Category: Client Nightmares

You know when someone reaches over and steals a fry, and for the slightest split second of a moment you’re pissed? It’s really only for a split second, because immediately afterward, you tell yourself to stop being greedy, and that you didn’t need to be a fatass, anyway. But there’s just something about an unauthorized eater, right? Multiply that feeling by 100,000 and that’s what it feels like to have someone steal money from you. Except you aren’t just pissed

Everybody worries about being nice these days. We tiptoe around our own words, soften everything we say, and generally ask permission to have our own opinion. But unfortunately, nice isn’t a selling point. People do business with competent people, with smart people, with successfully branded people, with interesting people, with creative people, and with people whom they think can help them get ahead. They do not do business with nice people. Not if that’s all you’re bringing to the table,

When you get on the phone with a prospective client and they want your hourly rate / a quote on the spot, even though YOU ARE SWEATING THROUGH YOUR PITS AND OH, SHIT, WHAT DO I SAY??! Try: “Let me run some numbers and get back to you in an hour with some options!” When you actually need to give the client your quote (no shrinking, hedging or hesitation allowed!). Try: “My price for a project of this scope is

Money: Love making it. Hate asking for it. (Unless the Tooth Fairy’s involved, in which case it’s all PAY UP, ASSHOLE.) Money talk makes us sweaty and uncomfortable and fidgety—mostly because we’re all trying to pretend money “ain’t a thing” when, in reality, it is a thing, and it’s called shoes. But just because you’d rather talk to a stranger about your period than ask a client for more money, the time comes when you’re going to have to, ahem,

Too often you do things you shouldn’t. Because you worry that if you don’t answer that email at 11pm, if you don’t squeeze them in this week, if you don’t work within their budget, if you don’t do the extra round of revisions for free, if you don’t accept their god damn Facebook request, there’s going to be a consequence. But there’s a difference between doing what’s best for your business. And doing what’s best for your guilty conscience. Make

If you’ve never had a Brazilian wax, I’m pretty sure you should try it. Not only will you feel supremely sexy, but you’ll also never complain again about stubbing your toe, jamming a finger, getting a paper cut, or getting violently smashed in the face with a crowbar. Compared to the pain of a Brazilian, those things? Child’s play. Speaking of savagely ripping out hundreds of delicate hairs using piping hot insect excretions, I’d like to mention something else that