Where To Go From Here With My Business?

February 13, 2013 1:47 PM

I am self-employed in the creative arts with one main client. Recently I have begun to enjoy some success for myself. My main client is unhappy. I am unhappy that they are unhappy. Career and business advice needed.

I am self-employed in the creative arts with one main client. We've had an ongoing understanding over the last couple of years: I do consultancy for them on a rolling basis. In return I have a reliable client who'll pay me $ XX every month which pays for the basic stuff: rent, gas, electricity. The rest of my clients? It's been a steady flow of one-job clients which has been fine and I have money for food, clothes and the occasional luxury.

Over the last year or so, though, I have begun enjoying some small success stories with my own creative business. Things appear to be taking off this year: I am doing more press than ever, I have secured some pretty sweet design gigs, and I have slowly become a minor name within my line of work. A speaking gig I am doing recently sold out within a couple of days (which feels amazing).

My main client? I have offered my design work with a nice discount (thanks to our long-standing relationship) but they are not interested. Fair enough - I just thought I'd do the decent thing and let them have a chance. What's not so cool is that they are really unhappy about me doing any sort of work within the field outside of the work I do for them.

I don't know why they're so unhappy: I don't encroach on their territory, I don't 'pick up' clients when I work for them, and I make a point of always recommending my main client if I am not the right guy for the job.

I took a long, hard look at my business - and I am not sure where to go from here. At the moment I cannot afford to let my main client go and rely upon my young business. However, I don't want to be pseudo-self-employed and restrict myself to my main client as that would be financial suicide. Still, I won't be able to keep going the way I am going at the moment: I am pulling crazy hours, I spend far more than the billable hours on my main client, I am turning down one-off clients who pay more per job than my main client, and I am increasingly worried about the main client pulling work from me because I do my own thing too.

At the moment I don't have a business plan - things have grown pretty organically - and I don't know where to turn for career advice. What the beep do I do now? How can I make things work?

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (15 answers total)

...they are really unhappy about me doing any sort of work within the field outside of the work I do for them.

Answering without knowing exactly what field this is...
Your old client has every right to be unhappy, if you're doing work for other clients in the same field. There's a definite possibility of conflict of interest there, and probably the fear of cross-communication of ideas.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:58 PM on February 13, 2013

I'm hardly one to give business advice, but it does seem like your main client thinks of you more as an employee than as a contractor or a business relationship. That might explain why they're unhappy; they believe they have paid for your full attention.

The way I see it, you need to explore two main options:
1) Sit down with your main client and discuss your relationship to them, with the view to making it a full-time gig. I mean, if they want you that badly that they chafe at the thought of you doing work for others, or making a name for yourself, surely they would want to regularize your agreement?

2) Sit down and craft a business plan that sees you doing work for a range of clients in various industries. Network the hell out of whatever events or gigs you get, and look for opportunities in other places to broaden your portfolio.
posted by LN at 2:03 PM on February 13, 2013 [9 favorites]

I think you need to sit down with your main customer and have a discussion about WHY they are unhappy.

Right now you know that they are, but you don't know the reason.

Once you know the reason they're unhappy, you can work to make them comfortable with your other clients.

Here's how you broach the conversation, "Bill, my business is growing and I'm branching out into other areas of design. You've expressed some concern about this aspect of my business and I want to understand why you're concerned."


They: We don't like that you are doing business with XXX because they poached a client from us and we feel vulnerable.

You: Fair enough. What would you need to have from me to make you comfortable with this aspect of my business?

They: Can you agree not to do any work for XXX?

You (knowing it was a one-off) Sure. I'll amend our agreement to include a clause that says I won't work with XXX.


OR

They: We don't like that you're taking time away from our projects.

You: While I value your projects, and admit that they are the bulk of my livelihood, I'm not able to exist solely on your work, I must have other clients. I'm lucky in that an off shoot of my design work has been taking off and that I'm able to augment my income based on it. Would you be willing to give me more work to off set the money I'd lose if I stopped this second income stream? (Chances are, the answer is no.)

