability that gig workers have in legitimizing their work for important applications and governmental purposes. 

Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO and co-founder, hopes that the company will one day have created millions of new entrepreneurs worldwide. While the gig economy may at times appear to be a disorganized conglomerate of individuals all seeking to provide a unique, on-demand service, it's thoughts like Chesky's that may eventually transform the traditional definition of entrepreneur. For many, entrepreneur still connotes an individual that raises money, headquarters in a physical location, and helps create jobs for the local economy.

Chesky's vision, along with the millions of individuals inventing their own positions, expands this definition to include those who have never sought funding, but rather built their business from savings or pure sweat equity. It includes individuals who will never have a brick and mortar location beyond their home office and those who will never hire additional employees. One day soon the majority of workers will have a string of roles, proficiencies, and skills that follow their name in place of the traditional one-profession title. For most states, the law cannot evolve quick enough to resolve the complexity of fluid, non-standard employment sweeping the nation.

Reposted with permission by Paloma Kenney. Original link found here. 

Madison startups profile on THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™

Thanks to Madison Startups for giving THE JILLS a shout-out. We so appreciate the support. 

Madison Startups article, by Audrey Meis

Imagine yourself as a professional with talents that led you to a career of solo work. Now imagine yourself within a system of empowered entrepreneurs that are all searching for their next gig. This is exactly what Corinne Neil and Megan Boswell had in mind when they founded the Jills of All Trades.

With the trademarked term of “Work Solo-Not Silo,” the Jills of All Trades is a Madison-based network that launched in 2016. It showcases and supports the professional talents of individuals, particularly women, in a precise area of expertise, such as consulting, creative directing and independent contracting.

“Jills members recognize the power of aggregation to amplify the voice of women solo-entrepreneurs across the nation to lead the new project-based economy,” Neil said.

Working as an independent professional, Neil recognized that hunting for the next gig was a constant challenge.

Coming from the opposite side, Boswell realized how hard it was to find trusted, on-demand talent. During her corporate career, she ran into resource gaps that hindered team productivity when searching for freelancers.

Neil and Boswell, who met through their sons, shared the vision that there must be a solution to this two-sided issue, and from there, the Jills of All Trades was born.

Neil has a background in education and curriculum and content development, while Boswell has experience in marketing and design and launched her own consulting company three years ago. For the most part, company tasks are handled between the two of them, and they make sure to block days to work specifically on the Jills of All Trades.

”As we scale, the plan is to have a community manager as the ‘Jills Hub Leader’ in locations across the U.S.,” Neil said.

These Jills Hub Leaders will take on the “vetting” process of adding new members to the Jills website. Right now, becoming a Jill requires a check of references and portfolio. Men also have been featured on the site and are encouraged to join.

The Jills of All Trades website currently features just under 50 professionals. Their titles span from “Graphic Designer” to “Clinical Trial and Research Consultant.” Project seekers can browse profiles or create a posting for a job.

There is no middleman when potential customers reach out to contact a Jill. The company generates revenue through membership fees, and it also offers a fee-based service to help potential clients match directly with a specific Jill to meet the needs of the job.

With statistics on their side, Neil and Boswell see a bright future for the Jills of All Trades. Fifty-three million people in the United States are currently working as independent professionals, which is about 35 percent of the workforce. That number is expected to increase to 70 or 80 percent in the upcoming decades, according to Neil.

”Independent, project-based, contract-by-contract is the future of work,” Neil said. “And we think women are well poised to lead this new economy.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE LINK:

http://www.madisonstartups.com/company-profile-the-jills-of-all-trades/

Our Founding Mothers & the United State of Women

We Didn’t Set Out to Be Entrepreneurs. Why Steadying the Scales of Work-Life Balance Compelled Two Women to StartUp.

Megan and I did not necessarily set out to be entrepreneurs.

Megan build an amazing career in fashion and design, climbed the corporate ladder to executive positions in prestigious organizations, shaped brands that changed an industry, traveled the world, was granted patents, was featured on Oprah, made movies, and even dreamed up experiential cruise ship voyages. She earned a top salary, and was beloved by her staff and colleagues. Her nurturing and generous spirit extended through her leadership where she taught many, especially women, to fully embrace the ampersand and be powerful & feminine, direct & kind, humorous & focused, collaborative & independent.

