Diane Mulcahy: The Gig Economy

Transcript

[0:00:22] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today's episode is with Diane Mulcahy, author of The Gig Economy. Do you make most of your income through short-term jobs, contract work, and freelance assignments? If you do, then you're going to love this conversation. Before she wrote her book, Diane taught a class called The Gig Economy at Babson College, and that class was named by Forbes as one of the top 10 most innovative business school classes in the country. She taught her students how to prepare for the future and she shares some great stories of graduates who transformed their lives by embracing this style of work. By the end of this episode you’ll have completed a few simple thought exercises that will help you take charge of your own career and lead the life you actually want. Now, here's our conversation with Diane Mulcahy. Diane, before we talk about The Gig Economy, can you kind of tell me about your personal story journey, your back story that ultimately laid the foundation for the book?

[0:01:46] Diane Mulcahy: Yes, although my back story story is probably a little bit strange. It started when I read an article that used the term The Gig Economy and it was the first time that I had seen it and I swear to God I got goosebumps when I saw it, and I had a moment of epiphany where I felt like, “Oh my God! That is it. That is the thing that I have been thinking about for the past several years.” I had always been trying to figure out how can I work differently. I don't want to be a full-time employee. I don't want to have just one job. I like to be able to do a variety of different things. I like to be able to take time off. I'm an avid traveler, and I had taken chunks of time off, like in college to go backpacking and things like that. I wanted to be able to incorporate that into my adult life. When I read this article and I saw this term, I just felt like it became a thing for me. It had a name. I immediately created a syllabus. Now, it’s a question mark why I did that because I had no teaching experience, but I was doing a little bit of pro bono work at Babson College here in Boston where I live and I just felt like a syllabus and teaching it would be a good way to figure it out. There wasn't a lot written about it at the time. It wasn't even a thing. The term wasn't widely known or understood and it felt like a place to start. Babson's all about entrepreneurship, being in the classroom, as a new professor seemed very entrepreneurial, and so I created this syllabus and I got it approved as an experimental course. Now, the funny part of this story is when I posted the course as part of the next semester’s listings, well, when my department did. I structured it as an MBA course, hardly anybody signed up. The deal with an experimental course is that you have to have a minimum enrollment, and I didn't make it. The course was canceled and I tried again the next semester. Luckily, I did get the enrollment that I needed and it was off and running. I started teaching that course five years ago. I've been teaching it to groups of MBA students, and that experience really informed a lot of the content in the book in the sense that it allowed me to put in exercises that I had tested on my students as homework assignments and as in-class exercises and it allowed me to focus on subjects that really resonated with the students and then leave out subjects that didn't. That’s the story of The Gig Economy as told by me.

[0:04:57] Charlie Hoehn: Alright. When you created the course and the enrollment wasn’t high enough to make it a course initially, right? What was your feeling then, because you were so excited about the concept. Did you start to think maybe, “Oh, this is something that maybe I'm only passionate about,” or were you dead certain that this was going to be a bigger, more popular thing?

[0:05:24] Diane Mulcahy: I was pretty convinced, and I rewrote the description and I worked on the syllabus and I kept monitoring articles and other readings that came out during the year. I was pretty persistent. I was convinced that I should teach this class and that it should be taught, so I kept at it.

[0:05:46] Charlie Hoehn: Apart from your desire to have those traits in your life that workers in The Gig Economy have, why did you feel it was so important to teach it to others?

[0:05:59] Diane Mulcahy: Because I think if we all look around us, and especially if we’ve been in the corporate world and have worked full-time jobs over the course of our careers, we see a lot of people who are not happy in the work that they do, in the jobs that they have, in the type of life that they’re leading. I live in a major city, I don't have a long commute. I do work that I think it's interesting, but I know a lot of people who aren't in that situation and I was very dogged by the idea that there had to be another way for people to work that was more interesting, that was more exciting that made people more interested in the work that they did. They gave them more flexibility. I was really convinced about that.

[0:06:54] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. I have personal confession. I feel a kinship to both you and your book for the same reason. I had a similar strong feeling when I got out of college where I just couldn't see myself fitting into the round hole when I was a square peg of going into a very rigid traditional job when I was not that type of personality. I really believe as well that The Gig Economy offers so much more to people who have that type personality, but would you say that there are certain people that The Gig Economy is not for, or do you think it is something that our entire world basically is going to have to have as their new reality because of all the changes in the way we work?