You have to talk to your customer and find out what they want you to do.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 2:03 PM on February 13, 2013 [11 favorites]

I'm afraid you haven't described your situation very clearly, and the responses may be confusing.

At first I thought you were a graphic designer, and your main client needed a lot of graphic design work done. In that case, they could be unhappy because you had less time for them; you were busier with other work. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

Are you a subcontractor for your main client? Do you do work on their behalf for other clients or customers, and now they are unhappy because you are doing similar work for other clients/customers, i.e. you are going from being a subcontractor of theirs to a direct service provider? I'm guessing this is what's going on.

On that assumption: I'm generally opposed to the idea that a company has any rights over what a subcontractor (or employee, even) does in their spare time. If they want all your work, they should at least employ you full time and make you a genuine employee with benefits. But the fact that you want to keep them happy and that you need to keep getting work from them makes it tougher; you can't just walk.

Given that you have a longstanding relationship with them, maybe you can sit down and explain the situation: you want to keep working for them, but you need more work and you need to be able to grow your career. Maybe you can mark out some boundaries between what you do for them and what you do for your other gigs.
posted by alms at 2:17 PM on February 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I spend far more than the billable hours on my main client

I would examine this much more closely, since it means you're underselling yourself. Your current client is getting a great deal!
posted by rhizome at 2:18 PM on February 13, 2013 [5 favorites]

Whatever you do, don't structure your professional life so that you're relying on one client. What if they...go bankrupt...turn in a different direction...just fire you for no reason...etc?

I started freelancing when my kid was born and I made a stupid mistake and took too much work from a particular company (the place I'd worked at full-time before I had my kid). I ended up turning down the other little jobs that came my way because I was so busy with the big work for this company. But when things changed politically there (all of my peeps got laid off) they stopped using me. Period. Cue the sad trombones. No big client, and no little clients, who'd stopped contacting me because I was always too busy for them.

Luckily for me, this was just extra money in my household and we could live off of Mr. BlahLaLa's salary. For you it sounds more serious.
posted by BlahLaLa at 2:23 PM on February 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I must be missing something here==how does your main client know of your other clients/side business? How is that any of their concern? I work as a freelancer in a creative field, have multiple clients at once, and it's none of their business who else I work for or what else I do. If you're on a monthly retainer, then they've got 1st dibs on you, but they don't own you.
posted by Ideefixe at 2:24 PM on February 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Is this a sort of if you do work for Nikon they might get pissed if you do work for Canon? In all my experience, as long as you don't pass along sensitive information, it's fine to work for a variety of clients. If you say you're only going to stick to one company in a particular vertical market that company will most likely bleed you dry and under pay you unless they have some sense in which case they would value your exclusivity and pay accordingly. The latter doesn't sound like it's the case.

It may be hard for your business but a client like that is ultimately a client you don't want to deal with if they can't be reasonable. Unfortunately, reasonable and business don't go hand in hand these days.
posted by juiceCake at 2:29 PM on February 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yeah, none of this makes sense. Why stay with main client if they don't pay you what you feel you're worth in billable hours or what others are willing to pay you? No wonder he wants you not to work for anyone if he is getting you at below market rates.

If you're an independent contractor and have signed no agreements not to work for others (which would be crazy unless you were an employee or being paid very well indeed), then who cares what he thinks? Stretch it out as long as you can while you line up replacement work.

Or if you are that financially dependent that he basically owns you, you suck it up and do what he says until you can quit, like any other employee.

Simple.
posted by spitbull at 2:32 PM on February 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is your main client someone you do work for, like designing ads for a law firm?

Or is your main client someone you freelance for, like an advertising agency?

Because most clients won't know or care who else you do work for as long as they're getting what they want from you when they want it (unless you're also designing ads for the other big law firm in town). Your success makes them look good if you're winning design awards with their ads.

But an advertising agency is going to see you as a freelancer who's made a name for himself on their dime. Your independent success in that case makes you a competitor rather than hired talent.

