Stop Getting Stiffed

You finish the work. You send the invoice. Then you wait, and the client who was so warm during the sales call goes quiet.

Stop Getting Stiffed is a practical contract system for freelancers, consultants, and solopreneurs who are good at the work and tired of getting burned by the business side of it: scope creep that turns a fixed-price project into unpaid overtime, clients who try to strip protective clauses out of the agreement before signing, and the invoice that never gets paid. This is not a legal textbook, and you do not need a lawyer to use it. It is a specific, scriptable system: the five clauses every freelance contract needs, the exact deposit and milestone structure that keeps your risk small, and the exact words to say when a client pushes back.

Inside, you will find:

• The five non-negotiable clauses every freelance contract needs, with sample language for designers, developers, writers, consultants, virtual assistants, and photographers
• A deposit and milestone payment structure that keeps you never more than one payment away from being made whole, plus a full late-payment follow-up sequence ready to send
• The exact sentence that stops scope creep in the moment, and a change order system that turns every new request into a clean business decision instead of an awkward negotiation
• Scripts for holding your terms when a sophisticated client tries to redline the deposit, the kill fee, or the payment terms out of your agreement
• A written approval process that closes the approval trap, when a client signs off on work and then asks for a near-total rewrite two weeks later
• Nine red flags that predict a contract dispute before you ever sign, plus a simple scoring system to decide when to walk away
• A full escalation path for when things go wrong anyway: the formal demand letter, small claims court without a lawyer, and when to fire a client
• A complete, ready-to-adapt sample contract compiling every clause in the book into one document

Every script in this book is built from real situations freelancers run into constantly: the client who wants "just one more small thing" for free, the client who wants the deposit clause removed, the client who approves a deliverable and comes back with a rewrite request. None of these are edge cases. They are the normal, predictable ways freelance work goes sideways when there is no contract, or when the contract was never built to handle them.

The appendix includes a full 30-Day Contract Audit, a day-by-day path to rebuild every contract you currently use into one that matches this system, plus a complete sample contract you can adapt today.

If you have ever finished great work and then spent weeks chasing payment, wondering whether you did something wrong, this book is for you. You built a skill people pay for. This book protects it.

Part of the Solo Business Series by Ryan Reed.