The Freelancer’s Harvest & What a California Farmer Can Teach Court Reporters About Diversification

When California farmer Brandon Sywassink drove truckloads of freshly picked grapes to his winery this fall, he expected to deliver a year’s worth of work. Instead, the winery told him to dump his crop.
The reason? His grapes measured 23.9 brix instead of the required 24.0 — a mere 0.1% shortfall that erased an entire year’s income. “Brix” refers to a scientific measurement used in winemaking and agriculture to determine the sugar content of grapes (or other fruits).

That story — painful as it is — carries a powerful lesson for freelancers in the court reporting world. Because what happened in the vineyards of Lodi is exactly what happens when a reporter puts all their eggs in one agency’s basket.

When Your Only Buyer Says “No”

In the wine industry, farmers often sell exclusively to one or two wineries. It feels secure — until the buyer changes standards, gets bought out, or starts importing cheaper product from overseas. Suddenly, the farmer who’s given everything to that relationship is left with no market, no paycheck, and no leverage.

Court reporters can relate.
Many freelancers rely on one or two anchor agencies or attorney clients. The work feels steady — until the agency is sold, merges with a conglomerate, or replaces human reporters with digital recorders or automated speech recognition (ASR).

Then overnight, the loyal reporter finds themselves back at the bottom of the call sheet, scrambling for new clients, just like that farmer watching his crop go to waste.

Dependency Is Not Loyalty — It’s Risk

The parallels are striking:

Farmers	Freelance Court Reporters
One buyer decides if grapes are “good enough.”	One agency decides if you get the “good jobs.”
A contract clause can void a year’s income.	A scheduling email can dry up overnight.
Global imports undercut domestic growers.	National agencies offshore transcription to digital vendors.
Climate shifts change sugar levels.	Market shifts change demand, pay rates, and technology use.

In both cases, dependence on a single source of income creates vulnerability.
Diversification is not optional — it’s survival.

Diversify Like Your Livelihood Depends On It (Because It Does)

If your agency client suddenly disappears tomorrow, could you still pay your bills next month?

Here’s how freelancers can insulate themselves from “crop rejection”:

Build a direct attorney network.
Reach out to law firms you’ve covered before. Offer your card, thank them personally, and remind them you’re available for future jobs. A single lunch or LinkedIn message can turn into recurring direct work.
Work with multiple agencies — local and niche.
Spread your workload across three to five agencies with different client bases (civil, criminal, workers’ comp, etc.). This protects you if one loses a contract or changes management.
Develop alternate income streams.
Captioning, CART, realtime training, proofreading, scoping, or even offering transcript seminars to law students — all expand your resilience.
Invest in your own branding.
Like a winegrower bottling under their own label, reporters should own their name. Build a simple website, claim your Google Business profile, and keep a professional LinkedIn presence. Agencies come and go, but your personal brand stays.
Keep your tools independent.
Store transcripts securely, maintain your own billing and scheduling systems, and avoid platforms that “own” your work product or client data. Independence is protection.

The Hidden Cost of Comfort

It’s easy to get comfortable when one agency fills your calendar. You stop marketing, stop networking, stop updating your rate sheet. But comfort can quietly become captivity.

As one court reporter put it after her longtime agency sold to a corporate buyer:

“I thought I had seniority. Turns out, I just had history.”

When your “buyer” changes the rules, you’re left with the same hard truth as that Lodi farmer: You don’t control the harvest if you don’t control the field.

The Takeaway: Plant Multiple Vines

Diversification isn’t just about money — it’s about freedom.
When you build multiple income streams, you gain the power to say no to exploitative rates, unreasonable turnaround times, or unethical practices. You become less replaceable and more self-sustaining.

Just as the farmer can’t control the weather or the whims of the winery, freelancers can’t control the consolidation of the industry. But they can plant new vines — new relationships, new skills, new revenue channels.

Because whether you’re growing grapes or building a freelance business, one bad season shouldn’t end your career.

Closing Thought

Brandon Sywassink said it best:

“It hurts a lot just to watch it… Farmers get a paycheck once a year, and we didn’t get a paycheck that day.”

Don’t let that be your story.
Diversify now — before your best crop gets dumped.

StenoImperium
Court Reporting. Unfiltered. Unafraid.

Disclaimer

“This article includes analysis and commentary based on observed events, public records, and legal statutes.”

The content of this post is intended for informational and discussion purposes only. All opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are based on publicly available information, industry standards, and good-faith concerns about nonprofit governance and professional ethics. No part of this article is intended to defame, accuse, or misrepresent any individual or organization. Readers are encouraged to verify facts independently and to engage constructively in dialogue about leadership, transparency, and accountability in the court reporting profession.

The content on this blog represents the personal opinions, observations, and commentary of the author. It is intended for editorial and journalistic purposes and is protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Nothing here constitutes legal advice. Readers are encouraged to review the facts and form independent conclusions.

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Published by stenoimperium

We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps. This has done a lot of damage to our industry. It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued. We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives. Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that! We are the Responsible Charge. “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met. This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more. In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.” That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone. Who we are is the Responsible Charge. How we do that is by Protecting the Record. View more posts

3 thoughts on “The Freelancer’s Harvest & What a California Farmer Can Teach Court Reporters About Diversification”

…..I sum this all up in one word….Wisdom. Just Do It!

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This is one article that really caught my attention, and I couldn’t agree with you more! I have been a freelancer for 32 years. I have been “fired” from agencies because they found out I was working for more than one agency. The mentality of the bigger firms is they expect you to be loyal to them and only them. I’d be interested to know if others have had the same experience.

I have been fortunate over the years to build relationships with other smaller firms and independents and have had great success with diversifying.

Great article!