[00:02:18] – Frankie
Hello. You’re listening to the Doing It For The Kids podcast, where we swear a bit too much and talk a bit too fast about freelance life with kids in the mix. I’m Frankie, and this is Steve.

[00:02:29] – Steve
Hello! Yes, each episode we take a question from the Doing It For The Kids community, do our best to answer it, but we start each episode by looking back at the last one. Last time we were talking about-,

[00:02:39] – Frankie
Losing a client, and then questioning your business, and trying to untangle your thoughts around that.

[00:02:46] – Steve
Nina Lenton said,

“Well, this is a question that caught my eye! I do own at least one website name with the word ‘untangling’ in.

Some of these were already mentioned in the episode, but I’d try…

Map out all the different thoughts and ideas on a mind map, or write them all down in bullet points or sentences — whatever works best for you as an individual. Then you have captured all the thoughts in your head so you can see them more clearly.

You may find just doing that helps, either to help you pull out some themes, see the anomalies, or maybe even a clear way forward. Or you may find you need to talk to someone else to crystallise those thoughts.

Also, just to say that these things take time. The word ‘untangling’ in the episode title is an appropriate one because often you find new layers and other tangles as you’re sifting through your thoughts, and you need to come back to it all again a few times. So be gentle with yourself.”

[00:03:36] – Frankie
Lucy Werner says,

“True story. My first piece of press coverage was about getting locked in public toilets! Not a cubicle — the entire building. When they automatically locked at a certain time. The front page of Tunbridge Courier was: ‘Two trapped in town toilet’. Yes, I was in there with someone else!”

[00:03:56] – Steve
So many questions.

She’s not the only getting stuck in a toilet…

I should say, if you didn’t hear the last episode, you’ll have to go back and listen to it to find out why we’re talking about toilets!

Charles Commins said,

“Let me tell you the story of when I got locked in a toilet just before a half marathon race…

I was running the English Half Marathon in Warrington, and on the day of the race, I met up with a few of my running club friends, one of which is a volunteer at the town’s Methodist Church, located right near the start/finish line.

With the queue for the official race portaloos ridiculously long, my friend said she could open up the church and let us use the toilets inside. So about 10 of us took her up on the offer and wandered around to the church.

It’s a big building with four floors with toilets on each one. I — needing a traditional pre-race poo — headed up to the third floor for some privacy. Having completed my business, I returned downstairs to the door, which we had all entered through, to find it locked.

Thinking my friends were waiting for me in one of the big rooms on the first floor, I headed back up the stairs, but they weren’t there! They had all finished a lot quicker than me and left the building locking up behind them.

With my phone in my bag in the race’s baggage area, I had no option but to start shouting and banging on the windows to get someone — nay — anyone’s attention!!

Alas, no one noticed me from outside, and after 10 minutes, I resigned to missing the race and potentially spending the rest of the day and night inside the church alone…

Thankfully, with five minutes to spare before the start gun sounded, my friend realised I was missing and came back to the church to let me out.”

WOW.

Imagine you’ve trained for a half marathon and you’re going to miss it because you had an over long poo at the church. How that hasn’t already been turned into a film, I will never know.

[00:09:36] – Frankie
Okay, episode 117, we have an anonymous question…

Anonymous says,

“Hi, Frankie and Steve.

I was asked by an organisation recently how much I’d charge to redesign a publication they produce three times a year, with a view to then designing that, along with other publications for them going forward.

Problem is, I sent the price in, and now I’m convincing myself I’ve undercharge for the amount of work it will be! Kicking myself for letting the imposter syndrome voices in.

What would you do? Suck it up because it’s your mistake, or go back to them and correct yourself so you don’t kick yourself each time you work on it (providing I even get the job).
Have you ever revised a quote after sending it? Thanks.”

Well. Have YOU ever revised a quote after sending it Steve?

[00:10:21] – Steve
Have I wanted to? Yes. Have I? No, I don’t think I have, have you?

