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The Queen’s rule: no payment, no gig

What can you, who can’t sing very well, learn from one of the greatest singers to ever grace a stage?

Get fucking paid, that’s what.

Through her entire career Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, twice named by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest singer of all time, would not go on stage without getting a literal bag of cash beforehand.

Her rule came from her early days, when she saw African-American musicians all around her underpaid and cheated out of royalties.

Aretha was having none of that. No upfront payment, no gig.

People wondered why she always carried her handbag on stage and put it on top of the piano. The cash was in that bag, right where she could see it.

Few of us have had the stark lessons of Aretha’s early days. Still, the world is full of people who are happy to have you work for them, yet seem surprised at your uppity requests to get paid on time or at all.

It’s a lack of confidence you have when you’re starting out, and you need to snap out of it within a few years or it will blight your commercial life forever.

Back yourself to get paid

In those early years of a business, you make lists of all the ways you can make yourself more appealing to clients. Competitive pricing. Faster service. Personal approach. Flexibility. All of those are helpful to get a toe on the ladder.

It’s tempting to add easy credit to that list of perceived benefits. Like it’s another element of good service.

And you’re so grateful to get any work that you accept it under any circumstances.

Bad idea, don’t do that. It has the reverse effect to what you think, and people will walk all over you.

Every single thing that will grow your business and make your working life better comes from cash.

There will come a time when you’ll get offered exciting growth opportunities from all your hard work, and you can either:

A: Act on them and think wow, this is exactly the winning feeling that makes all my efforts worthwhile, or

B: Wish you could grab that opportunity. But you can’t because you have no cash, because you worked really hard then let debtors walk all over you.

Offer all those good things you can deliver. And back yourself to say upfront: I want to be paid, on time, for all those good things.

Insisting on getting paid makes you look better

If it’s your business, your attitude to getting paid is a statement of your self-worth.

You’re going to get nowhere unless you believe in yourself. If you’re going to work for free, or let customers pay you six months late, you’re effectively saying:

“My value is zero.”

Did young Aretha think: I still haven’t proved myself, this gig is a chance to get some good exposure, if I do this gig for free or on loose credit terms it’ll open up some opportunities in the future?

No she didn’t. She made sure she got paid because she was worth it.

And so are you.

If you’re assertive about getting paid, clients take that as a sign you must be good at what you do. It’s a positive signifier, not some special favour you’re begging for.

The price of not getting paid

There is nothing more precious than your time, and the right approach to getting paid will save you an insane amount of it.

Here’s the actual price of an unpaid invoice. Multiply what you earn per hour by:

• The time you spend doing reminder emails and calls. Because they don’t respond to the automated ones
• The internal meetings you have going through those lists and discussing, for the third or fourth time, why someone gave credit to a company called Raccoon Solutions
• The time you spend being angry about it, which distracted you from doing productive things
• The percentage you have to give to a collections agency when all else fails

It’s easy to chew up more than the total value of the invoice on this stuff, because you didn’t listen to Aretha.

They seemed so nice. You did not get paid

So many business people give credit terms on vibe. The customer seems nice, and good for the money. And mostly they are.

But you only need 5% of them to not be and it can grind your business to a halt.

Bad payers are so good at the con. They’re so plausible. They talk up what a great client they’re going to be and how much work they have in store for you.

They agree to your payment terms. They’ll just suddenly go quiet or have other urgent business to attend to at the point they promised payment.

They’re waiting for you to do the work, so you have no leverage over them whatsoever. Once the work is done, they can fob you off until the end of time.

Or clients from large, brand-name organisations who are lovely to work with. Surely they’re good for the money.

You send the invoice. Then, much later, learn your nice contact has left you you in the hands of their multinational accounts payable dept in Delaware, who will just stonewall you forever with mega-company excuses.

“The purchase order number doesn’t match our records.”

“That person wasn’t authorised for that expenditure.”

“You are not a registered supplier in our system.”

“Someone left the company and didn’t sign off.”

Companies this size have eliminated all phone access, and your emails and messages will go unanswered for weeks.

One of our businesses has been going through this for a 5-figure debt from a global pharmaceutical brand, from work we did last May. People on salaries really do not understand what it’s like to not get paid.

Sort out your terms and conditions

It’s worth investing in proper terms and conditions for your quotes.

We revisited ours when COVID was cancelling out every event a few days out. Getting a signature or purchase order for every order is not practical for us, the deadlines are too tight.

So we had our T&Cs worded so that our execution of the work means acceptance of the contract.

The whole thing, not just the bits they like.

So when customers say “oh but our policy is to pay 90 days from the end of the month the invoice is processed and approved”, that policy is not our problem. They have accepted our payment terms.

We don’t want to get all hard-arse legal on clients, it’s not our vibe. But neither is being paid three months after we do the work. Our staff aren’t taking a three month wage pause.

If you’re the supplier that kicks up some resistance, most of the time they’ll pay you and give the runaround treatment to other, softer suppliers.

Memo to those A/P depts:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out what it means to me.

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