Creative Context
Creative Context blends professional advice with a friendly, down-to-earth approach, making it a valuable resource for anyone navigating the complex relationship between clients and creative professionals. Through stories and practical tips, the podcast helps both sides understand each other’s perspectives and work toward more successful outcomes.
Creative Context
Creative Rush Jobs Can Make or Break Your Reputation
In this episode, co-hosts Douglas Duvall of Motif Media and Eric Wing of Darby Digital dive into the challenges of managing last-minute client requests, rush jobs, and the importance of setting boundaries in creative projects. They share real-world experiences, discuss strategies for transparent communication, and emphasize the value of educating clients about the complexities of high-quality deliverables.
Rush Jobs and Emergency Projects (0:00)
Client Communication and Project Management (9:15)
Handling Client Expectations and Deadlines (9:38)
Impact of Rush Jobs on Business and Reputation (9:51)
Lessons Learned from Rush Jobs (25:20)
Strategies for Managing Rush Jobs (28:46)
Balancing Client Needs and Business Viability (35:10)
Educating Clients on Project Complexity (36:24)
Final Thoughts and Recommendations (37:10)
Video Version:https://youtu.be/koz5fbvoOW8
📌 Topics Covered:
rush jobs, client expectations, pricing strategies, transparency, phased project approaches, client education, professional boundaries, vendor relationships, business reputation, personal anecdotes
📢 Key Takeaways:
transparent communication, client education, phased delivery, boundary setting, pricing strategy, reputation management, flexibility, collaboration, risk assessment, self-advocacy
🚀 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more insights into the world of creative professionals and those who work with them!
🔗 Connect with Us:
- Doug Duvall: [Motif Media](https://motifmedia.com)
- Eric Wing: [Darby Digital](https://withdarby.com)
- Podcast Website: [Creative Context](https://creativecontext.net)
🚀 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more insights into the world of creative professionals and those who work with them!
🔗 Connect with Us:
Douglas Duvall
motifmedia.com for high-end video production.
Eric Wing
withdarby.com for digital marketing and web development services.
Someone knows there's a big presentation coming up, and they've known about it for months, and then we're down to the two week wire, and now they've decided, let's plug some video in on some slides. In their mind, they might be thinking, Oh, that's simple. People can jam those out real quick. If you want a professional video in your in a presentation, you're trying to get $20 million from an investor, you want to just crap out a couple videos and plug them in. Let's get right into it. We're going to talk about rush jobs, emergency jobs, the last minute thing that might be a client's coming to you, and someone else had worked on it, and they weren't delivering or executing to a certain level, and now they're up against a time crunch, and they've come to you to fix it, right? Or you mean that be a variable, a lot of different variables to that example. What's your sort of experience with rush jobs? Yeah, I
Eric Wing:want to kick off with but with the example you just mentioned, what comes to mind is we used to do a lot of work in the event space, so for bands, for conferences, anything that requires advanced ticketing and a lot of Gala like Gala, galas for nonprofits and stuff like that. So we usually do a little bit of it, but that's where it comes up, is maybe they decide to do it on their own, but now, for one reason or another, the deadline is approaching and they're not ready. So they need to take it out. They need to, like, outsource it. And we, you know, maybe we're the ones that they outsource it to, or they hired a different vendor to do the work, and for one reason or another, that vendor, believe it or not, like, more times, more times than not, we're coming in because the other vendors disappear. I don't know if you deal with this or not, but people, I guess they just find the work to be too difficult, or something happens, and they just don't communicate to the client. So anyway, we have, we have the ghost vendors that we have to pick up the slack for sometimes as well. And you know, the process is kind of stressful. We used to just say yes to all of them, but our own reputation got put on the line because, you know, sometimes this guy's a real rat's nest of things to sort out, and there are certain things that just take time. And so, so the way that we organize those projects is not too dissim dissimilar to how we organize a regular project. The difference is going to be in cost, and the difference is going to be in the stress placed on myself and the team. That's really the difference. We will charge more for a rush job. We don't have like a like a table or just something that we like a checklist of, like, Okay, this will qualify for this about it's just based around, really how demanding the client we perceive the client to be, and how demanding is the deadline or the turnaround, if we have to be working, if there's more than one of us working on the project during Non, non typical office hours, that's where it really starts to become a you know, it's burdensome to everybody, right? Like we want to help and make sure that the client delivers on whatever, whatever it is that they need. But you know, it means that we're not able to service our other clients at that same time, perhaps, right? So, I don't know what book I read it in, but I guess there's a rule of thumb that if you're doing that, you actually charge for the lost time, the