My brother Chad at the Independent Short Film blog sent me a link to the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur’s article about the 3 types of clients:

1. Paying Clients

2. No Clients

I will let you go to his blog if you want to read the descriptions on the previous two; what I liked was the part about type 3:

3. Non-Paying Clients – Funny enough these are usually the most heralded clients, yet they can destroy a business. They often come with big ticket demands, and then never pay for the services rendered. It results in a double whammy. First you incur costs to deliver goods and services, then you don’t get paid. Do you see now? No Clients cost you a lot less than a Non-Paying Client.

The key to avoiding these black holes is looking at every prospects history. Yes you can request referrals about a prospective client… I mean they are asking you for referrals after all. (End quote)

The reason I decided to talk about this article today is because in the web design / development / SEO industry, we see this all the time.  I myself have run into plenty of clients who are not willing to pay.  They want to speak over the phone for hours before even committing to hiring you, or they do hire you, and after the work is finished, try to back out on the deal.  In fact, I had a client disappear off the map completely about two weeks ago, after I sent him the code for his site, and I am still waiting for him to respond to all of the IM’s, emails, and phone calls.  Fortunately, this was on a small project and I will be better off forgetting about him than to try to rank higher than him on Google for his keywords (Riley Heating and Air, Upper Marlboro, MD) and telling people about how he was a non-paying client, dishonest, etc.  I left him a message saying, it’s fine if you cannot pay.  Just contact me so that I can send you the rest of the files, that way it’s not a COMPLETE waste of my time, at least SOMEONE will get some use out of the time I invested for you.  No answer.

So the reason I bring this up is that I like the point made here in the article:  Get references from your clients, to make sure they have not cheated other web service providers in the past.  By not wasting time on clients like this, you will be richer in the long run.  It pays to be selective.  So why do we, as service providers, not naturally ask them to reciprocate?  If we must prove ourselves before being hired, why should a client not prove himself before we take on his project?

If you agree with this line of thought then you might like my previous blog entry, from several months ago, “7 Words That Changed My Life…“

If you have been following my tweets, you might know that I have had plenty of stress (more than my fair share). 

Quite honestly, the past year has been hell.

My ideal office space.

It’s time to change your mindset, Chris.

My business almost didn’t survive after I was betrayed by the one person I thought I would always be able to trust till death.  Depression and drinking, DDOS attacks, Kosovo Hackers, and an unexplained server crash, all compounded, NEARLY spelled disaster for Webovator.  But I am a fighter.  I have a tattoo of the word THRIVAL.  I don’t believe in mere survival, I want more out of life. I have been re-evaluating my business, my hobbies, and my reading materials, in an attempt to coalesce a more worthwhile existence. Money is not the goal; the goal is economic and geographic freedom.

My friend Kevin once told me the best revenge anyone can ever get is by forgetting the past and being happy.  A mentor from Broadcast Center once said that real magic is the ability to see patterns between cause and effect, and if you want to change the outcome, you recognize how to change the actions that cause the outcome.  By applying these two quotes I have come to the realization that I am happy, because I enjoy what I do.  I love helping friends and clients to build their businesses with a website, SEO, traffic campaigns, PPC management, etc., because it’s so rewarding to see the results, hear a “thank you”, and watch them achieve their own success. If you know me, you know that my favorite Zig Ziglar quote is “You can have whatever you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.”

So I was reading Frank Kern’s blog comments tonight, and stumbled upon yet another internet marketer’s squeeze page.  (You enter your email, and you get access to a free success course on Clarity, Confidence, and Focus–email me or leave a comment if you want the link, but I am not specifically endorsing it, not having opted in, myself.)  But the interesting thing was that the marketer had posted a video of a Tony Robbins interview for people to watch before signing up for his free course.  I watched the interview and I can say two things:

1. There is something very peculiar to me about Tony Robbins’ appearance.
2. He beat a brain tumor, and I think his insight on life is inspiring.

