| Random advice from the internet: The most useful thing you can do is a "mission debrief". + Identify what were the warning signs of non-payment. Sometimes they will be there from the start and the client never intended to pay. In longer relationships, non-payment is part of changing behaviors and often due to other financial stresses (this is how it tends to play out in economic downturns). + Identify the reasons you accepted this particular job/client. It is one thing if this job/client looked like other previous jobs/clients. It is another if the job/client was accepted due to ambition (expanding internationally) or desperation (just need the work) or greed (terms more lucrative than normal). + Identify why the client chose you. Maybe you have a rare special expertise (though by definition, this is rarely applicable). But if your services are somewhat fungible (much more common), it is worth examining why you and not another similar service...or to put it another way, a web developer might think about "what happened to this potential client's last developer?" Was the lead outbound or inbound? Was it a warm introduction or a cold call? In the end, the best likely outcome is a better intuition about potential clients and which one's should be avoided and a greater willingness to stop work quickly over payment and eventually a better process for assessing the financial wherewithal of people and their projects. It is unlikely you will be paid. For what it is worth, contracts/terms are somewhat useful for defining project scope and describing the processes of work delivery and payment. Unless you are big enough to have attorneys on retainer, they are pretty useless as something to point at when things go off a reasonably happy path. Client and project selection are much more valuable. Good luck. |
A major symptom is that many of my worst clients are both impressive and repulsive. We have decades of experience with people (yes, even us needs) and whatever your instincts are about someone, it's probably right.