#081: How to Get Paid Faster Without Chasing After Clients

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey there. Thank you for joining me for episode 81 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find detailed show notes for this episode by going to b2b launcher.com episode 81. You know, if you've been freelancing for at least a couple of years, chances are that you've had trouble getting paid at some point by a client. Maybe the client was slow to pay you or they lost your invoice or, or they held your payment for some weird and unfair reason. And when these things happen, you have a choice. You can rant about it, you can foam at the mouth, call Tony Soprano to help you out. You could lose sleep over this and just go to social media and really raise some hell. But that's one way of doing it and it's not the only way. And it might not be the best way necessarily to at least get what you really want out of this. You can also, instead of doing all those things, use this as a learning experience and you can change what you do in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, or at least to prevent it from happening as frequently as it might be happening to you in this episode. My guest is a lady by the name of Katie Lane. Katie is a very smart lady. She's a super person. She is actually an attorney who works with freelancers and artists. So she really understands our world. And what you'll hear here over the next 30, 40 minutes or so will be some very practical ideas for preventing these nightmares from happening in the first place. So if you've had this problem happen to you, or whether you have or you haven't, it doesn't really matter. I urge you to listen to Katie's advice. Some great ideas here and what I think is the best solution to this dilemma that really at the end of the day is going to happen at some point when you're in business for yourself. So hope you enjoy it. And I'll come back at the end with a quick announcement. Hey, Katie, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited.

Yeah, yeah, so am I. This is a topic that I've been asked about quite a bit And I haven't really addressed it in the show before, at least not the way we're going to address it. So I'm really excited to get right into it. But before we do that, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about what you do, the work you do, the kind of clients you work with, and maybe why you do this, why you enjoy it.

Yeah, sure thing. I'm an attorney and a negotiation coach and I focus on working with freelancers and artists, people who are working for themselves. This is actually exactly what I wanted to do when I went to law school 100 years ago. So I'm glad that I have finally gotten to the place in my practice where I get to do it full time instead of part time or on the side. Started my practice about three and a half years ago. Prior to that, I had a blog called workmadeforhire.net, which is just giving negotiation advice and basic legal education to people who are working for themselves. Because I don't think there are enough resources out there and I don't think that there are enough lawyers who are taking it seriously that these people have businesses and they have real valid questions and need help. So my practice evolved from the blog and I did that part time for about two years while I saved money for my day job. And I've been doing it full time for a little over a year now.

Oh, that's awesome. Good for you.

It's pretty great.

So I'm assuming and you work with self employed professionals, a lot of creative types. Sounds like really in all professions?

Yeah, I tend to focus on working with people in the, in creative industries. A lot of my clients are comics creators, authors, designers. I also really like the, the open source software community, so I work with developers and some designers over there too.

And I'm assuming you work with clients all over the country?

I do. I'm lucky in that because I'm doing both legal work and negotiation work. I have. I can work with more people. Also, most of the work that I'm doing is related to contracts. Helping people make sure that their contracts are well, making sure that they have them number one, and then making sure that the contracts they have are in good working order and have the tools that they need should something go wrong. So a lot of the work that I end up doing is related to, you know, things like copyright and getting paid, managing your intellectual property, that sort of thing.

Cool. All right, so in terms of getting paid, let me kind of frame it the way that some of my listeners have explained it to me. It's not so much the, hey, you know, what's the trend? You know, is it getting worse out there? Although I'd love to hear your thoughts about that, you know, if you're seeing any kind of trend or is it basically the same? It's always been, but really the biggest issue is, look, I can't afford to kind of finance my clients projects. You know, I need to get paid relatively quickly. I know that there are things that I could do on my end that I have control over to, to shorten that window, but I'm not sure what they are. I've tried a few things and it seems like it doesn't matter what the client is, it's always taken me a long time to get paid. So what I'd like to kind of focus our conversation on is maybe a handful of ideas, things that you've seen make a dramatic difference in your ability to get paid and get paid faster. How does that sound?

