Juls: Hi, I'm Jules, I'm your host of the Honest Designer Diaries. bonus episode that I'm gonna bring you now and again. Whenever conversations come out of the chats I have with our designers and it just reminds me of a certain situation that happened and I want to share in a bit more detail. And this is after my chat with Viviene and we were talking about red flag clients, those boundaries that often get blurred. this one is about the Saturday night SOS client. And I know before I even start that so many other designers and creators are going to have some similar story to what I'm about to tell you or a similar situation that's happened to them. But there will be a moment when a client has messaged you in a panic. You've looked at your phone and every sensible part of your brain is saying no, don't do it. And then you stupidly find yourself agreeing to in fact do it. It's honestly such a designer thing to do. You're probably nodding along with me as you listen to this episode. Yep, Jill's done it too. So a few years ago, it was a Saturday night. My kids were away to their dad's, so my husband and I had a rare Saturday night free. He'd went away to pick up a takeaway, I'm in the shower. And yes, we're all thinking, so glamorous, but Chinese takeaway, in our jammies, watching a movie, because the kids were still wee without them being there, was a luxury for us at the time. when you're building your business and freelancing, you work all the time. my husband's also self-employed, so this is a rare night off for the two of us. and I could see my phone lighting up on the counter in the bathroom as I was in the shower. At first I ignored it but then it kept ringing and immediately I go to it could be mum or dad, something going to happen to them. it could be my husband's parents so you start thinking it must be an emergency if they keep constantly ringing me back to back. So I quickly got out of shower, wrapped a turn around and picked up the phone and I could see SOS please call me right away. and was a client, but it wasn't just a client, she was also my friend. And this is an important detail because this is when the boundaries already start to get bit wobbly and it's even harder to kind of put those firmly in place. So I phoned her back, she's in full panic mode. because they had an event happening the next day. this was a big important event for her, And the banners they were planning to use, when they took them out of storage, they were all damaged. and they were bashed and there was no way they could get used. Now don't know about you but if you find out at 7 o'clock at night that your banners are all ruined then you'd probably just sit on floor and cry and not know what to do next but she had managed to source a printer who was willing to come in first thing this Sunday morning and print those banners for her before her event. which to be fair is really impressive. And knowing how good they are on the phone at persuading me, I can see that this is a great skill that she has. It's hard to say no to her when she's on the phone to you. And the only tiny piece in this puzzle that the banner still needed to be designed. That night, and by me. This is where I'd love to tell you that I was very sensible and said that this is an impossibility. and that I'm not available at such short notice this Saturday night but of course I didn't. Of course I said yes I'd work on them. Now I know this sounds ridiculous and I can sit here and say to you, well if a client phoned you Saturday night, no of course it answers no but it's really hard to say no when it's also a friend and it's also hard to say no when you know you can help and yes okay you have plans but those plans can't change. And that's trap, isn't it? Because essentially we're people pleasers, we want to help people, we don't want to ruin their plans and their events. So you know they would struggle to find another designer if you said no. So all these things are going on in your head and I said yes. So I ran upstairs and jumped on my laptop and started working. My husband came home, he's the Chinese, didn't even need an explanation, I just said the client's name. He rolled his eyes, he knew immediately what had happened. Last minute emergency, because this is the thing. This client of mine frequently came to me for emergencies. It wasn't like this was a one-off. If it was one-off, I would have absolutely jumped in and said yes, but they seemed to thrive on last-minute emergencies. And I was often the person who got phone calls at 10 at night or the night before or frequently lastminute.com. So my husband plaited up my food and brought it up for me. He went downstairs to watch a movie on his own. and I'm trying to design these banners as quick as I can. And of course, because it was last minute, the nuclear brief literally said... I trust you, you'll do something amazing, just do something quick, we just need something. And this sounds all very flattering, but I also know this client very well and it's never as simple as that. And also assets that I had to work with weren't great, wasn't a brilliant logo. There was an image embedded in the logo which made it difficult to scale and for banners you needed to be able to scale. So I already knew I was going to be at a hindrance when I working on this artwork. And then of course, Hendova the design and she immediately phones up and says, nah, I don't like So in my head I'm thinking I'm meant to make my Pong Crackers in peace right now but okay what don't you like? And I now know this is not going to be simple one hour job. That's still need to artwork. I'm now going to be doing changes back and forth. And that's what I did for the rest of the evening. Back and forth, back and forth, making alts, sending them for review before I could even start an artwork. get more feedback, more changes. And my time eventually finished at around 11 o'clock at night. the bed that I really want to talk about. was because, yes, was of course like now I can laugh at it. And it's one of those ridiculous moments of its power freelance life. And it's often about how common it is for designers to get in exactly this kind of situation. usually because we are helpful. We are problem solvers. This is literally what people hire us for. We are used to being the people who step in at the last minute in an emergency to sort things out and make things look good. And this is a lovely skill to have until somebody starts taking advantage of that skill. And they feel like they have unlimited access to us and our time, even late at night and on weekends. And the difficult thing with boundaries often slip in in little tiny ways before you even realise what's happening. It's these little things where you've helped out