Treasa Edmond: 0:00

Welcome back to the Boss Responses podcast. Have you ever had one of those conversations where, at the end of it, you're like, wow, I was a little bit passionate about that. Well, this may be one of those episodes for me, but it's a good episode. Jessica and I are answering a question about what happens, or what should you do, when you have clients who are driving you crazy. The person who asked the question today is dealing with three such clients, all of them at the same time. Jessica and I cover a couple of different topics while we're answering the question, and I think that they're all pretty great. We talk about ideal clients, client management and when it's time to just let go and find better clients. It's a little bit of a longer episode, but I think the time spent was well worth it, so have a listen and let me know what you think.

Treasa Edmond: 0:53

If you're a freelancer, business owner or anyone who deals with clients, you're in the right place. I'm your host, teresa Edmond. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time. I've been dealing with clients and running my business for nearly two decades and in that time, I've dealt with my share of doubt, imposter syndrome and not knowing what to say when a client asked a question I wasn't ready for. I created this podcast to empower you with the boss responses you need to grow your business. Each week, my guest co-host and I will bring you five episodes packed with practical insights. Monday through Thursday, we answer your questions, and Fridays we dive deep to explore how our co-hosts embrace their role as the boss of their business. Welcome to Boss Responses.

Treasa Edmond: 1:41

We are back for day four with Jessica Walrack and Jessica. I have the question for you today. It says my clients are driving me crazy. We've all been there, right? Yeah, so I have three main clients I work with all agencies. Lately, I seem to be receiving a lot of conflicting or unclear instructions from my contacts, which makes it difficult to deliver the final product they actually want. This means more revisions and more frustration for them and for me. I've never had this problem before. All three are on the low end of the average on rates, but they give me plenty of work, so it balances out. This is a theme this week. Yeah, there's been turnover at all three and my contacts at two of them are new. The third contact has a new manager and nothing we do seems to please him. Is there a way I can stop the madness, or am I out of luck?

Jessica Walrack: 2:33

Well, first of all, I'm so sorry you're going through that. I've totally been in a similar situation and, yeah, it's hard. You can take on the role of leading clients and giving them feedback on what you need, on how to give clear instructions, like I've had clients I see this a lot with like brand new startups. They just got funding and they're ready to go ahead, but they just don't have very much infrastructure. They're not that organized yet, and so they'll be like, yeah, can you write this blog? And then they have six people on there giving feedback and all different conflicting opinions, and so at that point I can say you need to have a point person who everybody talks to, and they put together all of the feedback and then they deliver it to me and I'll give you two revisions that are included in the price, and then, if you want more, we can talk about that afterwards and it will be an additional cost, and so you can lead them in that way.

Jessica Walrack: 3:34

Honestly, when I start to see things like this, I just start looking for a new client that I can replace them, because a lot of times they need to just work that out. Their stuff isn't ready to hire freelancers yet. They're doing the best they can, but they're not organized and then it takes too much of your time and then stressful. It's not good for your health. Maybe you end up working through dinner when you're supposed to be cooking for your family or other things, and it's just one thing can lead to another.

Jessica Walrack: 4:03

So I would say, like I talked about on day one, this is one of those things where you get to the end of the project and you're like okay, feedback wasn't cohesive and organized, there was too many back and forth revisions, manager isn't grateful, doesn't seem truly happy with my work. Maybe this just isn't a good fit. Nothing personal, it just doesn't sound like it's a good fit because there are clients out there who are going to love what you're doing. They're going to write you back and just be like I am so grateful for you and make you feel amazing and you're not going to have all these kinds of revisions. I think you can try to take the guidance role, if you want, first, or you can note these things for the future and keep prospecting to look for clients to replace them.

Jessica Walrack: 4:48

I know it's not always easy to just drop someone If you have a space, you have bills to pay and these things but I would recommend starting to look for somebody a better fit. How about you, teresa?

Treasa Edmond: 5:00

No, I absolutely agree, and I was going to start by talking about client management, but now I'm going to talk about the ideal client first. Not every client is your ideal client and sometimes you have to work with people who are not your ideal clients to support your business. That's just part of what we do. Every once in a while you have to choose a client. Maybe at the beginning you have to choose a lot of clients that aren't necessarily people that are going to be your ideal client, and there's a difference between an ideal client and a good client. An ideal client is that client who's like. I'm so grateful. I really respect your work. Very few revisions. They love what you do, whatever that is to you. So figure out your ideal client and then work on getting more of those. Realize you have to go through some chaff to get to them, but really work on getting to those.

