How frustrating being an entrepreneur/business owner is is not talked about enough.
I’ve always been the buyer and I usually expect business owners to be polite despite anything up until my worst fear caught up to me - The moment I became one.
I never knew the patience, the attentiveness, the decision making, the confidence, the politeness, the PATIENCE and the overall professionalism it took to being one until now.
Today I was this close to loosing my sh!t along with my appetite and sleep, just because I was trying to be as professional as possible.
It’s my first time working with someone that isn’t my friend so I went back to my notes where I had jot down everything my trainer taught me about dealing with a client and thought it couldn’t be that hard.. oh how wrong was I.
So my role was to design a logo and as expected, my client was very a bit indecisive because she had little idea of what exactly she wanted.
her former design
She insisted that I freestyle on it but I know better.
I asked some questions to help both she and I, also sent some already existing logo designs to her and she finally made her choice.
source
what she wanted
We were down to colors and she mentioned blue, white and black then went ahead to ask for my opinion.
Dear potential clients, it is YOUR LOGO. Any decision you make is a good decision, we are trained to work with it no questions asked.
Anyway, to appear polite I mentioned the colors best combined with blue (as i was taught) and her reply was ”Do your thing.”
F*ck me.
This always ends with criticism and a redo, then suddenly the clients now know what they want and how they want it.
My amateur ass simply gave up, assured her that the logo would be ready in three days and prepared myself for anything.
Immediately I got to work and was able to finish the next day. As soon as I was done, I showed my sister AKA the biggest critic I know and she approved.
what she got
Already hopeful, I sent my client the design the day after wishing my star would shine and I’ll get little to no complaints.
Well my star in fact dimmed.
She complained about the color and the text. Then went ahead to mention a specific shade of blue she liked. It all summed up to a redo.
At that moment I was about to have breakfast by 3pm and I immediately lost appetite. Then came anger because I took my time to prepare the pasta with recipe I found after scrolling for hours on tiktok. Then bargaining because I tried to convince myself that “customers are always right”. Then back to anger because I was hungry as hell.
I paused and took deep breathes. I took some minutes to process before replying or making any decision.
I went back to my notes and reread all my trainer taught me then I was prepared to reply.
Few minutes later I calmly asked where she might need the changes and a picture of the particular shade of blue.
She replied and I immediately changed it then sent her the finish work.
what she got II
To my relief, she approved.
I thanked her for her patronage and that was it.
In essence, never again will I criticize a small business owner heck even Hive community owners.
Now I understand why some flip out in the comments!
To business owners, entrepreneurs, Hive community MODs etc, have you ever had to deal with a difficult client/user and what were your tips in doing so? Because I sure as hell might need some.
All images are mine except sourced otherwise.