Eamonn O’Brien: Today we’re talking about how do you manage relationships with people who don’t work in the same business as you, it could be virtual staff, freelance staff, call it what you will and we have a great expert here to talk with us about this today. It’s Annabel Kaye and Annabel I’m delighted to have you here, and of course you’re a speaker, a consultant, and a trainer, but you’re also an expert on how to manage long distance relationships with staff that aren’t yours.

Annabel Kaye: Indeed.

Eamonn: Now in these days of course more and more speakers, and businesses of many sizes, solo-preneurs, SMEs they’re hiring more and more freelance staff, or people who are maybe part of smaller organizations that are not theirs, and that opens all sorts of things, and but before I get into where it’s like legal, and compliance, and the like, tell me about what it takes to set up the right kind of relationship from the get go with third party staff.

Annabel: I think you have to start with clarity. It’s so easy to assume that the person you’re hiring is intending to, or able to, produce what you think you’re going to get and particularly with freelancers I was talking to some entrepreneurs the other day and they said, “But I’m buying them because they’re experts so how would I be telling them what I want?” And I’m like, “Supposing their expert is something that you don’t want.”

Eamonn: Right, or indeed they’re not as expert as you thought they were.

Annabel: Indeed or as they thought they were, which is a common complication.

Eamonn: Yes, well that’s exactly right because you’ll find, and I’ve certainly admit that I would have used a number of freelance sites and you would find that you have any number of people who will tell you they have all sorts of qualifications and when you dig a little bit maybe they don’t.

Annabel: Even if they do I’m not sure qualifications are always the answer. You can have the most highly qualified person on the planet but if they have a really dreadful attitude and they’ve got no idea of time and customer service, they may not be the right freelancer for you.

Eamonn: Yeah, absolutely and there’ll be tears on your pillow before we get going [laughing].

Annabel: Absolutely.

Eamonn: So when it comes to getting the right kind of relationships in place, and I suppose the moral of the story here is that we really do need to look before we leap, what do we need to me conscious of?

Annabel: First thing I would suggest is you’re realistic. If you’re buying someone for five quid in the Philippines to shoot your next video it’s not realistic to expect it to be a mini masterpiece or world class standards. As entrepreneurs we can be very tight. We all want to maximize our revenue and get people to respect our expertise, but we can be very dismissive when we’re buying other peoples expertise, and there is a known saying, “You get what you pay for.” And if the only videographer you can find is selling their time for five quid a whole video you really can’t expect more than the sort of thing your mates do after a night down the pub.

Eamonn: [laughing] I don’t know that my mates down at the pub could create a video.

Annabel: Mine could but you wouldn’t want to publish it.

Eamonn: But having said that and even if you’re paying not $5, or five pounds, or five Euros, which ever currency you choose, even if you’re paying a higher price when it comes to getting the right kinds of accountability in place, and getting the right kinds of relationships up and running what’s the best way to make sure that you set your stall out correctly from the get go?

Annabel: It’s a great temptation when you’re a solo-preneur or a busy small business to go, “I need a copywriter,” or, “I need a website designer get me one,” and 20 minutes later you’ve got one. If you think about the time most organizations spend recruiting people if they’ve got any sense, they go through a much more elaborate process. So I think you have to really start with the similar process of, “What am I trying to achieve and how will I know when I’ve got it?”

Eamonn: That’s really interesting. I love that analogy. You’re absolutely right that if you go on to a freelance site, you can literally within a half an hour, have 20, 30, 40, 50 people say, “Well I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” and you don’t really have an awful lot to go on when you’re choosing these folks.

Annabel: No, but you have to start with what you’re trying to achieve, and you might then move on to asking people who’ve had things like that done that you value. So if you’ve got a friend in business and they’ve got a website you think is great ask them not only who did they hire but what process did they go through to get there. Because it’s not sensible to expect people to specify what you want and deliver it. There’s two parts to this relationship you have to do your bit.

Eamonn: Yeah, well on that front I suppose then if there were things that people can do to make sure that they do do a better job in telling people what they want at the onset how formal do you need to be in that explanation?

Annabel: I prefer something that can be put in writing, not necessarily formal. We don’t have to have lots of here to, unto, there fore’s in it.

Eamonn: Absolutely not, no you get lost in three and four syllable words in a second.

Annabel: Absolutely and in fact I’ve seen some horrendous freelance agreements where neither the client nor the freelancer knew what the agreement meant. So I think you can go too far, it has to be realistic, but it has to deal with what you’re trying to achieve and what expertise you’re expecting from that person. There’s a world of difference between asking someone to just design you a logo and completely re-brand your business.

Eamonn: And what about the ownership side of things? So you know you’re asking somebody to do something for you and let’s say that maybe they don’t as good a job as you hoped they would now what happens?

