Mike Lenhart (bio)

Situation 1 - Working for friends of family

This was a good one. I did it once and I'll never do it again. Never say never, but I'll think long and hard about it next time. Most of your responses were that you'd do the job, but with many caveats and explanations of what the work entails. One of you said to treat them as any other client (good point) while one of you said NOT to mix business with family and friends as a rule of thumb. It's a tricky situation, for sure, but as we all know, it depends.

Situation 2 - Client Rejection

Another thought-provoking one. As many of you mentioned, we ended up following the terms of our contract in terms of the non-refundable deposit, but waived the rejection fee. You all sounded-off as professional business people and said to create a good contract and follow it. One of you also said that it's good to make the client feel like they've won and try to maintain some sort of good client relations - after all, word-of-mouth is very strong in our business. One of you mentioned the "L-word" - lawyer, but I would suggest that you weigh the balance between the max allowed in small claims court vs. what the job was worth. Thank you for some great comments!

Situation 3 - Controversial Projects

While I've turned these down and most of you thought the same way, one of you said that you'd take it since, being a professional, personal feelings shouldn't come into play. I can agree with that. The sticky one here was that we could possibly see some big dollar signs in our eyes. That stinks of greed and, although we could all use some extra cash right now, I'd think long and hard about the cost to your conscience.

Situation number 4 will be coming down the pike soon. So, keep your professional and ethical hats on and thanks for helping me, and each other.