How To Get Logo Design Clients

Ian Paget: How do you go about getting logo design clients?

David Airey: Before anything else. You've got to be good at what you do, and you've got to have confidence that you're good because no one wants to buy a bad design. So if you think you need to get better before you can lead a client through a project, then you need to train yourself.

Whether that's in design and in the quality of what you create. Or maybe it's in your sales skills and knowing how to turn a prospect into someone who hires you. Clients, they hire me either through word of my life, through maybe picking up my book or through finding my website. Everyone, when they start out in design, there's no word of mouth at all because you've got nothing behind you to draw upon.

So I'm not going into that at all, but much more realistic is to have people find you through a side project. Something that shows your interest in design and that design for you is more than just a way to make ends meet.

Think about it this way. If you take two people who do the same job, one of them enjoys it and the other one isn't really that bothered. Give me the one with a smile on their face every time, they'll be more reliable. And they'll do their job better.

So if you can use side projects to show that that person is you, it gives you an advantage over the thousands of designers who have nothing more than a portfolio. It's like the podcast that you're beginning. I bet that it puts you in a 1% bracket of designers who have a portfolio on the podcast.

Ian Paget: I can agree with that because Logo Geek started as a side project. I was just working on logos for fun and you're totally right with that. Like that doing something that you're passionate about and putting your work out there, that does attract other work.

Even things that I've done for free for friends, things that have really excited me putting it... I think that's probably the most important thing. Physically putting it out there, showcasing it on all these different online portfolios or even on our website. It does attract more business. So, that's brilliant advice.

David Airey: Yeah, it definitely puts the work out there because if you don't, no one's going to hire you. It could be a bit of a struggle overcoming that at the start. You know, you want something to be perfect, but you've got to start somewhere you realise that you're never going to be as good as you want to be, because you want to continually improve what you're doing.

So you might look at your work and think, "Oh, it's not quite right", or "I need to change this about it". But see you've just got to say it to yourself, show it to people... There's a book by Austin Kleon, Show Your Work. It's a good one.

Ian Paget: In terms of what you said about putting your work out there, where would you start with that?

David Airey: Other than your portfolio you mean?

Ian Paget: Well, I guess would there be a particular showcase website that you possibly put your work on to put it out there? Or would you literally just start with a website?

David Airey: Well, I started with a website, but I know that people have had success putting their work on Behance. I have a profile there, but there's nothing, I'm pretty sure there's nothing on it. It could be great if you get a lot of views that way. But I'm not sure how many clients search through Behance. Have you had any success with it?

Ian Paget: To be honest, I haven't used it myself just because where my clients come from mostly is through my website.

David Airey: Well, I mentioned that some clients find me through my book, and that's the value of side projects. Like the client that I've just finished working with, for example, a psychiatrist in Brooklyn. He sent me an email after picking up a copy of my book. So even before we spoke, the book had done quite a bit of work in establishing trust, the trust that someone needs to have if they're going to pay any thoughts into paying without ever meeting me in person.

And it was only a few days after that initial email when his first payment reached my account and it's not a one off. I've had a few clients based in Moscow and I knew for sure that before hiring me, one of them had bought the Russian translation at the bookstore.

So the ability for that to happen at all, came through a side project. It was first the Logo Design Love blog and then that turned into a book. So anyone can do it. It's easy to do. It just takes work. Just takes making a start, and it was how it started with me.

It was when I launched the Logo Design Love blog in 2008. It was a side project, I didn't think too much of it. It was just a few hours each week that developed into something a little bit bigger and then got me an approach from a publisher. So it's funny how these things turn out.

Ian Paget: So for you, has it been the book now, and your website that's literally drawing in clients?

David Airey: Yeah, that's right. I'd say about half of the work that I do is probably word of mouth. So people are going to see my website before they learn about my book. But I've also had clients who have told me that they find my website through a Google search and then they went on to buy my book and then after seeing that, then they contacted me.

So there's, it's really got a lot to do with trust. If you can make your clients think that you're the least risky person to deal with, then side projects that show your passion, they're going to help a great deal.

Ian Paget: Okay. So for those that already have clients. In instances where they want to get bigger clients. I mean higher paying clients, even potentially names. Do you have any different advice for that group of people? I'm kind of imagining it's possibly the same answer, like getting books out there and blogs and showing your passion. But just curious if there would be a different answer for that question.

