Vampire Clients: How Freelancers Can Avoid the 8 Types of Bad Clients-70

Hi, I'm Brittany Ratelle, and I'm so excited to talk to you today about freelancing. So specifically, how to avoid bad clients as a freelancer, the 8 red flags that you should look out for as a modern-day freelancer. So here's a legal disclaimer because I am an attorney, and what kind of attorney for creators or freelancers would I be if I didn't include disclaimers all over the place? While I'm an attorney and I'm licensed to practice in Utah and Idaho, I am not your attorney and this is not official legal advice. However, we will be talking about stuff that should hopefully be general information that should help you in your business, whether you identify as a creative freelancer or you're a new freelancer or maybe even a seasoned one who's just trying to avoid drama, headaches, stress, missed payments, scope creep, some of the other bad things that can happen when you're freelancing and that's your main source of revenue is when you're providing one-on-one services to clients, which is what we're gonna be talking to you about today. So the news flash, which is good news, is that the freelance economy isn't going anywhere. I think a lot of us saw a huge rise in freelancing and freelancing becoming more popular, more acceptable, having less of a stigma about it. This trend has been happening for decades, but specifically, I think COVID jumped it into gear, into top gear. And the data supports this. Upwork found that the number of full-time freelancers grew from 28% in 2019 to 36% in 2020. And that the pandemic, while it may have jump-started this trend, it doesn't even seem to be showing any signs, signs of slowing down. In fact, some projections have said that in the next 5 years, by 2027, 86 million people will be freelancing in the United States. That's about half of the total US workforce. So freelancing, kind of a big deal. So we're moving from gig economy to big economy. And so we wanna make sure that we have the boundaries, the perspective, the features in place, the systems in place that can really govern us and protect us and make it so that we're able to do what we do best as freelancers, to stay in that zone of genius and to avoid many of the hard lessons that could come, especially as you are beginning to start or grow or scale your freelance business, especially as you maybe move your service offerings as a beginner to more advanced. The types of clients that you're attracting and the types of projects that you're working on. In my perspective, in my profession, because I'm a business attorney and I do intellectual property as well, I've helped dozens and dozens, probably hundreds at this point, of freelancers with their businesses. Everything from setting up their businesses to working with clients, to yes, seeing when things go wrong and when things get ugly and trying to manage those situations, how problem solving, how to avoid drama, trauma to all the parties involved. Because these are things that they suck a lot of time and energy from our business. And so we want to try to avoid it when we can and try to be proactive. And what can we do on the front side to really own the type of clients that are coming to us and the type of work that we're doing and making sure that we're being clear and really using all the tools in our toolkit to, to hit this on the front side instead of trying to be reactive in our business. So on that end, let's get to our first tip here. Okay. Of our tips, which is tip number 1. Make sure you're setting up your business boundaries. So no surprise here that as a lawyer, I like contracts, right? Spoiler alert. You know that the barber would say that you needed a haircut and that the attorney, me, would tell you, you need to use contracts in your business. But here's the rub on this. Here's a nuance that I want to make clear. The best contract is a clear collaborative contract. It is not a one-sided contract. It's not a gotcha. I buried something in the fine print on page 18. That I'm gonna try to use to bludgeon my client when things go wrong. No, I don't recommend this. I don't draft contracts like this. I don't promote contracts like this. I don't, it's not good business practice, whether it's legal or not, whether it's ethical and just good client management is a whole nother story. Okay. And we wanna make sure that we're having congruity and integrity in all the ways that we're doing business. The best contract is one that is clear about the expectations of both parties and sets up good boundaries and that matches how you're doing the rest of your business. Because here's the thing, the fine print in your contract should not be fine print. Basically, it shouldn't be the only place where you're talking about how you're gonna value and how you're gonna set up communication, payment, collaboration, the way we work, um, what's the expectation timelines and deadlines around that, or how you're gonna be working with each other. What's the format, just the rules of the engagement that you're setting up. And you really wanna have those boundaries be clear and in multiple places while you're informing your clients and really upfront so that people know and can self-select, oh, that sounds like me. That sounds like a good fit of what I'm looking for in terms of hiring a service provider and hiring an expert at what they do, or it's not. And that way you can steer clear because it should be very clear that you're not for everyone. And that's okay. What you