Yeah, absolutely. I really like that. A lot of my getting paid advice comes from the fact that I used to manage the software and hardware contracts for a local utility. And in doing that I also managed the professional services contracts. And in that role for the company, I got to see firsthand one, how the company thought of contractors that they were, that they were contracting with, but also things that contractors could have done to get the company's attention. And in my role I couldn't say, hey, do this thing. But now that I'm out on my own and working with people one on one, I can say, hey, this is how to get a company to take you seriously. And a lot of what it is is just making the company see you as a company, as a small business, rather than just as an individual. Because for whatever reason, they take it much more seriously when they are dealing with another business than they are when they think that they're just dealing with another person.

Interesting. So let's start there. So when you're talking about, does this have to do with the way you portray your. Does this have to do with the way you've structured your business legally? What are we talking about specifically in order to get them to take you a little bit more seriously?

I think it has to do with both of those things. One of the things about structuring your business legally is that honestly, it's more helpful to you as an individual. It protects the things that you own and that are important to you, but it can also signal to the other person, hey, this is actually a company. This is not somebody who is doing it on the side for fun. For whatever reason, companies tend to see freelancers as somebody who is doing something until they get, quote, a real job or until they are able to land full time work. But there are a lot of freelancers for whom this is their full time job, this is real work and this is very important. So to just shift the perspective of the companies that they're dealing with, I encourage my clients to look into either incorporating or setting up an llc. Using a name for your business that is separate from your name, your individual name, so that it not only is, but sounds like an entity that is separate from yourself and that sort of thing. But the other thing is just in how you're presenting yourself. The fact that you have a contract, the fact that that contract is thoughtful, that it is expressing to the other side. I am the expert in knowing what's important for our jobs to be successful. So you're hiring me to do a job for you and I'm going to tell you how we're going to get it done. Really, really well. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to sign your contract, but just by starting out and saying, hey, here's the paperwork, we need to get signed to get going, they're going to take you more seriously because you look familiar to them. One of the things that I think is really important when we think about negotiating and thinking about influencing other people's behavior is people tend to do things that are familiar to them or that they feel comfortable with. So if it's possible to present something that you want them to do as something that is familiar, that they know that they don't have to learn a lot about or squint their eyes and cock their head to understand, you're more likely to get them to act than you would be if you're expecting them to come even further towards your perspective to do whatever it is you want them to do.

Yeah. Don't get them to think or any red flags to go up. Make it as kind of vanilla and standard as possible so that they feel comfortable with it and maybe ask fewer questions.

Yeah. And the other thing is that just because you are making it easier for your clients to work with you doesn't mean you are running your business in a way that doesn't feel authentic to you or genuine to you. You are running your business based on your values and what's important to you, but you're making sure that it makes sense to your client to do what you want them to do. Including paying you. And that's thing is making the client see that paying you is really an investment in themselves as opposed to letting money go. They are buying something of enormous value from you and you are going to be able to in turn give them something that is going to help them grow their business or help them with their reputation or help them make more money. So one of those things is positioning payment not just as payment for services, but as really an investment in themselves. And part of that, as you well know, goes back to how you present the work that you're going to do for them. So how you present it in terms of pricing, how you talk about and describe the work that's going to be done over the course of the project, and really thinking about their perspective and what's important to them.

You know, it seems like there's two sides here though, that you have to be concerned about, especially if you're going after the corporate market. There's your champion or the person who hired you, and then there is their accounts payable department. And you know, there might be other layers here, but it seems to me, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, that if you can do a really good job with your positioning and the way you position your value with your champion, that makes it a lot easier for them to present it that way and to make sure that it gets handled properly on the payables side. Is that accurate?

Absolutely. I don't think people actually ask their champions enough questions about the internal politics and policies of things like getting paid and what do I need to do to make this easy for you, or what, what should I take into consideration? When I was working for that utility managing their IT contracts, one of the things I would always do with a new salesperson is give them a half hour to ask any question that they wanted. And I would explain our budgeting cycle and I would explain our payment cycle and that was their free time. It was an ama. But I figured if I could give you that information, you're in a better position to serve my clients, my company well, because you're not going to get tied up with the administrative stuff. So one of the things I encourage my clients to do, especially if you're working with corporate clients, with companies that are relatively big or even medium sized sometimes, is to ask that champion for 30 minutes to make sure you understand what you need to do so that you're sending invoices to the right person so that you understand internally how they work, what's important to them. I encourage People to do things like, all right, do I need to put my contractor number on the, on the invoice? Who does the invoice need to go to? Can I have their phone number and their email so I can follow up with them? And then I also encourage people you send, whenever you're sending an invoice, it goes to accounts payable, but you're also sending a copy to that the person that you're working for. So your champion or the person that hired and is using your services and saying sent this in today, just wanted you to have a heads up. Please let me know if you have any questions. But having more touch points and being more aware of internally what's going on can really save you time on the back end.