David Airey: Well, bigger clients obviously pay more money and if they're going to pay you that money, again, it's like you said, it's possibly a similar answer. I think it comes down to trust. That's not a new thing. When clients get to a certain size, even the smallest clients are rightly cautious before hiring you.

It's like any time you spend a hefty amount of money on something before you actually get what you're paying for, you do your research on who you're paying. And it's exactly the same with design clients, more so when they're spending tens, maybe hundreds of thousands. So always expect your potential clients to see every detail there is about you online.

They're highly unlikely to see it all, but you've got to show it with your professional and be consistent about it, for year. It's been a gradual thing, me growing my business. If you happen to land a multinational in the first couple of years, well, you're doing better than I did, it was about was already three years into the business when I got a project with Yellow Pages, and that was after they emailed me out of the blue.

So, there was probably an element of luck in there, like how they actually found my portfolio. It was because of my blog. Someone who was working at the company at the time had an interest in the design posts that I was writing about, and showing my sketches. I think that made a big deal. If Yellow Pages came to me today, I'd be doing things differently.

First start, I'd be putting options in my quote. That's something I didn't do, whenever they contacted me at all. What was that? It was back in 2008, 2009 maybe. I gave them one figure for the job that they asked for. And that meant that their choice was either a yes or no, but when I send quotes today, I generally put three price options in there, so the client, instead of deciding whether to hire me, they're then left wondering in what way are they going to hire me? So it makes it more likely that they're going to actually say yes.

Ian Paget: Okay. So in terms of those three options, just so that I can understand, how does that make a difference? Because I guess, I'm probably not doing it the best way, but I'm offering one price at the moment for everyone. And where I'm justifying that is that I'm running my business part time, so if I can make X much money each month, that covers everything for me.

But in terms of those three options, are you doing a low version? You don't need to say any prices, but are you're doing a low version, mid price and high price and slightly differing what those services are?

David Airey: Yes. I'll give you an example of the last quote that I sent. A company in Dubai approached me. They asked for a redesign of their logo that they'd been using for more than 17 years. It's not the best logo and the person who contacted me knows that it can be better.

So thus their only reason for contacting me, was to get this redesigned. And in our discussions I was asking if they wanted it refined slightly, so that they kept the brand equity that was behind it, or if they wanted a complete redesign, something completely different and the logo was going to be placed on a range of packaging because they ship stationery all over the world. Things like hole punctures and ring binders, that type of thing.

So, what my quote was broken down into was, the first option was simply for the refinement of the logo. That was the cheapest one. The second option was for a refinement as well as a redesign. So it had some, some comparison there. And then the third option was for the refinement, the redesign to give them that comparison, and then to design the packaging as well so that the full range of products looked consistent.

The packaging wasn't something that they mentioned whenever they wanted to hire me, but as a result of me putting that in my quote, they choose the second option, which was the redesign and the refinements. And then they asked me if they can do the packaging after we finished the stage.

Whenever I started out in business, I would have just given them a quote for the refinement, but I'm able to earn, well, about three times as much and to do those additional options. And it's not like I'm stealing money off them, it's help that they want, so we both benefit from it.

Ian Paget: Yeah. It's a really good idea because you're essentially providing a quote for what it was they asked for and then offering something else that they possibly hadn't thought of. That adds more value. Then it's also more work for you, more money, a better client, a longer relationship.

In terms of doing that packaging, the fact that you mentioned that you do that as well, you've probably got a client for life that's to some extent. That's really good advice.

Now we know that creating a portfolio is essential for attracting clients or a website. We've spoken about that already. I want to just talk about that with you. Where would you recommend to start with a website? So, I personally use WordPress. Would you recommend that's the best place or are things like SquareSpace, it seemed to be pretty easy to get started. What would you recommend to people?

David Airey: I also use WordPress. And I have been since I started. So I definitely recommend it, whether it's the best option, I'm not sure. SquareSpace comes very highly recommended as well. With SquareSpace, and it might end up being a little more expensive. It depends on how much traffic you have coming to your website and how much hosting you need.

The cost for me with WordPress is minimal. As, what do I spend on hosting? In fact, I get my hosting in return for a banner ad or an old link in the sidebar. So I don't pay for hosting. Well, I kind of, through advertising, but the outlay that I have for my website is very low and WordPress has been brilliant. It's helped me to learn a bit about coding as well because when I started I knew nothing. When I started in business I had to teach myself how to customise the WordPress theme without, well, just online tutorials, of which there are loads for WordPress, so can't go wrong with that.