want to be is attracting the right type of work and clients for what you do. So let's be clear. That we want to be, make sure that we're setting up business boundaries. Okay? And so let's get into some of what those are. And then what happens when you don't set up business boundaries or kind of unclear, which brings us to our number 2. It's the 8 types of bad clients that you should avoid. Bad clients. And we're gonna talk a little bit later about, are there really bad clients or are we just not setting up clear expectations? I think there's room for healthy debate on both sides. Overarching here is that you need to trust your gut. There will sometimes just be clients that give you the willies. You just don't have a good feeling about it. And it's a really good idea to trust your gut, to trust your feelings, to trust that this might not be a good relationship. I know that sounds and can be sound really trite or privileged if you are beginning as a freelancer because expectations and high hopes don't pay the bills. Work pays the bills. And so sometimes I understand that you are in a position where you need to be more flexible and open-minded and taking whatever work that comes, especially when you're in that feast or famine, especially in the beginning when you're setting up your clients and maybe don't have word of mouth or don't have a huge reputation or portfolio or network to rely on. So totally understand that position. But there are some things that I have learned in helping a lot of people out of the sticky messes and situations they get in with clients that I've got some pretty classic bad client archetypes here that let's dig through. Okay. These are varying shades of vampire clients and I call them vampire clients because They suck the lifeblood out of your business. Okay, these are no Edward Cullens. There is no sparkling in the sun here. These are bad actors that you want to try to avoid if you can. And if they show you who they are in the beginning of your interaction on social media, on follow-up calls, on a clarity call or Zoom that you might have with them, you need to believe them when they're showing you how they interact with you. When there's already tension or stress about the relationship, Again, you need to trust your gut and really think about what's the hate rate, or, and my friend Jenny Melrose talks about that, but it's basically the rate that you need to charge or charge more and upcharge so that you don't hate your life so much when you're doing this work. Okay? So I want you to think about the hate rate. Let's get to these 8 types of clients. Number 1, this client is the bad mouther. Okay? This client speaks poorly about your, about lots of different businesses. Okay? And here's the thing. Someone who's the negative Nancy, who sees flaws in everyone, who's, oh, I'm so glad I found you. There might be some flattery here. Watch out for it. I've worked with 17 different graphic designers and they were all terrible, but you are gonna be the golden unicorn. You're gonna be special and solve all my problems. Is that likely? Is that realistic? No. What is the more likely case? That you are an amazing, incredible, never seen before service provider? Maybe. Or is the common denominator This client is crazy. This client has unrealistic expectations. This client doesn't know how to manage the relationship, or this client's budget doesn't match. And we'll talk a little bit more about that too. So if you find someone who badmouths everyone else, just think whether you want to be the next person on that list, because if they're speaking that way about other people, you could be next, my friend. Okay? And it's probably not a club you want to be part of. No fun jackets, no t-shirts. Okay. Hey, number 2, the existential wanderer. Okay. This client is somebody who doesn't know what they want. They're like Thoreau on Walden Pond. Okay. They are all over the place and not in a fun way, not in a fun way, in a fun way that they don't know what they want. They don't know who they are. They don't know who they're selling to. They don't know what their product is or their service is. They don't know who they are. And because of that, They are gonna take you for a never-ending story, okay? And you need to get off before you land with Atreyu in the swamp. Okay? I know I'm dating myself with this reference here. If you don't, if you haven't seen that movie, I'm sorry that you're not a '90s kid. Okay? So you need to make sure that you're working with someone who has a clear idea of what success is, because guess what? You can hit that and you can deliver and the client's gonna be happy and you're gonna be happy and you're gonna tie a nice bow on that project. Okay? So be wary of the existential wanderer, the person who doesn't know who they are. Send them to a life coach, a therapist, meditation, literally anyone else besides you. Okay. Number 3, the DIYer. Okay. This is particularly pernicious in some communities where people like to bootstrap and figure things out on their own and wear all the hats. And look, we've all been there. If we're small business owners, we know there is a time and a place where you do wear all the hats and you are Googling all of the things, and it's a special place. And then we hopefully move on and we start to value the expertise of people, of experts, people with experience and credentials, people who know and are good at their lane and know how to deliver their one thing and solve one problem really well. And that is what you want is