[00:10:33] – Frankie
Okay, so I think we need to clarify what we mean by sending a quote…

Because early days Frankie, I didn’t have a quote with any T&C’s. There were no legalities! There was no, like, “By accepting this quote”, blah, blah, blah. It was just maybe an email with me going, “Oh, I reckon it will cost this much.”

Or is it that you’ve sent them a quote, it’s attached to a contract, that contract has been signed by both parties. You know, like… What do we mean I ‘sent a quote’?

Then there’s the middle ground, isn’t there? Where you’ve sent a quote without the contract, but it has some terms.

Is the sword in the stone? Is it stuck? Is that it? Or is there wiggle room? Like, what is the agreement here?

[00:11:16] – Steve
But then beyond legalities is the psychological thing, isn’t it?

[00:11:19] – Frankie
Yes, that’s the other side of it.

[00:11:21] – Steve
Because whether it’s on a PDF or it’s in an email, they’re opening it up and they’re going-,

[00:11:25] – Frankie
“That’s how much it costs!” Yeah.

[00:11:27] – Steve
And then you turn around and say, “Oh, actually…”

[00:11:32] – Frankie
But say you did get the job based on a quote that you feel is genuinely, grossly underpaid. Do you just have to suck it up? Maybe you do.

[00:11:47] – Steve
I mean, if it was so drastically bad — what can you do? Feeling your pain.

[00:11:54] – Frankie
We don’t know the answer I don’t think!

[00:11:56] – Steve
I guess you could argue, right? If you’re going to feel so annoyed about actually winning the work, then what harm is there in saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, I sent you a previous figure. It should have been this.”

[00:12:09] – Frankie
What about just saying, “Look, I’m really sorry, I made a mistake. I’ve looked back at this document and I’ve made a mistake.”

[00:12:20] – Steve
True. Because if they then say, “Oh, well, in that case, we don’t want to work with you” then you didn’t want that work anyway at the original price. That’s kind of what I think I’m thinking here is — what have you got to lose if you really don’t want to win the work at that price anyway?

[00:12:38] – Frankie
What I will add in here is two things about contracts and protecting yourself with this sort of scenario. One is a ‘get out’ clause. So you can get out of a job for whatever reason. I personally feel so much better not feeling inexplicably tied to a job. Like, life happens, kids etc. There’s so many outside things that can go wrong. So to have the option to be able to leave a job for whatever reason I think is a good thing to have on a contract.

And also, if you are a service-based business — this is clearly a designer! — if you’re at all quoting for that kind of work, you have to lay out how many amends you are going to get for that money as well.

What I would hate to happen is not only have you grossly underquoted, but you haven’t set any kind of boundaries on how many changes they get. So you could be like, “I’m going to do this for £100”, and now we’re on version 35!

If you grossly underquoted, they accepted the job, and you got a contract signed and you realised it was too little — if you had a contract that allowed you to get out of the grossly underpaid job (if that’s what you wanted to do) that would be helpful.

But in terms of managing expectations and the fluffier side of it, the conversation about it… How you frame it is the key. So rather than, “I’m really sorry, I realised this is too little money,” it could just be like, “I’m really sorry, I clearly made a mistake. I missed a zero off that!!”

[00:14:09] – Steve
I missed two zeros!

Or maybe you want to have in your terms that on a longer term project like this, you have the right to be able to revisit the price after you’ve done the initial job — once you have a chance to actually know what they’re asking of you.

So, I edit podcasts for people. And people might say, “How much is it to edit a podcast?” Then I will think, “Okay, well, if you’re saying it’s going to be this long, then I think this amount.” And then you might find that actually they always give you terrible sounding audio quality, so you have to spend loads of time tidying it up. You might find that they often go off on tangents and you have to keep-, imagine that, Frankie! Going off on tangents! And you have to keep editing random stuff out. Like, you get a better sense of it once you’ve done the job once or twice. And so I think, yeah, sometimes there’s that reasoning as well.

