Hey, my friends today, we are going there.
We're talking about clients from hell, and I don't usually, first of all,
I don't usually refer to this term.
I also don't usually talk about clients from hell all that much because usually
when I'm sent these stories or asked my opinion, usually I see things that
the freelancer did wrong as well.
Usually in my own situations, I have had some nightmare experie.
Nine times out of 10, there was something that I could have done better as well.
So I never liked to like rant and bash clients.
That's just not, you know, that's not my style.
But I do wanna take today's episode to talk about how to avoid some of these
nightmare clients and how to fix some of these situations that come up because we
can only control what we can control, and we're gonna talk about getting in control.
Okay.
The first thing that you can do to avoid clients from.
Is stop showing up like an employee.
I see this all the time.
New freelancer.
So excited to just get an opportunity.
So much so that they end up abandoning all of their processes that they have built
out, all of their wishlists, you know, all of everything that they stand for.
Um, and they just become like, they just shrink in front.
The client's eyes, I would assume on the discovery call, they're not leading.
They're not taking control even, even before the discovery
call when it comes to pitching.
They haven't invested in content, so they're only cold
pitching and a lot of times.
It can come off as desperate.
I get a lot of cold emails in my inbox and a lot of times they come off pretty weird.
When you are creating content that is authoritative, that shows that
you know what you're talking about, that you are an expert in the space,
that you are delivering a service in.
People want to work with you.
It's not like, oh, I, I have this seat to fill.
I need to hire this person to check this box For me, it's like, oh my
gosh, I see this person as an expert.
I hope they wanna work with me, and this affects everything.
This affects how you show up on those discovery calls because
it's no longer a job interview.
Right.
We've all been on those discovery calls where it feels like it's
getting job interview territory.
And those clients, whenever that happens, that's an automatic no.
For me, that is a huge red flag.
Even if I like their business, even if they want to take the next step
with me, I'm like, if you just ask me like standard interview sheet
questions, it's gonna be a no, because you're not looking at me as an expert.
You're not not looking at me as an authority in my space.
You are looking for somebody to kind of push around and control, and that's fine,
but you gotta pay full-time income for.
And you know, you gotta hire someone who wants to work full-time.
Also, when you are putting together your offers, a lot of times we
think we need to pack our offers.
We need to just have so much stuff in our offers really,
instead of selling deliverables.
I mean, I know some of us just, we can't get away from selling
deliverables if we're like a designer or returning over a website or whatever,
but like, don't, don't prioritize.
Don't emphasize that deliverable so much.
As you are emphasizing and prioritizing the solution to their problems, right?
I am not just selling you this many social posts and this
many, you know, this and that.
I am selling you the end result, which is hopefully more leads in sales for
your business through social media, which is an improved, you know, cohesive
brand on social, which is reaching more people in your target audience.
That's what I'm selling.
I'm not selling.
Five social posts a week.
That gives employee, that gives, hey, they're gonna push you around, they're
gonna make sure that you are delivering exactly those five social posts.
Cuz if you dare to post one less or one more, you're gonna have to answer to
them and you're gonna get micromanaged and it's not gonna be a good situation.
So don't treat yourself like an employee.
Treat yourself like the expert that you are.
One thing though, I'm gonna say there is a line, there's a fine
line between expert and arrogance.
And as somebody who hires a lot of freelancers myself, I've seen
the arrogance thing a lot too.
So just, just putting that out there, you know it, it's hard because you.
Do wanna position yourself as an expert, but at the same
time you are there to do a job.
So just keep that in mind.
Being an expert doesn't mean that you do not have to make your clients
happy or do your best to make them happy, that you don't need to take
it seriously, that you do not need to have any type of sense of urgency
for their work and for their clients.
This is something I've struggled with myself, but there is a way to do both.
There is a happy medium, I promise it exists.
So that whole discovery call interview thing is definitely a big red flag.
But there are so many other red flags.
And the second tip that I have in avoiding clients from hell is to not
ignore those red flags every time.
I'm not even joking, every time I have just second guessed
a client, I'm like, Ugh.
Was that a little weird?
Was that a little pushy?
Was that a little, was that.
Every single time I've paid for it emotionally, spiritually, and mentally,
physically, financially, I've somehow paid like it has somehow turned
into a client from health situation.
Every time I have, I have sensed that little red flag, so pay
attention to those feelings.
I don't have the science for it.
You know, I don't know, but there's just a vibe, right?
There's just a gut feeling.
You gotta pay attention to those things.
They give us signs, you know?
That's what our gut feelings, that's what our intuition does, is it's
there to kind of keep us safe and to warn us of potential danger.
It's not to say that you cannot fix this, right?
If a client does get on a discovery call and starts treating like a job
interview, or I've had experiences where I've had to tell clients
to stop speaking to me that way.
That I expect professional demeanor while we're working together.
