Why I stopped being afraid to lose a client

THIS WEEK: A more personal one this week. I want to talk about working with clients, why I no longer put up with behaviour that drains me, and two things that happened recently that reminded me why that boundary matters. This can be applied to potential business partners!

I do not work with just anyone. If I get messed about, if a client is pointlessly difficult, or if I see red flag behaviour early on, I remove that client from my business. That took me a long time to be comfortable saying out loud, let alone doing. When you are starting out, whether that is running a web design business, investing in property, or anything that involves working closely with other people, you put up with far more than you should. You tell yourself the money matters more than the discomfort. You tell yourself every business relationship has friction and this is just what friction feels like. Some of it is. A lot of it is not.

The data backs it up. Only 22.5% of small business owners describe their mental health as thriving. The rest describe themselves as surviving or struggling. Nearly half of small business owners have sacrificed real personal relationships because of pressure from the business, and a significant proportion report tension or lasting damage to a close relationship as a direct result. Owners whose businesses are growing or stable are far more likely to report good mental health than those whose businesses are not, which tells you something important: mental health and business performance are not separate concerns competing for your attention, they move together.

I realised a while ago that my mental health and my happiness were more important than money. If I wanted to spend my time working with people I did not like, being spoken to badly, or navigating constant games and inconsistency, I would go and get a normal job. The entire point of building this business was to have some control over who I work with and how. A bad client or a bad business partner can drain you so badly it bleeds into your personal life as well as your business. I am not willing to trade my wellbeing for a client relationship that costs more than it gives back, and I think more small business owners should feel able to say the same thing without guilt.

I want to be specific rather than abstract about this, because I think the specifics are what actually help.

I recently let go of a client who never once took the advice I gave them. Every recommendation, every piece of guidance based on seventeen years of doing this, got ignored or overridden. Then, predictably, when the results were not what they hoped for, the blame landed on me. Not on the decisions they made against my advice. On me. That is a pattern I used to absorb without saying anything. This time I did not absorb it. I ended the relationship. It was uncomfortable in the moment and it was absolutely the right call.

Around the same time, I was in the process of trying to win a new client. Things seemed to be moving forward, an agreement seemed to be in place, and then it was not. They said yes, then decided no without telling me, then the goalposts moved again. There were what felt like deliberate mind games and small power plays throughout the process, the kind of behaviour where you come away from a conversation not quite sure what just happened but fairly sure it was not straightforward. I sat with it for a bit and realised something important: this back and forth, this inconsistency, these games, were not a rough patch before a good working relationship. This was almost certainly a preview of what actually working with them would be like, indefinitely. I stopped chasing them.

The next day, out of nowhere, two new clients came in. Not connected to the situation above in any way. Just two genuine, straightforward opportunities that appeared the day after I stopped putting energy into someone who was never going to be worth the energy in the first place.

I am not going to pretend that is proof of some cosmic principle where letting go of the wrong thing automatically summons the right thing. It is probably coincidence, or it is probably that stepping back from something draining freed up the mental space to notice and respond to two things I might otherwise have been too preoccupied to properly engage with. Either way, it reinforced something I already believed: the energy you spend chasing or tolerating the wrong client is energy you do not have available for the right one.

How I Actually Decide

I do not have a formal scoring system for this, but there is a pattern to what makes me walk away or decide not to pursue something in the first place.

Inconsistency early on is the biggest one. If someone says yes and then no and then maybe, before any work has even started, that is not a one-off. That is how they operate, and it will not improve once money and expectations are involved. If anything it tends to get worse, because now there is more at stake.

Blame without accountability is another. If a client ignores advice and then blames the person who gave the advice when things do not go their way, that is not a communication problem you can fix with a better explanation next time. It is a pattern of behaviour, and it will repeat.

The general feeling of a conversation is worth trusting more than people give it credit for. If I come away from a call feeling slightly manipulated, slightly off-balance, or like there were undercurrents in the conversation I could not quite name, I have learned to take that seriously rather than explain it away. Genuine business relationships, even difficult ones, tend not to leave you feeling that way. Games do.

And the honest test underneath all of it: when I am mentally in a good place, I am more productive, I do better work, and everything downstream of that improves, from client results to my own home life. A client relationship that consistently undermines that is not worth whatever fee is attached to it, because the cost shows up somewhere else, in worse work for my other clients, in a shorter temper at home, in the kind of low-level stress that does not show up on an invoice but absolutely shows up in your life.

Pick one client or working relationship that has been bothering you. Ask yourself honestly: if this person came to me today as a brand new prospective client, exhibiting exactly the behaviour they exhibit now, would I take them on?

If the answer is no, that is worth sitting with. Not necessarily acting on immediately, not everyone is in a position to walk away from income overnight, but worth being honest with yourself about. The relationships that are draining you now were, at some point, relationships you said yes to. You are allowed to un-say yes.

NEED HELP? In over your head? Wearing too many hats already? No idea where to start? I can help you. Alternatively, feel free to WhatsApp me on 07800596333!

I am aware this issue is a departure from the usual tools and tactics format, but I think it matters more than most of the practical stuff I usually send. Nobody teaches you, when you start a business, that one of the actual skills you need to develop is the ability to say no to money. Not recklessly, not as a matter of ego, but as a genuine, considered judgement that some working relationships cost more than they are worth.

67.5% of self-employed people deal with issues around late payments and poor client behaviour, and the overwhelming majority say it adds real stress to their lives. That is not a niche problem. That is most of us, most of the time, quietly absorbing behaviour we would never accept from a friend, because the invoice is attached to it.

I built this business, in part, to have some say over who I work with. I am not always going to get that judgement right, and there will always be a version of me early in my career who took on far more than he should have because he did not yet believe he had the choice. But I do now, and I would rather send fewer invoices to people who make my work miserable than more invoices to people who make it worse.

If you are reading this and there is a client or a relationship in your own business that you already know the answer to, you probably do not need me to tell you what to do about it. You already know.

Need someone to do this properly rather than doing it yourself? I have been doing this for 17 years. Get in touch. Alternatively, feel free to WhatsApp me on 07800596333!