Annabel: Well if you haven’t set things up correctly in the first place, you can find you don’t own what your freelancer has done for you. We tend to think, “I pay for it so I must have the rights to it,” but in fact if you’ve paid a freelancer they retain copyright in their work, and although they may give you a license to use it unless you’ve got a piece of paper that says it’s exclusive to you, you can find something very similar to your new branding going out tomorrow for another one of those freelancer’s clients.

Eamonn: That’s a real sense of humor of failure time, isn’t it?

Annabel: I would not be amused.

Eamonn: No you would not be amused at all, and what you would say to people though who say, “Well you know surely you know these kinds of things happen.” Are we not over-exaggerating things, how bad can it be?

Annabel: I was about to be a little coarse about things that don’t happen.

Eamonn: Don’t do that.

Annabel: But all sorts of things.

Eamonn: That’s a public service discussion.

Annabel: Lots of things happen that people think don’t happen. They don’t happen every day but you wouldn’t cross the street with your eyes closed because not everyone gets run over, and a lot of entrepreneurs are trading with their eyes closed thinking, “I won’t get run over.”

Eamonn: Yes.

Annabel: Why not take the time to specify what you want, and document it, and then by all means put the agreement in a drawer and never look at it again if everything goes fabulously?

Eamonn: Yeah and if you were to give entrepreneurs a few tips maybe on how to get a better relationship going and something that you can sustain…So let’s assume that we’re trying to do things the right way here and not running afoul what would your top tips be?

Annabel: The first one would be don’t muddle your relationships up. It’s quite common for entrepreneurs to have their friend, or someone they know as an acquaintance to do things for them and they completely muddle up the friendship with a business relationship.

Eamonn: In fact I was listening to this very conversation in a Mastermind Group last night and all sorts of things went wrong when the business relationship went wrong.

Annabel: Indeed, they’ll run the other way. Sometimes the friendship goes completely as well, but it’s very tempting we like to do business with people we know and trust, we tend to pick our best friend, or people we’re acquainted with but within having two relationships, and we need to be very clear, this is the business relationship, this is what I’m paying you for, this is what I want you to deliver, and this is us having a friendship.

Eamonn: Yes.

Annabel: And we need to respect that. We can’t ask our friend to do 50,000 pounds worth of work for 500 pounds.

Eamonn: Yes.

Annabel: And we can’t really expect our friend to drop everything if we’re a cheap client that’s saying, “I’m paying 10% of your normal rates.”

Eamonn: Everyone love it because it’s an immediate disconnect and it’s not a fair relationship.

Annabel: No, but we drift, we kind of segway from friendship to “I could do that, I’ll do you a freebie,” and suddenly we’re full of resentment because our friends not delivering what we feel we’re paying for, but if they pitch for the whole project from the off it would never have been delivered for that price in that timescale.

Eamonn: Yes, but having said that I take it you’re an advocate of using freelance folks, are you?

Annabel: I think I’m an advocate when it’s appropriate. I perfectly understand particularly in a growing business that you don’t want to hire everybody for 35, 40 hours a week, particularly for people who are doing things you might be doing once a year, or once every two years, but I think sometimes having a freelancer is not appropriate.

Eamonn: So choose wisely is what you’re saying?

Annabel: I think many business owners use freelancers as a way of getting out of employment lawyer labor laws and they think, “Sorted, no troubles here we’ll just go over there,” and in fact having a labor force that’s running their own business and therefore you’re not their primary focus can be a problem. I’ve come across clients who’ve had maybe 50 people who were all freelance providing customer service related roles and they’ve had contracts with their own customers to provide cover 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. They simply haven’t matched what they’ve promised to do with what they’ve bought in the labor market.

Eamonn: So if there was one thing that you would say top of the list that really heads towards the more virtuous type of relationship where there’s harmony in the camp and things work out beautifully what would you put at the top of that list?

Annabel: Oddly enough the last thing on anyone’s list I would think about how I wanted this relationship to end.

Eamonn: Are we in pre-nup territory here?

Annabel: Probably because if you’re in the freelance market, you’re not expecting this person to be freelancing for you forever.

Eamonn: No.

Annabel: So you need to plan for when this project is going to end. I’ve seen people who’ve had freelance web designers who don’t have the code, and the log on’s, and the passwords to their own website when they wonder off.

Eamonn: And I’m aware of that, in fact I had a conversation about that earlier on today with somebody else.

Annabel: So when you start, it is kind of pre-nup but to keep the relationship healthy, you have to be aware that it will end, it must end, it was planned that it would it end, but you need a plan for how.

Eamonn: Yes, you do need a plan. So the moral of the story, and I really appreciate you coming in today, is to think about these things first of all, a bit of thought medication might save everybody a lot of bother.

Annabel: Indeed.

Eamonn: Thank you very much. So thank you very much for listening in today, and thank you Annabel for being here.

This has been Eamonn O’Brien, this is The Reluctant Speakers Club Expert Series and until the next time, happy speaking.