As life changed, as it’s so apt to do, Megan did too.

Children grew, relocations happened, new interests developed. There was downsizing. And Megan found herself contemplative and eager for a brand new dress to wear, one that could bring her closer to a work-life balance so she could soak up more time with her husband, 3 teenaged children, and her extended family living in different states.  She eventually styled her own independent and successful brand strategy and design consultancy business, and after nearly 30 years of leading multimillion dollar projects and being 'traditionally' employed, Megan was now using her talents and skills so she could work when she wanted, how she wanted, and on projects that mattered to her. A flexible schedule with a variety of projects and hand-picked clients suited her as an encore career.

My career story was much more of an 'adapt and go' kind of set-up from the beginning. I loved to teach, I was good at it, and I used it to satisfy my taste for travel, spending the early part of my career in both the Middle East and Europe.  When I moved to the US from Canada, I found myself in Austin, TX where I decided to redirect my talents for teaching and writing to an educational publishing company instead of the classroom, and exchange my evenings of grading papers for night classes to earn my massage therapy license - something I’d wanted to do since high school.

But before long, I too, decided to step out of corporate and embark on what I know see as my portfolio career working as an independent: writing, teaching, and educating. Because besides being wearied by the corporate ladder that only one person can climb at a time, there also came pregnancies that were tougher than imagined, relocations, and superhero mom and dad manoeuvres to ensure one of us was always home with our boys - a portfolio career made sense to me.  There just wasn’t a name for it then.

Together, Megan and I have a very unique 360 degree view of work. We know both sides of being an independent and working in corporate. We see the possibilities, opportunities, and struggles of both.  We know stay-at-home parenting, we know being working mothers. We’ve lived re-entry and are always re-entering so we can routinely adjust the work + life equation. Megan shattered glass ceilings. I stayed off the ladder. We know the merits and downfalls of each.

And we know the world of work is changing. And so do you. You’ve seen the statistics; read the headlines. 70% of us will work freelance in the next 10 years.  Lifetime employment is over. The gig economy is the new economy.  It’s a Freelance Nation. Our work will come from our alliances, not recruiters, and not employers.

So no, we didn’t necessarily set out to be entrepreneurs.

But after nearly 30 combined years of trying to steady the scales of work-life balance, we’re compelled to be. 

We’re turning directly to the problems felt by both the independents and the hiring clients in this gig economy and creating a solution.  And it is our combined 360 degree view, and our lifetime of experiences that make us uniquely qualified to take on the challenge. We’ve lived the problems, see a path to a solution,  and know it’s time for us to step up and lead a workforce revolution.

Join us on our journey.  

Because we know in our core that when women come together,  link arms, and lift each other up we have the power to change everything.

How is the Gig Economy Going to Work? And Be Sustainable.

Although the statistics are hard to pin down precisely, the Freelancers Union tells us approximately 34% of the current US workforce is ‘freelance’ - equating to 54 million people in the United States. With estimates from the likes of Robin Chase and Fast Company suggesting that in the next 20 years those independent workers will rise to 70-80% of us. Liz Ryan reports in a recent Forbes article that we need to  “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. Employment is Over”.  And in a LinkedIn post, Reid Hoffman, agrees that ‘lifetime employment might be over”, and offers that “lifetime relationship remains ideal” suggesting that our work will come from our alliances.

It likely means that you and your partner and your friend and your brother and your sisters will be working on a contract by contract, project by project basis consulting, creating, and collaborating with each other, with previous colleagues, with new startups, with anchor businesses.  It means you’ll be marketing yourself, operating your own business, working from spaces you chose, and hunting up your own work.  You will be empowered to carve your career how you will like. It means you will be responsible for your own success.

With this ‘new’ economy on the brink of exploding, one has to wonder, how exactly is this going to work?  And be sustainable.

Companies like Uber,  Fivver and TaskRabbit, are evidence of a ‘gig’ economy and are built on leveraging excess capacity showing us how the sharing economy can and does make our lives more efficient and possibly more profitable. But we cannot ignore that  Uber is routinely under scrutiny for under or de-valuing the independent workers, and Mattermark suggest that the company itself is not profitable. Fivver operates on the premise that you can get work ‘done’ for just five bucks, and TaskRabbit focuses on easing the daily tasks in your life like cleaning your house, fixing your repairs, and completing your grocery, laundry and mail deliveries - none of which seems to fit a professional model for being ‘employed’. Add in campaigns like that of the Freelancers Union, which is blogging and tweeting that #FreelanceIsntFree as they create the world’s longest invoice of unpaid bills, and it can make stepping into the world of independents seem rather daunting.

