Focused - 5: Envision a Bonfire

Episode Date: September 21, 2016

Clients: Getting them (by marketing yourself), keeping them, and the dangers and rewards of taking them with you from your previous job.

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow host, Mr. Jason Snow. Hi, David. Hi, Jason. We're back.

Yes, we are. This is an episode that is, you're in the driver's seat for this one, Mr. Lawyer Expert Person. Yeah, there we go. Because we're going to talk about clients. Now, I do have clients or have had some stories, and I'll tell later about my experiences, but a lot of this is from your experience about getting clients. So, what do you want to say about clients? Yeah, you know, so you quit your job and you went indie and- You work for yourself now. Nobody can tell me what to do. Oh, I need clients now to tell me

what to do. Well, that's clients now to tell me what to do. Well, that's not always true, though. Some indie gigs don't need clients. They need customers or they need relationships like you have with some of the publishers you work with. I mean, in fact, as I was writing this outline, I was thinking, this isn't one that Jason probably has a lot of experience with because that's not something you need. But it's industry specific. That's not something you need. But it's industry specific. But whether it's the way Jason gets writing gigs or the way that I see quite often that's kind of scary for independent workers. So I guess legal disclaimer, I'm a California lawyer, nothing else. I'm not in any other state.

I'm not here giving you legal advice. I'm just kind of telling you some experiences I've seen. All right. And I'm going to be telling you to get a lawyer if you go out and you're bringing clients with you. So let me tell you a sad story. You've got an independent worker, somebody who's really smart and works for, you know, big company, you know, big company, been there for 20 years, loves big company, but it's ready to go out on her own. And she goes out on her own and she's independent. Hooray. You know, she gets started. She's got her business going. A bunch of big companies, clients go, oh, I really

loved you at big company. I'm going to love you even more as an independent. And then suddenly she gets sued by big company saying, hey, you took our clients. You're not allowed to do that. And she has just got started. She doesn't have a bunch of money set aside, right? And she may or may not be allowed to take those clients. But either way, somebody with a huge pocketbook has got a bunch of lawyers chasing her. And before you know it, you know, her business fails. I've seen that happen. I've seen it happen more times than I would like to admit, you know, over the years of being an attorney and seeing how this goes down. So I think you need to be careful when you're going out and you need clients and you're bringing clients from your old work. I'm sorry. I'm still terrified about the idea of losing a house here, but I guess,

you know, knowing what the rules are when you leave is important. What do you take with you when you go? We haven't really talked about that. But that is something you need to deal with, especially if you choose your exit, rather than being shown the door is knowing what you take with you and knowing what, you know, potentially if something may be negotiable, but knowing what your rights are in terms of non-compete agreements, in terms of taking clients, in terms of knowledge of the, you know, the organizational knowledge and what you're allowed to apply that you learned at that organization. There's lots of questions that come up and it's probably a broader topic than this episode, but it's something to just keep in the back of your head that if you're going to make a change, you know, you have to remember what you're allowed to walk away with. Yeah, and a lot of people don't know is the problem.

Yeah. Because when you get a job, they make you sign a bunch of documents. You sign some stuff, yeah. Yeah, that's like, you know, 30 pages worth of nonsense and buried in there somewhere are promises you're going to make. are promises you're going to make. Especially if you have any kind of contact with clients because that's what everybody, that's the lifeblood of any operation, whether it's a one-person or a thousand-person operation.

So they take all that very seriously. And one thing they do is they have what they call confidentiality clauses, which are generally legal. But I mean, let's again, I guess my overarching advice here is that if you're doing, getting ready to make a move and involves clients from your old company, go see a lawyer. That's the, you know, just do that. I mean, I can give you some good advice about what questions

to ask, but I can't tell you what's going on. I haven't seen your documents, but confidentiality clauses in large part are enforceable saying that you can't take something you learned about our client then go use it to compete with us non-compete clauses and this gets confusing for people it's a different thing that's non-compete says you're not allowed to be in the widget industry you know right sell widgets and you can't sell widgets somewhere else in california that generally isn't true there's exceptions but it's generally not true that you can enforce that yeah a lot of states it is true you can enforce that. But a lot of states, it is true. You can enforce those. So it depends where you're going, where your company is located.