[0:07:52] Diane Mulcahy: I think it’s largely becoming a new reality. I think, first of all, I would say I don’t think the traditional jobs world is for everybody. I suppose you could equally say that The Gig Economy is not for everybody. What I would say though is the jobs world and The Gig Economy are increasingly colliding. What we are seeing in the jobs world, the traditional jobs world, is the median tenure in a job is two to three years, and what that means is that you're already looking for your next gig, you’re already thinking about what's my next opportunity. How do I position myself? How do I think about marketing myself? How do I sell myself and create a brand? How do I make myself attractive for my next employment situation? Similarly, in The Gig Economy, you're always doing that because you're always looking for your next gig, your next project, your next client. The difference is really one of frequency. In the traditional jobs world, you're doing it maybe every couple of years. In the Gig world, you're doing it maybe every couple of months or maybe every couple of weeks if you're just getting started. I think that they're going to converge.

[0:09:15] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. I think you’re right. What I’m curious about is there are some people who seem to really do well in The Gig Economy, while I think a lot of people see it as an exhausting race and chase for a little bit of money. People who might just be Uber drivers or TaskRabbits, what do you see you are the things that people who are exceeding in the economy that are doing really well versus the people who are struggling or floundering?

[0:09:49] Diane Mulcahy: Yeah. Again, I like to draw the analogy with our traditional jobs based economy and say that if you look at our traditional jobs-based economy, you have people who are doing really well and you have people who are struggling and who are scrambling for pay. If you think about a cashier at McDonald's, if you think about somebody who works at Walmart, or pretty much anybody who works in retail, there’s a lot of shift work. There's a lot of work that's not well-paid that doesn't provide access to benefits. That already exists in our traditional jobs economy unfortunately. It also exists in The Gig Economy, and I think they're the same types of people that are in both positions. They are relatively unskilled. They may be are not as educated. The people who are doing well in both the jobs economy and The Gig Economy are people who are well-educated, who have skills that are in demand, who have experience that employers are seeking or that have particular expertise that the market is interested in. It's the same in both economies.

[0:11:06] Charlie Hoehn: Right. Absolutely. Let's talk more specifically about the stuff and the ideas in your book. At this point, people understand what The Gig Economy is, that it's a good fit for their personality or are they’re already doing it and having a little bit of success. What would you say is the number one idea in your book that listeners who are already in The Gig Economy could use this week to improve their lives, their professional lives in some way? What would be the one thing that you would want them to take away from this interview?

[0:11:47] Diane Mulcahy: First of all, I would just like to maybe make clear what I mean when I say The Gig Economy, because I do feel like a lot of people hear the term and their mind immediately goes to TaskRabbit and Uber, and so I just want to be clear about the audience that I've written to. When I talk about The Gig Economy, I'm basically talking about anybody who’s not a full-time employee in a full-time job. If you're a consultant, or you’re a contractor, or a freelancer, or a part-time person, or an on-demand worker, you’re in The Gig Economy. My definition is quite broad. In terms of the major idea, the reason that I wrote the book was really to try to emphasize the opportunities in The Gig Economy, but also acknowledge that it does require some changes mostly in mindset. I think probably the biggest takeaway for somebody who is thinking about The Gig Economy sitting a full-time job or maybe just getting going from reading my book is understanding the way that you need to change your mindset and some of your behaviors in order to succeed in The Gig Economy.

[0:13:01] Charlie Hoehn: Can you explain that a bit more?

[0:13:03] Diane Mulcahy: Sure. For a lot of people, and certainly this is true for people that I've interviewed and students that I've talked to in my class. There's sort of a default path of going to college, maybe going to graduate school, graduating and then getting jobs and a house and the normal sort of traditional American dream, if you will. In The Gig Economy, there's so much more uncertainty that it really requires a deeper examination of what it is that you want out of your life, because there is no longer an option to get a job and settle into a steady paycheck and put yourself on automatic pilot. It just doesn't work that way anymore. The economy is too dynamic.

[0:13:54] Charlie Hoehn: For the better. Yeah.

[0:13:56] Diane Mulcahy: Well, but it can be difficult for some people to question that traditional path, and I've certainly run across that resistance among my students. It's challenging.

[0:14:07] Charlie Hoehn: It's hard, because they’ve grown accustomed to in their most formative years having things be laid out for them, having a prescribed path with very clear levels advancing you to the next round and to enter into a world that's the exact opposite. Yeah, it's definitely challenging, but that's life, right?

