Using your mistakes to become a more trusted freelancer

How do you salvage the relationship with your client when you make a mistake as a freelancer? The secret lies in the groundwork you’ve laid with the client prior to the mistake, and how you handled previous (smaller) mistakes. It’s all about trust.

If you’re at the start of your freelancing career, I have a spoiler for you: you’re going to make mistakes.

Most of them will be small. You’ll easily recover from these, learn important lessons and move forward feeling stronger. But some – just occasionally – may be much bigger. These mistakes might cost a client money, time, reputation or all three. They may be catastrophic, even meaning you lose the client.

Much as I’d like to, I can’t prevent you making mistakes. That’s down to you as a responsible freelancer who keeps their skills up to date and pays diligent attention to their clients’ needs.

But I can suggest a way to minimize the impact of the big mistakes if they happen.

Let’s first consider why trust is a vital factor when you make big mistakes as a freelancer. Then, at the end of this post, I’ll give you my six-point plan for what to do when you’ve made a mistake.

Why it matters how you handle your mistakes as a freelancer

Minimizing the impact of big mistakes is all about trust.

I’ve previously written in a general sense about how to be a trustworthy freelancer. But, over my 15-plus years as a freelancer and a manager who hires other freelancers, I’ve come to see that there’s one rule above all others that influences how your clients react to your mistakes:

How your clients react to your big mistakes depends on how you handle your smaller mistakes.

Making a smaller mistake is a fabulous opportunity to increase your client’s trust in you and the service you offer as a freelancer. When you react to a smaller mistake proactively, diligently and ethically, it gives your client evidence that you can be trusted.

I’ve seen the above rule in action as a freelancer working for my own clients. I’ve noticed that when I’m open, constructive and conscientious in how I deal with my occasional slip-ups, it opens up mutual understanding with the client.

For example, many years ago in an editorial project management role for a major academic publisher, I accidentally deleted the name of an author from a multi-author book’s back cover copy. Nobody noticed until the book had been published. This was obviously very embarrassing for the client and author, and I was mortified (still am!) when my contact got in touch to discuss what had happened. But the contact was understanding, and I have continued to work with the client to this day. The same contact even later told me I was the best editorial project manager they’d worked with.

How I responded to this big mistake was important (and at the end of this post I’ll give my suggestions on what to do). But I believe it was also crucial that I’d laid a solid foundation of honest, collaborative responses when smaller misunderstandings and slips had occurred previously.

What kinds of smaller mistakes can help you to build trust with your clients?

Now, I’m not suggesting you go out and deliberately make mistakes in order to demonstrate your trustworthiness to your clients! But, seeing as occasional mistakes are inevitable for freelancers, you may as well look out for them and harness their potential when you do slip up.

The smaller mistakes I’m talking about might be as simple as forgetting to attach a file to an email. Or temporarily getting in a muddle about the dates in a schedule (without actually delivering anything late). Or missing a minor instruction on the client’s brief. Or you might not really make a mistake at all – you might just need to admit you don’t know the answer to a question that you (and potentially the client) think you should be able to answer.

Your smaller mistakes might also be a little more substantial, like delivering a day late without warning the client. Or missing a more important instruction on the client’s brief. Or mildly embarrassing the client in front of an important author.

In a sense, as long as it doesn’t lose you the client or do any irrevocable damage, the bigger the mistake, the bigger the opportunity to solidify your relationship with the client.

Again, I am not suggesting you deliberately set out to make mistakes! Aside from this being a terrible approach ethically, you never know when what you consider a minor mistake might have unanticipatedly large consequences for the client. I’m just proposing you use a growth mindset to find the silver lining when mistakes inevitably happen.