That's why you've got to talk to a lawyer about this stuff. But some general rules. See the lawyer first and find out what your rights are before you get started. And then don't do anything stupid. I saw a case once where a guy was sending out emails at his former employer's email address to the client saying,

hey, I'm leaving. These guys are terrible and I'm going to be better and cheaper. You know, something like that. And then,

then all they have to do is go look at their mail server and then the lawsuit's on the way. You know, don't do that. You know, don't market

until after you leave. You know, don't market until after you leave. You know, don't try and market to your clients until after you've gone out to start a new, new, new gig. And there's different ways you can market. I mean, it's not going to be as easy as just saying, like, you can't compare prices and like, you got to talk to your local lawyer first, but there are very big limits about what you can do. And one of them is the timing. You know, it's very important. You wait until after you leave. And for goodness sake, don't take anything from your former employer. People take copies of client files and all kinds of things they're not supposed to do.

And that's the kind of stuff that gets you in that lawsuit that torpedoes your new successful business. And it doesn't even have to make sense sometimes. I've seen it happen where the old company treated the clients terribly. They didn't, they treated the employee terribly. So the employee finally had enough and went out. But because the way the employee handled the transition so poorly, you know, the employee found herself on the receiving end of a legitimate lawsuit. So, well, I didn't want to scare everybody, but you know, starting out getting clients, if the clients come from your old company, you need to get help before you do that. I'm not saying you can't do it, but you need to be careful.

I'm fortunate to live in a state, like you said, California does not have, uh, non-compete in most cases, but, uh, the idea of what you take with you and being diligent, like some, some employers, like my employer was really good about like letting me take my laptop with me. Um, but their condition was essentially you got to wipe the laptop and that was just right. And it's like, I'm just going to reinstall software on it afterward. But what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to have their email archive and I'm not going to have their serial numbers for their software. It's going to be just for me. And that, that, uh, not everybody is going to be as generous as my employer was in terms of letting me walk away with my laptop. But the idea still applies that if you've got stuff that belongs to your,

your, uh, former employer, um, that you've always just sort of not thought about because you work there and it's not a big deal and it's all intermingled. This is the point where you have to ask yourself all of those questions about what really belongs to me and what doesn't. And although it might be painful to lose some of the stuff that doesn't belong to you, it doesn't belong to you. Yeah. And I'll say for like the eighth time, talk to a lawyer first. But I can tell you my experience when I left my firm that had been with something like 22 years is there was a group of clients at the firm that I felt like were my clients. And there was a big group of clients that I felt like weren't my clients. And I went to the people in charge and said, hey, here's a

list I made of the people who I think would probably insist on being with me and I think I believe should be mine. And they looked through it, and we had a couple that we had to talk about, but in general, we reached an agreement, and there was no problem at all. They let me take the files. There was just no problem.

And it was because of communication, and I think generally that's going to be fine for you. There aren't, you know, when I tell that war story at the beginning, there are people like that who just want to knock you out because you're a potential competitor, and they, I tell that war story at the beginning, there are people like that who just want to knock you out because you're a potential competitor and they see you as vulnerable when you're getting started. I mean, make no mistake, there are people like that, but most people aren't like that. A lot of people are like, hey, you know, Jason's leaving, I wish him luck. Yeah, well, I mean, this isn't quite about clients, but in terms of extracting yourself,

and I do think there's an entire show about making transitions that we're going to have to do about the steps you go through and what you say and all of those things as you're leaving and as you're starting. But I will say that one of the things that I asked about in addition to the laptop, I asked about it at my old job was, um, was a piece of intellectual property. And I basically said, said, I do this. Um, you're not going to do it when I leave. But I was very clear that like, it belonged to them. I made it for them. I was working for them when I did it. And if I wanted to take it with me, I had to ask, right? We had to have a conversation about whether this was a thing that I was going to be allowed to take.