[0:14:30] Diane Mulcahy: It is challenging and I think the biggest surprise to me doing the interviews for my book was realizing how many people were buying and living a life that they didn't actually want, because they had defaulted into this kind of standard path. What that led me to do is to spend some time right up front in the book and in my class encouraging readers and students to really think about what does success look like for you? What is your definition of success? What is it that you want to accomplish? What are the values that you want reflected in the life that you live both professional and personal? I really came to feel strongly that that's where you have to start and then everything else falls from there.

[0:15:29] Charlie Hoehn: Right. Were those questions questions that you wish you’d been asked at their age?

[0:15:37] Diane Mulcahy: I think so. Those were questions I began to ask myself pretty early on, but I think the earlier the better.

[0:15:46] Charlie Hoehn: Right. I’m curious how diving into this subject has changed either the way you work or the way you think about work. You kind of dove into The Gig Economy concept, very excited about it. You develop the syllabus. How much has the syllabus changed?

[0:16:08] Diane Mulcahy: The syllabus changed tremendously. In the beginning, when I started offering it — Remember, I was teaching this in an MBA program. When I started teaching it, I had a class on sort of the broad economic trend. I had a class on the impact on business models. I had a class on startups that were emerging to take advantage of this new way of working or to serve the people that were working this way. It was very business oriented as you would anticipate. What I discovered was that was interesting in so far as it went, but what really resonated with the students and the class as a whole in terms of discussion was how does this impact me? The students really were clamoring for something that was personal and applicable to their own lives. I started incorporating things like a success exercise, talking more about fear, talking more about risk and how to mitigate it. Talking about taking time off and how do you create a different life and how do you manage the expectations of your friends and family? How do you deal with your personal finance? All of those things that really form the structure of my book were not there in the first syllabus. They really evolved in response to what the students wanted, what they cared about, what they wanted to talk about, the issues that were important to them, and so I incorporated them.

[0:17:46] Charlie Hoehn: That’s fantastic. What a way to write a book, to have that kind of feedback. That’s great.

[0:17:54] Diane Mulcahy: I'm sure you have writers in your listening audience. Honestly, it was a little bit difficult for me as a writer because my writing background is entirely nonfiction and almost entirely business. Normally, I write about venture capital and investing and entrepreneurship. When I started writing this book I had to write about things like fear, and anxiety, and risk, and success, and people's dreams and I thought, “Oh my God! This is was way outside of my comfort zone.” But it was really that experience teaching that helped me.

[0:18:30] Charlie Hoehn: With having this book, given that this book was more of an emotional journey, how were you transformed as a person through the process of creating it? How did you start and where are you now?

[0:18:48] Diane Mulcahy: Yes, and thank you for asking that again. I know you asked a similar question in a different way. I think for myself I started from an emotional place thinking this is the kind of life I want to lead and I’ve ended up there for sure. I lived that kind of life. I am a person in The Gig Economy. I think in a way it's come full circle. I started teaching in a place that felt comfortable to me, very businessy, very economic-oriented, but I really ended up where I started which is how do I live a life like this? How can I help other people who are interested in living this life? How can I help people understand what it takes to not follow the traditional default path if that's not something that's interesting to them?

[0:19:40] Charlie Hoehn: Right. I’m wondering, when you were teaching the course, what were your students favorite exercises that you — What was the thing that they got most excited about when you started listening to what they wanted and giving it to them?

[0:19:58] Diane Mulcahy: I think the exercise that generates the most passion is absolutely the time off exercise. I have them do a homework assignment where they are to imagine that they have one year and one year of tuition equivalents and those are the resources they have. They have one year of time and one year of tuition equivalent in terms of cash. What would they do with that? That's really to get their minds freed from the constraints of time and money which constrains so many of us and really just let their minds go and write a plan for that year off. It's a very powerful exercise because, one; it unleashes the imagination. Two; once you write those things down, you cannot un-write them and you cannot un-know them. Students leave knowing the things that they would do, and those dreams take route. In many cases, those dreams are already there. I mean I receive assignments that are multiple pages with detailed itinerary, detailed, month-by-month, broken out into every possible thing that they're going to be doing and where they’re going to be traveling and with whom they’re going to be doing what. It’s really quite exciting. It's a really fun exercise for them to do and for me to read. I think the most challenging ones where the students — I have them do reflection papers and where they write things like, “This is really terrifying, this is really — I feel really anxious. I feel really uncertain,” are the earliest ones. The ones where I asked them to think about what is success really mean to them and what are the values that they care about living? What are some of the personal goals that they want to make sure that they accomplish in their lives? I think this applies to readers too who send messages to me. For many people, they don't take the time to do that kind of reflecting. When they do, it's very powerful.

