the rollercoaster of shit [idgaf 033]

Ah the sweet sweet release of (project) death.

I’ve seen people sharing stories about client relationships ending because they were just too awesome and overdelivered and the client grew so much they no longer needed them.

{{first name | Friend}}… this is NOT one of those stories.

The family and I were on the way back from a lovely 10 days in Fiji, and while waiting for the airport valet to bring the car around (yeah I’m a fancy bitch), I open my emails like an idiot, only to see this beauty from a client:

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

For some perspective, this project had been a major pain. I’m talking five people on every call, all with conflicting goals, and everything you can imagine that leads to. Not to mention taking weeks to reply to an email.

I’d gotten some pretty sweet concepts over to them before I left for Fiji, so I was hoping the call was about narrowing the choice down.

Oh Nick. Nick Nick Nick. Sweet, innocent, naive Nick.

“Yeah look, I’m sorry to do this but we’ve been going through a lot of shit internally, and turns out what we told you we wanted is wrong. Can we do a chat to run through what we actually need? I totally get it if you need to charge more, I know I would.”

Well.. okay I guess.

Ended up having the chat and yeah, it was going to need a fresh concept fml. So naturally, I shot over an appropriately chunky invoice. Discounted slightly as a gesture of goodwill, sure, but still a decent chunk of change.

Well, they tried to haggle 💀

Holy shit. It’s been so long since anyone’s pulled that shit, and I totally was NOT expecting it from a business the size of these guys.

I, of course, refused to budge, and (after some grumbling) they paid so I could do a new concept.

And a new concept I did do! Not to toot my own horn or anything, but the concept was perfect for them. It wasn’t just what they wanted, but also what they needed. And they loved it during the presentation!

That’s why the email I got 3 weeks later pissed me off so much.

Yup. And to add insult to injury: the email they sent me was AI generated, and none of what it said matched up. It was like the prompt was “please generate a polite and professional email to fire our web designer” and then copied and pasted without even reading it.

Uffff.

And look, I get how it seems. Someone complaining about being fired means they probably did a shit job, right?

WRONG BITCH!

That’s happened to me before, and this wasn’t it. I’m way too much of a coward to show a client a concept without having shown a whole lot of other people first. The design had the seal of approval 5 times over, plus the client loved it during the presentation, remember?

Personally, I think the big boss at the place got shitty I didn’t do the haggle on the change fee - but ultimately, it doesn’t matter. I got fired. Boo hoo.

I had such mixed feelings.

On one hand, I’d had enough of these guys and was contemplating firing them myself if they didn’t just sign off. On the other hand, if they’d signed off I would have gotten my next milestone payment which was pretty big.

Well, technically I guess my feelings weren’t that mixed: I hated the client and was happy they were gone, I just wanted the money hahaha.

Well, good thing money isn’t everything. No more dealing with their shit yayyy!!!
Even though I hope with every fiber of my being that their next website ends up being horrible and causes them to go out of business.

The icing on the cake was when I told my wife, and she said “thank fuck, they sucked.” 🤣

Look, it’s not the first time a project ended badly (fuck you pumpability), or something hasn’t gone my way.

I’ve had “sure thing” proposals never get signed. Or clients that were amazing but flipped out near the end of the project. And the amount of times people have changed their minds after I’ve put in lots of effort…. yeah I’ve been doing this shit for 10 years and I’ve got some stories.

Early in my career, these situations would take me out for at least a day. Sometimes even longer. So so so so laaaaame.

I’d sit there angry, stewing over it, complaining to friends, and not really doing anything within the business.

Generally being a sour little bastard and kinda unpleasant to be around #rip

Of course that’s very different to the Nick of today. Today’s Nick is way more handsome and confident, and doesn’t give a fuuuuuuuck what other people think (once he’s had a bit of time to process).

See, that email came through first thing in the morning.

I spent a grand total of 37 minutes being annoyed and complaining to my friend Cass (she called them cunts oooOOOoooh), revisiting every interaction to see how else I could have approached things without sacrificing my values, and questioning whether I was even cut out for this stuff…. and then moved on.

Let’s see what else happened that day:

Basically, ended up being a pretty awesome day, and the petty part of me (which is a fairly big part tbh) is like “hah suck it losers.”

Shit goes wrong sometimes, and we can’t really control it. But we can control how we react.

It’s mega fucking easy to sit and cry and be angry and upset. Sooooo easy. Trust me, I used to do it all the time. But that keeps you in a shit mood and then you lose all this time that you could have spent being awesome.

So let me give you a better option: be a petty bitch like me, and force yourself to have an awesome day. Make some calls. Write something. Finish a job. Chase up some work. Whatever feels right.

It keeps you more productive and you get shit done. And sometimes the shit you get done gets you new and better clients, or opens up new doors that you didn’t even know were nearby.

And sometimes… it does nothing haha. But hey, it’s still a lot nicer when you feel happy and productive than being all emo.

Shitty clients can fuck off. Stay awesome.

Cowabunga,
Nick Gulic