If you aren’t familiar with VIP days, then I’m shocked (and jealous) of your ability to dodge this topic since it’s something that seemingly every single service provider is either implementing in their business or teaching others how to implement them. 

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VIP days are when an entire project, from start to finish, gets done in one day. Yup, one day….so about eight hours. There are people building out entire systems, brand identities, multi page websites, etc. all in eight hours. 

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There’s probably a lunch break in there somewhere but depending on the provider that’s not always a given. I don’t like them for many reasons. A few of them are personal, and a few of them are not so personal. 

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I’m not interested in being chained to my desk for eight hours straight…and neither should you. 

I didn’t get into running my own business so I can be on someone else’s clock for eight or four non-stop hours. I wanted control over my own schedule, and I wanted the ability to decide when I’m going to work and how for long. 

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Now there have been plenty of times where I worked on a project for an entire day with breaks in between. However, that was my choice. Not because someone else is expecting it to happen on that day. And as a creative person, there are gonna be days where I’m just not on my game. And I want to give myself the grace and the space to take a day off if my creativity is blocked or my mental health is off. 

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The marketing around VIP days can be a bit deceptive in my opinion. 

This is the part that’s most annoying for me. Is it a deal breaker for clients at the end of the day? Probably not. However, I am not interested in the illusion that it creates for newer designers and the pressure it puts on them to deliver (what I believe to be) unrealistic results on very short timelines. 

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What the marketing for these VIP days don’t tell you is that there’s a large chunk of the work for the project that gets done before the actual VIP day takes place. And that goes beyond just onboarding, which makes sense to take place before the project starts. 

Some have set their VIP days up where the client gives them all of the assets or information needed up to a week and sometimes multiple weeks in advance before the day occurs. 

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In those instances, my question is: “Then why not just bake that time into the overall project timeline?” The project isn’t technically taking just one day. The person you’ve hired could “secretly” start the work the previous week and just present it to you on your VIP day on time.

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Is that wrong? No. Is it deceptive? Perhaps.  

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Overall, I think it’s a waste of time. Just say the project takes two weeks. Why are you creating fake urgency for something that people didn’t even know they could get it all done in one day? That may be my huge issue with it overall, the fake sense of urgency. 

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All that pressure on the service provider to perform miracles and on the client to give thoughtful and constructive feedback in a matter of hours.

That just sounds like a recipe for disaster. Why is there so much pressure on everyone involved to develop something as vital as a brand identity or website in eight hours? 

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You, as a client, want to rush into giving feedback or approving the design of the visual representation of your brand? The way that it presents itself online while you’re sleeping, in your marketing, in your client documents, in your ad campaigns, etc.? 

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What is the rush? Where is the urgency coming from? I understand the aversion to projects taking months and months to complete, however, with time comes space and opportunity to explore and validate multiple creative paths which can only lead to everyone making more confident decisions and producing longer lasting results. 

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You wouldn’t hire someone to build your house in a day, why should your brand be any different?

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