someone who recognizes that and appreciates that because a good client will appreciate you and pay you for your work. Pay you for what you're doing with them. Great, awesome, we love it. A bad client will hire you begrudgingly because they have a problem that they need you to fix, but they will not appreciate you, and they're still not sold. They're still not convinced that you're the one to fix it. They're like nothing Jon Snow. They're not 100% on board. They're not fully committed, okay? They're not into this relationship, and it's gonna manifest in lots of different weird behavior in terms of nitpicking over stuff or bad-mouthing you or not appreciating the price or going back on the proposal of not being fully committed and moving forward. And that you guys are a team here and you're both trying to move to the finish line so we can get the result that we wanted, that we wanted to. Okay. So beware of the DIYer. If you catch them saying things like even in your initial conversations of like, well, I would do this myself, but I just, I don't have time now, maybe. Does that sound like they're super on board and committed and recognize your value? No. I've done this, like, you know, work like this before, or I studied this in school, or graphic design, I guess we can use Adobe, but I'm, I use Canva all the time. My graphic designers are rolling their eyes here, but you understand what I'm talking about. People are giving you signs that, oh, they don't, they think they can do what I do. In which case, have at it. Knock yourself out. Truly go. You will be happier than this, and you won't be stuck in that, that middle place of constantly trying to justify your value and your expertise and also doing the work. You don't need to do both. You, at this point, you just need to be doing the work. You don't need to be a PR agent for the work. Okay. All right. Let's talk about number 4, the scope creeper. Oh, this is a creature, a feared creature from the Black Lagoon for freelancers, because This person just like needs to make a few extra changes. Can we just like put it up just 5 pixels up? Can we just get rid of this one comma in a 5,000-word blog post? Can I just, I looked at the product and it was great except for back behind it in the size 15, a size 12 font in the back. I didn't like this placement. It was justified. I want it centered. Okay. This person is a scope creeper. They're a nitpicker, they're a micromanager, and they will keep on asking you to do extra work that wasn't in the scope. Okay. The scope, when we refer to it, when we talk about scope creep and freelancing work, we're talking about the scope of work or what you are hired to do, which in freelancing is your lifeblood. It's your bread and butter because you may not be getting paid on an hourly rate. So it means it's super important to outline what the scope of the project is. What am I doing for you? What does the work look like? And if we have creep here, that's where the client wants to make changes. Or revisions. And sometimes there's room for that, and that's part of the process. And we talk about that in the contract. We talk about how many rounds of revisions you get or how many deliverables you have and what format and by what deadline. And if you want anything outside of that, then it's gonna be a new agreement or a new price or something to— something else that's going to capture that exchange of value. So you are not left on the hook doing extra work. And not getting any extra money. Okay. And that's what we wanna try to avoid. Okay. Avoid the scope creeper. Okay. Next one is the ghoster. Ooh, where are you? Where are you? This person isn't great at communicating, whether they're conflict avoidant, whether they're in the Bahamas, whether they're living like hashtag van life and have Wi-Fi. It's not your problem unless it is, unless they're your client. And now it is definitely your problem because you need them to approve things. You need them to get their homework done and back to you. And this person is ghosting you. They say they're, they're, they're hot and cold. They say they're super excited and you send over the proposal and you don't hear anything for weeks and weeks. They ghosted you. Okay. This person likely has too much on their plate or has poor communication or management or whatever it is. They're showing you that they don't value the process. They don't value your time. And you're likely going to have, this is going to be one of those projects that's going to run over. It's gonna run over on time, scope, possibly calendar, and butt up to other things on your calendar, which is gonna make it hard for you to keep having consistent and good client service to all the clients that you want to, okay? And show up the way that you want to. So the ghost, how can you look for signs of this person besides some of the obvious? If from the very outset this person is not good about responding to communications, emails, if they're getting you things late, that, that's a ghoster. That's a ghoster. And you need, you may need to set them free. Like Patrick Swayze, you can have your time together with Demi Moore and you're working on the clay potter wheel and then they need to go and they need to move on and maybe they were a fit for someone else. Okay, but not you because you're too smart for that. Okay, hey, let's talk about our next one. This is the discounter. Or how about you work for exposure? How does that sound? Doesn't that float your boat? Okay, doesn't that give you the heebie-jeebies? Exposure