Freelancer Breed #1
The Artiste Freelancer
Is This You?
You are a master of what you do, or at least you think so. Criticism from a client is often met with disbelief or anger and if a client asks for a small change you lament that the whole project is ‘ruined’.
Fulfilling your clients needs isn’t as nearly as important as making it ‘really cool’ and when you talk about your clients, somehow phrases like ‘stifling my creativity’, ‘pleb’, and ‘uneducated buffoon’ keep popping up.
The Highs:
If you’re fiery enough many clients will become too scared to critique you leading to very few revisions. Even if they do ask you for revisions you can always make up reasons why you don’t need to listen anyway. Your portfolio looks exactly the way you want it to.
The Lows:
Your adverse reactions to various client requests mean that often your clients don’t actually get the work they wanted. Plus thanks to your high maintenance you are beginning to develop a reputation - unfortunately it’s probably not the one you were after. If you push them far enough, your clients may refuse to pay you. And because you are unwilling to accept that you may be wrong on things you miss out on opportunities to improve your work.
All of this pales however compared to those horrible situations when after you have finally succumbed to your client’s wishes, the project actually turns out better than it would have if you were left to your own devices!
Picking Up Your Game:
Being an Artiste doesn’t usually mix well with the business of freelancing since most clients want the project to fulfil their needs not yours. When you put a lot of yourself into your work, it’s hard to separate criticism for the work and criticism of you. Unfortunately this is the day-to-day reality of freelancing and you need to grow a thick skin to protect your fragile ego. Try not to expect a first draft or concept to be greeted with congratulations and you won’t feel quite so devastated when you need to revise.
What often works is to think of client requests and revisions as constraints in an elaborate game that you are trying to conquer. Look at them in a positive light and do your best work within those constraints and your clients will be happier, your work will often wind up better and you’ll be a more successful freelancer.
Freelancer Breed #2
The Payin’-The-Bills Freelancer
Is This You?
Although there was a time when you loved what you do, recently it feels like nothing more than a way to support yourself. You don’t really feel any interest in improving your skills and ‘passionate’ or ‘committed’ aren’t adjectives your clients would use to describe you.
The Highs:
Thanks to your lack of idealism you don’t often get bogged down trying to get it ‘just right’ and you’re quite content for work to just be acceptable.
You don’t really get upset when you have to do revisions (so long as you’re getting paid for every single one) and if a client insists on directing your every step you are more than happy to let them.
The Lows:
You don’t have much fun working anymore and like someone working a 9-5 you live for the weekends and afterhours.
While others are happy to be freelancing, for you it’s much the same as any other job – except you don’t get holiday pay.
Because you don’t feel particularly interested or excited about work, chances are you’re not spending time pushing yourself to become better at what you do. This inevitably comes back to haunt you as other freelancers get better and better and you stay pretty much where you always were.
Picking Up Your Game:
Whether you are a freelancer or a 9-5er you are going to spend much of your adult life working, so you might as well enjoy it! Of course knowing this isn’t enough to change your attitude. To bring back the passion you used to have you need inspiration. Try subscribing to magazines, doing non-client projects, going to conferences and hanging out with others in your industry who just can’t help being excited.
If there is something that is making you miserable at work - too much of it, a horrible work environment, the wrong clients - then make some proactive changes! Drop back on some of the workload, get rid of the most soul-killing jobs and change up your work environment. Remember that by igniting your passion and getting excited again you’ll enjoy working more, produce better projects and in the long run make more money.
Freelancer Breed #3
The Pushover Freelancer
Is This You?
Even though you know your client is wrong, you still do exactly as they ask because you’re afraid of losing their business. You inevitably seem to find yourself up at 3am trying to finish off a client’s ‘sudden emergency’ and because you bend over backwards for them regularly, no-one really seems to appreciate it anymore.
When it comes to billing you could never call a client about an overdue invoice and you often give them discounts when they ask (or demand), even if it leaves you with a loss.
The Highs:
The biggest benefit to being a Pushover Freelancer is the amount of work you get because clients love working with you. Repeat clients and referrals flow through the door and you are usually booked up to the hilt. Your reputation for service and customer satisfaction is unequaled.
The Lows:
Unfortunately that reputation has come at a price. You often get the short end of the stick and some clients leave you feeling used and abused. Although you make big sacrifices for clients most of the time you aren’t receiving the appreciation or gratitude you deserve.
Picking Up Your Game:
While you have no problems getting or keeping clients, you’ll soon find yourself getting pretty annoyed and feeling hard done by. Before this happens, practice being firm with your clients. If you really feel that another revision isn’t the right way to go, tell your client. If an invoice is overdue, let them know. If the idea of doing this is downright terrifying, then you will need to either work on your confidence or find someone to partner with in handling your client liaison.