Yet there are others recognizing where this economy could go and all that it has to offer. In her June article How the Gig Economy Could Save Capitalism, Rana Foroohar begins to explore new directions for the gig economy and offers up the potential benefits of a shift from big employee/employer systems to smaller more entrepreneurial system. Her article considers the future of what she describes as community based capitalism and suggests the need for new thinking on labor laws, regulatory systems, and crowd-based capitalism. Faisal Hoque reminds us of the “value of small” in his Fast Company article while painting the global picture of the gig economy and describing the future of work as one where we can work how we actually want to work. He sees the future of a robust freelance economy where both independents and companies gain mutually and beneficially.

The world of work is clearly changing and there is a growing need to establish the necessary infrastructure to support this new workforce . As we move through this transition, where almost half of us will work as solo professionals in the next 10 years, let us be thoughtful and intentional in how, as independents, we can lead this new economy in ways that are positive and profitable and most importantly sustainable for us all.

Women Entrepreneurs Helping Women Entrepreneurs

In so many ways, THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ was co-founded in celebration of women and their constant deftness at reconfiguring the work-life equation. We’re women, and our personal and professional lives have morphed so many times, and in so many directions, as our families changed, our children grew, our mother’s needed us, and as we needed our mothers. And in all the inventing and reinventing, and keeping to our core and leaning in, we have loved all its iterations. And it was from these experiences that we knew we wanted to create a platform where all women were empowered to work when they wanted, how they wanted, on their terms, and on projects that made sense to them. We didn’t necessarily set out to be entrepreneurs, but we found ourselves compelled to do what seemed right for many women.

Having established portfolio careers ourselves to try and find the balance and flexibility we sought in our own lives, we decided to turn directly into the problems we encountered in our pursuit. Using our experiences both in corporate and as independent consultants, we noticed two clear and synergists problems:

1. Companies had a growing need to hire highly specialized consultants, freelancers and independent contractors in an on-demand, a la carte capacity, and;

2. Many talented and highly qualified women who craved and created flexible work experiences were fragmented and ‘off radar’ to these hiring clients.

Both the independents and the companies alike, lacked efficient and effective ways to seek and find each other. For us, it was time to bridge the gap between companies and consultants and aggregate a community of independents into a one-stop shop for diverse on-demand talent. The emerging gig economy fueled our fire, as did the importantly growing voices of women demanding pay equity, leadership experiences, and work flexibility.

And THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ was born - a community-driven platform to support and promote women entrepreneurs, consultants, freelancers, scientists, attorneys, designers and engineers and to connect businesses to a highly qualified on-demand talent pool.

Much like the way Etsy carved a community from the big-box shop of Ebay, so too does THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ carve a niche for women in the landscape of the freelance hiring marketplace, without job-bidding, or brokering or taking fees for work engagements. Instead THE JILLS are incentivized to join to gain community, collaborative partnerships, and large-scale marketing exposure.   

As we embark on our entrepreneurial journey, we recognized the opportunity this new economy is creating, and we’re audacious enough to believe that women can lead it.

Join our journey and let’s get started. If we want to lead in this new working space, we must first link arms, lift each other up, and walk the path together so we can get out in front.

A Salute to our Iconic Women Leaders

May the Workforce be with you.

WORK (HAN) SOLO-NOT SILO™

THE FIRST JILLS

we are the founders of THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ and we are on a mission to work smarter, live fuller & lift others who wish to do to the same. 

After our corporate 9-5 gigs became more grind than growth, we were convinced there was a better way to do work, find work, and get work done. We knew you could have an independent business and still feel professionally connected. We felt sure it was possible to feed our brains & fuel our hearts, without sapping our souls, without missing out on life's special moments….And still stay busy. And still make a living, while keeping a life. 

Naive? Utopia? Nope.

We're doing it here at THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES ™. Join our journey. 

Corinne and Megan

"THE LIGHT OF ONE ROW BOAT IN AN OCEAN IS HARD TO FIND. BUT LINKING MANY TOGETHER MAKES A BEAUTIFUL BEACON".