Self-Employment with Sarah Ventre

3rd Decade Alum, Sarah Ventre, shares in detail how she hustled her way through unpaid internships & temp jobs in her 20s and ultimately built herself a successful career in the audio journalism and production industry. If you need inspiration or someone to relate to if you're currently walking that path, look no further. 

To find more of her work, you can visit her website at sarahventre.com

Transcript

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Nikita 0:00

Hey, third decade community. I'm your host Nikita Wolf, and today I'm joined by one of third decades alumni, Sarah Ventry. Sarah's a full-time audio journalist and podcast producer and like many of the people that we serve hope to do someday , she transitioned from working for somebody else to working for herself almost five years ago. The Number of participants and third decades program who work for themselves or want to work for themselves continue to increase. So we thought it'd be valuable to have her on the podcast with us to share her perspective. Thanks for joining us Sarah .

Sarah 0:45

Thanks so much for having me, Nikita.

Nikita 0:48

So would you mind starting us off by sharing a little bit about the path that you took that brought you to where you are today?

Sarah 0:55

Sure. So I am a journalist and so when I was in college I started doing some freelance work for the Phoenix New Times and for, I was working at the college radio station. I was actually not studying journalism. Um, I studied anthropology, but I was really interested at that time, mostly in music and culture journalism. So I was writing about albums and local bands and things like that. And I realized that I actually really, really enjoyed getting an opportunity to kind of like live in that world and I wanted it to be more of my focus. So I was, as I was putting myself through college, I was working kind of halftime doing , uh, it got to a point eventually like where I was able to work up to doing halftime freelance writing and halftime , uh, I was cocktail waitressing at a, at a blues bar in, in town, which was great too cuz I was around music all the time. Um , yeah . And I , but I really wanted to shift the balance and I wanted to more of my time and energy to be focused on , um, at the time freelance writing. So I, I put a lot of energy into , um, like trying to learn the craft and doing freelance work for as many places as I possibly could and getting as many , um, things published as possible. And then when I graduated from college, I applied for an internship at NPR r Music at a , a podcast that was actually like one of the very first podcasts called All Songs Considered. Um, and this was sort of this reach, like dreamy setup that would be like working at this very, very cool podcast that was their mission is that they're dedicated to helping people find music they fall in love with. And it just seemed like so optimistic and beautiful. Um, and I was really, really, really lucky. And I, and I got that internship. Um, I will say it was an unpaid internship at the time. They're, they're paid now, but at the time it was an unpaid internship. Um, and so I worked as a, and it was in Washington DC which is a really expensive city to live, live in that I couldn't afford to live in at the time. And so I worked as a live-in housekeeper in exchange for free rent so that I could afford to live in the DC area and do my internship. And I lived in Virginia. I didn't live in DC and I lived not on the metro line . So I had like, it was a two hour commute each way , um, to and from work. And it was, it was rough. Wow . But I knew that this was , uh, a job that I wanted to be able to have eventually. And I, and I just sort of decided that this time in my twenties was gonna be a time that I really gave every, every ounce of energy I had to try to see if this was possible.

Nikita 3:40

That is dedication. I'm, I'm impressed. I had no idea that , um, I mean how creative that, even though unfortunately it was unpaid, like you found a way to make it work and like get your dream opportunity. That's so

Sarah 3:53

Great. Thanks. Yeah, it was, it was really hard. And like the thing is I feel like, you know, in a lot of ways I come from a, a middle class family and so knowing how hard it was for me to, to do that, I mean, my family wasn't able to help support me , um, when I was there and hadn't been financially supporting me for a long time. So, but I felt like it's just a really tough thing and it's something I think is important to talk about because I think if someone had been in a more difficult financial situation than the one I was in, like I didn't, I had student loans, but I didn't have a ton of credit card debt at that time, so mm-hmm . <affirmative> , like I , I was still able to just like live really, really cheaply. But it was a massive struggle. And I mean, full disclosure, I was like sneaking onto the metro so that I, I didn't have to pay the fair because it was like even that $4 fair or whatever was like, yeah , just felt exorbitant and it , it was a very stressful time, a very stressful existence. But , um, I , I also, I'll just say that because this is a financial podcast, I'll mention this too. There are lots of like weird creative things that you can sometimes do in big cities to save money. And um, one of the things that someone told me about when I first started like commuting in Virginia was that in Northern Virginia they have this system called slugging, where basically in order to get in the carpool lane on the beltway, which is the big freeway around the DC area, you have to have three people in your car instead of two. So if people wanna be able to drive to work and use the carpool lane , they have to pick up people to get in the car with them. And so they will offer you a free ride in exchange for being able to drive in the carpool Lane <laugh> .

