Doing It For The Kids

This week Frankie Tortora and Steve Folland have a chat in response to a CORKER of a question from 'Detective Harper MacCleod' aka Anonymous. S/he says:“Can we have the 'turning-down work’ conversation?I've reached the stage where I can (to some extent) pick and choose my work. However, I’m a people pleaser and still find it difficult to say no.For argument's sake, let's just say my job involves drawing things. Mostly houses.(But I’m happy to be a ‘detective’ if you insist).Even when you’re desperate for work, let’s face it, there are projects that are more trouble than they’re worth. Even worse, some projects could end up costing you money or be professionally disastrous.I’ll give you a recent scenario. I was speaking to a potential client on the phone and all these red flags were popping up. The project was ultra boring and would eat into my capacity for more interesting projects. The client was awkward, querying the relevance of my questions etc. I was trying to suggest that another professional would be b