If you are a creative, independent, idea-driven person, ready to work hard for the lifestyle you deserve, you might be a feisty freelancer.

And today we're talking with Suzanne Bones, author of the fabulous book, The Feisty Freelancer.

Suzanne has a PhD in English and teaches writing and freelancing at Humper College in Toronto.

And the book captures the lessons she's learned from building a business, trying new things,

making mistakes, picking new directions, and generally enjoying life as a 20 plus year freelancer.

Suzanne Bonesse, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

I'm a long-time listener, so it's fun to be a guest.

Oh, I'm so excited to have you.

I loved your book.

I thought it was just great.

And, you know, the advice that you have would be useful, you know, to people anytime. But I got my start freelancing many years ago when I got laid off from a job. And in the book, you say, you got your start when you got laid off too. And, you know, I see news story after news story these days about people getting laid off. So I thought this was an especially important topic or helpful topic to have right now. Yeah, it was actually my first job and my whole magazine

folded that I was working at. I was online editor at a general interest magazine here in Canada.

At 25 years old, I didn't even realize, I didn't know layoff was a thing. It hadn't really

clued into me that your job could be on one day and you were working hard and then off the next day. So it came as a real shock. I did walk home in tears with my box in my hands kind of things. But then after that, you know, you're always thinking about, well, what will be next for me even when you're just starting out. And I really thought I'd really like to be writing more. And I realized that working at a busy magazine, you do do a lot of administration and management and that kind of thing. And even though that was really fun being part of that team environment, I thought I really want to get back to writing. That's what I want to be doing for my whole career. And also at the same time, I saw these freelancers

swaning in and out of the office, having their meetings with our senior editors. And I thought,

oh, that sounds fun. They get to make their own schedule. And so I thought I would try that when I got

laid off. Actually, it's not the advice that I would give to somebody who is 25 at this point, I would say, and to my younger

self, and I do say to my students, go and get educated and mentored in your industry for maybe

10 years or so. And so get that extra, unless you're really sure that you want to start your

business to try to get as much learning as you can and then go freelance kind of thing.

But for me, it just happened at the time and it was something I was really eager about.

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