[libertine]

>The missing piece here is that your skills are in such high demand that you don't need to act like a servant to your clients.

I think you said it all here.

I'm talking in a broad sense, that can be applied to any service with high or low demand, in terms of providing good customer service when you're starting out.

You're talking about power imbalances that allow you to provide - arguably - subpar customer service just because they don't have much choice due to high demand.

If demand increases they'll jump ship.

I'm saying this because you reminded me of some friends that do consulting for some big accounting systems, bragging that they lock clients under their contracts and software, only to leave them with crap customer support because the cost to change provider is too high - those clients are hostages basically.