lost productivity on the work that you would have been doing, and you factor that in, so you have the actual billable hours to do the thing, and then you have the rush fee, because you have team working beyond normal working hours, and then you potentially for any time that is within working hours you're not able to focus on your day to day client work. You factor that in as well, and that's why I think some of these rush fees can get large. Now I must admit, we don't, we don't factor in the the lost productivity time with with the other work we might have been doing, we just, we just charge, you know, if our normal rate for the job is like 125 an hour, maybe we're charging 175 you know, 185 something like that, to bring in the resources required to do the work, right? So that type of thing. It hasn't happened a little while, I think, where we've received an emergency, we've been probably one of the more common things that we we experience is within our own projects, where suddenly the client needs something done sooner than they had expected. That's more common. And and specifically with web dev, anything graphic design related, software development, like all that kind of stuff where, you know, maybe there's a, there's a investment pitch coming up, oh, suddenly they need to have everything ready for the certain date, right? And so we'll negotiate the difference in what they had already agreed to pay for that project. And, you know, this, this rush fee component, and generally, we can make it work. So, yeah, those are the that's kind of how it shows up for us.
Douglas Duvall:Two Two examples over the past three years of like, in one case a new, very new client. And, well both, both cases new clients, kind of not existing clients that came to us with a like, hey, we thought of this thing be great if we could get this done quickly, kind of new clients right out the gate, like, Hey, can you help us out? One of them went really well, and one of them went very poorly. So there's great examples. Yeah, the one that went very well. They didn't just sort of kick us off in the lifeboat and say, get to shore. They were in the lifeboat with us. You know, they were working hard to be prepared for when we came. And, you know, we felt that energy and very much responded to like we're helping them get this done. They're helping us so we can maximize our time. And what they were doing is they were making a video to go alongside a proposal to get awarded some sort of grant or something, some sort of money for, I don't know the exact whatever, but they won. They got the they got the proposal, went through, and the, you know, the people commented on how they love the video, and they got whatever it is they were trying to get, and everybody was happy. And we did a bunch of other stuff for them, and we haven't done anything for them this year, but I guess they haven't needed anything, but we're, we're still in contact, and, yeah, it's a great relationship. And I think it stemmed from us stepping in and being like, Hey, we're here to help. We'll get it done. The other example was complete opposite. They we were thrown in the lifeboat, and did not feel as though they were. They're just kind of like, figure it out, yeah. And we did a bunch of work, and then they're like, and then they're like, Oh, this isn't really what we were wanted. We wanted something more like this. Yep. It's like, Oh, that would have been nice to have known when we initially, you know, spoke. So, yeah, you get the gist of where this project's going. Nobody's happy at the end, right? Yep. So that's kind of how it's come up in motif in my previous when I worked in the small ad agency, constantly I was thrown into fix an issue that maybe the internal team was working on a video, maybe their normal agency was working on a video. And to your point, the normal agency just sort of ghosted like, Oh, this is, you know, outside of our scope. We don't want to, you know, whatever, yeah, a laundry list of excuses. So we were sort of, you know, Joe, if you're listening, I doubt it, but Joe would love to, Joe would love to put us in a between a rock and a hard place. And somehow we always figured it out, so kudos to him. But in those instances, like you said, you know, I'm working. I didn't have a relationship or anything at the time. I didn't have a family, so working till midnight or 1am in the morning wasn't as big of a deal. And building up to is usually to an event, like they needed a video for an event, like a fundraiser or something, and, yeah, so that the emergency, like picking up the pieces of a broken project. I got really good at it, because I was put in that situation a lot. But I can't really speak to the the financing side of it, because I just wasn't in the loop. Yeah, but from our perspective, with those, those initial examples I talked about, I didn't really incorporate, like a rush fee, just thinking, hey, I want, I wanted to work with both those clients. They're both great clients that fit our sort of profile for who we want to work with. And one, it worked out really well. And the other, as the whole time I'm going, I should have charged triple like
