Treasa: 0:00

Welcome back to the Boss Responses podcast and day two with our co-host, Melanie Padgett Powers. Melanie brings great experience and expertise to the table and I think we can all learn from that. So let's go ahead and jump into today's question. If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Treasa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asks a question. I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the Boss Responses you need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-host embraced their role as the Boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses, melanie. Thank you again so much for being here this week. What is our question for today?

Melanie: 1:11

The question is I have a client that I love as a person, but they constantly request changes and revisions that are, quite honestly, unnecessary, which is affecting my workflow and project timelines. How can I address this without compromising the quality of my work?

Treasa: 1:27

It's always hardest when you really love them. It really is. This is a scope issue and this is a contract or statement of work issue. Whichever way you go, if you're not clearly defining the parameters of the project before you start the project, then you're setting everyone up for failure yourself and your client. This is a situation where you need to go back, look at what parameters you did set up and reinforce that right now, immediately. Do it right away. If you did not, it's not too late. Let them know. This is my process. This is what I will do. That's it.

Treasa: 2:06

Make sure that your scope is defined, even if you have to stop the project right now and do that. In my contract I have everything that I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it. Essentially, these are the things that I need to do to finish this project. This is my scope. Project scope is clearly defined. I actually include that in the proposal and the contract for larger projects. There are no surprises along the way. Then, in my kickoff call for larger projects, I discuss scope again and say these are the things that I'm doing If there are any changes to that, and I put this in the contract as well.

Treasa: 2:41

Any work outside of the defined scope is charged at and I put new rates or is charged as a new project From the get go. Whenever someone comes to me and says I know we're just doing this, but I'd like to add three extra chapters, or I would really like to add an editorial calendar to this content strategy, then what I do is say I'm happy to do that. If it fits in my schedule, I'm happy to do that. This is what the price would be for that. Would you like me to send you an invoice? I just consistently say that I'm happy to do it. This is what the price would be.

Treasa: 3:18

Would you like me to send an invoice? If it's a really small thing and I can roll it in, then I say I'm happy to do that. Normally this would be an extra charge, but because you're such a valuable client and I really enjoy working with you, I'm going to go ahead and do that today. But I want to specify this is a one-off situation and I'm doing it because of our relationship. In the future, I'll send extra invoices for those. That's how I handle it. What about you, melanie?

Melanie: 3:49

Yeah, I think that's great advice. It brings to mind those projects that you might have set up the scope but you didn't have a set date. When you are done with the project, maybe it's because you're waiting on deliverables for them. They have promised you something and then when you get that, you're going to wrap everything up. Yet they haven't gotten that to you.

Melanie: 4:14

Months go by and you can't really end the project because they haven't done their part. That's when I reach out and say we've been working on this project for this many months. I need to wrap it up. I will set on such and such date that you would get me this, and then, after I receive it, I'm supposed to do this. I'll give them another two weeks or maybe even 30 days or something, and say, as of such and such date, I'm ending this project and I will invoice you at that time. It's just an extra kick in the pants that I'm done. If you don't want to finish this project, that's on you. You can figure it out on your own, but I'm giving you one more chance to let me wrap everything up and then I'm just going to go ahead and invoice you. I think we get sometimes that's where and that's again where the scope, and you haven't made it clear how the project is ending and you're relying on something coming from them, and that can get us into trouble sometimes.

Treasa: 5:16

And that's a good point. It's kind of a sub question to this question, but how do you handle do you have a dormancy clause in your contract, melanie, where the project is due to be completed by this date if the client stops responding or doesn't respond for a specific period of time or if the project goes past that date? What your terms are on that?

Melanie: 5:38

I do not and I often so. This is controversial. I don't have contracts. I will sign client contracts because sometimes they're organizations and they require them. Although we negotiate what's in there, I will often create a scope of work and turn that into an agreement that we both sign. I don't like contracts often because, especially for writers, they are boiler plates on their part and they start getting legal. Even if I send them a contract, they're going to get legal involved and then they're going to want to put in indemnity clauses on which are very harmful to freelancers and they just start adding things like insurance. And because they get legal involved, I try to keep legal out of it.

Melanie: 6:27

I will put things in the agreement. I really focus on scope of work, deliverables and then I will usually I make it very clear when I'm going to invoice them. I often work on magazines and I'll say our print date is such and such. I will invoice you on this date. I have magazines that always stick to that print date because it's a contract that they agree to. But I always try to think through what the problems could be and when I need to invoice them and when I'm done with my work it's in there kind of subtly in the agreement and I think I've only a couple of times had to say, okay, we're done. Basically, it's been clear in the agreement that I did everything that I said I was going to do, except one thing that hinges on them not doing their part. I do put some things in the agreement, but I don't like getting legal involved and putting unnecessary things in a contract.

Treasa: 7:26

Right Now. This is something that is obviously going to be different, even with the scope of work and where you put it. That's going to vary based on the service that you provide. So designers are going to need a more formal contract because you need to make sure your copyright is covered on your designs and also who can revise them. Who owns the actual design files. All of that stuff needs to be clearly delineated. For other services it's a little bit different. For writing it's different, and I handle for sometimes, for blog posts or smaller writing projects case studies I do something like what you do. I do a service agreement, so it's a statement of work that includes all of that stuff. If I'm writing a book for ghostwriting or if I'm doing a content strategy, because there are so many moving elements in that, those I actually want to contract but I will not. I'm with you on the indemnity classes. That's a no go in my world.

Melanie: 8:22

Yeah, and I mostly work for membership associations, and so if they want a contract, it's the contract that they have. If there's a contract being introduced, it's on them usually, and so that's why if I introduce it, they're like I've never gotten a contract before from a freelancer. I have to show this to legal, and so the other thing I do too, if it definitely depends on your services, I understand, like photographers, too, want to outline what they are agreeing to For writing. Just a short I do a lot of writing assignments that are we want you to write about this for this magazine. It's do this date, this is the word count, this is the fee or what would you charge for this, and I respond by email. All of that is in an email.

Melanie: 9:03

Yeah, and I am not a lawyer, but I spoke to a lawyer years ago who said, as long as both of you are basically agreeing to those terms in an email like they need to respond back and say, yes, that sounds great and you've agreed to that rate, the deadline and the scope of work in email. That when a court of law would be a contract, and so I do that a lot because it just doesn't introduce and I've never that I can think of in 10 years had a problem because I'm working with associations and they're established organizations that are going to pay. It would be very different if I was working with small business owners or individuals. I would most certainly draft my own contracts and set that up with them, because those are that could get you into a lot more issues of them paying you.

Treasa: 9:58

Right. So back to the original question. How you deal with it largely depends on your relationship with the customer and what you do. But set it up ahead of time, Do that ounce of prevention, make sure you have the scope and all of that clearly defined, and then how you do that depends on your service, what you're comfortable with, who your clients are and then what they work with. So all of that's a lot to consider, but that's actually a pretty intensive question. All right, come back. Tomorrow We'll have another question with Melanie.