You set boundaries, the client agrees, and then halfway through the project, things start slipping. Suddenly, you’re overdelivering or renegotiating what you thought was set from Day One.

Sound familiar?

The reality is that most clients aren’t bad or trying to get one over on you. They are unaware or unclear about your boundaries.

Why? Either because your contract isn’t clear, is missing important things, or because you aren’t using your contract as backup when things get messy.

The truth is, this doesn’t come easy to most creatives. But for more than a decade, I’ve been helping creatives write contract clauses that predetermine outcomes and protect your time, so you don’t end up renegotiating mid-project.

So let’s break down why boundaries fail mid-project and the tweaks you can make to your contract today so you have them to support you when you are in that messy middle.

Rather watch?

Psst…rather watch the short version? Then hit play below!

Create a process for usual hiccups

When clients come to me, I spend most of my time on two topics:

• their ideal client workflow
• what’s not working in their current contract

Depending on their contract, I also ask what situations happened that made them add certain sections.

Yes, I want to know what’s working. But I really want to drill down and find out where hiccups regularly happen and what is frustrating them about their work with clients.

And that’s because most contracts are focused on what happens at the beginning, but trouble shows up in the middle. 

So I write contracts to predetermine outcomes when common hiccups occur.

Because if something keeps happening, you need a process for managing it.

This means your contract needs to include the process you want to follow when common hiccups occur, like:

• asking for a third revision, when your contract only includes three
• ghosting or being slow to provide feedback
• adding in a last-minute decision maker, on the final round of edits
•  asking for a “quick” addition to the scope of work
• requesting once again to move your 1:1 session

Depending on the kind of work you do, you can probably run through the 5-10 common hiccups that occur in client projects.

• What frustrates you with client work?
• What questions do you get over, and over, and over again? 
• What problems seem to always crop up?

Because these situations are predictable, you can plan for them.

You can predetermine how you want to kindly and gracefully deal with them, so you aren’t overdelivering. So your schedule doesn’t suffer. So your cash flow isn’t impacted.

And most importantly, you can put something in place a step before you get frustrated, so you never even end up in that place.

👉 Your assignment: 

1. Sit down and think about the common hiccups that happen with your clients.
2. Does your contract outline the process for what happens when each hiccup occurs?

Now, if you don’t feel good about that process or it doesn’t match your working style, then you’ll need to tweak your contract. Because your contract should align with your working style.

If your contract doesn’t outline a process, then keep reading, because I’ve got some common situations outlined below. 

Common Problem: Extra Revisions

“Oh, wait, we have one more tweak.”

After you’ve already done your agreed-upon two rounds of revisions.

You say yes, because it’s a small ask. But then you are unhappy, because you are doing extra work for free.

How can you solve this?

Make sure your contract says, “Your project includes two rounds of revisions. Additional revisions will be billed at the hourly rate of $150 an hour.”

Then, when they ask, you can send an email that says, “Happy to make that change. Just a reminder, you’ve already used your two rounds of revisions, so I’ll make that little tweak at $150 an hour.“

You’re not doing extra work.

Inside Copy + Paste Legal Week, I’ll give you scripts that make enforcing those boundaries easier and less awkward. Sign up below.

Common Problem: Feedback Delays

You are excited about the work you did, send it to the client, and hear nothing. Days go by, and still nothing.

And you are stuck in limbo waiting to hear back from them.

How can you solve this?

Make sure your contract says, “If no feedback is received within five days, then the deliverable will be considered approved.“

Then, once the number of days is up, you can move on to the next step in the project (or if that was the last step, send the invoice).

You aren’t stuck waiting to hear from them.

Common Problem: Scope Misalignment/Creep

Sometimes, once you start a project with a client, you both realize that the scope of work doesn’t fit. Maybe because they didn’t actually realize what they needed, or maybe because they were trying to work with a smaller budget.

Or maybe they do just need “one more thing”.

How can you solve this?

Include this line in your contract: “Any requests outside the original scope will be billed at $X an hour and will require a new timeline.“

This handles two things:

1. Allows you to bill for additional work.
2. Allow you to shift the timeline, so that you aren’t working evenings to cram a larger scope of work onto the original timeline.

Wrapping it up

If you’ve been changing your workflow to match your contract and not the other way around, you aren’t alone.

But it’s time to tweak your contract to align with your business.

Finally, if you want your contract format to also help eliminate client questions, then make sure you check out this post that explains how your contract cover page can save you from tough conversations.

If you want ready-made language for when this kind of situation comes up, make sure you join us for Copy + Paste Legal Week. Inside, I’ll give you the exact email scripts you can use to send to your clients when things get off track.