And I had to enter into that conversation knowing that the answer might be no, at which point it would be very clear that I couldn't take take. And I had to enter into that conversation, knowing that the answer might be no, at which point it would be very clear that I couldn't take it. And I couldn't like try to take it and just ask forgiveness later. And they, they were actually quite generous. And they let me walk away with it. And that isn't always going to happen. But I would, I tried very hard to be aware of the fact that it didn't belong to me. And if I wanted to take it, I needed to have that be a negotiation or a conversation. Yeah. And everybody talks about it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. But when you're talking about contractual stuff, just remember, I want you to close your eyes and envision a bonfire.

But instead of using timber for the bonfire, there are stacks of $100 books. That's what a lawsuit is in your life. Don't go on that theory that you can just ask for forgiveness later. Try and sort it out. Get a decent lawyer on your side

and just figure out where your limits are. I'm done with the part of the show where I freak everybody out. If you've got clients from your old employer, one way of getting clients is taking them from your old employer. And there is a right way and a wrong way to do that. And be advised, the wrong way can be very expensive. So make sure you do it the right way. All right. But forget about that. When you go out on your own, there's also a huge network that you have. And this is something that I found out to my delight when I left. I hadn't really thought about it so much, but I'd been in my industry for

22 years when I left, and I had a big network of people here where I live that I had helped out with favors over the years. And when I put the word out in my community of lawyers saying, hey, I'm gone solo, suddenly people were coming out of the woodwork with work for me. They'd say, Hey, what kind of work are you doing? Let me know. I will find, you know, I've got a client that would could use that help and got tons of work that way. And if it's not in your professional community, it's in your social community. If you go on,

we have tools like Facebook and LinkedIn now that just didn't exist before. And if you've got a nice Facebook and LinkedIn community and you say, Hey, I am now doing X for a living and I'm doing it on my own. Uh, and you put the word out there and say, look, I'd really appreciate if anybody had work, they could send my way or knew somebody that could use my services, let me know. And you're not going to get that work unless you ask for it. And I don't think you should be embarrassed to ask for it. Yep. It's just, you know, one of the things I, when I first went out with Mac, with the legal practice, I, on Mac Sparky, I did a post kind of telling, hey, everybody, I've changed this part of my life.

And I think the reason I did it mainly was because I knew it was going to change the content I was generating. And just, you know, that kind of stuff bleeds over into the stuff I do at MacPower Users and the books I write. So I said, I'm not going to keep it a secret. I'm just going to tell them. What I didn't expect was that there were all these great, you know, nerdy listeners that needed legal advice. And suddenly I got, you know,

a significant number of new clients out of it. And I had no idea that I would be getting clients from, you know, writing about AppleScript, you know, a significant number of new clients out of it. And I had no idea that I would be getting clients from, you know, writing about Apple script, you know, right. That's not something you did with the intention of turning into legal clients, but in my case, it worked out. So I would say wherever you are in your life, whatever activities you're interested in, if you're in a user group, or if you're in a model playing club or whatever it is that you're doing, let everybody know what you're doing because people that like you are going to want to help you get work when you get started and they're going to help you find clients. Those are the best helpers you can have. Yeah, and I would say I got a couple points on this.

One is, yeah, we used to call this tapping the Rolodex or something like that. But now it's your personal social network because Rolodex is who has those anymore. But it's true. You know a lot of people. If you've been But it's true. You know a lot of people. If you've been doing this a while, you know a lot of people. They know you. Hopefully, they had positive interactions with you in the past. They think positively about you.

