I’ve been working in freelance marketing a long time – about ten years. Been through two recessions now. Seen a lot of stupid things. And now that we’re growing up a bit and turning a successful freelance practice at last into a full marketing firm, I’m finding myself looking back and being retrospective. Part of it is Kristi and I looking over old client files together with a dispassionate eye and deciding how we want to conduct ourselves as a company.

Today we’ve had two turns of events with clients. One, an old client who reappeared on Christmas Eve with a big project, finally came back with some first round copy feedback. They loved it, we nailed it. This client is making some big market moves and has had to carefully determine the best path to get there. But they’ve been a successful company for a long time, and they know what they’re doing – and, luckily, we managed to get on the same wavelength.

The other issue is a relatively new client who came into our lives last summer. Nice guy, good company, but I hate to admit that right now the success of his business is highly reliant on current and volatile market conditions. One firm move by the feds, or another twist of fate in the economy, or simply one false move in his marketing, and he could easily be wiped out. The struggle with him since day one has been to somehow turn his fragile market position into one of long term viability.

There was a time, not long ago, that I compared the job of a freelance marketer (in my case, copywriting) with that of an arms dealer. You have no control over what the client does with what you provide. You can tell him not to shoot his foot off. But if he’s bound and determined to point the gun and pull the trigger, there’s nothing you can do – someone’s going to sell him the gun, so it might as well be you. Yeah, it’s a cynical viewpoint, but it’s happened too many times: the second the client starts seeing results, the client gets greedy. And insecure. And then eventually he’s standing there pointing the gun at his foot and spinning the cylinder. You warn and warn and warn, and the client blows his foot off, looks at you and says, “Why didn’t you stop me from shooting myself in the foot?? THIS HURTS!”

After about the ninth or tenth time, you say to hell with it. Sell him the gun, the ammo, a map to his foot, the works. Bill him well. Tell him halfheartedly that you do not recommend shooting himself in the foot. Cash the check and wait for the bang.

But honestly, I’m finding now that I can’t do that as easily anymore. The industry is full of marketing arms dealers. At the risk of losing this particular client, I pretty much told him point blank that his ideas on the current topic were pretty well stupid. And would result in a bloody stump where his leg had been. And of course he didn’t like to hear that. So we’re exchanging heated email back and forth, and who knows, ultimately we may lose him as a client. But worse things have happened, and clients aren’t forever. You contribute when you can make a difference, but when they peak and start coming down the other side, worse things can happen than being fired for not backing their suicidal play.

We had a client a few years ago, same type of situation. Worked solid with him for a year. He got good results from the advice we gave him and the materials we made for him, and then he got greedy. Decided that he wanted his local little Orlando manufacturing concern to become a big multinational conglomerate, and started making dumb decisions – such as wiring virtually his entire cash reserve to Africa to secure a new manufacturing facility. He needed that cash to pay his bills; he couldn’t afford to lose it. Well, the transfer was held by the bank when Homeland Security wanted to know why a foreign national (which he is) was wiring lots of money to that particular part of the world. The money remained in federal pockets for months. When he refused to pay his bills to us, the relationship soured and we went our separate ways. That was right around the time I moved to California.

The frustrating part about that was that we advised him to continue building on his current success and not try to grow faster than he could deal with it. But that’s not what he wanted to hear. And so he went to some trade show, had his ear filled full of gambits and hot moves and dreams of getting super rich, and he got greedy. And then, bang. Today his marketing is in worse shape than before we started working together; it’s obvious that he’s had setbacks in the last few years, and that his dreams of megacorporate stardom are far and distant now. And that’s a shame, because he has a good product. Too bad the good product didn’t have a sound plan.

I really hope the current client isn’t going the same way. I’m tired of watching good clients do dumb things. And as much as I’ve been willing in the past to bill out for that, today I’m gradually seeing it more as blood money. Not worth it.