"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday's question comes to us from Emily and she writes dear Ted I really appreciate the QA videos that you do I really took the advice that you've given about working for free to heart but I'm having a problem with a client this particular client is very consistent but the jobs pay very little on top of that it seems like every time I work for this person they make demands that go past the price that we've agreed on I don't really know how to deal with this perhaps it's just that I need more experience do you have any suggestions how do I say no and not jeopardize the working relationship Emily this is an excellent question and thank you for asking and yes you do have yourself in a little bit of a pickle and I understand you have a client who you're saying on the one hand is very consistent in the work that they're giving you they're hiring you over and over again you know you work for them frequently on the other hand you're saying that when you do jobs for this particular client that you're in a situation where they are making demands that are more than you're being paid for on the job and it's becoming uncomfortable well I would encourage you to actually look at this a little bit differently that is not the kind of work that you want to have consistently and I know that may be hard to hear but that's looking at it the wrong way you need to figure a way to deal with this now the other thing you're telling me is that maybe you need more experience Emily your experience is happening right now you need to start learning from it and this is really important a lot of people think oh I just need more experience or someday it's just going to come out of the blue and hit me and I'll understand no it's not you're doing the work right now and I think you know that and it's just a matter of understanding how to deal with this particular situation right now and how you can learn from that moving forward let's talk about your situation and before we do that I want to back up and let's talk about business 101 here and what the core of running a business is it's very simple if you have a business you need to make more than you're spending it's that simple it's amazing how many people particularly creative people will over complicate this I used to when I did client work it's been a while and so hindsight is 20/20 but I did client work for seven or eight years and I've had this particular problem myself and it's not comfortable and it's not easy to deal with but it is really important that you understand that is running a business you need to make more than you're spinning otherwise you're not in if you're breaking even you're not in business you need to make more than you spend it is that simple businesses cost money you need to eat you need to pay your own bills your business will cost money you need to be on paying yourself you need to host your website you need to make business cards sometimes you have to travel sometimes you have expenses that come up as part of a job sometimes you have to hire people depending on how big your business is you know you might have rent you might have power bills and phone bills and internet bills on top of that rent if you have an office space and so all those things are your business expenses you have to make more than you're spending on those it's that simple and so right now if you have a situation with a client who's come along and they're asking you to do a little bit more for the job than you're comfortable charging for or that you're not charging for that work because you have a relationship with them you know I can't totally pin this on the client because I hate to tell you this it won't be the last client who does this it is human nature this is how we work in today's world everybody wants to feel like they're getting the good value for something or they're getting a good deal or a good price this is why people in general shop at Amazon and Walmart because they're getting more bang for their buck in those places now that's another conversation and a bigger issue but what you're dealing with is that's totally normal for the client to want to feel like they're getting a good deal from you and you have trained them into a very bad habit of doing this consistently so this is happening on every job you need to take some of the blame for that and realize that you've allowed that to happen let me give you an analogy here that's a little bit different but I think it's the same ballpark so last week I had my car work done right I took my car into the shop and I know I needed a tune-up and there were some things that need to be replaced and we went through the list of what that was gonna be and what it was gonna cost and I'm walking out of the room and I thought oh I need to get my tires checked as well because I think the treads getting low so I go in there and I said hey can we check the tread on the tires I don't know what and they said oh yeah yeah and they did not turn around and say Ted we got you on the tires no problem they didn't say that what they did is they took me over they said yes your tread is a little low you can replace a nag replacement then they took me over the computer and then they showed me what the pricing they could get on that was and they were very clear so the expectations were met as to what I could expect if I wanted new tires and then it's up to me to decide whether or not I want to add those into the hole now I did respect them for that and I respected them for actually trying to get me a good deal on the tires so I still felt like I was getting bang for my buck but that's the difference you know you got to be really careful about when clients want to throw more into the job because that happens all the time and you've got to understand how to say no and is not easy now with your current situation now you're gonna need to say no and you're gonna need to do it pretty quick because I I don't know what the specifics are around your job with this client or what the work is but you're obviously feeling in a pinch and so you need to do one of two things you need to have a conversation with the client would be the first suggestion and I know that's not an easy conversation to have because the risk there is that the client might be offended because all of a sudden you're asking to charge for something you've been throwing in and that's difficult and they may say no we're gonna go with somebody else maybe they'll be offended and upset with you I mean there's a lot of fear that we have in having that conversation client relationships are no different than personal relationships and whether you're married or whether you're dating somebody or even just your friends sometimes you have to have difficult discussions with people and they're not comfortable working relationships are no different in fact sometimes they're even more at stake because we spend time more time with clients working than we do with our friends and family sometimes and again that's another conversation but I know it's hard but the result is is