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“Freelancers are flakes.” How many times have you heard that warning from colleagues burned by a project that cost twice the anticipated amount, took a year instead of a week to complete or just ground to a halt mid-job?

People sometimes cut freelancers a weird amount of slack that they wouldn’t give their own employees, especially the ones who perform creative work: “Oh, those right-brain eccentric artists, they march to a different drum and we’re just lucky they come down to Earth once in a while to help us regular folks.” But freelancers aren’t flakes, or at least they don’t have to be. The successful ones take their freelancing seriously and run it as a business instead of a lark. Unfortunately, though, they still suffer from the behavior of the less-serious ones who give the profession an apparent case of terminal dandruff.

Watch out for these potential problems:

The unknown price tag. Beware the freelancer who refuses to give you a firm quote for a job before starting work. For many of us who tend to charge flat per-project rates, this issue never comes up. But even if your freelancer bills by the hour, you should still insist on a realistic estimate of what you’ll pay, even if that estimate falls into a range.

Excuses, excuses. There’s always a good reason not to get a project done on time, and some freelancers want to make sure you hear all of them. “Sorry this is a month late, but my dog came down with mange and my kid’s having attitude problems and I had to get my tires rotated and the recent spell of bad weather has deprived me of Vitamin D and….” Some of these excuses may even be legitimate. But even if there’s always a reason for the late or sub-par work, the end result is still late or sub-par work.

The disappearing act. “I had a freelancer working on this eight months ago, and then he went off somewhere and I haven’t been able to get ahold of him since.” Some freelancers go bust and return to the world of standard employment, while others only do it as “gap work” between day jobs. Even in these cases, though, a courteous professional would contact you to let you know, or at least answer your inquiries.

So what should you look for in a freelancer? A portfolio of strong samples, a solid track record, recommendations from satisfied clients and clear ground rules. Always ask about the freelancer’s billing and work processes, turnaround times and availability. Get hard numbers and set deadlines, and hold your freelancer to them. The good ones will make every possible effort to deliver as promised. As for the flakes — well, you don’t put up with dandruff, do you?

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.

Ever feel like you’re repeating the same day over and over again — and not a particularly pleasant or productive one? Has the groundhog gotten a glimpse of its shadow and high-tailed it for the comfort of his living room, leaving you to experience more of the same old situation instead of looking forward to a change? If so, then you’ll sympathize with Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day, even if you don’t like him much.

That’s TV weatherman Phil Connor’s problem, in fact — he’s just not a likable guy. in fact, he’s an arrogant grump who resents his assignment to cover celebrity groundhog Punxsatawnie Phil’s prediction for winter’s end. The only way his February 2nd could get any worse would be if it happened again. And then the morning, it happens again, and again and again. He keeps having the same conversations with the same people until he’s literally ready to kill himself.

Eventually, however, Connor realizes that this bizarre Groundhog Day has its upside, because he has an opportunity to become the kind of man his beautiful news producer Rita would find ideal. He spends February 2nd after February 2nd learning to speak French, create ice sculptures, play the piano and so forth. Along the way he comes to know and appreciate the people around him. By the time the calendar finally does start moving forward again, he’s a new and better person.

If you feel paralyzed in your attempts to grow and market your business, maybe it’s because you’re trying to master everything at once. A full-scale marketing campaign, for instance, can be an intimidating thing to envision, build, launch and manage. I don’t now about you, but when I see an insurmountable hurdle dead ahead, I stop in my tracks and think twice before surmounting it.

At times like these it may help to take a page from Phil Connor’s playbook. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, goes the old joke. Director Harold Ramis estimates that Connor relives at least 30 or 40 years of Groundhog Days to master all the new skills he displays. You can become effective at marketing your business in far less time than that, and you can do it incrementally. Get the website done. Get your print marketing looking sharp. Learn how to use social media. Sharpen your networking skills.

If you screw up you can always make repairs, learn from the experience and keep going. But unless you do something every day to move forward and improve your marketing knowledge and skills, your business will remain frozen in place, experiencing the same day over and over again. Phil Connor broke out of that loop — and so can you.

Here’s to an early spring!

For more about my writing services and current package deals, check out my website at www.reynoldswriting.com.