Let’s make a distinction here.

1. the question should only arise if the client relationship precedes the friendship
2. you can care deeply about your client, their life and interests and wish personally for their success. does this make them a friend in the same sense as those whom you began with as a friend from the start? I somehow sense there is a difference, but over several years, maybe this difference might blur.
3. you SHOULD care about your clients as people. even love them. if you feel genuinely about your client and have a good working relationship with them, you will automatically feel warmth towards them which is a natural friendship. I think this type of friendship isn’t supposed to be overly close, but the aspect of a ‘measured distance’ shouldn’t take away from the GENUINENESS of the friendship. I consider most of my clients as friends and if we were to not do business together theoretically, I would want to keep the relationship alive simply for the pure sake of the friendship.
4. as Klaus says in his comment, you should NEVER be friendly for the sake of business as a tool. Friendship should come from genuine feelings. In any case, it will remain a one-way friendship if you use it to manipulate. remember, your client is smart. they will know if it’s fake.

In my opinion, of course it depends on both the freelancer and the client, if you have an asshole client that is just concerned about making money, not only on your project, but as the primary goal of this life, you ain’t gonna get too far in a friendship with him, you just wouldn’t connect with him even if you were introduced to him at a party.

BUT, if you client is a cool ass mother fucker, and you are a chilling freelancer with other things in your head apart from making more money, like surfing, playing an instrument, chilling and philosofying about a better life in your spare time, you two ARE going to get along just fine, regardless of the business environment.

I’ve had both types of clients, cool ass mother fuckers with whom I would go have a beer anytime and just talk about life, and then also the capitalist, unfair clients how care nothing about your well being and are just concerned about finishing the job even if that means you can’t have a social life nor sleep for 2 weeks straight, he just doesn’t care about you, nor about anyone else. It is a pity, that our society has created this kind of people.

Ferazzi, talks about the concept of friendship in his book, “never eat alone”, and encourages a friendship with your clients, we need to change the perception of business and friendship, changing it from thinking that YOU always have to win, that this is a business and there are no friends in business, to becoming a win-win situation, where you win LESS than your client, you care about your client reaching higher goals that yourself, but you are always winning more at your own level too, and that makes you better and bigger with every client that you help.

A successful example of the concept explained in the article happened to me this week.

I’m from Spain, from a little island called Mallorca, this week I went to see my client to the mainland, I took by best shirts and my sloppiest t-shirts, wasn’t sure how to dress up, you know, to give the right image to him… so I started of with a neat t-shirt, he was wearing a bright red t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, we connected from the beginning, went out for beers, had great conversations and talked about each others past and goals for the future, we connected without effort, without lying.

After the first stage of the project our plan is for him and his designer (I’m the developer in the project) to come to my city and chill here for a few days, helping them to setup an improved working environment with a version control system, the updated ruby on rails framework, and a short tutorial from my side to get them up and running with this new workflow which is going to make us all more productive.

My conclusion is that you can find cool clients, with money, with whom you connect and can actually enjoy working for them, for the money that you deserve, get to know someone cool, and open the door of trust for other projects to come down the line. You just have to chose your clients wisely.

Kudos to the author!

PEace

Human beings are greedy. Normal friends take advantage of friendships. I can’t imagine the client/friend conversion. How would one manage projects if a few clients become fast friends? They would demand a lot of attention and concessions (I nearly spelt concussions because that’s pretty much what it would feel like) and there goes the bottom dollar.

Sure, I’d have drinks and chit chat with my clients. I’d listen to their problems and give advice. But business is business and a line needs to be drawn.

Instead, I like to have friends and friendships for after-hours activities. Business relationships, such as those between me and the clientele, are for work hours.