Profiles in Success

Getting Ahead and Loving It

WHERE: Doylestown, PA
E-MAIL: briano@tradenet.net
WEBSITE: http://www.brianoc.com

WHAT: A former bond trader, Brian has authored six books, including, The 401(k) Millionaire, CNBC's Guide to Creating Wealth and The Death of Mutual Funds. A new book, The Career Survival Guide (McGraw-Hill) is due out in May, 2002.. He also contributes regularly to CFO, Telephony, Business 2.0, Entrepreneur, Robb Report, Dow Jones Investment Advisor and Newsweek.

"I'm also a golf nut,and I write about golf for CBS SportsWatch." With a stay-at-home wife and three children, Brian's mantra on freelancing is "failure is not an option".

WHY: Brian edited the University of Massachusetts student newspaper and thought he wanted to be a journalist, but after graduation in 1984, money lured him to the life of a trader. He started on the Philadelphia Exchange and also worked in New York City and San Francisco. But by age 30, job pressures brought him to an early midlife mini-crisis, and he decided to try writing. He kept his day job, but built a portfolio writing speeches for his boss and stringing for a weekly. Within a few months, his experience won him a job with a computer magazine covering financial issues. "It was a dramatic drop in pay, but I wanted to do it; I had money saved up; and I was happy."

HOW: "It never occurred to me that I could make a living freelancing until I worked for Jonathan Pond, an economics professor at Harvard University who has written a number of personal finance books. He encouraged me to freelance all I wanted." A piece for the New York Post on 401Ks led to his first book, The 401(k) Millionaire, which was a Book of the Month Club selection. And that led to other opportunities. "Freelance work was pouring in." In 1996, Brian decided to concentrate on publications work full time. "I was getting ahead and loving it."

MARKET YOURSELF: September 11 hit Brian hard. "I learned a great lesson that as a freelancer you are subject to the whims of the economy. Even though
I'd been on a Wall Street trading desk, it never occurred to me that the economy could be so tornado-like. Plus, as a former trader who had worked in the World Trade Center in the late 1980's, I had a hard time adjusting for a while after 9/11, emotionally. The economic events of 2001 really changed me, too. I had never written a query until last year. In a few months, I sent out about 200 of them. That effort has resulted in a lot of work, but I've had to earn it."

YOUR BEST TIP FOR OTHER WRITERS: Don't let anyone tell you that you can't make a good living as a freelance writer. If you take the stance that failure is not an option, you will prevail. The thing that helped me the most is my background on Wall Street. If you can manage to write about what you did in the corporate world, that's great. You become an expert. It
buys you time until you can establish yourself as a freelancer."

ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO TELL US: "I can't believe people actually pay me to write. It's been a blast the last five years freelancing, and I don't plan on ever going back to work for someone else."