you'll never look at a shopping trolley in the same way again...

I was recently invited to guest on the ValuesJam podcast, to reflect on the value of Generosity (which wasn't chosen me, or the series' host, but rather by the universe, after I chose the number '42' - if you want to know more about that tangent, you'll have to listed to the episode!).

As a quick reference point, 'values' are those things that are most important to us in informing how we try and act, view the world and others, define ourselves by, and how we prioritise our decisions.  

The show takes the format of using the ValuesJam card deck, to explore and understand how different values manifest, impact, and can be harnessed to create better understanding between us all (as a group of people trying to share the same planet).

So, after drawing the Generosity card, we started to share stories around the card's prompts. 

You can get the full episode here:

https://youtu.be/MwHkwP0_3Z0?si=lFfRmZ78HmfNI4Bk

But as a brief synopsis of what I took from listening back to it, the themes that we seemed to keep returning to through the discussion were:

• how negative motivations can create public good through the lens of values;
• how talking about values can resurface hidden and lost memories;
• the need for crazies if we're to see movements for change not only start, but also 'take'*;
• how we usually recognise a value more, the more we practice it.

And naturally, my props were never far from appearing on camera - this time, it was the turn of a rubber duck, safety googles, and a trumpet that each seemed a natural artefact to highlight an idea or argument we found ourselves making and exploring...

Overall, we agreed that being generous is a risky business for people to be, and if you listen to the full episode, you may never look at shopping trolleys in the same way again, after we found ourselves constantly returning to them and the influence they create on other people's behaviour as well as our own...

* https://youtu.be/fW8amMCVAJQ 

how to find out how much people really respect you...

I've blogged in the past about how difficult it can be to take 'time off' as a sole trader/freelancer - something that various studies also highlight:

• 1 in 4 of us aren't able to take any holiday at all, and of those of us that are able to, about half have to take work with them;
• and this isn't because we're all greedily trying to cash in, or we're workaholics, but because unlike our counterparts in salaried employment, we're not entitled to the nearly 6 weeks paid time off that they can claim for holidays.  If we take time off, we get no pay;
• and all of this is further compounded by my also being one of the nearly 500,000 self-employed/sole traders who are also unpaid carers, and so already earning less money than those that aren't...

So it was with mixed emotions that I prepared to be away for a week with my wife recently - roving around caves, forests, and fields in Devon and Cornwall. And as this has been the first time we've been able to take a holiday together for about 5 years, was 'quite important'. 

In recognising this, I made effort to contact various clients, project managers, associates, etc in advance, to alert them to my being away - partly to help manage expectations, and also to try and best protect this time away.

Most people I contacted acknowledged and wished us both a restful and enjoyable time. A mark of the respect and strength of relationship I'd built with them. Or so I thought...

While I was away, I had to respond to no less than 13 arising issues, all from different bodies, people, and groups whom I'd already informed of my being 'out of office'*. These ranged from local groups, to collaborators with whom I'm working on joint projects with, to infrastructure and national sector bodies.

And none of these messages referenced the senders' awareness that I was taking a holiday at the time they were sending them, nor that they were able/happy to wait until my return - in fact, nearly all needed responses urgently (so a good job that I was able to wander around early in the mornings before my wife rose for our adventures of the day, to find signals for my phone and quickly send acknowledgements, replies, and clarifications to nearly all of them).

Now, the above could be read as an encouragement that I'm fortunate to have these relationships and work at all, but it's also been said that a mark of respect is how far people will act in ways you ask them to - and in light of the above, I can't help but start to wonder how far my experience is illustrative of either people not being respectful of me, or it's a wider issue about freelancers and sole traders in general not being respected?

My hope in sharing this 'rant' isn't to shame any of the above (after all, there are always at least 5 sides to every story, and we'll never be aware of most of them), but to try and open up opportunities for conversations with others to test the above question: is it easier to have your holiday protected and uninterrupted if you're employed (and so have legal rights and protections for your time off), or are freelancers and consultants not thought of as being equally valued in how they're treated by clients in comparison with how said clients would treat their employed staff for the same circumstance (taking holiday)?

If it's the former, then it's another sign of how unjust the law is in treating the self-employed as a lower class of people in not recognising or affording them the same protections and rights as people in other forms of employment are entitled to. And subsequently, the damage this is doing to the 4.3 million of us in the UK who work in this way.