Is your main client bidding on (and losing) the jobs you're getting? Did you sign a noncompete? It's probably a good idea to have a formal sit-down discussion about how they and you see your role in their company and your own plans and their expectations for your additional work. You're creative; it's not too hard to spin your success as a valuable thing that they can benefit from. And there's nothing wrong with renegotiating your rate. If you were an employee you would get a raise, right?
posted by headnsouth at 2:34 PM on February 13, 2013

Relying on one client is obviously very risky. So it's clear you need to move towards having a more diversified portfolio of clients. The process of getting there might be a bit of a juggling act, but it sounds like your main client wouldn't want to totally dump you immediately, so you should be able to keep some business with them while developing new clients. That's the general course of action, but of course the specifics are in your hands only.
posted by Dansaman at 3:24 PM on February 13, 2013

My advice based on what you've said, fire your main client, tomorrow.

My reasoning:

The rest of your business is on a positive trajectory already.

Your main client takes a lot of time and pays below your market rate, perhaps way below your market rate if you are doing significantly more work than your billable hours.

You are already turning away better paying work.

If you fire your main client, then you'll be able to take work that pays better.

If you fire your main client and you don't yet have enough work to replace the income you lost, then you will have more time to drum up additional business.

You may feel that you can't afford to let your main client go tomorrow, but is that actually true? Do you have some savings or can you cut some spending to help you bridge the gap until you've replaced that income?


It sounds like your main client has no leg to stand on. They don't give you enough business to pay your bills and feed yourself month to month, and yet they have a problem with you don't enough outside work to actually make a decent living and plan for the future? WTF.

If you really want to try and work things out with them, give it another shot, but do so with the understanding that the issue isn't that you can't afford to loose them as a client, the issue is that you can't afford to keep them as a client given the current terms of the relationship.

If you want to give them a discount, fine, but at this point, I'd say you are well within your rights to withdraw the discount you offered and offer them a much smaller one. You should also feel completely confident stating that you aren't going to be available for as many hours as you have been in the past, and you shouldn't feel bad in the slightest to start billing them for work you've been giving them for free. If they don't like it, thank them for their business and let them know that you'd be happy to work with them again on projects if suitable business terms can be arrived at.

Good luck, it sounds like you have a bright future ahead of you. Don't let your old client cast a shadow over it.
posted by Good Brain at 5:40 PM on February 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

I agree that you need to get rid of this client. They don't get to have any say in what you do outside of your work. If they do, either they need to treat you as an employee or the IRS will want to know what kind of shenanigans they're pulling. I don't know what kind of relationship you have with them, but you might point that out.

Your work is growing. Let your new clients know you have more availability. Find out how they found you, and work those contacts. A good client will recommend you to others so you can stay freelance and happy.
posted by Ookseer at 10:41 PM on February 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

If you are truly self-employed, unless you have signed some kind of agreement saying you will not work in X field while doing work for them, it is not their concern who else you are doing work for. Self-employed people do work for clients in the same field EVERY DAY. Your main client is being stupid and dumb and controlling.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:15 AM on February 14, 2013

I agree about talking with them. Ask them what bothers them about your other business. It sounds like you have no contract or letter of understanding. If you'd be happy working just for them, then ask them if they want exclusivity? They should pay adequately for that.

a few thoughts:
Re-frame the Situation: However, maybe they're getting a great deal, by having your services at a fair price, lower than it might be, because of your long association. And your skill is growing, your reputation is growing, and they have 1st dibs on you.

No Competition clause: If, say, your client is Super-Dooper Shoes-n-Bags, don't accept assignments from JimBob's Discount Bags, Shoes & Boots, and talk to them about work from VeryBig Dept Store, which has shoes, also bags. But work from Dudes and Goddesses Riding Academy, although tangentially requiring boots, should not be an issue.

Be positive, and emphasize that you value their business, a swell as the relationship. You might want to plan better communication, like a monthly meeting, or a weekly call, specifically to check in.
posted by theora55 at 10:27 AM on February 14, 2013