Makes perfect sense. I want to take a step back, Katie, real quick before we kind of walk away from this because I get asked a lot and you touched on it briefly, but I wanted to see if you had any additional suggestions or insights. People ask me all the time, should I incorporate, if so, what structure, what, what type of corporate structure should I adopt? What would be your advice to someone out there asking that question?

My sort of cheeky response when people ask me if they should set up a business structure is do you have anything you like that you wouldn't want to lose? So if you have a car or a house or a retirement account or a savings account that you really wouldn't want to lose if something went wrong, it is in your interest to look into setting up a business structure in general. And structures are different from state to state, so you can go to your secretary of state's website and get the lowdown on the different options you have. But in general, a limited liability company works for a lot of solo businesses because it provides you the liability protection. So creating, making sure that the company is separate from you, so you're protecting those personal assets that are important to you and the company is the one that's responsible for fulfilling obligations and paying debts. With that in mind, the company has to be properly financed to be able to do those things. So you can't set up a shell and not leave any money in the corporate bank account, that sort of thing. But limited liability company provides that protection and separation that a lot of solos are looking for. Depending on your income situation, incorporating as corporation could be a better idea. I usually encourage people to talk to their accountants and if they tell me they don't have an accountant, I tell them that they need to hire an accountant before they hire me. But they should talk to their accountant about what makes the most sense from an income standpoint. Because really, with corporations or limited liability companies, you can do a lot of the same things. One of the things you can't do with a limited liability company is issue stock. So if you're looking for investors, that might be something to consider. But on the whole, you can hire employees, you can enter contracts, you can do all of the things, you can hire independent contractors, you can do all of the things that you might want to do to run your company. But when it comes to taxes, that's usually where most people find the biggest difference.

Okay, perfect. And I'm glad you. That's a great answer that I think will, Will. Will help some people get. Get moving in the right direction. So we talked about legal structure, we talked about position, how you position your work and your value right as an investment. We talked about getting into getting to know a client's kind of payment process, their invoicing, processing and so forth, and ask and make sure you know that and learn that up front as best you can. So let's talk about maybe kind of contracts. So things that you should have or you should think about including in your contract that will again, minimize the possibility of payments getting delayed or payments just never getting to you.

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the important things in realizing about getting paid is that you are constantly underscoring the same message. So before you can really get to contract language, you have to sit down and figure out what are the best policies, policies and procedures for your company regarding getting paid. For instance, how many days do you want to get paid from the release of the invoice? What are you going to do if somebody pays you late? How long are you going to keep working if payment hasn't come in? So sitting down and answering those sorts of questions can be really important before you even get to the contract. Because then you know what your company is going to do. And what your company's standard is, is there is a lot of power in being able to say, I mean, I'm sure a lot of your listeners have heard from their clients. Well, that's our policy. There's a lot of power in being able to say the same thing back. You know, our company's policy is X. If you want an exception to that, there are going to be, you know, either these additional ramifications or additional fees to compensate for the fact that we're doing something contrary to our policy. But once you understand what's going to be most important and supportive to your company, you can then look to the contract and say, okay, I want to make sure that my contract is supporting my policies and that I have the tools necessary to enforce those policies if I need them. So for instance, if you're going to charge a late fee when a client is late with a payment, you need to decide how many days late will that late fee, how many days late does the invoice have to be before you assess the late fee, what the late fee is, and then what happens if they still don't pay after that? So in the invoice section of the contract, it's going to clearly state that invoices are due within 21 days of issuance or checks are due within 21 days of issuance of the invoice. Any payment that is more than five days after the due date is going to be assessed a $25 late fee. And any account that remains unpaid for more than 30 days after the due date work will have to stop until the bill is settled. That sort of thing where you're clearly laying out consequences for not doing the standard thing. The other thing that I encourage people to think about are termination fees. And I differentiate between a termination fee and a kill fee. To me, a kill fee, it typically means you can take that work and use it somewhere else. You can still get value out of the thing that you have created. Whereas a termination fee is somebody sort of cutting and running and you can't really do anything with what you've created. And you've also lost that time and that investment with that client. And I encourage people to look at termination fees in the termination section of their contract as opposed to in the payment section of their contract. Because the termination section of the contract is where everybody's going to go if they need to terminate, if they need to walk away for some reason. And so if you put in there, if this is terminated early for any reason other than a breach by me, then, and that's basically saying so long as I've kept up my end of the bargain. If you want to walk away from the contract, you can do that, but you're going to have to pay for it. So a termination fee will apply. And people, you know, I encourage people to pick a termination fee that is going to discourage somebody from walking away willy nilly. And that could be a percentage of the total project cost. It could be a flat fee, but it's likely going to change depending on the size and value of the project that you're working on. So you're probably going to have to Think about it for each project that you engage in. But stuff like that, having those tools available so that if something goes wrong, you know immediately what to do. You don't have to think about it, you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to control, convince the client to do the right thing. You merely say, hey, we agreed that if you paid late, there was a $25 late fee. So you need to pay that within the next, you know, 10 days, and everything's going to be fine. If you don't pay it, we're going to have to stop work. And any delay or harm that comes from having to stop work because you didn't pay is your responsibility, because we've already agreed to that in the contract.