Case study: increasing clients’ trust by handling your mistakes well

Owning up to your mistakes improves your long-term professional credibility. Imagine two freelancers:

• Freelancer A (let’s call them Perfect Penny) goes to great lengths to avoid ever directly admitting they got something wrong or don’t know the answer to a question. They get away with this for two reasons: (a) they are generally good at what they do, so their mistakes and knowledge gaps are relatively minor and easy to explain away, and (b) they are unfailingly polite and plausible, so there is no obvious reason for their clients to doubt them.
• Freelancer B (let’s call them Realistic Rob) is equally good at their job, but they know they will sometimes make small mistakes. They also appreciate that there is a big wide world out there, and they can’t reasonably know everything. Consequently, if a client raises what seems to be a mistake with their work, they are quick and direct about admitting culpability, giving the reason and putting the issue right. Additionally, if a client comes to them with a question, they are upfront if they can’t fully answer it. They may then suggest how they and the client can work together (as appropriate to the relationship) to source the required knowledge.

Perfect Penny’s approach may get them a long way, but it is inherently fragile. Trust me as a project manager who has worked with many freelance editorial professionals: we get a sense of when a person is too good to be true, and it prevents us from fully trusting that person.

In contrast, when a freelancer is happy to appear fallible, like Realistic Rob, it can actually increase their credibility and trustworthiness.

Now, let’s say that Perfect Penny and Realistic Rob each have a monumentally awful day and get something really, badly wrong. It’s so bad that Perfect Penny has no hope of obfuscating the truth, and even Realistic Rob has to steel themselves before facing up to the client.

It’s easy to think that Perfect Penny will come out of the situation better than Realistic Rob. But my experience says not.

One of two scenarios is likely to play out in the client’s head with Perfect Penny. Either (as I suggested above) the client never really trusted Perfect Penny to begin with, which means this catastrophe is likely to finally remove what little trust existed. Or the client’s trust in Perfect Penny was so unrealistically high that the shock of discovering their fallibility will lead to an equally extreme crash and probably a very confused client. Either way, the relationship is likely to be broken.

In contrast, with Realistic Rob, there will still be a dip in the client’s trust, but likely a much smaller one. Realistic Rob has frequently demonstrated to the client that they can own their mistakes and take sensible, conscientious actions to address them. Yes, this catastrophe will take a big effort to set right, but the client has evidence that this will be within Realistic Rob’s capabilities. Perfect Penny, in contrast, has denied the client any opportunity to truly build up a bank of evidence that they are trustworthy.

Here’s a visual representation of these scenarios (click to enlarge):

How to respond when you make a mistake as a freelancer

Small mistakes may not involve any special process – it may be appropriate to simply send a quick apology and change course.

But when you’ve made a moderate or big mistake as a freelancer – one that may threaten your relationship with the client – what should you do? Rule number one is to always tailor your response to your client and the relationship. But beyond that, here are my suggestions as someone who’s both recovered from mistakes as a freelancer and managed freelancers who’ve made mistakes:

1. Identify that you’ve made a mistake. Be honest with yourself – don’t psychologically shy away from admitting you’ve messed up. Remember that small mistakes are opportunities to build a relationship with your client based on trust.
2. Stay professional. Emotionally eviscerating yourself in front of the client is unlikely to be of practical help. Be honest only to the extent that it is useful to the client.
3. Check you understand the mistake. Don’t make assumptions (it might have been assumptions that got you into this mess!). Ensure you fully understand where you messed up and what the implications are for the client.
4. Verify your role in the solution. Don’t rush to ‘fix’ the mistake without verifying how you can best support the client. Suggesting solutions is a vital way to begin rebuilding trust. But a well-meaning, headlong dash (aka a panicked desire to expunge your mistake from the face of the earth as swiftly as possible) may only make the situation worse.
5. Carry out your role in the solution. Carefully and diligently do what the client has requested. (This will usually be unpaid work if the mistake was demonstrably yours.)
6. Don’t make the same mistake again! This point is crucial. A mistake is only an opportunity if you never make it again. A repeated mistake may make it impossible for your client to trust you, because all the work you did in steps 1–5 will ring hollow.

Build a trust buffer

Every freelancer makes mistakes. But how you deal with them is what sets you apart.

Client trust is like savings in a bank account. Build it up, little by little, on a consistent basis. One day, should a catastrophe strike, you may be very glad of what you’ve accumulated.

Want further support turning your mistakes into opportunities? By signing up to The Edit Better Letter (for free), you’ll get access to my Editorial Project Review Template, which helps you identify lessons from projects and make a plan to build on them.