Nikita 5:34

I've never heard of that. That's so

Sarah 5:35

Funny. It's so wild. It's like, it's like organized hitchhiking but in upper middle class suburbs. And so , oh my goodness, I would like walk a mile to the slug stop and then get in this slug line and then get a free ride into the city that way. And so I was doing things like that also where I was just getting in cars with people to get on the beltway and like trying to work these odd jobs on the side and stuff like that. And I continued to freelance while I was working at NPR also cuz um, even though I had free rent, I still needed money for food and the metro and eventually I needed money for like a winter coat, which is something that I didn't have cuz I grew up in Arizona. Yeah . So <laugh> . So I loved working at NPR and I wanted to stay and someone told me, if you really wanna stay working at npr, what you need to do is learn how to edit audio and try to go work for some of the news shows because they always need extra help. And , um, I taught myself how to edit audio with the help of some very generous people who would let me into the building and I would kind of sneak away into a production room by myself and they would um, show me how to open up like a raw interview that, that an NPR host had done earlier in the day that had already aired. And I would take the audio and make a copy of it and then I would try to cut it down myself. So they would say, okay, like , um, you know, this host hosted a 45 minute interview, can you make it four minutes long? Oh my gosh. And I would spend , yeah, it was really hard and I would spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how to do it and then I would ask a friend like, can you listen to this and tell me does it sound good? Does it make sense? Are the cuts clean? Like all of those kinds of things. And basically just continue to practice at that until I was able to get a little tiny bit of temp work at npr At the time NPR used temps a lot and that was sort of the stepping stone to getting a full-time job there, which I think is kind of problematic. And I think they're trying to address that problem now. But at the time that was like what I, again, I felt like the system was imperfect, but there was something, it was something if I really wanted to work there that I needed to try to do. And so I was trying to like fit into that system.

Nikita 7:43

Do you mind sharing the general timeframe in which you were working for NPR as a temp? Like the year span?

Sarah 7:50

Yeah , so I interned in the fall of 2010. Um, so it was like between Labor Day and Christmas 2010. And then I wanted to get temp work immediately afterwards, but I couldn't. And so it took a while . And so from January, 2011 until like I think June or July, 2011, I was working as a daytime bar manager at a bar near the National Zoo . And then when I wasn't at work, I would bring copies of my resume into npr, get the friend to let me into the building again. And I would literally walk around to all of the offices of all of the executive producers of the shows and just go up to the ep, like the e executive producer, our morning edition and be like, hi, you don't know me but my name is Sarah Ventry and I interned here and I know how to cut audio and I'd really like to work for Morning Edition and here's a copy of my resume. Can we talk about this? And sometimes they'd be like, I don't have time to talk to you now, why don't you come back in a few days? And I'd be like, great. And then I'd make myself a note like, okay, I'm gonna come back in a few days and then I'd walk to the next person's office and I did this for, for like six months where I was going in almost every week. Um, and just following up with people

Nikita 9:02

That's such hard work. Not only like in, you know, in terms of the time that that requires, but that's, you're putting yourself out there. It's like almost emotional labor, at least if you're like me and, and feel that way, you know, walking up to someone and and pitching yourself.

Sarah 9:18

Yeah, it's definitely emotional labor and like actually part of the reason why I think it's really important to talk about this aspect too is because I feel like this is actually something that set me up for what ended up being the career that I currently am working, which is a freelance career. It's like a lot of hustling and I think at different points in your career or like in your, like at any moment in time when you're looking to line up your next contract or your next gig or your next job, like you have to be kind of forward thinking about like, like I started having to think, okay , um, a lot of people take vacation around the holidays, right? So that's like a time when a lot of shows need temps. So if I wanna get lined up to work around the holidays, I needed to start going to people in like October and saying, Hey, I'm gonna be here around the holidays. Do you have, do you need any like extra help around Christmas? And then people would be like, actually yeah, a bunch of people are taking vacation. Can you work the week between Christmas and New Year's ? And I would just say, yes, of course I can do that. And so , um,

Nikita 10:21

That's so smart.

Sarah 10:22

Yeah. And I got a lot of advice from other people who had been through this kind of system before who were like, here's what you need to do, find out, like if someone is taking leave, find out if someone is going away for the holidays. Find out if a show is trained to expand and needs a little extra help. Like , um, and so I was constantly like doing those things and eventually I got, like, I got hired to do two weeks of work as an editorial assistant on a show the summer of 2011. And at the end of the two weeks I went to them and said, would you consider extending my contract? And they did. And I ended up working for that show off and on for probably like nine months. But I , I, my contracts were never, I think I had one contract that was six weeks, but other than that every contract was two weeks. And so every two weeks I had to go ask for more work and sometimes they would say, no, we don't need you next week, but come back in a week cuz we might need you in two weeks.