a little bit and then the next time the client pushes it a bit more and a bit more and before you know because you have been helpful one time last minute, this then becomes their norm and expectation. Sometimes it could be just replying late at night because you're still at your desk anyway. or you do that little extra thing without charging for it. Sometimes it starts with giving a friend a discount because it feels awkward not to. sometimes it starts with saying yes to emergency because you know you can technically fix it. and then suddenly one-off fever becomes the way they want to work with you all the time which is what happened with me. And there's also I think a hidden layer of worry that freelancers have that work isn't always predictable, work isn't always steady. Sometimes you're busy, sometimes you're quiet. And there's some of that expectation you should be grateful for the work that's coming your way. And sometimes you're worried if you say no then if that client goes elsewhere then that client won't ever return to you. They'll perceive you as being a difficult one when that's not the case at all. So instead of saying, no I'm not available tonight, you start bargaining with yourself. It won't take that long. I'll just get this done. They're really stressed. It's only this once. I can charge a bit extra. I don't want to let them down. And I kind of laugh now because I didn't charge extra. In fact, I discounted my rate that I charged that job because there's also that bloody friendship boundary there. And I hate that I admit doing that, but... And that's just in reality what I did do. And that phrase can be just. Should honestly come with a warning light above it. because can't be just is never just. Can we move this? Can we add that? Can we see a different font? Can we see a different colour? Can we try a different layout? And Cami just makes it sound like it's a really small and easy thing for us to do when we know behind it that could be a half an hour or another hour's work. And because designers understand how to do the thing, clients assume they're doing the thing must be really quick too. They don't see the thinking, the set up, the checking, the exporting, the file sizes, specs, the fact that moving one bit out of the way affects the whole layout. They see the end result and think, well that didn't take you that long. all. some do. Let's face don't know what's involved. and when I posted this on socials, wasn't until somebody actually said, well, why didn't they just use the original artwork and get them reprinted? I didn't even enter my head to ask them, which now thinking about it, yes, why didn't they just take the previous artwork? and reprint it. And I think it's because they saw that they were damaged and then thought, well, here's an opportunity to get nicer vanners designed. And yeah, good old Julie always answers my calls, always does things last minute. And even on Saturday night, I wish she'll do it. I now realize thinking ahead, that's what the client was thinking. And I should have just said, get the original reprinted. So please don't think this is me sitting here telling you what not to I'm still very much recovering from, yep, it's no problem. Designer, I've got better. And I've got better with age and getting more pissed off with things. and then realizing that that same client does the same thing a couple of months later. And the friendship part is really a messy situation to be Because when that client is also a friend, business hours just don't count. And it can feel suddenly rude to say no. Charging properly feels really awkward. thing no feels personal pushing back on times, feel like I'm not being supportive to them. And before you know it, you're making decisions based on friendship rather than being a client boundary. But this can build resentment very quickly and in the end resentment did build up with this client. Because I did sit there doing a project thinking, why am I doing this again? Why didn't I say no? Why did I leave it so late? Why did I answer the phone? Why am I discounting this again when I shouldn't be? I should be charging extra. Why am I the one fixing this last minute when it wasn't my problem in first place? And now I'm reserving this horrible because it starts to both the work and the friendship. that particular client relationship went on for years after this. And to be honest, it took me far too long to recognise the pattern. late messages, last minute requests, that only you can do this, only you can fix this. The pricing never quite reflected the pressure. The feeling that because I made myself available once, I had changed relationship to expect that kind of availability all the time. And this is what I think you guys will also recognise that you might do too. It took lots and lots of little things happening. for me to one day look back and think this is just not working anymore. I'm shaping my whole working life around someone else's emergency all the time. And I talk about this with Viviene a lot in episode five It's called Bad Clients, Bloody Boundaries. And honestly, you should go and give it a wee listen. Because it was one of those chats where the two of us had so much to say on the subject that it could have been a two hour episode. Vivian had some brilliant stories of her own. And we talk about that weird guilt we feel as designers when we do say no and put a boundary in place. And how we're very quick to spot when clients are crossing boundaries with other designers, but it's so hard to recognize when we're doing it ourselves. And I'd convince myself that giving up my Saturday night was worth it because somebody else needed me. Now I am much more precious about saving my Saturday night, for myself and for family. but it's such an easy trap to fall into when you care about your work and you care about people. So if you listen to this and you have your own version of a Saturday Night SOS, I would love to hear it. Come and tell me because I know you've got one. And if you haven't listened to the full episode with Boobie Nae yet, go and give it a listen. And so you will be glad to know that I no longer work with that client, but it took me until they broke quite a few more boundaries and last minute requests and taking advantage of my good nature and willingness to help before I found the courage to say no more. But I eventually did. So yes, I kind of just wanted to share about how difficult it is to basically put these boundaries in place. As a designer especially, you are a people pleaser and I am what I can now call a recovering people pleaser. And right now, I'm to protect my next Chinese takeaway with my life and not let anyone disrupt it. Thanks for listening and I'll chat to you soon. Bye.