Can You Identify a Bad Client Before Sending an LOI or Pitch?
This week, we're going to go over specific attributes of red light/bad clients, how to identify bad clients before you reach out to them, things red light clients say in communications that should put you on alert, what to do if you realize you're on a call with a bad client, and how to avoid bad clients in the future.
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Can You Identify a Bad Client Before Sending an LOI or Pitch?
Can you tell if you have a bad client on your hands before you send an LOI or pitch, and this question came in from our community. So this was a question that was asked. Of me to do a live stream on. And I was just like, what an interesting question. Hey, Vicky, welcome in. Um, and I just, I guess I, when I first got the question, I was like, yeah, there's a couple things, you know, that pop up before, you know, you ever kind of get into these situations with signing contracts or doing work.
But it's interesting where, um, for me, when I was thinking about it, it's a lot about mindset too, right? Like the mindset of like worrying that you might sign a BA bad client without realizing it, or that you might end up, um, you know, ignoring all these red flags and then end up in a, a bad situation. And I just thought that was so interesting where it's like, how do I prevent this?
Like, is there something I can see before I even like, I, that I shouldn't reach out to someone so that I can kind of save myself from this difficult kind of process greetings. So. Just to give an update before we get into anything. There are zero peppers in here today. This is the first time ever. There are zero peppers and there's two reasons why, and you might have seen this on Instagram or LinkedIn.
So Bo is still healing. He is basically like having a newborn and a toddler at the same time. So like we have to watch him 24 7, like he cannot be left alone. Um, he had a medical emergency and, uh, he's not in here cuz he's still healing and resting and I don't really want him have him on camera. And like, you know, he can't catch trees.
He just, he needs to have some rest time. And then Charlotte, got sprayed by a skunk, a few hours after Bo had a medical E. Um, and so she still smells. We've given her many, many baths, so we're still trying to get the skunk smell out of her. She definitely got sprayed at close range. So if I have her in here, she reeks still, like, you can still smell it on her.
So I don't want her to, like, this is the one of the few rooms where it was like the least skunk smelling. So she is not here either. Cuz she still smells. we're trying everything. Like if you have a remedy, let us know. We've tried all these things. Um, the house is just now starting to smell less skunky. So that's a good thing.
But just as an update, there's zero peppers here right now, uh, for the first time ever. And you know, we're just, we're letting them heal and we're Hopi. Hopefully they'll be, you know, Charlotte won't smell anytime it'll get rid of it. So let's talk about this. So let's talk about there's attributes of red light clients, right?
1) Specific Attributes of Red Light/Bad Freelance Writing Clients and How to Identify Bad Clients Before You Reach Out
Like, so the first thing, number one that we're talking about, we also have questions that we're gonna go through today. No, I, I don't want Charlotte in here because no, you know, that Charlotte, like Charlotte is like wherever she goes, it kind of just perfumes. Like it, it's not super bad. It's not as bad as it was.
Uh, but Charlotte kind of like perfumes, anything she touches, right. Because it's skunk smell is oil based. Right. And she, so she has it on her skin. A lot of people are like, oh, just wash it out of fur. Nope. It's on her skin. so, uh, it's hard to get, get rid of it. um, and I, you know, I, when we have this skunk smell and I smelled Charlotte collar, I gagged.
So I don't really want her to be in here and we gagging. All right. Let's get to the information. Right. That's the important part. Um, so let's talk about red, red light client attributes, like things that you would see before, right beforehand. Um, when you're looking at bad clients, right. Or red light clients.
So the deal is that. there's a couple of things, right? Like, so a lot of times what ends up being, not a fit, like I'm gonna classify this as not a fit, not a bad client, but just not a fit. When you end up getting an email, like an inbound lead, where someone says like, Hey, I have this project, like, uh, you know, what are, what's your turnaround time?
And then what's your rate, like, without telling you anything about the project, they're like, I have a blog post or I have this thing. Um, and they don't actually tell you, like, it could be not a fit for you. So let's just classify as that. They don't tell you like what the word count is or what the project's about, or, um, anything that is actually useful in pricing that project or knowing if it's a fit for you.
They're just like, there's this attitude sometimes. And this idea that like freelance writers are so hurting for work that they'll just take anything. All you do is ask for turnaround time in price and they'll just do anything. That's the first part. And it's a weird, um, It's a weird thing that happens where it's like this, you know, we're still in this idea of like this starving artist, right.
Which hopefully like in my lifetime will be gone, but, um, that's, that's like for a different live stream, but the idea is, um, when someone sends you that kind of stuff, like they're not looking to find the right person for the project all the time, and they're not looking to learn more about you in like, are you the right fit for this project?
They're just like, how fast can you get it done? And like, is it usually cheap? Right. That's usually the thing. And that can be a big problem, right? That can be something where that's just not a fit for you. And sometimes what ends up happening is you have a client who sends an inbound lead to you and, uh, they just don't know the process.
Like they just don't understand, um, the, how to work with a freelance writer. It's not that they're trying to disrespect you or that they're just like, they care about. Cheap work or quick turnaround. They just don't know how it works. And this is when you send that email back and you ask them like, Hey, could you tell me a bit about the project, the word count.
Um, did you have a budget in mind? Um, what's kind of going on, so, and then they're like, oh yeah, let me tell you more about it. Or then you can hop on a call. That's totally cool. That's fine. It's the people that like, when you reply and say, Hey, could you tell me about the project? Like, can you tell me a little bit more information before we hop on a call or before I give you, uh, turnaround time and, and pricing information, they're just like, they ignore your questions and they either send you an email back that says like, what's your turnaround time and price, or they're just, they just tell you stuff that just doesn't sound good.
Like they want it really fast within 48 hours or something, or 24 hours. Um, they expect it to be like a hundred bucks, um, or they expect it to be really cheap. And there's just stuff that just sticks out as like, this is not your client. You should not sign a contract with them. Don't do this. So that's, that's one of the first things and that's kind of like a not fit for you.
And then also a mix of like red light client attributes. The other thing is that, um, when you're looking through clients, right, this is something that I talk about with my freelance writer, wealth lab students, and that's actually opening up in September. Um, and we go into this in depth in the course. So if you wanna sign up for the wait list, let me pop that up.
I just remembered that, um, you could go to Mandy ellis.com/course, and you can sign up for the wait list. We're like less, we're like about 30 ish days away. We're like 34, or I forget, but we're pretty close to opening up. So if you're interested in that at all, sign up for the wait list, it only opens twice a year.
When we go over this in the course, we go over, like when you kind of start researching your clients, you end up, you end up going through like their company profile, like either on crunch base, or you look through through their revenue, right? You look through their revenue on crunch, base tech crunch. You can just Google, like company name, revenue, like Zillow revenue or whatever.
Um, you can, uh, look through it on Glassdoor or hour or LinkedIn. And in that process of looking through their revenue, looking through their website, looking through their LinkedIn profile page, looking through their social media, there's a bunch of things that just don't seem right. And what that means is like they're not posting on their blog very often, or their blog content is kind of.
Um, there is this disconnect between their social media and like what their company is about. Um, there is like a lack of substance. That's something that I really kind of look for is like, there's a lack of regularity in posting for their content, um, which couldn't Al it's not always a red flag. It's sometimes that they just struggle with being consistent, posting their content.