You know what I like about this is I find that it's easier to decide on these issues before you're emotionally involved in them, because the moment it happens, you're not going to be clear. Right?

Yeah, yeah.

You're going to be emotional. So what this does is it gives you a set of guidelines to follow when the emotions are running high. And that way you can make the best decisions. The best time to make those decisions is before you're emotionally involved. And think about it like, one big thing for me has always been, this is probably the biggest is I. My terms clearly state that I will invoice one week after submitting an initial draft. So in other words, I'm tying my final payment to when I submit the initial draft of the work, not when the client decides this is final. Right. Because I have no control over how many people are going to see this, how long it's going to take. And I know it sounds like common sense, but I would say I'm in the minority. I think maybe 10% of the people I talk with do something similar. Everybody else goes by. Well, when it's final, when it's finalized, well, that could be months.

Right. And that's really. Because that's what clients push for. Right. And when you do, when you start out from a position, when you're negotiating where you're entirely differential to the other side, you have a lot less wiggle room and you have fewer tools to use should something go wrong. And I am a big fan of tying payment to you, providing something to your clients. So, for instance, if you're using milestone payments, if it's a longer project, and so it's not going to be just one draft of something, it's going to go on for a while. I encourage people to tie those Milestone payments to times in which you are providing something to the client. So the client starts associating. I get something of value and I pay for it. That is the exchange. And then you're also not waiting around for them to have their internal committee meeting and decide that they want 20 different changes that were not part of the scope of work. If you do, if you do what you've suggested, which is the final invoice after providing that initial draft, I do encourage people to include somewhere in their contract that should the scope of work be broadened after that draft, you have the right to charge either a fee based on what the work is or an hourly rate for that additional work.

Makes sense. I like that. And I love the way you talked about termination fees. I hadn't thought about the before was always. I was always thinking about kill fees, but not termination fees. So let's just take an example. Because you say should be high enough to discourage. Let's say it's a $5,000 project. And I'm sure you know, it's up to the individual, of course, but, you know, what would you say would make a bad and a good termination fee? So $500 or $2,000?

I think $500 is too low in that instance because I can absorb that cost relatively easily. As you're getting more into the thousands of, you're probably getting closer to what you want. And these are situations where it really is a convenience fee. Right. The client isn't getting out of the project because you haven't been doing the work. The client is trying to get out of the project because internally something has changed or they've decided to go in another direction or fill in the blank excuse. But the fact of the matter is you held up your end of the bargain and now they want out. Okay, that's fine. They get to pay for it. So in a $5,000 project, I think, you know, something around $1,500, $2,000 would be a reasonable termination fee in that instance. Also, I would probably present it as a percentage of the total fee in the contract itself so that it's, you know, it's clear what you're doing. But they're probably not going to do the math until they want to get out of the contract. And at that point in time, they will realize that it's not in their best interest to do so. So it's a little bit different from how I sometimes recommend you present information in a contract. I like to be really clear and upfront. But when it comes to Agreeing to the terms initially, when everybody's happy, I think that percentage is a lot less scary because nobody's anticipating we're going to leave the contract. Whereas once they've decided they want to leave the contract, having them go through the process of doing the math just forces them to be more thoughtful and decide, okay, is this really worth it to me to do this? And chances are they will come back and say, okay, let's finish this and let's finish this. Right. Instead of me paying essentially for the benefit of walking away from an obligation.