Here is the video for you, if you are in need of some inspiration:

So if you are beating yourself up with worry, wondering what the next step is, just change your mindset. It only takes a few seconds to reclassify a problem as a challenge. Watch the end of the interview, and listen to what he says about the person who is paralyzed from the neck down.  After three years, he is happier and stronger.

My year of hell is over.  Thanks to all of my friends, family, freelance partners, and clients.  May you all enjoy the success you deserve, in the remaining 6 months of 2009.

After reading Malcomb Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker, about innovation and the winning full court press basketball strategy, I think about being a David. How can I avoid playing by Goliath’s rules? Is Goliath the established mode of thinking where I have to trade my time for money, in equal proportion?

I have never been happy working for corporate jerks. Even though working for myself might seem unstable to outsiders, to me, the trade off is worth it, because the freedom and integrity are more valuable than just knowing what day I get paid. Working at Office Max, I learned a little bit, but it is depressing to me, to just nod and smile, worshiping the CEO, bending over to make the upper crust happy. Working my butt off as hard as I can and not getting back anything extra in return. It’s the classic Office Space debate; if you don’t give people something to motivate them, if you only pay them JUST ENOUGH so that they don’t quit, they will only work JUST hard enough so that they don’t get fired.

The things I was forced to do, working for other people, was embarrassing.

For example: Office Max sells a ton of extended warranties, and they make a lot of money doing this. Most of the people who buy them don’t need a warranty. They just buy it because the employees are pushing it so hard. And the employees are not doing it because it’s of any value, they are doing it because if they don’t, they wil be reprimanded by management. I think I am going to copy this rant to an article and publish it, because people should read this: NEVER BUY A WARRANTY. THEY ARE RIPOFFS, AND YOU DON’T NEED ONE.

However, as a manager at this chain, I actually found myself reprimanding my underlings, when they “forgot” to offer the warranty. Did I truly care? No. But I had to go through the motions, to avoid my own reprimand from a manager higher up the ladder. There was a small incentive to get employees to sell the warranties, in that they might get a commission of a dollar. But it is interesting that no ACTUAL PRODUCTS sold would get you a commission. Only the warranties (Max Assurance), because they are like pure profit. Most of the time the products would come with a better plan from the manufacturer, and the MaxAssurance wouldn’t always cover the breakable parts (like how ridiculous is it that on glass tables, the glass was not covered under MaxAssurance?!).

This is the type of crap I hate about working for other people (You may remember my previous blog articles, the 7 Words That Changed My Life…) You sell out your ethics, and you don’t even get your money’s worth. You work your fingers to the bone to make them extra money, and when finished, you are lucky to get a pat on the back. You know what? A pat on the back doesn’t buy groceries or diapers.

So MAYBE Goliath can represent all the people who are trying to force me to work for some greedy corporation, who doesn’t care about me, or whether I live or die, because I am not a person, I am a job title. I can be replaced at the drop of a hat, because so many people are looking for work. They are doing me a FAVOR, just allowing me to put on their uniform and use clever tactics to get unwitting customers to purchase things that no one ever needed.

David says no to this, yes to self-empowerment. I want to work smarter, not longer and harder. Will I work for another corporation? Sure, probably many, but only because it is absolutely necessary to help me reach my other goals. When the design business is good, I will enjoy it. When it slows, I will find backup plans, like working at an office store or data entry cubicle. But I will keep working on the #30DC ideas, and taking one step at a time towards MY DEFINITION of success.

I am listening to Seth Godin’s Tribes right now, and considering the number of tribes that I belong to:

• WKUK fans
• web designers
• Christian entrepreneurs
• social media enthusiasts / TWEEPLE
• font nerds
• electronic music producers / DJ’s / listeners

How many tribes do you belong to?

Picking one of these, I remember the feeling of community that I experienced upon my stumbling into the world of freelancing.  I would go to freelancing sites when I first started, and bid on as many jobs as possible.  I met other designers, developers, and artists.  There was a feeling of competition, yes, but there was also a lot of mutual respect.