Ian Paget: I've found with WordPress there's quite a lot of free templates, to kind of get you going. But if you did want to invest, I know you're talking like $60 or like £50 in the UK. Through websites like ThemeForest, you can find a really good box standard templates and I understand with your one that you modified the HTML, which I really feel like I need to start doing that now. But you don't have to do that. You can literally take these templates, do an install, and it's just a case of adding in images. From that side of it, it's quite manual. But yeah, WordPress makes it very easy for you to build anything you want to some extent.

David Airey: And yes, there are so many themes out there that even if you were to choose one off the shelf, it's likely that you can still differentiate yourself even though there's going to be other people using the same thing, because ultimately it all comes down to the work that you put on it. My preference with the theme would be just to keep it simple.

When you strip it down, all you really need is a homepage, a work page with your individual projects a profile page and then a journal or a blog. When you, when you've just graduated, I'm thinking about any students that might be listening... When you just graduated, all you tend to have is a collection of classroom projects without any client involvement.

And if that's the stage you're at, the goal is when you have those projects on your website, the goal is to replace each one starting with the weakest, with work that you've been hired to do. It's obviously tough to get hired whenever all you've got is a student portfolio. And that leads on to pro bono design where it can play a big part.

That doesn't mean pro bono is only good for the early days of building the portfolio. You know, it can be great all through your career. Paula Scher often talks it up. It's one where you give your... for the greater good. That's the rough translation of pro bono. You give your work for free for a charity, a nonprofit for example. And they in turn they use the work and then you can take photos of it or put it in your portfolio, as an example of a client project.

Ian Paget: For those people that haven't really done a lot of work other than what they've done in university for example, how would do they go about getting pro bono work?

David Airey: They would contact charities directly.

Ian Paget: So just literally go on their website, go on their contact page and send an email or pick up the phone? Is it just as simple as that?

David Airey: It can be, but I would recommend approaching small charities because large ones, they're going to pay a lot of money for design, they're run like any other business. Well, a small charity is also run like any other business, except it doesn't have the money to back it up. So if you go to a small charity, a local one as well, so that you can meet them face to face and build a better relationship that way, then that relationship that you build with the business owner they can then give you some word of mouth referrals, that that can grow your client base as well.

Ian Paget: I've done work for a couple of charities. To be honest, not for the reason of doing portfolio work, but I mean other than putting stuff in your portfolio, to be honest, when you see a charity, you think you'll work for the greater good. It feels good as well.

So I mean there's two sides to it. You're doing something good, but then also you're exposing yourself to real world clients and you've got a physical project that you can do a case study. In terms of portfolio, in terms of the pieces you put in, would you do some kind of case study around that as well to show you how it works? How you've gone about doing that?

David Airey: Yes, definitely. It's the case studies that tend to get you the better clients because they can get a real sense of how you work through a project. There are so many portfolios where all you might see is a final logo, but you don't see any of the thinking behind it. You don't see any of the meaning behind an otherwise abstract symbol.

A good logo has to be simple, but it also has to be distinctive. So there needs to be some features that help it stand out from other simple marks. And at the same time it has to be relevant to the business that it's identifying.

So with such a simple idea, such a simple mark, should I say, the meaning can often need a little explanation, which some people think that, that might be a bad thing, or what good is a logo if you need to explain it. But people who run a business, if they're looking at something every day they want there to be a meaning to it.

They want, they want to feel some kind of ownership, or some kind of involvement where they might've had some say throughout the process. If you can show that through a portfolio case study and explain the various steps that were involved, then it's going to make potential clients more interested in following that process with you themselves rather than them just coming to your portfolio and seeing a variety of the finished article.

Ian Paget: Lots of people make mistakes when they start out, so I think that's probably a good area to talk about now. So what are the typical portfolio mistakes that you see?

David Airey: One is including every piece of work that you do. There might be jobs to take off, that pay better on average, but that might be as exciting as normal or the result isn't any better than your other portfolio entries and that's fine. Those jobs might make it possible for you to work on the brilliant opportunities that don't pay as well, so don't worry about doing work and leaving it out of your portfolio.

Some of the best portfolios I've seen have maybe 15 or 20 projects and when you put yourself in your client's shoes, that's plenty to give an idea of how good you are. If you look at the largest studios like Pentagram for example, they might have hundreds of projects on their website, and that's understandable too because they have a lot of people involved in the work, so they don't want to be doing the work and then not having it online.