Yeah. Because like you said earlier, they're not getting anything, so they can't say, okay, well, I'll pay it, but you got to get me this so I can keep going with it or hire somebody else.

Yeah. And I've had interesting conversations with other attorneys who are representing another side who really want the ability for their client to one, walk away and then walk away with files and the right to use those files in the future. And I've said it over and over and over again, and I've even had clients walk away from situations where we say, no, the termination fee is not there because you're unhappy with the work or because my client isn't doing something. It's there because you just want to get out. You don't want the bother of trying to fix it. So you're not going to walk away with anything that we've done. And that is another reason why I think another important tool in your contracts as far as getting paid, is how you deal with intellectual property and being really clear to the client, at what point in time do they own what you've created? I prefer that they own it once they've paid for it. But that means that you're not doing work for hire, because with a work for hire agreement, they own it as soon as you create it. So I prefer when my clients own the intellectual property up until the point that the client pays for the work, at which point the intellectual property is transferred to the client and the client can do whatever they want with it. And usually I encourage my clients to reserve certain rights, like being able to use it in their portfolio or that sort of thing.

So how does that play into the whole work for hire thing? If you're suggesting that they own it until. Until they've been paid.

So with work for hire, you can't use that tool, essentially, is the problem. And it's a tool to encourage payment. Right. Because if we're only transferring intellectual property when the person's paid you for the work, then it encourages them to pay you. If they want to use the work, they've got to pay you. But in situations where a client is asking for a work for hire deal, the client owns the work as soon as you create it. So immediately they own it. And you have, you don't have the ability to encourage payment by withholding intellectual property because you don't own anything. So that's one of the reasons I encourage people to be really mindful when they're doing work for hire. It can be worthwhile, it can be perfectly fine. But be really mindful when you're going into it and making sure that you're getting compensated at a rate that, that adjusts for the fact that one, you're not going to own this and you're not going to have rights to it, but also that you have other payment tools in there, things like late fees, things like being able to stop work if they haven't paid you for a while. Make sure that you have other tools in there so that if something should go wrong, you do have some sort of recourse. And it's recourse that present, calm, cool, collected, you figured out for future, frustrated, angry that you're having to deal with this. You.

No kidding, I've been there. So just before we go on, I just want to make sure. Can you clarify for those of you who don't know what work for hire means?

Sure. So work for hire means that you have to have a contract. It has to say in writing that the work is a work made for hire or work for hire. And what that means is the client who is hiring you to create the thing owns the intellectual property, owns the copyright in what you are creating from the moment that it's created. For a work for hire to be a valid work for hire, you do need that writing element. And it does need to be explicit. I also encourage clients that, that work for hire has to be established before work begins. So the contract should be signed before work begins. And I say that because of, of what it means when something's worked for hire, it means that from the second it's created, the other party owns it. And so if you've already started creating it, there's really no way of going back in time and saying, wait, wait, wait, we meant this other thing. So I encourage people to make sure that the contract is clearly laid out before work begins, to not start work before you've got a signed contract from the other side. And typically with work for hire, it needs to be one of A set number of types of work to be able to be enforceable as a work for hire. Many times freelancers are asked to do work that does not fulfill one of those categories. And if you go to copyright.gov and you look up the work for hire flyer that the copyright office has, it's very helpful. But, but typically freelancers aren't always doing work that would be in one of those categories. And as a result, their contracts will have what I call a belt and suspenders approach. Where the belt is, hey, this is a work for hire and I own it from the very beginning. But then the suspenders will be. But if it isn't a work for hire for any reason, then you're assigning me the copyright and you can't revoke that assignment. And what assignment means is you're selling it, you don't own it. You are saying this other person owns it. Does that clarify it?

It does. And I guess the follow up question is what would be the advantage of structuring it as a work for hire engagement versus the other?