Now you're on your own. They're going to think of you, especially if they know that this is what you're doing. And the other thing I would say is from my experience working with a nonprofit, because I'm on the board of a nonprofit, is I know it's difficult to put yourself out there and to ask and not necessarily like asking for donations, which is what I have to do for the nonprofit, but just saying I'm here and potentially I'm looking for work. If you've got work, think of me. And it can be, especially if you've previously worked at a big company, it can be a hurdle to get over that of asking not for a handout or anything like that, but asking for work if work is available and saying you're available. And especially if it's to a colleague or a friend

or a former client, but you got to do it. That's part of the deal now is you're independent. People may be predisposed to give you work if they're aware that you're available, but they aren't going to be aware of it unless you tell them. And we talk about sometimes how one of the goals of the show is to help people understand the reality of working independently. And the reality is you don't have somebody doing your marketing for you. It's you. So true.

And you've got to be willing to do that. And you don't have to doing your marketing for you. It's you. This is so true. And you've got to be willing to do that. And you don't have to do it like being a jerk. You can tell people, hey, this is what I'm doing now. In fact, later in the outline, I'm going to give you some kind of a little script that I use. But you have to be willing to do that. You have to be willing to go to your friends and just say, hey, now I'm an independent artist. I'm an an independent whatever and this is the kind of work i do and i'd love to um if you

know anybody that could use my services let me know if you if you're listening to this makes your heart pound and you feel like you just couldn't do it this may be the the deal breaker for you this episode of the free agents is brought to you by Equal Experts. Equal Experts is a diverse network of experienced software consultants specializing in agile delivery. Equal Experts works with companies big and small all over the world, creating simple solutions that address big business problems. To get things right, the equal experts only recruit experts. Equal experts is a different type of consultancy, not just for clients, but also for the people who work for them. In true free agents fashion, the majority of equal experts consultants work with

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And said, hey, okay, I'm on my own now. This is what I'm doing just to kind of give you an idea. If you know anybody, first of all, I appreciate that you're, you know, you're still my customer, but it also, if you have any friends or know anybody else that could use my services, I'd really appreciate it if you reached out to them for me. So that's even harder, right? I'm not, I'm just as asking for their business. I'm asking for them to go to their friends and recommend me. So that's level two paladin there. It's a tough one, again, because you're putting yourself out there. But it's true.

They don't know unless you tell them. And that if they've got good experiences with you, I think people are going to be inclined to work with you some more. But they just need to be aware that you're there and that you are looking for work and that you'd appreciate if, you know, that they think of you if it comes up down the road. And that's incredibly important. The amount of cost in having lots of different clients, like, right, like if I told you, you could have five clients giving you five hours of work a month, or you could have one client giving you 25 hours of work a month. I imagine you would prefer the one client.

It depends on if the work is monotonous, but I can tell you, I would much prefer a smaller number that wrapped me up for more time and more money than having to try to find the next client because trying to find the next client is exhausting and if you get a good thing and they like your work and they keep kind of like ramping up within reason i feel like that that is uh it's just it saves you from having to switch from client a to client b to client c which is a lot harder to do yeah the only downside to that though is if if the if you if you wrap it all up in one client and they say, you know, we don't need you anymore. Yeah, if you become over reliant on them,

then you're almost like an employee, then that's the risk there. And that's the balance, right? I feel like that's my balance too is I have a very good client that pays me regularly for regular work, and I love it. And I would much rather have that than beating the bushes for, you know, a story here and a story there. But the downside of that is if that client decides not to pay me anymore, it's a big hit,

because I have become even a little bit reliant on that money being there. But still, you know, the cost of always trying to find a one-off assignment is a lot harder for me. You know, it's always better if you find something that's regular. And so, you know, that's the advantage of having a good relationship with people who are like, oh, yeah, I appreciate you. I'll come back to you with more work later. Yeah. And so, following up on pounding the pavement, in addition to talking to your existing clients about them sending you additional work, look at the other elements of your business. From personal experience, one of the people I deal with quite often is another lawyer.

I may have had a big case with another lawyer. And I'll call them and they'll say, hey, nice to hear from you. It's been whatever. And I say, hey, I'm out on my own now. And tell them what I'm doing. And if they had a good experience with me and they felt like I did a good job, they will send me work. Or at least I'm on their mind for sending them work. And it would be different depending on what industry you're in.