[0:22:23] Charlie Hoehn: Can you share a specific story of maybe someone who gave a really remarkable — it turned in a really remarkable assignment for that exercise.

[0:22:36] Diane Mulcahy: I’ll do you one better, and I'll give you a story of a student who lived that exercise, who lived the course, because I got an email from him about two months ago. He was really moved by this course and by this new way of thinking and he decided to stop going through campus recruiting and he put together an Airbnb business, meaning he negotiated with landlords, got their approval to make the apartment an Airbnb apartment. He got several of them. He hired somebody to help him manage it. He got it up and running. Once that was — About a third of my course and about a third of the book is personal finance. That was incorporated into this plan. Once that was up and running and doing pretty well, he left the country to go traveling. He left shortly after graduation, so in about June, and I got an email from him a couple of months ago. After the beginning of the year, this spring, and he said, “My Airbnb business is going really well. It's throwing off a lot of cash. I've been traveling ever since graduation. I haven't looked back. I am so excited to be pursuing this dream that I've always had to travel but never thought that I could accomplish.” He was like, “I’m loving my life. It’s amazing, and I don't know when I'm coming back.” It was the best email.

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[0:25:41] Diane Mulcahy: That is the power of sitting down and actually really reflecting on just a few key questions can really clarify so many things that. Do you mind if I tell one other story about another student?

[0:25:57] Charlie Hoehn: Please do. I was literally just going to ask you, do you have any others stories you could share?

[0:26:02] Diane Mulcahy: Yes. I have one that’s different. I think this is another interesting one to highlight, and this is also one of my favorite stories. I was teaching a class in the evening, and so this student was already working a full-time job at a large traditional corporate 500 company and she was just starting her MBA. My class was the first one that she took, and she went through the course and she really was also really struck by some of these questions and exercises and things that she hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about. She hadn't really pursued very much a traditional path of graduating, getting a job. She had been living with her parents, saving money, paying down her debt, which was all great, out in the suburbs. She took my class and she was like, “You know what? That is not the life I want to continue to lead. I'm glad I did it. I am in a good position, but what I see now and what I know to be true is that I want something completely different.” She ended up dropping out of the MBA program. She quit her job in the Fortune 500 Company and ended up going to work for a much smaller sized company, a startup. It wasn't really a startup, it had been around for like two years. It wasn’t completely new, and she ended up being able to pursue work that was much more interesting to her, much more hands-on. She had a lot more responsibility, a lot more of a path to grow with the company which she was really excited about. She ended up moving into the city, selling her car. Again, this is some of the personal finance stuff. Selling her car, moving into the city into an apartment, having a much different lifestyle, a much more urban lifestyle that didn't include things like a car or a big house and was much more financially flexible. She was one of the students that I interviewed in the book and it was just a remarkable transformation of her life. I like to tell both stories because living in The Gig Economy doesn't mean you have to throw everything to the wind and travel the world. You can still — She still works a full-time job. She still has a very responsible life, if you want to call it that, but it looks really different than the life that she was living because she asked herself a lot of questions.

[0:28:38] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. Probably more aligned with what she ultimately wanted. Now, you mentioned she sold her car, she changed her lifestyle, and you also mentioned that your book covers a lot of personal finance. What I'd like to know is what is your personal finance advice for people making these big adjustments to their lifestyle who are veering toward The Gig Economy because they're going from — In their mind, their secure monthly paycheck, to something that is much more influx. What are the personal-finance recommendations you make?

