maybe not the laziest freelancer in the world, but I was close

Thanks to M.'s email this past weekend, and Terry's tweet to this article about when freelancers should walk away from clients, it seems like all things freelance are in the air today. Which is the perfect (if slightly pathetic) excuse for dredging up some of my old experiences under the guise of infotainment, or edumation, or just content.

I was most comfortable working for agencies. They tended not to haggle or openly balk at my rate, and when the job was done they almost always paid promptly. Folks there knew what my job was and what they should give me to accomplish my job, i.e., a decent brief. They also handled potentially sticky things like client feedback and production.

Working directly with my own clients was always a little more free form. I suppose you could spin this as being entrepreneurial, but it wasn't really my style. I had one client expect me to create and handle printer-ready files, and then to find a printer. Given that I'd signed up to write a simple brochure, the extra "opportunities" were a gnawing source of anxiety for about two weeks, until I found a freelance print producer/broker who took the thing off my hands. Some might see it as a lost chance to enhance my service delivery and make it big; being more stereotypically Canadian, I was happy that I had rid myself of the potential to screw up badly doing something I had no interest in and had never done before, something I would have had to work at a lot to get very little from.

As a freelancer, I saw myself as more of a craftsman for hire. This is what I do, I would think; take it or leave it. (But the fact is, I never actually said that to clients or potential clients.)

To the point of the Freelance Folder post, I only ever had one client that I parted ways with, but I didn't walk; it was mutual.

They were a digital signage company who wanted to redo all the brochures for multiple product lines. Their salespeople were finding that the brochures weren't communicating everything that potential customers needed; they didn't talk about benefits enough.

I spent a couple of days going through all the brochures. It wasn't the most exciting subject in the world, but their products had about a billion and a half uses in all kinds of business and consumer contexts. It wasn't too big a stretch to find compelling reasons to install their signage. I gave the client a quote and a timeline, they accepted, I started in.

A week later I sent them a first draft of the first batch of brochures. My marketing client liked them, had a few revisions which I made quickly, and then she sent the second draft to sales.

Can we guess what happened?

Yes, the bitter copywriter in the back row is correct. The deck came back from sales as an ugly, angry mess seething with red ink. Not enough about their product. Too much about the user. A whole lot of negativity. I did what I could, but with every line it was apparent that, as far as sales was concerned, I could have changed about a word per paragraph in the original briefs I'd been given. I finished the revisions, got everyone as happy as possible, and before my marketing client wasted any more time, suggested that they look elsewhere for a lot less money. She agreed, a little more quickly than I might have liked.

I really don't see this as laziness. Okay, maybe a little. But I also hate waste and inefficiency. And to paraphrase a brilliant developer, I'd like to think that, in addition to great ideas, my freelance career was also about simply trying to find the most efficient solution.