Nikita 11:16

I think this is such a, a point of struggle for freelancers is it's such irregular work. It's like you almost have to have like a big break per se. And did you have anything that finally felt like that at some point? Or did you just finally get to a point where you were getting enough of that kind of random work that it sort of sustained itself?

Sarah 11:37

It was the second one for me and it was, I really wanted it to be the first one I had heard of people getting these long-term appointments. Like , um, you know, someone is taking six months off because they're going on parental leave, so we need , um, somebody to fill in while they're out. And so when we get the six month appointment and then after the six months we're over, they , the person was so integral to the team that they would find a way to hire them el , you know, anyway. And I was really hoping for something like that, but for me that never happened. And what ended up happening was that I just got really good at making relationships with people and filling in for people who were out. I was good at floating from show to show, so sometimes people would work, you know, like six months at one show. But I was working a few weeks here, a few weeks there , uh, like Christmas week I was at All Things Considered and New Year's Week I was at Morning Edition and then two weeks after that I was at the newscast. And so like, I was constantly sort of bouncing around and it was really stressful. The, the upside was that it meant that I met like every manager at NPR r and they all knew me and they knew I was able to work under pressure and they knew what I was good at and so I could be a go-to person when they needed a fit . Like, oh some , you know , half of our staff got the flu, can you come in this week and fill in? Like I could just jump in seamlessly. But it also meant that I didn't have super regular work. I was just able to get to a point where I knew enough people and I had enough of a stable of work that I, you know, I could sort of start to see in advance like, okay, I can be at this show for a month and so in two weeks I'm gonna start walking around the building again and checking to see who needs help. And um, and then eventually I got a three, like, like these longer three month appointments with the newscast , um, which they didn't guarantee work, but it paid a little bit better. Um, it was just the exchange was you had to work really a regular hours. So I worked overnights for a long time. I worked , uh, 4:30 AM shifts, like things like that, like shifts that were just eight 30 to four 30, but it was like eight 30 at night to four 30 in the morning or something like that. Oh my god. And I actually did that, that temp cycle that I'm describing. I did that for probably , um, almost three years because I never was hired permanently as a permanent employee at npr. But I worked at NPR from <laugh> summer of 2011 until like the February of 2014. Wow. Yeah. And so that whole time I was just like, and I was learning and growing too and I, I kind of saw it as like, this is not how I want my career to be permanently, but I'm gonna just treat this as a time where I can really get experience. I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna grow. I learned how to do different skill sets and so I got good at different things and it was helpful. And then February, 2014 I applied for a full-time job as a senior producer at the N P R station in Phoenix, which is where I grew up. And I got it and I moved to Phoenix and then that was like, at that point I was 28 or 29 and that was really my first full-time salary job. I think all of that time I hadn't really thought about it as freelancing because I was really trying to work at one company and all of my work was coming from one company, but it really was freelancing and until I got this full-time job and then I worked that job for about four years and in 2018 or four and a half years and then in 2018 I left to go freelance on my own.

Nikita 15:07

I'm interested in hearing maybe how you navigated employee benefits or lack thereof as somebody who was a temp for, you know, a handful of years. How did you handle taking time off of work or, you know, were the breaks long enough that you didn't feel like you needed that? How did you manage health insurance? I think these are really common struggles for people who are trying to freelance and make it on their

