A Word On Raises

The bottom line of this story is going to be, “you need to ask for a raise.” What was quite common in my New York freelance years was many of us accepted, year after year, what agencies handed out. It is time for us to step out of our court reporting skins and be business people.

There’s something called inflation. The really low level summary of inflation is that as more money is produced the value of existing money decreases, meaning item values go up. That’s why you could live off less money back in the 50s or 60s, and why everything is so expensive now.

The buying power of the money in the bank goes down every year, and every year, the services you provide need to be charged at a higher rate so that you have the same buying power.

Try it for yourself. Get an inflation calculator, type in your very first page rate or salary, the year you started, and the year it is now. A reporter told me that in 1989 they made $2.50. That’s worth $5.11 now. If they aren’t making $5.11, their buying power is shot.

I did it myself. I sat down and said what’s a good starting rate for 2018? I was given $3.25 in 2011. Inflation calculator says that’s worth $3.66 now. I had a few friends who started at $4. That’s worth $4.50 now. But who wants to work for the same exact money every year? No. We want a raise. So what would a raise of 3% a year look like? Year 1, you start at $4.00. By year 6, you should be making $4.60. Look at those numbers again. Just to have the same exact buying power 2011 to now, you need $4.50 a page. To give yourself a $0.10 raise after six years, you need $4.60. Your cost of living is going to go up, and unless you make more money every year, your quality of life is going to go down.

That’s really it. This is my case and my explanation for why we have to start talking about our rates. We have to start informing each other about simple business principles. We need to keep an eye on that inflation rate. We need to really take a close look at what we make on all our services and ask ourselves why our money for our associations, charities, and causes are so tight. We need to admit one thing: You need to ask for a raise.

For The Entrepreneur

Some have asked about how to go out on your own and start a company or client base. It’s a common enough question and I have enough basic knowledge to tackle it, so I am going to tackle it. As always, this is related mostly to stenography since that was what this blog was invented for.

First thing is first: Decide whether to incorporate. Incorporation, done right, can limit your legal and tax liability. It is not something you should unquestioningly do every time, but it is worth your consideration. For this, you need to look up the rules surrounding incorporation in your state. Note that in some circumstances you may also file to do business in a county under a name different than your own as a partnership or sole proprietorship. Those business structures will not provide the same legal liability as incorporation, but they are options for the aspiring entrepreneur. With regard to incorporation you should know that for the best advice tailored to you it is advisable to hire a lawyer, an accountant, or both. They can assist with many pitfalls, such as failing to comply with workers’ compensation requirements. If you are creating a business entity or wish to do business under your name with a different tax or social security number, consider applying for an EIN or TIN directly from the IRS.

Now that we’ve breezed over the mechanics, let’s talk a bit about next steps. The most important step for any business is its customers. Who are your customers? Who are you targeting? Who is going to pay you money? What are they going to pay you money for? It can be incredibly difficult to get the business off the ground. Cold calling is a possible strategy. I would say keep a brochure handy for potential clients who show an interest. Beyond cold calling, there are many ways you can get yourself business, such as applying to be on an insurer’s vendor list, getting a state court RFP, or getting on the city’s vendor list. In the end, getting a client is going to come down to your charisma and your ability to follow up. I once tried to pull together a client list, and even had attorneys that said they would utilize the company I created, but I failed to stay involved and keep communication open, and unsurprisingly, they never called when they needed depositions done. If you don’t have charisma, you need to have an ability to follow up. If people do not know you are open for business, they won’t come in. You need to put yourself on the market.

Now we get to the big bad wolf in the room. How do we decide what to charge? Generally court reporting is a service. We are taking down the proceedings verbatim and creating a transcript of the proceeding. Though colloquially we say the transcript is the product, realistically the service is the product, otherwise the transcript would be subject to sales tax. The page rate is nothing more than a way to measure the time you are working on the project. That’s why a lot of reporters charge more for dense testimony. To this end, there are a myriad of services that you provide. The following words might ring a bell: Printing, copying, mailing, originals, copies, exhibits. Running an office, even a small office, has a lot of work and expense involved. Even if the actual cost of printing a transcript is low, the cost in terms of time can be very high. Let’s get this into more concrete terms. You know, generally, what you can make from a job if you take that job from an agency.

