Whenever you see their name light up in your phone you cringe a little bit. Your heart beats a little faster every time you get an email notification from them. It’s always SOMETHING with that one client or customer. In this week’s episode, Rachel and Avram talk about one of their worst clients, the red flags, how they contributed to making it worse, and the deal breakers they discovered from that experience. Hopefully, you’ll learn from their mistakes and even gain the courage to fire your most cringeworthy client or customer.

Show Notes

[01:58] Common red flags of a problem client

[05:50] How we made a bad client, worse

[10:45] The simple question asked that shifted the entire energy around the situation

[15:26] The crazy thing that happened within 24 hours of firing the client

[17:58] 6 actionable lessons learned from the worst client ever

Mentions & Resources

We Create Together

Digital Harvest

Episode Transcription

Below you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

Avram Gonzales: Welcome back to the Babies and Business podcast. This is your host, Avram Gonzales, joined by Rachel Gonzales.

Rachel Gonzales: Hello!

Avram Gonzales: It’s been a while since we co hosted a podcast, had some guests on lately, but really excited about today’s topic because I think everybody can relate to having the worst client ever. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re serving other businesses or serving customers.

We’ve all had experiences of those cringe worthy people that we just don’t want to deal with. You see their phone number pop up or an email come in from them and you just, you just want to crawl in a hole and die. And that’s what this episode is about. What you can look forward to today are some takeaways.

If you’ve got. clients in or customers in your roster right now that you just don’t know how to get rid of them or find the courage to Get rid of them and they’re annoying the crap out of you We’re going to give you some insight on how to do that We’re also going to be sharing with you through our own stories Ways that you might learn to pick up some of the red flags and avoid some of these situations like we’ve had.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah for sure so Yeah, so let’s start out by you telling me in a nutshell kind of situation. We’re in

Avram Gonzales: so This is not the first client that we’ve had that was not playing by the rules, but it’s the first client that inspired us to do a podcast about it. And I would say that it’s like most situations, everything starts out and it seems good or you’ve got the fairy tale in your mind of how it’s going to go.

In this case, we thought it was going to be a really. Tremendous relationship that we were going to build over time with a company that we thought wow we can really get behind and believe In what these what these folks are doing. But that’s sort of where it ended because as soon as we got engaged and we got into relationship with them Is when all of it started to change. They wanted exceptions to be made about everything The ways that they wanted to be communicated with they wanted it to be different than we normally do for other clients. We had to constantly repeat ourselves over and over and over.

because the business owner wasn’t listening was never really present on the meetings and then we ran into a lot of situations where Because there was poor communication between the owner and the staff or the owner going around the staff to talk to us and it created a lot of There are actually several times where we got pulled into inter office drama with people pointing fingers and us getting caught in the middle of the crossfire just for doing our jobs.

And… It just led to tons of stress every single month or every single interaction that we had with this client. So to the point where I’d have a meeting with them and The rest of the day was just destroyed.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, it was the day before too

Avram Gonzales: and even the day before.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah

Avram Gonzales: So we would be talking and going over stuff for an hour or two You know trying to trying to work with the insanity of this client trying to make them happy And then we get on the meeting and it was, you know, everything that we were supposed to be doing, we were doing, and there was just, that was the other thing, right?

We felt like they never trusted us, there was all this felt like skepticism, and here we are just cranking in huge numbers, year over year, difference from where they were before, and it just wasn’t, wasn’t enough. It was, it just went off the rails from the very beginning.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, okay.

Avram Gonzales: You know, um, and we tried to do everything that we, we even rearranged processes.

That we’ve had well established that work for other clients to try to make this work We actually thought first it was us. That was the problem I think that’s kind of where we started and it also didn’t really serve us in the long run.

Rachel Gonzales: It’s true you know, I think that an ytime something doesn’t quite work in our business.