Sarah 15:29

Own. Yeah. So this is so messy and it was so hard to navigate. Um, so I did it in a handful of different ways. So first of all, I did not have p t o for a long time and I just told myself that this was like a phase of my career where I wasn't gonna have P T O and I needed to be okay with that. And it's actually not something I think anybody should have to be okay with. But I think unfortunately that if you work for yourself, you have to think about giving yourself p t o . And so now that I've been through the third decade program, and I've also been doing this for a lot longer, when things are good, you know, sometimes the phrase like make , hey , when the sun shines, I think when things are good I would save money. Whe where I could at N P R you get paid double time and a half to work holidays. So I was working every holiday I possibly could because I could make, you know, a week's worth of pay in two days. And so I, I was just like, okay, any holiday, every holiday I wanna work. And I would definitely like line up all the holiday work and then I would try to save money to say, okay, so in January when everybody comes back from their vacations, I'm probably not gonna be needed for a couple weeks, but it'll be okay because I'll have saved the money that I worked during the holidays. And I really went back to basics for a while. Like I was so tied on money and so paycheck to paycheck at the beginning that I was just doing everything out of cash and envelopes and like keeping 'em in my underwear drawer. And like that was like the only way I could do it at the beginning. And eventually I was, I will say this too , N P R is a union, sh NPR r headquarters is a union shop and I was covered by the union as a temp. I did have to pay union dues and that came out of my salary and that was not easy. But because of that I was able to get certain union protections that I think can be difficult for people in other places to get. So now as a freelancer in Arizona, just working for myself, I don't have that obviously, but at the time I had that, so that helped because I had kind of a minimum pay and then a certain , um, I, I was able to get the benefits of like getting holiday and pay and things like that. The second thing is benefits. So at the beginning when I was working at the, the bar and like working very, very temporarily at npr before I had built up like my kind of permanent temp uh, situation, I didn't have insurance. Um, this was also a different time. So there was like, I think the law passed around that time that if you were up to 23 or 25 or something, you could be on your parents' insurance. But my parents didn't have insurance and so I didn't have health insurance for a while . Um, and at a certain point like I got sick and I needed to go to the doctor and I tried to go and just assumed I was gonna have to like get a big bill and pay it off. And um, someone at the doctor's office said, have you thought about applying for Medicaid? And it hadn't occurred to me like at that time that I was in a , an income bracket where I could qualify for Medicaid. And I was embarrassed because I thought that Medicaid was for people who were poor. And I was like, this feels so counterintuitive to me that I'm trying to work a fancy job at a fancy company in dc Like I was wearing like, you know, office clothes every day and going into npr, which felt really kind of bougie. And then I was saying, I don't have enough money for health insurance, but the reality was when I broke down the numbers I didn't and I absolutely qualified for Medicaid.

Nikita 19:10

Yeah, there's so much stigma around using those services and it's something I've talked about before on our blog and on our podcast that like there are requirements that if you meet, like use it because they're , they're meant to be used as a tool that helps get you a leg up so that you don't have to be dependent on them forever, but they can be life-changing for the people that actually need them.

Sarah 19:32

They can be life-changing. And I think I just, I did feel so much stigma around it, especially, you know, depending on where people live. But like I was in DC which I think there's a very stark contrast between rich and poor and DC and I saw a lot of poverty when I was there and I felt like it was wrong to be trying to use a resource that people that I could see really needed it were also using. But I had to stop thinking about it as a limited, like it wasn't a pie that if I took a piece of it, there wouldn't be a piece for someone else. Yeah,

Nikita 20:05

Exactly.

Sarah 20:06

And that was really changing for me. And actually I wish I had really internalized that because to be honest I qualified for food stamps too and I didn't take them because I was so embarrassed and I really needed them. And there had, you know, by that point I was mostly able to afford groceries, but there had been a time prior to that when I was doing the unpaid internship and working as a live-in housekeeper that I couldn't afford groceries and I had this awful moment where I went to the grocery store and I, you know, went to the checkout and they told me the total and I ran my card and it was declined and oh ma'am, I just couldn't afford the groceries and I, and I said, Hey, I'm really sorry, you know, I don't, I don't have the money money, I'm just gonna have to ask you to put these back. And everybody in the grocery store just stared at me all at once and it and it felt horrible And so, oh man. Yeah, I wish that I had been not so proud as to not take the food stamps when I needed them and like I was really grateful that I had Medicaid when I needed it and you know, it was a difficult system to navigate. It's a really imperfect system. Like you have to do all these weird things. Like I would have to take a day off from work to go stand in line to like re-certify my Medicaid and the irony of like missing work so that you could get a benefit that you only qualify for because you don't make enough money. It's kind of intense. Right? Yeah. Um, but eventually I got Medicaid and then eventually, eventually um, someone told me, you work here enough that the union should be like, you get union, like you're a member of the union, you get benefits like you should be getting paid. Like

Nikita 21:41

And no one before that?

Sarah 21:42

No, because I didn't have one boss. I had been hopping around from person to person and show to show and there was, I sort of fell through the cracks a little bit cuz nobody was saying, huh, what's Sarah's like, nobody was checking to make sure I got, you know, I was supposed to be getting p t o that I could start banking. I was supposed to be getting health insurance, I was supposed to be getting retirement benefits that I didn't even know that I was supposed to be getting. Um Wow. And yeah, and I had to work with the union lawyer to like get everything straightened out so that I could get those things. And by

Nikita 22:17

The time were they have a backdate any of those like retirement benefits specifically ,

Sarah 22:21

Um, I don't know if they were able to backdate the retirement benefits, they backdated the P T o but by the time I got the PT o I was getting ready to leave NPR R so they paid me out the vacation time that I had banked but not the sick time, which was kind of hard to swallow cuz there had been times where I worked when I was sick. Yeah. Because I didn't have sick time, which like now knowing everything , I mean this was obviously pre covid , but like now I think about that and I'm so horrified at myself that I was like going into the office coughing all over everybody, like keeping a tea , like electric tea kettle under the desk B you know, because like clearly I was infecting other people I'm sure. So it's

Nikita 23:01

Such a sad reality. Well I think we'd all be embarrassed to admit it, like most of us have done that at some point or another and it's just so frustrating that that is necessary for some people because like the alternative is like, okay, I can't buy groceries this week if I don't show up for my fourth shift.

