Don't take advantage of family and friends when doing a gig for them

If you're blessed to be gifted with technical skills, such as web design, photography, music production, then you probably have had friends and family who have asked to use your skills for free, or a highly discounted price. Sometimes the motive is to maintain/strengthen your relationship, gain experience, or to further your repertoire. Often time, there's not as much incentive to do a good job in a timely manner since you're doing it as a favor. Many times for performers in this situation don't take the gig as seriously and will flake out at the last minute. I want to STRONGLY condemn this attitude in this post, and encourage doing your best, or not doing it at all.

Encouraging Story

 My family tradition is to play Starcraft II with my family every year around the holidays. The gaming was delayed a couple days because my dad was asked by a close family friend as to make a wedding video their son's wedding. I was a little bit sad that I had to wait, but ultimately filled with deep respect and admiration for my dad who wanted to do a good job in a timely manner without any monetary reward.

1. When to accept or not to accept a project

Let's be honest. It takes a lot of time to do technical projects. As a software developer, I've been approached a few times to create a website or an app for family and friends. One of my neighbors runs a business, and was excited to hear that I was programmer. She told me about her idea for a really intricate  and complicated app that she was sure would take me a few hours (a big understatement). There were benefits of doing it. I would have gained a lot of practical technical knowledge, and would have had my name on a product of a growing company. I was very busy at the time with school and work and I knew that I wouldn't be able to dedicate the time needed to a good job for her app. So I politely declined.

2. Pass the baton!

Family and friends are like traditional customers; they want a quality end product. Family and friends are more patient and understanding to your situation. They understand that you may be working on their project around your busy schedule. Yet, they deserve that you do it in a timely manner. Nothing is more disrespectful when you put off their project for too long.

Music Mixer flees to Mexico

The bassist in my band knew a guy who gave us good a deal to record a 4 track CD for only $200. He's recorded pretty good stuff in the past. We laid down all the tracks, and while he was in the middle of mixing the tracks, some weird stuff happened to him. We lost contact with him for two weeks. When we got a hold of him, he said that he was in trouble with some debtors, and that he lost his house and he fled to Mexico. This was super random but, he emailed me all of the tracks and projects so that we could continue to work with somebody else. While we weren't completely satisfied with this outcome, we are much more satisfied than had he just up and left us hanging.

YSA Website

This also happened to me when my young single adult church group asked me to create a regional website for them. It was summer, and I had plenty of time to work on it. I put a lot of time into it, but I wasn't able to finish 100% before getting married and leaving the single's church group. I didn't make the interface easily customize able to those with no coding knowledge. I did my best to create robust documentation, videos, and even trained another coder within the church group to continue the work. I didn't want to have wasted all my time on "almost functional" website. It would have been useless to the church group, and I wouldn't be able to use it as part of my repertoire.

3. Do Your Best

Even though you may not be a professional, and the person you're helping might not be paying you, you still should do your best. My wife and I were lucky. Most of the people who participated in our wedding did an outstanding job and really came through for us. I could go on and on about how awesome everybody was, but I'll pick one notable exception: The cake maker. She is a high-quality professional who is in high demand. We approached her with little notice, asking her to make our cake. Even though there was little notice, she gave us the best tasting cake I've ever tasted, and I'm really grateful for that too.

En Fin

Do a good job always. Especially for your friends and family.


EDIT: removed the negative story.