And my case as an independent designer, I think there are maybe about 20 projects in my portfolio at the moment and I'm not massively keen to increase that number, but if it comes to a new project that I finish, I'm much more likely to take out one of the weaker projects, and replace it with a new one. So it's a kind of continual progression in quality.

Ian Paget: I understand that. One thing that I'm thinking of with that is... I totally agree that, it makes sense to only show a handful of pieces. But what I found in my experience is that sometimes people can not see beyond a company. So if for example, if you've got loads of fashion brands in your portfolio and you get a plumber that might come in and they want a logo, they might have the budget to work with you, but if they don't see examples of that in your portfolio, I found from my experience that they might not necessarily go with you. Have you faced that problem and is there any way to get around that with just a small selection?

David Airey: Have I faced that problem? Yeah, it's a good point. Every now and again, people will come to me and they'll ask me if I've worked on a project in their specific industry or sector. And if I haven't, I'll tell I haven't, and I'll say that it's the same. I follow the same process no matter what company that I'm working on. Thus, I do design. I don't do their business.

They specialise in what they do, and I specialise in what I do and I can translate design across any market, across any industry. So it's more a matter of trying to ease any fears that they have, and sell myself a bit better and has been a good designer.

Ian Paget: Okay. That makes sense. Okay. Are there any more portfolio mistakes that you've seen?

David Airey: Yeah. Not enough context. A single page that shows all your local work, for example, that can be good if it's just a lot of logos in isolation, as long as you give some of the designs, their own page with more project details. If all you're showing is a logo and so it gets much harder to differentiate you from websites that sell contest listings, for example.

Another mistake, too much jargon. You gotta write like your talk and also write like you're talking to your next client rather than another designer.

Ian Paget: What's an example of the jargon that's been used?

David Airey: Oh, synergise... words like that. A lot of branding speak.

Ian Paget: Is it generally terms like typography terms like kerning and-

David Airey: Exactly. It's okay to talk like that, but you have to explain things. Unless you know that the person you're talking to is familiar with these terms, then I either wouldn't use them. I'd explain it in a different way rather than saying "kerning", I'll just talk about "the tightness between the letters, the individual spacing so that there's no bigger gaps here rather than there", that type of thing. Pretend... that term "pretend". You gotta be talking to a friend in a pub. Think of it that way.

Ian Paget: Yeah, that makes sense. Keep it simple beyond the clients level. That's good advice.

David Airey: Yeah. And another mistake would be tiny text, or a lack of contrast between the text and the background. My eyesight's all right, and it's not perfect. I wear glasses when I'm at my computer or watching TV, but the amount of websites that I go on, I really shouldn't have to manually enlarge text to be comfortable reading it. So, that's more the design of a website.

Ian Paget: That makes sense. A lot of people out there are using small texts and in a light grey, which to be fair, it looks nice but you can't read it. So I guess all of these pieces of advice, this basically, they all link together in some way. You're advising to make it easy for the client. Allow the client to understand what you're doing, to speak in the client's language, I guess rather to create the website and the content from the client's perspective. Do you have any more tips that you want to add to that?

David Airey: Another mistake is one I fell into in my early days. You know this feeling, the need to make yourself look bigger than you are through your website. Having done this myself. I can understand why people do it. It's something that I still see. I was worried that no one would hire me if they knew that I was working alone. But that's just irrational. You know, people hire you based on the strength of your work. Well, actually that reminds me of a speech. Neil Gaiman, he once gave... it was a commencement speech. I think I put it on my blog. I like it that much.

He said that people get hired for three reasons. Because their work's good, because they're easy to get along with, and because they get the work done on time. But his point was that you don't need all three. Two out of three is fine.

People are going to tolerate how unpleasant you might be if your work's good and on time, or people will forgive the lateness of your work if it's good and they like you, and you don't have to be as good as everyone else if you're on time, and it's always a pleasure to hear from you.

That's something that stuck with me because I know I'm not as good as everyone else and I'm never going to be as good as everyone else. But if I enjoy my work, and I want to do a great job for the people who hire me, and I get their work done on time to the best of my ability, then if I can make a living doing that, I think it's a pretty good place to be in.

Ian Paget: I took that advice from you, when I read one of your books, I think it was in Work For Money, Design for Love. When I first started out I had a lot of people telling me I should make my business sound bigger and I did start using, "we", but it was me on my own and I did find that the moment I did switch it to being honest and open and putting my name, I actually got more business from that and the people that was getting in touch with me at that point, they were more on my level as well.

