Strategically Rejecting Jobs

As soon as you can financially afford it, start rejecting jobs that don’t fit into your personal profile and that you wouldn’t enjoy at all and just do them for the money or jobs that are underpaid. This will have several effects: creative jobs are massively depending on enjoying the work, otherwise you might get stuck in a situation where you start to lose the joy in making music which when you need to be creative makes it almost impossible to deliver a decent end product. Also, a rule that unfortunately very often is true: once you do a job that you don’t enjoy and just do for the money, it is very likely that the next job offer will be another of such jobs.

The other effect: starting to reject jobs will gradually raise your market value. Clients noticing that you don’t do everything for peanuts might get to you with a better offer next time or the jobs that you actually accept will set the benchmark for future project offers.

Of course, as usual these things should always be decided individually. Rejecting a job for one client might leave him/her so dissapointed that you will never be asked again, so the decision of how to react to a job offer that doesn’t fit your profile or your financial expectations should always be made individually and take the context into account.

Generally, it is always best to react in a way that feels like you being a problem solver to them. Responses like: “I’m sorry, I can’t do that job under these conditions, but I’m happy to refer you to a colleague/my assistant/outsource and oversee the project etc.” is better than just saying no.