Yeah, so work for hire engagements can be really good for quick stuff, for stuff that you don't care a whole ton about, for stuff that you're not going to have any reason to reuse for a client who is willing to pay you a ridiculous amount of money for work that is not maybe your first choice, but is definitely pay the bills kind of work. Work for hire can be good for those situations. It can also be good for situations where, you know, if you're looking at work in the entertainment industry, a lot of times stuff is work for hire. But that's going to be a situation where you're playing, you're essentially playing with somebody else's toys. Right. So if I get the opportunity to write Spider Man, I know I don't own Spider man, the Spider man character, but maybe the opportunity for me to write a story for Spider man is such an advantage to my career that I'm willing to say I don't own this going forward. So work for hire can be be perfectly reasonable. You just want to go into it with your eyes wide open and to understand what it is you're agreeing to do.

That makes sense. That makes sense. So what other elements, and I like how you started this by really asking yourself what's important to you before you get to the down to the weeds. But now that we're getting down into the weeds, what other elements do you feel are important to include in your contract?

Those are, I think we've touched on A lot of them. And again, and it's setting up that story and that narrative of if something happens that we don't want to happen, here are the steps that we're both going to follow. Other things that can be important are usually at the end of the contract, it will say, this is governed by such and such state law, and we're both agreeing to a particular venue. I encourage clients to write out an exception and say, except for any claim that's suitable for small claim court, I agree to go to whatever state to litigate. And the reason that I encourage them to do that is that if you are in a situation where you haven't been paid and you want to recoup payment, instead of, say, for instance, if you and I had a contract together and I had been a bad client and not paid you, so instead of you having to come all the way to Oregon to sue me, you could go to small claims court and at home and recoup your money there rather than having to travel or pay additional fees to file in a foreign state.

Oh, gosh, so I could do it here in my hometown. File here, and then they will go after you over there in Oregon.

Yeah. There's a whole process of small claims and how you serve people, particularly if they're out of state. But part of the reason that contracts have that section is one, it tells the judge, okay, if you're interpreting this, I want you to follow these rules. But the other thing it says is if we're going to fight about it, we're going to fight about it here. Typically, it's in the favor of the company whose contract it is because they don't want to travel, they don't want to take on additional expenses to be able to litigate the contract. So they'll say it's in my home state or my home county, which is perfectly reasonable if it is something significant. But if you're just trying to get paid, chances are that it's going to qualify for a small claim. And you want the ability to be able to do that from home with. With limited travel and hassle.

Makes sense. So that leads to kind of the inevitable question, which is what happens if the client wants me and expects me to use their contract and they don't even want to look at mine?

Yeah. And that, I think is normal, unfortunately. But what I encourage people to do is to, one, understand what's in your contract, understand what your policies are and have that listed out, and then read through their contract, sort of comparing it to what your Standards are and where you see there's a difference, make changes. Say, you know what I see here that you pay within 60 days. The prices that I've quoted for this particular project are based on a 30 day payment term. So if you want to stick to that 60 days, the prices will be this X plus. But if you would like to agree to 30 days, I can honor the prices given in the initial estimate. So stuff like that going through and making sure that it matches up as closely to your standards and policies and even, you know, having it, I encourage people to even just have it as sort of like a checklist, like okay, I know it's 30 days, there's got to be a late fee and I can stop work after a certain point in time and then reading through the contract and checking things off as you find them or if you find that there's a difference, making a notation of it and then stepping back and deciding, okay, they want 45 days, I want 30 days. I'm going to go back to them and request the 30 days. But I would agree to, I don't know, 40, stuff like that. But if you just take their contract and don't make any changes, your unnecessarily creating problems for yourself. It's not a bad thing to make amendments to a contract before you sign it. In fact, that's when you have the most amount of influence. They want you, they want to hire you, they want what you are offering. So now is the point in time to ensure that the terms that you're agreeing to match up with what you need. So in that the job that I keep referencing, one of the terms in the standard contract I had to use said that the contractor agreed to provide helicopter insurance or insurance for helicopter trips. And it made perfect sense in this totally different area of the country company, excuse me, where they hired helicopter pilots to do certain work. But, but I knew if I got a contract back from a contractor and they hadn't either crossed that out or asked me a question about it, that this was going to be a difficult project. Because to me what it said is I'm not paying attention to what it is I'm agreeing to do up front. And so I might not pay attention to things throughout the project. In fact, when I got a contract where nobody would comment on that, I would usually call up the project manager and say, okay, it looks like everything's mostly good and that we'll be able to get this signed in a couple of days. But just so you know, they don't seem to be paying attention to details. So make sure that you are really focused on that while you're working with them.

