My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [62]
• If a client wants your professional opinion on an extraneous professional matter (I get “Can you tell me how to get my book published?” a lot) and it’s not something you can answer in five minutes, tell them you charge an hourly consulting fee for such advice.
• If despite all of the above, a client continues to try to leech off you, finish the job at hand, then cross them off your list. You don’t need the money that bad.
PROBLEM: Your Client Has Set You Up to Fail
Because we freelancers fancy ourselves superheroes, we sometimes agree to projects with insurmountable problems. Sometimes we see the red flags going in; other times they don’t come into focus until we’re knee-deep in the project.
Betty, the freelance project manager you met in Chapter 3, told me about a doomed gig she took on recently, overseeing the production of a corporate video for a new client. Betty knew the production budget for the video was too small for the look her client wanted, but she thought she could get around it. “I tried to come up with a creative solution for the project, like an inventive, guerrilla, DIY approach,” she said. “It ended up that they weren’t happy with my approach, but they also didn’t really have any ideas about how I should fix it because there wasn’t any money. They were sort of stuck, and we were both really frustrated with each other.”
SOLUTION: I’m not sure why clients outsource such doomed projects, but I suspect it has something to do with denial and the myth that freelancers have some sort of magic wand we can wave à la Harry Potter to save a project from any giant, rabid, snarling three-headed dogs it involves.
In Betty’s case, her client asked her to step aside from the project and paid her for her time. Betty was more than happy to leave the project, as she was fixing to quit it anyway. “It wasn’t the end of my career,” she said. “I didn’t take it as a failure. I took it as a lesson to learn from. If you see a red flag, don’t think that this is the one time that you can work around it. Really work hard to announce those red flags to the team that’s hired you so that they know what you’re up against. I sort of went into a vacuum and said ‘I’m going to solve this myself,’and that didn’t work.”
As for Betty’s client, trying to cut corners wound up costing them big time; they still had to finish the video in house, and they had to use their own money to do it, as they’d nearly exhausted their own client’s budget. So how can you avoid getting caught up in a similar lose-lose situation?
• If you can’t negotiate the time and resources you need to get the job done, turn down the project.
• If you’re partway through the project and realize it’s doomed, loop in the client immediately. It’s not just your problem. Let them help you.
• If you and the client can’t come up with a viable solution and you decide to leave the project, ensure you get paid for your time. All the more reason to have project cancellation fees and payment contingency plans in your contracts.
Do Try This at Home: See If Your Clients Make the Grade
Sometimes you need to stare the facts in the face to realize you have a troublesome client on your hands. Making a Client Report Card can help. Here’s a list of what I grade my clients on:
• Pays well and on time
• Gives me repeat business and recommendations
• Gives reasonable lead time and deadlines
• Doesn’t try to squeeze extra work out of me for the same price
• Communicates key information in a timely manner
• Doesn’t need me to work from their office or come in for meetings
• Is pleasant and easy to work with
• Looks great on my bio (pays in prestige)
• Assigns creative, fun projects
• Gives my work great placement (on the home page of their website, on the front of the magazine cover, or as the leading lifestyle story