[0:29:21] Diane Mulcahy: Yeah. My personal finance recommendations are not materially different even if you're in a full-time job because, as we all know, job security is absolutely dead. There are companies do not make any promises, guarantees of loyalty, of longevity, or anything. I feel like for people in full-time jobs, the first step in any kind of financial plan is becoming really clear and comfortable with the idea that you could lose your job at any moment. It could be eliminated, automated, outsourced, offshored, contracted out, whatever. The first thing that I recommend is that people who are in jobs put together an exit strategy, and that, right away, changes the dynamic that they have with their job because they’ve created a plan and a path to exiting it. Even if they decide to stay in their job, that's great. It doesn’t mean you have to execute on it, but just knowing that you have a plan and a series of steps that you have begun taking to make sure that you have a good exit gives people a sense of control and reduces their anxiety about that. I think, for everybody no matter what their situation, work-wise, having some kind of exit strategy is a good first step. I think probably the most important piece of personal advice is similar to the piece of life advice that I give in the book, which is really understanding clearly what is the life that you want to buy, because every lifestyle that we can choose costs money. We have to live somewhere, we have to do things outside of work for our entertainment, for our families, whatever that is. I think it's really important to get very clear on what it is that is important for you to buy, because otherwise what happens is you end up buying a lot of things that don't really matter to you and yet you end up having to generate revenue in order to cover all those expenses. If you can understand right from the beginning what matters to you and what you need to buy and how much it is, then you know, “Okay, here’s what I need to generate,” and then add on overhead and savings and things like that. That's how you can build a plan, and a lot of people don't do that. Again, it's a very powerful exercise. I actually have — There are number of very specific exercises, one of which is called the checkbook diagnostic that I have people go through to really understand what life they are currently buying and what pieces of that life they want to continue to buy.

[0:32:16] Charlie Hoehn: Right. In a quick footnote, because I love that advice of knowing what you really want to buy, is for the bigger ones, test them out first because you can test anything, whether it's a house, a car, you can do Airbnb, you can rent a car and have it be cheap before you commit, because sometimes you find out you don't need it.

[0:32:41] Diane Mulcahy: Actually, on that point, I have a whole chapter on this. I believe that the ability to access things in our life instead of own them, in my mind, that is nothing short of a personal financial revolution. It is incredible, the flexibility that it allows you to bring into your life the financial flexibility, the fact that you do not have to own so many things now. If you think about the impact that has on people's need to incur debt, it really becomes amazing. If instead of having a mortgage, you're open to a different living situation that includes renting or Airbnb-ing or being more nomadic, all of those things reduce your need to take on an enormous amount of debt. If you're willing to live in a city and access your transportation using Lyft or Zipcar or your local bicycle share, BicycleShare, or the subway, all of those things eliminate your need to purchase a car which means not having to go into debt to buy a car, no car payments. The ability to access, I really do think, is a financial revolution.

[0:34:07] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. It really is, and it's confusing at times because we’re still combating the old mentality, for instance, with homes. If you're renting, you’re throwing away money is the classic line that people will throw at you. Really, those are people who are planning on living in their home for 20, 30 years. If you're the person who’d looking for flexibility and being mobile and having options and living more for this year or the next couple of years instead of the next 30, renting makes a ton of sense.

[0:34:46] Diane Mulcahy: I have a whole section in my book on the myth of homeownership but I would also say that a lot of the narratives that we’re used to hearing around things like homeownership are predicated on a series of assumptions. The most significant of which is that your house will increase in value.

[0:35:06] Charlie Hoehn: You’re right, which is a huge assumption.

[0:35:09] Diane Mulcahy: It’s an enormous assumption. The real estate crash of 2008 really opened people's eyes to how necessary that assumption is to make all of the financials work around the houses that they bought. Now, there are different ways to buy houses too. One of the issues is, in the U.S. there are too many people buying houses that are too big with too much debt and that creates its own financial problem. Home ownership in and of itself is not a bad thing, but there are ways to do it that allow you to preserve more financial flexibility and then there are ways to do it that allow you no financial flexibility. Those are some of the things that I cover.

[0:36:01] Charlie Hoehn: Right. Talking more about these lifestyle shifts that come with being a part of The Gig Economy, I know that from firsthand experience and from talking to a ton of people who make their living in The Gig Economy that one of the most challenging parts is not the ups and downs with finances necessarily but it can be the isolation of working alone versus working at a company or with a team. In working at a co-working space might be somewhat of a relief to know that you're surrounded by people who work in similar styles, but it still doesn't always satisfy that feeling of being on a mission with somebody else and being connected to people that way. What are your suggestions, if you have any, for people who are working in The Gig Economy who want to feel supported socially? Do they need to have that be separate from work or are there ways of systematically kind of making that a part of their work life?