But a lot of times it's like there, it can be disorganization and that's a red flag because then you just get roped into the disorganization of the company. And it's like a whole , you're basically just like in the garbage disposal being like, how do I get outta here? Um, so the other thing is that there's inconsistent messaging and inconsistencies between their social media, their LinkedIn stuff, their page, or their LinkedIn content and their blog or their website.
Like everything doesn't seem to fit together. The other thing is that, um, maybe they're trying like too hard to do viral content on social media, or they're trying to hard to do all these things that just don't make sense for their brand. Um, the other thing is that their content just doesn't seem to make sense for their audience.
Like you're looking through this and you're like, why are they writing content? Um, why are they writing content for real estate agents when their product is for consumers? Like that doesn't make any sense. Right? And like, they're not trying to get real estate agents to use the product with consumers.
Like their product is straight up just for consumers. There's a lot of like these disconnects that you will find with red light clients, cuz they don't actually understand their company and product like the CEO might, but everybody trickle down below that doesn't get it. So they create all this stuff that doesn't make sense.
The other thing that we can talk about in terms of a little attributes to look for is, um, that we are doing a lot of scanning. So this for me is like, as someone who has, um, been freelancing for 10 years, right? Like I know now when I look at something I'm like, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no. But when I was starting out and even.
Even halfway through the 10 years, like I was still learning. Right. You start realizing there's these little quirks that people have, like there's these little things in their posts or these little things in how the company operates or, um, little things that just pop up that you start to realize are not a fit.
Like you get on a call with someone and, um, they just don't seem to be connecting. Like, it doesn't seem to make sense what they're saying and how things are going. And, um, they're kind of treating you like an employee on the call, right? Like there, there's all of these weird disconnects where you start talking about the content or you start talking about the goals for the content.
They don't have any goals for the content. They don't, they're just like we should just create content. Um, they don't have any focuses. They are not really sure about their target audience. They are treating you like an employee, like convince me that you're the right fit for me. And it's like, no, , that's not how this works.
Um, they are trying to like pigeonhole some stuff in their content that doesn't make sense. They want crazy high, like fast turnaround, which is not good for quality. Um, there's all these things that happen when you either look through their stuff, like little quirks that pop up that just like, for me, it took me a little while to trust those quirks, like to believe that there, that these quirks were like red flags for my clients.
Um, cuz I, you know, I wanna give people the benefit of the doubt and I know that creating consistent content is difficult, but then you start realizing that like, oh, these quirks are red flags. Like these little things where there's inconsistencies or dysfunction or you just kind of notice like things aren't adding.
Trust that if you start looking through all of their materials, their website, any downloads, they have guides, blog posts, social media, content, PA different pages, LinkedIn, whatever Glassdoor and things aren't adding up. That can be an indicator that like this is not gonna be a good client for you. So trust that , that, that took me a long time to realize that that was part of the process is you have to kind of trust that.
Um, and then there's like the other part where you get on a call with them and you're just like, uh, this is not going, this is weird. Like that's what I would think to myself is like, this is weird. Uh, I wouldn't recognize that there was a ton of things happening on that call, right? Like all of those things, I mentioned, like timeline and deadline or, uh, timeline and deadlines, right.
Uh, budget. When they don't tell you their budget, they wanna like skirt around where they treat you like an employee where they make it like this weird thing where you feel uncomfortable, you should always be kind of striving for a partnership. We should always be kind of looking for clients that are like, I wanna partner with you.
Um, I want to work with you on this project because I really loved your clips or like you send them clips and they're like, yep. We love your work. There is this harmonious partnership atmosphere, rather than like them hiring you as like, it's like a weird job interview where they're like, what's your weakest attribute?
2) Identifying Red Light Client Communications, Alerts, Tactics, and Things to Avoid
And you're like, I don't know. like, you know, that kind of stuff. So that's the first thing that we're talking about. All right, let's do number two. So let's talk about, um, let's talk about a few different things. So when you are looking through your client stuff, like before you reach out to him, that was the thing is like, can you identify a bad client before you send an L Loy or pitch before you ever speak to them?
So before you ever speak to them, you need to do your research. That's really important. So, um, that's what you need to kind of pay attention to is like the research into the company, into their content, into their social media. Um, and make sure that things are connecting and flowing. That's something to know.
The other thing here that we need to remember is like, um, when we are having our clients, like basically communicating with us and putting things on alert and, or not putting things on things that should put us on alert. Right. I'm I have notes. So I wanna make sure I say some important stuff. Um, like things that, um, they communicate that put you on alert, right.
There's research part before you reach out. And then there's times when you get inbound leads, right. And they're communicating with you or, and then there's calls. So your research needs to be mostly thorough. And by that, I mean, over time it takes less time. So for example, if I look at a company now, it probably takes anywhere from five to 15 minutes for me to be like, okay, this is a fit, or it's not.
Or like, there's something weird here that I don't like. So there's. The other part is like, it used to take me longer cuz I would read more stuff. So if you need to read more stuff to kind of figure out what's going on, do that the research ahead of time into their revenue, into their content, into their vibe and how they're running the company.
And like how many people are staying and leaving like in the LinkedIn stats on their company page, it'll say like how many people have been hired, who has been hired their average length of time that the employees stay there. That's all important stuff. Cuz if people aren't staying at the company very long as full-time employees, I can almost guarantee as a freelancer.
It is not gonna be fun for you. So that's all important research stuff. Now the communications, right? An inbound lead. Or something where you have a call or emails with them. There are just things that pop up in communication that it's just weird, right? Like there's just weird things that pop up. Like, like what I said is timeline.
They do the runaround with you. Like there's some kind of game being played. They won't tell you their budget. They won't tell you information. You need to do pricing. They're just like, it's a blog post, just price it. And you're like, what? Um, or there's employee stuff or there's things that, um, as you kind of communicate with them, it just becomes clear that it's not a focus on quality.
Like you want clients that think of it as a partnership. These are kind of green flags. They think of it as a partnership. They like your content. They like your copy. They like your clips. Um, they understand they're looking for quality. First. They have a budget, or at least they can understand that when you send it over, if it's not quite what they thought, like they, they want to, um, kind of negotiate that rate with you and be like, Hey, I really wanna work with you.
This was a little bit higher than we thought. What do you think about this rate? They're reasonable, nice people. Like that's something that to pay attention to is as they communicate with you, they're like, oh, of course you need more information or, yeah. I'm, I, I would love to tell you more about that. Or they are open and honest with you.
A lot of red light clients start playing games. Like you, you immediately start feeling like you're in some kind of weird, crazy. Freelance writing game show Mac, where they're like, now jump through this hoop and now jump through that hoop. And then now do this and now do that. And then you're like, why are we doing this?
Like good clients, won't make you do that. They will be upfront with you, honest with you, transparent with you. They will tell you the details you need, uh, to create a proposal and contract, to give them a, a quote. Um, they will give you all this stuff that obviously makes sense. And it is a teamwork atmosphere.
If you ever start realizing through reading, uh, researching their content or their company, or you ever start kind of communicating with a client. And it ends up being that you're like, this is very weird. Like there there's, you know, uh, they're like, oh, they have to go talk to Sherry all the time, but they don't just like CC Sherry on the emails, so it can be quicker.
