
Why you shouldn’t take a client’s money - pauljarvis
https://thecreativeclass.io/why-you-shouldnt-take-a-clients-money/
======
ffn
So what about when you're just starting out, OP? When you haven't quite
reached the Torvaldian heights of subject expertise in a niche, but you are
somewhat competent with everything. What's the best strategy for finding /
choosing gigs and building your brand then? Also, how long did it take you to
reach expertise in your niche area?

~~~
tomjen3
Patio11, back when he still did consulting, charged 30k/wk, primarily by
getting close to the value the business provided (e.g optimizing a signup flow
on your customers Most Important Website is a lot easier to show will result
in $MEANINGFUL_AMOUNT_OF_ADDITONAL_INCOME than building an entire rails app to
improve developer productivity, ignoring that the first is easier).

~~~
irrigation
"Patio11, back when he still did consulting, charged 30k/wk"

He _says_ , adding heavy draw to an initiative. Absolutely nothing or anyone
can validate those incredible claims, though. Every engagement was, to us,
like the girlfriend from Canada.

~~~
minot
If you said you could I increase my bottom line by at least 300k by working on
some low hanging fruits that I've missed so far, I wouldn't hesitate to give
you $30k... Of course, I'd pay you after I have results though.

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jest3r-
Article is kind of contradicting.

> If they’re too new, they may not know much about their business or their
> audience yet.

Isn't that what they're hiring you for? I mean your previous point about the
right niche makes sense. But if your niche is healthcare and a new healthcare
businesses shows up ... are they not leaning on you to provide expertise in
that market? And wouldn't that help build your brand?

> – but those are all much harder to do if a client is starting from a place
> where they’re making no money or worse, spending more money than they are
> making.

This has nothing to do with "can't afford you". If the business truly can't
afford you then as a freelancer you're doing yourself a favor by not offering
discounts to accommodate. You're not doing the potential client any favors
here.

Otherwise most businesses actually do spend more money than they're making on
marketing and creative, especially early on as they build their brand. You
should definitely take their money. How else are they going to grow if you
can;t help them at that critical early stage? Send them to get a free website
first? You might as well start writing the obituary.

Established businesses that are already making money hand over fist would
typically already be happy with their freelance creative, but if they're
willing to spend money on something new with you, then you must have done
something early on that contradicts the premise of this paragraph in order to
earn their trust.

> If a client assumes that hiring you will completely turn their business
> around instantly, bring them bags of money every day, and skyrocket their
> brand into the stratosphere…

As a freelancer, if your work is high quality, really good, award winning type
stuff, then I would expect all potential clients would think you're a miracle
worker. That's high praise.

At that point it's your job to set expectations, not turn them away.

While I do agree with some of the points, the author seems out of touch with
reality - we regular folks don't have the recognition or word of mouth machine
to be this picky. And at the end of the day it's all about setting client
expectations. Not the other way around.

~~~
pauljarvis
point #1 - there's a difference between a startup who's figuring those things
out (and has the business acumen to know how business' work) and a person
who's never run a business before. i'm talking to the latter point, since a
freelancer can't really do everything for someone's business (like figure out
their market, audience, how to run a business, etc). that's more of a business
partner relationship than a freelancer.

point #2 - this again is speaking to people who start business' without
knowing how business' work (for me personally, i get a lot of leads like
that). through experience i've found that until a person has a good grip on
how their business works and how it can make even some money, the spend they'd
have on a site design is wasted money (just setup a free squarespace or WP
site).

point #3 - there's a big difference between realistic expectations and totally
unrealistic expectations. sure, good freelancers can make a business go from
not awesome to very awesome, but it has to tempered with reality.

i (the author) am a "regular folk" too. i've been freelancing a long time, so
i'm in the trenches. the only reason that i have the word of mouth machine
going is because i am picky with my clients :)

cheers! and thanks for the comment.

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amelius
Sounds pretty obvious to me. Why on earth would you take on a job when you
know beforehand that you can't satisfy your client's needs?

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fragsworth
Not everyone has so many contacts that they can really pick and choose.

Going 1-2 months without work because you turned down a client and can't find
another one can be really shitty.

~~~
irrigation
I'm a cynical sort with a lot of experience in the industry consulting, and I
can't help but view a lot of these pieces as heavily...embellished. Akin to
"fake it to make it". Ala "I'm so overwhelmed with business at 30K per
week....but would you like to buy some tupperware?"

I understand the author is here, and hopefully people don't embarrassingly
downvote this purely to try to act civil -- I think the embellishment is doing
a massive disservice to the entire industry. It is often complete fantasy. I
will also say that I found the claims the other day about the 30K+ per week
consulting engagements, apparently chosen at whim, completely _ludicrous_
(again, having worked with countless organizations). It has zero verification
or believability, but is a nice draw for someone's new initiative.

