Lost a $1,200 gig because I didn't read the brief carefully enough

3 comments

3 Comments

the_mary7h agoMost Upvoted

Buddy of mine once lost a $500 editing job because he skimmed the deadline as "next Friday" when it was actually this Friday. He spent three days on it, thought he had time, then got a cancellation notice. The worst part is he couldn't even be mad at the client because he knew it was his own fault for not double checking.

shane_wilson7h ago

And that's the thing about skimming, it's like a tax on your time and money that you don't see coming until it's too late. I've done similar stuff where I thought I had a handle on the details but really I was just rushing through because I wanted to get started on the fun part. It's a hard habit to break, but I've learned to read everything twice now, once for the basics and again for the small print that usually bites you.

lucashenderson5h ago

Man, that is ROUGH. Twelve hundred bucks is a lot to have to just swallow like that. So here's what I'm wondering - was it a detail in the technical specs you missed, or like a total scope thing where the project was WAY different than you thought? Because I feel like there's a big difference between messing up on a font size and missing that they wanted a 30-second video instead of a 60-second one.