Right? There's all these weird little quirks and intricacies where you're just like, this is very strange. And as you kind of grow as a freelance writer, you will become heightened. Like that will be very easy for you to identify. So for me, there's like a couple things that happen, um, where you just kind of like get into a place that after like a couple minute conversation, you're just like, this is either a fit for me or it's not.
And sometimes what ends up happening in the communications that should kind of put you on alert with freelance writing clients and red light clients is. There's sometimes, and this isn't all the time where they're like, oh yeah, you just write as much as you want. And then we'll pay you. And then what that really means is like, they'll give you $20 a blog post, and that's not always the case.
There's a lot of times where people really understand the value of content. And they're like, yeah, we wanna pump out a lot of content because here are our goals. And in order to meet these goals, we need to pump out a lot of content. That's what you want to hear is that they have goals and they're creating a lot of content to align with those goals.
But when someone says, they just want you to like write a ton and there's like, no information about why you're doing that or how that's helping them or goals or KPIs or information that actually is useful. That's a problem. So whenever you get in a conversation with someone where they're like, yeah, this is like, we're, you know, we want you to write a bunch of content.
Here's the. Um, you wanna make sure that that is aligned with an actual purpose for that company? Like, why are we creating this content? Where is it going? How is it going to drive traffic or build your audience or get downloads and shares and likes, like all of that should be apparent if they can't communicate that stuff to you, that's a problem.
Your, your clients should always be able to communicate the focus and the goal and the purpose of the content, because why are we creating? We're not gonna like create content for zero reasons. That's not a good idea. That's what happened before. Right? Like 10 years ago when I kind of started. And actually even before that, like 15 years ago, a lot of the content was very low paid and it was like, Google wants us to do this for SEO is just create content and do all this stuff.
And, um, you know, uh, just kind of boost through keyword stuffing, or it was just like a lot of stuff where it's like put in as many keywords as possible. It was kind of this, um, More beginning era or like medium-ish era of SEO. And that's just like, not a thing anymore. Right? Like we want quality like Google and all the SEO, robots and stuff.
They want quality. And there's a reason that something gets on the first page of Google. It's not because you like have the perfect amount of keywords or whatever it's because that thing is providing value, right? There's plenty of articles that come from top publications. Right. And they don't, they're not filled with a ton of keywords.
They're like actually quality stuff that people care about. That's the important piece. You want people who care about quality and teamwork and are giving you specific areas. Like we want to do this because we know that if we create a white paper, it will help us grow our leads for sales because of ABC, we want to create 10 blog posts or like, you know, 20 blog posts a month from like one a day, you know, or whatever, seven to so.
Um, like they wanna do a blog post every single day for the month, or they wanna have two blog posts a day, every single day for the month, like continuing on because they have no content and they really need to build a big content library, or they're trying to do that in order to help with SEO to help, uh, you know, they've realized there's three different pain points that their clients have, and they're not addressing any of them in their content.
So they really need to create a lot of content to do that. There's a very specific way that they can explain that, right? Like it's very clear to them when you ask, like, why are we doing this? That they can tell you that, right? Those are really important things. And a lot of times your red light clients, your, um, difficult clients, your clients that you should never sign, can't give you enough information in the beginning of a call or in the, in an email series where you can actually suss out, like, why are we doing this?
Or what's important to you? Or how is the content giving you value that kind of stuff. So be on the lookout for that. All right. Um, let's go to number three. If this has been helpful for you, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you wanna learn more about building a hiring freelance writing business subscribe.
3) What to do if You Realize You’re on a Call with a Bad Client and How to Avoid Them in the Future
Actually I think the subscribe button is like over here or over here, or like down here. I never know where to point and I have my mighty ducks shirt on today, so we're getting a little mighty duck power. . All right. So let's talk about this. Um, let's talk about number three here. So number three is gonna be like what to do if we realize that we are on a call with bad clients and how to avoid them in the future.
Right? So I think I've kind of given some things about how to avoid them. Like if you start seeing things that are not adding up, that's probably not a good sign. If you're looking through their content and things look wobbly, right? Like there's an inconsistencies between their mission and their website and their blog and their social media and their LinkedIn.
That can be a problem. It's not always a problem, but like percu ears is up. Put your satellite dish up. Um, the other thing is that you have a conversation with them and it's not like a partnership, teamwork conversation. It's not something where like, they're treating you like an employee. They're not giving you what their KPIs or goals are and KPIs, or just their key performance indicators.
It means like how they measure results, essentially. So you're avoiding bad clients by kind of learning and experiencing more of kind of what is the dysfunction of a bad client. And I just wanna tell you, I'm gonna tell you right now, you're gonna assign bad clients and they're not always bad clients.
They might be just bad for you and which I call 'em like not a fit. Like I have signed clients where I just think like, yeah, this is gonna be great. Like, everything looks good. And then we just start working together and we're just like, not on the same page. Like there's a disconnect between how I do my work and how I set it up and like what they were expecting, even though we've had conversations that's gonna happen.
Sometimes that's just how it is. Like, you're two people, two humans working together, try and create great content. And that just happens. Um, it's not that they're a bad client sometimes as you're just, you just realize you're like, oh, we're just not a fit. Like this is not, we're not on the, you know, we're, we're missing each other.
Um, and you definitely don't want them to spend more money with you if you guys are like missing each other. Right. So that's how we have our end of our contract. But as you kind of learn and experience more good clients, you start realizing more of what the bad clients are. You can start paying attention to more things ahead of time, but.
You will have clients that are not a fit for you, and you will sign clients that are just like bad clients. Like, there'll be a bunch of things where you don't really recognize that type of dysfunction. And then when you start working with them, you're like, oh, I see now, like, and then you can kind of pay attention to that in the future.
There's all different little things. And sometimes what bothers me, won't bother you. Right? Like sometimes things that like, I'm just like, Nope, I'm out. And you're just like, ah, I don't care about that. Um, like I know that there are people who allow their clients to text them, like at all hours of the day , and that's not, I that's a boundary.
I, I have, uh, I will not text you at all hours of the day or on the weekends. Um, and then there's a bunch of stuff that just is not right for how I operate my business. And that client is just not a fit for me, but it might be a fit for you. So these are sometimes kind of personal things that we need to watch out for.
Before we kind of look into clients, right? And we can't know sometimes about texting or boundaries until we start working with them, which leads me to why we're talking about what to do. If you realize you're either on a call or you've signed a contract with a bad client. So when you're on a call and this is, I've done this before, when I'm on a call and I realize that this client is definitely not a fit for me, this is like not a good freelance writing client for me.
Uh, I will end the conversation. Hey, uh, you know, based on your goals, I just don't think we're the right fit. But I do know a writer who might be a better fit for you and what you're trying to achieve. So then we'll hop off the call and I'll give a recommendation. And it's not that it's a bad client. This case would be a, that client's not a fit for me.
If I am on a call with someone who I'm like, obviously this is not a fit for me. I will tell them I have done this before. I'm like, Hey, I just don't think I'm the right fit for this project based on your goals or based on understanding. Excuse me what you're trying to accomplish with the content or, Hey, Marie, welcome in, um, or what you're trying to get done or the things that really matter to you.
I'm just not the right fit. Like I, I, I normally do X and you wanna do Y uh, I normally work on this and you wanna do that. You can just tell them that. And the weird thing is, is it's just like, it's kind of like dating where sometimes if you reject a client, a bad client, they're just like, wait, wait, wait, no, we wanna work with you.
