Advice for designers

I have been to see Rachid yesterday, the owner of "La menara restaurant".

I came with my laptop and a first design for his website.

He had given me a few example of websites he liked. And given the quality of these websites...I was pretty confident : he would be amazed by the design I was about to show him.

Well, fortunately I had not spent that much time on it - defined:
1) The layout (monitored by CSS)
2) 4 master colors (monitored from the CSS too - very classy - deep browns combined with ivory and black)
3) navigation

He was not very happy by the color - We have changed them on the fly. So far...so good. But I made a mistake. The mistake I will never do again : feeling an excess of modesty, I admited that it would probably not look as good as if we had hired a professionnal designer ....

MIS-TA-KE!!!!!

He will now keep that in the back of his head, and whatever I come up with, he will never feel completely satisfied.

Advice : never turn yourself down. If the guy is looking for a very high quality work, he will look around anyway, and compare your portfolio with others. You need to do the same! You need to look out there, and compare the work you can provide with what can provide others.
You have got a "market value", and whatever you can provide, you have to know the value of the "work" you can produce.