It’s not a bad thing to let clients have their way from time to time, but it should always be an even balance. Remember that if you don’t do it, no-one else will look out for you. It’s unfortunate but true that some clients, particularly larger companies will happily walk over you if you let them.
Freelancer Breed #4
The AWOL Freelancer
Is This You?
Work’s getting a little stressful so you switch off your phone, shut down your email and go to the movies.
You have 10 irate voicemail messages on your cell – but that’s not unusual for you. Avoiding problems is your version of dealing with them. You vastly prefer email as a communication medium because it’s so much easier to ignore.
The Highs:
You’ve found an effective albeit temporary way to avoid stress, pressure and confrontation.
Your clients always seemed immensely relieved to hear from you after one of your disappearing acts.
The Lows:
You live in a constant state of stress, doing everything possible to avoid irate or sometimes even just regular clients. Your phone is off the hook, your cell is switched off and your email usually unchecked.
When you see clients and even ex-clients on the street you hide.
Most clients only ever work with you once because they can’t handle the stress of not knowing what’s going on.
Picking Up Your Game:
The AWOL Freelancer wants to avoid confrontation or difficult conversations. This is particularly hard when a client needs your help or wants to give you a kick in the pants and you’re nowhere to be found. Unfortunately for you, the best solution is to take that first phone call/respond to that first email and get the pain over and done with - like ripping off a band aid. More often than not dealing with the problem isn’t actually that bad and when you face up to things you often find yourself saying ‘Gee, why didn’t I do this before and not go through all the worry’.
Depending on why you avoid contact, you may also need some practice in saying no to client requests and not making promises you can’t fulfill later.
Freelancer Breed #5
The I-Did-It-My-Way Freelancer
Is This You?
No matter what the brief is, what the client asks for and what the audience’s needs are, you do pretty much the same thing for every project. Whether it’s a house design style, the same tone of voice in every piece of writing or the same choice of development environment, you have one tool for every job.
If a client tries to explain why they’d like their work done a certain way you ignore them until they give up. If that doesn’t work you give the appearance of going along with them, but slowly, subtly turn the project around to become one of your usuals.
The Highs:
You often end up doing jobs exactly as you originally envisaged them. You’re very confident and some clients appreciate having it just taken care of for them. If your particular style happens to be in fashion or the project happens to be well suited to your ‘way’ then you can produce spectacular results.
By ignoring your client’s actual needs and doing whatever you feel like you are able to do things that people in the industry appreciate (and often wish they got to do). This can lead to industry awards and accolades even if the end results weren’t actually that effective.
The Lows:
Unfortunately your ‘way’ isn’t appropriate for every job, leading to sometimes poor results, overkill (or underkill) and frustrated clients. Additionally while your ‘way’ is in fashion you might get lots of kudos and recognition, once the boat has passed your work might be seen as passe and irrelevant.
Picking Up Your Game:
Every job is different and it’s unlikely that a one-size-fits-all solution is going to work every time. While you pursue your own agenda you will often wind up giving your client the wrong solution to their brief and no matter how cool or fantastic others in your field think it is, at the end of the day if it doesn’t serve the purpose it was intended for, then Houston we have a problem.
Unless your client has given you a license to do what you may, your responsibility is to produce the right solution for the job - that’s why you’re getting paid. Although you are the expert, and rightly should feel confident you know how to get results, you must take into account both your client’s needs and the audience’s. Although you may often wish to still stick to your guns, it is wise to at least listen and try to be flexible.
Freelancer Breed #6
The Hit’n'Miss Freelancer
Is This You?
While you have had times when you’ve managed to meet deadlines, most of the time you just go right off the tracks. Unless something is urgent you just can’t seem to get it started. Unfortunately too often when you play with fire you get burnt – letting jobs go way over their deadlines - leading to some very unhappy clients.
You suspect your repeat clients are giving you fake deadlines to counterbalance your hit’n'miss ways, but this only leads to you not taking the new supposed deadlines so seriously.
The Highs:
Rather than it just being what you were s’pposed to do, when you hit a deadline both you and your client are overjoyed. Because you thrive under pressure, living close to the edge means you produce some good work.
The Lows:
The irate phone calls and emails from clients when you’ve missed their deadlines are never much fun and sometimes you have to go without payment or you lose a client when you just can’t get a job finished in time. You’re often up at 5am desperately trying to finish a project and sometimes the stress just doesn’t seem worth it.
Picking Up Your Game:
Most of the issues for a Hit’n'Miss Freelancer are related to organization and productivity. You might want to look into a system like Getting Things Done or subscribe to a productivity blog like ZenHabits. Whatever you do it’s going to be annoying to start with and will take work, but you’ll hopefully get closer to meeting those deadlines. This means that overall it will have to be more pleasant than your client screaming down the phone.
