{"id":493,"date":"2007-10-08T22:48:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-09T04:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=493"},"modified":"2007-10-08T22:48:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-09T04:48:00","slug":"2007-10-08-rule-no-1-for-freelancers-get-the-purchase-order-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/2007-10-08-rule-no-1-for-freelancers-get-the-purchase-order-first\/","title":{"rendered":"2007-10-08 Rule No 1 for Freelancers &#8212; Get the Purchase Order First"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }<\/style>\n<div class=\"flickr-frame\">\t<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/1520582013\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2251\/1520582013_6c8bcf6b56.jpg?w=605\" class=\"flickr-photo\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\t<span class=\"flickr-caption\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/1520582013\/\">2007-10-08 Rule No 1 for Freelancers &#8212; Get the Purchase Order First<\/a>, originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/royblumenthal\/\">royblumenthal<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<p class=\"flickr-yourcomment\">\tHere&#8217;s a golden rule for freelancers&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re going to do work for a corporate client, simply do not put your butt in your car seat UNTIL you have a purchase order number. In the corporate world, a purchase order is as good as money in the bank.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent gig I did, the client was a consultant who hired me to do work for his client. When I told him I need payment up front, he uhmmed and ahhed. Said that it was very short notice, and his client wouldn&#8217;t be able to get me on the system quickly enough.<\/p>\n<p>So I said, &#8216;Okay, just this once. But I&#8217;ll have my payment before month-end.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;No problem whatsoever,&#8217; he lied.<\/p>\n<p>I did the gig. And he simply stopped communicating with me. And it took some heavy action on my part to actually get payment out of him.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, he&#8217;s got a lot of egg on his face with his corporate client. And he might still find that he&#8217;s going to have to do quite a lot of explaining to them about how shoddily he treated me.<\/p>\n<p>But the lesson is this&#8230; get a purchase order number. Put it on your invoice. Invoice BEFORE the gig. And only then get your ass to the gig.<\/p>\n<p><i>This pic started off in my Moleskine as pen on paper. It then got converted into digits via my HP Deskjet F380 scanner\/printer\/copier. And then my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc and Photoshop CS2 took over in the colouring department, with me wielding the stylus.<\/i><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2007-10-08 Rule No 1 for Freelancers &#8212; Get the Purchase Order First, originally uploaded by royblumenthal. Here&#8217;s a golden rule for freelancers&#8230; If you&#8217;re going to do work for a corporate client, simply do not put your butt in your &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/2007-10-08-rule-no-1-for-freelancers-get-the-purchase-order-first\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">2007-10-08 Rule No 1 for Freelancers &#8212; Get the Purchase Order First<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-7X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}