You know, like, it's that rejection makes them want to like work with you more. It's very weird. Um, but you, you have to know and be honest and upfront with people. Like, if you are on a call with someone you don't wanna lead them on by being like, oh yeah, I'll, I'll give you a proposal and contract and then not give them anything and just ghost them.
Uh, you wanna just be upfront with them and people really respect that, that, you know, what's for you. And what's not, that's a really important thing about. Kind of building confidence in yourself as a freelance writer is that you start realizing like, Hey, this client is for me, this one is not. And I feel confident enough to be on a call and be like, Hey, you know what, uh, we are not a fit to work together.
You know? Like, thank you so much for your time. Um, and if it's a bad client, remember, like we don't wanna recommend other writers in our network to them. If it's really a bad client, big difference between someone who's not a fit for you and a bad client, like I've had plenty of clients where I'm like, oh, this is a good client, but it's not a fit for me.
And I will refer it out. But when you're on the call, just be upfront, Hey, we're not a fit. That's the other thing. Um, and sometimes you will get reactions where they're like, wait, wait, wait. Like, you know, like we should work together. And you're like, no, this is not gonna work. Um, but as you kind of go through these things, if you're on a call, you can always leave.
Like you can always, you know, leave the call. Um, the other thing is like, if you realize that you are kind of getting into deep, take a breather, you don't have to rush through any of your client processes. This is why we have all these things in place, right? This is why we have initial emails. We have calls.
This is, I used to be so afraid of client calls, but client calls are like the easiest way to tell if a client is a good fit or not. And this is really important. Sometimes it's really hard before you send an LOI or pitch to figure out if the client is, is a bad client, you have to get on a call with someone, feel out their vibe, have a conversation with them, listen to the tone of their voice, how they speak about the company and the content and the project.
And put all those things together. Right? So identifying that on the call for me has been more important than worrying about it before I send an Loy or pitch, because that call is leading to me, sending a proposal and contract typically like almost every time, um, I have a call it's like sending a proposal or a contract or some kind of information about moving forward, right.
That call is giving you so much information about that type of person that you would be working with. And that's really important. So you have to make sure that you kind of pay attention on that call and that you are kind of figuring out what's going on and you can abort. You can leave the call if you want, if you get off the call and you're like thinking about it, you're mulling it over after a few hours.
And you're like, Ooh, this isn't a fit. And I've done this too. Like sometimes it takes a while for it to sink in and you're like, I, I shouldn't do. Um, you go back to them and send 'em an email and you say, Hey, um, I was thinking about your project and you know what, when I started working on the proposal or when I started doing this, um, I realized that like, I'm not a fit fit for your project.
You know, I hope you find the best writer for you. Thanks so much for your time, move on with your life. It's okay to change your mind. It's okay for things to marinate. It's okay to take some time. Um, those things are important to preventing signing a lot of bad clients because there's nothing there's like, not that many things that are worse than you making money over and over again from bad clients, because then you get into this very, uh, tumultuous kind of.
Tumbleweed situation where it's like, you have to sign dozens and dozens of clients all the time, right? Because you're, you're constantly having these bad clients that you either have to let go, or they just ghost you or they stop paying you. And then you're like in this horrible hurricane, um, of like constantly having to do all this marketing for very little money or for, um, projects that are not a fit for you.
So that's where we wanna avoid hardcore. So when you're off this call, let's say we've gotten off the call and we're like, Hey, everything seems okay. And we're like, all right, let's do the contract. This is why we always have this, these clauses in our contract. Hey, if this is not working out client and freelancer just need to give 15 days notice of cancellation.
I've had this in my contract for years and years. It's really important that you have this in your contract. And I actually have it. um, if you want my actual contracts that I use in my business, in my six figure business, um, for like to have these clauses, you can go to mandela.com/bundle and get them.
Those are the actual contracts I use in my business. And this protects you. If you get in a situation where you're realizing that that client just isn't the right person for you, you I've done this. I've done this recently where I sent them an email and I'm like, you know what, uh, I don't think I'm the right fit for you.
Like after we've kind of put the content together and we've talked about this, like, I don't think I'm the right writer for you. I think you need a different writer. And that's why you have that cancellation clause in your contract to say, Hey, uh, this is why like, Hey, I just wanna give you notice, you know, 15 days notice we'll finish up all the content that's on the docket, but I'm not the right writer for you.
This is how you avoid having bad clients. Like some people have bad clients for like years. This is, this is how we get out of that is that we have, um, our contract that gives us an out. So, if you start realizing there's kind of like a red, red flag pile up happening, um, then you can just pull the rip cord in your contract and say, Hey, in the con, you know, uh, I need to give you 15 days notice, you know, as in our contract that I just don't feel like I'm the right writer for you, and we need to cancel the contract.
This happens. But honestly, when it's, it's a big relief that I think a lot of freelance writers forget about. They're like so scared about canceling the contract, um, or losing the money. But honestly, there's always a better opportunity. Like there is, there is always good stuff coming. And if you keep doing your marketing and filling your pipeline and learning and paying attention to like how you kind of get out of and into these red client, red light client situations, you end up with a lot better clients on the other side, like it's way better to find a client that's really a fit for you rather than keep working with a client where it's like grading against you and difficult to do the work.
So. You can always cancel the contract. That's why it's in there. It's really important. Cuz if you keep working with that red light client, it's gonna be a big disaster. So there's that then we're gonna do four. So let's talk about number four. All right. So number four, this is the last thing, and this is the most important thing that I'm gonna say about this topic.
4) The Most Important Things to Remember About “Bad”/Red Light Clients are…
Okay. So listen, you can't always identify a bad client before you ever send them marketing. The best thing you can do is get on a call and talk to the real person on the other side of that LOI, this is what I do. I kind of scan through and there's times where like, I'm like, Ugh, this isn't the right fit.
And I don't send an LOI, but I don't really focus on that super high because I know that the call is really where you get to know the person in the company, the brand, their goals, their KPIs, why they're creating the content. So instead of worrying about, can I figure this out before I send an L oy or pitch, which is where you're making a ton of assumptions, right?
We're making a lot of assumptions in our research and in our collection of data about that company and their emails and stuff, right. We're making a lot of assumptions and sometimes they are founded, right? The actions of the person in the email or whatever, or in the company, you're just like, Ooh, this is not a good fit.
Most of the time, you're kind of making assumptions and guesses. So I would not worry so much about identifying bad clients before you send any marketing, send the marketing, move on with your life, send the LOI, send the pitch, and then UN analyze things on the call. Like I know calls can be stressful. I used to be very scared of them and very worried about them, but literally they've saved me from so many agreements.
I shouldn't. Like I know when I get off a call and, um, you know, I need to like talk about it or something. Like I get off a call and I'm like, yep. That's, you know, that's a fit, like, you know, immediately if you're kind of like mulling it over and you're like, Ugh, I don't know. Like, that's usually a sign that this is not a fit.
And then there are times where you're on the call where you're just like, this is not, Nope, Nope. Hardcore. No. So don't worry. Don't place your emphasis on fear of reaching out. Because a lot of times, what I hear is like, how do I figure out if it's a bad client? Like I don't wanna sign them or I don't wanna even email them if they're a bad client.