But there's always going to be, in addition to former and existing clients, there's going to be other colleagues that you've had. People that you've worked with in different capacities. If you were going back to our graphic artists, if you've done some work for a couple of different app developers, maybe you go and ask them, you know, to tell their app developer friends about you, but, but you, you're going to have to do that. And that time, it can feel like sunk time, but that is, you know, building that pipeline. You need to have a pipeline of work. If you really want to do this indie thing, if you want to be able to go to Starbucks whenever you feel like it, you've got to pay the price,

and that is having a pipeline of work to keep you going. So how was your experience with this? I mean, I guess you didn't need it too much because of the way you work. No, but I definitely had that with, like I said, establishing sort of like with different clients, essentially, of like do you want to write for us regularly? How do you build that relationship? That was a challenge. I did have people who knew me, you know, it wasn't quite the same, but I had people who connected with me of like,

what are you doing now? What kind of work are you looking for? Which led to opportunities, most of which honestly were not, I sort of already had in my mind what I wanted to do. And I'm doing that. And so a lot of them were kind of a little bit of field, but I said yes to them in the sense that I wanted to, um, I wanted to try them out and, and some of them I had good experience with, and it just hasn't repeated where I did some consulting. Um, and then some of them, it was, uh, not a good fit and it wasn't good for. And it wasn't good for them. And we agreed, you know, basically, like, not, let's not do this anymore. But that was good,

because that was another good learning experience. So I would say a lot of my work after leaving, that it wasn't part of the stuff I was doing on my own came from kind of people who knew me, and were curious about like, what else I might do. And I was open to that, I guess is the way I would put it, not being used to having clients. I was kind of open to the concept and I did, it did some work and I would be willing to do more work there. It's just for me, I don't feel like I'm in a place where I need to cultivate that kind of work right now because I've got so many other projects going on. But definitely when they kind of floated by, I was happy to talk about them. And, and, uh, it was kind of fun to being, being somebody who was a, who was a manager

before it was kind of fun to be, to have a client where like, they wanted me to do a job for them. It's like, Jason, please do this for us. I'm like, all right, I'll do it. And I did it, uh, to their specifications and they're like, all right, thank you. And, uh, here's your money. And it's like, wow. You know, cause usually I was the one managing the project and it was kind of fun. Yeah, you're the one writing the check. Kind of fun to be on the other side of that and just do the job. It's well-defined. And then they pay you for it. There's some brilliance in that too. Well, I spend a lot of time pounding the pavement out there, trying to keep that

pipeline of clients going because the type of work I do legally is not super time intensive. I'm kind of general counsel for people. And some of those people only need me a couple hours a year. And so I need to have enough clients to make it all work. And I was talking to accountants. I was talking to insurance brokers and just people that I dealt with in different industries, as well as opposing counsel and existing clients and it worked for me but those first couple of months i did lose um significant amount of of revenue because i spent a lot of time just kind of getting those relationships established well that has to do with looking at the big picture too which i think is an important thing of like i maybe there's a

tendency to just try to get up to speed as quickly as possible and start the money coming in just like take as much work as you can but you slowed it down a little bit to establish those or reestablish those relationships knowing that there was a long-term gain there. Yeah. And you know, going into this, if you're making the switch, you have to do that. The other thing I do is I still have ongoing maintenance on these things. Like I have OmniFocus tasks that remind me every three months to just reach out to clients that I don't talk to very often. I just call them out of the blue. And just to be on their mind, you know, and know that I'm out there thinking about them.

