Articles And Guides On Freelancing

Breaking up with a client is like breaking up a romance.

It needs to be handled gently with the least amount of damage done to the person receiving the bad news.

If you’ve reached the point where you feel the relationship isn’t going anywhere, and your goals aren’t aligned, that means it’s time to move on. But there’s a tugging feeling of obligation that can make you feel trapped.

How do you end it without burning bridges or closing yourself off to future opportunities?

Well, there is a way.

Back in March I needed to step away from a lot of my freelance writing clients.

90% of my income came from a niche I hated. I had anxiety about going to work. I couldn’t sleep. And I put on 15 pounds through comfort eating.

Something needed to change. I became a freelance writer to escape doing work that I hated. But now my business was as bad as my dead-end job.

In order to grow my income through work I enjoy (and improve my overall health) I needed to find a way to let go of my existing clients without hurting my business.  I had to maintain my income, my reputation and their results.

I spent the next weeks listening to podcasts, reading articles and consulting mentors to learn how to delicately handle these crucial conversations. This helped me put together a simple formula for effectively breaking the bad news with minimal repercussions.

Using the six steps I’m about to show you, I was able to step away from these clients, maintain a good relationship with them, and prevent any negative outcomes for their business or my reputation.

“Hey Laura, Thanks for the proposal, it all looks great! Let’s go with Option 2. When can we get started?”

There’s nothing like getting a project accepted.

No matter how many times it happens and no matter how confident I am that the client is going to say yes, I always get a jolt of excitement (and do a little dance) when it becomes official.

It can be tempting to relax a little after the tedious back and forth of selling (cough, try Roadmapping).

But how you start the project is going to set the tone for how the rest goes. 

If you start by coming across as organised and professional (even if you don’t feel it), that’s how your client will see you throughout the whole project.

That’s why I’ve put a lot of effort into refining an onboarding process that:

• Makes me look good
• Makes the project more efficient
• Makes my clients happy that they’re working with a professional who knows what she’s doing.

In this article, I’m going to show you a repeatable process you can use to onboard every new client.

Whether you take my process in its entirety, or simply use it as inspiration to make your own, you’ll have everything you need to start each project on the right foot.

This guest post is brought to you by Francesca Geens, a UK based technology and productivity strategist, who loves nothing more than simplifying and untangling the way people do their work.

The problem with most articles on productivity is that they do one of two very annoying things.

They either list ten million ‘essential’ apps, or they prescribe the author’s own ‘system’.

Unfortunately, neither of these approaches results in the reader becoming more productive.

Why?

Because reading about and playing with a ton of new apps is one of the greatest productivity sucks around! You probably already have the right tools but you are not using them well.

The prescribed methodologies only work for a lucky few. Everyone else ends up more stressed because their new ‘system’ is not working for them.  That’s because everyone is different.

Isn’t there another way?

How about we look at what successful independent consultants do to be their most productive and effective selves?

No list of essential tools coming up folks. And plenty of different approaches.

Read on to build your own productivity toolbox.