[00:15:10] – Frankie
Yeah, very similar in my industry. It sounds like they would be doing potentially multiple publications across the year. That first publication is going to set the tone and is almost like a learning experience for both you and the client. I might also do a thing where I phase out a project if it’s a big one. Phase one — I will do a ‘look and feel’ example doc that has some cover options and a couple of spreads to give you a sense of what the overall thing is going to look like. It’s like a little mini, like a pre-, an hors d’œuvre to the main course, and it’s quoted separately. So I would get paid for that and then go on to quote for the full however many pages — potentially hundreds of pages! — with that experience behind me, that process behind me.

But you’re right to have something — again in writing — that says, “I can change my mind about future publications” or whatever.

I think the other side of this question is: What can I be doing to avoid getting into this scenario in the first place? And there are probably a million things we’ve talked about in other episodes about pricing and whatnot.

But as far as I can tell, you were given a decent brief. I mean, the amount of briefs that people just don’t write or there’s just a sentence in an email adn they expect you to write up a quote. You know, it’s madness, really.

I’m not saying you haven’t done this, but get on the phone with this person and talk about what the project actually is. What is the format? How many pages is it? What’s actually involved from your perspective? Is there going to be graphs and infographics… what is it? What is the scale of this thing? You can also look back at previous quotes that you’ve done for similar projects and cross-reference that process and what you got paid for that — and how you felt about what you got paid for that! — and use that information to write this one.

[00:17:01] – Steve
You can-,

[00:17:02] – Frankie
Cross-check with a mate?

[00:17:03] – Steve
Yeah, I was going to say. Run it past somebody else!

You could also leaving a breather… I mean, this is hard if somebody wants the quote *NOW*.

[00:17:16] – Frankie
Can I just say, though. If someone wants a quote *NOW* it’s a red flag? Sorry. Continue…

[00:17:22] – Steve
You know, If you write an email — how will I feel about it tomorrow morning?

[00:17:26] – Frankie
Yes, totally agree with that. Don’t send it yet. Sit on it overnight. Yeah, and definitely talking it through with somebody that you trust. Ideally a friend in your industry who knows what the job actually involves would be good.

[00:17:40] – Steve
More often than not, it is likely you’ll be undervalued.

[00:17:44] – Frankie
This is what they say! “Kicking myself for letting the imposter syndrome voices in”. And we all do it. I swear to god. We all do it. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s helpful or not to hear that, but we all are talking ourselves down on our quotes, not talking ourselves up.

[00:17:59] – Steve
You write a price, you delete. Click, click, click, click. And then you go, “No,” type it in again, and then you go click, click, click, click. And then you type in a higher one. And you go, “Oh yeah,” And then you come back and you go, click, click.

[00:18:14] – Frankie
I do that thing where I go through line by line, I try and break down a project into different elements of it, and I price those up. Then I add them all up and go, “No, that’s too much!” But individually, they feel reasonable to me, and then it’s suddenly like, “Oh, but that’s-, no. I can’t be doing that. That’s far too many zeros,” or whatever it is. But that’s all just nonsense, really.

[00:18:34] – Steve
I do think this person is right to want to revisit it, though, because if you are likely to have that ongoing work, that should be a brilliant thing.

[00:18:44] – Frankie
And you do your best work when you are getting paid fairly. You just do.

[00:18:49] – Steve
And you never know, these people might refer you to other people or leave and go to another company. And you don’t want them leaving going, “Oh, yeah, this person…”

[00:18:57] – Steve
“…she’s well cheap!”

[00:18:58] – Steve
“Five hundred quid cheaper than everyone else!”

[00:19:00] – Frankie
Totally. Yes, that is definitely not a scenario you want to be in.

I think bottom line is I would be inclined to suck it up if it’s a niggly amount. But if you suddenly realise it’s grossly under, I would do the-, “Look, I made a mistake on this one. Can I reconsider this quote?”

[00:19:15] – Steve
And include whatever reason you want to give.

[00:19:16] – Frankie
“I was really tired. I haven’t slept for 10 years. I’m really tired, and I messed this one up!”

[00:19:23] – Steve
Yeah, “I’m really sorry, I was locked in a church, and I was shouting my quote through a locked window!”

Okay, we would love to hear your comments on this.