When is a Non-Retainer a Retainer?

Saturday, August 27, 2011

A few years back I had dreams of being on retainer. Something along the lines of “Fifty dollars a month gets you up to four hours work in any month; non-accumulative”.

Adjust the figures and terms as you see fit, but you get the idea.

Too many people were picking my brains (Rough Translation: I was permitting too many people to pick my brains) and getting away with it, and I was broke.

This week I realized that I have a few clients who treat me as if I was on retainer, when I’m not.

Typically I’ll make out a proposal for a small job, say $1,000 of work, and be whittled down to a fragment of the task at $275.

That’s fine if over the past 24 months we’ve been doing $50 of business each month, swings and roundabouts.

But when this niggling event occurs in isolation, it’s just plain meanness on the client’s part.

And I’m not sure that I want to do business with that sort of person.

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