blog | chickens and eggs | CreateSean Web Design

chickens and eggs

Friday May 22 2009

Two days ago I had a meeting with a potential client about working on their site. The meeting seemed to go well and when I got home later that day I sent an email thanking them for their time and also saying that I was looking forward to the meeting we had scheduled for Monday. Everything seemed good.

Yesterday I recieved an email, late in the afternoon, informing me that they had chosen to go with someone else. This is my first real rejection and it sure doesn’t feel very good. I’ve had other potential clients go elsewhere, but not after a face to face meeting. And definitely not so quickly after initiating discussions. It definitely doesn’t feel good. It probably hurt me more than it should since I was counting chickens, but only had a couple of eggs which didn’t hatch. Essentially at this point, I have one client site which I am going to finish up shortly and then no leads on any other work. EEforums4You hasn’t brought any work, but has cost me money—graphics and advertising which had me focusing on the income from a job which I hadn’t secured rather than on building a relationship with the client and better undersanding their business and goals.

I did reply to the client again and thanked them for their time and also for considering me for their project. I also said that I hoped we could work together in the future. This is all true and even if it wasn’t I would still say the same things as it is the professional approach. Sure I ~~was~~ am hurt, but it’s not going to help anyone by being anything other than professional.

I have thought carefully about what we talked about in the meeting and what was said in the rejection email and have determined what I probably did wrong. I will definitely be aware of this in the future and will be sure to not make the same mistake again.

The important thing here is that I learn from this experience. Rejection is going to happen as a freelancer, it’s just a matter of reducing how often it happens, learning from it and growning a thicker skin. What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.

I will use this time to tweak the design of CreateSean—I want it to be a little more exciting to look at. Perhaps some shiny, glossy gradients and drop shadow on the content boxes or a new background color instead of white. I’m happy with the basic colors and layouts, just need to bring the design to the next level. I’m also going to dive into learning some basic php and maybe write a plugin/extension for ExpressionEngine.

Sean inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday May 22, 2009 at 10:15 AM

| tags: clients, professionals, |

Comments

Erik Reagan wrote 86 words on Friday May 22, 2009 at 10:42 AM

Sean,

I admire your transparency on your blog. You’re right when you say, “[r]ejection is going to happen as a freelancer.” The fact is that rejection will happen regardless of who you are. Sometimes it’s not even something you did wrong. It took me a while to realize that there are actually times when “the competition” actually can bring something to the table that I cannot, whether that be a product or what-have-you. Keep your head high and move forward (like you seem to be doing).