After fending off a number of overbearing clients, Farmington, Connecticut–based designer Kristen McCory began to second-guess her business. Instead of admitting defeat, she lawyered up and tightened her contract so that she can keep doing the work she loves on her own terms.
I always felt confident about my business—I had great, busy clients who didn’t want to do the job, so they brought us on as a service. But when the pandemic hit and everybody started working from home, things changed, and they were suddenly there to literally watch every move. Obviously, we’d always been working for them, but it was almost like Ibecame an employee at their office, where every little thing was analyzed. We all lost our lives to some degree during those months, and when clients had us back in their homes, it was something for them to have control over again, and many of them became a little overbearing. People I had worked with on and off for a decade—whether room by room, or on their whole house and then second homes—and who I never had issues with, all of a sudden, made me the target. But it was like, “I haven’t changed. You have.” And it was happening with new clients too—they were taking my agreement and breaking it apart over and over, trying to change every word. My answer was no, but I still started questioning myself.
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