Reprinted with the author’s permission from The Zest.
Unless you just landed an 8-figure series B funding from Sequoia Capital, chances are there are some gaps in your team’s skill set that need plugging with freelance help. Yes, freelancers, those free-spirited renegade mavericks with their roguish smiles and devil-may-care attitudes (or maybe that’s just me), hold an important place in the entrepreneur’s toolkit. Used well, they can provide you with top-notch work at a fraction of the cost of hiring someone fulltime. Mismanage them, or choose one that doesn’t fit, however, and you can find yourself back to square one, minus the cash you had set aside to get the work done, or worse – pleading the 5th in small claims court.
But despite that dire last sentence, working with freelance help doesn’t have to be that hard.
Get it in writing
For the love of all that is holy, please make sure that whatever agreement you come to is solidified in writing. Chances are good that any halfway-professional freelancer you deal with will be keen on this too. A mutually-agreed contract prevents your arrangement devolving into a he-said, she-said situation, which is frustration to the nth power for everyone. Regardless of the type of help you need, a decent contract should cover (at a minimum) the following topics:
1. The goal/deliverables of the job
2. The timeframe in which it’ll be done
3. How responsibilities of the job will be divided up
4. How much it’ll cost (either an estimate or fixed fee)
5. How you’ll pay, whether it’s an upfront fee, 50/50 or otherwise
6. An out clause
Pay attention to #6, as it comes into effect if things go wrong. The out clause should offer a fair resolution to both parties in the event that the contract has to be terminated before the job is completed, for whatever reason.
Be decisive (mind-reading costs extra)
Whether it’s knowing what you want when describing the job to a freelancer, or providing feedback on a piece of work that they’re showing you, being decisive will ultimately save you time and money. That second part is especially important, as if your feedback is not clear, or you can’t commit to a direction, you’re leaving a freelancer guessing as to what it is that you want, which will likely lead to them spending more time on the job than is necessary, and you spending more dollars than you anticipated. This cuts both ways – a good designer or copywriter will probe, ask questions, and challenge some of your direction to get a crystal clear understanding of what you need, but you can’t always rely on them to pull it out of you.
Don’t be afraid to not like something – but explain why
Following on from the previous point, sometimes your decisiveness will mean that you need to say no. It’s ok, it happens – but it’s critical that you a) tell your freelancer that it’s not quite what you want, and b) explain exactly why it’s not working for you. This is a common part of the creative process in marketing, and it happens every day to thousands of freelancers all over the world. Often times, you’ll feel the need to tell them exactly how to solve the problem – “I think we should make the headline neon green and put it in Comic Sans font” – but you should try to resist this, unless there’s a very good reason why you’d need certain things done precisely that way, the reason being that…
They’re the expert
The reason you hired this person in the first place is because you lack their skills in-house, so it makes sense not to tell them how to do the job, right? Recognize that they’re the expert in this area, and let them help you – 90% of them genuinely want to, because few things are more coveted in the freelance world than a happy repeat client. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to blindly agree with everything they suggest, but it does mean you’ll need to put your trust in them from time to time.
Jason Amunwa is a marketing consultant and designer in San Diego, CA.