doesn't pay my mortgage. Okay, this person is characterized by not understanding that freelance isn't free. Okay? Not one in the same. That you are running a business, not a charity. That you need money to survive and do what you need to do. It's a fair exchange of value, not anything we need to be weird about. And that if they wanna work for you, they need to have a real budget if they wanna have real work. Okay? That those things go hand in hand. Watch with particular care that these people aren't friends and family and angling for a friends and family discount. That sometimes happens a lot in the kind of work for exposure workshop exposure? What's— can I get like a friends and family deal? And I get that this can be really dicey because you want to be thoughtful. These are people that you probably have a relationship with. You care about them, but also you're running a business. A line that I love to answer back is, hey, so excited you're interested in working with me. I just want to make sure of all the service providers or all the businesses you could choose— hint, you're a service provider and business, you're reminding them, hint, hint— of that, that you want to work with me and it's a good fit for your budget. What were, what were your ideas for this project or for in terms of timeline? And see, you reminded them you're a real business. You reminded them you have a pretty decent relationship, but you also, there's trust in that bank and that if you're not a good fit for them, that's totally fine. You're, it's not gonna hurt your feelings, but that you want them to choose them because they, you are the person for them. You are the best fit. You're who I wanna work with. Not that I'm gonna get a sweetheart deal. So you've become my one and only because you're giving me 50% off. So that I would be very careful about. And here I will say another word of caution just because I've seen it so much. If you do decide to do some sort of exposure or trade or discount, I like to invoice as normal and note that discount on the invoice just to keep everyone honest on the same page of, by the way, this is what this package normally costs. Because honestly, some people just might not know. They might not know, oh, That's what a whole website costs that you do? Gosh, that's awesome. Good for you. You're right. I don't have the budget for that. Or what I was going to trade for you, totally not a fair trade for that. And you avoid that whole awkwardness of they think they did you a favor and you know that you're doing them a favor and see how we're not having a good meeting in the middle. Okay. Because again, freelance isn't free, is it? Hey, the discounter. So the next person that we want to talk about is our clinger. Okay. This is our class 5 clinger. Okay. Any fans, uh, Wedding Crashers in here? Okay. There also can be a micromanager, but this person, again, not sold that you can do it, or they just have weird boundary issues. And so they, they need a lot of handholding, more than normal. They want to know all the ways of contacting you and will press those boundaries. It's not okay just to have an email or a set meeting. They wanna text you, they wanna Slack you. They will DM you when, even when you've told them that there's not gonna be any movement for this point, and this is the timeline of how you're gonna be working together. That does not compute, does not process, and they will keep bugging you. So what's hard about that? If you're a freelancer, time is money for you. And so you need to manage the communication of that relationship. Otherwise, even just keeping them happy and telling them no new news, or hey, this, all of these edits or feedback needs to be in this format, or this is the way we've agreed to work, because that's gonna cut into your time. Okay. And then do your money. Hey, avoid the clinger or the micromanager. Okay. Next person to avoid are bad clients is the copycat. Okay. The copycat, as you would imagine, as someone who does intellectual property work, is particularly unsavory because this person doesn't respect the process, doesn't respect individuality, doesn't respect their own brand or their own way of selling something. 'Cause here's the rub. I talk to clients all the time that there is a spectrum between everything's a remix and everyone copies and it's totally okay and just get with it. And which isn't exactly true. And everything I do is unique and special. I am a unicorn. No one else can sell pillows or hair bows or a fitness plan or meal planning like I can. Okay. Neither of those extremes are really the truest true. They're somewhere in the middle. That's more of a nuanced position. And, but if you have someone that's coming to you and all they're saying is, I want this, I want you to copy the sales page. I want you to copy exactly this branding. I want it to look exactly like this. Note that not only, like we said, is there a legal line in terms of what's legal and it's possible what they're asking you to do may not be legal. It may be copyright or trademark infringement or breach of trade secret or confidentiality, depending on if they have a relationship with the other person they want you to copy. But there's There's an ethical hedge around that too. Legal is just the baseline, is the floor of the kind of behavior that we want to serve. It's not the ceiling. And if there should always be a hedge around that of what feels good to you, what feels in congruency with the way that you want to show up and serve in your