Eric Wing:that's also the risk, where you agreed to do a rush thing and you and because of. The rush nature of it, maybe the the discovery, the intake, the whatever, also becomes rushed. And you, as a result, create, create more chaos than than solving for and we've, we've done that as well. That happens going back to the to the trade shows, you're working with so many different vendors, and this vendor needs this thing by a certain spec at a certain time and colored, you know, requirements, all this other stuff. And it's easy if you're if you're not doing things methodically like you would typically do, to make further mistakes, and then it's like, it's interesting, because, like, you you come in to be the hero, right? Like you're coming in, you're saving the day, but once you've taken the project, you're now the vendor, right? And you're not the hero anymore. You're the guy doing the work. And so, like, you screw it up. If you create more problems, they're not seeing you as a hero anymore. You become the villain. You become another villain, right? And they're like, You can't trust anybody, and then your reputation is at risk, or your company's reputation is at risk. So yeah. So I took some lumps for sure, in some earlier days of just saying yes to everything, but now I will say that if I've had a takeaway or some sort of key learning from rush jobs, that is to push back on the client and say, you know this, this may not be realistic. Would you be open to a compromise? We do x and y, and we don't do Z, right? Like, like, Would you be willing to do that? Otherwise we risk quality and we and we risk not meeting your deadline, and you know, you're not going to be happy with paying us and so and in with that, we've, we've, we've not, we've not taken the job, or we've not been offered the job because of that pushback. But in the end, just like what we talked about in the past, where sometimes saying no is is the appropriate thing to do, because, sure, you're not going to receive that revenue, but you're also not going to receive the the headache, the stress and the potential knock on your reputation if you can't deliver it in this, like, unrealistic timeframe, right? So I think it's a it comes with maturing the business, and also not not having your business being in a state of desperation. We need to take everything that comes along. You know, 100%
Douglas Duvall:it's funny you say that because the the example I had where things went, Well, you know, the I'm working with the marketing people, and they have friends that work in other marketing departments at other companies. Someone reached out. They were friends with, you know, company A it's like, hey, we heard you helped out so and so, in a pinch. We were in bit of a pinch ourselves. You know, I need this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just said no, because it was right after Company B that we had the big, like, no one was happy. It was a total disaster. I'm like, No, I'm not doing it, yeah. And it was like, traveling to Vermont and doing like shoots, and I'm like, I'm not doing I'm sorry. I wish I could be helped, but i We can't do this. And you know, obviously that company is going to look at me like you said the villain, like we didn't come in and save the day, yeah, because they needed for whatever it was. I don't remember the the stakes, but it was something, and the stakes are always high, right? Like, oh, it's for a national this or that TV ad or something. And, you know, we do a lot of video with people, and it's like, Okay, I've heard all this before,
Eric Wing:yeah. Like, you're gonna get so much exposure you need to do this
Douglas Duvall:90% of the time. It's hot air, yep. Come back to me when you have a regular whatever, and we'll talk. But yeah, yeah, like you said, when you, when you take the job and now the bag, you sort of hold the bag, right? And we did the job that went bad. We did a bunch of shooting, and they wanted live action shots to transition to renders and animations and all of this stuff that is would take a ton of planning and coordinating to really make it look good, right? So I think of the Fire Island. Did you watch the Fire Island document? Yeah, yeah. So they these people that did you, if you're aware of the Fire Island thing, like these people know they're in a disaster. And then. And then they're like, being picky about food vendors. Like, Oh, we didn't like their whatever. Yeah, you know, they were being like, picky about things when they should be like, anyway, maybe that's a bad analogy. I'll cut that out. But they were being like, hyper critical about certain things. That's like, what are we doing here, like, we're trying to get something under the radar for you, and it ended up them shooting, like, cell phone stuff, yep. Like, it got to that point, and I'm like, You're not going to put this in a presentation, right, right? You're not happy with it. You hate me now. You hate us naturally, because we look like idiots, because you set us up to fail. So it's just like you really have to analyze who, and if it's a new client. I know it's hard, but you really have to analyze the situation. I have a feeling like this company does this sort of thing all the time. Yep, there's no sort of forethought or whatever. It's just like, let's they're totally reactive, yeah, and I guarantee most of the video, if not all the video that's come out of there is, you know, gotten to the same exact point we were at. You know,
