🚮 It is worse to have a bad client than no client

I truly believe that it is worse to have a bad client, than to have no client at all. The same is true for employees.

I have experienced this myself in my business, and I see it all the time with clients when they first start working with me. While I say this from a position of privilege, I got to this position using the exact counterintuitive strategies I often share - including firing bad clients (so I can focus on the good ones).

Looking back, the most draining, difficult, exhausting, and frustrating periods of being in business that I have ever experienced have all come as a direct result of working with/for a client I didn’t like. It makes you dread starting work and it can make you feel trapped.

A bad client:

• Saps your time

  
  

  • Bad clients often demand more time, attention, and resources compared to good clients. They may be overly demanding, changing project scope, requiring constant revisions, meetings, or support. This makes you dependent on them, as you simply don’t have the time to serve other clients or to find new, better, clients

    
    

• Steals your energy

  
  

  • Time is one thing, but we also only have so much energy in the day. Bad clients often drain our energy, leaving us unable to muster the motivation to work on important things that actually move the business forward

    
    

• Makes you question your sanity

  
  

  • Dealing with difficult clients can take a significant emotional toll on team members, leading to increased stress, burnout, and decreased morale. This affects productivity and ultimately impacting the overall effectiveness and success of the business.

    
    

• Erodes your self worth

  
  

  • Bad clients question everything. They make you feel like the prices you charge aren’t worth it, or the work you do isn’t good enough, or that you don’t really know what you’re doing, or that you are not good enough. This erodes your self worth, and starts a spiral of poor decisions.

    
    

This is without mentioning other traits of bad clients, such as being more likely to be litigious, to pay late, or to damage your reputation.

Bad clients do more damage than they could possibly add in value.

While you can sometimes change a bad client, it is rare and is usually not worth the time and effort. Often, we have “trained” the bad client to be bad through our own actions like unnecessarily quick replies, agreeing to negotiated discounts, and not enforcing boundaries. It is difficult to change cultural norms. I often prefer to cut the losses, cut them out, and focus on building back better with a new client.

ACTION: Consider whether you have bad clients (10 minutes)

Write out the names of your clients. After interacting with this person, do you tend to feel energised or drained? Have they shown any of the traits of bad clients mentioned above? What can you do to address this issue?

I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-march-20-2024

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