Um, kind of wild that you have to tell, you know, I don't know, grown adults to
not swear at you and yell at you, but I've called it out and I've been able
to remedy the situation long enough for us to get the, the project complete.
Luckily that client was not a client that I had like long-term contract with.
Uh, cuz yeah, I can't deal with having to tell people not to swear at me.
You can remedy it.
The point though is that you have to call it out.
If I were to just sit there and cower and, you know, let myself become small because
I was, you know, didn't do something to this person's liking and this should
be a normal professional conversation and I'm getting screamed at about.
I could have taken that route and just made myself small and
just said, okay, no problem.
I'll fix it.
I'm so sorry.
Oh my gosh.
What would've happened?
That cycle would just continue.
I would, it would probably have gotten worse.
I would've probably gotten more inappropriate.
I probably would have, you know, had my contract broken and had to
do more and more revisions on this project that I was working on.
Right.
But by calling it.
You're, you're stopping, you're halting it in its tracks and you're saying to
this client, this is not acceptable.
We will not continue if you keep doing whatever it is that you're doing.
So call it out and document these things to.
If there are any type of, especially if there's any type of contract,
you know, breach of contract.
If they didn't pay you, if they are asking you to do something that's
outside of your contract, make sure to document that somewhere.
Send an email to them, write it down for yourself with
timestamps and all that stuff.
Take screenshots.
Just because if there is any type of dispute, I'm not a lawyer, of
course, but if there is any type of dispute, you'll have something to
back you up at at the very least.
Okay.
Um, another way to avoid clients from hell is.
To stop charging so low.
This might sound weird, I don't know, but there's this old saying in the
freelance, the freelance community that, you know, the, the $5,000 client
is like, cool, approved, no problem.
Pays you immediately.
Lovely to work with.
The $500 or the $50 client, right?
They are the ones who are micromanaging, who are asking for more than your
contract allows for, they're, they're the clients from hell a lot of times.
And I don't wanna, like I said, I'm always very hesitant about
saying anything negative about.
Any clients on my podcast because I never want a $50 client or a $500 client
to be afraid to work with freelancers.
And sometimes I do feel that rhetoric in the freelance community that is very
us versus them, it can be very nasty.
So, Um, I have had lovely, lovely low ticket clients, so many lovely ones.
But I will say, it kind of factors into 0.1 that if you are just dying for
acceptance, you know, you're like, I'm gonna price so low that I'll basically
work with anybody cuz I just need, I just need experience, I need work.
Whatever that pool is is wider.
Right?
So there's a.
Chance there's a bigger opportunity that you are gonna end up with a
client from hell versus there's a smaller pool of people who can
afford these higher ticket packages.
And you know, I don't know, the pool to nice person ratio on those
high ticket cl, I don't know.
So it could, it could even out, but in theory, There's a
bigger pool of people, right?
If you walk into a mall, there's a good chance that there's gonna be more
jerks in it than if you walk into a very small boutique because there's
just more people in in the mall, right?
And another thing that that happens from charging too low is it breeds
resentment in youth, the service provider.
And what I find, like I said, a lot of these client from health
situations are usually two-sided.
And I find that usually, yeah, you're gonna start dropping the ball,
you're gonna start forgetting things.
You're gonna stop giving those little surprise and delight moments that really
make your service what it is, and that build those strong relationships with
your clients and that that relationship's gonna start to whittle down.
They're gonna start to be annoying.
You know?
You're gonna start to be like, oh my gosh, this person's so annoying.
They're not even paying me.
And it just like keeps, keeps going back and forth at minimum,
because I certainly have had nightmare clients who paid me a lot.
At minimum.
In those situations, I can say.
Let's just pay this mortgage for the next few months.
Let's just shut up and stop complaining, Latasha, and just, you know, like
it, it's a little easier for me to suck it up, grip my teeth, and just
get the job done if it is actually.
Significant amount of money, but when it's very low amount of money,
it's too easy to just be a jerk back.
And like I said, it just goes back and forth and nobody's happy
and it's not good for anyone.
So make sure to charge what you're worth.
Charge what is.
Fair for your position.
Also, you know what?
I'm going off on this one.
I am, I am.
Another, another thing that happens when you charge too low is that
it hurts the industry as a whole.
So if you're a graphic designer and you're charging, you know, $50 for
a logo, if you're a social media manager, you're charging a hundred
dollars a month for social whatever.
Industry as a whole.
And what that means is that now these clients, these prospective
clients, they expect that everybody is gonna work for that rate.
And then when they get in discovery calls with other freelancers who are charging
market rate or even a little higher.
They might be very negative, very hostile towards them.
They might, you know, just not be prepared.
They might be doing the whole race to the bottom game and reaching out
to everybody that they can until they finally find someone that is willing
to work for that low of, right.
So charging a fair rate is not just a service to yourself, but it's a
service to the rest of the community, and then helps us all win also.
All right, the next two.
Really have to do with, with communication.
I mean, first is not onboarding properly.
Onboarding is your chance to make this work.
