Field Guides / Case studies
Anonymised from a real member's coaching thread. No names or identifying details.
An owner quoted two rounds of revisions per video on a four-video edit, then let the rounds run to three and four before raising the cost. He asked for $600 for the extra changes. The client offered $300, take it or leave it, and the relationship ended on a job the owner called "wildly unprofitable". The rounds had never been defined, counted or held, and that's where the job was lost.
The situation was an edit-only job: no shoot, four videos for one client. He quoted two rounds of revisions on each video, which is fair and normal.
By the time he brought it to coaching, two of the videos had been through three rounds and one had been through four. The client had just sent another list of changes. Around six weeks in, he finally said what most owners never say out loud: this is going to cost more.
What was going wrong was a missing boundary, and he read it as a pricing problem. "Two rounds included" was on the quote, but the rounds were never defined, never counted at delivery and never held, so the number sat there as a polite suggestion. Over six weeks he taught the client that rounds were unlimited, then tried to un-teach it in a single message.
He asked for $600 to cover the extra changes. The reply came back fast and furious. The client felt ambushed, offered half, $300, and told him to take it or leave it. His own verdict: "I think this professional relationship is doomed," and the job was "wildly unprofitable".
So the cost was the margin on four videos and the client with it, in a dispute over a few hundred dollars. And it wasn't a one-off. On a larger multi-deliverable quote, the same owner tangled himself in revision-round maths that had never been made clear up front, and had to start the explanation again.
A boundary set in week one would have prevented it. That means three things: the number of rounds and the price of a further round written on the quote, the round counted out loud at every delivery, and the money conversation held the moment round three is requested, before any work starts, as a choice the client makes. A line set calmly in week one is reassurance. A line drawn in anger in week six is a fight.
The coaching he got was the same: define the revision rounds in the quote, hold them, and treat extra rounds as billable rather than absorbing them to keep the peace.
The clause, the round definition, the line to use at each delivery and the scripts for pushback are on the guide this story belongs to: how many revision rounds to include, and how to charge for extra ones. The emails for each moment are in the three revision emails.
What happened after is that the relationship ended with the dispute. The coaching record doesn't show the client coming back, and it doesn't show what the owner's later quotes looked like, so this page doesn't claim either.
Your last client knew which round they were on only if you told them at every delivery. Think about your last three jobs: did the client ever know which revision round they were on, and did you?
The method behind this story. How many revision rounds to include, and how to charge for extra ones: the revision clause, what counts as a round, the scoreboard line, the pushback scripts and a worked example, all copy and paste.
Related tools and guides. The three revision emails, How to price a video project, Anatomy of a Profitable Quote, Quote checklist, Drop the scope, not the price.