We definitely look back Because of our core value of we create together that to us means like how did we help create this situation that we’re in right now and Looking at this, you know We were constantly pointing the finger at us and our process and our project and what maybe could be better But really in reality We were dealing with some really unreasonable people and it felt like crazy town it felt like Groundhog Day every time we had a meeting with them and It was like, like the question over and over and over was how can we make them happy?

How can they not be happy? You know, we’re getting these banging results for them and they’re still unhappy and they’re still asking, wait, help me understand this. And we’ve gone over that

so many times.

Avram Gonzales: Well, even though we did realize in the end that they were just being completely unreasonable, we did come around to that and we’ll talk more about it, I think, here in a minute.

Do you think, I mean, what were some of the things that we did to contribute to them? Having unreasonable expectations because we do have an impact on that.

Rachel Gonzales: Absolutely. Well, I think that some of a couple of the things that we do is, you know, just in life in general, when someone makes a request of us, we have really, we have a choice.

Are we going to say yes to that request or say no to that request? And with clients, oftentimes it’s kind of a, a knee jerk reaction to say yes. to the thing. And from the very beginning, even before we had them under contract, we, you were fielding emails and calls at unreasonable hours and kind of talking them into different things.

Like they had another, company that they were maybe thinking of working with instead of us. And so the owner would come to you and say, Hey, what do you think of this? They’re, they’re saying this, what, what do you say about this? And so it was back and forth and back and forth. And I swear it was like six months of that.

It felt like anyway,

Avram Gonzales: for like a long time before they pulled the trigger.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

So it felt like a lot of talking into. like talking them into doing business with us. But then also we didn’t really hold our boundaries that we do here at Digital Harvest. We have a little boy. We do not work outside of the hours of nine to five.

But that wasn’t demonstrated in the sales process with this client. So I think that that was a huge contributor on our part because, you know, when you sign a contract, it doesn’t mean, Okay, now things are different. You know, we’ve already established how that relationship is going and what we, we taught them how to treat us.

Avram Gonzales: We did. I think every time that we said yes to something that was different than we would normally do, We taught them that that was okay to ask for more than was in the contract.

Rachel Gonzales: Right. Well, and then also I think there might have been some stuff like, uh, there, uh, if you will, a weak link on the team that they knew if they asked this person that they’d get the answer, kind of like a kid playing mom and dad against each other.

You know, dad doesn’t know that mom said no, but the kid goes and asks dad and dad says yes. And then you’ve got this big thing going on. So some of that maybe. And you know, I just think, I think that there was a point where we realized it wasn’t working for us. But, uh, I, I think we should really talk about what that was.

What did that look like? To arrive at that, knowing that this just doesn’t work for us.

Avram Gonzales: I remember we were sitting on the back patio one evening, just pissed off. Yeah. Because I think we had realized that because of the way things had gone down either like at a meeting or the meeting that was yesterday or something was going on with it because there was always something.

That it ate up our entire evening and that we couldn’t stop talking about it over dinner. Right. You know, we went and put the baby down and then we were talking about it again and it consumed our entire evening and it had done that for two or almost three days in a row and we realized this is the pattern every single month of this client around when we meet with them.

Rachel Gonzales: Well, and then you with your, your love of numbers, you went off and you started rattling off numbers. Numbers like. What does this mean that we emotionally contributed to this client over the life of this client being with us? And I remember the number was ghastly.

It was astounded.

Avram Gonzales: It was, it was, it was something like we’re spending six to nine hours every month, just talking about this client.

It has nothing to do. With actually serving them. It was everything about trying to make them happy. Yeah! And we were so, I think, mad and upset because we had done all these things that we, I think, maybe were hoping would be enough and that would be seen and acknowledged as above and beyond. Right. And we were resentful of that.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: We made all these compromises. To our business hours. Right. Early on that then we almost couldn’t take back.

Rachel Gonzales: Right, exactly. Well, and then the client would hit us up and feel really urgent and it was unpleasant and You know, nobody wants to have an email that comes in at 8 p. m And you feel like you have to respond right away when this is family time and and that’s super frustrating.

