Does my Son at Kmart earn more than you?

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[00:00:45] Kylie: Welcome back to a quick tip episode. We're at episode 46. Does my son at Kmart make more money than you? This was a post that I put up on Instagram recently. And I found it really interesting, the response to this, and I didn't really expect that it would get such a great response, but I guess it really resonated with the audience.

[00:01:08] And I sort of realized that this. you know, applies to many of us at some stage in our design journey. So the post went a little bit like this. My son applied for a job recently. It came out and it got me thinking the hourly rate advertised was 25 an hour. It reminded me of a client that I was speaking to recently.

[00:01:33] She explained how she'd over delivered and undercharged her client to keep her happy. When we audited the project, we quickly realized her hourly rate for that job was below the minimum wage. Can you relate to this? How many times have you over delivered? Gone through numerous amounts of changes.

[00:01:53] I actually was working with a designer last week who was up to version six of a design plan. And I remember just seeing V6 on her work. And I said, please don't tell me that's version six that you're giving the client. And she said, yes, it is. And I said, why are you giving them six versions? Mind you, this client went back to the original version.

[00:02:17] Okay. So this just goes to show that sometimes if we give our clients too many options, we confuse things. And they are coming to us for answers and we need to take the lead and give them those answers. Okay. So never give them too many options. I promise you, if you're giving them too many options, you're actually doing your client and yourself a disservice.

[00:02:41] Anyway, the reason why she had done this over delivered was that she didn't have a clear process in place. The number of revisions were not specified clearly for the client and her perfectionism took over. And I'm sure you can all relate to this. We are people pleasers. We're perfectionists. We want the client to walk away happy, but there is a fine line between, getting paid less than the minimum wage.

[00:03:09] And keeping your client happy and the way to do this is to have crystal clear communication and to have those terms in your contract when the client is onboarding. Okay. So when your client signing up with you, you need to tell them you get two revisions, for example, in this design presentation so that they actually know, okay, if I don't like the first revision.

[00:03:34] Then I'm going to get another one, a chance to have another one. And then on top of that, if I still don't like it as the client, then I realized then that I am going to have to pay for more work to be done. So don't let your projects get out of hand, have some clear boundaries in place. Get crystal clear with your contract and your onboarding process, know how to charge and be aware of the things that can pop up along the way.

[00:04:00] And plan for them, put some fat into your contracts as well. So the way that I like to do this is I like to add a little buffer into my pricing because I know that things don't always go as planned. And so that way I know that I'm covered. I'm not going to be out of pocket and I'm going to make money.

[00:04:21] Okay. Working for ourselves often means that we do not set clear boundaries. All processes. So as a solopreneur, you know, you're, w