Knowledge catalogue / Case studies
Anonymised from a real coaching situation. No names or identifying details.
A video business owner came in halfway through a job that had turned sour. Edit only, no shoot, four videos for one client. He'd quoted two rounds of revisions on each, which is fair and normal. By the time he reached out, two of the videos had been through three rounds and one had been through four. The client had just sent another list of changes, and he finally said the thing most people never say: this is going to cost more.
He read it as a pricing problem. It wasn't. It was a boundary problem, and the boundary had been missing since week one. He'd written "two rounds included" on the quote and then never enforced it, so the number sat there as a polite suggestion. Over six weeks he'd taught the client, without meaning to, that rounds were unlimited. Then he tried to un-teach it in a single email.
The reply came back fast and ugly. The client felt ambushed, offered half of what was asked, and told him to take it or leave it. The relationship was over. The job, by his own admission, made no money. The damage wasn't the few hundred dollars in dispute. It was that you can't draw a line after you've already let it be crossed three times.
A line set calmly in week one is reassurance. A line drawn in anger in week six is a fight. The fix would have cost nothing: name the rounds in numbers on the quote, count them out loud as you deliver, and have the money conversation the moment the next round is requested, before the work, as a choice the client controls.
The full framework: how many revision rounds to include, and how to charge for extra ones.