Farm freelancers networking on 9th August 2023
Posted by Paul Silver
On 9th August we had our freelancers networking meet in the beer garden of the Battle of Trafalgar. 12 people attended across the evening.
These are the topics I heard talked about:
- Pride!
- Living in Taiwan
- The many coworking spaces in Brighton
- Making videos of your product
- Karaoke experiences
- LINE (Whatsapp alternative heavily used in Taiwan)
- The differences between working for aggressive bosses/entrepreneurs and overly aggressive ones
- Trump and Musk giving flashbacks of working for a bad boss
- Selling to sales people
- Being clear and confident in meetings
- Red flags for potential bad clients
- Projects that are death by a thousand cuts
- Radium in watches and clocks
- Selling clocks
- New car clubs in Brighton
- Seriously, is anyone still on Twitter? And… why?
- WordPress SEO plugins
- Pride!
Highlights
It was great to sees Clem, who hasn’t been along since a little before Covid. He’s been living and working in Taiwan for several years and that has given a different perspective to his freelancing.
Coworking in Brighton
There are a large number of coworking offices in Brighton, the oldest being The Werks and The Skiff, others that Farm members have used are Projects, Platform 9, Spaces, Wrap, Freedom Works, Eagle Lab, Dock Hub, and Plus X.
Deciding which is best for you is hard as everyone likes and needs different things from their work space. The most used by Farm members are The Skiff and Projects. Whether they’d be right for you is another matter. One new member has spent the last couple of weeks trying various coworking spaces using trial days. If you’re looking for somewhere to work, that’d be a great way to work out where is good for your needs.
Red flags from potential clients
I thought we had an article about this, but I can’t find one so here is a pocket version. This topic came out of the one about working for overly aggressive bosses, as I used to work for a successful but very aggressive businessman who still owns two buildings on the Old Steine area of Brighton, although the company I worked for is long gone.
Working for someone who is a nightmare is a good way to hone your bad client spotting skills. Any behaviour that reminds me of strongly him tells me not to work with the person. This isn’t very useful in general, so here’s a list of red flags that came up on this night and others:
- Client has “fallen out” with several freelancers and is now seeking someone to “finish off” the project – someone falling out with a freelancer is very possible, but when it’s been 2-3 you need to watch out
- Someone who immediately pushes back on how much you will charge, especially if that is before they find out what you charge – negotiations are common, but good clients do not usually start that before finding out what you charge
- People who won’t sign or otherwise agree to a contract
- People who don’t want to work out a plan before work starts
- They want a quote that you will stick to without a clear brief
- Someone who starts to devalue your work before you have done anything for them, i.e. by saying what you do is “easy”
Generally I would need more than one of these before deciding not to work with the person/company, but it depends how much work I’ve got on. One of the advantages to getting good at finding work is you can become more choosy about what you take on as you’re not dependent on any one client.
I need to properly compile and write up the red flags we’ve shared with each other over the years. I will link this to that when it is written.