It might also help to start considering your client’s perspective. As you begin to identify and consider the ramifications of their deadlines you’ll naturally feel more responsibility to get things done before the deadline has long passed.
Freelancer Breed #7
The Blame-Game Freelancer
Is This You?
It is never, ever your fault. Anytime a project goes wrong you find blame everywhere but on your own shoulders. Most often blame winds up at your client’s feet, often leading to bad relations. Whether it’s because the copy writer didn’t get you the text for the site soon enough, or because the legacy system was badly written or because the client’s brief was poor, somehow there is always some other cause to your woes.
The Highs:
You get to feel self-righteous. Because you are constantly searching for evidence of where others have dropped the ball, you always feel vindicated. You never need to improve because as far as you’re concerned, you’re already perfect.
The Lows:
Clients will get very upset when you tell them it’s their fault. By finding fault elsewhere you often can’t see a way to improve things yourself, leaving you feeling powerless.
Picking Up Your Game:
If the fault lies elsewhere you get the benefit of not having responsibility, but more importantly you also have no power in the situation. Being powerless to affect your work is a depressing place to be. But there is a simple fix, consider that you hold the power over everything. By adopting this mentality you will find that you can start to control the outcome of your projects. If you think a copy writer is going to be late with the text for a website then start contacting them, warn the client, write the text yourself, anything, just take back the power!
If you have to work with some legacy code that is rather poor, explain this to the client and tell them you either need to be paid to clean it up or you can’t take the job. If the brief is too vague, ask the client for more details. And so on.
Running a blame-game will sometimes help you sleep at night, but ultimately leave you feeling less fulfilled. Deciding you are responsible for everything is a hard road to tread, but will get you much further in life and in work.
Freelancer Breed #8
The Constant- Excuses Freelancer
Is This You?
Unlike the Blame-Game Freelancer, you are quite happy to take responsibility for something going wrong, the problem is things always go wrong, don’t get done or are really late.
Your client has lost count of every time you’ve been sick, detained or the victim of natural disasters. They are also becoming exasperated by how often their emails mysteriously disappear or you have computer problems that hold you back.
The Highs:
At first you get a lot of sympathy, slack and belief, and you milk it for all its worth! This means that you get to take days off, sleep in, do whatever you feel like and then produce one of your patented no-evidence excuses.
The Lows:
Before long telling your client you’ve had another stomach bug is just too embarrassing and you’re pretty certain they are beginning to see through your excuses. Like the boy who cried wolf, you now know that any real emergencies will not be tolerated by your long suffering clientele.
Picking Up Your Game:
This is a stressful habit to get into. It’s not that you’re lying to your clients, but rather you have some great excuses if you just exaggerate a little bit. The only problem is, you do it a bit too often, and your clients are now getting pretty annoyed. Gone are the sympathetic emails – now you get a curt reply with no reference to your latest misfortune.
When it comes down to it, your client probably doesn’t care what your problems are. They just want their work done well and to deadline. You could have a look at your organizational skills if you find you’re missing deadlines. Otherwise, just try to apologize when things don’t go well and get on with it. Not relying on an excuse will make missing that deadline for whatever reason far less appealing.
Freelancer Breed #9
The Hidden-Costs Freelancer
Is This You?
The Hidden-Costs Freelancer is a favourite of clients the world over. You always quote low to make sure you win the job. Then once you have the job and are mid-way through you begin to mention those extras that will be needed and what they’ll add to the bill.
Job bidding sites are perfect for you, because you can quote low initially, and besides you rarely work with the same client twice since they already know your game.
The Highs:
You often wind up getting paid quite well at the end of the day and your prices keep the clients coming. You never worry you’re going overtime on a job, because you know you’ll make them pay in the end.
The Lows:
Your client relations are strained to say the least as most people don’t appreciate the way you add extra charges the way a Nigerian email scammer adds bank fees. Because of this sometimes a client will simply not pay, hoping you’ll go away and hence you rarely get repeat clients. You have also been known to get little pangs of guilt occasionally!
Picking Up Your Game:
Sometimes as freelancers we need to add an extra cost at the tail end of a project if a brief expands. However, if you always find yourself adding unforeseen extra charges at the end of every project, you may need to work on your quoting and communication. Creating an in-depth brief with the client at the beginning of the project may help you to quote more accurately. If you do need to add an extra cost into a project, be sure to let the client know before you commence that portion of the project. A good explanation and some options will go a long way to keeping goodwill, and hopefully your client.
Freelancer Breed #10
The I-Can’t-Finish-This Freelancer
Is This You?
