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By Root 188 0

If a client tells you “Oh, that clause of the contract doesn’t really mean what it says—I would never hold you to not working for our competitors” or “I don’t think we need to update the contract—I’ll remember later that I said we’d put your bio alongside each piece of your work,” don’t give in. What if your point of contact leaves the company and you’re left without a written record of her promises? The legally binding agreement is the one you make in writing, not some off-the-cuff (potentially bullshit) assurance your client makes to get you to sign the contract.

Clear?

PART 3

Your So-Called Freelance Life

Part of the appeal of freelancing is that there’s never a dull moment. With so many hats to wear, you can easily find yourself playing hired gun, customer service rep, and accounting manager all before lunch. On the downside—well, that is kind of the downside. With so many balls in the air and to-do’s to keep track of, it can be tricky to stay in the black, focused on the deadlines at hand, and on top of your schedule (not to mention your shit).

That’s where this section comes in. Consider this your guide to the day-to-day of keeping your freelance business humming along smoothly—without letting it overtake your personal life. I’ll talk about the steps you can take to keep your star clients smiling, and how to deal with (and ultimately weed out) those hell clients who are all too happy to suck the time and life right out of you. I’ll also cover how to keep your bank account flush, your ass insured, and the IRS off your back.

As mistress of your own schedule, it’s all too easy to find yourself bouncing from urgent email to urgent email and lunch date to lunch date if you’re not careful (meaning, no time for your actual billable work). To put the brakes on that train wreck, I’ll discuss how to tame your unwieldy schedule, from banishing distractions and battling procrastination to hiring other freelancers and building time off into your calendar.

Finally, I’ll wrap up the section with every freelancer’s favorite topic: your master plan for world domination. Here, I’ll offer up some suggestions for promoting your work with wild abandon and bringing home a bit more bacon in the process. Plus, I’ll show you how to juggle the bread-and-butter projects that keep a roof over your head with the dream projects you really want to do.

Chapter 13

Care and Feeding of Your clients

Stroke your customers and give them the happy ending

“Above all saleswomen, the one an intelligent customer is certain to like best—

the one in fact to whom she always returns—is one who listens to what she

says and tries to give her what she wants, instead of trying to sell her what the

store seems eager to be rid of.”

—Emily Post, Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, 1922

A couple years ago, while doing some prep work for a class I was teaching, I asked half a dozen clients of mine to lay their biggest freelancer peeves on me. A newspaper editor I adored coughed up this gem about a wannabe columnist who, lacking any comprehension of the word “no,” hounded her via email for weeks: “Her last pitch to me said, ‘I should have a column in the paper because, frankly, I deserve it.’ This has now become a buzz phrase we use here to crack each other up . . . not where you want to be as a potential freelancer.”

Ouch.

Fortunately, satisfying your clients can be boiled down to this tidy list:

• Remember that you’ve been hired to produce a product.

• Follow directions.

• Don’t be a schmuck.

Simple, right? But you’d be surprised how many indie workers are ill-versed in keeping clients happy, evidenced by the tsunami of questions new freelancers ask their battle-tested counterparts. On the flip side, I’ve heard many a client grumble that it’s hard to find good freelance help these days.

So how do you become the good freelance help that clients (and with any luck, all their colleagues) can’t seem to get enough of? Since not following directions is one of the top client complaints, let’s start there.

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