business, what doesn't give you an icky feeling and lets you sleep at night and lets you keep on moving forward with your work and, and being in a community of people, especially in some industries or very small communities where all the players know each other, that would allow you to keep on doing work and not being like, oh yeah, I'm just I'm real bummed I took that project, or that I knew what the project was and I didn't see how problematic that was going to be, maybe for you and the way you wanted to work. So beware of copycats. And if you want more resources on copycats, I've got lots more on that because it's an issue that comes up a lot and I get asked about a lot. So make sure you check in the links below for more info about how to, if you get copycatted, what to do about it. And the last one is the no handshake, or the handshake hate. Okay, the no-contract Hank, the handshake Hank, who— person who doesn't want to use a contract. Aren't we friends here? Aren't we like— aren't we gentlemen here? Please, sir. And you may be, and you may be— you know what, here's the thing. If you already know each other, all the more reason to use a contract, because what we talked about, that relationship matters. That means that you want to have a really strong clarity and spelled-out expectations of what it's going to look like as you move forward in that relationship and what to do when things go wrong. Okay. So that's how you manage that is we don't just do handshakes. We do real contracts because you are a real business. You should, and you deserve that, and your clients deserve that, and your future clients deserve that kind of clarity. Okay. So my last tip here is to talk about contracts. Okay. We've alluded to it. Hopefully I've given you a good enough pep talk. If you're not using them yet in your business, here's why they matter and here's how to make sure that a contract has what it needs in it to protect you as a client service provider. Okay? Because as I talked about, there are some people who feel like there are no bad clients, despite us— me just having listed a whole bunch of the types of bad clients. But instead, there's reasonable people, normal people who become bad. They become the wicked witch of the west because you don't manage the relationship because you're not setting this relationship up for success. You're not being clear about how you work, why you work, when, what, and who needs to do what by when for things to happen. Okay? And especially if you start to avoid conflict because it makes you uncomfortable or conversations about money, this is how you can get a bad client relationship, even when otherwise things would maybe be set up and it can move along smoothly. So what do we need to have in our contract? First thing, first, You know, order of business here, make this easy. Do not use paper and ink. This is not the, this is not a Regency novel. We don't need to be making this hard. No, this is not Bridgerton. So use online tools, use contract managers like Dubsado, HoneyBook. I have a new one with some friends of mine just launched called Harlow, which looks amazing. That's specifically designed for kind of more modern business freelancers or consultants, cuz that's their background. But make it easy for people to review. Sign, collect e-signatures, to onboard, to have really clear proposal and you have a scope of work. Some of my clients have one contract that has everything in it, the kitchen sink. Some people prefer to have kind of a proposal or a statement of work or scope of work, all called different things depending on sometimes the industry that you're in. That's got more of like the fun stuff, like what the project look likes. And then maybe they have a client service agreement or a master service agreement or MSA, they're sometimes called. That has more of the fine print and the legalese, the stuff that applies to every contract relationship that you have, every deal that you do with people, and doesn't change as much as maybe the proposal does. That's maybe more the specific menu or offerings that you are gonna be doing for this. Make sure, make sure that you're making this easy for both parties to review and to have a copy of the agreement if they need to. The next thing you wanna look at is to have a tight scope of work. We already talked about this. But you need to specify who's doing what, when, who needs approval. Make sure you have approval timeline and a point of contact. Okay? Don't let yourself be beholden to a committee of people. Make sure you have one person that you need to answer to when you're dealing, especially with freelancing work. Okay? Otherwise you can get yourself in some nasty triangles or flat out like polygons where person A told you to do this, but person B wants you to do something different. And who are you supposed to be listening to? And you're caught in the middle and you did both of it. And are not getting paid for that, it's a nightmare. Especially scope of work are really important for freelancing projects that are collaborative or iterative where people have homework. The client needs to get you the product photos or they need to get you the talking points so that you can write the blog post. They need to get you the podcast episode so that you can go in and do the show notes and the graphics and get everything edited as a podcast producer and turn it into— these things are dependent. B is dependent upon A happening. Which means that if we have milestones that we're trying to hit on a timeline, then we