The Free Work Lament

[TapperMike]

This came to me via facebook.

 

http://www.tickld.com/x/i-wish-i-worked-with-this-manhes-hilarious

 

I used to have my own web design firm, then later a hosting company as well. I threw it all away after dealing with clients much like the client in the article.  Getting work wasn't the problem.  Getting paid was. If you think that this is limited to design or music, trust me it isn't.  Commercial contractors (electricians, remodeling, carpet installers etc) all experience a similar fate when dealing with commerical clients.  The clients refuse to pay anything up front then are slow if at all to pay afterwards. Taking a client to small claims court and winning doesn't assure that you'll be recompensed for your efforts.

 

What are your experiences with slow / no pay types for services you have provided?

 

 

[justsoulin]

Seen that before tapper - hilarious. Closest I've come I guess is being a middleman for introducing people to firms that can do what they say, as opposed those that waste 6mths and then give it up. People like the help and advice, but are surprised they have to pay for it, coupled with those firms I spell it out to, who ignore me and then give my client a new contact putting me out of the loop and earnings. I'd spent 10 years building up a solid network of reliable go to people. Next

[john]

You mean apart from running Songstuff for 13 years

 

When I was 16 and fresh out of school I was working in a recording studio as a trainee sound engineer for about 6 months and ended up not getting paid, that was pretty annoying! It was my first real taste of truly being ripped off.

[TapperMike]

I've had more slow pay/ no pay customers in the web design field then one can shake a stick at.

 

I've just recently stepped down as Super Moderator @ flashkit after having been there for 14 years.  Flashkit has been in the hands of many larger companies through the years.  At first it was independent, then sold to internet.com. Then jupiter media then Getty and now Quinn Street / Developer.com   All the admins take between 50 and 100k per domain name and usually work about 10 to 15 hours a week per domain.  There was much promise that I would take on fk as the admin or one of the other domains during the internet.com and jupiter media years.  Never happened. most posts were assigned to individuals with little to no previous background in either administration or in the field the site they acted as the admin over. 

 

I used to work at a restaraunt as a cook. We went through owners like water.  One case was pure nepotism.  The owner who had originally been a partner then siezed the biz from his other partners had actually walked into the restaraunt 2 times in 5 years.  Upon taking total control he handed the General Manager position to his son.  His son that had recently graduated from college with an accounting degree and had three months trainee / volenteer work at an accounting firm. 

 

Many B2B operators in the hospitality field go above and beyond to try and maintain good relations with customers.  90 days same as cash, 180 days same as cash.  Not only goods providers but service providers as well.  Electricians, Carpenters etc.   My Employers were not hospitiality people.  They didn't recognize thier own customer base.  They made bad decision after bad decision which came back to bite them.  Then they had a great idea.  Lets make more bad decisions and file for Chapter 11.  We won't have to pay back all this debt and get a fresh start.  So they hired all these companies to do remodling work but they didn't fix things that could cost them the biz like... the air make up ventilation system.  They bought more dry goods then they could reasonably go through from sales as well as perishibles that we couldn't move.  And they applied and recieved chapter 11 status meaning they didn't have to pay for it all.  Many of our suppliers simply bit the bullet and moved on.  Which meant we could no longer get quality products (produce etc) from quality purveyors.  Carpet installers and Electricians picked our entrance which drove off business.  Of what remained they didn't look at the history of sales and the breakdown.  Sure making it a big bar and less of a restaraunt did increase bar sales slightly.  But it dropped food sales like a rock.  Over the 20 years that the place had been a restaraunt there was a balance put in place by the customers.  50/50 Food/Liquor.  As soon as that balance titled in either direction long term sales diminished. When they pushed for a larger bar and made it a more open bar food sales dropped like a rock.  Bar sales actually diminished as well.

 

So come the big weekend.

Our restaraunt sat on the shore of a lake.  We would get a lot of business because of that over summer.  Unfortunately this happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003  When the power came back on for everyone else ours didn't.  Why?  Someone forgot to pay the electric bill.  We tried to keep the coolers cold with ice and dry ice but still thousands of dollars of food began to spoil.  Once we got the electricity on.  The Gas and the Water stopped.  Again someone decided they could wait a little longer to pay the bills.  We had water cooled walk-in coolers.  The food spoiled anyway.  The owner didn't want to throw it out.  Cometh the Health Department.  Five days after the blackout we were still unprepared to serve the public but we did anyway.  The health department shut us down for a multitude of no brainers all having to do with the owner / general managers prior decisions.  They tried to make last ditch efforts to get things fixed like the climate control for the hoods but no electrician would go near the place due to prior non payment issues.  They tried to rent refrigerated trucks from our food purveyors but again no one trusted the company.  They didn't own the property and the lease was up.  In short they were forced to shut thier doors. 

 

We had a staff of 100's I'd been working at that location for 12 years.  I could never return to the payscale I was recieving there. I was unemployed for three months and the next job I got was a 50% cut in pay.  Six years later new owners took posession of the location and opened a new bar / restaraunt.  I'd already been working in the tech field and I'd made a decision not to go back.

[MikeRobinson]

There are just six secrets:

1. A signed contract.  Change orders.
2. 50% down as a non-refundable deposit.  Cash the check and be certain that it has cleared.
3. Take your estimate and double it.  Then, double it again.
4. See (2); see (3).
5. Your first (paid, always paid ...) task is to map out the rest of the tasks.
6. If you find that there's no work there, be sure that your contract allows you to end the engagement at that point.

Lots of people have "ideas."  Most of them don't have money.  The ones that do have money usually don't have a contingency plan.  But the ones that do, recognize you to be an expert in your field and therefore as someone who can help them minimize risks.  (Is there a "risk" in music?  Yes, that the song won't be suitable, that it won't be useable, that they will have poured money into something not-yet knowing that it can't be used.  Every effort has a risk-of-failure to the buyer.)

 

So, your first order of business is to weed out the 99% while still making some amount of money from them all.  Hang on to that 1%.