~~~
pauljarvis
i can't speak for anyone else - but by the same token, i'm not embellishing
anything. verifiable? no, because i'm not sharing my bank account statements.
believable? definitely - most of my friends make about what i make a year
freelancing, so it's not totally out of scope or outside the norm (i also
never said i make $30k/week freelancing - some weeks i do, but others, i
definitely don't).

i've built a career and an audience by being very honest, even about my epic
failures and shortcomings. i know you don't know me from adam - but luckily my
audience and client-base does, and really they're the ones i cater to. my
pricing is listed publicly on my website, and i wouldn't do that if clients
weren't willing to pay for it (i don't have a sugar daddy or sugar mama to
support me).

i also appreciate that you voiced your opinion in an actually civil way! i
hope it doesn't get down voted.

~~~
irrigation
The 30K thing was related to a post on here a few days back where an author
claimed that they had their pick of "30K / week" engagements. As an
interesting contrast with your policy, they claimed that they kept their rates
hidden, thus allowing them to magically and endlessly ramp it up.

In any case, I've long come to learn in the freelance industry that the more
people talk about their success (which can be "so many clients I turn them
away", or "I am now charging 50K+"), the more unlikely that success actually
is. e.g. the guy who puts "published author" at the top of his blog likely has
an Amazon Digital Delivery PDF book. The guy who talks about "top clients" had
someone from Apple visit their blog once. And so on.

The more bombastic about success someone is, the more incredible the claims,
the more likely they're struggling for relevance, using the escalating
accomplishments to create it. Again, this has been my experience in the
industry, where when you look behind the curtain you find Lenny asking you not
to tell anyone how he lives.

In no way am I saying that about you, but just in _general_ HN has been awash
in "so much success I have to wear shades....now would you like to buy some
tupperware?" type posts (I'm not being facetious with the tupperware thing --
it's people claiming boundless success, and then pitching something so petty
that it puts it all in stark contrast), and I have to think it does a massive
disservice to most of the readership, putting in their notice on this notion
that there are endless lines of clients throwing money around for vague needs.

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ams6110
A bit of a tangent, but as a freelancer who picks and chooses who to work
with, have you ever been hit with a discrimination claim, e.g. you turn down a
job, and next thing you know they are claiming you won't work with them
because they are black, or gay, or whatever.

How much do you need to document the reasons for turning away a client? Or is
there some kind of "at will" protection that applies to freelancers?

~~~
pauljarvis
preface: obviously i'm not a lawyer :)

but there's no employee/employer relationship, and i would never turn down a
gig based on religion, gender, sexual preference, etc.

at least for me personally, it's never come up. it may also help that i rarely
work with clients who live in the same country as i do (international law is
typically too expensive to litigate for something as tiny as a freelancer
saying no to work).

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mtae
Should be titled 'When you shouldn't take a client's money'.

Or (text from the article): 'Why you might not want to work with a potential
client'

~~~
vinceguidry
The main problem is that someone isn't a client _until_ you're taking their
money.

People ask me to take their money to help them solve their website problems,
which are actually their business problems, which are actually their life
problems. They do this when they find out I'm a coder, that automatically
confers upon me a magical ability to fix their lives. This typically happens
in the context of a bar conversation. I tell them, "no, I generally don't
moonlight unless there's at least $5K involved, but, hey, as long as we're
here, tell me what's going on and I'll see if I can help you."

So we unwind their problems a little bit. Inevitably there's a lot of emotion
stored up and I'll encourage them to release it with some 'tough love',
letting them know that without either a good bit of capital or a lot more
willingness to figure hard things out on their own on their part, they're not
going to achieve their goals, and they need to acquire one or the other if
they want to find success.

Tears start flowing, catharsis happens, no, I still won't take your money.
Accounting headache, you see. Tell you what, if you can do X, Y, and Z, to get
this monkey off your back and learn something truly useful, then give me a
call in a month and you can buy me a few beers and we'll talk next steps.

I call this 'community outreach'. Happens roughly twice a month, ever since I
started taking my laptop to the bar. Someone in a bad situation can always
count on my Houston air traffic controller delivery of the hard truths of
trying to make money on the Internet. Thought about building a business around
it, maybe if I find the right partner...

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raminassemi
Great read!

