What to do about a brand that does not fit

Every creator eventually gets an offer from a brand their audience will
dislike. The money is real and so is the damage. Here is how we think about it.

Your audience is the asset

The fee is a one-off. The trust is what generates every future fee. A single badly chosen
integration can cost more in goodwill than several good ones earn, and the loss is invisible
until it is not.

Questions worth asking

• Would I mention this if nobody were paying me?
• Would I be comfortable if a viewer asked me directly why I took it?
• Does this contradict something I have said before?
• Is the product one I would be embarrassed to be associated with in a year?

If the honest answer to any of those is bad, the fee is not the relevant number.

Declining should be free

On Tejaki it is. There is no ranking to fall down, no score that drops, no penalty and no
effect on future offers. We built it that way because a decline that costs you something is not
really a choice, and we would rather you only ran work you actually wanted.

If a platform penalises you for declining, that tells you what it thinks you are.