Now realize that you are putting all of the work into getting the client and making the transcript. Take some time out to understand that a good chunk of money in the freelance reporting, for the agency, business comes not from the original, but from the sale and distribution of copies. In New York this is something rarely said out loud, but agencies are allowed to charge 2, 3, 4, 5 bucks a page per copy, as much or more than the original, and then pay the reporter 25 cents, and that’s exactly what a lot of them do. So you may get a lawyer that says, “Oh. My reporting service only costs $3.50 per page.” How much litigation does your firm do, counselor? How many lawsuits that get to depositions have more than two parties involved? Let’s be clear. It’s not worth working for somebody at $3.50 a page if you could work for an agency at $4.50 a page, but if you can work for somebody at $3.50, and get a copy at $3.50, that’s $7.00 per page compared to the $5.00 per page you might have made through an agency. That’s $200 more per every 100 pages for basically the same work. The beauty of the business model? It’s scalable. If you start getting a lot of business, you can simply scale up, give away most of the original to the reporters you hire, and take the bulk of the copy sale for your work in getting the job.

Know the market. Know what it’s paying. Know how people are keeping their companies solvent and thriving. Don’t be afraid to call up and ask a competitor their rates. In the end, the game is going to be won by the players that do everything in their power to maximize gain and minimize loss. My personal vote is always going to be for the working reporter, and every bit of this blog has been about helping the working reporter with information that’ll assist them in improving themselves or understanding the business. So do us all a favor: If you take these basic concepts and you create a successful business, do the right thing and take a little time out each year to train people on how they too can be successful. Put out tips and tricks. Spread ideas and information. We will all be better off for it.

Audio Transcription, Pricing, And You

First and foremost, happy Thanksgiving. As with most great writers, I’m going to take the time away from preparing to the holiday to write about something I know everybody will want to read about: Audio transcription and pricing. As stenographers, we tend to get very focused on a per-page pricing structure. This often leaves us trying to measure our time by pages, and is not always the most ineffective way of being paid.

For purposes of this post, let’s talk a little about CART, audio transcription, and pricing generally. CART and audio transcription are not the same thing, but they have similarities. One key similarity is that they tend to charge by the hour. For CART it’s per hour of writing, usually with a set minimum, and for audio transcription it’s money per hour of audio, sometimes prorated for audio that doesn’t last a whole hour or end exactly on an hour.

Succinctly, for CART, captioning, and audio transcription, despite having different prerequisite skills, the pricing for all of them must take into account the amount of work we’re doing, the quality of the work we’re doing, and ultimately the time it will take us to do the work. So speaking strictly for transcription: I’ve guesstimated that it takes me approximately one to two hours for every hour on the machine to transcribe with pretty close to 100% accuracy. That means for every hour of audio, there are about three hours of actual work involved. So, for me, honestly, working for less than $30/hr becomes painful, so the transcription deal isn’t sweet until maybe the $100-something range. The bottom line of this story? We must examine our time and really decide what it’s worth.

In examining our time, we can also consider other factors. For example, what are other people charging for the same work? As we can see from this Google search here, there are companies that boast a $1/minute transcription fee. So if we do an independent assessment of our time, and we come to the conclusion our time is worth $2/minute, that’s perfect, but just bear in mind that we may lose a couple of customers to the person who is half our price. A potential solution? Split the difference and charge $1.50 per minute.

There’s a lot that goes into economics, buying, selling, demand, supply, and no one blog post could ever impart all of that knowledge on anyone. Even top economists who have devoted their lives to understanding value and money disagree with each other. The best we can do is urge every reporter, where applicable, to look at what they charge, whether charging an agency, lawyer, or outside consumer, and consider how our pricing practices affect all different areas of the field. There’s tons of literature and articles on price matching and how it can help consumers, hurt consumers, help businesses, and hurt businesses, and the cold truth is that it’s up to us to take the time out and learn about these things, because many of us are our own business, and our business rises or falls on our willingness to learn beyond the machine.

