Kevin Hanley
Forum Replies Created
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First of all, the people who call to ask you how to do what you do so that they don’t have to pay you to do it….total waste of time and energy.
You will be happier, more productive, and more successful without clients like this. I recommend dropping it an moving on, using this as a lesson on why you shouldn’t do anything (dubs, etc.) for free, and more importantly, the fact that the clients who pay the least actually expect the most.
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After reading your initial post, I had planned to ask you a question, but you subsequently answered it further down in the thread. The question I was going to ask was “Is this a high paying client, or a low paying client”, and then I was going to tell you that I already knew the answer.
In our business, we are selling time. That’s all we have to sell. Experience is part of what we sell, but actually experience is what makes our time more valuable, so it’s still time that we’re selling.
Any good client expects to pay for your time. The ones that don’t are always—100% of the time—low paying clients. They’re also the ones that take up the majority of your time, preventing you from working for other clients, and more importantly, preventing you from spending time improving your business and working your way up to bigger and better clients. Expecting free “meeting” time is one red flag. The next red flag is the “if you take care of me now, there are big things coming your way later” line.
Bottom line, meetings are not free. Maybe an initial consultation to sell the client on your company, but beyond that everything should be billable. Attorneys, mechanics, and many other people who sell time (labor) for a living charge this way, and I don’t see a lot of people questioning that. Why should your time and expertise be free?
We charge half rate for consultation and pre-production meetings. That seems to make all of our clients happy.
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One thing to remember is that the PSA is for the state department of education in the state where the class photos were taken. My guess is that whatever covers the schools to publish the photos (in yearbooks and newsletters, etc) would filter up to the state level for the same purpose. However, I lean toward the advice of being cautious if you can make out the faces of the other kids. Thanks for the input!
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Geez, but no hard feelings, right?
I began my business by starting my *own* thing, not leeching off of someone else’s product. But then again, I started 15 years ago right out of college.
And yes, I have turned away clients out of ethics, but no, I haven’t ever spoken negatively with clients about former employees. Seems to me that would come across as less than professional and be counterproductive.
Kevin
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I agree with most of what I’ve read in this thread. However, I’d like to point a few things out:
– The clients did not go to that production facility because of you. Had you not been there, someone else would have, and the possibility exists that they would have done as well as you since it sounds like the owner had provided the tools and the place needed to do the job. The reality is that you were there because the facility was there, not the reverse.
– Are the demo materials taken from your projects at your old job *really* yours to use? Is it your intellectual property, or does it actually belong to the person/people who were paying you the agree-upon rate to do the work?
– This is why NDA/Non-compete clauses are needed.
Now, all of this is from the perspective of a facility owner, but I truly believe that it’s a two-way street. An employer should make an effort to keep employees happy (and productive), and an employee should try to understand and meet the needs of the employer. It’s not always going to work out, but just as your former employer doesn’t have the right to attempt to prevent you from being a success, neither do you have the right to attempt to take the business away.
Kevin