Every freelance business is a little bit different. It's hard to go completely against the grain if your customers are used to paying in a very specific, certain way. But I do recommend that you at least try to get a signed agreement from your clients can advance. When I do someone says at Joe, he wants you to do a long presentation training workshop three weeks from today. Put on your calendar, I'll say timeout. At the moment the calendar is available, I can make that available to you.

I'm sending you a letter of agreement. I don't need it today. I can give you a free hold on that date for 24 hours. I need the signed agreement back. The signed agreement says they are purchasing that day. I'm going to show up deliver what I promised but they're going to show up to and they're going to pay me and if they want to change the day They still have to pay me for that date.

Critically important to lock them in again, your profession may be different if you are a massage therapist, it may simply be unworkable and impossible. Hotel calls you and says we need someone to do massage therapy and one hour in room 202 you're not gonna have time for that. I understand that. But I do want you always looking for opportunities of how you can be treated professionally, not be jerked around, not have your time wasted and build a real freelance business. So back to my business when someone wants me I have them sign a contract. The contract says that they are going to pay me doable now.

The payment is due now. today. Now do I call them up the next Stay in and scream. You didn't pay me yet? No. But I'm trying to get the payment as soon as possible.

And before the training because of the training has taken place, and I haven't gotten payment. I've lost all leverage. Even though I charge a pretty hefty fee, it's still not something I want to be chasing people for in small claims court. And certainly if the training is happening in another country, or that consulting assignment is happening in other country, I certainly don't want to have to be navigating the legal system of another country. So with any client in a foreign country, I absolutely mandate 100% of the payment is due upfront. Now you can sell we'll teach you how in the world you get up front, no one's gonna do that.

That's not what people do on land, ask. That's partially why we spent so much time in this course. helping you build your website, your videos, your newsletters, your testimonials, your references, all of these things are credibility markers to let people know you are a serious professional. You're a serious expert, you have to be treated professionally. You need surgery for a child with a heart defect and the surgeon says, I don't fly to your city without the 10,000 in advance, or some other professional service that you really, really need. You'll figure out a way of paying if it's truly important to you.

Now, again, every industry is a little different. The standard practice for professional speakers and trainers is they get a letter of agreement signed, you pay half up front to hold the date half is due the date of the training the speech, the assignment, the gig. That's what I did for many years. I don't do it that way at all. What I do now is I just asked for 100% upfront upon signing. Here's what I've noticed with the vast, vast majority of big corporations, government entities, other organizations, that they're happy just to pay up front, they'd much rather not have to do with two separate invoices in two separate approval processes and two of everything.

I just say you pay 100% upfront. Afterwards, I bill you my expenses and you have to pay within 14 days. That's what I find works best for me. You have to find out what works in your industry. What I can tell you is if you just leave it up to your clients, no matter how nice people they are, they'll never pay you. When I initially started this business, I treated it like other businesses, PR services and others where you do the work.

You send someone an invoice and you hope 30 days later, you get paid Here's the problem for any type of training business that I'm in is someone asked for a date. They may even sign an agreement. But the last second is Oh, you know what? We're busy. We'd like another month to prepare. Let's do it next month.

Can you reschedule? And initially I did, what I found is I could have a month where I've got 10 training dates booked. Looks like a great month looks like I'm gonna make good money. Every single client said, Oh, we got busy, something come up. Let's reschedule the next month. So all of a sudden cash flow went from very nice to zero.

Guess how many months you'll be in business if your cash flow is zero. So for my business, which is selling units of one day workshops, it's critically important that you nail people then you get a firm commitment because here's the thing once someone has signed a contract Especially if they've paid 100% in advance. No one ever tries to change the date. They say can we I say, Well, sure I'm happy to. But you got to pay the full rate again and all of a sudden, the big reason the big need to change the date disappears. And they treat me like I'm a professional.

They don't treat me like the next door neighbor, 14 year old babysitter. as a freelancer, you constantly have to train your clients. You have to guide them to treat you the way you want to be treated. If you want to be treated as a professional whose time is really respected. You have to lay those expectations out right from the beginning. So I let people know very clearly simply do not get on my calendar.

