Before we move further into this chapter, I would first like to start off by explaining the difference between “clients” and “employers.” Most people think that these two terms are synonymous, but they are not. To become a successful freelancer, you must know the difference between the two terms. An employer is someone who employs you as an employee to work for them. You're paid a set amount of money, and you are a representative of your employer. As an employee, you don't represent yourself.
This is why employees who work in most places, whether it is a fast food restaurant or department store, tend to wear similar uniforms, because they are representatives of the organization they work for. If they represented themselves, they should be able to dress in any manner they choose. Another thing that separates employers from clients is the relationship they have with you. When you're an employee working for an employer, you are a subordinate. You do what the employer wants, and your relationship is based on the terms set by the employer.
If you are an employee working on the bottom of a large organization, such as a multinational corporation, you will be seen by your employer as being highly replaceable. Your job will be to do the grunt level work, and should the organization experience financial difficulties or rough economic times, you will in all likelihood be the first to get laid off. You work when the employer wants you to work, you get paid when the employer wants you to get paid, and you will take your vacation when the employer decides it is time for you to take it. Employees, regardless of the income they earn, are often wage slaves for their employers, since virtually everything is dictated on the terms of the company.
A client, on the other hand, is different. The relationship that you have with them is more personal. In most cases, when you deal with a client, you will often be dealing with one person, or at most, a group of people. Employers will often be medium to large sized businesses, and you won't have a personal relationship with them. Clients tend to be more or less equal to the freelancers they employ; after all, even though they have the money, you have the skills, and though they can go find someone else who has the skills, you can also go find someone else who has the money.
This puts you in a situation where the playing field is level, a lot more level than what you will experience with an employer. If you're one of the small group of elite freelancers that have specialized skills that are rare or hard to find, you may even find that you are in a stronger position than your client. To understand this, think of the power of the A-list Hollywood actress or actor. They have been in numerous movies, all of which have been box office hits. Everyone loves them, they have millions of fans, and they have a style that no one on the planet, past or present, has.
A director has a movie that he is interested in shooting, and a certain A-list actress is the perfect lady for the part. But she gets roles all the time, much of which she turns down. She has already made tens of millions, and her asking price is now $18 million a film. When the director sits down to talk over the script with her, though she likes it, there are things about the character she would like changed. Though the director is hesitant, he knows that no one else can pull off the part, and as annoying as it its, he makes all the changes she requests and pays her not only $18 million to appear in the film, but royalties as well.
As you can see from this example, having a rare skill or style that is high in demand will not only put you on a level playing field with your clients, but it can sometimes allow you to have the edge on them. This is a relationship that no employee can have with an employer, and this is the key difference between employers and clients. In my years working as a business owner, what I've found is that clients tend to treat you with a lot of respect. If you've done a lot of projects for them, and you have skills they need, they will treat your more like a partner than a subordinate.
This is perhaps one of the greatest advantages that the self employed freelancer has over the employee, the ability to see “eye-to-eye” with their clients. While disagreements between freelancers and their clients will inevitably occur from time-to-time, the freelancer is a in a good position, because if they have a network of clients, it won't hurt them much if a single client decides to stop using their service. In contrast, an employee who has a disagreement with an employer may find himself without a job, and if he is like most employees, this will be his only source of income, meaning his income will be cut short until he is able to find more work.
Another point that separates clients from employers is flexibility, an important concept that we discussed in the previous chapter. When you deal with most employers, you are dealing with an organization, and when you deal with an organization, you must deal with the bureaucratic issues that are typically associated with such entities. For instance, when you get a regular job with a company, you're required to fill out a bunch of paper work. The employer wants to know everything about you, your age, date of birth, your social security number, your address, your phone number, and in some cases, your credit score.
In many instances today, employers know far more about their employees than their employees know about them. In some large corporations, many bottom level employees are often unaware of the names of the CFO, CEO, or board of directors of the company which employs them. This imbalance leads to a shaky relationship that is very risky for the entry level worker. Additionally, when you deal with employers, everything often has to be processed through multiple departments before anything is done. When compared to clients, employers often move at the speed of a tree sloth.
An employee often has to wait weeks before they get paid, months before they can take their vacations, and years before they may be given a raise, if ever. In almost all cases, the relationship that freelancers have with their clients are completely different. Because most clients are individuals or small groups of people, there is no large bureaucracy to deal with, and this means that everything can be streamlined. Payments can be made within a short time span, schedules are flexible, and the parameters of the projects are open to negotiation.
At this point, the key thing that you must remember is that you're not a subordinate of any of the clients you do business with. You should always consider yourself to be an equal, since they need your skills, and you need their money. You should never act like a subordinate, and your clients should never treat you like one. If you find yourself in a situation where your clients are treating you like a subordinate, then it is time to consider ending the relationship unless they change, regardless of the salary that you're being paid. Remember, you left the rat race so that you could become your own boss, not so you could become the employee of someone else. The reason why I'm driving home this point is because you will not be respected as a freelancer if you don't position yourself as being equal to the clients that work with you.