I attended the HOW Creative Freelancer conference in San Diego last month. Since it was a “creative freelancer” conference, I “creatively” came up with the money to go and wondered if it would be worth it. Well, I’m happy to say that it was. Not because I met lots of wonderful folks (which I did). Not because it was 85 degrees in San Diego (versus 115 in Phoenix). And not because I wanted to work for three long days (listening non-stop is tiring). What truly made it all worthwhile were the two magical sentences I learned to say to clients whose budgets are as short as their deadlines.

Here they are…I urge you to commit them to memory because they’re so good:

“It sounds like you (Mr. Client) haven’t allocated enough resources to a project of this scope.”

AND…

“I would be irresponsible as a business person if I took this project on in that period of time. It wouldn’t do it justice.”

So very PC, yet so very powerful, don’t you think?