Sarah 23:19

Exactly, exactly. Wow.

Nikita 23:21

Yeah.

Sarah 23:22

So anyway, eventually I was able to get those benefits and, and I I'm saying all of that because I think again, when you're a freelancer or when you're not, you don't just have like one boss and like a constant paycheck. There's a ton of things that like otherwise, you know, you meet with an HR person when you get hired somewhere and they set you up with your benefits and they give you all the paperwork and you can make an appointment with them and ask questions. And when your a temp and they , your contract is two weeks, it doesn't float up to anybody to say, oh, we should make sure that she's worked like ten two week contracts. We should make sure she's like getting enrolled for benefits now. Um, that that doesn't always happen. And so you do have to think about those things yourself and it takes an immense amount of time and labor to apply for the Medicaid or apply for the health insurance or you know, figure out your finances so that you can save money for when you don't have P T o or all of those other things. So , um, I was really kind of hanging by the skin of my teeth for, for quite some time.

Nikita 24:23

Wow. Uh , I it is all too familiar I think among, like I said freelancers. So I'm gonna use this as kind of a segue into, obviously it feels very tumultuous while you're going through that. When did it feel safe to you to make that leap into doing it full-time? You

Sarah 24:43

Know, I worked that permanent full-time salary job at the NPR station in Phoenix for a few years. Um, and I would say during the second half of that period of time I started getting maybe queries from people who were interested in doing things. So, like for example, the, like a department at the university wanted to make a podcast and they didn't know how to do it. And so they would reach out to, like, they would look up who are the producers at the local NPR station cuz they're , they know how to produce audio. And then they would sometimes reach out to me and say, hey, like we're thinking of making a podcast, is that something that you could help us with? Um, and I would be like, oh yeah, for sure. That's something I know how to do. So I would take on these kind of , um, they were often, I think university jobs pay a little better than other ones, so they were usually like decent paying, but then they were kind of smaller jobs. So it would be like, we want to record three episodes and we want your help making a three episode podcast and we'll pay you this lump sum of money. And so I, I was able to do that outside of my job at the station and then I started thinking like, you know, I'm interested in getting some of my stories placed on national shows and sometimes you can make money doing that. So I was like looking into that and then I kind of started realizing that like, you know, there's a little bit of a demand for the skillset that I have outside of the station and I was getting to a point where, you know, I love public radio and I loved the station, but I felt like I wasn't really able to grow in that job anymore. It was not as creatively fulfilling as it was at the beginning. And I at that point started to just look for other work outside of that and I started thinking, okay, if I wanna make this leap and leave the station and work for myself and do freelance production, I need to have, you know, like I think it's very helpful if you have an anchor client. So like someone where you can get, let's say half of your income from that person, so the equivalent of , of 20 hours a week of pay and then you can pull together the other 20 hours a week through little jobs or something like that. And so I started looking around for other opportunities and I started, I, I was able to kind of pull together a handful of these smaller jobs and then I thought, you know, all I really need is this one anchor to kind of be in a position where I can actually make this jump. And then I started looking for the anchor job and I applied for a job that was like 20 to 30 hours a week producing, helping launch a new show, a new podcast. And when I got that I, I thought, okay, like now I have the puzzle pieces fit together and it's gonna be like a little tough cuz there's gonna be things I have to figure out on my own again, but I feel ready to do it. So I I, I waited until I had the offer for the anchor job and I had been slowly piecing together these other smaller things, which meant that for a while I was really working a ton and really exhausted because I think, you know, I was working my full-time job and trying to pull together these smaller gigs and working these other jobs at the same time. And so there is a period where you have to do that kind of ramp up so that you can make the shift and it can be very exhausting for sure. But for me that's, that's how I did

Nikita 28:05

It. I think a lot of people um, have this dream that working for yourself means like showing up to a coffee shop and putting in like 15 hours of work in a week and then heading home and calling it a day. And while that maybe for some people can be a reality later down the road, I think a lot of people it, it more so looks like working 50 hours a week up front Yeah. While you're kind of building your business and then Yeah . You know, reaping the rewards of that later. I am kind of curious, have you been able to work less than 40 hours? Like do you , do you end up working less now than you did when you were previously scrounging together all the work now that you have your solid client base? Or do you feel like you end up working more than you would if you just had a normal nine to five job?

