Stop 5 of 8 · Daily

Revisions

Turn "can you make it pop" into three specific changes, count the round out loud, and keep a change log the client can see.

What a client means by pop

Nobody sends a brief that says "increase the contrast between the display face and the body copy". They say pop, energy, cleaner, more premium, more us. Those words are real information poorly encoded, and the fastest way through is not to ask what they mean. It is to guess three times, precisely, and let them point.

Rami does this in the client Project so the guesses come out inside the brand rules rather than outside them. Three readings of "premium" for a taqueria are not the same three readings as for a gym, and the Project already knows which one it is looking at.

Marco says this about the layout: [paste his message]. Give me three specific readings of what he might mean, each one describing an actual change to this asset in terms he would recognise, no design vocabulary. Then write the two-line reply that puts all three in front of him and asks him to pick, so I only build one.

Send all three. Do not build all three. The point is that he chooses with words, in a message, at no cost to you, and the choice is now on record as what he asked for.

Counting rounds out loud

The retainer says two rounds. The relationship says never sound like a contract. Both survive if the round number appears in every reply from round one, as a plain fact, before it is ever a problem.

Here is the revision request: [paste the client's message]. Write my reply. Confirm what I am changing in one line. Say which round this is against the two included in the agreement. If any part of the request is new work rather than a revision, name that part in a separate sentence, say it needs its own quote, and offer to send one today. Warm, five sentences maximum, no apology and no lecture.

The separate sentence is the whole technique. Revisions and additions get different sentences, so the client sees the line without being told about it.

The change log

Add this round to the Ironhouse change log: [paste the request and what I did]. Keep the table to date, asset, what changed, who asked, round number. Then tell me if we are now past the two included rounds on any asset.

Run this after every round and the log writes itself. At renewal it is also the clearest evidence of what the retainer actually absorbs, which is the conversation where your rate goes up.

The three sentences that keep the relationship

None of these are confrontational. They are only uncomfortable the first time, and they are uncomfortable because nobody wrote them down before now.

Mark stop 5 done