* Yes, dear reader, I could have simply ignored them all until I got back to civilisation - but to do so, would have meant a higher level of stress on my return when I opened the inbox to find torrents of conversation threads marked urgent and whose deadlines had already passed and therefore my needing to get involved in dealing with the unexpected 'fallout' from these (and which would have further compounded our coming home to find the bathroom leaking into the hallway...) - thus negating all of the benefits of taking time away.

Links - 

https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/article/holiday-when-self-employed-get-away-with-getting-away 

https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/articles/2023/05/can-i-get-self-employed-holiday-pay/ 

https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2023/06/being-all-things-to-all-people.html 

blending running a business with being a carer

Earlier this year, I found myself back in the Atomicon-verse (for those that don't know, it involves oversized pink pineapples, lots of freelancers getting giddy, and a strict 'no selling' rule). 

Most people involved in it seem to focus on the main day speakers, and the chance to hang out with people they normally only get to share a zoom screen with. But I've always found that the most encouraging, powerful, and useful part of it for me are the 'roundtables': hour-long on-line spaces in the weeks running up to it, hosted by people coming to the event, to share, reflect, and explore a range of self-chosen topics.

Last year, I was fortunate to be invited to lead one of these round tables, on the topic of being an unpaid carer and small business owner (see the write up from that here) - and this year, the ever upbeat Liz & Mike Cole were holding a space on how to approach 'blending' these 2 identities.

It saw a small group of us convene on screen at the appointed time, to initially offer mutual encouragement through each sharing a (very) small part of our story in how we'd come to gain our caring roles, after we'd already established and were running a business; and some of our struggles in reconciling often competing demands on us this leads to.

This also highlighted just how diverse caring roles can be:

- being a parent to young children

- being a foster carer

- being single parent, following the loss of a spouse

- having neurodivergent children (both young - of school age, and older - in their 20s)

- nursing a spouse through significant illness

- having elderly parents who struggle to live independently 

But we didn't focus on how we supported ourselves in these roles (as happened in last years' round table); our conversations instead explored how we can be more open about having a caring role, with our clients. 

This is because all of us identified to some extent with the concern that as freelancers and small businesses, clients buy us in to fix their problems - if they learn we also have caring responsibilities, which may mean we have to delay or defer working on their project, then they're more likely to pass us over for the commission. 

Several options and ideas emerged through these reflections together, and I've summarised them below, in hopes that they may be of encouragement and support to other unpaid carers in similar circumstances to us:

1) mapping the skills we've developed as unpaid carers, against the offers we can present to clients, to highlight how these responsibilities can offer us additional 'superpowers' in what we can offer them in turn;

2) highlighting the value and impact we've delivered to other clients whilst also having caring responsibilities, to challenge prejudice and bias on their part (however unconscious it might otherwise be);

3) pro-actively offer clarifications about our working practices to manage expectations, as part of our terms and conditions, as a means of 'positive disclosure';

4) referencing external research to validate the assertions we're making about all of the above with regards to our ability to deliver proposed projects.*

This isn't the first time that I've invested time in considering and exploring how to be more open with the world and clients about what it means for me to be an unpaid carer, and how this affects my working life - I had the opportunity to raise the question at an 'expert hot seat' session last year. However, in that instance, I felt rather disappointed with the response from the 'global experts' (who didn't have experience of caring roles themselves). Their suggestion was simply "Tell the client at some point, but don't make it a 'first date conversation' topic. If the client doesn't understand and isn't supportive, then you probably wouldn't want to work with them anyway". But that somehow misses the point of recognising that about 80% of the self-employed are already in poverty (before we add in the impact of being an unpaid carer, and the financial penalty we pay because of this), so we can't always have the luxury of being picky and choosy over the types of clients we work with...

Perhaps this divergence in experience can be attributed to the adage that those with the affected experience are best placed to know how to best respond to it? But as last years' round table on this topic highlighted, we seem to have precious little opportunity to currently do so, so I've very appreciate of Mike and Liz to have hosted the space, for us, and for everyone who was part of it on the day.

* There's not much of such research out there at the moment, but following last years' round-table on the subject, ipse and other national sector bodies have subsequently gotten interested in this topic (given that it's been identified there are about 500,000 of us!), so there should be more evidences hopefully emerging soon...