It's like, you can't know. Sometimes you can't know until you talk to a real person, that's also like fear of marketing and fear of putting yourself out there and lack of confidence, right? So we wanna build the muscle of marketing regardless. We wanna do our marketing. And if you see clear signs, clear red flags, don't send the Loy or pitch.
They should be very blaring, big red, juicy tomato, like red flags. Then don't send the lo. But most of the time, what you're gonna find is that you just need to get your marketing done. You need to put those irons in the fire, you need to plant those seeds. And then when those seeds start to bloom, or when those irons start to get hot, then you have those calls where you're like, oh, like this is not right.
Something is wrong. Like we should not be working together. That is where you really identify whether or not it's a fit and whether or not it's a bad client. That's the most important piece. Okay. And I said that at the end, because I don't want people to, I want people to know that there are attributes of, of red light clients, but that what we wanna do is really foster our ability and confidence to put our business out there.
Like we can't control what happens, right. We're we can control our marketing, we can control what the calls are. Like. We can control our attitude and our effort. Right. Worrying spending a lot of time worrying about whether or not a, a client is bad before you even do anything that prevents you from taking a lot of action.
Right. And for me, what I have found is that the action gives me more confidence and the action leads me to getting all these little quirks and weird things that I'm telling you about. Now, like I had to make all the mistakes, I had to do all the things and sign the red light clients and, um, do all this stuff where, um, I am now, like, I can identify like, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no.
In my clients, like in potential clients that I talk to, that's something that you get from experience and from putting yourself out there and trying things, that's the most important. And obviously if you start getting that little like, Ugh, like yuck that then don't sign that client, that there is another client out there that is a fit for you.
Worry more about sending your marketing, worry more about putting yourself out there. Worry more about doing a good job for the clients who love you. And there will be plenty of work. There's always like, even when I get into a fear state, which happens, you know, it happens to me too, where I'm like, there's no more work.
Everything's terrible. And it's usually when I'm super tired and when I'm just like really feeling burned out or when I'm just like, Ugh, you know, like there's too much stuff going on. There's always more work. There's always more stuff out there. There's always more things that work out. It's just a matter of being diligent in all your processes.
All right. So we have some questions. Let's go to questions. They came in, we actually have comments and questions. So, um, Marie says, I love . I love your Mandy questions that I learned in the wealth lab. Um, it's helped me land clients and weed out clients that wouldn't work for me. Yeah. So something in the course in the, in my freelance writer, wealth lab course that opens in September.
I think it, yeah, September. Um, I give them my client questions. I give them like a detailed list of like, here's all the questions that I ask on a call to weed out, whether or not the client's a fit and whether or not the client is a red light client. Um, and Marie actually used these and she landed her first retainer client, which is amazing and big deal for Marie.
Like Marie went out there, she's been doing the marketing. She's been doing all the stuff doing, she's been killing it. She got in her first retainer client, which is like amazing. So I wouldn't say, like, I wouldn't say that it's like, I, I would say it's sussing it out. That's why we have these questions.
That's why I give my students. These questions is like these, you know, and there's a bunch there's like 10 or 15 of them to go through with your clients on these calls, your potential clients, because you want to weed them out. You want to be able to get answers to them. You wanna look like a pro and you wanna be able to sign the right clients for you.
So big ups for Marie big congrats for Marie. We actually where's the Jif. Let's see if I can put it up here. I think it's still in. Yeah. So Marie can't have the I'm so excited. Goose J there we go. Let me put more jifs in here. All right. We had a comment. So, um, as the parent of a human with many animals, all I can say is that you're only as happy as your unhappy as creature.
Good luck with the dogs I feel for you. Yeah. Thank you for that. um, thank you to everybody who send a lot, sent a lot of kind words about the dogs. It's been, it's been a lot, like you can tell that my, um, now it's happening. You can tell that my voice is raspy that's because I'm not getting like, I'm tired, man.
Hold on.
There we go. So my voice gets raspy when I get really tired. So you can tell, as I've been talking that it's like. Um, and it's just Bo is on like a ton of meds. We ha we have like this big schedule where like one of us has to get up early and one of us has to get up late and he cannot be left alone. So that's why I said he's like a newborn and a toddler and he's like a newborn.
Cause you have to give, you are like awake with him all the time. Like he, you have to pay attention to him all the time. And there's very little breaks in between. And then he is like a toddler because as he starts to feel better, he wants to like be more active, but he can only be active in like five to 15 minute spurts.
But then you have to wa you know, he's got the cone on and you have to be , you have to like, watch him all the time. It's a thing. And then Charlotte just smells. So like, you don't want her to touch all the stuff. Um, even though like, we're still washing things like we had, I washed all of my clothes. Ired everything like.
Yeah. Um, and luckily for us, Bo has been improving. He has a specialist appointment next week. So hopefully that will be a good one. Um, And, uh, yeah, so it's totally true. Like when Bo was really, we were really worried about Bo, um, he's about to turn 16 and, uh, we thought we would have to put him down. Like, he's, he's kind of at this point where he's too old for surgery and they were saying that he might need surgery.
Uh, and we thought we would have to put him down because like, when they give him those meds, like they gave him some specific meds when we took him to the emergency vet. Um, and it took him about two days-ish or more to like get off those meds. Like, it was really hard for him. Um, and you know, as much life as he has and as much, you know, as, as happy as he normally is and boisterous and whatever, um, he's still old.
Like he he's, he has a Peter pan attitude with. A 70,000 year old crock inside, basically like he's, he's old. Um, so that really worried us. So it seems like he may not have to have surgery. We won't know until we keep going to the specialist. Um, but as he improves day by day, all of the rest of us are kind of like improving with him.
So that's been a thing. So I'm thank you so much for this comment. Um, I, it was an that like sometimes, you know, sometimes people say like, Hey, can you share this on the live stream, but I wanna be anonymous. So I'm sharing on the live stream. Okay. Now we have questions that came in that we're gonna go over.
Um, Marie says, because I read through the Mandy question, it makes me sound intelligent and I don't get nervous as I hit all the points I need to know. Thank you, Marie. You're just showering me with, like, with praise today, I'm taking like the praise, shower, you know, shampooing my hair and the praise. So I appreciate.
Um, and I feel like that's important. Like as someone who's like, you know, slightly ahead of Marie in my career, I feel like it's really important to share that knowledge for other people that are coming up as freelance writers, because we all, you know, we all benefit by sharing this knowledge, right. If I can help, uh, you know, students and I can help Marie, you know, basically like do better, faster.
That means everybody else can kind, you know, like we all kind of do that better and faster. And then we earn more and then, you know, we can finally erase that horrible, starving artist thing. That's not a real thing. Hi, Getty. Welcome Getty says our cock poodle Eddie live to the age of 18. Wow. I saw a video the other day of a pit bull who was 20 years old.
She got adopted at 12 and she's lived for eight more years. She's 20 years. Bo is about to turn 16, like, uh, he's as far as like, you know, pending everything that's going on, he's been pretty healthy. So who knows? He may live to be 18, just like Getty's dog, Eddie, or he may end up, you know, being 20. We never know.
All right, let's get to questions. So, oops, there we go. Okay. Question letters of introduction, Lois. So how do you write these quickly and still customize them for each company? What are the key items you need to include in order to get a response? Great question. I always wonder why people wanna be anonymous on the, on the live stream when they ask questions like these, you know, how many people ask me this question?