Eric Wing:it's a good point about the so what, what I was going to say earlier, and I actually had my mind, you just brought it back to mind, is that a lot of times the emergencies are because they're disorganized on their Yeah, it's not technically an emergency. It's an emergency because you waited so long, you know? And it's like, hey, well, we'll just put, we'll put pressure on the vendor, you know, in I don't want to come across as being super negative on today's discussion. It's not always the the doom and gloom, but certainly the doom and gloom is what where we take our knocks and we learn and we get better by right? And so a lot of times the rush jobs are coming from the marketing managers, coming from the marketing director, marketing coordinator. It's not coming from, like, for us anyway, it's not coming straight from, say, a business owner, right or something. It's coming from somebody who probably has too much work on their plate to begin with. The deadline got got got away from them, and now their boss came knocking on their door saying, hey, what about that video? Hey, what about that landing page, or, Hey, what about this? And they're like, oh, man, okay. And they start scurrying, and they try to find vendors to put pressure on, to save their hot they're behind, yes, right? And then the the pressure just dismounts from there. So, like you said, like trying to sniff some of this stuff out prior is, is is important, if possible. And usually I ask, you know, I ask, we have some questions to ask, to try to get to the bottom of, is it truly an emergency? That's the other side of this is, maybe they don't need the finished product by the time they're saying but they need to show progress by a certain time. They're not going to tell you all those details, because they want you to really be focusing and concentrated on just their project, right? So there's, there's also the perceived or the quote, unquote emergency rush job that really you do have a couple of extra weeks in there, but they're not telling you about that. And so in that will sometimes come out when you start negotiating on the price, because if you know, they have to give somewhere, so you're like, okay, yeah, we can get this done in two weeks, but it's gonna cost you two times what it would normally cost. Like, well, what if I had an extra week? You know, they'll, they'll actually, what if, okay, so if I gave you two more weeks, we get that cost down by $1,500 or whatever, right? And, or if they just want to Stonewall you, then they're just going to pay more for it, right? And, okay, actually, you know, I can turn the table. I do the same thing to our contractors sometimes, like the the will, I'll say, maybe I'm the the guy that you were mentioning earlier, the agency owner from earlier, giving everyone rush jobs. But there are times when, like, I forget something, and I'm like, All right, I gotta apply pressure somewhere. You have to get this done as soon as possible. So we're, I don't want to come across as being immune to this, like it is a human tendency to lose track of time and just be really busy. However, there's ways of handling it, both on the vendor side and on the in managing of the client side, to to ensure that the quality, the quality control remains, but, but yeah, like there are, there are times, you know, I've been up at one o'clock in the morning because I can't, I can't, I don't have the heart to put pressure on my employees, so I'll just do it myself, right? And now it's just no one feels good about that. Nobody wants to be working until the wee hours of the morning on something so. So, yeah, I think the name of the game. Organization, staying organized, and then just having an open mind when the deadline is super looming. It's not a looming feeling for the vendor. The vendor's like, Okay, I have this whole project brief I need to accomplish, regardless of the fact that there's a burning fire at the end of the road or something, right? It's, it's still like the work is the same, is this you are asking us to do it in half the time. We would typically want to do it in
Douglas Duvall:right, accelerated manner, yeah, yeah. And that's, so it's a funny point you mentioned where it's like, it might be the sort of the it's not the boss or the director. That's you're speaking with, you're speaking with a marketing department, or someone of that kind of in that ecosystem, and they're the one that sort of has dropped the ball, and they're trying to pass it to you that would explain why. Hey, why are they being hyper critical right now, we're trying to get something, we're trying to push a basketball through, you know, a needle hole, and you're splitting hairs about something, and it's like, that would explain why something like that kind of happens,
Eric Wing:yeah, like, it's for sure, and people have a lot of pride and ego in their job, right? Especially, like, I think sometimes you and I, at least I know I do, I sometimes forget what it's like to have a boss or, like, you know, we joke that we've got, like, we don't have one boss. We have 20 or however many clients we have, right? That's That's true. However, I don't literally have a boss that's going to walk up to my door right now and say, where are we on this? And I do remember those corporate days when that's a really unfavorable situation to be in if you're not prepared with an answer, like, it's really stressful. So like, I get it. Like, I totally get it and, and that's why we that's why we will take these rush jobs. Because like, I get it, however, the transparency in the matter is what we're talking about today. Imagine they come to they come to you, and they say, Hey, listen, my boss asked me about this project. We're behind on it. We've been really busy with other things, you know, if they take responsibility for it, and then they say, what can you do to help it? Just, I feel like it just like that, transparency levels the playing field, and it can really be a collaborative partner, because you're not trying to, like, guess and like, avoid the landmines, and like, yep, you know, all this other stuff. So, but unfortunately, the human nature also means that people are not going to admit to these types of things, especially in an email that the IT department could read at some point or something, right? So it's, it's tricky, and people are going to try to save their jobs, you know, or save their their in office reputation. And it's easier to put the blame on someone that doesn't work in the office.
