Abigail Koffler On Embracing The Freelance Vibe

"I don’t know if it’s controversial to say, but there are just people who get jobs in media, and there are people who don’t."

Abigail Koffler publishes the food newsletter This Needs Hot Sauce, teaches cooking classes, and writes for various publications. Check out the other half of this interview on F&BQ&A.

How did you get started working?

My experience right out of college was in the nonprofit sphere. I didn’t want to go to law school, but I was a history major. So I was like, how can I read and write and “make an impact”—which is very oversold in the nonprofit world at the expense of everything else. I worked at nonprofits for about three years. It was at my last nonprofit job where I started my newsletter, in fall 2017. I was really miserable at that job. I had just been through a breakup. I was like, “Everything sucks!”  

When you have a toxic job like that, weekends just feel too short. You’re trying to squeeze all the good feelings into two days because you know the other five days are going to be really, really bad. So I started writing the newsletter on Sunday. It was my Sunday project. 

That was pretty early in the newsletter renaissance. 

Yeah, it was on TinyLetter. At the time, I was applying for editorial assistant jobs in food media. I actually had a phone interview with the Infatuation, but I was too far out of college. And I knew it was not going to happen. That’s just how things are. So I was like, okay, I’ll do this newsletter and see what happens. I was sending it to a pretty small group of mostly family and friends. And then about six months later, I got laid off from my nonprofit job, which was actually such a relief. I was thrilled. 

Now it’s spring 2018. I felt really stuck because my resume was all about nonprofit stuff. I knew I didn’t want to continue in that sector. So I decided to keep doing the newsletter and try to freelance. I got a part-time job that I actually had until this past May, teaching at a Hebrew after-school program three days a week. 

I’m freelancing with the newsletter serving as my clips. That’s how I got my first articles—it showed that I could write once a week, I knew how to string a sentence together, and I had some knowledge of the culinary industry scene. That was enough to get articles in pretty small local outlets, and it went from there.

At that point, in your mind, what would the freelancing lead to?

I think at the time I hoped that eventually I would get a full-time staff writer job somewhere. I don’t really have that ambition anymore. 

Why not?

I like having more control over things, where I’m not at the mercy of getting laid off. I also have more freedom about what I write about. I don’t know if it’s controversial to say, but there are just people who get jobs in media, and there are people who don’t. You can very much get categorized as a freelancer. It’s not a knock on my own work ethic or the quality of my work at all. I think people are like, “Oh, she’s a freelancer,” and now I embrace that. 

You think that when it comes to media, people doing the hiring view freelancers as outside the valid candidate pool?

Most people get hired through past jobs. It’s a very small group of people moving between a couple different places. If you’re not really in that circle—and I really love and respect and enjoy working with those people—it’s very hard to enter that circle. And I’m saying that as someone who’s extremely privileged and well-connected. It’s way harder for other people. But I think it’s very exclusive in a lot of different ways. So now, I don’t apply to jobs. I want to build my own business. 

What does that entail? What do you want to be doing, that you’re not yet able to do?

For the cooking classes, my partner and I are really trying to get into doing in-person events. I’ve hosted happy hours for the newsletter since 2018, but I don’t really cook for those. And then I want to write for an airline magazine. I feel like those are the gold standard for freelancers because they pay really well. I’ve been in print a couple of times, but it’s just a really cool feeling to go into an airport and see your work on the newsstand. And even bigger than that, I want to write a novel. 

While I’ve written about food, and I love food—it’s always going to be one of my primary things—one of my goals for this year is trying to pitch and write about other topics, like the workspace, or what I like to call the early twenties crisis phase. I’m not in that area of life anymore, but I think it’s a really, really difficult time. We gloss over it. Everyone talks about how you’re in college, then suddenly you’re married with children or something. But there’s a lot in between. 

What’s your strategy for trying to break into other genres of writing?

What I do is test out an idea in the newsletter. I have written some more personal essays in the newsletter, usually for my paying subscribers. So it’s a smaller, more supportive audience. I wrote about how when I got laid off, my employer asked me if I could stay on for additional two months because they were really slow at hiring. And I was like, “What? Are you serious? Then why did you just lay me off? If I suck so much do you really want me to stay for two months?” I said no to that. 