Lots. Lots of people ask me and they're like UN worried about being anonymous, cuz they're like, oh my God, I'm embarrassed that I don't know this. Like honestly, I, everybody needs to know this. This is a great question. so I need to get some water. So hold on one second.
Okay. People. So Lois letters of introduction, how do you write these quickly templates? This is like, let, let me tell you my story on this. So I used to write these two, these like two page long horrible Lois, because I was kind of experimenting. I wasn't even experimenting. I had followed a bunch of other examples.
I had found other people who had written these super long Lois and they were like, oh my gosh, this is working for me. And it took fucking forever. I hated it. I didn't, I hardly ever got an answer. And then when I did get an answer, they were like, that's nice, but we need this. Right. Cuz the point of the long LOI was like, oh, well, you know, you should recommend a type of content to them.
Blog, post or case studies or white papers based on what their industry does or needs or what you think they. This happened so many times where I made these assumptions about you need a white paper, you need a case study, you need a blog post. And they were like, that's nice, but we actually need this. And I realized that making assumptions about types of content they need was just silly.
Like, I didn't even have a conversation with them. I was like trying to shove content down their throat that I thought they needed without actually listening to their goals or why they needed content. Um, and so the long Lois, I just don't think are the thing. The deal here is that to write them quickly, you need templates.
I templateized, mine are super short now. And the things that I customize I have, um, I don't know. I forget what it is like 15 LOI templates and they're all ized by niche. So I have, and I, and there are some that are combining niches. So I have like one that's just for food. And then I have one for food and travel.
I have one that's just for real estate and then one for PropTech and SAS. Um, and mortgage tech. And then I have one for hospitality, tech, and restaurants, and then I have one for pet, uh, uh, not pet. Uh, I do have one for pets, um, but then one for insurance and insured tech. So I have all of these templates that are customized by niche.
Then the only thing I have to customize in the actual template when I send it to someone is their name and their company name. And sometimes I change a little things in there where like, uh, I'll add something in there, like just in case I think like, Hey, I saw your recent, um, you know, funding, or I saw this cool product that you just revealed.
It's really neat. Like, I'll add a compliment or something. Interesting. I found that's newsworthy in there, but yes, templateized the key items to include to get a response. So this is something that's really important for me. The idea here is so. Here are my templates. You can go to mandy.com/bundle and get the templates.
My LOI templates that I use right now in my business, in my six figure business, you can go to mandela.com/bundle and you can get them right now. So LOI templates are there. They're super short. Now let's go over what they're, what is in there. So let's go back to our question. So here's the deal. I, you need an opening, like, Hey, hope you're doing well.
Congrats on your funding. I saw your new product launch. It was super cool. I love X, Y, Z. About the product you need a nice kind of like warm opening. Then you ask a question. Hey, could you use help with your content marketing efforts? Could you use help with your content? Uh, could you use help with content strategy?
Ask a question then this is all in the templates. So if you go to mans.com/bundle, you will get my templates. So you won't have to listen to me, like spell this out for you. You actually get like written versions that you can use. The next part is asked the question you say I'm a freelance, whatever the niche is, I'm a freelance mortgage tech writer.
Uh, and here are my clients, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, if you want to, you know, if you would like to talk, um, if you that's the next paragraph, so the next paragraph is telling them I'm a freelance writer in your niche. Here are some clients I've had. Right. And then the third part or the fourth paragraph is, um, Hey, here's like, uh, if you want to see testimonials or my portfolio, here's a link.
Um, and then like, I'd love to chat more about your needs and then you sign off. Now here's the difference. My Lois are based on that, cuz I have clients in those niches, right? Like, and a lot of times I get this question of like, well, what do I do if I don't have clients yet you explain how you help in that niche.
So this is what I do. These are in the templates. So if you go get the templates and you don't have clients, um, if you don't have clients yet, it explains what to do in there. Like, Hey, if you don't have this, do this, it gives you all the direction. So if you don't have clients yet, you just explain, like, I'm a, um, I've done this before with my coaching students.
You say like I'm a nurse with 10 years of experience and I've helped with my communications department do case studies, white papers and blog posts. Or what I used to do was be like, um, I'm a longtime food, you know? Um, I'm a long time traveler and I've, I, um, specialize in writing about restaurants because I know a lot about these types of food.
Uh, you can also do something where you say, like you use your past full-time experience. You can tell them that you're moving into freelance writing and you have a strong interest in the growing real estate, uh, prop tech, um, and SAS products. And all you have to do there is explain like why you're qualified and how you can help.
That's the only thing, if you don't have any clients to like name drop in there, you just explain, like, explain that. Um, and like I said, it's in the template, so. The last thing here that we need to talk about is like, in order to get a response, right? You can't control whether you're gonna get a response that is non, that is a non-factor, don't worry about that.
You cannot con you, like, you can write the best LOI you've ever written, like where you're like, I know I'm a slam dunk for this client and you'll just never get a response. You can't control what phase that business is in. You can't control if someone even reads their your message. So what you wanna focus on is the key things that are important as highlights in that LOI, right?
Like, so what you're going to put in there, if someone reads it and wants to reach out, so warm opening question about, could they use help with content? Could they use help with content strategy, content, marketing, whatever third paragraph is your qualifications. I'm a freelance mortgage tech writer. I'm a freelance, uh, prop tech content strategist.
Here are some clients or here's how I can help you. And why are my experience? If you wanna know more, here's some, like here's a link to my website with testimonials and my portfolio. I'd love to top on a call, you know, looking forward to your response or looking forward, blah, blah, blah, goodbye. That's it.
We wanna make sure that these are really easy for us to get done. That's why you do them quickly. Like you have these templates, you don't wanna keep customizing the template every single time you do it. Like you want to make sure that you have a prop tech one and an insurance one and a he one and a travel one so that you can easily port them in for the appropriate clients.
And then you just change the name and the company name. So hi, John, you need help with blah, blah, blah company name and these, you have to get a bunch out. So like, as I tell my students, right, my freelance writer, wealth lab students know you need 50 to 75 Lois a month. And the way to do that is to create these custom templates and then change a couple things in there for.
Sending 'em out to different companies. So not only are the templates themselves customized by niche, which makes it very easy to send those. Then you customize a second time for name and company name and that's it. We move on with our lives. And the key here is that you're highlighting the things that they care about.
And this is also why I call them drive through Lois. All you're doing is going through the drive through hi, I can help if you need help, I'd love to chat. Bye. That's it. The amount of emails that people get and the amount of stuff that people have to do quick and dirty is the way to go scan ability.
Like when you have clients and someone can scan those clients and they're like, they scan your note freelance writer. Okay, cool. They work on content strategy or the content marketing and here's for their clients. Cool. They have a portfolio that scanability matters. We don't wanna write a long novel about why we're the best or like all of this stuff that we could recommend.
That's just a waste of time. I, I really think it is. I think in today's world scanability and quick, quick and dirty is the way to go. And it's good for us because if we have quick and dirty, we can get more out 50 to 75 is, is really easy to get done. Um, even for me, like when I do, I do quarterly marketing, actually, I'm doing more marketing right now.
Um, and I have . Yeah. Like, so in any case, um, I still send like 50 ish or more every quarter, like to, to fill the marketing pipeline. So the key here is that you have to send a bunch, that's the focus you need to focus on your own efforts. And what I did for a while was I did my marketing every morning, every morning to make sure the marketing got done.
