Doing Free Work Existing Clients

You said that your clientshave dried up in recent times.Yeah and they asked you to pitchin renewing a Design Studio.Is it worth taking the riskand resources and time?And you also get paidhandsomely by this clientand the company is oneof the Fortune 500.So is your question becausethey've been good to you.And because they'rea big company,if you should do work for free?Yeah no, no, not basically.Should I give thema style escapefor free, to be very honest,a style escape for free?Yeah well, that'sfree work, is it not?Yeah, it is.OK, and where didthis escape came from?It came from strategy, right?Yeah, it did.And did you charge themfor the strategy part?No, I would have given thestaff at the Australia skipperhow to do it.I'm thinking, shouldI do it or not?I've done it on my,you have to do it.And style ships are avery important part.Part of the process,translating words and ideasthat are abstract intophysical, tangible thingsthat people can look atand agree or disagree on.It's very important that you doit, whether you do it for themor not, it has to be done.Otherwise you windup doing somethingthat they're like, well,that's different than whenwe talked about.Now, that's whyit's not been paidfor in a part of thescope, I don't understand.Right in Fortune 500companies have money.Yeah, yeah, I'll giveyou a brief story.A really brief.Yeah, it is just ascrisp as possible.They asked me to redesigntheir design studiosin four districts of Indiaand one in turkey, Istanbul.Then they told methat then I told them,I need some time to do researchand then I'll come back to you.And as I gave them that space,they drifted away from me.They gave me smaller workslike murals, sculpturesand all those stuff like that.Yeah, they Yeah.Well, let me justtell you something,there's a couple of thingsthat I want to share with you.For the first and you'veheard me say this before,and this comes fromJonathan stark.He said it's not thatclients don't have money.They all have money.They just don't prioritize.What you do is being worththe money they want to spend.And we've seen thisbefore, and you guysget really upset about it,like the amount of moneythey spent on catering, thatlunch for 40 people that theyhad could have easily paidfor all that you wanted to doand even more.And that was wasteful becausethey got nothing for itexcept for a full belly, right?It's the fact that whenclients don't want to pay youor don't have the budget,it's because they have notprioritized what you'redoing as important to them,and therefore they've allocateda very small amount of moneyor, in your case,no money to do it.If you accept that,then you are alsoconfirming to them thatthis is not important work.I get it.You get it.So a dental cleaning isdifferent than brain surgery,and the prices reflect that.So you feel like whatyou're doing is important,and they don't the realtask isn't to do the work.The real task is to find outwhat they find to be important.And then do thatinstead, or helpthem to realize through aseries of open Socratic kindof questions as to why thisthing that you're doingis really important andaligned around their goals.So earlier today,we were talkingabout self-loveand self-loathingand all that kind of stuff andself-confidence versus ego.So I think ego.It's too much focus onyou and what you want.So one of the thingsthat have helped meout a lot in overcomingsome of my issueswith insecurityand self-confidenceis I try to take myselfout of the equation,like why do I wantto do something?What's the purpose?What's driving meto do this thing?And when I and I adopta servitude mentality,like, how can Iserve other people?How can I help other peopleaccomplish their goalsor to spend theirtime more wiselywhen I try to serve people?I'm actually filled upwith a lot of confidencebecause now my mind isn't on me.My mind is on them.How can I help them?So when you're in asituation like this?And they don't wantto pay for this thing.You have to ask yourself,well, what can Ido to serve them better?What is it that they need?Find that thing.And whether you're was it clearearlier, I think it was clear.Yeah, it was clear,the reason whythey want to pay thisamount is because theydon't see what itis that you wantto do as being importantto the business at all.And you've heardme say this, youshould try toquestion why they wantto do this thing to begin with.Once you figure that out.And help themfigure it out, thenthey'll realize it'seither not worth doingor it is really worthdoing, but you're not goingto be stuck in the middle.OK so I do not love the ideaof doing real design workand work for free because itfeels like they don't want itand you're just goingto do it and just keepthe ball moving along.The other thing I want to say toyou is this is that you cannotdepend on one clientfor more than, say,20% of your annual revenue.It puts you in a really badposition, and some companies,believe it or not, becauseI've been asked this questionbefore will not hireyou out of policyif the amount of businessthey're giving youexceeds a certainpercentage because itputs too much risk on them.Did you guys know this, thatif the amount that they pay youis more than, say, 40% ofyour entire annual revenue?They will not hireyou out of policybecause it means that yourbusiness is very, veryvolatile, that you'renot diversified enough.So let's do this.Why don't you leveragethe relationship you haveand try to findanother relationshipwith anotherFortune 500 company?We worked with x, wouldyou like us to help you?What's a problem worth solving?And let's start that dialogue.OK thank you, thank you so much.