podcast 48
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Artist to Artist podcast. This is the podcast for self-taught and undertrained makeup artists who are ready to stop second guessing themselves and start showing up like pros.
I am Angie, a full-time freelance makeup artist, and today we're talking about what to do when a client cancels last minute or disappears after you've already put in the time and effort to book them. How do you not get upset? How do you not go crazy?
How do you protect your time and how do you avoid taking it personally?
Let's start here. It's one of the most frustrating things that you will run into as a makeup artist. Clients who cancel or disappear last minute can totally throw you off, especially when you're just getting started in the industry. Clients who cancel like this will have you second guessing everything.
Did you say something wrong? Were you too expensive? Were you not good enough? There's so many questions that come up when this happens, but one person canceling on you does not always mean you're doing anything wrong. Sometimes it's just the reality of working with the public.
There are so many things that I wish I understood earlier [00:01:00] in my career, and one of those things is over accommodating clients, and I am sure you're wondering how this connects to the topic of this podcast, which is what to do when clients cancel. But just bear with me for just a second. There were so many times where I did so much more than I needed to because I didn't wanna lose a booking.
Sometimes it was because I needed the money. Sometimes it was because I thought that doing a specific booking would open the door to something else, and every time I did that, those clients ended up pushing me further.
And what I mean by that is they'd ask me to do things like, oh, can you just touch up my hair? Can you just do my friend's makeup too? Really quickly? They knew I was kind of bending to them, so they kept asking for more. I always walked away from those jobs feeling really used, feeling like I gave so much more than I got.
And for me personally, when I feel undervalued, I hate that feeling, and that's one of the reasons why boundaries are so important to me. Now, I will be honest. It's very hard at first to lay down those boundaries, whether it's with your booking process, whether it's [00:02:00] what you're doing in person with your clients, I.
You wanna be nice. You want people to like you, you don't wanna lose a client. But when I think about the clients that I've enjoyed working with the most, they have always been the ones that have respected me from the beginning. The ones who treated me like a working professional, not someone that they could just squeeze extra favors out of.
And anytime I ignored the red flags, like asking for more in a booking is one of them. It did not end well. And let's talk about those red flags for a second. Yeah, because a lot of the times your clients are gonna tell you how things go with your booking, with your relationship with them before you even meet them.
So I would say some of the common early warning signs that a client may cancel or ghost are the following delayed or kind of incoherent replies where you're like, were they typing this while driving? Like, what is going on with this reply? Really vague answers to the questions that you're asking. I think if they.
Chat with you and right away they're asking for a discount, huge red flag. Bringing up other artists and their [00:03:00] experience with other artists who have charged less maybe red flag, and then asking a bunch of really important questions way too close to the appointment, like the day of or the night before, where it sounds like they're kind of freaking out and unsure of the booking.
These are all things that have come up for me as red flags repeatedly in my career, and I'm sure some of you are listening right now going like, oh my gosh, I had a client like this and they ended up canceling, or, it was a really bad experience.
All of these things that I've mentioned, they don't usually improve. Later on, these people are not gonna get better. And if you're ignoring your gut feelings and your intuition because you're scared to lose a job, I totally understand. But what I can tell you is that these are not the clients that you want long term.
Even if they book once, they're likely to move on to someone cheaper, more flexible later on.
And the more you accommodate, the more you look. Desperate. The more you look inexperienced and whether you mean to or not, this is how clients are perceiving you.
I also think it's important for me to add that there is a difference between offering really great service and being overly [00:04:00] accommodating, and when you're newer, it is very easy to confuse the two. There is a very thin line that separates the two. This is something that you will probably continue to struggle with throughout the duration of your career.
I know that is something that I struggle with still to this day, but being professional doesn't mean saying yes to every single thing. It just means being clear about. What is included with the rate with your service and really just sticking to that, you can still be warm and friendly and kind to your clients.
But when you start maybe shifting your entire schedule last minute, putting some of the things that you value, maybe like your personal time, always on the back burner, squeezing people in, letting clients skip steps in your booking process, letting clients treat you in a way that isn't respectful. You're training these clients to expect that every single time from you.
So instead of feeling like you're doing them a favor, you have to ask yourself, would I do this again for another client at the same rate tomorrow? Do I wanna do this again tomorrow? If the answer is no, then you're not offering a service. You're really just stretching your boundaries. Once that [00:05:00] happens, clients will rarely stop at just one ask from you, and they'll continue to push your boundaries further and further and further.
So what do you do instead? I protect my time with very clear booking policies and procedures. One of the cancellation policies that I've had, and you may have a couple different ones, depending on the type of work that you do.
If a client cancels within 24 hours, they're charged the full fee. If it's within 72 hours, I charge my client half of the fee. And this cancellation policy, like some of the other ones I have, I say this more than once during that process where we're communicating with one another about the booking. In my quote, in my confirmation follow up emails and things like that, it's always very clear even with people I know, even with long-term clients, because I've seen what happens when you get lazy with that type of thing.
And it's happened to me. I've left it out a couple times and I've been taken advantage of. I.
