Lets face it; human beings are lazy, good-for-nothing bags of horny resentment and given the choice would spend every day sat in their underpants eating pot noodles and watching Quincy. Unfortunately Pot Noodles cost money so we all work and save our comfy pants for the weekend. Still, many people still seem to forget to make an adequate separation between home and work to the extent that their freelancing appears to be done while half awake on a sofa piled with Dorito detritus. It seems simple but so many people ignore the basics that it is worth reiterating.
5) Responding to clients
You send an email to a client to try and clarify a small problem – for example- and you wait for an unspecified amount of time for the client to get around to deigning to respond, usually in an incoherent fashion that displays frightening lack of understanding of the project that you have been commissioned to do, and displays a childlike ignorance of the rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation.
What you think they mean:
“Hey dude, I’m disorganised and largely apathetic about whatever it is I commissioned whoever you are to do. Take your time – as long as you get the bare minimum done I’ll pay up”
What it actually means:
“Look dipshit, I commissioned you to do this so get to fecking work! I don’t give a teflon coated ball-bag about your problems, I am up to my neck in work of my own which is why I outsourced it; apparently to a random feeble minded tool. JUST FIX IT!”
How to overcome this:
Basically just assume that the client is some kind of rabid fascist who expects you to have the patience of a saint with them, but respond like your nethers are on fire every time they ask something of you. Some clients may be nice, but you’ll only find that out about 30 days after the end of your project. Respond immediately to every email or call and you will definitely end up with happy clients.
4) “I think it would be good to get [insert semi-impossible task] by [random but semi-impossible to meet timescale], what do you think?”
It’s new project time and the client has a few wild requests about things that are largely or totally impossible to complete without direct divine intervention or the Fonzie.
What you think this means:
“I’m a total idiot, please help me set a realistic timeframe and cost for my ludicrous project”
What it actually means:
“I’ve fecked something up, maybe time, maybe resource, maybe budget, probably all three. What I want from you is a magical get-out-of-jail-free card that allows me to go to my boss and tell them that it is all in hand and this was the plan all along.”
How to overcome this:
Tough one this, the client wants the moon on a stick and you are fresh out of celestial bodies. I tend to find that the best way is to pick a manageable core of the project and then be wildly enthusiastic about getting that core “which is most of the work” done then be really, really specific about time and work parameters. When the client inevitably starts trying to tack things on to the deal you have to put on your soothing voice and tell them that that would be a great addition AFTER you do the work that is possible.
3) “We are pretty relaxed about timing…”
I think this one is just there as a test to find out if you are too trusting and can hence be shafted. Everyone likes to be seen to be the ultra cool laid back guy or gal who effortlessly dispenses bolts of awesome from their genitals. However only drug dealers can afford to be relaxed about their business as they know you’ll be back come hell and/or high water.
What you think this means:
“We are a hip trendy advertising/seo/web design agency. We dress like hipsters and probably have some kind of ‘post-ironic’ brand tag line like ‘got pudding’. No one here is held back by crushingly boring things like deadlines.”
What it actually means:
“We are pretty relaxed about timing, because it will be YOU doing all the work and you’d better get it done on time. Or else we won’t pay you.”
How to overcome this:
Pretty easy to do this one. Always have an agreed deadline and if you are going to miss it because your cat needed an emergency episiotomy or something then make sure the client is well aware of the delay and do everything possible to keep the delay to a bare minimum. i.e. Does that cat need all 12 stitches or can you use two and a staple gun? Vet fully booked? How about a taxidermist – they are kind of the same thing right? I’m not a massive fan of Twitter, probably because I have two followers, but I’ll begrudgingly admit that it is a useful instant response tool for the terminal badly organised in this kind of scenario.
2) “We’ll leave that up to you.”
The illusion of creativity is important to most people. Many people think they are great in bed (72% of you in fact) but most people also think that other people know about as much about the tantric arts as a dead porpoise called Gerald The Slob (about 22% think other people are as good or better than them between the sheets). So either sex has about 5 billion variations on ‘good’ or everyone is as sexually dynamic as a crumpled wad of loo roll and just think they are better in bed than a freshly oiled Reece Witherspoon (ed: Grrrrrrr).
What you think this means:
“Use your natural creative genius to come up with something for us!”
What it actually means:
“Oh balls. We should really have thought about this ourselves but as we are largely interested in not doing that… we haven’t. What we want from you is for you to use your psychic freelance powers to work out what we should have done… and then do that.”
How to overcome this:
You have to fake psychic powers or have psychic powers. If you have psychic powers; congratulations! What the hell are you doing here? There are numerous sci-fi applications for a mind reader. Perhaps you could start a business breaking into the thoughts of corporate directors and stealing their tat to sell to other corporate directors. Watch out for huge plot holes and ludicrously cantankerous figments of your own imagination though or you could end up looking like Leonardo di Caprio.
If, like me, you don’t have Professor X-like magical powers then unfortunately you are going to have to take a bit of feather ruffling. If you start vague and then quickly work into specifics with the client (making notes all the while) then the client might not notice that you are basically sucking all their ideas from them. Some clients will be like a stone wall and others with be like a fence made of pixie-custard, however the key thing is to make absolutely sure you don’t agree to Jack until you actually have (at least tacitly agreed) the general form of the idea that the client is happy with. Do not leave that meeting thinking; “I’ll brainstorm that later with my cat” because your cat will have chosen that day to be plum out of ideas and the client will not be sympathetic.
1) “I’ll get that paid straight away”
Ah the jingle of change and the rustle of crisply pressed notes. These are sounds that are never heard by (honest) freelancers. More likely is that you’ll get a cheque, BACS payment or just a rude hand gesture. Now as you’ll be well aware, most clients don’t want to pay you. They want you to have been so fulfilled by working with them that you will waive payment and continue to support whatever work you did, just because you don’t want to see client X fail. Of course you might give a mild crap about this, but I’ll bet you are more interested in getting fed regularly and buying the latest version of Angry Birds for your iPhone.
What you think this means:
“I’ll get that paid as soon as I am able to.”
What it actually means:
“That is that job pretty nearly done then….apart from all the after sales support presumably? We will probably get around to passing that invoice on to that department that pays the bill at my strip club for my expenses at some point when…well when hell freezes over I guess.”
How to overcome this:
How indeed. Without a debt collection agency there is not a great deal other than emailing, calling and threatening that you can do. A great way I have found to “incentivise” clients to pay is random discounting in concert with late penalties. Add something important sounding, but ultimately fluff, to the invoice like ‘Server Architecture verification’ or ‘Cyber-proofing’. Then write in a price that is about 5% -10% of the invoice value, then put a huge red line through the price and put ‘£0′ or ‘discounted to £0′ or something like that. Now they think they are getting a bargain.
Sure it is underhand and slightly dishonest but so is stiffing you out of your fee and the time to chase it up so I reason it breaks out about even. The inverse is to also agree in the upfront contract that for every week overdue then they owe you 5% interest or something. Architects do this to building firms all the time because if the firm say the house will be finished in Feb and the new owners turn up on the first to find a house only fractionally more attractive than a hole in the ground, they will be pissed off. But they will be less pissed off if the architect gives them £5 grand for every week they have to wait.