Treasa Edmond: 5:48

Having said that, when you have clients like this that are driving you crazy and this would drive me crazy this is one of the primary reasons and I'm not dissing agencies I don't like situations like this, and situations like this tend to happen more when you're working with something like an agency than when you're working with an individual client because you don't have any control over their clients, and that is where a lot of this comes from. I am fully with Jessica on this one it's time to start looking for other clients, because it's just not worth trying to fix a situation like this. Having said that, client management is something that I am a big proponent of and it's built into my process and I do it from day one, and I've done this because I've pivoted my mindset. My clients are not my boss. I am the boss of my business and I am the boss of me, and therefore they don't get to tell me what to do or how to do it or any of those things. And in the workplace, when your manager gives you bad feedback or the not enough feedback or any of that, that's on them. But whenever you are running your own business and you're dealing with your clients and you're not getting what you need from them, most of the time that's on you, and if you choose to accept that that's happening and let it keep happening, that's definitely on you. So this can be more of a you issue than a client issue.

Treasa Edmond: 7:20

Do these three clients suck? It sounds like it, and you should probably get rid of them. But it's up to you to make sure that situations like that don't happen and don't happen continuously, period. So I do not wait for my clients to give me good and clear instructions. I go after them. Most of my work is at the front end of a project and that's how I have very few revisions and that's how I have very few dissatisfied clients, because I spend way more effort at the beginning finding out exactly what they want and what they need and why they need it. So it's not just enough.

Treasa Edmond: 8:02

We need you to write this blog post with these things. Why? What do you want to accomplish with the blog post? Because if they want to accomplish something different than what they think they do, your clients don't always know best. You are the subject matter expert when it comes to writing this stuff. So you need to step up and be that person, and sometimes that means demanding what you need out of the clients, and I'm not saying demand in a bad way. We're very respectful, we're very professional, but we are making sure we get what we need to do the job so that we can do it to the best of our ability, because that's what we do, right. We're great, we're experts, we do the thing, we do it well and we it to them, and then they are thrilled. And that's how we create ideal client situations is by not only finding the people who are just naturally ideal clients. You can turn a good client into an ideal client just through client management. I think and that's kind of a big thing.

Treasa Edmond: 8:52

For me, agencies are a different ballgame, because you have very little control over what happens and they tend to work with a stable of writers and then you are just one of many. So it really depends on how you want to run your business. Do you just want someone to give you assignments? You do them, you turn them back in and you're done, which is kind of like being an employee, I have to say or do you want to run your business? If you want to run your business, if you want to run your business, then you need to approach the agencies that will treat you like a trusted expert. And they do exist and they are out there and they pay really good rates. So if you want to keep working with agencies, find the better ones. No, just don't deal with this stuff. That sounds harsh, but not every client is the right client and it is nothing about the client. It's not personal. Like Jessica said, it's making the decision that's best for you and your business.

Jessica Walrack: 9:47

Yeah, and I know a lot of people say this, but it's so true that a lot of times, the ones that pay less, they're just they have the most problems or the biggest pains. They are.

Treasa Edmond: 9:58

You get up and you.

Jessica Walrack: 9:59

If you're a low-paying client, we apologize, but really truly they're more demanding, and I don't know, it just seems to work that way.

Treasa Edmond: 10:11

Here's the deal. When you charge a premium rate, your clients expect premium services. So you better dang well deliver If you do. If you charge a premium rate, your clients expect premium services, so you better dang well deliver If you do. If you charge a premium rate and deliver premium services, your clients never feel like they have to run anything. They know that you are the expert and you're doing the work. And that is a huge weight off of their shoulders and they love it. They love it.

Jessica Walrack: 10:38

If you're providing.

Treasa Edmond: 10:40

Yeah, it's a huge trust thing. And I talk about client management. Client management isn't about managing your client. It's about managing the process so that both of you are on equal footing all the way through. So I'm huge on client relationships where we are equal partners all the way through. They are the subject matter expert on their thing, I'm the subject matter expert on what I do, and we work together to create something that's wonderful and great and is going to solve one of their problems.

Treasa Edmond: 11:07

And if you approach it from that perspective, you're not lording it over your client. Your client's not lording it over you. Instead, you're equal partners working towards a desired end goal. That makes a huge difference. And if you can find the people that you can do that with, then you don't have problems like this.

Treasa Edmond: 11:25

Because if you do have a problem, come up, if they do give you an assignment or they want something done and they give unclear instructions, you know to clarify them. If you clarify them and you have it in writing in an email that this is what they want, and they come back at the end and they're like well, we really don't like this, we want to change it. That's when you can just step up and say no problem, but this is completely out of scope with what we'd originally discussed, so we're going to have to actually start a new project. Would you like to take what we've already done and turn it into something else that you can use? So that's not a complete loss for them? You're still watching out for them, so it's not always just about you, but things like that, those simple mindset shifts and viewing them as a partner instead of a boss type client I think that makes a huge difference in how you approach your clients Absolutely, and I used to definitely.

