It’s Time To Let That Crazy Client Go — Here’s Why

An 8 step guide to preventing Karens from ruining your biz.

Independence, being able to make your own schedule, letting your creativity run free…Those are some of the main reasons why many of us request discharge from the “industrial reserve army” by starting a new side hustle as freelance content creators.

Ah, but there’s a catch. Being a successful side hustler means on top of mastering the skill, service, or product you’re trying to sell, you’ll also have to deal with highly demanding clients.

There’s no manager to step up for you when they refuse to pay. No other colleagues can take on the rest of the project after the client reject all your ideas.

As a freelancer, you are on your own in the wild, putting the desire to make your business succeed ahead of the urge to leave that business meeting, slam the door, and put that whole project behind you.

Tough luck.

We all have encountered people impossible to work with and have had to turn the page.

“I love to be a graphic designer, but could we get rid of clients somehow please?” ― Erik Spiekermann

1. But, hear me out: a difficult client could be an opportunity in disguise:

99% of the time, you can turn a problematic client’s complaints into learning opportunities. Dealing successfully with a problematic client could lead to more significant profits if you play your cards right.

Think about each reasonable complaint as a chance to revisit your system or service. You’ll encounter some clients that are more knowledgeable than you are in your field, and their complaints can be harnessed if you’re humble enough to deal with change.

If you’re looking for the right way to regain control over your business, following these simple, actionable tips could change the way you think about all of the world’s Karens.

2. Not everyone is “client material”:

Remember when I said earlier that there’s a 99% chance for you to turn an angry customer into a gold mine if you work your way to see their complaints as business opportunities? I’m leaving that 1% out of the picture for a reason.

Some people aren’t visiting your online store to shop or hiring your content creation services because they need your brand of professionally written articles for their blog.

Some clients haven’t understood the difference between requirements and whims, valid complaints and childish tantrums, business-appropriate conversation, and abuse.

I have many friends who are working in call centers, and their stories are shocking. The amount of yelling, undeserved name-calling, and disrespectful behavior they have to deal with day by day was draining their energy until they learned this secret mantra everyone in the service industry should live by:

“Their frustration isn’t against me, sometimes not even against my work. I won’t personalize this aggression. Everyone is dealing with a personal story.”

3. There’s something we all need to accept at some point in our careers:

We all want to change the world and fight for what’s right, especially when trying to persuade our clients to value the results of our hard work.

However, some client’s requirements can be unreachable, as they aren’t based on results you have a chance at delivering.

As we all know, some people are unfixable, and so are their problems, even when they are work-related.

• Sometimes they’re delusionally shooting for the stars with a subterranean budget.
• Sometimes they are so personally invested in the project they can’t accept a solution unless it comes from them.
• Sometimes they aren’t happy with the results because they want to argue with someone after a bad day.

In any case, if you feel the whole purpose of you having a side gig or even your work’s value is being put against the ropes for reasons beyond logic…

It’s time for that client to hit the road and don’t let them come back no more, no more, no more.

4. The clients you need Vs. the clients you found:

Strive to find, keep and nurture the relationship with clients that help you grow. As with any relationship, there are two sides to the coin.

That’s a rule that should be set in stone.

As a service provider, you put a price on your skills for the benefit of your customers. That’s why the terms of the agreement must always be clear.

Even though empathy is an essential part of human relationships, keeping things on the professional side is mandatory for healthy communications.

Boundaries are so hard to maintain when it comes to business that sometimes we fuel abuse in the workplace, even as freelancers.

Respect requires empathy, the capacity to anticipate and understand the feelings of others. It requires consideration.

— Deborah Norville

5. Let me tell you the story about my very own “Karen”:

I got this amazingly perfect client once. It was a writing gig about makeup that I’d managed to land on the content mill I worked for before finding this platform.

In the beginning, I was ecstatic! Yes, the SEO research she sent me to work on was so generic she wasn’t going to get good results, but I could also offer to work on that in the future.

It was a win-win-OMG-I-get-to- write-about-eyeliner-and-get-paid situation.

So I enthusiastically started writing the first blog post for her online makeup services startup. Being a makeup artist myself, I was in the zone.

I was ready to catch new clients, seducing them with my knowledge about eyeshadow palettes, matte lipsticks, and “The top 10 tricks to get a professional look at home on a budget”.

