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I finally stopped chasing retainer clients after a coffee shop wake-up call in Boise
Last January I was dead set on landing a monthly retainer. Every freelance group I joined said that was the golden ticket. I drove to a coffee shop in Boise for a networking thing, and this older designer told me he ditched all his retainers years ago. He said steady money made him lazy and picky projects kept him sharp. I thought he was crazy, but I tried his way for one season. I took on a messy one-off project that paid $80 an hour and taught me more than any retainer gig ever did. Now I mix short bursts of work with real breaks between jobs, and my income actually went up about 15%. Has anyone else ditched the retainer model and seen better results, or am I the odd one here?
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margaretc422mo ago
So the one-off work paid $80 an hour and taught you more, but did that actually come with less stress? Because my last retainer almost killed me with constant check-ins and scope creep, and my project work lets me actually sleep. Curious if the 15% bump matters when you're also trading panic attacks for downtime. What's the real tradeoff been for you, the money or the mental space?
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