Jessica Walrack: 12:15

I mean, I was an employee before I was a business owner, so that was my default mode was how can I do the best job for you that I can and do everything you need? But when I really switched it to seeing it as a partnership, it was hugely pivotal, like if somebody wants to talk to me about hiring me, it's not just them interviewing me, I'm interviewing them. Yes, is they the right client? Do they have these things that I need from them in a client? And so and they feel that too, it's like OK, this is not a one way thing. We can't just tell her to do whatever we're in. We both have boundaries, we both have needs, we both have all those things.

Treasa Edmond: 12:55

So yeah, and that's a good point, you are choosing your clients as much, if not more, than they are choosing you. The ideal goal for I think, all of us is to have enough potential clients coming in who want to work with us that we get to choose who we work with every single time.

Jessica Walrack: 13:13

Yes, that is a beautiful point.

Treasa Edmond: 13:15

That's it. And the whole thing with the client management is like my discovery calls. I set my discovery calls up and then mine are different than some people's because I do mostly long projects ghostwriting things like that I spend. I have 30 minute discovery calls and I spend the first 20 minutes asking them questions. Even if I'm just doing a blog for a client, I spend the first 10 minutes of the call asking questions and that's helping me decide if this is the right project for me. And I have no qualms at this point in my career and I hope everyone gets there really quickly I have no qualms walking away from a project that's not a good fit because I'm spending so much more time and energy on not good fits than I could be.

Treasa Edmond: 14:00

I could be using that energy on a great client that's a great fit and I could have more of those. And you're making a choice Every time you're making a choice. Do I choose to work with a lower paying client who's probably going to be a pain in the, or do I choose this client over here who pays more but is more sporadic work? Whatever, You're making that choice, but in the end it's. I think it's really peace of mind.

Jessica Walrack: 14:31

Yeah, it determines your quality of life. It really does. This isn't all about money?

Treasa Edmond: 14:36

Is that something we should have a whole episode on that? Running a freelance business is not all about money. Money is one of the outcomes. It is not one of the driving factors, or it shouldn't be. If you run a business to only make a profit, then you become one of those clients you hate.

Jessica Walrack: 14:55

Yeah, it's definitely a way to support yourself, but then it's so you're spending your valuable time of your life every day writing this stuff. How is your experience doing that? Are you enjoying it? And at first it is. For me it was very much survival and trying to get as much as I could to make my ends meet. But then after a while, once you find your footing, it's like okay, how can I make this enjoyable? How can I make this stay within the boundaries I want it to stay in? That's huge because it can very easily take over your life and it a lot of that comes down to that client management you're talking about. It's saying no, learning to say no and feel good about like now, when I turn down a project I'm like, oh, dodged a bullet there.

Treasa Edmond: 15:44

That's not a good fit. No is not a bad word. No is one of the most powerful, best words you could ever have in your arsenal, and it should become your favorite word. I actually had a conversation with my mom a couple of years ago and she told me that watching me run my business taught her how to say no. She never actually understood that she could before then, and to me that actually brought me to tears a little bit, but that's the thing you really have to understand that not everyone understands that they can say no.

Treasa Edmond: 16:13

Not everyone feels empowered to say no. And when you pull that power to yourself and you start doing it, you're serving as an example for everyone, even for your clients, even for the people you're working with, your contacts. You running your business the best way you can and living a most fulfilling life serves as an example to the people around you, and that shouldn't be your primary purpose. But you should realize that you're doing that. And if it's all about the money and if it's all about making ends meet, then you probably should be asking yourself the hard question would it not be easier to just have a job? Because running a business is hard and you can actually just make money and let someone else make all the decisions. But if you want to be involved in that decision-making process and you want to drive your life and you want to run this business, then you actually need to step up and run the business.

Treasa Edmond: 17:01

So now, all of that's a bit out of the what do I do with these three clients? But no, I think it's still a decision. What are you going to do If you're going to find new clients and you still have to work with them a little bit, maybe step it up a little bit in the client management and say hey, I know a lot of things are going on. Our last couple of projects have been a trial. We don't seem to have clear communication going on here. Let's work together to see if we can fix that and then maybe they'll turn around and become a great client again. If not, then you're still making it more bearable until you can find a client to replace them.

Jessica Walrack: 17:35

So yeah, maybe give it a shot as you're trying to find other clients. Yeah, you're protecting yourself and trying to make the best of it.

Treasa Edmond: 17:48

Yeah, don't just settle for the status quo. Try to improve it, even as you're trying to get out of it. If that's the situation you're going with, yeah, all right. So tomorrow we are having a deep dive with Jessica on a couple of different topics that I think you're going to be really interested in. One is niching down and the other one is turning that outbound business into an inbound business, which I'm really excited about hearing about. So join us tomorrow, our Friday episode, and it will be a longer episode, and we'll just hear a lot more from Jessica. See you there.