Like most of the clients that I'm working with, I felt like we're at the same stage in our business. And I think being honest, it not only attracts, similar people to you that want to work with you... when the person starts working with you, it's more realistic. It's exactly what you would expect. So from a branding point of view, it makes sense that if you're a one man band to present yourself as a one man band.

But if you're saying "we", when you're calling in, you would expect someone else to answer the phone, you'd expect to, potentially be able to command. There's great expectations if you're pretending to be a branding agency. And I followed your advice.

David Airey: Yeah that's a good point about bigger expectations too. And on the flip side, when you show that it's just you, people like that too, because they know that when they hire you, you're going to be doing the work for them. Whereas if they're approaching a bigger studio or agency, the person that they speak to first, they might not be the person who's doing the work.

In fact, they're more likely not to be the person doing the work. So there's more accountability on you and the person knows that every time they talk to you, you don't have to relay their words to somebody else. You can get the job done straight away. Hang up the phone. "Okay I'm doing this now". And it's just, there's more... Well I wouldn't say there's more trust because huge agencies and studios can be trustworthy, but when you're dealing one-to-one it's more of a human relationship. Rather than having a middle person involved.

Ian Paget: Yeah, you're right. Because if someone's looking to work with an agency, they will go to an agency. But there are a lot of people out there, I'm finding they do want to work with a freelancer.

They are specifically looking for one person that could do everything for them. I guess it depends who your target audience are, but if you're planning to work as an agency, then from the outset you need more than one person, then it makes sense to start presenting yourself in one way.

David Airey: Yes, definitely.

Ian Paget: If you do a Google search, you'll quickly see that prices vary drastically. It can be anything from someone on Fiverr charging only $5 for a logo versus agencies out there that are charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for a logo. So when you're a freelancer, it makes it really hard to know how much to charge.

And I find in a lot of group communities, generally, that's the biggest question that comes up. "How do I know how much to charge?" Now, I've seen this in your book and on your website, but for the sake of listeners, would you be able to talk through your pricing model for how much, say how people can work out, how much they should be charging? Because I think the advice that you give is probably the best.

David Airey: When I first started out, the easiest thing for me was really just simple maths. I figured out how much I had to earn to cover certain things like food, your rent or mortgage, bills, clothes, car insurance, dental appointments, that type of thing. Software subscriptions. I divided what I was spending by the amount of working hours in a week to come up with a rate that just about covered everything, and then I doubled it because we need to make a profit or we won't be able to carry on through the inevitable quiet times.

And I've been self employed for about 12 years now. I still get the odd month or two when inquiries dry up. I wonder where the next project's going to come from. I start giving these thoughts, "Oh, am I going to have to get a real job?" That sort of thing.

Not that design isn't a real job, but I sometimes feel like I'm blogging out of breath. But an important point is that despite starting out, by basing my quotes on the number of hours I worked, it's much better to show a flat fee on your invoices. I'm sure you, you know this yourself and I'll give you a quick example.

When you bring hourly rates into the equation, it punishes efficiency. If one person takes 10 hours to do a job, you could do the same job in five hours because you've learned twice as much or because you're twice as skilled, that doesn't mean you should charge half what the other person charges. If anything, you should be charging more because you've saved your client time. So price pricing is tough. It gets easier, especially as you get more confident.

No. I don't base my pricing on hourly rates. I'll just base it on what I think that I'm worth. And that's something that's only come over time. I will continually increase my prices because I know that I'm continually learning more, as I do more work. And sometimes that'll get to the stage where a few quotes will be sent out and I won't get any response. I'll be quiet, and I'll be wondering if I'm pitching too high. I can always lower it, for the next, for the next quote. Because it's always a balancing act. You're never quite sure if what you're charging is the right figure.

But you have to go with something and it's purely based my experience, because people can tell you what they charge specifically, but their circumstances are going to be different from yours whether it's the specific design that they're doing, or their experience, or the clients that they're working with.

That leads me on to always base it according to the client. You can't charge a multinational company the same as what you would charge a local grocery store, for example, because the grocery store will be able to afford a huge amount. But if you were to approach a multinational with the same figure that you quoted to a grocery store, you wouldn't get the job because they wouldn't trust that you have the ability to do the work. So you need to pitch yourself differently depending on who you're sending the quote to.

Ian Paget: Just going on from that, how do you know how much he should be charging those bigger clients? Because for me, that's probably where I struggle.

