Speaker 1: I think the most frustrating thing about being a freelancer that I hear from other people is complaints about clients. You know, my clients are so horrible. I have clients from hell. And so in this video I want to kind of discuss my philosophy as to how I manage my client relationships and more than that kind of like my mindset around, you know, client interactions. And so I think that the fact that most people maybe hate their client or have bad client interactions is due to the fact that they are coming into a relationship, kind of a freelance relationship, from the wrong perspective. And that is they think that they are selling, let's say you are a designer, they think they are selling design and they don't realize that actually they're selling a service. And that perspective actually makes every interaction with the clients kind of a waste of time, right? Because I'm being hired to do a design. So let me do the design. Everything that is not design related is a waste of time. It's a time of me not being productive. What is productive? I'm producing the work that you have hired me to do. And so the mindset is let me focus on my thing. When it's ready I'm gonna give it to you and in the meanwhile everything that we have to do, all the meeting, all the talks, all the emails, all the phone calls, they are just a waste of my time. And if you do that, if you try to get my attention, if you try to talk to me, if you try to give me feedback, then you are annoying client and you're not fun to work with. But the truth is, the truth is that you are actually selling a service. And if you come to a freelance engagement from the perspective of I'm here to give a service, a great service, and that service will include my design but it also include me, the relationship of me and the client. And so what we do is a collaboration of working together to achieve that goal. And so in that sense, everything that you do together is very very helpful to achieve the goal which they have hired you for. And I think there's also something that I find helpful is, I don't remember where I read it, maybe in a 37signals article, where they said that most people think that the client hires you, I don't know, for the thing itself but actually they're hiring you to make them or to make them feel reassured that, you know, the problem will be taken care of. And so that is part of what you're selling, right? You're not just selling the end result, a logo or a website or what is it. You're actually selling the feeling to your client that this is the right solution to them. And when you think about your relationship in that matter, then you understand that you can't just give the deliverable to the client. You have to sell it. You have to explain it. You have to persuade them, right? A lot of, I hear a lot of freelancers saying like, you know, you wouldn't argue with your doctor, so why would you argue with a designer? But I think that is not true. That is not true. Actually, people do argue with their doctors and even if you had a doctor who is very smart and would just come to you, you know, you tell them how you feel and they were like, take this pill without any explanation as to your diagnosis. What do you have? You know, why you should do this? You know, why is this, how is this going to help you? If it's just going to, you know, drop medicine on you, that's not going to be very, you know, trustworthy. You're probably not going to end up taking those pills or medicine or whatever. And so even doctors or, you know, I don't know, professionals, other professionals who are not creative professionals, they have to sell and they have to give you a good service. And so, and I think it's even more, you know, more important when you're selling something which is intangible or it's not just like, you know, mathematically correct. You have to sell and persuade. When I think about it this way, it makes my relationship fun. You know, I come to work with people, you know, that's part of what I do. Sitting in front of the computer producing, you know, tangible deliverables is part of it. But it's not, it's not even maybe 50% of, you know, the engagement that clients pay me to do. And so I think that if you are somebody who doesn't like to give service, be nice to people, talk to them on the phone, meet them up for coffee or something like that. Then maybe freelancing is not for you. Maybe you can partner up with somebody else to do this, but if you just like to sit in front of your computer and work, work, work, you're not going to be successful as a freelancer. You have to give the good service and you have to be, you have to enjoy giving that service. You know, if you hate your interaction with your customers, you're never going to be, you know, you're never going to create a successful business because you hate your business and obviously won't try for it to grow. And so I think that is the perspective needed in order to be a good freelancer. Understand that it's a service and love giving that service, enjoy giving it, try to create, try to be fun to work with, you know, create a fun environment, fun meeting with, you know, customers. Just make it a good service, you know, whatever that means for different people and for different clients. That might mean different things, you know, maybe your office is fancy and you're dressing up for suits for your meetings, that's okay. Maybe you're super casual and fun and joy with your clients. Your different, your service is something that is also super, super unique to who you are and it's also a differentiator from other competitors or other freelancers out there. All right, I hope this was useful for you guys. Today I'm actually chilling. Yesterday I ended up doing two Webflow websites on the same day and that was so exhausting that today I'm totally chilling. It's super, super hot here in Israel even though it's just the beginning of May. It's like, feels like August outside. So I'm going to ride to the beach for a little bit, try to chill, read some book about creative strategy and take the day easy. Hope you guys are having a great day and I'll catch you guys tomorrow.