Big Budget Clients: Why You Might Not Want Them
I’ve been paid anywhere between $0 and $10,000 for various projects I’ve done over the last 5 years as a self-employed photographer / videographer / marketing guy.
Like anyone, my goal has always been the same: attract more high-paying clients.
It’s true that working with people with deeper pockets means you get to invest yourself more into the project (or, as we’ll soon see, you have to invest yourself more) and take on fewer jobs as a result of that.
The problem is, it’s not all rainbows and lollipops.
There’s a lot of extra baggage that comes with big budget clients.
And I’m not here to complain from a privileged point of view. I’m trying to help out anyone who has been where I’ve been in the not-so-distant past, that working with honest and moderately-paying customers can actually be a best-of-both-worlds situation you might be hunting for.
I’ll dive a little deeper into my solutions to these problems towards the end, but first I wanna discuss 6 of the big reasons you might not want big budget clients:
1. More time is spent talking than doing
You got into your craft because you love doing it. Is that fair to say? (Side note: if it’s not and you purely got into your business to make cash and you are indifferent about what you do, drop me a line, because I’d love to meet you).
The problem with big budget clients is that you’ll spend more time in every single stage of the process in order to execute—sometimes even adding stages of the process you haven’t needed before—and that can become really stagnant and boring really fast.
Big budget clients typically have more bureaucratic lines they need to tow, and that means there are that many more things to address. You’ll have to plan in far greater detail for every single aspect of the project. There will have to be considerably more redundancy. You can expect multiple revisions of stages that you usually can abbreviate.
You will spend more time talking about doing the thing than you will actually doing the thing.
It is so, so rare to be paid handsomely and set loose to do as your heart sees fit. I haven’t met many clients with a blank cheque and a hole in their pocket. I don’t expect you have, either, because you wouldn’t be reading this blog if you had.
Anticipate a lot of meetings about meetings, and phone calls about phone calls, the more money you anticipate making in a single job.
Smaller budget clients don’t have time for stuff like this, and they can be decisive about big and little decisions. You will bypass the boring stages and get to the fun stuff faster with someone who can’t afford to drag you through hours and hours of administrative nonsense.
2. Lots of feedback from difficult-to-please people
Too many cooks in the kitchen: that’s an easy way to summarize this problem that arises with big budget clients.
Even if you’re working with a solopreneur millionaire, he’s still going to get his wife to weigh in on the project when you send over the first version of it. But, more accurately, you’re going to be working with either multiple people, small teams, or massive companies where everyone has an opinion.
Trying to please big budget clients is like trying to drive a car with 20 hands on the wheel.
Because there are so many people who get a say in how the project evolves, you have to contend with a lot of different ideas, objections, epiphanies, off-handed comments, and unspecific criticisms of your work. It is exhausting to try to juggle all of that.
This is why I advise you get input from all of the decision-makers early in the process; and it’s why I encourage clients to exclude anyone who doesn’t have a trusted opinion.
If you wouldn’t ask someone for advice, you shouldn’t accept their criticism.
Many big budget clients don’t realize this, and you’re the one that ultimately pays for it.
Smaller budget clients typically have fewer decision-makers, and you have the authority to push back when they object. While it’s been my experience that any budget of client can be difficult to please, it seems more common with bigger budgets.
3. Scope creep is hard to fight in a well-paying gig
When someone is throwing a lot of money at you—and they know it’s a lot of money compared to what you’re used to—they will complicate the process in small ways and expect you to eat the cost.
Most of the time, it’s worth eating to cost to protect the relationship. But when a line has been crossed and you have no choice but to speak up, it can become a really uncomfortable exchange very quickly.
This is why it’s so vital to have a thorough and detailed contract that covers every possible avenue the project might turn down, and to make sure your client is adequately knowledgeable about what extra expenses might occur if that’s where they steer it. But even then, it’s sometimes impossible.
Rarely will the project go exactly as planned, and it’s up to you to speak up when it doesn’t.
This is an uncomfortable place to be put in. Smaller budget clients can’t make demands like this because you’ve made it clear to them that you are worth more than what they’re paying.
Now I’m not saying small budget clients won’t ever complicate the project: they certainly can, and the cheapest of the cheap almost certainly will. But you’d be disappointed how often big budget clients are going to expect more for their money than they originally discuss.
4. Higher expectations are harder to exceed
It’s natural that the more you pay, the more you expect. This makes it increasingly difficult to do something that I always strive for:
Under promise, and over deliver.