Sarah 28:47

That's a really good question. So y you know, part of it is tricky cuz I've never had a nine to five job that was truly nine to five <laugh> .

Nikita 28:54

Yeah,

Sarah 28:55

That's fair. All of my nine to five jobs have really been like, you know, eight 30 to seven or what six or you know, something like that. But um, I feel like, okay so part of the freelance thing too is that there's a little bit of an ebb and flow. So there are some weeks where I'm working much more than 40 hours where I'm working late into the evening or I'm working weekends or both. There are also some weeks that I have kind of a lull and I might only work 20, 25 hours that week or there might be a week or two in between projects. I mean now I work mostly on documentary podcasts that take somewhere between six months and a year to make. And sometimes I'm working full-time on a project for that year and then when the year is up I take, you know, a a week or two break in between and then I get started on another project. So there are some weeks that I'm, you know, able to sort of regroup and have like my downtime and, and get to a place where I can start thinking creatively again and then move on to the next project. The biggest thing I think is that I control the way my day is set up in a way that I couldn't when I was at a full-time job. So like I think I still work an equivalent amount. Like I don't always time it exactly when I start and exactly when I stop. But I would say I work about the same amount as I did before for a while. It was like I had to work a lot more. Now it's like much more balanced and I feel like there are some weeks that are hard and heavy and some weeks that are a little lighter and then some weeks that are that nice balanced. So I, I think for the most part it balances out. But I feel like also, you know , I'm a caregiver for my dad for example, so today I'm taking him to an appointment in the afternoon, I'm able to just make that choice to take him to an appointment in the afternoon and then instead of having to use P T O or put in for sick time or whatever

Nikita 30:54

Or get someone's permission.

Sarah 30:56

Yeah exactly. I can just say I'm gonna take my dad to his appointments this afternoon and then when I come home I'm just gonna work later tonight. And so I'm able to do that or if I feel sick or have a migraine and need to just not work one day I can do it and make it up on a Saturday. Or if I need to go do field work on the weekend, I could say, you know, I'm gonna make Monday kind of a slower day where I just sort of catch up on, you know, sending out invoices or something that doesn't take a lot of my mental energy. So to me that's the biggest difference is that you can really control how your day is set up, but the only way that you're able to work fewer hours <laugh> is if you're able to get better paying jobs that make up that income. Cuz I still, you know, I still have bills to pay and I mean I'm married so we're, I'm in a two income household but, and I'm on my partner's insurance, which I think makes a huge difference. But I also make significantly more money than my partner does. So the household income is still pretty dependent on me and it's important that I am able to keep lining up work mm-hmm <affirmative> and that I'm able to make all those puzzle pieces fit together. Even though like I don't have to think as much about the insurance, there's all the other parts I have to think about still.

Nikita 32:12

Yeah, definitely. Did you always feel inclined to work for yourself or did that sort of develop out of a need to just like, I guess because of the uncertainty that you kept facing within this specific industry?

Sarah 32:27

It wasn't so much because of the uncertainty, although here , okay, I will say this, I think when you go freelance it's really scary because you're totally dependent on yourself for your income and you're not just gonna get a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks. And that's very scary. At the same time, someone told me this when I was making the leap and I didn't quite internalize it until later, but if you get laid off from your job working a full-time job or your company restructures and eliminates your position or something like that, it can feel really disorienting because that is your one thing and then that one thing is gone and you have to like scramble to find another one thing. So you're really heavily dependent on this one employer. Right now I'm working projects for probably like five or six different people. If one of those five people says, you know what, we actually don't need you anymore. I still have four other jobs, <laugh> . Um, yeah . And so yeah, it would be great to find that fifth one to fill in, but what I'm looking for is something that, you know, maybe pays me for whatever, I don't know, 15 hours a month instead of like a 40 hour a week full-time job with benefits, which is much harder to find than like a short-term gig.

Nikita 33:42

Yeah, it's an interesting way to think of that. Um, it's almost like diversifying your income streams. We talk about diversifying and investing. You're, you're managing your risk in some ways, like you said, by not having all of your eggs in one basket , uh, with just one employer and instead while you're taking on risk in other ways, it sort of minimizing it as well by doing things the way that you do, having multiple contracts lined up.