that one of two things is gonna happen though you're going to say yes we understand we like the work that you do let's agree on a new price moving forward or they will say sorry we're gonna leave if they say sorry we're gonna leave that may not be the end of the world which leads me to my second option if you don't want to have that conversation maybe the best thing to do is to cut bait and fire the client and move on that's hard too especially because at the beginning of that question you mentioned that the consistency is there with this client and that they are consistent you work for them a lot but you can't do it like you're doing and I think you know that but moving forward I'll end with this story so back when I used to do freelance work there was a time where I had a very difficult client and to make a long story short we were still negotiating the job I had already agreed on the price but we were still trying to determine with the start and end dates we're gonna be and this guy who's for product thing for a catalog and he was just calling every five it's an adding more to it and we'd already agreed on a price since like no we can't do this and it was the point where he was really kind of getting annoying with this and I remember one day I got up I got in the shower by the time I got out of chair he called twice and I thought I can't do this because I just knew going into this relationship into this job was just going to be too much for me to handle and I was actually gonna lose money on it as well as my own sanity and I picked up the phone I made a very difficult phone call and called him and said you know what I can't do it I'm sorry you're gonna have to hire somebody else I'm sorry I can't be more specific than that best of luck to you the guy actually got really upset and blew up at me and I got off the loan pretty quickly but I was so relieved after doing that and I know this is probably not like your situation but what I'm getting to is what I felt in the end of this is I was relieved and I realized that the time I could have wasted on that job being miserable was time I could have spent looking for a better client time I could have spent on my portfolio time I could have spent making phone calls and emails and trying to reach out to people and doing social media and all those things and then it would blossom into a better client in the long run and you know what it did work out exactly that way I did find a pretty good client after that and I realized too at that point that that client wouldn't have come along because I would have been completely engulfed in this other job that wasn't right and I know this is a lot but I you know you got to do something and I hope that helps you and I'm sorry it's not an answer that is just really comfortable or easy to do it is a difficult thing to deal with it's a client relationship and I hope this helps and I encourage you to deal with this as soon as possible and please keep me posted because I want to hear how this works out and thank you for letting me share this with everybody else on the show because I think this is stuff that needs to be talked about it needs to be understood needs to be looked at and thank you guys for watching if you guys enjoyed this video please remember to like it and share it with your friends and as always hit that subscribe button and subscribe to the art of photography so you'll always be up to date on all the latest and greatest videos that we do here thanks Emily for a question thank you guys for watching I'll see you guys in the next video latertoday's question comes to us from Emily and she writes dear Ted I really appreciate the QA videos that you do I really took the advice that you've given about working for free to heart but I'm having a problem with a client this particular client is very consistent but the jobs pay very little on top of that it seems like every time I work for this person they make demands that go past the price that we've agreed on I don't really know how to deal with this perhaps it's just that I need more experience do you have any suggestions how do I say no and not jeopardize the working relationship Emily this is an excellent question and thank you for asking and yes you do have yourself in a little bit of a pickle and I understand you have a client who you're saying on the one hand is very consistent in the work that they're giving you they're hiring you over and over again you know you work for them frequently on the other hand you're saying that when you do jobs for this particular client that you're in a situation where they are making demands that are more than you're being paid for on the job and it's becoming uncomfortable well I would encourage you to actually look at this a little bit differently that is not the kind of work that you want to have consistently and I know that may be hard to hear but that's looking at it the wrong way you need to figure a way to deal with this now the other thing you're telling me is that maybe you need more experience Emily your experience is happening right now you need to start learning from it and this is really important a lot of people think oh I just need more experience or someday it's just going to come out of the blue and hit me and I'll understand no it's not you're doing the work right now and I think you know that and it's just a matter of understanding how to deal with this particular situation right now and how you can learn from that moving forward let's talk about your situation and before we do that I want to back up and let's talk about business 101 here and what the core of running a business is it's very simple if you have a business you need to make more than you're spending it's that simple it's amazing how many people particularly creative people will over complicate this I used to when I did client work it's been a while and so hindsight is 20/20 but I did client work for seven or eight years and I've had this particular problem myself and it's not comfortable and it's not easy to deal with but it is really important that you understand that is running a business you need to make more than you're spinning otherwise you're not in if you're breaking even you're not in business you need to make more than you spend it is that simple businesses cost money you need to eat you need to pay your own bills your business will cost money you need to be on paying yourself you need to host your website you need to make business cards sometimes you have to travel sometimes you have expenses that come up as part of a job sometimes you have to hire people depending on how big your business is you know you might have rent you might have power bills and phone bills and internet bills on top of that rent if you have an office space and so all those things are your business expenses you have to make more than you're spending on those it's that simple and so right now if you have a situation with a client who's come along and they're asking you to do a little bit more for the job than you're comfortable charging for or that you're not charging for