I remember Um, in this situation that kind of along the same, maybe that same night when you were doing that math to find out how much time have we actually wasted on this? Um, I asked the question, I kind of brought it up like, okay, so maybe we’re asking the wrong question. We’ve been asking this whole time how to make them happy and we’ve tried everything.

Maybe we should ask, is this working for us? Because we realized the drain that it was having on not just our time and our emotions, but kind of our relationship too. We would get really snippy at each other and we don’t do that. We don’t, we don’t communicate with each other like that, but there was some real frustration that came into our household an d it was just really unpleasant.

And when we asked that question, I’ve, it was emphatically, no, it doesn’t work for us.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. We looked, we could also look very easily at the rest of the client roster that we have and all these people that really appreciate the work that we do, that trust in what we do, that shout our name from the rooftops.

And we realized we’re not the ones that are in the wrong here. We’re the ones that are taking it right now. And it’s costing us. Our family time. Yeah. And that’s what really broke it for us. You know, we have business hours for a reason. Why are we talking about this? Why can’t we stop talking about this?

Even when it’s after hours, now it’s consuming our evening time and we should be, you know, relaxing and getting ready to enter the next day. And we weren’t able to do, it was just really taking away from our quality of life. And there was no amount of money possible. that would make up for that. Right. But I think that money is also a big reason why people don’t fire the client.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Well, you know, I know that that was initially some thoughts that I had had was, wow, you know, I mean, here we are at this certain level of income each month and we’re serving these clients at really high level. We’re so excited for these results, like really, really good results. And like you said, it wasn’t enough for them.

And then, so I went and I did my own math. And I figured out where we would be with our expenses and everything else. And I said, I came to you and said, Avram, we can fire this client and not feel it. And some really, really, really awesome things happened when we took that step into the dark, not knowing where our foot would land in kind of in essence.

And I’d love to hear what happened. You know, do you remember what happened after that?

Avram Gonzales: Kind of. I just remember the feelings of relief and not having to deal with it anymore. Yeah, that peace that it brought back to me was pretty powerful because I got back a lot of my mental capacities. I didn’t realize we’re getting soaked up by this client.

My emotional, um, tank was being drained and I just, it immediately felt more full and more me again.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, I agree. That’s exactly what happened. And I remember also that people started flooding in. There were calls, people called us. I think it was the day after we fired them that somebody called. wanting us to represent their business.

And then it was one after another, after another. And we were able to make up that income that month and every single month after. And we never actually felt it. And I was just, you know, I look back and I ask the question, how did we not do this sooner? You know, we could have been here so much quicker and without less, with less pain, without all of the trouble and, and just, I don’t know.

I think maybe we walked away from this more committed to recognizing up front maybe seeing red flags and not allowing it to get to this point of actually Drawing up a contract and doing business with people like this So I think we really found what our deal breakers

are.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, and I just remembered what happened.

Yeah, specifically. Yeah Yeah, so it was within 24 hours of firing this client That we got a referral, a good one. We’re still working this, this referral for the largest company in its industry in the state of New Mexico.

Rachel Gonzales: Yep. Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Avram Gonzales: So that’s a very long sales cycle for these guys because they’re not hurried to make a decision, but we’re in, we’re in the ring.

We’re in the mix for getting this. This particular client, which would be probably twice as big as the one we let go of, right? And so it reminds me of this Sort of universal law. It’s the law of the vacuum You can see this applied in the physical when you clear out a closet or you clear out your garage or whatever That space will stay empty for a minute unless I’m sorry, it’ll it will and if you if you don’t have intention That space will fill up with a bunch of junk that you don’t want in there.

But if you do have intention, what will come back into that space is something totally different. So you see that physically when people do like a spring cleaning, they clean everything out and then all this new stuff comes into their life. Yeah. Well, the same thing I think is true in business and we found to be true with this case, we fired the client and then new and better opportunities came in right away.

