If you haven't been heavily client-facing inside a large company please, for your sake, remember to make sure you have written signoff from your clients at ever

If you haven't been heavily client-facing inside a large company please, for your sake, remember to make sure you have written signoff from your clients at every stage re: expectations and deliverables. Clients spending their own money or with an incentive to keep costs low (been at this 10+ ys) have all read the same book, from single owner businesses to major international shoe brands: everything for nothing, yesterday, and "oh how about we make this little change, that won't affect anything, right?" Also make sure that if it's a fixed price contract, you factor some expectation of hours in there and have a clause handling the case that if you go over by 10% you'll need to renegotiate, or as others have suggested, you pause until payment has been made.