Public Records

Knowledge Can Be Power.

Agency owner talking about a sweet new deal they got with the City of New York? How exciting! But wouldn’t it help your negotiation position if you knew what they were pulling in on that contract? Yes! But how could you do that? Check it out: You can go to the Mayor’s Office of Contracts Public Access Center at 253 Broadway, on the 9th Floor, in New York, New York, and you can print out data on their contracts with the city. You’ll need the proper business name, which you may obtain from the New York Business database. Once you get a printout of the general contract information, such as the city agency the company does business with and the amount of the contract/contract number, you can make a FOIL request to the city agency they do business with for a copy of the contract. Knowledge is power if you do something with it. Use information to negotiate for yourself, bid on contracts, or share it with others so that they might negotiate more effectively.

FOIL Requests.

FOIL requests are easy. You find the FOIL law that applies. If it’s a New York Executive Agency, it’s covered under the Executive Law. The State provides tons of free resources for learning about FOIL requests. If the agency you are looking to find information from is a court, then it is likely covered under the Judiciary Law.

Writing your request is even easier than reading the law. Locate the address of the FOIL officer of the agency you are seeking to find information from. Often this information is available online. For example, as of writing, the FOIL Officer of the New York City Law Department is Andrea Fastenberg, 100 Church Street, Room 6-244, New York, New York 10007; which is information easily accessible through the Law Department directory.

Now sit down to write your FOIL request. Simply write hello, my name is so and so, and under such and such section of law, I make the following Freedom of Information Law requests for the following records. You list the records you want information about. You should ask for a full copy the record or contract, and any and all documents/records related to that record or contract. You should name the record or contract, and describe it as fully as possible so that the agency can locate it for you. Ensure that the agency has good contact information for you, and offer to accept the information by e-mail, because it may reduce your FOIL request costs. Succinctly, the government is entitled to a small fee for production of records. Often, receiving the information by e-mail eliminates this cost.

If you are seeking information generally from a state or city agency, you may also consider adding a time period to your FOIL request. For example: I request a copy of any and all contracts for stenographic reporting services, court reporting services, recording services, or electronic recording services from January 1, 2016 to January 1, 2017. This will help the agency with your request, because then they would only be looking for records in that year, as opposed to records going back a decade or more.

Always be professional and polite. If you do not receive a response within a month, you should consider following up with another FOIL request!

Learn Stenography!

NCRA.

National Court Reporters Association is, as of writing, the powerhouse association for stenography in the United States. I came across this video today and I figure it’s worth sharing to all who might come across this blog. It will immediately direct you to a site with a little information about how to start getting involved. Having lent a piece of equipment to one of the A to Z programs they describe, I can honestly say I’m a big supporter of this stuff and people giving this profession a try. It’s worth it.

A very brief summary of what we do: We take down the spoken word and make it text. We type it faster than a regular keyboard because our keyboards (stenotypes) allow us to hit multiple letters at once, and those letters stand for various sounds, words, and sentences.

More Than A Job.

In our field we often point at the potential to make money for relatively little education, and I think that’s just fine, but I also realize that doesn’t motivate everybody. If you’re in the camp of not being a money-hungry person, then consider a few extra things. For those of us that work in court reporting, we provide hours upon hours of service to the community, logging and keeping safe thousands of pages of court or deposition records for the day they’re needed by lawyers, litigants, or the public. For those of us that work in captioning or CART, we provide access to the people who need it most. Voice-to-text access for the 15% of Americans who report trouble hearing, and the millions who cannot hear at all! Indeed, if you won’t do this thing for the money, do it for the people you will be helping just by sitting at a little machine and typing your heart out.

Stanographer.

Stanley Sakai gives a pretty upbeat and fast explanation of stenography here for those that want to know more about the concept of machine shorthand.

Stenoodie.

I came across this fascinating blog by someone who writes under the author name Stenoodie, and they have a short page describing steno/machine shorthand for those who like reading more than videos.