The client who disappeared for 3 months
The client who disappeared for 3 months
March 2022. I’d just finished the first round of designs for a rebrand project. Sent them over. Asked for feedback.
Silence.
A week later, I followed up. “Hey, just checking in — did you get a chance to look at the designs?”
Nothing.
Another week. Another follow-up. Radio silence.
The waiting game
At first, I figured they were just busy. It happens. People have emergencies, take vacations, get swamped with other priorities.
But after a month, I started to worry. Did they hate the work? Did I do something wrong? Were they ghosting me because they didn’t want to pay?
I checked LinkedIn. Still active. I checked their company website. Still up. They weren’t dead. They were just… not responding.
Three months later
In June, I got an email. “So sorry for the delay! Things got crazy here. Can we pick up where we left off?”
Sure. Except now I had other projects. I’d mentally closed this one out. And I’d spent three months in limbo, unsure whether to wait or move on.
We finished the project eventually. But it took another two months because I couldn’t drop everything to accommodate their schedule anymore.
What I do differently now
Kill fees. If a project stalls for more than 30 days due to client delays, I charge a restart fee. It’s in the contract. Most clients never trigger it, but it protects me when they do.
Clear milestones. I break projects into phases with specific deliverables. If one phase stalls, at least I know exactly where we are.
The “parking” email. If I don’t hear back in two weeks, I send something like: “Since I haven’t heard back, I’m going to pause this project for now. Just let me know when you’re ready to continue and we can discuss timeline.”
It’s not aggressive. It just makes the situation explicit instead of letting it drift.
Document everything. What was approved, what’s pending, who owes what to whom. If they come back in three months, I shouldn’t have to piece it together from scattered emails.
It’s not personal (usually)
The hardest part was not taking it personally. They weren’t ignoring me because I did bad work. They were just overwhelmed with their own stuff and my project fell off their radar.
That doesn’t make it okay. But it helps to remember that clients are humans with chaotic lives, not villains trying to make yours difficult.
Having one place where all project info lives — instead of scattered across emails — makes the “pick up where we left off” conversation way easier. That’s part of why we built equest.