Douglas Duvall:Yeah. So yeah, and when I come back to these examples, but like, again, like the the successful rush job we had was there in the lifeboat with us. They're like, hey, this thing came up, you know, we just, we were just made aware of it. We're entering it. We want to win it. You know, normally we'd have a plan and we wouldn't be doing this, but we're, we're in this situation. Can you help us? Yeah, and, you know, the complete opposite of that was the other situation. But I was, I just took it blindly. But, like, that was the successful project. It's like, hey, totally upfront with you. We need it by noon this day, no matter what, like, Can we do it? I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, they were, they were super responsive, like, you know, to, you know, I sent the first edit. They came right back with changes. So like, we got, like, everybody was, everybody was pedaling in the right direction, and we obviously it all, it all worked out, yeah, and like, like you said, we are all human, like, we're not perfect. We, we dropped the ball sometimes, for sure, but being honest about it and upfront about it, like, upfront about it, like, Hey, I forgot about this. Hey, I forgot so and so is on PTO. You know, during that week it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be another 10 days or whatever, like, that's gonna get you so much further, even if it's an awkward email or an uncomfortable email, or, god, we, we had this issue with them last time, and are doing it's like, just, just tell what? Tell like it is. It usually, usually ends better, right? Or it's gonna end better, not usually it's gonna end better, yeah,
Eric Wing:yeah. Now it goes a long way. I don't know if I've mentioned emotional bank account or not on this, on this show, but that's essentially what you're you're kind of like tilting your head at is like you people, people generally value honesty, even if it's at a cost, right? Like. Uh, maybe better put is, people always value knowing where they stand with you, and so if they sniff that you're you're kind of beating around the bush on why something's late. It's going to erode your that emotional bank account that you've built up with goodwill over how, however many you know, years or months or whatever you've worked with them. But if you can say, Listen, if you take responsibility for it, and you're like, hey, we dropped the ball. Blah, blah, blah, they're not going to hear that. They don't. They still don't want to hear the news, and they don't want to hear it coming across as an excuse, per se. Like, you don't want to, like, dilute the matter by going on and on and on about something or making something up. But I think just a quick, yep, this is the situation. We messed up. We're going to need an extra five days on this. But here's what you can expect at the end of those five days. Because, especially if it's a, if it's somebody that is reporting this information back to a to a supervisor, they can now say, you know, actually, the vendor is running five days late. We can expect it next week. Instead of saying, I don't know, I haven't heard from them, or oh, they keep reaching out, saying they need more time, but I don't really know how much more time they're going to need. If we have these vague situations, then assumptions start to be made, conclusions from those assumptions, and it can just start spiraling. So I agree with you, and we do it often. There are times when, probably once a week, I need more time on something, and if you just, you're you're upfront with the person, they generally are more more agreeable. And you can actually strengthen a bond with a client by by handling these situations correctly.