that work because you have a relationship with them you know I can't totally pin this on the client because I hate to tell you this it won't be the last client who does this it is human nature this is how we work in today's world everybody wants to feel like they're getting the good value for something or they're getting a good deal or a good price this is why people in general shop at Amazon and Walmart because they're getting more bang for their buck in those places now that's another conversation and a bigger issue but what you're dealing with is that's totally normal for the client to want to feel like they're getting a good deal from you and you have trained them into a very bad habit of doing this consistently so this is happening on every job you need to take some of the blame for that and realize that you've allowed that to happen let me give you an analogy here that's a little bit different but I think it's the same ballpark so last week I had my car work done right I took my car into the shop and I know I needed a tune-up and there were some things that need to be replaced and we went through the list of what that was gonna be and what it was gonna cost and I'm walking out of the room and I thought oh I need to get my tires checked as well because I think the treads getting low so I go in there and I said hey can we check the tread on the tires I don't know what and they said oh yeah yeah and they did not turn around and say Ted we got you on the tires no problem they didn't say that what they did is they took me over they said yes your tread is a little low you can replace a nag replacement then they took me over the computer and then they showed me what the pricing they could get on that was and they were very clear so the expectations were met as to what I could expect if I wanted new tires and then it's up to me to decide whether or not I want to add those into the hole now I did respect them for that and I respected them for actually trying to get me a good deal on the tires so I still felt like I was getting bang for my buck but that's the difference you know you got to be really careful about when clients want to throw more into the job because that happens all the time and you've got to understand how to say no and is not easy now with your current situation now you're gonna need to say no and you're gonna need to do it pretty quick because I I don't know what the specifics are around your job with this client or what the work is but you're obviously feeling in a pinch and so you need to do one of two things you need to have a conversation with the client would be the first suggestion and I know that's not an easy conversation to have because the risk there is that the client might be offended because all of a sudden you're asking to charge for something you've been throwing in and that's difficult and they may say no we're gonna go with somebody else maybe they'll be offended and upset with you I mean there's a lot of fear that we have in having that conversation client relationships are no different than personal relationships and whether you're married or whether you're dating somebody or even just your friends sometimes you have to have difficult discussions with people and they're not comfortable working relationships are no different in fact sometimes they're even more at stake because we spend time more time with clients working than we do with our friends and family sometimes and again that's another conversation but I know it's hard but the result is is that one of two things is gonna happen though you're going to say yes we understand we like the work that you do let's agree on a new price moving forward or they will say sorry we're gonna leave if they say sorry we're gonna leave that may not be the end of the world which leads me to my second option if you don't want to have that conversation maybe the best thing to do is to cut bait and fire the client and move on that's hard too especially because at the beginning of that question you mentioned that the consistency is there with this client and that they are consistent you work for them a lot but you can't do it like you're doing and I think you know that but moving forward I'll end with this story so back when I used to do freelance work there was a time where I had a very difficult client and to make a long story short we were still negotiating the job I had already agreed on the price but we were still trying to determine with the start and end dates we're gonna be and this guy who's for product thing for a catalog and he was just calling every five it's an adding more to it and we'd already agreed on a price since like no we can't do this and it was the point where he was really kind of getting annoying with this and I remember one day I got up I got in the shower by the time I got out of chair he called twice and I thought I can't do this because I just knew going into this relationship into this job was just going to be too much for me to handle and I was actually gonna lose money on it as well as my own sanity and I picked up the phone I made a very difficult phone call and called him and said you know what I can't do it I'm sorry you're gonna have to hire somebody else I'm sorry I can't be more specific than that best of luck to you the guy actually got really upset and blew up at me and I got off the loan pretty quickly but I was so relieved after doing that and I know this is probably not like your situation but what I'm getting to is what I felt in the end of this is I was relieved and I realized that the time I could have wasted on that job being miserable was time I could have spent looking for a better client time I could have spent on my portfolio time I could have spent making phone calls and emails and trying to reach out to people and doing social media and all those things and then it would blossom into a better client in the long run and you know what it did work out exactly that way I did find a pretty good client after that and I realized too at that point that that client wouldn't have come along because I would have been completely engulfed in this other job that wasn't right and I know this is a lot but I you know you got to do something and I hope that helps you and I'm sorry it's not an answer that is just really comfortable or easy to do it is a difficult thing to deal with it's a client relationship and I hope this helps and I encourage you to deal with this as soon as possible and please keep me posted because I want to hear how this works out and thank you for letting me share this with everybody else on the show because I think this is stuff that needs to be talked about it needs to be understood needs to be looked at and thank you guys for watching if you guys enjoyed this video please remember to like it and share it with your friends and as always hit that subscribe button and subscribe to the art of photography so you'll always be up to date on all the latest and greatest videos that we do here thanks Emily for a question thank you guys for watching I'll see you guys in the next video later\n"