[0:37:15] Diane Mulcahy: That’s always an interesting point to me because I work in The Gig Economy and I don't feel isolated at all. I think for most people who are working independently, they are working with others. They have clients. They’re working on projects. There's a fair amount of just kind of — I hate to use the word networking, but keeping up with your connections, understanding what your colleagues are doing, understanding what's going in the market. A lot of people who work independently that I know do some form of speaking, or teaching, or getting themselves out there. If for somebody who's feeling isolated, I think one is to look at the kind of work that you're doing and is there a way to do work more project-based work that puts you in as part of the team or is there a way to do work that is more locally based in which you can go on-site to the client and maybe feel more a part of the team. Maybe if you traditionally have worked remotely, is there a way to incorporate into your proposals more time on site at the client if that’s your interest is to spend more day-to-day time with your colleagues. I do think co-working spaces are incredible resources. There's been some recent work that’s looked at, workers who avail of co-working spaces and what they found is those workers are actually happier than both people who work in an office and people who work from home and it's because they get all the autonomy and flexibility of somebody who works from home. In other words there's no FaceTime, there’s no office politics, nobody cares when you come, when you go, whatever, but they are in an environment of structure. Some people need the structure of a place to go, and then they’re also in an environment which is social and there are people there working independently. Now, companies are renting We Workspace so you can also tap into more of a professional network, then it's not just all independent workers. I think co-working spaces offer a real viable and very cost-effective alternative to people who feel isolated. The other thing I would say is I think it's important to live in a more urban environment if you're going to be a remote worker. I live in the middle of a city, so it's very easy for me to go to events during the day to go to Chamber of Commerce breakfast, to serve on a board and go to their meetings during my lunch hour. It’s easy for me to meet up with friends, former colleagues, business colleagues that might be coming through the city. It makes it so much easier to meet people in-person to grab lunch, to grab coffee. I think it's much more difficult — The people that do feel more isolated are the ones that live away from that. They’re in a suburb, they’re in a neighborhood. Nobody's home during the day, you have to get in your car and drive to go somewhere. It feels isolating. It feels time-consuming and not as casual to meet up with people. I would think about your living situation and is there a way to make that more dense?

[0:40:50] Charlie Hoehn: Right. That’s a great answer. I’ve read something recently that said as much rhetoric as there is for politicians about creating new jobs, over 90% of new jobs are created by individuals in The Gig Economy; freelancers, consultants. How do you see the economy shaping up going forward? Do you feel that this, on a whole, is going to make life better for most people, worse, about the same? Where do you see the big picture?

[0:41:30] Diane Mulcahy: I think you're absolutely right. The driver of The Gig Economy —There are a couple of drivers. One is the job creation rate is at historic lows. Companies aren’t creating jobs at the same rate they used to, and they're also figuring out that they don't have to create jobs. They can actually take what used to be a job and disaggregate it into a series of tasks and projects. The example I like to use is there aren't very many reporter jobs anymore, but there's lots of freelance writing work. You're seeing a movement from jobs to work. The other thing driving it is companies — For many companies, the full-time employee really has become the worker of last resort, because they're expensive, they're inflexible, it's difficult to respond to their business needs and bring in the expertise they need at any given time. Finally, I mean, workers want to work this way. Of all the surveys that have been done, asking the independent worker, “Would you work this way? Would you continue to work this way? Do you plan to continue to work this way? Do you plan to continue to go back to full-time work?” Over 70% say they are choosing to work this way and they want to continue to choose to work this way. That's a really powerful statement, I think, that people are finding this an attractive alternative. The other interesting thing which I think it’s no press at all is that many contractors in The Gig Economy are highly paid and their growth rate is increasing the fastest. What you're seeing is highly paid professionals that have options are the ones choosing to work this way, because they have a choice. In a way, that makes sense.

[0:43:21] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. Can you give some examples of the ones that should be getting press that are highly paid?

[0:43:27] Diane Mulcahy: It’s not an individual necessarily, but that's just a trend, that I think the latest numbers I saw indicated that about 20% of independent workers in The Gig Economy are making $100,000 a year or more and that that cohort is growing at over 30%. It's one of the fastest-growing cohorts of The Gig Economy, is highly paid professionals. Again, it makes sense. Those are people who have the choice.

[0:43:59] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, absolutely. From what I understand, a lot corporations, these bigger corporations are having to lay off salaried employed and those professionals are transitioning into The Gig Economy with their skill sets and their knowledge of working in the corporate world. They’re working independently. Probably earning more than they ever did and having to work arguably less.

