Flakes & Disappearing Act Clients

When you work 1099, providing a notice on either side is typically not necessary. However, let's be honest: it stinks when someone abruptly cancels a contract and leaves you high and dry.  So what to do with flaky, disappearing act clients?

Links:

https://timdenning.com/freelancing-is-dead-simple-dont-take-on-shtty-clients/

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-recognize-and-avoid-bad-clients-4eb86d2a0ba

https://www.awai.com/2017/01/the-taac-rule-for-dealing-with-flaky-clients/


Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/ 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host, Sara Causey. 

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to talk about one of the pitfalls of freelancing, which is when a client misleads you about the duration of a project, and or the amount of work that they actually have for you to do. Full disclaimer here, as per usual, I don't give you advice, and I don't tell you what to do or what not to do. I opine for your entertainment only. And that's it. Laws are different in different states, as well as different countries, this broadcast goes out all over the globe. So if you have legal questions, always make sure that you consult an attorney who knows that area of the law, who knows the jurisdiction that you're in, etc. Because I don't, I'm going to be speaking in broad brushstrokes in this episode about general 1099 work. But as I say, the laws are different in different states. And I don't know what kind of contracts you may have signed or didn't sign. So there's that. Generally speaking, in 1099, situations, whether you're considered a freelancer, an independent contractor, or even if you are paid w two through a staffing agency, let's say, and you actually are plugged in and accompany but you're doing so as a temp, if you're in an at will state, it's very similar to 1099 work, ie, you can quit for any reason, or no reason at all. And you don't have to offer any type of notice. The flip side is that employer can also cut you loose for any reason or no reason at all. And they also do not have to offer any kind of notice. So it is with freelancing clients, if you are a 1099 independent contractor, it's an easy marriage. But it's also a very easy divorce. And that cuts both ways. As I've said before, I personally don't sign any kind of long term contract, because the world is just too flaky. Things can change seemingly on a dime. And there are a lot of aspects of the way a company is run or the way a department is run that you as a 1099 freelancer, a hired gun on the outside so to speak, I have absolutely no control over. And I will use something that I dealt with firsthand as an example. I was working for a company and the lady who had engaged me it was great. She was down to earth. I mean, she and I were just on the same wavelength. You know, let's just call it what it is. We were on the same wavelength. We liked each other. We had a good report, and she left me alone. She knew that I was a professional. She knew that I knew what I was doing. And she left me alone, which was fantastic. However, she had to go out on maternity leave. And the guy that was hired to be an interim while she was gone. We were oil and water. He was a micromanager. He was a bossy jerk. He would call it all hours of the day and night and just bark out orders like a drill sergeant. And I thought, No, this is not going to work. So I told him politely, firmly but tactfully the first time. This is not how it works. The second time it happened, I was significantly less polite, still professional, but much more to the point. This is not acceptable behavior. I'm 1099 someone calling me at nine o'clock at night barking orders into the phone. That's not how it's done. This is not going to fly with me. Unfortunately, I was trying to hang on because I thought she was going to come back after the maternity leave ended, but she opted to not come back. And they decided to hire this guy who had been the interim as the full time replacement for her and I thought there's no way in hell Absolutely not. I can no just no absolute NO. If I had been locked into a long term contract, goodness knows what kind of a situation I might have been in. So it was better for everybody involved to just be able to say, this is not a good match the person who retained my services no longer there. We're just on two different spectrums is probably better to let this go. If you've signed a contract saying you're going to be there for six months or a year, then you could really get yourself in some legal hot water. So I get it. The easy marriage and the easy divorce part of it can sometimes be a blessing. However, let's say that a client tells you this project is going to last for six months. We're certain of it and you start laying your life around that. And then three months into that project, they say, Well, you've worked yourself out of work, we don't have anything else for you to do. Or, well, we're running short on funds, we don't want you to start sending invoices that we can't pay. So we need you to lay off for a little while. For an undetermined length of time, we don't really know when we're going to have you back. But it's not your fault. It's, it's us, it's not you. That stinks. And it does make it more difficult to plan ahead, and to feel a sense of security in your life. Even though I think by and large in the corporate world, the three hots and a cot world of you get a steady paycheck once every other week, and you know exactly what it's going to be and they cover part of your benefits. I think it's an illusion of stability, it's an illusion of security. But at times, it's a damn good one. And you have to be able to let go of all of that when you freelance when you own and operate your own business. Or if you decide that you mostly just want to plug in at companies on a temporary basis. I've been through more than one of the boom and bust cycles in the oil and gas market. And what I've always observed is that the temps and the contractors are cut first. They're also the first to come back, but they're always the first to get cut. The minute that those companies see that the boom cycle is ending and the bust cycle is coming on. They it's like a bloodbath, oh my god, it's horrible. If you're working in staffing, and you have a bunch of contractors out, all of a sudden your gross margin is going in the 12 Lay because all those people are getting cut. When the booms when the bust cycle hits. It's it's brutal for everybody involved. So you have to think about these things. And one of the reasons why I'm bringing this up is because we see companies having layoffs, we see companies doing cost cutting, and it becomes an easy temptation for people to say, well, I'll just set a shingle out and freelance, if you're doing that as a temporary stopgap, if the idea is that you're going to continue looking for full time work. And you're just going to freelance to try to keep the lights on and to keep food on the table, I get that. I think if you are imagining that freelancing is going to be a magical solution to all of your problems, I would just humbly ask that you think about some of the crappy things about this line of work. Yes, you have more freedom and more flexibility. At the same time, you have some headaches, too, that you're not going to have as a full time employee. And one of those I found are these flaky disappearing at clients? Yeah, this project is gonna go on for six months, and then it doesn't. And maybe you have turned down other opportunities, because you don't want to overload yourself. You don't want to get to where you're having to work until midnight. Been there done that and it sucks. I don't, I don't want that kind of a life. So you may turn down other opportunities because you don't want the quality to suffer. You don't want to be up half the night trying to subsist on caffeine and fumes which I because of my heart issues, I just literally cannot live that way anymore. It's not an option for me. And I have to be healthy, whether I want to be or not. So it really stinks. When somebody pulls the rug out from under you. I have found in personal experience that it tends to happen. This is not a 100% rule of thumb, because if somebody is going to jerk the rug out from underneath you, they'll do it whenever they damn well, please. Typically, it happens Friday afternoon, Friday evening, Saturday morning or Monday morning, when you just suddenly get the hail buddy Oh, pow. We need you to cease and desist immediately. And you might get a reason behind that you might not

