On the Ask Us Anything podcast, BOH editor in chief Kaitlin Petersen taps former Trade Tales guests to answer real, confidential designer questions, offering a safe space to discuss business challenges. Have a question of your own to ask? Send an email to start the conversation.

This week, Los Angeles–based Christine Vroom answers a question from a fellow designer who recently landed several dream clients, but then, for reasons entirely out of her control, each of their projects hit a roadblock—flooding, a medical emergency, a house sale that didn’t go through—and was abruptly put on hold. Now, she’s wondering how to pick up the pieces.

Vroom stresses the importance of taking inventory of the hypothetical situations that could impact a design business, explains why her firm implements a “restart fee” for clients who need to push pause, and normalizes the start-and-stop nature of design work while offering tips on how to mentally prepare for the ebb and flow.

Crucial insight: Protecting your firm from pipeline disruption from the outset of a project without pushing away potential clients can be difficult to navigate—especially when so much of a designer’s job is to empathize with a client’s needs. While some designers insist on payment in full of the estimated design fee if clients must walk away from a project, Vroom explains how she found a middle ground after that language proved to be a dealbreaker for at least one of her prospective clients. These days, her firm implements a onetime charge for clients who are looking to restart the process after a period of delay. “How do you write your contract to protect yourself? The one thing I would do is define the ‘pause clause,’” she says. “It’s really [about] setting limits, even though it’s uncomfortable.”

Key quote: “Empathy without structure will break your business. Part of taking care of yourself is also taking care of your business. That balance is really tricky, because you need the structure to support not only yourself but your team, and your own finances are at stake because of somebody else’s finances. It’s a really, really hard pickle to be in.”

This episode was sponsored by Four Hands and Crypton. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.