Douglas Duvall:Yeah, for sure. Have you developed the process when, when a when a job like this comes in, or is it more just case by case, and you kind of have to suss it out, you know, with some conversations? Or, yeah,
Eric Wing:it's case by case. But I'm, I'm thinking about a lot of the stuff that we're talking about today. I'm trying to figure out how this became an emergency, because so going So, for example, I know that if I, if I have, if I need to put pressure on one of my vendors or one of my employees, I may say we need it on Friday, but we really, really need it on Tuesday, or we really need it the following Friday. But I'm putting up some padding, some buffer in there. So I want to know about that, buffing that buffering. If there is literally no buffering, then you know, that's a little bit of an amber flag for me. Because if you really need something that's going to take they should take two weeks to do, and you need it in a week. You know, you have to try to figure out if it's reasonable or not, and sometimes charging more isn't the full answer, because Sure, you'll get more revenue, but you only have so many hours in the day, and you can't completely ignore all your other clients at the same time. So So while we don't have a checklist per se, I do have, I do have a way of having this honest conversation with them, and I will say that probably more than 50% of the time I ended up having them compromise what they want. And so I put my my my advisor hat on, and I say, Listen, we've seen these types of situations go in a variety of different ways, the way that you want. You know, we may want to trim, do some trimming in order to get what you want. And honestly, like, if you can do it correctly, you will get a phase two job, right? So what I've learned to do is break it into phases. Like, listen, we're going to get you phase one, these core items in time for your event, right? And then as soon as the as soon as we launch those, we're going to start these other items. And here's how they'll layer in and how that's valuable to you. You get a second project out of it, if you can do it correctly, right? And not all projects, not all projects, will require a phase one, phase two. But for like, web dev, yeah, I can put a lot of stuff in a phase two, right for video, maybe, maybe not, because you'd have to cut a whole other thing. But,
Douglas Duvall:yeah, I guess that would really depend. But another thing I as we've been talking, I've been thinking about, and this is outside of process, but I think there's a what this podcast is all about, sort of, you know, talking about misconceptions, you know, in a case where someone knows there's a big presentation coming up, right? And they've known about it for months. And then we're down to the two week wire, and now they've decided, let's plug some video in on some slides. In their mind, they might be thinking, Oh, that's simple. Like, we'll just get a couple video like, yeah, that's nothing we you know, people can jam those out real quick. You know. So I think there's a there's a layer of like, you know, like on education, like, Okay, if you want a professional video in your prof, in a presentation, you're trying to get $20 million from an investor, you want to just crap out a couple videos and plug them in like that. I mean, this is what you like for you were talking about that disorganization thing. And, like, I think there's also that bridge. Like, okay, have you made a video before? Do you know what goes into making a video that looks a certain way? And, okay, now you want to put animation on top of it. Like, you know, let's, you know, maybe there's a there's a lack of education needed there too. Like, yeah, maybe if you're new to a role, and maybe it's a role that you're maybe not prepared for, speak with another person who sat in your role, you know, right? Or someone else in the company who's, you know, adjacent to the department, right? And they might not know everything ins and outs of your department, but maybe they can give you a little insight, because they've been there a while, and they know how things are going. But like, you can't assume something's easy unless you know what that thing is, all right? Like, right, yeah. If you've never made a website before, and you're looking for all this dynamic functioning and a website like, you know, Eric air can't, like, you said, you could jam a lot into phase two. Like, I think there's an element to that, maybe, yeah, for sure, yeah. I
Eric Wing:think in Yeah, you actually sparked my memory earlier about the talks that we've had around to sort of respect for the work that we do, you know. And I think the education piece is a big part of it, and I think there's a big reason why we have these conversations. And you know, if, someone's coming from the standpoint of, you know, I could probably just do this from my iPhone. Like, how long will it take a professional to do it, you know, if they're coming from that standpoint? Or, like, oh, I made a Squarespace website one time. I you know, why is it taking you so long to do this custom website? Like, it's not apples to apples here, you know, and I think, I think that, I think it's a combination of things. I think a lot of it's human nature, procrastination, and also just turning a blind eye to what they know is the case, but they don't want to hear that, because it's like they need something now, you know, and, yeah, there's not always a way to help everybody. And, you know, depending on now. Now we've been talking about big emergencies there. There are things that pop up that are relatively small, things that we can, we can pump out quick, right, yeah, and right and up, charge it, get a little bit, get a nice little profit margin for the extra little work they had to do and and turn it around quick like that. And honestly, with AI, depending on what it is, we can, we can really do things even faster now for, like, small jobs and things. But yeah, if you need a marketing strategy fully fleshed out with competitor research and all this other stuff, and you need it in like, four days, that's asking a lot, you know? And so what I'll do is, oh, here's a, here's an example. Actually, we have an opportunity right now with a, with a I won't say too much, because they might still be vetting us, but we have an opportunity to maybe take over what could be a large advertising plus SEO AI project from another from another agency, and we were asked for a proposal, and it's like, and they're up against it. This is a different example, like they're up against needing to, like, renew that contract or whatever, and, and so I'm sitting down trying to write this proposal, not with enough, nearly enough information to write a good proposal, because even the discovery call was a little rushed. And so what I decided to do was, instead of write a full proposal, I wrote out two strategies, and if they want to buy the strategies from us, I'll write a proposal around those strategies, right? Rather than trying to consider all the different areas that I could write a proposal for to generate more phone calls for them, and I had never done that before, but you know what? I was able to write out two strategies in like two hours, and it would have taken maybe four hours to do the full proposal, and the full proposal didn't have all the information I needed, so it likely would have fallen flat on his face, but he. Here's the kicker it, by doing the two strategies without any fees or costs or anything in there, just like, hey, do you like the way we think it's putting almost too much work on the client, the prospect, because, because they now need to spend time reading through these reading through this document, you know, so it was a little bit of a gamble, but I guess I wanted to mention that, because there's always a way, usually some there's always a way to compromise on what they think they need in telling them what you know they need and what's realistic to do in a certain timeframe, right? And if, if you'll know, if you've got a client you want to work with, if they're, they're amenable to that, like they're open to it, they're, they're flexible to take that input, you know? Because if they're not, are they going to be open to taking any of your input all along the way? You know? Yeah. So the going, actually, that was the more answers to your earlier question about, like, what's your process? But, but at the end of the day, if there's an opportunity to do some interesting work, and the fee is good, except the timeline is not ideal, I can usually find a way to make it work.