David Airey: When I started with that early figure in my head, I increased it gradually. Today I'll charge something like five or ten thousand pounds for a logo or an identity project. When I started, I thought it might've been three or four hundred pounds. I was happy then, I'm happy now. And it's been a gradual increase in between.

So you've got to start somewhere and then realise that you're getting better doing your job, the more you do it. So it only makes sense to charge more. Well at what rate you increase it? I can't say because I don't know if I'm doing it right, but at the same time, I'm doing it right enough to give me a comfortable life, to support my family and to make my clients happy as well. If you're charging too much, you wouldn't get the job. And equally if you're charging too little, you wouldn't be able to create a sustainable business.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think that's probably the best way of taking it because there's loads of advice on that. In an earlier episode I spoke to Chris Do and he was talking about how he's pitching a project for $160,000. It's an insane amount of money that if I got that, I could work on that project for a couple of years and be happy with it.

But I think as freelancers, Chris is coming from an agency perspective, so it's quite different. There's drastic overheads, but I think it's worth charging enough so that you can live the way that you want to live. Like for me, I'm able to live a reasonably comfortable life charging around the £500 figure. But obviously I need to start taking your advice for the bigger clients because obviously that's the way that you get the bigger clients, is you charge more to show trust.

David Airey: Yeah. And not only to show trust, but also to show that your work has a level that they're looking for. Big companies, they're used to paying £50,000 to £100,000, half a million pounds for design projects. So if they come to you in the first place, then you should be expecting to charge a considerable fee. But the company that I mentioned when we were talking about the three options in my invoice, that is a big company.

I might have left some money on the table, I'm not sure. But the situation I was in, was that I'd finished a couple of projects and I had one more lined up for starting later on this month, but nothing at this exact time. So I said to myself, "Well, I want to pitch this in a way that shows that I'm good, but that doesn't have any chance of pricing me out of the water".

So I might've bent in a bit lower than I could have with that one, but it's hard to say, unless you come right out and say, "What's your budget?", which is something I don't do. There were other ways to figure out how much their budget might be, if you were to ask the company what their turnover might be, or if you're working on a sub-brand for a multinational, what was the turnover for that sub-brand.

There are ways to figure out the value of a company without actually asking, "how much money do you have to spend on design?" And that's something that Chris Do can probably explain a lot better than I can. There was a video that I put on the Logo Design Love blog that I think he might've kindly retweeted or linked to.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it's a really good video. I'll link to linked to that in the show notes. But yeah, there's loads of good advice out for pricing. But then at the same time, everything you've spoken about now, to be honest, it's what the listeners are looking for.

It's a more realistic look at pricing. Because it's very easy to say that you price on value, but what does that really mean? You can't go in there and price for... the value of a logo might be £1,000,000, but you can't go in there realistically with that figure.

So I think what you've explained now makes sense for everyone at the level that I'm at to kind of understand that, okay, you have to increase your prices to get that business. It's not a case of increasing your prices to get more money. It's a case of increase in your prices to show that you are capable of doing that business because those clients are used to seeing that figure. So for me personally, that's really good advice, and I know that anyone listening will also take that advice, and hopefully act on that.

David Airey: Good. I'm glad.

Ian Paget: Okay, fantastic. I think we'll wrap things up now. Is there anything else that you wanted to add?

David Airey: Well, touching on the options in the quote, that we were talking about. How can I be sure if I priced the job right? And that's a question that I asked myself with every quote that I prepare.

And it ultimately depends on how quickly your client agrees to your quotes. If they say yes immediately, then you're probably pitching too low for the size of the client. If they try and negotiate you down a bit, then maybe you went in around the right amount and you can then choose whether you want to take the job for less than you first quoted, which is always an option. Don't think that if you send the quote and the client says "no, that's more than I can afford".

If you get the feeling that they can afford a little less and you want to do the job for a little less, then just let them know, "well, look, maybe we can come to an agreement here". And if you're way over the client's budget, then you're probably not the right fit anyway. So determining whether or not if you've gone in at the right level? It's a tough one.

It's something that I'm never quite sure of. So there'll be people out there doing it better than I do. But coming back to the point, as long as you can enjoy your work, and support yourself, and lead a comfortable life, and get better at the same time, then you're on the right track.

Ian Paget: I think that's fantastic final words. So David, thank you so much for being on the show. It's a real honour for me, personally to be able to speak to you. So thanks again. Really appreciate it.

David Airey: You're very welcome Ian. It's been a pleasure.