How can I learn to work with clients well?

Read (or listen to via yt) "How to win friends and influence people“ from Dale Carnegie

The best advice i've ever had for this is to just turn it around, and imagine you are hiring someone to build stuff for you - how would you want an ideal candidate to behave? Now work hard at making yourself that ideal candidate.

The second most useful advice is to consider the power dynamics in your relationship, as it is not always the direction you expect. The best long term relationships work when the client and the contractor have as much to gain from the success of the project as each other.

And best of luck with your new venture. Exciting times!

I disagree with a lot of this. However, I do value your comments and I'm glad you wrote them. This is just another perspective.

> - It's a relationship like any other, and you earn each other trust through your interactions over time. So you need to be extremely reliable and responsive if you want to be perceived as trust worthy;

Trust does develop over time. But it's not something to worry about. It's something that happens naturally. Being reasonably reliable is important but set reasonable expectations.

> - If something bad happened, be transparent and the sooner you say it the better. It's extremely uncomfortable, and you'll try to delay it because you don't want to say shit happened, even if it wasn't your fault.

It shouldn't be uncomfortable to be honest with people about what's happening. If you are uncomfortable then there's likely a power imbalance. You don't have enough clients so you are worried about making one client unhappy.

> - Never bring up a problem without a solution, or a potential solution, or a recommendation for a solution. No one wants problems, we all have plenty of those. Even if it's something out of your control, you should always spin a solution for it.

I think the real issue here is that clients want people who are able to exude the confidence that they can solve problems. I see no problem outlining a bunch of problems that need to be solved to a client.

> - Always reply, never leave someone hanging;

Agreed. But I read a sense of urgency here. No need to reply immediately.

The missing piece here is that your skills are in such high demand that you don't need to act like a servant to your clients. If there is mutual respect you will get paid a lot more. Since you are new to this it will take time for you to appreciate this.

>The missing piece here is that your skills are in such high demand that you don't need to act like a servant to your clients.

I think you said it all here.

I'm talking in a broad sense, that can be applied to any service with high or low demand, in terms of providing good customer service when you're starting out.

You're talking about power imbalances that allow you to provide - arguably - subpar customer service just because they don't have much choice due to high demand.

If demand increases they'll jump ship.

I'm saying this because you reminded me of some friends that do consulting for some big accounting systems, bragging that they lock clients under their contracts and software, only to leave them with crap customer support because the cost to change provider is too high - those clients are hostages basically.

A key thing I don't see mentioned yet is the importance of disengaging (or not engaging in the first place) with clients who are not a good fit for you. The problem is you often don't know at first what attributes to look for. It's very important to forecast what your business will look like in, say, five years, and then try to attract from the start only those clients that fit the model. Yes, this is hard if you really need income right now.

Sorry, I don't know any books or other resources regarding this topic.