Douglas Duvall:Yeah, yeah, no. And touch back on what you talked about at the start was, like small jobs and things that come up for regular clients. You know, we that stuff happens all the time, and it's, it's no no brainer, simple stuff that we can get to them quickly. And, yeah, we do that sort of stuff all the time. I think in this case, we were talking about, like, truly, like, hard deadline stuff. Yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad you mentioned that, because that sort of stuff comes up all the time. And, hey, could you get us, could you send me all the footage from this project we did last year? Like, little requests that come up all the time. It might take an hour or two, or, you know, three or four. And we do that stuff all the time and accommodate it, especially for people who work with us regularly, oh for sure, regular clients. Any final thoughts or recommendations to people that may or may not be in a pinch, looking for someone to help them out with something?
Eric Wing:Yeah, I think just being as upfront and and transparent as possible, because, like any situation when you're when you're reaching out for someone to help you out of a sticky spot, the more, the more info that the that the person coming to help has to the more information that they have to help you, the more information, the more likely it is you'll find a solution that will work. But if it's super rigid and the deadline super rigid and the budget super rigid, it's just likely not a scenario that a vendor would want to take you know, or a situation that you'd want to get a part of. So I think just having some flexibility and just being willing to maybe swallow ego a little bit and admit like, you know, I made a mistake where I missed a deadline. Can you can you help me out? It's really if they stay in the boat with you, like, your analogy, if they're gonna stay in the boat and pick up a paddle? Yeah, let's go like we know the information, we know the stakes, like we're here to help. We're actually trying to bail you out and make you look good. Extra little motivation there for us to do great work, you know? So I think that, I think that's what I have to say about that.
Douglas Duvall:If you're in the boat with us, it's more than likely going to be successful, yeah. And if there's, like, circling back, because I finally thought about what I was gonna say, if there's something you think is very, you know, simple to do, or, you know, you need a quick landing page, or you need a quick video, and you just think it's something easy to do, do it yourself first. And then if, if that is all you need, like, you just need a landing page, and you just make a Squarespace site, or you just need a video, and you use one of the AI things, or, you know, editors, or whatever, start there, you know, you know, put your money where your mouth is, yeah, if it's so simple, do it yourself and then. And that's I'm not trying to be I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm being honest. Yeah, that might be enough, and you're going to save yourself money, headache, all that. And if that isn't what you're looking for, okay, now you have a little understanding of a maybe, how not easy it is to look a certain way or do a certain thing. So you're going into that conversation with a professional, with a little like, all right, you've maybe taken a little humble pie or what have you, and you. You can approach the conversation with that knowledge like, Hey, I know how. I know this is going to be a challenge, you know, to get this done in this timeline, or what have you. So that's, that's a thought, yeah, and I say that video all the time. Like, with this, you don't necessarily need me, right? You really don't. It's, do you have the time and the drive and the, you know, the Constitution, to do it and do it consistently? Because if you do, you don't need me. That's, that's the reality. But if you're running a business and you don't have time, that's when you come to me, yeah. Or what you're doing doesn't look a certain way, or trying to make it look. Then you come to me, yep, or someone like me, yeah.