I know some of you are wondering, how do you not take it personally when this happens? I always have to remind myself it's not about me because they don't know me, right? So it's can't be about me personally.
It's business. Your clients don't know you and they're not doing [00:06:00] this to you. In particular, right? Like they don't know who you are. You have got to separate your ego from your business. And you have to remember, and this is something we do not talk about enough, that working as a makeup artist is a volume game.
And what I mean by that is, for example, in bridal, it might take you 50 bridal inquiries to get. Five or 10 weddings, that is normal. People should shop around for their artist. They need to compare rates and portfolios. It is not personal when a client doesn't book you.
Sometimes that could actually be a really good thing, especially if someone is not the right fit and if they aren't the right fit for you. This is very hard to do in the beginning when money is tight, I understand all that, but you do have to let these clients go 'cause it's gonna be the best thing for you long term.
I also think it's important for me to remind you that one bad experience is not gonna define your career. It's not gonna define your reputation. I think what matters more is the pattern of behavior. If you are mostly working with respectful clients, you're doing something right, but if you're [00:07:00] constantly getting no shows, cancellations, weird energy clients just not respecting you at all, you eventually have to ask, what am I putting out there?
What does my booking process look like? How am I presenting myself? What is the tone in the messaging that I'm putting out there to my clients? Because clients really do respond to how we show up.
Sometimes MUAs don't realize how much their tone in emails and dms shape. How they're treated and how other people perceive them. I see this with dms that I receive. I think if you are sending out messages to people and they are overly casual, so if you're saying like, Hey babe, hey sis, sounds good, girl, or whatever it is, instead of being clear and direct.
You're not really setting the tone for a professional relationship, and I'm not saying you need to sound like a robot, but you do need to sound like someone who has booked clients before, someone who has systems in place, and someone who values their own time. One of the best shifts in my business that I ever made was. Taking time to write emails that [00:08:00] I was sending repeatedly in a more professional tone, even before I was fully booked. This is something I did very early on because when you take time to put these things together and use them as templates, you're writing with more confidence and then you can., Book with more confidence as well. And when clients are asking you for your rates, your booking policies or whatever it may be, you have something already in place that you can copy and paste so that when you are messaging, you're getting out all the information you need to get out in a way that's professional, in a way that's quick.
Because as we know, sometimes it's the first artist that responds that gets the booking.
And I have seen with myself and even how I spoke to people then versus now, that tone and messaging is really important and it really does affect how people treat you.
I think if you've ever been ghosted or canceled on last minute or just have had a client totally hang you out to dry because you didn't listen to your gut, you are not alone. It happens to all of us. It happened so many times to me when I was first starting. The way I look at it now, it's really more of a sign.
It's a [00:09:00] reminder for me to tighten up my policies, to get more clear in my emails and not to feel bad about having boundaries because I get so frustrated. When clients do this to me that I don't want to go through this again with somebody else. So when these things happen for me, it's very motivating.
Because it's a feeling I really hate to experience. And you can't control every client, but you can control how you protect yourself. It is your business and you operate under your rules and you set the tone for how clients are gonna treat you. The best part about all of this is that it gets so much easier with practice.
Now, I don't care if someone doesn't wanna work with me because I have a cancellation policy. It doesn't bother me at this point. My business is my business. My policies are my policies, and I'd rather that than have someone I. Cancel on me last minute or treat me disrespectfully or not really respect what I'm bringing to the table.
If you're listening to this and you're feeling a bit intimidated, maybe you're feeling discouraged. I get it because this job can be very emotional sometimes, but I. You [00:10:00] can change how people perceive you and how people treat you. You really can. It's totally in your control, and it starts sometimes with just the language that you use, the tone that you set, and the respect that you give to yourself.
Clients can pick this up.
Yeah, not every client will treat you right. I still have clients where I have difficult days. They don't treat me very well, but the right clients for you will be around long term and the wrong ones. You kind of just have to let them go and chalk it up to that volume idea that I shared with you earlier.
You need a lot of clients to find the really good ones.
I know all the feelings around this job can be difficult to deal with. I understand that the booking policies and procedures side can be a little bit intimidating, and I think it's hard specifically when you don't have someone that you can run to and ask about these things, which is why I'm sharing this episode with you.
This is also why I have the artist to artist membership inside the membership. I always share my email templates when I have difficult clients that I need to. You know, email and handle. , I talk about [00:11:00] guidance on setting boundaries. I also cover topics like your branding and communication and all of that stuff.
Everything in the membership is what I wish I had when I started. 'cause I did not have the opportunity to speak with a mentor or have anyone that I could communicate with as I was building my business.
And I will include the link for you to join the membership in the show notes. It will be there for you to wrap up this episode. It's really important to value your time, protect your time, , communicate clearly with your clients, and stop feeling bad for running your business like a business.
You deserve to work with clients who respect you, and it starts with you respecting yourself.
And if you think there is someone that would definitely benefit from hearing this episode, please feel free to pass it along and we'll chat soon. Bye.