Without a signed contract the contract states that they are going to be paying me by us certain date Now, every once in a while someone says, TJ, we don't want to pay 100% up front, can we pay 50% up front and then the rest of the day off? And I say yes, they are, of course, exceptions. I sometimes work with federal government agencies around the world, the United Nations agencies and they say, TJ, we love you, we want to work with you. We simply cannot pay any sooner than 30 days after the training. If it's a huge government agency, I'll make an exception because I've never been ripped off by a government agency. You can criticize government agencies all day long if you want to.

But they're simply not in the business of hiring contractors and they're not paying them in my experience, and I've done a lot with government for more than 30 years. So I do make exceptions there. You've got to figure out what works In your business, but the typical model of you want me You want me to show up somewhere, and you want the right to cancel at the last second. That works if you're a 14 year old looking for a little extra spending money to go to the mall. It doesn't work in my opinion. If you want to consider yourself a serious professional freelancer, and you want a certain level of income every month, you will be jerked around royally.

So, get it in writing, even people who like you who are not dishonest, they tend to remember things differently. All it's human nature. We tend to remember things in our own favor. If it's all written down, and the client has signed it. And it's not about anyone's memory. It can't say Oh, the 28 I thought it was the 31st Well, it's here.

It's you signed it. Note up, today's the 28th you've already paid. Are you gonna do it or not? And lo and behold, people can't argue with a contract that they have signed, in my mind. They don't even want to try. Most people want to honor agreements, very cute people sign something with the idea of I'm now going to sort of jerk around this freelancer, even though I signed this, waste their time and steal their money.

Most people are not like that. The whole key is you got to lay it out in a straightforward way and just say, Well, this is the industry standard. This is my firm's standard. Here's where again, it's important in the eyes of your client, not to position yourself as Oh, I'm this little Freelancer and people can pay me whatever they want. You need to present yourself as a professional firm. An organization of professional organizers That has policies are pilot, I'd love to help you.

Our policy is I cannot put you on the calendar until I have a signed agreement. And again, in my experience, most people, no problem whatsoever. If you just put it on the calendar, do the work, send the invoice, you're going to be chasing that invoice. And then they're going to Oh, our policy is we, we pay vendors up to 60 days after invoice. Well, if you didn't tell them your policy, you are now completely subject to their policies. You tell them up front.

This is my policy, this is how it works. You'll often get what you want. organizations can have all sorts of policies, but if you need a plane, if you need the next plane ticket from Atlanta to New York, and there's only one airline going, they're gonna want their $572 now, they can't They're not going to say to you, oh, well just pay us in two months, wherever you feel like you want to take it, you're gonna pay before you step on the plane can be exactly the same way in your freelance business. So you need an agreement, you need to be highly specific, and then you got to enforce it. You got to be very clear in what I do to make it even easier to say, Hey, I'm really looking forward to the training in three weeks. As you know, we got to have the pre training conference call.

I've got to send all of your people, the books, the videos, the other tools, I can do that once the deposit has been paid, which has not been received yet. So it's not angry. It's not Where's my money? It's not nasty. It's not hounding. It's just here is the procedure.

And people respect that. They understand that well, why should he release all of his valuable content and start working So we haven't paid. So that then gives ammunition to my client to tell their their person in accounting or billing. Pay this now we need this to happen. Again, every freelance business is different if your business is doing rose garden here, this is the world's greatest expert on creating beautiful rose gardens. You're not dealing with corporations typically although you could for their corporate grounds.

But let's say you're dealing just with high end wealthy families. It's not a big complicated approval process, but someone in that household is going to be either writing checks or giving cash. And you need to make it very clear. You don't want to be buying a lot of expensive rosebushes laying that capital out and really not have any leverage if they decide Oh, we decided to plant sunflowers instead. Now you're stuck with 1000 dollars worth of rosebushes that you've purchased. Don't put yourself out there to risk.

Have it written down, have an agreement, get ideally 100% of the money you want up front. That way, you're at no risk. I realize you can't do that all the time. Nothing wrong with asking ask for 100%, there's a good chance you'll get 50% upfront. If they're not willing to do that, at least the compromise could be, you're not going to leave their office or their home or their premises without 100%. Whereas their normal policy might be you got to wait 30 or 60 days.

You can always ask for what you want. And let that be the starting point. Not the starting point be maybe we'll pay you in 60 or 90 or 120 days.