One Entrepreneur's Journey: Pam Kapoor

This is part of a series called "One Entrepreneur's Journey," where I'm talking with solo entrepreneurs about their successes (and failures) along the path of entrepreneurship.

In this interview, I spoke with Pam Kapoor, a wordsmith and messagist who helps non-profit, community, and political organizations deliver expert writing, communications, and advocacy campaigns through their websites, promotional materials, and in new media.

Tell me a bit about your business and how you got your start as an entrepreneur.

Around five years ago, I wrapped up a contract and decided to take a couple of months to think about what I wanted to do professionally and reconfirm that I was headed in a direction that I would be excited about.  The changeover in how I approached my work was finally waking up and realizing that I had the courage to do this on a freelance basis, and I really crystallized for myself that I wanted to do more writing.  I parlayed some of my grassroots organizing or community organizing experience into a more focused area of professional pursuit.

The fields or areas in which I predominantly worked my whole professional life (non-profit, community organizations, political organizations, human rights organizations, women's rights organizations), a lot of the folks I had done work with over the years, provided the same kind of employment I was looking for.  I developed a list of the types of things that I could do extremely well and identified myself as an invaluable resource to some of these organizations.  For example, many organizations provide newsletters of some kind, and that's an obvious thing I could provide, as well as other writing, like for their website or promotional materials.  My niche was public engagement or public awareness, and that's sort of how I tailored my pitch.

What methods do you use and recommend for finding new clients and promoting your business?

It's so important to stay networked, to stay linked and connected.  Maintain an online presence.  It's really just a matter of maintaining a presence in communities, be it on or offline.  The other thing I'm trying to do is regular communication with former, potential, and existing clients.

I'm in the process now of making designing some kind of e-communication plan, whereby once a month or every few months I can connect with people with an update on what I'm up to, what I wish I'd be up to, and perhaps linking them to samples of my work.

The last thing is professional development, to try now and again to attend a conference or some sort of event where peers in my field or related fields are gathered.  I have found that to be really important.

Let's talk about strengths and weaknesses, things you struggle with and things that you feel you're getting right so far as an entrepreneur.

For me, so much of my work has to do with particular sectors of non-profit, political, and advocacy organizations.  Over recent years, they are struggling with resources and capacity issues, and I'm finding it more and more important to cast my net wider.  The question for me is really about the follow through, how to be more proactive than I have had to be.

My strength is that, over this amount of time, I have finally gotten better at worrying less about money.  If you're going to freelance or consult, the little panic about money is never going to go away.  It just becomes one of the things that you have to manage.  It's always going to be there, either quietly underneath things or really audibly in front of everything, but we have chosen a financially unstable work life.  We've chosen it because there are so many things about it that we enjoy.  There's always a sacrifice to be made.  We've given up financial security, in the form of a bi-weekly paycheck that's automatically deposited into our checking accounts or vacation or sick pay.  We've opted out of those things in order to get other things.  It took me a while to kind of shrug off the more panicky feeling about that and to realize that things can happen magically, if you have the right attitude or intention.

What's your most important lesson or best advice for new entrepreneurs?

My cheeky answer to that is always, get dressed, but obviously that just applies to people who work at home.  Routine and getting dressed is really important, creating time and space divisions in your house.  Your question is a bit broader than that, so my answer is balance.  Ideally, people don't choose to freelance because they just can't get a job.  It's a choice because you want to do other things with your life than just working.  You opt to freelance so that you have space for other things.  Many of us wind up struggling with balance to make that objective a reality.  Work can be all-consuming.  When you report to yourself, it's not always easy to insist on boundaries or take time off.  I think it's very tricky, but very critical, to know what you want for balance.  Understand that that can evolve.  Then do everything in your power to insist that that balance be maintained, work-life balance and pursuing the things that we dreamed of pursuing when we decided to become a freelancer.  If you've made a decision that you don't want to sit in a cubicle under fluorescent lights from 8:30 to 4:47 every day, because you have other things that you want to do, then do them.