Hi Reader!

One myth that I try to dispel is that smooth working relationships are just plain luck.

They are about putting the right guardrails in place, so your clients know what to expect and aren’t making assumptions about what you want/expect/need from them.

Most clients aren’t bad. They just don’t know what “good” is to you.

Which is why when I write contracts, I start our kickoff meeting with the question,

And once we nail that down, I want to know,

Because once I know what makes a client “good” and where they are currently turning into problem clients, we can put the guardrails in place to keep the client from getting off-track.

So if you are someone who has the problem of:

• Clients asking for “just one more tweak” too frequently, then your guardrail is stating the number of revisions allowed, and that anything extra will be billed at $X/hour.
• Your point of contact is blaming AP for invoices being paid late over and over, then your guardrail is stating that you can stop all work if invoices aren’t paid on time.
• Clients ghosting you and going silent after you send a deliverable on the regular, then your guardrail is stating that deliverables will be considered accepted after so many days.

Remember that just like a highway, you don’t need guardrails everywhere. You just need them in places where it would cause problems if your clients go off the highway.

And that’s where most people get contracts wrong: they try to put guardrails in for every possible scenario, not just the most common, risky, or important ones.

If you only have 20 minutes this week, the task above is the most important thing to do. But if you have a little more time, keep reading.

Chat soon,

P.S. I did the 13 Wishes ritual again this year rather than setting New Year’s resolutions. And the wish I’m in charge of is, “I’m surrounded by authentic relationships that bring me joy & support me when I need help.” What’s your word, goals, resolutions, or wish for 2026?

Other things on my radar...

• Next week is my mini-sabbatical. But when I return, I’m starting a video series on smoother collaborations. In it, I talk about how one of the mistakes collaborations make is failing to talk about copyrights until emotions are high. This blog post is a good primer on whether you want to consider having a joint copyright with your collaborator.
• AI cases involving copyright are finally making their way up through the courts. This post breaks down the petition to the Supreme Court to remove the default that anything created with AI is not eligible for copyright protection.
• I’m going to be following this checklist in the coming weeks to beef up my robots.txt and Terms of Service, based on recent court cases that give an additional reason to sue AI scraping tools if my website content is found in their algorithms.

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