It's very important. So getting clients takes work, I guess is the answer to the question. But there's an issue here, and it's one that I'm struggling with now having been independent for a year and a half, is balancing the marketing with getting the work done. I don't have a bunch of people working for me. So I've got to worry about keeping the pipeline going. You know, I've got to know my crystal ball, how much I'm going to be doing in the future and how big that pipeline needs to be and exhaustion. I mean, I don't want to spend so much time nurturing hypothetical future clients that I ignore the current pain ones. And that's something that I think I don't really have the answer for. That may be another show someday even, but it is

a challenge to be aware of as you get down this road. So how do you ask for business without being a jerk? Well, this goes back to what I was saying earlier, which is that it's a hump, I think, for people to get over, right? It is a challenge to put yourself, I would say put yourself in relationship with somebody that is not a relationship you're used to having, perhaps with them, if it's somebody you know before. But even if it's somebody you don't know, putting yourself in that position of like,

I'm looking for work and it's a challenge. So what do you do? I think you, first of all, you have to be completely honest. Don't try and puff yourself up with people. At least for me, that never works. And, and try to tell your narrative in terms of kind of helping them and how you can help them. But you have to also be respectful of the value of what you're doing. So, you know, say, Hey, I can really, I think I can bring something to help you. You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't think you were making the world a little better in one way or another. So try to connect with that. And I think part of it is if you've never done it before is rehearsing it, just getting the words over your lips. It sounds silly, but when I was

a young lawyer, and even now as an older lawyer, when I'm going to court for hearing, sometimes I will just practice the words I want to say in front of the judge or jury in my car. Not because I don't know what I want to say, but I feel like the mental process of getting it through my brain and over my lips a few times beforehand makes it better later. And I think that's true. And if marketing is something you feel uncomfortable about, you're going to screw it up unless you practice it. Talk to your significant other. You know, role play with somebody. Do it in front of the mirror.

Anybody with a phone these days can take a video of themselves. You know, take a video of yourself. You know, just kind of work on it a little bit. And there's a million blogs and websites and podcasts about how to sell yourself. And I'm not sure how much I agree with all that. But there are some good tips out there, you know, to be positive, kind of connect with your message. Somebody told me once, make everything in connection to how you can help somebody when you're talking to them. They don't really want to hear how you want to work because you want to buy a new car.

They want to hear how you can help them solve a problem. And the, um, though I took notes one day, somebody told me this, I wish I knew who it was so I could give them credit, but it's just a note right now. It says in my marketing stories, I help dot, dot, dot. So I help somebody, you know, some business, some industry, bear, you know, that can make their app look better than all their competition. And then the, so, so there's three points there. I help dot, dot, dot in their desire to insert blank by insert blank for everybody listening to this. If you need a client, you should be able to insert those three blanks. And then the final piece of it is war story, You know, tell a war story. Tell, say, you know, for instance, there was this Twitter app that I helped out and they were just not even on the radar. And we made this really cool user interface that I helped them out with.

And now they're, you know, routinely in the top 20 or whatever. And, you know, that's the kind of story you want to tell with people. And that's not being a jerk. It's explaining how you can help them out. So spend some time on that if you need new clients. But it's a never-ending struggle when you're an independent. And that's part of the hard work of being independent, because you don't have a boss or a marketing department or somebody else just giving you the work to do anymore. It's up to you. Boy, that could be a tagline for this whole podcast couldn't it it's up to you

yeah sadly but but the marketing part i think is a particular struggle for people because you may be really good at graphic design but you've never marketed yourself yeah i mean that that's the story right is is um you're getting your own story straight in a way that you didn't when you had a manager who knew your skill set and what role you served. And they had a sales team who knew how to extol the virtues of the company in aggregate, including the piece of it that you did. And all that is gone when you're independent. And now you are a cog, you're a piece of a larger puzzle. But you need to sell yourself as a part of the part of the machine as as somebody who's got an important

set of tools that can help a business and that they should give you work in order for you to do what you're good at. You didn't have to do that before, but now you have to. That's part of being independent. Yeah. Well, let us know your independent stories and your marketing stories. We'll put it in the eventual feedback show. Yes. We are going to do one down the road. So send us your feedback. You can get more information about the podcast and you can get a link to email us at relay.fm slash freeagents

and the show notes for this episode are relay.fm slash freeagents slash five. We will see you next time and in the meantime, go sell yourself. Yeah. That sounded kind of bad. Thank you.