2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me. on Vimeo

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2. 2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*ck You. Pay Me.

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10 months ago

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Our speaker at the March 2011 San Francisco, CreativeMornings (creativemornings.com) was Mike Monteiro, Design Director, and co-founder of Mule Design Studio (muledesign.com). This event took place on March 25, 2011 and was sponsored by Happy Cog and Typekit (who also hosted the event at their office in the Mission).

A big giant thank you to Chris Whitmore (whitmoreprod.com) for offering to shoot and edit the video. Photos were graciously provided by Rawle Anders (twitter.com/rawle42).

The San Francisco chapter of Creative Mornings is run by Greg Storey (twitter.com/brilliantcrank).

Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/SanFrancisco_CM

Credits

4,257 Likes

Nick Heer
22 minutes ago
Matthias Saunders
6 hours ago
Redajin
8 hours ago
visuality77
8 hours ago
Jed Sweigard
10 hours ago
Ana Villanueva
12 hours ago
Tomek Gancarczyk
21 hours ago
Andrew Phillips
1 day ago
Michael Collins
1 day ago
Michael Ryan
1 day ago

Tags

Dinah Sanders 10 months ago

This looks like a fantastic series. Thanks, Greg! (and Mike, Gabe, Chris, and Rawle!)
luxuryluke 10 months ago

Hope to make it to one of these soon. So good.
Simon H. 10 months ago

Awesome.
Chris Fato 10 months ago

So true in every way!
Sean A. Mack 10 months ago

Thank you very much for this.
Colorful Studio 10 months ago

Fantastic!
Rudi de Wet 10 months ago

Rock 'n Roll
Kevin Cale 10 months ago

Thank you!
Mig Reyes 10 months ago

Fuck you. This was great.
Chuck Casella 10 months ago

Well Done!
Dan Holt 10 months ago

Incredibly informative. Charismatic, funny but Straight to the point and serious! This was information that I needed. Thanks for being so Authentic and down to business.
Daniel Markham 10 months ago

Lot's o' "hair-clifs" at this gig (~33:00)
Tori Bishop 10 months ago

Awesome! Thanks!
Matt Otto 10 months ago

I am really enjoying the talk but, as an audio person pelase ring out the mic before people come and you place it on the talent.
JTB 10 months ago

It's not just me who gets wound up at that sort of thing then?

Great presentation though.
Mats Hage Eikemo 10 months ago

Also agreed. I cringe every time the mic rings. Please get your sound technician to fix this before the video is made.

Also, don't crank up the sound during questions from the audience. It simply sounds awful. Provide the audience with additional microphones or put subtitles in the video.
Patrick Carter 10 months ago

Very useful stuff, thank you for posting!
JTB 10 months ago

Great stuff. A sample contract to work from would be a bonus.
Clement Yeh 10 months ago

This can be easily google-searched.
Ana Seaton 9 months ago

One of the things that has helped me in the past, before I found my way, was to pull from several sources and compare. Pull out what you can use and throw away the rest. Don't just grab one and run with it. You can usually find good lawyers locally that will review your contract and give you advice on what to include and where the gaps are. You are going to want to re-evaluate your contract with each client and cater it specifically to them so it is an ongoing evolution, though, there will be some parts that remain as the foundation.
zach wolfson 10 months ago

Amazing – thanks for sharing this!
Accent Creative 10 months ago

nice!
Ross Floate 10 months ago

Mike's advice is slowly sinking in to me.
Obscura 10 months ago

Champion!
Spijker 10 months ago

enlightening :)
Beekeeper 10 months ago

fantastic!!
ciaran 10 months ago

Really interesting and informative.

Next time you guys do this, try to use subtitles for the audience questions, rather than simply cranking up the volume of the clip - looks and sounds way better!
Stef 10 months ago

bravo!
George Probst 10 months ago

This was just what I needed to hear this week. Time to go work on a contract!
Jakub Kejha 10 months ago

Excellent.
David Poindexter 10 months ago

One of the most well-structured, relevant, helpful, and pertinent discussions I've seen in many years. Very well done!
Rob Jones 10 months ago

Thanks so much for this ... very useful!
Jared Volpe 10 months ago

Would love to see some stock content that can (and should) be used in a contract.
Bauer 10 months ago

Hate to have to ask, but what's the artist/name of the introduction music used?
Chris Whitmore 10 months ago

Hey Bauer, to be honest, im not sure :] but i think you might find similar material if you search Wynton Marsalis' Trio...
cheers,
Chris
Dylan Mullins 10 months ago

