Q&A: “I think my client ghosted me…”

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Have you ever been ghosted? Man, it's not pleasant. You think you are really connecting with somebody and then all of a sudden they stop returning your messages. You think, well, surely something must be wrong with their phone or their inbox. They're just not getting my messages.

So, you know, I'll try a different way to reach them. And also why are the police coming to my house to tell me to stay away from them? This is all so awkward. Hey, we've all been there. It happens, right?

Those restraining orders. But let's leave the relationship advice to someone else, different podcasts perhaps. Today inside us all school, a designer is having this problem with her client or actually her almost client. As you're gonna hear, her almost client has effectively ghosted her or perhaps disappeared, which I guess is the same thing, right, just being completely unresponsive. What are you gonna do in this situation?

Aside from calling with a burner phone, you know, in hopes that the client might pick up, is there anything else that can be done? I really like this question. So we'll see what we can do to help our caller, Elise. And that question's coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]

Hi there, Chris.

This is Elise and I've been listening to the show for a couple of years. I'm a new designer who's been doing freelance work for the past few months. Some of the experience have been great, but something happened recently that's been bothering me. I had a client ready to sign a contract for a good amount of work, but they wanted to see some sample ideas first. I put a few hours into the project and sent them over.

The clients said they liked them and would get back to me in about a day or two to move forward. But then they disappeared. I've tried following up multiple times, but haven't received any response. I feel like I've been ghosted. Did I do this work for nothing?

And should I not have sent them my initial ideas before the project officially started? Thank you for your help. [Music]

Man, Elise, I'm so sorry. We have all been there. We've all experienced this in one way or another, maybe not in relationships, maybe not in client work, but I'm sure most people listening at some point in your life, you've been trying to hear back from somebody and they just don't get back to you and they're just gone forever or at least gone for an extended period of time with no explanation.

And honestly, this is pretty common in the service business. Any kind of service business like design could be something else. What likely happened here is that they either found someone else or they just decided to not do this project, but for whatever reason, they didn't wanna tell you. And so that's unfortunate, but it's not that different from being ghosted in a relationship. People just don't like to have these difficult, sometimes awkward conversations.

So what can Elise do here? Well, she can't change human behavior. What she can do, and I think what most designers, other service professionals do over time, is kind of change the practice of putting a bunch of hours into a project without being paid. Now, for some of these pitches, you still might have to put some time into that research process, that pitch process, but you wanna avoid doing a whole bunch of work on the front end. So over time, as you have more and more of a portfolio, as you can point to successful projects, there's some work you can show off, then you tend to lead with that in the pitch and not, here are all my ideas for you because that is part of the work.

That is part of the work that the client will ultimately pay for. So you don't wanna do that for free or on the front end. Sometimes in the beginning, that's what you have to do, but your goal is to avoid that. So that's the area you want to work on. And Elise, I am sorry about the ghosting client.

Glad to hear that some others have been successful and hopefully there'll be many more who will see it through. Hang in there. Listeners, if you've got a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions, let me know what you're working on, working through, what's working well, and of course, what's not, because that's how we're all gonna improve. Thanks so much for tuning in today. I hope you'll come back tomorrow.

My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.