The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 308: The Time I Fired a Client

Today, I am diving into everything you need to know to be able to protect yourself, your energy, and your business. I will also be sharing my experience around firing a client and how to handle that situation. Then I’ll share some recommendations on what you need to have in place to protect yourself!

The Time I Fired A Client

BY: MELISSA LIN

Welcome back to another episode of The Fierce Business Babe podcast. We are back for another episode. And this is something I have not talked about much on social media or on the podcast and only have ever shared a story like this and I'm really looking forward to it. Because it's something that we don't hear about often enough in our industry. Having to fire clients, dealing with clients who are out of Integrity with their payments, people breaking their contracts with you, and firing team members, is hard stuff. Today I'm going to share about a time that I had to fire a client and the reason I want to share about this today with you is that this isn't talked about enough in the online space and so many business owners don't even see firing a client as an option or something that they are even allowed to do. Something that I believe to be true was that as the business owner, you get to protect your energy and you also get to protect your experience in your business and protect your business as a company. That means, from time to time, you may take on a client that you thought was such a great fit and turned out, they weren't. So I want to go into a few things with you today so that you can see what it can look like if this ever happens to you and your business and also let you know and remind you that everything is going to be okay.

When Things In Your Business Feel Hard

For example, maybe you've got clients not paying their payments and being out of Integrity with the agreements, not following your contracts, maybe somebody recently copied your program and is selling it to their audience, whether it's happening right now or going to happen in the future, I want you to know that you can truly handle anything that comes your way. You are so strong. And I know personally that when some of these challenges have come up for me and when they come up for my business I was just so happy to have a huge support team and also a mentor to lean into to help guide me through from someone who is just way ahead of me in that moment and had also been through similar situations. I wasn't going through it alone and someone could hold my hand as I was going through. And I knew exactly what needed to happen as I was going through it, even though I had support, it still felt scary.

And there have been so many moments in my business like this. I mean, I've been in business since 2014. So there have been many, many, many moments, and I actually shut my entire business down and their offensive moments where I wasn't sure how to move forward. When I can say is, after going through those experiences and growing, learning and expanding, I know that with whatever is currently hard right now, I know it’s just a current challenge. Six months from now. It is going to feel so much easier. I'm going to look back and I may giggle at the situation. Maybe not depending on what the situation is. Six months from now everything's going to feel so much easier. Whatever feels hard in this moment will feel easier as you get support to go through it and ask her to go through some of those challenges, right? Maybe you don't know how to handle them right now, at this moment. And if that's the case, I recommend making sure you have some type of support system to lean into,. I don't necessarily recommend only to hire a mentor. However, find a group, find a mentor and start working with somebody that way when a challenge arises.

I've gone through so many different challenges over the years as we've continued to grow and you can handle anything that comes your way. There is nothing that can break your business and I love to remind my clients about that and I was actually sharing that with some of my fiercely scale clients on one of our calls last week. You know, nothing can break your business and there really are no problems and business. Everything is figureoutable rather than challenges are opportunities. There is nothing that you can't figure out and there is nothing that is going to burn everything down.

Why I Fired My Client

I want to get through, and I want to chat about my experience, firing a client, reasons to say no to some potential clients, when I recommend having a place in your business to protect you and so much more.

The first thing I want to chat about is my experience firing a client and I deeply believe that you must protect your energy and you must protect your experience as a business owner. I had a client years ago who broke our contract that we had together. She copied most of the content inside of the program, even my social media content plan verbatim, and utilized it for her own business, which immediately went against our contract. My legal team Immediately got involved and a cease and desist went out and the client was removed from my program. So we ended up removing this person from the program and firing the client, and no longer worked with that person.

In the moment as this was happening, it was such a scary time because it was one of those times where It was something I hadn't faced before. It was the first time that I was pretty much being copied where my program was stolen from me and somebody else was selling it and it was also the first time where I really needed to get my legal team involved.

This is your permission slip. That if something is happening, you get to be human, you get to give yourself a day or two or three or a week, however long you need to feel the whatever emotions come up for you.