Sarah 34:05

Exactly. But in terms of like why I made the choice to go freelance , um, I did not always feel destined to work for myself. That wasn't necessarily a goal or a plan of mine. What I did find happened is, you know, the work I do is really kind of intellectually and creatively based . And the reason why I love doing it is because it really fulfills a need. I have to be able to connect with other people and to be able to do things that are creatively put together. I get to do a lot of collaboration. I love reporting and interviewing and meeting new people and going to new places. And so this line of work allows me to do it. But when I was at the station, I felt like I had reached the limit of what I would be able to do at the station. And I actually tried at the station to, to sort of shift my responsibilities and shift my job a little bit. Like I would meet with my boss and say, here are my professional goals, like how can we work towards these? Or I would like to have more of an opportunity to do reporting. Can I go on a couple of reporting trips? And I didn't feel like it was working. You know, my, my boss said, look, I'd love for you to be able to do those things, but that's not what you were hired to do . We hired you to do this job and that's really how we need you to spend your time. And for a while I said, okay. And I would, while I was working full-time and not getting paid extra to do it, I would just do the projects I wanted to do on the side because I wanted to be able to do them. And so I would produce during the weekend report on the weekends and I got burned out doing that. I just got really exhausted cuz I was working many, many, many hours all the time and there was no break. And I just thought, okay, if I want my career to move in the direction I want it to move in. I've tried to make it happen here. It's not working. I don't really think there's a template for what I wanna do in the world of public radio. I could have tried to get a full-time job at a podcast company and I thought about doing that, but at that time I hadn't worked on any like podcasts full-time and I hadn't worked on any narrative documentary type shows. I'd only done short form work, not longform. And I wasn't really a great candidate for a lot of those jobs. And so I just felt like if I wanna do this, I have to make this happen. And I think that that ethos was really cemented by my time at NPR r temping. Like yeah, my entire career has been built on the idea that like, if I wanna make this thing happen, like no one is gonna help me make it happen. So I have to make it happen myself. And I shouldn't say no one because I've had really great friends and colleagues who helped lift me up. Um, and I also don't think it's always a choice. Like I also come with a lot of privilege. You know, like I said, I'm a white woman, I grew up in a middle class family, like English is my first language. There are certain privileges that I have that a lot of other people don't have. And I don't think it's as easy as just saying, I wanna do it, so I'm gonna do it. But I think that like in, for me, in my situation, I just knew that if I wanted to give it a shot and I knew there was a chance I would fail too. But I felt like I had to give it a go because otherwise I didn't feel like I would be fulfilled in my job and that just wasn't worth it to me.

Nikita 37:19

Yeah, and it, I mean it bought you the flexibility of being able to recalibrate if you reached seasons in, in your work where you were like, you know what? I wanna learn how to do such and such, or I wanna take on this kind of project, you had the freedom then to do so.

Sarah 37:33

Exactly. And like, not only am I getting to do more of what I want to do, like I've gotten to work on a ton of investigative shows. I do international travel for my work now. I've gotten to partner with some really interesting people I've gotten to go live in communities that I would never like. Part of my work is that I also sometimes go embed in communities. So I did a podcast about a fundamentalist Mormon community on the Utah Arizona border, and I moved into that community for three months as part of my reporting. Like I would've never been able to do that had I been working in public radio. Totally. Also, I wasn't anticipating this, but I do better financially now than I did before, like significantly better financially now than I did before. And I was not totally anticipating that, but I found that I was able to get paid higher rates and I was able to build my skillset so that I could over time start charging a little bit more. And I, you know, I realized I was able to do, not just just producing, but I could do editing and I could do story editing work and I could do field producing jobs and there started to be like, a lot more things opened up to me. So I don't know that that would be the case for everyone. And I think it certainly depends on the field and the person, but I was surprised because I, I thought public radio is so stable and I'm giving up this really beautiful, stable thing in a, in a field that I love to go do something that feels really uncertain. And I, like I said, I knew it was a risk and I just sort of told myself like, if this doesn't work, I'm gonna go, you know, I might have to go back to the temping thing. I might have to go back to NPR and work the overnights or I might have to , um, apply for a job in a city that I don't really wanna live in long term and just suck it up and do it. And I was willing to take the risk because I, the benefits to me felt like they outweighed the risks.

Nikita 39:25

Absolutely. That's really well put . I appreciate you sharing so openly in this. I guess I, I'm gonna segue to what'll probably be our last question and I of course have to ask it selfishly, but <laugh> , uh, how did third decade kind of play a part in the way you think about freelance finances and I guess maybe how you've managed that? Um, cuz you started our program, I believe it was in 2018, right?

Sarah 39:52

Yeah, that sounds right. So it would've been right around the time that I started freelancing. Oh no, you know what? I think I applied in 2018 and it was full and I didn't get in until 2020 because I did mine all virtually during the pandemic.