in my grading system, a good client will give you at least a two week notice and say we're going to need you to turn the water faucet off, go ahead and wrap up what you're doing over the next two weeks, and then we'll have to let you go. A great client will give you at least a month. I mean, a really, really great client will give you a four to six week notice so that you've got plenty of time to secure something else. And they will also offer an explanation about why they're doing it. They'll offer to give you a testimonial, they will offer to be there for warm referrals if they know somebody else that could use your services. I mean, a great client who genuinely cares about you, and who cares about having some type of relationship where they're not burning a bridge, they will make sure that the parting of ways happens in a manner that's very tactful, and that's respectful to you. Whereas a crap client, they have no compunction whatsoever about pulling that rug out from underneath you. They don't care they don't give a damn. This goes back again to the notion that corporations and companies don't have any type of social obligation, the only obligation they have is to make money for the shareholders period. So if they don't care anything at all about their internal employees, you can bet they're not going to give a damn about somebody that's 1099. Freelance on the outside. It's all about the money. And we can Godfather it. It's not personal, it's just business. And I get that. However, let me assure you, that when you're the one sitting there with an electric bill, or the kids need new school clothes, or there's hardly any food in the fridge, and somebody drinks that rug right from out from underneath you and tells you they don't need your services anymore. It's gonna feel really effing personal. Let's, let's call it what it is. And be honest about all of this. I think it's so important. Tim dinning has an article on his website called freelancing is dead simple, don't take on shitty clients. Yeah, I mean, we, if we want to take it to bottom line, distill it down to what is the most basic way of putting it? Yeah, that's it, don't take on too many clients. The thing of it is, you may not always know, at the onset, some of these people can hide their crazy really well, and they can sell themselves and their project to you so very well, that you may not know, at the beginning, that you're dealing with a shitty client, some of us, you know, we have to go through the school of hard knocks a time or two to really learn what's going on. There's an article on Medium written by Heidi and spa. And one of the clients that she talks about is the flaky one. And under her bullet points, how to spot and avoid, she writes, engages you in several discovery calls, but then avoids taking action or sets up several initial calls with you, but flakes on all of them, says they want to work with you, and then ghost you asks for a scope of work then doesn't follow up and you have to bug them about it more than once. won't sign contracts. Nope. Anyone who does those things is unprofessional and not a good business person anyway, you don't want to do business with this type in quote. Those are all great pieces of advice for vetting someone on the front end, when you're in that intake process. If you're always having to chase this person down, flaking out I mean, for me, I really have a it's a one strike policy. There was a guy that came into my funnel, I'm really not even sure from where to be honest with you earlier this year. And he did that to me he set up a zoom call, which you guys already know what time it is a freaking hate video calls. Can we not just talk on the phone doesn't always have to be this flippin video crap. Who wanted to do a zoom call and I was sitting there ready to go, had my hair fix and some makeup on and a dress shirt. And I'm just sitting there and I'm waiting. And I'm waiting. And it's like, Bueller? Anyone Bueller. And about five or six minutes into what should have been the meeting, he comes up with an excuse about, oh, I'm sorry, I got busy. I've got to do something at home. Can we just reschedule this for some other time. And I wrote to him, if you want to reschedule, I'm willing to do it as a phone call. It takes a lot of extra time to prepare for a video call. And then if the video call doesn't happen, it turns out to really, quite frankly, be a time drain. So if you want to reschedule as a phone call, I'm willing to do that. I never heard from the guy again. I mean, and the way I look at it is no big loss. Because if somebody is going to behave that way, why would I want to deal with them? Then also from a recruiting perspective? Why would I want to try to entice people to go to that company? I have to assume that the way that I'm treated, the way that I'm vetted, the way that the intake process goes, for me is a reflection of what the