The song playing at the beginning is Nicolas Payton's band covering "Tiger Rag".
Dylan Mullins 10 months ago

youtube.com/watch?v=PJl7R5QtCXs
Mikko Vierumäki 10 months ago

Excellent!
Sandro Dujmenovic 10 months ago

Great!
venkman 10 months ago

how many days in a working week?
Panda Marketer 10 months ago

Apparently 6.
i-media 10 months ago

Great presentation, thanks for sharing it!
Mike, Belgium
James Campbell 10 months ago

Great presentation guys. Agree with everything.
Chaitanya Bist 10 months ago

Thumbs up " "
Alia Trice 10 months ago

Loved this. Excellent presentation!
Luis London 10 months ago

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. This is the best presentation I've seen this year.

Thanks for Sharing !
Martin Tulaev 10 months ago

just make them pay in advance, easy
virtual republic 10 months ago

The main problem of young creatives is that wisdom, experience and understanding for "business = it's all about the f*cking money" will come mostly too late after burn-out and fail while more and more fresh young creatives will support this damn catch22 again without beeing aware of it... I was the same young and wild creative believing it's all about party, passion, hobby, talent, self-fulfillment and not F*CK YOU. PAY ME. Sad truth is that most of the self-proclaimed, selfish and arrogant "Managing Directors" didn't learn from it but abusing the young creatives "otherwise someone else will do". What makes the whole situation worst and unchangable. Because the hard way is of course harder. I just can say: F*CK YOU! LEARN BUSINESS, FIGHT AND PAY THEM.
Rob McDougall 10 months ago

"burn-out and fail" is so close to home it almost made me cry.
virtual republic 10 months ago

Great presentation. When my corp works for a direct client then contracts are a main topic before the work starts. But when my corp is hired by another corp in the food-chain you'll find noone who's talking about a contract. Most of these "sub-clients" have no competence inhouse or even a lawyer. A bigger client and agency have a legal department and contracts for the big budgets. Eventually the film- or post-production have an agreement with the agency or some kind of sub-contract. But everything lower that this is more like based on trust, dealing with employees and not the CEO's and simply "doing the job in time or a tight schedule". Here we used to secure processes by producing, debriefings, reports and post calculations of author's correction which need to be approved. The result is that you get your money but those "sub-clients" are mostly pis*ed and they complain about "that you are the only one who wants to get paid for overtime or changes". Meanwhile they are looking for another corp where's the workoholic boss and his bad paid pets and trainees work 24/7 for... yeah, for what? Guess what? I learned to give a sh*t on this otherwise nothing will change if I don't show my people what's wrong in creative "wild West" business and how it can be changed.
Thomas Burleson 10 months ago

Mike's comment "Twitter is for dick jokes..." is priceless. I love it.

As a software developer/architect, my rates are based on time & materials; I never work on max-cap or fixed cost projects. Nevertheless, the "Kill Fee" clause is a very interesting one... as well as the explicity statement of IP ownership until the fees are paid.

BTW, should I also say that "facebook is for dating pictures..."?
mr. sifuentes 10 months ago

the new mantra! fuck you! pay me!
David Parrish 10 months ago

Thanks Mike. Great presentation!

See also "How to Get Paid on Time":
vimeo.com/17336666
ALPHA DESIGN 10 months ago

I'm having the "FUCK YOU PAY ME" problem with a client! Fortunately we keep all web access passwords at our name xD But this is absolutely usefull! THANK YOU! :D
Gabriel Levine 10 months ago

Very good idea. Gabe
MINDRIOT PRODUCTIONS 10 months ago

This is so informative, thank you.
Jon Sheppard 10 months ago

Loved this, showed it to all my New Media/Graphic Arts students.
christoph 10 months ago

shared!

cjwho.tumblr.com/post/4608561074/f-ck-you-pay-me
ARTORICAL 10 months ago

Thank you for adjusting the sound for the questions. :) I want to know what Mike was arrested for. (Yes, I know I ended that sentence with a preposition; deal with it)
Jacob Halton 10 months ago

Ha, I've been using this mentality for a while now, glad to see others had the same idea.
inspiredMark 10 months ago

A tedious subject made entertaining. Thanks for sharing.
Pawel Piekarski 10 months ago

Great & helpfull. Thank You.
Clement Yeh 10 months ago

Too many people in the creative fields shy away from talking about this stuff! Good for you guys.
Arnold Zokas 10 months ago

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I have picked up a lot of useful advice.
Vin Thomas 10 months ago

So awesome. Do you have an example of your Kill Fee verbiage. I'd love to see what you're using.
Scott Orchard 10 months ago