[0:44:28] Diane Mulcahy: That’s absolutely true. I that's not the case for everybody, but those examples absolutely exist. Where you stand in The Gig Economy depends on where you sit. As I said earlier, if you're somebody who has that experience, who has skills, who has expertise, who’s in demand, you can be very well-positioned and do very well in The Gig Economy. It’s more difficult if you're a relatively unskilled worker who doesn't bring that to the table.

[0:44:59] Charlie Hoehn: Right. Diane, I just have a couple final wrap up questions for you. If you were going to write a follow-up book to The Gig Economy, what would you write?

[0:45:09] Diane Mulcahy: That’s an interesting question. A follow-up. On the topic of The Gig Economy.

[0:45:16] Charlie Hoehn: Or your next book. Yeah, I’d be more interested in hearing what the extension would be of The Gig Economy.

[0:45:22] Diane Mulcahy: One of my real interest in The Gig Economy is the policy aspect of it. I'm a policy wonk. I have a Master’s in Public Policy and I did against the advice of several people who read my manuscript, I did squeeze in a chapter at the end on some of the policy issues that are important to think about as we move to this new way of working, but it's only a chapter. I suppose if I were to write a follow one book, I would focus on that aspect of it and talk about some of the policy issues.

[0:46:03] Charlie Hoehn: Not to go too deep down that rabbit hole, but could you give a quick overview of what that chapter covers?

[0:46:11] Diane Mulcahy: It covers things like the issue of employee classification, the structure of our labor market where we break it into contractor and employee. It covers the topic of benefits and issues around portability and universality. It covers retirement and how we think about that and how we think about a safety net. All of those kinds of interesting midi but fairly complex topics.

[0:46:39] Charlie Hoehn: Absolutely. Do you have a parting piece of advice for aspiring authors or even aspiring authors who are professors and teachers who have things to say now that you've been through this whole process or writing books?

[0:46:58] Diane Mulcahy: I should say this isn’t my first book.

[0:46:58] Charlie Hoehn: Right. I understand that.

[0:47:05] Diane Mulcahy: Yeah. Yeah, not my first rodeo. The thing I always like to think about is I heard a great saying which goes like this, “I hate to write. I love to have written,” and I think that's so true. Writing is never easy. It's hard. You wrestle the concepts to the paper. You fight with the words and the sentences and the paragraphs and the structure. It's never easy. It’s often tedious. It is lonely. I think the reason to write is if you have something that you really want to say. I think that's the only thing that ever worked for me.

[0:47:48] Charlie Hoehn: I completely agree with you there. A friend of mine who’s an author, his advice is the only reason you should write a book is because you have to. You have to give birth.

[0:48:01] Diane Mulcahy: I would agree with that. This book has been — I signed with an agent for this book 3 years ago. This book has been in my life, on my head for several years and there was just such a feeling of relief to have written it. I knew I had to write it. I sort of didn't want to, sort of did want to because I knew I was getting into. I really had things that I felt I had to say and I think that's the reason to write it. I think it would be very difficult to decide intellectually to write a book to kind of improve your business prospects or brand yourself. I think that would be a difficult exercise. It really has to come from somewhere else.

[0:48:50] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. Absolutely. Big time. How can our listeners connect with and follow you?

[0:48:54] Diane Mulcahy: Well, the easiest way is my website, which is dianemulcahy.com, and that has a number of articles that I’ve written on The Gig Economy as well as a link to my book. I'm also on twitter @dianemulcahy. Those are probably the easiest ways.

[0:49:10] Charlie Hoehn: Beautiful. Diane, thanks so much for being on the show.

[0:49:14] Diane Mulcahy: Thank you for having me. This has been so much fun to be on an Author Podcast. Usually, I’m on a business podcast or talking about the economy. I really enjoyed being able to be more casual and talk all my students and the writing experience. That's really been fun for me.

[0:49:35] Charlie Hoehn: Awesome. I’m so glad to hear that.

[0:49:37] Diane Mulcahy: Thank you for those questions.

[0:49:39] Charlie Hoehn: You got it. Many thanks to Diane Mulcahy for being on the show. You can buy her books, The Gig Economy, on Amazon.com. What was your favorite takeaway from this episode? Let us know by leaving a review on iTunes or by posting a comment at Facebook.com/authorhour. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.