need to be really clear when you need what you need so that you can do what you need to do. Crystal clear. Be wary on this in scope of work and really as a freelancer in general of people who want off-the-menu services, who want special treatment, especially if you've worked hard in your business to commoditize and systematize your offerings. Okay? If you've set up that this is the menu, these are the 3 packages you offer. If someone comes in and wants something special in hybrid, please resist the urge to reinvent the wheel again. Okay. There's probably a reason why you liked having it spread out like this. Okay. There are probably processes and systems that have saved you time and money. This is a predictable way of doing the work, of delivering the work, and a good way for people to have good expectations of how this is all going to go. And when you go off the book and you dabble and you go off menu and people want their special unicorn stuff, that's where things can go off the rails quicker because you don't have a predictable system or it doesn't fit in your system. And so emails get dropped or deadlines get dropped or things get behind schedule. And so that's when you open yourself up to more hassle and ultimately to maybe more conflict and legal, legal issues and legal drama in your business, which we all want to avoid. Okay. That's why we want to be legally legit. Next thing we want to talk about is clear payment details. Probably not a huge surprise that the money talks and the money matters in here. And so we want to make sure it's really clear How are you getting paid? Is it PayPal or is it direct deposit? Are you gonna invoice? Are they— are you gonna run their card? Is it credit card or ACH? Note to self, you need to have special permission to have ACH and do direct deposit. Make sure you're asking for that and have the proper paperwork for that. Are you supposed to charge them as an individual or as an LLC? Do you know? Does it match the header of the contract match what's actually in their business details to make sure they can't skip out on the contract and be like, oh, You didn't contract with me. That's not actually me. You also need to make sure that you have really clear about the deadline. Don't settle for net 90 payment terms as a freelancer. Okay. Net 90 means that they get 90 days to pay you. Okay. Celebrity marriages have lasted less than that. Okay. Don't put yourself in the position where you are working for the man. Dolly Parton would be mad at you. You're working 9 to 5 and you're not getting paid for that. They're not being paid certainly for a long time. And the longer that it goes on, there's a Murphy's Law about big checks in freelancing. That the bigger the check gets to be, the more likely that the client starts to doubt that you've done a good job. Not saying it's fair. It's, it's not saying it's even rational, but there's something about the pricing and payment psychology that happens that when a client has to write a big check or big PayPal, whatever, they start to doubt the efficacy of your work and whether you've really done a good job and really done everything and whether they've really gotten served the way they thought they were going to be served. So don't put yourself in that position. Use payment milestones. Okay? Have some, have, take some money up front to make sure they're serious and to make sure that the opportunity cost of refusing other work on your calendar is getting compensated. And then make sure there's good payment milestones along the way, particularly if this is a larger project. If you're doing a huge, giant, beautiful website, awesome. Love it. Please do not wait for the end for the big check, please. I'm begging you, please. Because I don't want you to email me later and for us to have that conversation. I will be there for you if it's a good fit, if you need me to be, but I'd much rather have you be protected on the front end for you to be proactive and be taking care of that relationship. And I get to be the chiropractor or like the really cool yoga teacher for you and just helping you along the way. And I don't have to be an ER doctor. Okay, don't love that. Don't love that for us. Okay, and I doubt you love that either. So make sure you have clear payment details, okay, especially on how are they supposed to pay you. And again, that should be definitely in your contract and in another place too. Maybe if you get that question a lot, it probably means you need an FAQ or you need an onboarding video or something else for your clients to be able to respond back to again and again so they can answer those questions. Okay, and then my last big tip here is you need to document communication and it needs to be in a way that's clear between the client. And this is particularly important with any types of revisions or change orders. I'm looking at you, interior designers, graphic designers, UX designers, people who are having to— it's likely part of the process that what we started out with is not what we're gonna end. It's just, that's the nature of the work. And so to couch against, again, you doing more work and thus making less money, because you've given up, because it's a flat fee and it's project-based payment, you need to make sure that we have really clear communication on how many rounds of edits you get, or do they just give you feedback as they go, or do you have a feedback meeting where all the feedback has to come here and then they have to forever hold their peace? I'd recommend doing it