Eric Wing:Well, also, don't sell yourself short, like you. You also bring value from a from an advisement standpoint, right? Like, you might have a phone and you might have an idea, but like, how do you build the story? How do you bring interesting some videos some people want that people actually want to watch. I think that's a big component of what you do as well. But yeah, from a technical standpoint, sure, everyone has these amazing cameras in their pocket and with a tripod and correct lighting and microphone like you can do some good stuff, but it may not be to the vision or to the spec that the company needs, you know,
Douglas Duvall:right? Anything you just got back from big trip.
Eric Wing:Yeah, it's a great trip eight days, I think, and I didn't work. So anyone that's listened to the podcast we did about burnout, like, I pulled it off. I pulled off a I might have sent one email or two emails or something, but, yeah, it was in Oregon for all that time. And it was a, it was a cool mix of music festival for a couple of days. If anyone's heard of the pickathon, it's, I guess it's kind of a big deal in Portland and and so we did that for a couple of days. And then some like hiking waterfall, North Pacific Northwest stuff, probably the one of the highlights, actually, and you may find this interesting, is the Goonies house. You know the movie Goonies? Yeah, it's in Astoria, Oregon, and we drove out there. It's on the coast. And we went to the Goonies house like it's still the current owners have brought it back to being just like it is in the movies. It's a little eerie. Even the fence is like broken and dirty. And then, though, you know, the mechanism that they did to open up the gate, like the boot kicked the chicken. The chicken lay the egg. The egg went over here. All that stuff is out there. So it was cool. Got some pictures of that. And, yeah, I spent some time in the city and hiking around Mount Hood. It was, it was really complete and really awesome. R and R time, yeah,
Douglas Duvall:yeah, sounds fun, yeah. My son and I took a quick trip to Maine to visit my grandmother, his great grandmother. And it was, normally, I plan my trips to Maine in the summer, carefully, because you don't want to get caught in Maine only has traffic during two, two or 310, weeks a year, and it's on Saturdays and Sundays traveling on 95 Yep, in and out of the state. And I got, I got slammed on both days just Hampton tolls, yeah, I just got, I just caught it literally on the way home. We just, it's, we sat like the car stopped for like 10 minutes at a time, sometimes, oh my gosh, thankfully, my son slept through most of it, so it wasn't horrible. But yeah, that was a nice little trip, less than 24 hours up there. And, yeah, nothing, nothing too crazy, just work. We went to a nice design event, lawless design in Duxbury. We've we videoed a little panel discussion. So shout out to lawless. Yeah. We did that, yes, two days ago. It was fun. It's always fun to do a little it was like a nice little networking thing. It wasn't too it was just nice. It was a good event. You know, there's not a lot of them like that that are just, there's not, there's not a level of, I don't know. It was probably less than 50 people, and everybody was pretty chill. So that was a great,
Eric Wing:yeah, sometimes networking events can get, get intense.
Douglas Duvall:So, yeah, yeah, there was, there was no one there, like, with goals, how many, how many business cards Am I gonna handle? Yeah, yeah,
Eric Wing:that was one of those in the group. But it's good that they stayed home that day for you.
Douglas Duvall:Yeah, it was cool. Not that I there's an I have any problem with someone who sets goals like that. Just it was nice.
Eric Wing:Yeah, changes the vibe a little bit like the conversations can be a little bit more authentic if people are actually looking to hear. Hear what you have to say and not just waiting for an opportunity to like network you to death.
Douglas Duvall:Yeah. So, yeah. So it was good. There are actually some people from New England pro there, so that was always good to see them. So I'm Doug Duvall, motif media. We do high end video production and podcast production here in Boston. Yeah,
Eric Wing:yeah. Eric wing, I own Derby digital for we've been doing this for about 17 years now, specializing in web dev, software development, apps, marketing, AI, all the good stuff. So we work mostly with clients in the Boston area, but we have, we have some accounts across the country as well. So I was looking for more opportunities. Said,
Douglas Duvall:you said that? I'm going to say it too. We do some podcast. Most of our podcasts are from around the country, one's in Arizona, one's based in New York, one's based in Chicago. So like nice podcast production. No problem if you're not in Boston. Yeah. So appreciate you guys, if you've listened this far, we appreciate you if you've listened any amount, For that matter, but we will catch next week.
Unknown:You you.
