She complains, “There’s just no appreciation on their end. I got them ___, and they’re still trying to tell me how to do my job. It’s so frustrating. I have clients that I feel I’m under-servicing and this one takes up all my time. They have a low retainer, but they act like they own me. That’s the last time I let them talk me down on my retainer.”

“You shouldn’t have let that happen so you shouldn’t be surprised.”

“How so?”

“I once visited Venice when I was a kid. Many stores didn’t have prices, but some of the stores did. No matter which, you didn’t have to pay the listed prices — there was an expectation that you could haggle over the price.”

“And?”

“Well with this client: they don’t know your field so they don’t know what the expectation is. **You** set that. Letting yourself get talked down on that amount is like buying something in Venice. Imagine if we were in the United States, and someone walked into your store and said, ‘Hey, I know it says it cost $15, but how about I give $10?’”

She laughs.

“Exactly! The only place you can do that here is at a car dealership. If you treated their counteroffer like you just treated this hypothetical, they would have learned to go somewhere else and be someone else’s problem, or deal with you on the terms you set. When you created your own business, it was because you didn’t want companies to feel they owned you, and you wanted to be free to be honest with them. You need to set those terms down in this way.”

“Yeah, they said that they wanted _____ in the long term but didn’t have enough money right now, so they wanted a two month contract at a lower rate to try it out. I should have known they never really valued the work I do.”

“That’s another thing right there! Imagine, I was single right now and asking you out. What if I told you, ‘Hey, I really want have a committed relationship and get married someday. Why don’t we fuck so I can try you out?’ Would you?”

“When you put it that way, definitely not.”

“Exactly.”