The easiest way to build good rapport with your clients is to exceed their expectations. Of course, you need them to be anticipating enough to have hired you in the first place, but you should always be leaving room (where possible) to routinely go above and beyond what the client is expecting.
Because a big budget client is probably pushing you to the edge of your abilities as a craftsperson, you have far less ability to do something more than they’re hoping for.
If this seems contradictory to the scope creep argument in the last section, it’s not. You should always be building into your expectations of the project extra work that isn’t accounted for yet. The client shouldn’t know about the extra bonuses you plan on delivering from the very outset.
But those bonuses aren’t bonuses to a bid budget client: they’re expectations. And that gives you less ability to wow them later in the process.
Clients with smaller budgets, by definition, can’t have expectations so high that you can’t exceed them. It should be a walk in the park. They will show more excitement and gratitude—usually—when you do more than they’re anticipating. This ultimately builds a better relationship with them, a better word-of-mouth referral, and hopefully more money in your pocket down the line.
5. You lose creative control after a certain point
Any professional who has worked with a big budget client will be shouting “AMEN TO THAT” at this argument. I guarantee it.
There comes a point in every process where the client ceases utilizing your expertise and insists on doing something different with the project. You can advise them away from their bad decision, but there’s a point where you need to “kill your darlings” and let it go.
Big budget clients will trust you to do a great job only to a point.
They see the entire process not so much as collaborative, but as authoritative. They’re the ones with the deep pockets, and they call the shots. They might even be right about that! But there’s a point in time where you can’t argue back because you’re going to be at risk of losing them, or souring the relationship and guaranteeing you’ll never work together again.
Even if you know that to be true, you protect your future self by not burning any more bridges than you have to. I’ve written about how business people can’t afford to have justice in all circumstances. You will lose some battles, and you need to come to terms with that asap if you want to succeed.
One of the biggest battles you’ll eventually lose, in every creative project with a big budget, is the ability to get your own way. Doesn’t matter how right you are, you won’t win. Expect it + prepare for it.
This isn’t to say small budget clients won’t do this either. But again, you have more authority to argue back (respectfully) because you are seen more as an authority or an equal than you are a contractor who they’re throwing money at. This is hugely beneficial to you, so take advantage of it. You won’t get that with bid budget clients.
6. Higher overhead means the same take-home as smaller gigs
Bigger budgets require more stuff. This is entirely dependent on your industry, but I practically guarantee that the project will need you to spend more money on it in order to execute at the higher calibre that’s being expected.
There’s this false belief that we can have where the budget for a project is our take-home pay.
In reality, this is usually not even close.
This won’t be true for all instances, but a lot of the time, when all expenses are paid, when all the hours you worked are tallied up, your take-home pay ends up being very similar to what it would’ve been on a smaller gig. If this is true, this is actually a considerable net-loss, because you’ve probably invested 2x to 5x as much time into the project for a very similar pay.
Because most smaller budget clients have simplified projects where you can streamline the process, you increase your take-home (even if it’s a smaller sum) based on the amount of work you put in.
So, am I doomed to misery forever?
No! Thankfully not. There is an answer to a happy working life with clients who aren’t cheap.
Notice that this entire time I’ve been contrasting “big budget clients” with “small budget clients.” The implication, of course, is that there is a “medium budget client” (for lack of a better term) where the money you’re making is reasonable and on-par for the amount of work you’re doing and the expertise you bring to the table.
There IS a sweet spot between client budget and type of project you’re working on.
It’s difficult to find, but it can be done. I’d even argue, in a lot of cases, you’re probably already there; or very close.
Only you can know what the magical ideal budget is from your clients.
But this blog is an argument against the idea that that ideal budget is considerably more than what you’re currently getting.
The best way to know is to experiment. Can you take on even more less-paying gigs? Do you enjoy the process more of working with fewer big budget clients? Do you attract good clients that you enjoy working with?
It’s all subjective, and your experience may differ considerably. I’d love to hear it if so! But until then, I firmly believe most of what I’m advocating here to be true. Bigger budgets are not always bigger happiness.
Homework:
Analyze your past 10 projects, or at least projects that ranged from lowest-paying to highest-paying.
Were clients on either end of the spectrum more demanding or less demanding than you anticipated?
Did any clients snowball into additional work later on?
Did any clients refer you any work?
What was your profit margin (actual take-home pay) from the small budget clients? Big budget clients?
Is there any trends you can see—either in favour of or against this blog—between your higher paying clients and lowering paying clients?
