Listening to your intuition is crucial, in business & life
A recent lesson I learned
These last week has been a bit busy, with lots of birthday activities and being creative.
It has also brought very big lessons for me; one in particular, that showed me how much I grew in the last 8 years of having my own company.
I decided to share it with you, in a way to show how important it is to listen to our intuition, our basic instincts & to trust them. Even if we don’t logically know why.
In the eight years of running my business and creating scientific illustrations for researchers, companies, journals & more, I have had 95% amazing clients. I can truly say that I am definitely spoiled in that matter and I wouldn’t want it any other way!
But of course, nothing is always 100% in life, so also me, in my client-spoiled world, had to learn a lesson. It came last week, after 7,5 years into running my company.
Just as a side explanation: I had projects that were tricky; either because they turned out more complex than anticipated, or because I undersold myself, or because I didn’t have the courage to ask for more money (hello scope creep) & clients that turned out stingier than they could be, for the small amount they paid.
But all of them were decent and kind people. The circumstances and my own inability to set boundaries were making it a tricky project, not the people and their attitudes themselves. Because many people still don’t know the time, effort & detail it takes to visualize a scientific concept. And many have never worked with someone like me.
However, last week was different, as the client was highly inappropriate.
As a summary of the whole situation and to mentally & emotionally process it, I drew the essence of the interaction and in the end, it made me laugh. I hope it brings a smile to you too:
It all started off with a DM & a question to meet up, very short-term, but I had time, so I thought “Sure, why not?”. The meeting was exceptionally short, 10 minutes, a bit rushed, with a promise to send files and asking about a quote, company details & a contract.
We continued via email. I usually don’t send contracts, I have a professionally made one, done by a lawyer, adjusted to swedish standards. But I operate on trust and it has always worked that way.
As my client wanted a contract, I send it to them. I also told them the short timeframe they wanted to won’t work, I need 2 more days. They agreed.
I also set a decent price tag, because I have not seen the files yet & I added a 50% payment up front & 50% at the end upon delivery.
I never do that. Ever. Not even with clients that I don’t know. As I said: trust. Unless we decide upon a fixed price and the budget is high, then the client usually suggests to pay directly. They are the most serious, professional and amazing clients to work with! And I agree with these terms, its’ good for my peace of mind :).
But this time, my intuition told me to do a 50%-up-front.
Back to the story: that client agreed to the upfront payment & asked to confirm when I receive it. I also send a summary of the questions I have about each figure, and what I need from all of the authors to be able to complete the task.
We signed the contract & my client introduced me to the two coauthors & stated that I will coordinate from now on what I need so we finish everything.
Then, I received the final manuscript and 30!!!! AI generated graphs, models, visuals, some excel sheets with columns of numbers and the statement that “Some of the AI generated figures “surprisingly” survived into the manuscript” and “…that I should feel free to create any type of other visual that would be suitable.”
This was the first biggest red flag. Because I already did not understand two of the models that were included & I realized why: because they were AI-slob, absolutely bullshit & impossible to understand. And to me: unacceptable as any scientific visual.
I openly communicated about everything. I send the document with the questions I compiled to all the three authors, so everyone was on the same page. I stated clearly what I needed to be able to fix their figures. I also said that I was not hired to do more figures, but improve those they gave to me.
My questions were ignored. All of them. The files I received were incomplete, I had to re-ask several times. I re-formulated my questions, asked for feedback & clarification: nothing.
So I moved on anyways. I just decided to re-sketch the crappy AI models into something that is actually understandable & scientific and asked for feedback again: NOTHING, again.
The excuses of no time, no need for a meeting and “…that you should just go on with what you received.” were what I got.
After the weekend, I emailed them, sent all I was able to do, on my own initiative, without knowing if that is the message they wanted to communicate and even suggested to them, that we can stop this interaction if they want. I would send them all the files I was able to complete & they wont have to pay the remaining 50%.
In the last moment possible, I finally got a reply, saying I was unprofessional & a lier, delivering unreadable sketches & they would take it from there.
I replied that it was a very unpleasant and unprofessional interaction for me as well & that it was the first time for me in all my years.
The END.
If this would have happened in my first two years of having my company, I would have been smashed. Totally done. Wrecked for weeks, emotionally & mentally exhausted, felt stressed & beaten myself up over having done something absolutely wrong.
Not now. Not last week.
I was surprised, I felt confused, while at the same time glad & proud that I asked for 50% upfront & received the payment. That I listened to my intuition. At least I was properly compensated for the hours I put in.
I was really confused because to me this behavior and interactions were absolutely not understandable. Completely illogical and unprofessional and unscientific… everything that does NOT belong into a business interaction happened.
The moment when I got frustrated and slightly angry, I went out for a walk, stumped on the ground, grunted a bit, threw swearing words out into the nothingness and then drew the illustration above.
I somehow needed to get out the anger before I wrote an email, suggesting that thay could stop our interactions and not pay.
Not once did I have the feeling I messed it up, was unprofessional or did something that wasn’t agreed upon. I have no problems in admitting mistakes, but this situation was just not acceptable at all.
Looking back on this, the years of other business interactions helped for sure. The learnings I had, my confidence that grew, the pricing I dared to adjust and my observations how important this work is helped a lot.
What also helped is, all the things I did around self-development: my regular meditation practice, my deep-dives into suppressed emotions and behaviors that I learned and had to re-learn, my disappearing people-pleasing tendencies, my increased capacity to set boundaries, my higher self-worth and value I gained, my capability to not take responsibility for others and let them be the way they are, without trying to fix them.
And so much more.
Life is not split into: / WORK/ PERSONAL LIFE / HOBBY / PERSONALITY A / PERSONALITY B / TASK C / TASK D / etc.
Life is EVERYTHING! It is all of you, the whole mess and chaos that you are, that I am.
If I am incapable to set boundaries and respect myself in friendships, I wont be able to set boundaries and respect myself in work relationships, or romantic relationships.
We cannot split ourselves. We need to see ourselves as ONE creature, with capacities, incapabilities, gifts, talents, traumata, flaws, amazingensses & all of that, and know that all of them influence ALL other parts of our lives.
So! If I develop and change in one part of my life, the other parts of my life will improve too.
Working on my intuition and improving to listen to myself was a big goal of mine, it still is. And this situation showed me, that I was able to listen to this quiet intuitive hint, act upon it & ask for the upfront-payment in a business situation.
My aim was never to improve my business-intuition, but my Daria-intuition! And then it does its thing in all realms of my life. And I freaking LOVE it!
So this is it for today, I hope you could take something valuable from this weeks newsletter!
I wish you an amazing start into the week!
Love,
Daria
