
Your project is not my baby
Imagine this scenario, you receive a new enquiry, you ask all the usual questions, the response is great and the client seems like a great match. You’re too excited to get this project slip that you forget about all your other existing commitments; you then decide it’s best to book a call for 10 pm tonight.
Then, you remember about the other commitments you have today, but after all your family, friends, and daily life events aren’t as important as your newfound friend and her new ‘family’.
The project is so exciting that you ignore all the hard work you’ve put towards creating a perfectly organised calendar for your perfect week of meditation, healthy life-style, fitness, productivity and weekly friendly meet ups.
It is 10 pm, your new friend is at the other side of the world, you are sitting in your dimly lit bedroom, she’s dashing between calls, meetings and various other important errands but she decides it’s better if we see each other’s face, after all, who wouldn’t like to see what kind of cool life-style their newfound friend is living?
I must confess, her office looks amazing and I am a bit jealous now. I can see people having fun, table tennis and hover boards are still a thing (are they?). I can see someone hovering past, his company’s t-shirt looks cool, he has a massive grin on his face, he looks happy, and I want to be there too. Please friend, make me an offer, send me some swag, I want to be part of the team!
We start talking and everything seems to be going well, nothing is going to stop me from enjoying every moment I can with my newfound friend, not even when she says: “We love your work but…”
- We are talking to other designers.
- We don’t have the budget, you were open about your prices but we wanted to see if we could work something out.
- We believe in well-designed products but we need this full redesign done in two weeks.
- We need you to do this UI test for us, we worked with so many designers and we didn’t like their styles / attitude, we are confident yours will be exactly what we are looking for.
- You need to sit with us in the office for the duration of the project; we don’t work with remote designers.
I think, “Nothing is going to stop me now”, but then I hear the inevitable: “We want to make you part of our family, make this project your baby”.
I have heard this phrase so many times and with every single client mentioning it, the project didn’t end well.
No matter what you say, the only thing I hear now is “we will absorb your soul into our corporation; you will never have any time to look after your perfectly-planned weekly schedules, forget about yoga classes and meditation, forget about learning that cool new thing. Slack needs to be switched on at every hour of the day, don’t forget to activate the notifications, we want you to become one of us, forever!”
Dear client, you don’t need to pretend to be a family in order to convince me to work on your project, but equally so I don’t want to look after your baby during the night, I don’t need to answer your urgent cries for help at 5 am because you are in a different time-zone or you don’t know how to manage your projects, I don’t want to put your family above my own family.
Dear client, I don’t really want to adopt your baby, I am happy with my own life.
Dear client, you were already my online friend, I really believed in you, your project and your cool life-style, but this is not me. It’s not your fault, you believe in that corporate family culture that you’re so deep in it and want others to become one of you.
Dear client, the best companies aren’t families; they don’t pretend to be one. They work in favour of families and a healthy work-life balance.
