Q. Is it wise to accept a job offer from a client? And if you decide against it, how do you decline the job, but keep the client? Worse yet, what if you’ve taken the job, become miserable having given up the FLCW lifestyle and dynamic, and want your boss to be your client again?
A. Not sure if I have anything specific about that anywhere, but there’s my thinking: they guy must LOVE you if he’s willing to hire you full-time. And I could be wrong, but he’s probably thinking it’s a long-shot that you’d even accept. But regardless of whether or not that’s even the case, for him to think enough of you to want you around all the time, I find it almost impossible to believe he’d toss you aside if you declined. The only reason for him to offer you the job is so that he can have your PROVEN expertise all to himself – expertise you no doubt developed over time working with him, and which now makes you quite valuable to him. All which explains both the job offer and the reason why he’d want to keep you close by, regardless of whether it’s in a freelance or employee capacity. You sure you realize your worth to this guy?
If you seriously are considering the job, then you need to sit down with him and explain that you’ll do it on one condition: a three-month trial period, at the end of which you both decide if it’s working. And let him know, that you love the freelance lifestyle, and you might very well find that the 9-5 is too confining. In which case, you want to be able opt out AND keep the relationship as a freelancer. But DON’T take the job b/c you’re afraid that if you don’t, he’s somehow going to dump you. I don’t see that as happening, and if it does, then it would likely have happened at some point anyway.