interview process will be like, for a potential candidate. And I want to put somebody through that. No way. No, thank you. There's also an article by Ben settle called the tech rule for dealing with flaky clients. I'll read a little bit of that for you now. It's like a guy who likes a flaky girl asking his buddies how to handle it when she isn't even thinking about him at all, other than maybe as a backup and is chasing someone else who is most likely ignoring her while he's chasing some other tail. In both cases, the answer is the same. Find a better option. instead of chasing the flaky ones. It's much easier to find a new relationship, then try to fix a toxic one. So why reward the flaky clients bad behavior by even bothering to communicate with them at all? The correct action to take is this ignore the flaky clients keep generating new leads and continue to improve your skills. Do those three things and you'll be just fine. More. There's also a scarcity mindset thing going on with the copywriter. If you're a freelancer of any kind, listen up, listen, good and never forget the tax rule. Tax stands for there's always another call Client, always there are 10s of 1000s of clients out there, why waste your time with the flaky ones and quote, I agree with that 100%. Now, as I say in the disclaimer, I don't give you advice, and I don't tell you what to do. Speaking for myself, I believe that that type of a mentality has made a huge difference. Yes, we can look at some of the things that Heidi is talking about how to spot and avoid, how to know that somebody's flaky during the intake process so that you can just say, Nope, this is not what I choose to do. But if you get into a relationship with somebody, and you're thinking, okay, great, you know, they've got six months of guaranteed income, and then push two months into it three months into it, they tell you that actually, no, no, it's not gonna go that way. You silly goose. There's always another client, after you've had a few minutes there to be like, dammit, I can't believe they did this to me what a bunch of flags when a bunch of a holes, after you've had your little temper fit, then it's better to just say, You know what, there's always another client. This is making room for me to find somebody better, somebody who's going to pay me more money, somebody that's not going to flake out, etc. You really have to be able to brush that dust off your shoulders and keep moving. Because really, what are their choices there? There's, there's nothing you're going to be able to do. Especially if we're talking about the realm of there's been no signed contract. But even if there was, even if the client said we want you to commit for six months, and then they call you up at the three month point and say we've run out of money. I mean, what are you really going to be able to do? I mean, as I say, always, I'm not a lawyer, so I can't comment on what your legal rights would be in that situation. But I'm going to take a wild guess that by the time you talk to an attorney, and you look at how much you would have to pay that attorney to try to go after that company, it would be pointless, you probably spend more money on legal bills than you'd make trying to stick it to the people who shaved your contract short, mean the system. We live in a crony capitalist system. And it's rigged, and it's not rigged in favor of John and John Q Public is rigged in favor of the fat cats in the cronies, point blank. So to me, it's, it's better to take that approach that Ben is talking about, there's always another client. Yeah, it's frustrating. And yes, you may be thinking about opportunities that you pass by him because you thought you were going to be too busy. Maybe there's room to go back and say, Hey, actually, my dance card isn't full. After all, do you still need me? Would you still be interested? You might be able to salvage some of those deals. But even if not, we just have to think about what Ben is saying. There's always another client, to me dealing with flakes and people that jerk you around. If you need the money, if you're in one of those do what the crisis demands situations, you might just have to put up with it. If you have plenty of money in savings, and you've budgeted well, then you might not you have to make your own decisions on this. But I do think if we can construct a system where we identify flakes on the front end, and we were in that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure situation. That's best. If you get into a relationship with a client and then they flake you later. You just have to remember there's always another client. Even if you have to take something temporary even if you have to do a little something that's Hmm. To make ends meet. There's always another client. Stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode. 

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