Freelancers, how to deal with non-paying clients.

The solution may not be what you want to hear. 

In freelance, our work is based off trust and respect, for and from our clients. We don’t always get the best clients in the world to work with, but 99% of the time we do. However that 1% can easily ruin our trust with the rest. I’ve been freelancing for top of the line clients for over 10 years now. Just this past year, I finally got my first bad one.

Several months ago, I did a consulting project for a pioneer of the tech world. Not mentioning any names but he’s the creator of CNET, co-founder of Salesforce, and creator of Google Voice. A guy with this kind of background I immediately respected. He had started a new venture and was looking to contract someone to help with visuals for his first event to show off his new product.

Now, this guy had tried contacting me for months prior. I didn’t really want anything to do with the project at first. Mainly because after doing a quick Google search, I realized he wasn’t the best guy to be in business with. He owed millions to the government and is one of those millionaires that don’t pay taxes. This was a red flag which I ignored due to his background and urge to work with me.

Finally, after several chats, I had agreed to work with him part-time. Our agreement was via email, which by the way, holds up in court if phrased correctly. I rarely use contracts or signed agreements with my clients. There’s too much friction there. All of my agreements are via email and payment upfront.

I had helped him for 6 weeks and got the first 2 weeks upfront. I did his logo for his new company within 2-3 weeks. The rest of the time spent was unpaid and still is to this date. He owes me a lot of money. He went dark. His event failed and didn’t want to pay me for 4 weeks worth of hard work. After threatening with lawyers, loaded with anger he finally spoke up and said he wasn’t going to pay due to my previous work on projects I’ve done in the past, prior to this project. This was super weird reasoning. I had just posted a couple new projects in my portfolio that had been done almost a year prior. He was trying to argue I did them during our part-time gig. You could tell he was reaching and upset about his company not doing so hot yet.

He had also mentioned he wasn’t going to pay because of work I did on the side. I had spent one day (a handfull of hours) doing a Yahoo redesign for fun, on a weekend by the way. Funny, since one of his guys had a full-time job at EA Sports, and he himself works on multiple things. Still, he is reaching.

Anyway, after all of this I hired a highly respected law firm in the Bay Area. Probably the best there is if you ask me. They told me it was a slam dunk case. No doubt we’d win. However at last minute, I decided not to proceed, for several reasons actually. I felt bad for this man and his company. He’s got a lot on him. He had lost his entire fortune and clearly it was paying a toll on him if he couldn’t pay little old me. Why kick him when he’s down? Secondly, I don’t want to be that guy that goes after people. My clients usually become really good friends. I took a moment and thought to myself, man, I’m so blessed I’ve made this many friends over the past 10 years. I can let one pass by.

So how do you deal with non-paying clients? Forget and forgive. I forgive you big guy. Best of luck on your company.