So I wrote that piece about about transitions, and how it was very scary to say no. I was not making much money there, but it would have been a paycheck for at least another couple of months. After I left that job, my first freelance piece came out about ten days later. It felt like I was able to get things in motion—not like anything crazy, but something was happening right away. If I had waited, and stayed, it would have just made it harder to move forward.

One of the great privileges of working is leaving a job you hate. When you were growing up, what were your impressions of what a working life was supposed to look like?

My dad had a finance job at the same company for like 30-something years. When I was a kid, I had no idea what he did. He does something on the computer, I don’t know what he’s doing! Sometimes me and my sister would go to his office and get lunch. That was very exciting. My sister and I would count how many pictures of each of us there were in his office and fight about if it was equal or not. 

Did the number of pictures change somehow? 

Sometimes we’d bring more pictures of ourselves. 

That seems like cheating. 

Well, my dad would have to correct it afterward, if we’d created an imbalance. We were living in Queens, and my dad worked in Manhattan. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. A very different kind of work that’s super demanding, but not as traditional in terms of being in an office or something. For my own part, I thought that eventually I would have a job. I thought it was very important, back then. 

What was your first ever job? The nonprofit stuff?

I did babysitting. I think that counts. In college I had some research assistant jobs on campus. The summer before my senior year, I interned at a nonprofit in Mexico City. It was a really cool program where the school would pay your salary so that an organization in another country would get a college intern from the US, which, like, who knows how useful we were. 

But it was a really great experience. That nonprofit had fun events. They had one event that I really think about a lot. It was called Fuck-Up Night. 

Excuse me? What did you say it was called?

Fuck-Up Night. It wasn’t about getting fucked up! I know that’s what it sounds like, but it was founders and anyone who worked at startups or nonprofits or any kind of business. They would tell the story of the worst mistake they’d ever made in their business. I remember there was a guy who ran this alternative energy thing in rural Mexico, and he had ordered the wrong size light bulb for like 400 machines. And they were from China. So it took five months to get any more. It was all these terrible errors, but people were talking about them in this supportive space. 

What about you? Any major failures you’d like to confess?

I mean, please! Getting laid off—definitely at the time, I was like, this is a failure. I went to a really good college. I know all these things! How did I get laid off? That was a huge blow to the ego. And then I realized, so what. People get laid off. It’s very normal and just kind of not talked about. That’s something I do want to write about more because I think there’s this shame that comes with getting laid off that shouldn’t really be there. 

What’s been your family’s reaction to the arc of your working life so far?

They’ve been really supportive. I’m very lucky. My parents are super big cooks. My mom is so funny—when I go over there, she puts things on the nice plates so I can take a picture. My dad and I had a cooking class together last year for Father’s Day. My mom is constantly sharing my articles on her Facebook. They’re very excited about what I’m doing, and it’s really nice. I’m sure that they’re always a little bit worried about the stability aspect. 

What does work-life balance mean when you’re going solo as a creator, freelancer, publisher, teacher, and all the things you’re doing?

It’s a lot harder when it’s just you to have that work-life balance. Everything becomes potential content, as they say. I don’t remember the last time I went on an overnight trip without my laptop. I try to build the balance more in the day-to-day. I’m very much not a morning person, so I let myself take my time a little more in the morning. I’ll do a midday workout, or take a walk or something. Obviously you have those computer days where you’re just sort of stuck. But I try to take advantage of the flexibility, which I think helps. I heard this quote on the Call Your Girlfriend podcast, which is not running anymore, but the quote was: if you’re going to be your own boss, you have to be conscious about being a good boss. 

Given what you know now, and where you’re at now, what do you imagine is the best position you could be in down the road, with the work you’re doing? 

I think a lot about quality of life. My relationship with prestige has definitely changed a lot since I’ve been in this industry. I don’t really think about my goals as much in terms of getting into X or Y publication. I want to consistently earn enough money to have a good quality of life, put away savings, eventually buy an apartment in New York City. That’s always been a goal of mine, which I know is the freelancer dream. Just to have a balance where I can continue to work flexibly, and do things that are meaningful. I don’t necessarily dream of having dozens of employees, but it would be nice one day to have more people—whether it’s a part- time or supportive role to start. And then I could get to practice being a good boss.