One bad week with a client in Denver made me question my whole pricing model

I had a week last March where two contracts in Denver both hit scope creep at once, one asking for 14 extra revisions after we capped it at 3, and the other ghosting me for 5 days then demanding a new deliverable by Friday. The first client paid late and the second tried to renegotiate mid-project, and I spent the whole week chasing invoices instead of doing actual work. Has anyone else had a stretch like that where the money you quoted suddenly felt like a trap, or do you build buffer time into every contract to survive those weeks?

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henryt185d ago

Different take here. Those two clients weren't the problem, the real problem is you quoted them without any teeth in the contract. If you cap revisions at three, you hold that line. The second client ghosted you for five days, that's on them, their emergency is not your emergency. You chase invoices because you let them run slow, that's a you problem not a pricing problem. Your model is fine, your enforcement is weak. Put late fees in writing, require a deposit upfront, and stop answering the phone when someone acts like that. You'll have a bad week here and there, but the money quote was never the trap, the lack of boundaries was.