I did the marketing. So see, in order to get 50 to 75 Ys a month, every day, I would spend an hour in the morning. Like the first thing I did was do my marketing to make sure it got done. And I focused on an effort goal rather than numbers. So like, if you feel like 50, if you feel like. Are gonna be demotivated by the idea of 50 to 75 Lois a month, focus on the fact that every day you're spending an hour marketing your business and trying to move it forward.
That really worked for me. So on the months where I sent 49 Lois or 25 Lois, cuz I was really busy with work, excuse me. Um, I would say like every, at least every single business day, I spent an hour doing marketing. I sent Lois, I followed up, I sent pitches. I grew my LinkedIn network. I commented on things.
I liked things. I sent interesting articles to people, all that stuff like that, all counts as marketing and effort goals can be more helpful. So this is, was a great question. And the idea is that, um, we also start from a list. So you're you create your, and this is something again that I go over in the course I go over in freelance writer.
Wealth club is like how to create your list of potential clients. Cut them down by revenue. Um, and then you can do your wise quickly, cuz now you have a list of client like potential clients to go after, like to send your stuff to, um, then you have your templates and then you're ready to roll. So I hope that was helpful.
All right, let's go to the next question. So next question is I've ran into marketing agencies that pay well in those that pay peanuts. Is there a way to weed out the low paying agencies from the ones that pay? Well, yeah, I mean always ask about their budget. Like every time this is something where I'm very picky about agencies that I work with.
And uh, for the most part I've only worked for my friends agencies. So like a lot of times freelance writers end up with a ton of work, like after they've been working for a while and they farm it out to other writers. So they create an agency model, um, where they go out and do the marketing and do like a lot less work and they farm out the other stuff to other writers.
Right. So I've only worked for my friends' agencies. I don't think I've, I might have worked for like one other agency. That's not my friends. I don't know. It's hard for me to remember right now, but. The deal is that you always have to ask, like, anytime you're worried about peanuts or, or who pays well, you have to ask ahead of time.
What are your typical rates? Like if it's an agency, they should already have other freelancer writers that they work with. What are your typical rates, uh, tell, you know, what is it for? Like, is it for a thousand? Is it 50 cents a word or a dollar, a word for a thousand word blog post, is it $2,000 or $10,000 for a white paper?
Is it, uh, you know, like a hundred dollars or $10,000 for a case study or $3,000, $5,000 for a case study, you gotta ask that sub first, like, this is why in those questions that I have for my students, it says like, what's your budget? Like, we need to talk about that because we wanna be playing in the same field.
Like I, you know, I wanna charge pro rates for my work. I know what my work is worth. I know what I've charged other clients for similar work. Right. So that's what I charge. Um, and sometimes, you know, we negotiate, right? That's part of the process, but you have to ask them like you can't weed them out unless you talk to them.
Or unless you find a writer who works there. So if by some, uh, way you were able to go to the LinkedIn page of that agency and find other freelance writers who work for that agency and send 'em a LinkedIn message and say like, Hey, what are you getting paid at this agency? That's another way. But you have to ask about budget and you have to know things before you sign a contract before you get into anything with them.
Like, this is just kind of, for me, this is one of those basics about clients is like, you have to get them to share their budget. Like you, you have to get them to give you a ballpark, give them information and agencies like unlike, you know, business clients who may be a little confused about budget. And they're like, ah, I don't really know.
You know? And you send a proposal. Agencies usually have typical rates that they pay, right? Some pay peanuts, some pay. You have to ask them questions like, and this, I think comes down to having a more thorough call, like don't sign with an agency until you have a call, have a call with someone, ask them questions, um, ask them if, if they can send you like, Hey, can you send me ballpark rates for the last few projects that you've done?
You know? So they can say, yeah, uh, here's four different projects. So typically for a thousand word blog post we've paid anywhere from 50 cents, a word to 70 cents a word. And for other stuff, you know, for a case study, we've paid this to this and for this, uh, ebook, we've paid this to this, right? So you kind of need to know that and be more thorough in the questions that you ask.
You need to ask about budget and you need to be making sure that, you know, all the monetary information before you sign a contract, like you shouldn't be signing with an agency where you have no idea what they pay. And the other thing here is that if you're at these two. Ends right. You're at the peanuts end and the pay well end, which I know is backwards on here.
Right? Like, so this is, they're probably opposite. It doesn't matter on either avenue of the spectrum. That to me means you're missing out on having a floor price and missing out on being specific about what you wanna take. You're just kind of taking everything. That's how people end up here. And that's how I ended up here was I took way too much stuff.
And then I end up with some people who were, who I went to and I was like, yeah. Um, normally, you know, uh, I charge a dollar, a word and they're like, yeah, we normally pay a dollar 25. Is that okay? And I'm like, sure. So there's that. And then there's the other side where, you know, someone's like, oh, well, you know, we normally pay 20 cents a word and you're at this point you took it.
And now you're getting clients that are a dollar 25, and now you've got this weird unbalanced scale where like, there's a dollar per word difference. Right. So that's, you need to be having a minimum. Like I only work with agencies that pay 50 cents a word or more. Or I only work with agencies that pay, uh, at least $2,000 for a case study or only do this.
Like you need to start having floor prices here. Cause otherwise you end up in this weird juggling peanuts versus pay well situation and it's a pain in the butt. So you gotta make sure you have a, a minimum price, minimum stuff that you take from an agency. You have to have a really thorough call. You need some kind of information because agencies like should, I mean, most of the time they have budgets, they have other writers they work with.
They should be able to share that information with you. And if not, if all else fails, send them information and say, here are my ballpark prices. What does, you know, does that work for you? Then you can, at least with the agency have some kind of ground to work with before you sign anything. And you're in this like weird peanut space that doesn't work.
So be diligent about the calls. Ask about bud. Well, ask about budget, be diligent about your calls. Make sure you have pricing information before you sign a contract and make sure you understand, like all the stuff that goes into like how they're actually putting all their work together, um, what their word counts are, what the timelines are like, all the things that go with budget.
That's really important. Okay. Whoops. All right. Next question. I know Marie has Marie still have comments? Marie says she's still asking questions about the LOI process. Yeah, it's it's a process. Um, Vicky says, hold on. Vicky says I had a guy call me about a retainer for frequent cheap content. That's when the, to quote on the call so I can fire off a high quote and see if he has the budget.
Yeah, that's a good idea. Um, that can hap that can work. And then she says, Vicky says, I just can't. I can, uh, just get the conversation over with, um, like if he can't. If it doesn't work. Yeah. That's a good idea. Marie says, she's still, uh, asking questions about the LOI process. It is. Marie says the Mandy templates and the wealth lab totally changed my earning power.
At first, it just got me a one off, but then good one offs. And then now she got her new retainer, like, yeah, that was the coolest. Um, and then Marie says, I've worked with several agencies. I ask up front what the rates are and the frequency of the work. Yep. You gotta know. You gotta know before you sign anything.
I mean, there's, there are good. That's the thing about agencies is there's gold star agencies, and then there's like content pump out agencies, which are a pain. So you gotta know like, um, you gotta know, like who's good and who's like not gonna be a fit. Oh yeah. This is the other good thing. So Marie says, ask the agency, what kind of brief they give you if no brief, um, they needs, uh, more money to me.