that way. If you're starting to notice in your relationship with your client that you're, maybe they're falling into, they're starting to show more signs of being one of those categories, one of those archetypes, We talked about it being a bad client then, and you're like, oh shoot, I might be in trouble here. Best way to cover your butt is to document your conversation. Force everything to email or chat, DM, although I don't love it cuz it's hard to keep track and things can get lost. Screenshot it if you can. Record your Zooms, Slack, but try not to have just oral communication, whether by phone or by Zoom that's not recorded. Because it's a real documented phenomenon that two people can be in the same conversation and remember something differently. Okay? So it's not always that people are being vindictive or out to get you. They can just honestly, their communication style or their lens and their paradigm, they can be internalizing and understanding it differently than what you are. And so that's why two people can look at an accident and honestly, they both swear they saw different things. And in their— that is their truth and their perspective. So How do we avoid against that? We use stuff that's in writing. We use contracts. We have things that are in writing. That way, when someone's like, I swear I didn't have a problem with that, or I said that, you can go back and gently nudge and be like, behold, per my last email, per this conversation, per our discussion on this date and time, this is what we talked about. Again. Okay. And so it keeps you, it keeps everyone honest and keeps everyone on track. Okay. So guys, I hope this has been helpful. Guys, girls, business owners, freelancers, to go through all these, to talk about freelancing and how you can help manage and set up expectations in your business to really settle into that CEO hat. Because freelancing, it's such an incredible time to be a freelancer. And there's so many opportunities for you because the way that technology and software has allowed people to have lower gatekeeping, especially in certain industries where that wasn't an option before. And how remote work has pushed the boundaries and forced us to see, oh, sure enough, that person doesn't have to be inside my organization. They don't even need to be inside my building or zip code to do the work. I love all these awesome trends. And we wanna make sure that as we embark into this new age and the new rise of the freelancer economy, that we are supporting that with the scaffolding and systems and processes that help support you. Because if you are a freelancer and this is whether your side gig or your full-time gig, you own a business. You are now a business owner, my friend, and that is very different than working for someone else and relying on their systems, their contracts, their way of managing clients, and also managing the work. And those are two very different things. If you are interested in more resources and how you can set up, especially if you need to get your hands on your own client service agreement or master service agreement, If you don't have one of those yet, you're in luck because I have an online template shop called Creative Contracts where I sell this and other really popular and helpful agreements that online business, savvy online business owners need to get legally legit and to send with swagger. You can find that at links in the show notes, in the links below, but it's at creativecontracts.co. There's a free quiz on there that you can look at to see and type in what type of business do you have, what are you selling in your business, and how and figure out what you need. But note that client service agreement is the number one tool for avoiding headaches as a freelancer and making sure that you're just being really clear and professional and businesslike with who you're doing business with, that you're signaling from the get-go, from the outset, I know what I'm doing, I know how we're gonna work together, and I know how I'm gonna— going to deliver and to solve your problem. And that's what we want our contract and everything else around in our business to signal and for it to be really cohesive and clear. If you need some more help getting your business legally legit, I also have a freebie for you called the Legally Legit Workbook. It's my number one freebie, been downloaded thousands and thousands of times, and I'd love for you to get a copy too. So you can get that at getlegitwithbritt.com or look at the end, you can get a copy of that. Also note that if you're setting up a freelance business or starting as a freelancer, you would likely wanna set up as an LLC in your state. And I'd also recommend you set up some privacy shields if you're gonna be working from home. So there's some other episodes and resources in the notes about how to set up that. If you're new to that, if that seems overwhelming to you, I'm here for you. I got you. I'd love to help you walk through what that process looks like. So thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate you giving the time to talk about freelancing, to work on your business, to work on your boundaries in your business, most importantly, because that's what we're all about here. And what I try to do is I serve creatives creators, freelancers, modern online business owners is helping you own your business and be a true business owner in every sense of the word. Thanks so much for tuning in and best of luck as you grow and scale and protect that business of yours.