Nikita 40:08

Oh, yep . You were part of that, that <laugh> you were part of my first cohort working Yes . For third decade where we, like, in the middle of the week in class three, I was like, ah , we're not meeting in person , we're going online.

Sarah 40:21

<laugh>. Exactly. I was the pandemic cohort. So ,

Nikita 40:24

Um , our Guinea pigs

Sarah 40:26

<laugh> exactly third decade was really transformative for me for a ton of reasons. I mean, again, like I touched on before, I feel like I just had a lot of , um, I had a lot of anxiety and a lot of shame around finances. I was embarrassed that I didn't know better how to manage my money. Like I don't love talking about money. It like, it just makes me feel sort of like capitalist and nervous and scared and like, you know, it makes me feel bad. I just, I have all of these sort of emotions attached to it and I know a huge part of third decade is like getting rid of those stigmas and just saying like, you are where you are, you're here, we wanna help you. And and I think on the very first day you all told us like, you know, it's not too late. Like you didn't, you didn't mess things up for your future. Like you're here, you're making a really positive, proactive decision to move things forward. And I think just being able to be in a space where I could talk openly about my financial situation and not have people judge me for it felt like a massive, massive shift. And then mm-hmm. <affirmative> especially, I mean, first of all, I didn't know anything about investing. I didn't know what a Roth IRA was. I think the first day when they were like, what questions do you have? I think my question was like, who is Roth? Like I just didn't, I like , I just didn't , not it

Nikita 41:50

Makes you feel any better. Roth was named after a person.

Sarah 41:53

Right. I learned that too, but I was like, man, who is this Roth and why does he have an Ira <laugh> ? So, you know, like I think I just, the kind of baseline knowledge I gained was huge for me because I had such little before and then meeting with my financial mentor was absolutely a revelation. I mean, like, she gave us such practical suggestions about how to, how to save, how to think about saving, how to save when you feel like you don't have enough to save. And also making sure, like she was the one that encouraged me to put, you know, make sure that my, my partner and I had six months of essential expenses in the bank because first of all, I had been paycheck to paycheck for so much of my life. But also she was like, you're a freelancer, your income is unstable. If you get hurt, if you get sick, if you can't work for a period of time and your income is really critical to the household, like that's gonna be a big problem. So you need to make sure that like over, you know, you're not gonna be able to do this overnight. It's gonna take a really long time and that's okay, but you wanna build it up to where you have like a nice chunky savings that you don't touch unless something happens that you can't see coming. Yeah. And I'm so glad I did because I will just say a couple months ago I was getting ready to finish up a year long project. The company I worked with had said they were interested in hiring me to work on another project. I said, great, I was really excited about it. And then that project fell through and didn't happen. And because I thought it was certain I hadn't lined up anything else after that. And so I went through a period around the holidays when I didn't have very much work and that is an impossible time to look for a job. Yep . And I was okay because I had that savings that I had built up when things were better. So , um, that's just like one thing that she taught us. She taught us a whole lot of things, but honestly it really made me feel like I was gonna be okay financially and I didn't have to follow in the same path as my parents who are, you know, my dad is living off of social security right now and it's hard and I know that that is the reality for a lot of people and I wish it wasn't. And I just know that as I age, I wanna be able to know that if, you know, if something happens or if I need extra care that I'll be able to afford it. And I feel like I'm on a path now to be able to do that. It's just really taken a lot of stigma away and a lot of the stress that I was feeling and turned it into something kind of manageable and actionable.

Nikita 44:32

I'm really glad we've been able to support you in the journey of, you know, setting things in place so that being a freelancer doesn't mean scraping by for your entire life, but like truly setting yourself up for like financial wellness in the long term and retirement planning. I think a lot of people, you know, think retirement's out the window if you work for yourself and it , it definitely doesn't have to be that way. Um , exactly. And I'm really glad to be able to be part of, you know, working alongside of you to, to set yourselves up for that comfort down the road and now for that matter. But thank you so much Sarah . I I've really enjoyed this conversation and I am definitely intimidated to edit this episode. <laugh> , uh, being that you're, you're going to , you would do a much better job on it, but I won't make you do it. <laugh>

Sarah 45:15

<laugh> don't be , you're doing great. Um, and thank you so much. I'm really glad that I could be a guest and I'm really appreciative of all of the work that third decade is doing, so thank you so much. Yeah ,

Nikita 45:26

Yeah. Your story I think is gonna resonate with a lot of people. Feels very relatable and just very much appreciate your perspective.

Sarah 45:35

Oh , thanks so much

Nikita 45:36

Nikita .