Protecting Yourself

I had things in my business to protect me now. I was still scared and I'm just so happy I've always made business foundations such a priority and just making sure that I'm protected as a business owner. I still deeply believe that you get to protect your energy and your experience as a business owner and a little later in today's episode, I'm going to go into a few different things that I recommend having in place in your business so that you can also protect those things for yourself your energy, your experience, your business itself, your content inside of your business, your assets that you've spent so much of your energy and love creating, get to protect at all. It's yours and your business. I want you to know that there are ways to handle situations like this. And there are others who have gone through these things before that can support you through it.

I recommend having a legal team, and having someone there by your side to support you.

Reasons to Say No

I've said no to some clients to potential clients that I've wanted to work with because of some red flags that I saw. I have been able to avoid a lot of potential challenges because I have said no to some clients. I saw some red flags. So I want to share some of these with you. I have made many mistakes over the years in my business. I'm human. And I want to help you avoid making any of them as possible. Just because someone wants to pay you does not mean you should take them on as a client.

In my earlier days, especially my first year or two in business, I definitely took on some clients. I probably shouldn't have because of some of the red flags I’m going to share with you. Keep an eye out for somebody that doesn't follow instructions. If you've ever worked with me, or if you've had a conversation with me, like in the DM's, for example, I give, let's say, for example, that you've applied to work with me and one of my programs, I can give directions and give you next steps for what to do in order to take those next steps to work with me, right? If you applied, it's likely, I sent you a message, and also some voice messages and then like the link to take the next step. For someone that doesn't follow directions. It tells me a lot of things about you as a business owner and tells me about what type of client you could be.

A desperate client that needs to make this work and they expect everything to be fixed by you. Somebody who is looking for quick results like that, like growing into six figures overnight, are usually the clients, not always, but usually the clients that expect you to do the work for them. They're expecting some type of magic potion to do all of the work for them overnight just because they invested. This tanks the energy for you as a business owner. You legally can't guarantee client results. You don't know how they are going to show up fully actually and lean in. Yes, you can do your part and they also get to do their part. So expecting you to be there Saving Grace for their business or whatever that may be, as if they're looking to create that transformation, it can create a negative relationship with a client and coach from the get-go.

If the potential client is talking poorly about other people, whether it's their last coach or other people, and their last program in the industry, they're most likely not taking responsibility or maybe they're blaming their last coach for where they're at. So consistently breaking contracts with other coaches. And these are some red flags to keep an eye out for.

If you see a potential client breaking your boundaries, this is such a red flag, something to look out for so maybe they're in your DMs. They're trying to hop on multiple calls with you even if you have like a no-call rule or maybe they're trying to send you a video message or a video call over on Instagram. I share my boundaries often on social media. My audience knows where my boundaries are in my business. If they get upset with you not responding within minutes that's another red flag cuz again that behavior will continue very likely it will continue in your container.

I do want to get into what I recommend having and place your business to protect you as a business owner, to protect your company first, which is so important. Have a contract, this protects the only you as a business owner, but also your clients. And I am always so blown away when I have clients during my programs and they were either never taught to use contracts or told not to that wasn't necessary. But so, yes, it is. So important to protect yourself, protect your business and also protect your clients. And this is one of the first things that we support our clients with inside of our Academy.

I do recommend getting a termination agreement created by your legal team. This is what we have, our legal team, usually put this together if we need a termination agreement, really just depends on the situation.

We talked about so much today, we touched on my experience, firing a client, reasons to say no to some potential clients, what I recommend having a place in your business to protect you and so much more. We will see you next week and another brand new episode of the fiercest business pay podcast, brighten early, next Monday morning. Thank you for hanging out with me today.

Topics we cover include:

When Things In Your Business Feel Hard
Why I Fired My Client
Protecting Yourself
Reasons to Say No

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(8:10) Protecting your business

(11:45) Finding a mentor

(14:44) My experience firing a client

(19:06) Reasons to say no

(31:28) Contracts

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