Truly.
It's like it's your opportunity to, to make this go right?
And it is not just for your client, it's also for you to make sure that
you get what you need from them, but also that they know the expectations
and you know, the kind of workflow, how things are gonna go with you.
What I find is that a lot of times clients don't know that they're.
Much.
Uh, for me, I am very like, kind of low tech, I guess.
I didn't really realize I was, cuz I mean, I'm surrounded by like cameras
and stuff, but I hate being on my phone.
I don't even text my friends.
I text like one of my friends and only when he texts me first, I'm
like a bad friend in that way.
I hate being on my phone.
I didn't realize that some people, that is their primary method of communication.
Like a lot of people hate.
Dms don't even get me started.
If a client that's their primary way of communicating is through text
message or through dm and that's just their normal way of life.
They don't know that they're being intrusive to me or that they're
triggering me or whatever by texting me.
Uh, cuz I never like set that boundaries.
So that's on me to set that boundary.
It's on me to say this is a business relationship.
And so we communicate via.
Email or whatever other business tool that I use.
Text message is there for emergencies, but we don't text.
You know?
That's on me.
What may seem obvious to you.
Isn't always obvious to everybody else, so it's super important to keep that in mind.
I know it might sound a little silly cuz I'm like, who texts my personal phone
at 9:00 PM But we, we can't, we can't apply our own standards to other people.
Response times is another important thing to talk about.
How, how soon can people expect responses from you if you're working with someone?
Again, going back to the employee thing, sometimes people think,
oh, we signed a contract together, so they are at my beck and.
They should be responding to me within an hour.
That's not how it works in, in the freelance world.
Obviously.
Sense of urgency, I've got it.
If something is on fire, if there is an emergency, of course, but
day-to-day communication, no.
Like that's like a 24 hour, you know, I'm doing stuff during the day.
I'm might be out traveling.
Who knows?
So set that, set that boundary.
Is it 24 hours, 48 hours?
Is there a a specific process they should follow?
If there is an emergency, lay that all out for them because then you
also have documentation of it.
If they start calling you at 6:00 AM or 9:00 PM or whatever on your personal
phone and you have that written in some type of onboarding document, you can
point to that and say, Hey, remember when we signed this contract and when, you
know I sent you this onboarding packet.
This is what you signed off.
And you are continuously not abiding by that.
And so, you know, let's stop doing that or, or end the relationship.
And then similarly, not communicating.
Just not communicating throughout the relationship.
I always like to over-communicate.
I mean, not so much that it's annoying, there is definitely a balance, but.
If I did something for a client, I'm gonna write it down and I might just
jot it down in some notes and like send off a weekly update or, you know, hold
it for our touch base call or whatever.
But I'm gonna write stuff down so that I can explain to the client
what I've been doing for them.
What I've been working on, uh, social media management in particular is, is,
you know, there's a period of time, especially in the beginning when.
Maybe there's not a lot going out because you are busy curating content
or creating content or doing research or interviewing people or doing all
the weird things that we do all day.
There might not be like heaps and heaps of content coming out.
Or another thing that I find with social media management in
particular is clients will let, or like, well, where are the results?
How is this impacting our.
Well, you're not gonna see that after a month.
You're just not.
And I set that guideline and communicate that before we even sign a contract.
If you are looking for an increase in revenue tomorrow, it's not gonna happen.
By doing an organic social media strategy, it's going to help you next year.
Even maybe in a couple months, you're not gonna see that impact in most cases unless
you get lucky and get go super viral.
You're not gonna see that impact tomorrow.
So I want to map out a timeline for you.
Just let you know when you can expect to see content start going out.
When I'm gonna start to provide you your first report, all of that stuff,
and, and also how long it typically takes for me to really start to see some
impact from, from our strategy together.
This is important because they don't know what they don't know.
Like if I go into a hair salon and get my hair cut and she just starts whacking away
trying some new, you know, new technique and doesn't tell me what she's doing, I'm
gonna be freaked out if I go to the doctor and they just shove me into a machine.
I'm like, what does this machine do?
What are, what are you reading about my body?
So you have to explain what's going on, uh, because I do, I see, and I've
experienced a lot, a lot of confusion.
Hostility when that isn't communicated.
This doesn't mean that you are being micromanaged, it just means
that you're updating and you can do it in a very gentle way.
That doesn't take a lot from you.
But that is just, um, you know, explaining what people paid for
because at the end of the day, yes.
People did invest their hard-earned money into our services.
So it is our job to make sure that they know what they're
getting for that investment.
So what do you think?
Have you ever had a client from hell?
You don't need to tell me the the juicy details, unless you really feel like it.
I'm always up for a laugh or event sesh.
Feel free to let me know if there are any other big red flags or things
that you really try to avoid doing to prevent more of these clients
from hell from coming your way.
As always, I appreciate you so much for tuning in.
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I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
I hope it was helpful, and I'll see you in the next one.
Bye.