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It’s Okay to say “No, I can’t”
Posted by Dianne Hartwick in Self Improvement, Skills | 0 comments
If your nature is to please, then you know how hard it is to say no; especially to a potential new client. This time, I should have just said “No, I can’t” or…“I’d love to help you, however; it would be best if I put you in touch with someone with more experienced in that area”.
She wanted business cards—quick. “I can do business cards”, I say. Well, me and Vista Print. I explain to this lovely, eager new entrepreneur that I have a few templates and I can fiddle around with fonts. She has experience with colour matching so, we could get this project done. “Sure, let’s meet and brainstorm”.
We met the next day; she was full of ideas and even shared a hand-drawn logo design with me—that’s when I should have thrown-up my hands and admitted that the project was getting beyond my scope. However, in an effort to please, I said I would do my best to find a sketch or an image that could work for her based on her criteria. And, of course, raised fonts and her colour-scheme should not pose a problem in the design. We shook hands, declared how nice it was going to be to work together and then parted ways.
After two days of scouring Google Images, Shutterstock and Getty Images without any luck finding her very particular image; I knew I needed help. I outsourced the project to an on-line logo-maker and, 24-hours later, received poor results—the bill was in US$. I was able to manipulate the file that I received to the point where my client was satisfied.
Hours of my time was spent on a raised fonts, ‘masking’ the file (a new skill), bleeds & slugs (what?), phone calls to my Adobe expert friend—I couldn’t wait to get this card into production, which I eventually did. The cards arrived within days – because I paid extra for that. The raised font didn’t line up and the contact information was too small. Try again…, I fixed, uploaded, re-ordered, they arrived, I delivered.
One week of frustration put me behind on current client projects and, I lost revenue on the project due to outsourcing and paying twice for the cards.
What I’ve learned:
- Be good to your clients and don’t practice a skill on their time
- Formalize your roster of extended professionals; those who can enhance your services
- I’m still a good Virtual Assistant who has a new skills–how to save PDF files for Business Cards