Great brief. I'll accept a few jobs, even though that it's less money because I can write it faster. Yeah. You need to know what you're getting in terms of assets. Right? If they send you a content brief. Maybe you decide that you will negotiate a lower price, um, or maybe if they don't send you a content brief and you really have to kind of like come up with all the little pieces yourself.
Right. Which is fine. You know, I, I mostly do that. Um, I get content briefs from some clients, but a lot of times I end up pitching ideas or I end up like putting it all together. So yeah. You need to know what information they're giving you and how that affects pricing as well. Okay. Question here is all right.
I'm finding another, like all these questions that we've had today, I think are really great. So I'm finding a big disconnect lately with potential clients between the phone conversation and the contract. This is a great question for our talk today for our chat in order to save everyone time, would you recommend just asking to review their contract first?
This may seem demanding to some people, but actually I would've saved a ton of time if I'd seen the contract first. Yeah. So this is the problem. My guess is if you're seeing a disconnect between potential clients with a phone conversation and the contract, you're not asking enough questions or even the right questions to me, here's how I always see it.
If I have a phone conversation with someone, there is zero surprise that comes in later on. Like, if I ask you about budget and I ask you about stuff, the only thing that might be new information is the pricing because you didn't give me a budget. And I, or I gave you a rate on the call, which I rarely do, because I, sometimes I have to think about it or I need to read their old content to figure out like what I normally have charged for that content in the past.
Um, but most of the time you need to ask more questions because there should not be a big gap between your phone conversation and your contract. Like you that's, you need to know that stuff ahead of time. I always ask about their contract. Do you send a contract or should I send mine? That's something that I end up.
um, talking about on the call. So if you didn't, you know, like ask about that, that's important. The other thing is that you need to know kind of like what's going on. So like, I wonder what your gaps are between the contract. Like, is the contract different in scope of work? Does it have crazy indemnity?
Does it have like some other weird stuff? Like what's kind of going on? So, um, it's not demanding at all. Like you should, you should be very careful about what you signed because contracts are legal documents, right? So you, if you are finding that you're in weird areas with contracts, you need to ask more questions on the call and clarify that, Hey, I've noticed in my recent contracts that I've had a lot of rights, grabby language, or I've noticed in my recent contracts that, uh, there's no mutual indemnification.
Does your contract have mutual indemnification? Ask that on the call and then it clears up a lot of stuff, like start writing down the, the discrepancies you see. So if you're seeing them, right, like you say, there's discrepancies between the phone conversation and the contract. Write down, like I've noticed that these discrepancies are change in scope of work, change in indemnification, uh, change in rights, change in whatever it is, write those down, and then start asking that on your calls.
The other thing that you can do is send your own contract and say like, I normally send my contract. Does that work for you? And a lot of times they're just like, yep, sounds good. And then you don't use their contract at all. The other thing is that, um, you need to know what's in their contracts, like just what's in a freelance contract and what, uh, type of stuff is important.
There, I have a, an article on the right life, um, that you can go find. So if you go like Google, like the right life, Mandy Ellis, I go through in depth, all the stuff that are that's in contracts that might also help you understand like what to ask and what to know about in those contracts. Um, the deal with contracts is you can always ask questions.
They can say no, but you can say like, can we change this part of the contract? I noticed there's a difference in this contract. I noticed. Like you need to be diligent at the contract phase because if you sign something like that's, you know, that's a big deal. Um, so you need to make sure that you kind of know what's in these contracts what's to expect in them, if there's big changes in scope of work or weird stuff, then you need to bring that up with them.
Like anytime I see something in a contract, I go and I'm like, this is weird. I go ask about it. You can always ask questions. They can say no, or yes, or whatever, but asking questions and being diligent about your contracts or being diligent about the discrepancies between the phone conversation and the contract is really important.
Um, and, and you need to know, like, it's, it's very weird that someone you would have a phone conversation and the contract would be that different. Like I'm interested in like, what's different. Like the, is it the work itself? Is it like how they're doing it? Like. So ask more questions, be more diligent about your conversations with your potential clients.
Um, be careful about what you sign know more about what the contracts what's in freelance contracts. And like I said, I have an article on the right life. If you go, if you type in the right life in mans, look at my contracts, article, it goes over all the stuff. Um, and then you, like, if you ever have questions or weird stuff in the contract, go ask the client about it.
Like don't sign anything until you kind of iron that stuff out. But yeah, it's, it's interesting that you, that there, the disconnect for me, whenever I find out, um, that there's like some kind of weird gap it has to do with like me not being diligent. Like if I find out that there's some kind of surprise in the information I'm getting from my client, there has been a misstep.
Like there should be no surprises after you had a conversation with someone like. It should be pretty cut and dry. Um, and I tell my clients that as like, you know, if you can tell me budget, or if you can tell me like, what's going on, everything should be, it should be pretty, not surprising. Uh, sometimes I guess what ends up being a surprise, like I said, can be price.
Like if you have to review their work and look at stuff, there's that, um, yeah. That's the other thing Vicky says, did they send you a hecking boiler plate? Yeah. The other thing too, is that if you're finding discrepancies in your contracts, it could be that you're getting a lot of boiler plates that they use for just all contractors or that they use for, uh, full-time employees, which we talked about in the well lab.
Marie found a clause in our contract, um, that we talked about in our wealth lab, Q and a, um, where it's, it's really applied to full-time people it's not applied to freelancers and you can always ask for it to be removed. So anytime you get a weird boiler plate contract or whatever, you can always ask about it and ask them to remove things.
Um, Marie says, I ended up with a different contract with one client. The content manager said one thing on the phone, but legal in accounting had different expectations. Yeah. That's the other thing is like that to me is kind of like internal dysfunction at the company, which is a problem. So yeah, the deal here is that you have to know, like, what's kind of going on, like, are you getting like the content manager needs to know more about the contract?
You need to ask more questions. Like you need to kind of figure that out. Plus like I said, like, I always have a conversation on the phone is like, do I send my contract? Or you gonna send yours? That kind of clears up a bunch of stuff too. All right. I think those are all of our questions. Those are great questions today.
I hope that this topic was helpful for everybody. Um, let's see. I think we went through all the comments. Cool. All right. If you found this helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you wanna learn more about building a hi freelance writing business subscribe. You can always ask a question. So if you ever have a question, like the ones we just went over, you could go to mandela.com/question and submit it.
You can be anonymous like everybody was today. Uh, you can also submit a topic if you feel like your question. Um, or if you have like, Hey, can you cover more about Lois or can you cover more about this? You can submit it at mans.com/question, and we'll bring it on the livestream and do it just like today, like today's thing, right?
Can you identify a bad client before you send an L Loy or pitch that was sent to me as a topic to go over from someone? And, uh, we did it, so I hope this has been helpful. I'm sorry. We didn't have any puppet dates today. I'm hoping that maybe by next week, everyone will either. Not smelling like skunk or mostly healed, but we'll, I don't, I don't know.
We'll have to see bow Bo bows on like a, like a, it's gonna be a while, so we'll see how it goes. But, um, thanks everybody for hanging out. I've had a good time. I hope you had a good time. Hope this was really helpful. Uh, we're here every Friday at 12:00 PM central time by we, I mean, me and the dogs. They're not here today.
Uh, but I hope everybody has a good weekend and I will see you next Friday. Bye.
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