I use twitter. A lot. You’re free to follow me.

In fact I encourage you to follow me. I’ve stopped all the mass emails to everyone’s relief. Not that I was so horrible but it’s just one less thing to clutter the inbox.

Here’s the thing, though. I don’t automatically follow everyone back. Don’t take it personally. Really. It’s not you. I just need some time to get to know you.

I will respond to anyone who sends me an @myerman reply. And I will follow you if you’re doing something interesting (and yes I may disagree with you but still find you interesting).

I also tend to follow other Austin city dwellers, those who work in my field, funny people, smart people and so on.

Consequently I have more followers than followees. That’s just how it works with me (and I reserve the right to change my mind later). You might have a different way of doing things and that’s cool.

How do I use twitter? I point to interesting things I find on the interwebs. Some of it relates to marketing, some of it to the radical decentralization of everything (particularly to the death of newspapers as there are many object lessons there for all students of business), still others are links to writing.

I mix in some fun too. I tweet about my hobbies (photography and poker) and about things that tickle my funny bone. I will tell you if I’ve found something cool or had that weird breakthru thought (not that common).

In other words I’m not some kind of robot. Twitter is just an extension of what I’m doing and thinking and saying.

If you’re doing the same, well then I’ll retweet you because good stuff is good stuff.

If I find you on twitter and follow you, I won’t be offended if you don’t follow me back. And if I unfollow you, it’s just that my focus is changing and it has nothing to do with you.

(I opt out of seeing all your replies back and forth with others, which helps me make sense of the world.)

That is all.

First of all, thanks so much to all of you who came to see me at SxSW interactive. The Saturday panel “Your First Year as a Freelancer” was packed — we expected about 10-15 folks, got 40 instead. If you want to know what happened, or are just curious to continue hooking up with folks who were there, or want to forge your own connections, feel free to follow the #geektopeak or #g2p hashtags on Twitter.

For those of you not on Twitter yet, shame on you! Get on there! You can find me tweeting as @myerman.

I had the opportunity to talk with many of you during SxSW, and by talk I don’t just mean talk, I also mean “have beers with!” (It’s good to actually meet some of you face to face.) One thing kept coming up over and over: clients suck.

Yes, some of them do. Not all of them, but a surprisingly large number of them certainly do. The bad thing is, it only takes one schlemiel in a crowd of 100 to stink up the whole place, and this goes doubly so when it involves cash, check, or charge. Particularly if you’re desperately trying to stay out of that group of people known as “the foreclosed.”

One of the biggest paradoxical rules of business has to do with money and good/bad times. If there’s good times, everyone throws money around just to get your attention. You might be so busy that even if a client walked into your office with a wheelbarrow full of kruggerands, you still wouldn’t be able to respond to them. And of course, during bad times, it seems that all you meet are the nasty little chiselers who want you to do things for free (or pay them, if at all possible, for the privilege of wasting the precious hours you have left on Earth).

So look around at your stable of clients (and possible clients) and ask yourself these questions:

• Is there anyone on the list that makes you cringe? Like, you’d rather saw your own ears off then be with that person? And I’m talking mean, nasty, racist, sexist, ageist, classist? Anything like that?
• Is there anyone on the list who repeatedly crashes through the boundaries you’ve set up for accepted, normative communication? Stalks you on Twitter or Facebook? Calls you at all hours? Emails you 173 times a day? Then faxes you to tell you about the emails? Sends a courier to your home office to perform an interpretive dance that summarizes all past communications to date?
• How about anyone who repeatedly makes a whole bunch of changes to stuff at the last minute, can’t find a solid rationale for anything he/she says, or just wants to mess about and then blame you when things don’t come off as planned? Especially if there’s a spouse involved with big hair and $5,000 shoes and a little dog in a purse who flies in, blows air kisses, and says, “This should be pink!” then leaves for a day at the spa? (Don’t ask. Really.)
• How about the guys who screw around with the finances? Any check bouncers? Guys who repeatedly say the check is in the mail? Guys who argue with you, saying weeks later out of the blue that what you’ve done isn’t good enough? Guys who want to nickel and dime you to death?
• How about anyone who you’re charging 50% or 60% your normal rate? And who still insist on bad behavior like anything previously mentioned?

If you’re normal, you have three or four folks like this in your stable (or your pipeline). Once you identify them, you have to make a choice. You can either do your best to get rid of them, or you can live with them–but if you do the latter, you can’t burn up anyone else’s atmosphere with the bitching and moaning. (I did this for far too long, my wife getting the brunt of it, and for that I’m sorry. Those guys making my life miserable weren’t worth it.)

