The client you should fire
You found your best clients. Now look at the other end of the list.
A few weeks ago you looked at your top clients by spend. Here's that issue if you want it again. Today, look at the other end of the list.
You already know who's there. The one who books, cancels, and rebooks three times. Who wants the friends-and-family rate every visit. Who runs late and makes everyone else run late. Who leaves you tense for an hour after they go.
You keep them because firing a client feels dramatic, and because revenue is revenue. But add up what that one client costs. The discount they always negotiate. The slot they cancel that you can't refill. The mental load you carry before every appointment. The good client you couldn't fit because their flaky booking was holding the chair.
That is not a paying client. That is a part-time job that pays below minimum wage and drains you on top of it.
One honest caveat. When you're starting out, a paying client is a paying client. You take the work, you build the business, and you're right to. This issue isn't for that stage. It's for the point you're at now, with steady demand and more clients than you can take on well, where keeping the draining one isn't loyalty. It's room a better client can't have. Firing the bad one isn't losing revenue. It's making room.
I had a client like this once. She wanted my expertise but would only pay for the hour sitting across from me, nothing for the work that made that hour worth anything. The calls ran long. When I sent a proposal with a clear scope and clear deliverables, she wanted the deliverables and balked at paying for the time behind them. So I held my scope and my price. That was the whole boundary. She could take it or not, and either answer was fine.
Yours might not be a proposal. It might be the standing discount, the constant rescheduling, the after-hours texts. The shape changes, the decision doesn't. You don't need a confrontation. Next time they push past your terms, just hold them. Most of the time they sort themselves out, and the ones who leave free up room for the clients you want.
You spent the last few issues learning to see your best clients. Protecting your time for them sometimes means making room. Letting one go is how you do it.
You know the one. Permission granted.
P.S. Found this useful? Forward it to a fellow operator, or share the web version: link