And I think it’s kind of an exercise in faith to know that that will always happen. When you get rid of something, something else will come in to take its place. Yeah. And you have to step into that and we’re actually doing that again with some other stuff with the business. Not the worst client ever kind of deal, but considering making some big changes and moves and we’re feeling more faithful in making those changes just because of things like this.

Rachel Gonzales: Right.

Yeah. Agreed. So I think, uh, I know that it really brought us together. We were able to, um, actually have our evenings back and we came out of this situation knowing what is absolutely a deal breaker for us when it comes to working with clients. And that’s really helped give clarity when we’re pursuing a business and we actually can see things in those conversations that we’re having at the very beginning.

And we don’t actually get into situations like this again, and we’ve really committed to that, that we don’t, that we don’t actually want to do that.

Avram Gonzales: I have an idea.

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

Avram Gonzales: You want to do some quick takeaways? If we had to summarize all this into some one liners, we can maybe go back and forth?

Rachel Gonzales: Sure.

Avram Gonzales: So, you want me to go first?

Rachel Gonzales: Yep, you can go first.

Avram Gonzales: I mean, I’m the idea, right? Uh, so number one, clarity. And what works for you and what doesn’t work for you makes all these decisions much easier.

Rachel Gonzales: Yes. Better questions. Better questions. When we asked the question, Is this working for us? We knew the answer right away. And we felt such peace just in the answer.

We hadn’t even done anything about it. So, asking better questions if you feel stuck.

Avram Gonzales: Mmm.

Doing it just for the money? Rarely, if ever, works out. So if the money coming in is the only reason that you’re keeping somebody, it’s probably time to get rid of them.

Rachel Gonzales: Sure. Um, I think that the one that I’m thinking of is if you…

If you have something that you sell and we sell packages and those come with specific results or things that we want to help you with, we want to bring in more leads to drive your cost down. That is what we want to do with marketing. And we need to keep people focused on that and not get lost in the weeds because with this client, we really did get lost in the weeds and we let them lead a lot.

So, uh, really know what it is that you have, stand by what you have and I think that people are just going to love what you, people want to do business with you because it’s going to feel a little bit more, um, put together.

Avram Gonzales: The last one that I can think of, I don’t know if you got anything after this, is that there is always something better for you if you allow and give it the space to come in.

Rachel Gonzales: I like that.

Um, yeah, I think that, uh, just the introspection of, uh, how did we get here? And moving forward, how can we avoid this? Just a little bit of introspection can really help us get some answers when we feel stuck with a client.

Avram Gonzales: Dang. And you know, what a beautiful thing, I guess, in hindsight, because now we got this podcast.

Hopefully you as the listener got something out of it. I want to hear, after you listen to this, did you fire the person? Did you get rid of them? You know, we relate this back to our households. This is the Babies in Business podcast after all. I think that there are situations, there are certainly people, and it’s usually people, in your life that you may not need to cut them out completely, but you need to limit your time and exposure to them because really, when you’re an entrepreneurial parent looking to find your own way, you’re building a business while raising a family, you just don’t have the space.

To keep the bad actors around. Because the bad actors… Are keeping up and taking space for the people that really want to be there for you and support you

Rachel Gonzales: and just creating noise that you have to filter through.

Avram Gonzales: Yeah, so we appreciate you for listening in We’d love to hear about it catch us on social media @babiesandbizpod If you got something out of this episode Please let us know share this with a friend or a colleague that you have heard recently Complaining about a terrible client a terrible customer.

They probably need to hear this and make sure to hit that subscribe button We’re looking right now to build up those ratings on podcast on Apple podcast. So if you could do us a huge favor Rate us and leave us a review on there Your reviews are gonna help us attract more Entrepreneur parents that are looking to find their own way and what a better place than to see your sparkling review about This podcast and what it’s done for you.

That’s all that we ask. Thanks so much for listening.

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now