When the going gets tough, you will most often drop out of the project completely. While you share much in common with the AWOL freelancer, when you vanish you generally never return. You often feel guilty for leaving a client in the lurch and there are usually long email exchanges just before the end.
You will forgo pay to avoid having to work on a project any longer and feel immense relief when you finally ditch the job.
The Highs:
If a job is going badly, turns out to be very hard or much bigger than you’d anticipated when you wrote that fixed quote, it is much easier to drop it than stick it out.
The Lows:
You’re often left feeling guilty and generally like a bit of a quitter. You have a string of ex-clients who remain very angry or confused about the way the project ended.
Picking Up Your Game:
There will be a couple of incidents for every freelancer where they’ve decided a project was not working and the best thing to do was walk away. However, if you’re doing this often you may wish to rethink. It’s when things are really complicated and seemingly impossible to resolve that we often pull out our best work and learn new things. If you decide to stick with a project, even when it’s going really badly you will most likely earn a loyal client and some new skills to boot.
Freelancer Breed #11
The Too-Cool Freelancer
Is This You?
Many clients have trouble relating to you and for the most part you think you’re slummin’ it working with them. You feel like working for clients is equivalent to selling out and often drop in that latest art project or open source work you’ve been doing to establish your cred.
The Highs:
You have a lot of confidence and your clients are a bit intimidated by you (and in your opinion so they should be!)
The Lows:
Occasionally clients don’t realize how cool you are and try to tell you want to do or think that their projects are actually important. Other clients just feel bad about themselves and go on to work with someone else. And still other clients just think you’re a bit of a tosser.
Picking Up Your Game:
People like designers and photographers are considered trend-setters in marketing circles, so it’s no surprise if you’re uber cool (power to you). The problems arise when you’re too cool for school, and mere mortals feel horrible around you. Which you probably wouldn’t mind except your clients keep finding goofy but friendly freelancers to replace you. The solution? Broaden your perspective a little. Chances are your clients may not be as cool as you, but they’re probably damn good at what they do. See if you can learn from them a little, and hopefully they won’t get the impression you’re embarrassed to be seen with them.
Freelancer Breed #12
The Big Business Freelancer
Is This You?
Your website uses terms like “our team” and “our organization”. You’ve convinced your clients that you have a team of 10 minions behind you. Every time a client wants to come to your ‘office’ you almost have an aneurysm.
The Highs:
Your website and phone manner look and sound very professional, which can garner a level of respect and you can charge a bit more because clients think you have a mountain of staff to feed.
The Lows:
You live in constant fear your clients will discover you live and work in your uncle’s garage and all those ‘departments’ you keep talking about are really just you. Clients assuming you’re a team of 10 will sometimes give you ridiculous amounts of work for one person, and you’re up all night trying to get it done.
If a client does decide to drop in unexpectedly it is usually rather embarrassing.
Picking Up Your Game:
Some freelancers think there is something to be ashamed of in being a one man band. In fact, many people in business will admire you as being a solo freelancer affords a great deal of flexibility. If there’s just one of you, it’s best to be honest about it. It will make little or no difference to most clients, and you won’t need to lose any sleep over them finding out.
If you’re already embroiled in a big business deception and want to get out, you can transition slowly back to individual freelancer, and if you are subtle enough, hopefully your clients won’t notice the difference. Start referring to I instead of we, and next time a client asks if they can “come check out the office”, you can simply tell them you work from home and you’d rather come see them. Far less stressful and a lot more honest!
Freelancer Breed #13
The No Business Skills Freelancer
Is This You?
After quitting your job with a vision of pursuing your creative passion from home, you’ve woken up to the reality that the business of freelancing has a tendency of getting in the way even more than your boss did. Clients always have to give you pointers on how to run your business, some going as far as reminding you to invoice them. Every accountant you hire quits after seeing your accounts and when you need to quote you just pick a number that sounds about right and hope for the best.
The Highs:
You never get caught up in admin and let’s face it, you’re not in danger of becoming the Payin’ The Bills freelancer!
The Lows:
Your finances live in a constant state of disarray, you resent and avoid the realities of running a small business, have no insurance, haven’t paid your taxes and the truth is you could be making far more money but you just can’t seem to get organized.
Picking Up Your Game:
You love what you do and you’d be very happy, if only you didn’t need to run your own business. It is a very common problem for freelancers starting out to underestimate and avoid the administration work involved in running any business, even one as small as a solo one.
The best thing you can do is hire a good book-keeper and accountant, this will help make sure you don’t get into trouble with the tax department and some will handle your invoicing and payments for you too. You might also like to read this book which deals with all these issues. And finally of course, you should regularly read FreelanceSwitch for tips and advice!
Have we missed any?
So there’s our list, have we missed any?
