Originally Posted by TomCayman
Can you folks be serious in considering options ? There is only one... tell your client you are not available due to prior commitments... and unless the client is a totally anal a***, just tell him you are taking your kids to Disney.
Sorry, but having a life changing experience that hugely impacted my whole family relatively recently (Hurricane Ivan in Sep 04), my priorities seem to have shifted much more to those surrounding lifetime experiences over money and career.
Remember, nobody lies on their death bed worrying that they didn't make enough effort with their clients, but many wish they spent more time with their family.
Oh, and happy to say that these days I struggle to even make a mid tier frequent flyer status, as I've restructured / delegated to cut back my business travel to the bare minimum. Too many missed school plays, parent teacher conferences, birthdays (although I normally made them!), swim meets, primary school football matches.
You get the gist
Tom,
Valid points but sadly i'm not short of life changing experiences either.
At the end of the day what I think we concluded by post 7 or so was that if the client was prepared to pay enough then I was prepared to forego part of my holiday. I'm lucky that I get to spend a lot of time with my son anyway as I work from home, so a proposal went in last night and I should know on Tuesday whether they're happy to pay me (what I consider) an awful lot of money for just over 72hrs of my time.
If not, I don't go - it's as simple as that.