I am located in EY and was wondering if anyone had any advice in the following situation- what would you do if you are creating a flyer for a client in the US and it is likely that the flyer will have multiple changes (numbers/addresses, dates, etc)- would you go out of your work hours and do all these favors for them? How would you set your boundaries, especially if it’s for time sensitive things that need to be sent out to press? Is it smart to have a partner in the US that can do these types of projects? But then when would the US clients ever want to use the ISraeli designer?
I am in a similar situation. In EY now but working with American clients. Normally I do work out of regular hours. If you want to work with American clients regularly, you will probably have to work somewhat on their time schedule, otherwise they are likely to rather work with an American designer. But you can make better money overall working with American clients overall Israeli clients, so you have to decide if it is worth the trade off. Of course, like with any client, you should try to generally ask for enough time on a job that you don’t have to be keeping crazy hours. ie. if you have three days for a job, then you can be working normal hours and still get it done on time. Just like any job, if they are asking more multiple changes at the last minute you can charge a rush fee.
If this is a one time case and you don’t want to lose the client, and if you are not telling them that you are in EY (because if you are, you can just tell them that because of the time difference they should please give you 10 hours (or whatever number) notice for changes) you could just tell them that you are quite busy now with a lot going on, and so you need x amount of notice in order to guarantee changes.
You can also let them know each time you send changes, that you won’t be available to make additional changes until such and such time/day. But, like mentioned above, if this somehting you plan to do regularly you should come up with some system that accomodates their hours, in a way that you normally would if you were in the US (i.e. in the US you also wouldn’t be available to make constant changes at a moment’s notice, so a few hour’s leeway is normal)
Generally working with a parnter, in my opinion, is not a great idea for the reason that you mentioned and because it cause problems as to who gets what payment etc. Ultimately if your business really grows etc., it might be something to consider at some point, but unless you are getting so much work that you can’t handle it, and a high enough income that it is worthwhile to split it, not sure that it would pay off in the long run.
Hope that helps and makes sense!
Thanks so much! In this particular case, most of the changes they wanted done immediately, which was tricky to figure out my boundaries. Sometimes it’s not possible to have so much time for a change, especially when the flyer or ad needs to get out to press within that hour!