I became friends with several buyers.  And several service providers.  Many times providers would also be buyers, too. I started helping others find projects, when I had a surplus of work.  If I didn’t have time to take on a project, I would recommend a friend in the industry.  The group of people I worked with started to refer clients to each other.  We would focus on our strengths, and enlist the help of others when needed.  It was a crew of guys and girls from all over the world. We started to become a tight-knit group, with different skills.

We were like the Marvel universe only with design geeks instead of superheros: There was Jolme, the Illustrator; Felipe, the Wordpress Wizard; David, the Hosting Hero; Andy, the Project Manager; Melissa, the Copywriter; Ashok, the PHP/MySQL guru; Duncan, the eCommerce Expert; Kartik, the Joomla guy, and me.  I was usually the CSS Polisher, logo maker, or odd-jobs man.  I was also the communicator.  I was the hub, the others were the spokes.  If someone needed something done, I could always introduce them to the right person, and eventually the whole team had worked with each other in some way.

As time has gone by, each of us has grown busier, and we don’t connect as often as we used to.  Such is life.  But each of us would not be where we are at today, if it were not for our little circle of friends, the ‘web’ of superheroes. It was another form of a tribe.

Do you have a tribe?  Do you have a superpower and a network of other superheroes?  It may not be as cool as shooting spikes out of your knuckles, but when someone says thank you, it’s just as rewarding.

So, let’s dig right in to PART 2 of the “7 Words That Changed My Career As a Designer” series.

When I first started offering my services as a web designer and graphic artist, I was literally working for free. It started with a local dog rescue group that did not have a website. I was going to do their site for free in exchange for the rescue group waiving our adoption fees.

This led to other rescue groups wanting me to do their websites. At first I was trying to offer my services free to all of them because they were nonprofits, and I needed (I thought) to build my portfolio.

There are different schools of thought on this, but what I have concluded is that if you can get paid to do something, don’t offer it free.

What happened in my case was that I started thinking that because I had not charged these nonprofits much (or in some cases, any) money, my portfolio wasn’t ready. I started bidding on freelancing jobs, and when I say bidding low, I MEAN LOW. I was scraping the bottom of the barrel, getting only the projects that no one else wanted, and not getting enough financial reward for all the time I invested.

Gradually, I started finding better clients through word of mouth, and I was staying busy enough to pay the bills. But I still NEEDED the money, BAD, and the clients could tell by the way I was so willing to do whatever they asked.

Don’t confuse excellent customer service with just being taken for a ride.

I had one client hire me to build them an eCommerce site. I spent about 5 weeks installing the CMS, the shopping cart, configuring the payment processor, doing keyword research, optimizing product photos, and perfecting the visual design for the front end. After their 30th email requesting a minuscule revision on the completely unnecessary SPLASH PAGE (which could start a whole other rant), I emailed them and asked for 50% of my fee. They had paid me nothing so far, and except for the artwork on the splash page being revised into the dirt, the site was completely done.

The client refused to pay, saying I hadn’t delivered anything yet. So instead of wasting ANOTHER 5 weeks because they could never make up their minds about what they wanted, I told them I was not going to work with them anymore.

This was the turning point in my career. I cut my losses, because I could tell they were NEVER going to make up their minds. They wanted me to use Comic Sans and Papyrus, and basically trace other website’s artwork in Illustrator, and use a color scheme that looked like a cross between a circus and a pile of puke. I explained to them ever so tactfully that part of the reason I had offered to do their site at a discounted rate in the first place was because I would have the added benefit of placing it in my portfolio. But because the client’s entire family was backseat designing, and they appeared unable to honor the terms of payment, and they were requesting a RIDICULOUS amount of trivial revisions, it was actually cheaper for me to abandon the project than to devote another month or two of work and still risk never receiving a dime from them.

The point is, not every client is going to be profitable; some will cause you to LOSE hundreds or thousands of dollars in time and productivity. By saying “I don’t need the money that bad,” you free yourself up to seek out other clients who will respect your time and pay you what you are worth.

To end this entry, I will point you to two links that I forwarded to these abusive clients in our final email conversation. One is called 11 Clients You Need To Fire Right Now and the other is this video on YouTube, the Graphic Design Avenger.

Happy Designing! Don’t take any crap. See you soon.