@Ry Mac I was just a witness to this this week with a lead, who happens to be a friend of mine. I gave him a great proposal to help him with a lot of his online social reputation. I gave him a very fair rate and time horizon to do the project, taking on most of the work myself. At least, I thought so, but he still had the perception (a valid perception, probably) that his team would have to have significant involvement. I really need to figure out how to pare down his needs to where he has a clear understanding that his team doesn't have to have that much involvement to get the benefit of this work. In a couple weeks, when I reach out to him for followup, I want to be able to show the limited scope that his team would actually need to be involved for me to be successful at doing the work. The point of this is that this situation is real. If they see your project as adding to their to-do list in some significant way, and they're not prepared to do that, in this case, he's got a low-staff situation. The prospect will say no, for now at least... Actually, one of the items of our project was to help him with his profile and job posting situation on LinkedIn, it was a small part, but a part nonetheless. Anyway He doesn't feel like he can take on more work until he can pick up the staff he needs to do some of the things he's engaged in. It's a revolving double-edged sword, which is dangerous.