Oh, man, that's what a great point. You know, and one of the recurring themes of this show is, you know, know I've always said marketing can solve 90% of your problems. Steady marketing can do that because it buys you choices. And when you're in a situation where you have a client that expects you, let's say they expect you to use your contract and you go through it and they won't budge on certain items, then you are in a position of strength. Right. You can decide to walk away or to, you know, to try to negotiate a little harder. But when you don't have that option because your pipeline's not full, then that's when people make kind of crazy, crazy mistakes. But. So I love this. You know, I tell you, a few years ago, I had. I was working for a really big company, and they did that to me. They sent me their standard contractor agreement, and I sat there and it took me two hours to go through compared to mine. And I was really bold, but I could afford to do that because I had a lot of work, and I was dealing directly with their cfo. And there were a couple of points where I thought, you know what this is? This is maybe I'm asking for too much. But I said, forget it. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna ask for. And you know what? They. They gave in on pretty much everything.

Oh, man. Yeah. You know, one, you can't get something if you don't ask for it. But two, that standard is there for efficiency purposes for the company. It is so much easier for them if they just send that out and you don't read it and you sign it and they get to go forward. But it's not written with the understanding that everybody's going to agree to those. And a lot of times, the contract administrator or the person that you're dealing with knows that they have a lot of leeway on certain terms. And. But they're not going to tell you that they have a lot of leeway on those terms. When they give you the contract, it is in your best interest to do exactly what you did and ask for the things that you need. If you ask for too much, this is business. They'll come back and say, I can't do that, but I can do this. That's a much better conversation to have.

Absolutely. Like he said, this is the point of the relationship where they're going to be the most excited about working with you.

Absolutely.

So really, there's a time to ask is now?

Yep.

Later. Forget it. Super. Well, this is great, Katie. Really give me a lot to chew on here. And I like how you approach this because this is not the standard. Okay. Include this, that, and the other. You're starting with, hey, what's important to you, and let's think about what's going to make a really big impact. Let's focus on the big items and that right there will solve most of your problems or at least keep you from getting into some of the biggest situations you could get into.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of investing energy where it's going to be most helpful as opposed to just stressing yourself out over all the little details.

Yes, yes. So where can listeners learn more about you, your work, your services? Where can I send them?

You can send them to workmateforhire.net, which is my blog. It's also where people can contact me if they're interested in working with me. Sell classes through acefreelancer.com I don't have any classes up right this very second, but in the next couple of weeks, I will be starting a new cohort of my Ace Freelancers guide to getting paid, where I go through a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today and more in a really structured way so that by the end of the three or four week process, you, you have everything that you need to go forward and you don't have to worry about whether or not you have the tools. They're there, they're baked in. You got the language, you're good to go.

And we'll be able to find that@acefreelancer.com Correct. Awesome. Well, I encourage everyone to check that out. Katie, thanks for being on the show. Appreciate your insights and your time.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Ed. This was really fun.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation. And again, I wanted to remind you that you can grab the detailed show notes@b2b launcher.com episode 81. And before I sign off, I wanted to let you know that I've just opened enrollment to my B2B business launcher program. This is a training and coaching program that's both for new and aspiring freelance writers, copywriters and commercial writers who are either trying to get their businesses off the ground or who have already tried doing that, but they haven't had the success they expected. They're still below that $2,000 a month mark, for example. And I will tell you. This is not for everyone. This is an intense experience for serious and committed professionals only. I only open this up about two times per year. There's an application process and we start the first week of August. So if you'd like to learn more about it, I urge you to visit b2b launcher.com forward/program and check it out. So that brings us to the end of the episode. This has been your host, Ed Gandia. Hey, thanks so much for listening and I hope you have yourself an awesome day. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is.

A production of B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher.com work work for hire can be good for those situations. It can also be good for situations where entertainment industry, a lot of times stuff is work for hire. But that's going to be a situation where you're playing, you're essentially you're playing with somebody else's toys, right? So if I get the.