Hi, there. Anthony from Contractors Debt Recovery back haunting your screen yet again. Today, we’re going to talk about keeping it formal. That does not mean wear a bowtie while you do your work. It means keeping the relation between you and your client on a formal basis. What that means is you’re not friends and you’re not a good bloke and they’re not a good bloke. We’re all trying to be good blokes. Forget all that. You are a supplier. You’re supplying a service or product for a fixed price and the other party is your client and there needs to be certain formality in that relationship.

If you are informal be careful because informality equals less money. Informality equals less money for you. Why is that so? Informality means that your paperwork is not formal or there is no paperwork or it’s just yeah, we’ll just keep everything on a friendly basis, won’t record that. Formality requires you to keep good documentation. Formality requires correct notices. Formality means that you’re actually going to be charging for every bit of work you do including additional work. So don’t be shy about it. You’re not the person’s friend. They are your customer.

The other problem within formality is you tend to do freebies. Hey mate, can you throw me a few of those. Throw a bit of this, a bit of that. Okay. Because you’re trying to be a good bloke. So all of the sudden you’re losing money. All of a sudden someone saying do another sale in a less amount of work mate, can you. And you’re saying okay. All right. Yeah, you seem like a good bloke. You got to forget all that. No freebies. Formality requires that you record a variation and you seek to have that variation approve rather than just throwing in a bits and pieces here and there just because you’re trying to be a good bloke.

You need to rethink your relationship and understand that your relationship with your customer is a formal business relationship with a contract that documents or details how that relationship unfolds through the work. Okay. So remember informality equals less money. So keep it formal. Formality means better documentation. Formality means all extra work is charge for and no freebies and no favours. Just have a clean business relationship and that is a formal relationship. All right. Straighten up that bow tie and I’ll see you next time.