So how do you get rid of the sucky clients? Here’s a little program:

1. First, try to talk to them about what you find offensive or intolerable. If they’re calling you at odd hours, remind them when business hours are. Set up a policy for the next client. Set some boundaries! I had tr0uble with that my first few years, and yeah, I’m still working on it.Some of the offenders will go, “Oh, hey, sorry about that!” and it’ll be mostly done except for a few slip-ups in the future. And some will take their business elsewhere. Either way, you’ve taken the right first step in the escalation process.
2. If they still don’t get it, don’t want to hear it, don’t seem to understand, that’s okay. Just tell them that their rate is going up. It’s called a PITA charge, or Pain In The Ass charge, but you don’t need to tell them about it. If they’re at your full rate, add 15%. If they’re below your full rate for any reason, move them to the full rate immediately.
3. If you’ve already levied a PITA fee, do it again, or put them on a retainer basis. Charge them $1500, $2000, or $2500 a month no matter how much they use you. Make it a one-year contract. For those of you just tuning in, no I am NOT saying that retainers are punishment tools. I have retainer agreements with the best people in the galaxy, client-wise.
4. Under no circumstances should you broadcast your disgust over the social media airwaves. You will lose this fight in a bad way. Just don’t go there.However, if they start a fight on social media, you must counter with the facts. Don’t be emotional, and try to keep the fight clean. Don’t pick your fight out in public, but do it in places where other contractors, consultants, freelancers, and such will see it and be warned to run far, far away (places like the Writing Mafia group on LinkedIn).

That’s it! Anyone else have horror stories about sucky clients or tips for dealing with them?

Dilettante: A person who enjoys the arts or someone who engages in a field as an amateur out of casual interest rather than as a profession.

If you’re going to step into the technical freelancer/consultant/contractor game, then it’s time to cowboy up. You can’t abandon the technical part of the equation. In the past, I was never thrilled to run into so-called SEO experts who had never written a bot or spider (or hell, could even tell me what “semantically valid HTML” meant), and nowadays, I’m finding out that most of the people you meet in social media are just a bunch of amateurs running after shiny objects.

When you first meet some of these people, they’re pretty amazing. They talk about the power of networks, and how social conversations will revolutionize the marketplace, and blah blah blah blah blah. After a while, you get to know them better and you realize that they’re just dilettantes. In other words, they’re pretty enthusiastic, but they wouldn’t be able to pass muster in any group of real techies.

• They’ve never installed a Wiki, much less administered a community (like I have over at Frackipedia.com, running on MediaWiki).
• They’ve maybe done some blogging and some commenting, but they’ve never installed, configured, or otherwise looked at the guts of WordPress. In fact, I was told by one of these guys that sidebar widgets are a bit scary. Uh, yeah, just a PHP function in most cases!
• They have no idea how to put together an editorial policy for a blog, nor have they recruited quality bloggers (like I have for WritingMafia.com). Not exactly technical, but still a very important part of what blogging is about.
• They’ve certainly never written a WordPress plugin (like the one I did for Amazon SimpleDB).
• They may use Twitter, but they haven’t looked into the Twitter API and figured out how to use it in a social app for the Enterprise. Or know enough to roll your own twitter-like app thing.
• They’ve totally not built there own social media application, like the one I cooked up over at ShareWordMap.com.

Am I a raving egomaniac? Hells yeah! But I also know what the hell I’m talking about, and you should too! Don’t be that guy with the vaporware presentation and a box full of technical jargon. It might impress the folks down at the ad agency, but it sure as hell doesn’t impress anyone out here doing the technical consultant thing.

My good friend Kevin Beck turned me on to Bre Pettis and his Cult of Done blog post. Here it is, just because it is worth reprinting:

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

I would like add a few more–think of them as corollaries:

1. If you get it done fast and then fail, you’re still better off then the bunch of wankers sitting around thinking about it.
2. If perfection is the enemy of good, then done is the enemy of stress.
3. If you have an idea and just talk about it, then you are not done. You are wasting everyone’s time.
4. If you have an idea that languishes for more than a month, and you rediscover it and it still tastes yummy, set aside a day and get it done. That sound you hear is the universe knocking on your door.
5. Chicks dig done.

Every time I hear someone say, “I don’t use social media–that’s just greasy kids stuff” I just want to pull my hair out. Wake up people! There are some serious numbers all across the board for social media, and we ain’t just talkin’ ’bout blogging. Other social media activities, like rating content, reading/viewing content, and sharing content also rate high.