Thank you for the informative presentation! Great advice for anyone in the design field.
Brandon Tauszik 10 months ago

Yes.
Tom dB 10 months ago

Very, very good.
Dan Morelle 10 months ago

Thanks Mike. Ahhhh. I can think of at least one time the title of this talk has crossed my mind.
Nenad Zivanovic 10 months ago

Great stuff!
Bill Ray Drums 10 months ago

Your talk has inspired my little design firm to completely revamp our business relationships with a couple of clients, and from here on out "get it in writing". Thank you so much...I would say "from the bottom of my (insert some body part here)"....but that crack about "who is the bottom in this relationship" makes me laugh too hard. :D
Jeffrey T. Jarrell 10 months ago

Every Designer can walk away with something from this video. Thanks.
3DStreaming 10 months ago

Thank you for sharing this video. We added it to our website as our audience also gets to deal with those issues: 3dstreaming.com
Alfonso Enciso 10 months ago

After watching this video I feel I have now more confidence and I've realised how valuable my work is. I think I can charge them the right price and the most important part, cover my back with a proper contract.

Many thanks
Blake R. McRitchie 9 months ago

I would love to sit down one day and explain the experiences i have had over the last 2 years of my life dealing with a certain project that i spent a great deal of time on only to be kicked to the curb and abused. This box is just to small for me to go on without a camera to record it.
New World Designs 9 months ago

Superb, truly superb :)
Matt Lawrence 9 months ago

This is not an easy thing to shoot and make it look good. You did it. Thanks! Loved it.
Ana Seaton 9 months ago

Thank you so much Mike, and Gabe. Brilliant stuff, tremendous help. Wish I could have seen this sooner!
Neil Ferree 9 months ago

WTG Mike. I should grow some kahonies and send this vid link to the slippery jag-offs in Atlanta... are you listening LMS?
Owen Wexler 9 months ago

if there was a "favorite thing on Vimeo and the Internet ever" button I would click that.

also I actually revised my standard contract considerably with some help from this talk. thank you so much!
Ralev 9 months ago

Nice talk!

It's one rule that I'm trying to follow and that may be useful to somebody else : charge 50 or 100% in advance for projects from clients who you don't know.

If they like your style, if they don't want to mess with contracts, if they want to engage as much as you do in the project - they'll pay :)
Robert Alsop 9 months ago

Excellent advice to focus on 'business' to earn respect as a professional.
Justin Benn | Vivo Media 9 months ago

Mike Monteiro, I love you. You have encouraged me to take my business more seriously. Thankyou.

So I've decided, finally, to get a lawyer to work for me properly. Let's see how this works out.
video 9 months ago

great video; alot to think about.
Initials 8 months ago

Awesome, can I get a copy of the contract you use?
William Koehler 7 months ago

Fantastic presentation - never a dull moment. My only regret is not being able to download the original video for archive/offline replay.
ctoverdrive 6 months ago

Words can't describe how awesome and valuable this little clip has been. Speaking as someone who has been doing this for close to 5 years, talks like this are incredibly important to listen to and take part in. No matter what stage of your career you are in, it's always good to keep on top of this aspect of the business.

So thank you.
Ben Atkin 6 months ago

Great presentation! I both enjoyed the talk and the format. I'll be watching more San Francisco Creative Mornings videos.
Mauricio D. Ricaldi 5 months ago

great video.. thx for sharing this information..
Brian Ortega 5 months ago

I love design... and I want money. Thanks Mike. My confidence is rising.
Fizah Rahim 4 months ago

Thank you for this!
Hughes Hall 3 months ago

Thanks. Really needed to hear this.
Jim Peake 3 months ago

Great information thanks
Ian Ryde 3 months ago

Awesome, so wish I could attend one of these...
DJ Emir 1 month ago

It's simple for me, I simply ask for all the money up front on all designs. Unless it's a huge amount of money of course then it's laid out in stages with a contract and a down payment to "seal the deal" otherwise if they take too long to return with the signed contract and down payment then I simply assume they are not serious. I kindly remind them one last time that the price is contingent on them making the payment and signing contract within the month or within 2 weeks. If it's not paid by then, the contract will be open for negotiations again and the project will probably be going up in price. If they don't handle it then I simply move on, no point wasting time on people that aren't ready to move forward.

For DJ Gigs I do half down deposit with contract, the few ties I didn't follow these rules I got screwed over royally.- djemir.com
Aleksandar Medo 4 weeks ago

Amazing video. Really an inspirational tips and ideas for my next job.