Let’s take B2B buyers as a group. Most of you should be interested in this demographic, because after all, as a techie consultant, you’re probably running into these folks at one point or another. Think they’re not using social media tools? Think again! According to Forrester research, they’re one of the most highly involved groups of people they’ve ever sampled!

Some highlights from this research (start by looking at the right two columns):

• 91% of these technology decision-makers were Spectators – the highest number I’ve ever seen in a Social Technographics Profile. This means you can count on the fact that your buyers are reading blogs, watching user generated video, and participating in other social media. Note that 69% of them said they were using this technology for business purposes.
• Only 5% are non-participants (Inactives).
• 55% of these decision-makers were in social networks (Joiners) — despite as mature businesspeople and not college students, you’d think they’d be participating a lot less.
• 43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles, etc.) and 58% are Critics, reacting to content they see in social formats. Again the numbers are very high compared to other groups we’ve surveyed, and again the level of participation for business purposes is also very high.

What does this mean for you? If you’re a B2B marketer and you’re not using social technologies in your marketing, it means you’re late. We’ve seen a lot of excellent activity here from the likes of Dell and National Instruments (both won Forrester Groundswell awards) but a lot of the blogs, communities, and other social outreach from business to business companies is less than mature, to say the least. This is your chance to stand out. Take this report and show it to your boss to convince her that it’s time to get started.

Read their blog post here.

Yes, that’s right, I’ve made plenty of pennies helping companies establish blogs, online campaigns, and microsites–not to mention social networks, et cetera, et cetera.

For the solo freelancer or consultant, though, there’s some value to the old-fashioned high-touch (as opposed to new-fangled high-tech) approach. For example, meeting prospective clients face to face, shaking their hands at a social gathering, reading their body language at a conference, sharing drinks at a networking hour, or giving a talk to a group of colleagues can advance your career in ways that a more automated email campaign or LinkedIn profile can’t.

Furthermore, I’d argue that taking it slow can reap huge rewards no matter how you conduct your marketing efforts. For example, if you attend a networking event, having three 20-minute conversations with new people is better than having twenty 3-minute conversations. Having three fantastic testimonials on your web site is better than having ten mediocre ones.

In the end, I find it amusing that all of our terrific 21st century technologies just make it easier for us to conduct business like in ancient times: it all comes down to relationships and communication. In the old days, if you wanted to buy from a trader, you went with the guy your friends and family trusted. You made a name for yourself as a businessman by delivering on your promises, one job at a time.

It’s easy to forget that in this hyper-quick world of blogs, social network sites, and 200 emails a day.

My little consulting practice, Triple Dog Dare Media, just turned seven this summer. In my mind, the business celebrates a birthday every May 1st, because that is when I left corporate serfdom to strike out on my own. My wife, however, reminds me that our date of incorporation actually happened closer to June 15th, so I compromise and just say “we turned seven this summer.”

In any case, it wasn’t until the company’s sixth birthday that I realized how truly miserable I’d become. This is probably a funny way to address the topic of business ownership and freelancing in a blog such as this, but I believe in being honest above everything else.

Don’t get me wrong. At the time, I could have been judged successful in just about any outward way of measurement. I had lots of clients, lots of business, cash flow was good, projects were rolling in regularly, and life was good. I had an office, three or four employees, about half a dozen contractors, and days chock full of meetings, emails, phone calls, and everything else a business owner might want.

Except happiness.

You see, I had spent the previous five and a half years single-mindedly going after a specific task: building a business. Unfortunately, I was building the kind of business that every one else wanted me to have. The experts said I should do thus and so, and I did it. My fellow small business owners said you must have an office and employees and overhead and go after increasingly bigger projects, and I did.

Then one day, I said, “Wait a minute!” I wasn’t doing stuff I loved. I was working with a bunch of clients I didn’t respect, working on projects I had no love for, merely to meet payroll for a group of employees I’d come to deeply dislike. And I’m sure the dislike was mutual by that point.

So I declared a do-over. I fired the clients. I fired the employees. I sublet the office space. And for the next year, I concentrated on building the kind of business I wanted:

• Smaller projects
• Less overhead and HR hassles
• More meaningful contact with customers
• More focus on results instead of billable hours

Is my way the only way to go? Certainly not. But it is my way. And it is aligned with my values. Not anyone else’s. It only took me six years to realize it. Thank God I’m so smart!

My advice to you is to figure out what your values are, then go build the business you want to have. And ignore everyone else who says different.