Until she hired me, she was doing all the heavy lifting for her website:

She was behind the design, the writing, marketing strategy and was a makeup enthusiast herself. She was a young businesswoman ready to take over the world, but she lacked the time to keep that multitasking role.

We crossed paths precisely when she was starting to delegate some aspects of her new business to other passionate professionals, or so she explained.

I meticulously wrote the first articles she ordered. I also threw in a couple of extra goodies like ideas for the next batch, copyright-free images, and an offer to work on her SEO strategy.

I remember that after clicking send, I confidently waited for her to place a second order.

I was cocky, I know. But that’s how confident I was about the results of my work and the possibilities of helping her company grow by doing what I love.

Then, she went yellow cray-cray on me:

That night she answered with “some suggestions highlighted in yellow with the details that needed some editing.” Great! I can do that, I thought.

But when I opened the file, my mouth dropped.

It would have been easier for her to print the whole article on a yellow piece of paper.

I wrote: “use an angle brush to get more definition on your eyebrows”; she inserted a comment saying she would prefer: “you can get more defined eyebrows by using an angled brush.”

Where I said, “wear nude lipstick for a more elegant look,” she replaced it with “nude lipstick will make you look classy,” and so on.

A neverending revisions loop:

I must say I was impressed she didn’t notice how bizarre that was. The whole thing was written according to her requirements, but I wasn’t using the exact words she would. A goal that was obviously impossible, naive, and crazy to demand.

I was writing makeup-related articles about bridal trends. The project wasn’t about ghostwriting her autobiography, you know? Do I need to watch raw footage of her life story to write about a topic I can call myself an expert on?

As that never happened to me before, I never set a limit or an extra fee on the number of revisions I offered per piece.

Like so, I got surprisingly stuck in a neverending loop of bright highlighted pages.

“You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.” — Jerry Fritz

What would you do if you were in that situation?

Would you keep striving to work for a client like that? I did try to work on her suggestions, twitched the whole article… and yet! I received a second highlighting fatality combo right into my work ethic.

This time she highlighted the document in purple, which was, at least, a more soothing color choice.

6. How to recover from that?

A client like that may make you doubt yourself. But, I strongly suggest you avoid playing the victim and use that opportunity to learn.

What I learned from that experience is that working for solopreneurs can be risky. They are so invested in their projects and used to handling things personally that sometimes they aren’t looking to hire talent but to find someone to mimic them.

Some entrepreneurs are looking for robots that can’t or won’t produce any original thinking that could challenge their project’s vision.

Yes, by sacrificing your originality and voice, you could adapt and learn how to do things their way. I’m not so sure about that being your best option when looking to build your brand, though.

In case you’re wondering, I let that project go after receiving a third request for changes. No matter how much I love makeup or writing, a $25 gig shouldn’t be more complex than wearing false eyelashes.

7. The unreasonable client isn’t always right:

Now, if you’re sustaining that antiquated belief “the client’s always right,” and you would sacrifice everything to keep a difficult client happy, let me ask you: How much time, effort, and patience are you willing to spend on a single client?

As entrepreneurs, we don’t always have the opportunity to divert our time, resources, and talents to the service of a client’s neverending whims. Some clients don’t even know what they are looking for by hiring your services.

Depending on the client, and your ability to find new customers that can value your work, the line between professional masochism and perseverance becomes clearer.

8.Ready to let them go? First, ask yourself these four essential questions:

• What are the possibilities for that the relationship to grow? Is there an opportunity for numerous gigs in the future, or is this a one-time job?
• How much impact can abandoning this project have on your professional reputation?
• Have you given it everything you’ve got, professionally speaking? Are there opportunities to improve your services? Did you offer all the options to solve your client’s complaint? Can you walk away with a clear conscience?
• Has your client evaluated the results of your work objectively? Is it the first time you’ve heard a complaint like this, or have similar things happened to you before?

“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” — Damon Richards.

There are also toxic freelancers:

Last but not least, let’s have a look at the crazy person inside every one of us. As freelancers, side hustlers, content creators, or whatever you’ve chosen to call yourself, we have the obligation not only to set reasonable livable prices for our work but to deliver quality results.

We should also keep some standards no matter how “informal” you believe your side hustle is at this point.

Because you’ll see, there’s a tremendous impact on the whole “content creation ecosystem” every time one of us offers to write for less than pennies, plagiarizes another’s work, or holds onto exploitative jobs.

Feeding that beast creates significant issues for the writing community to solve. If you’re stuck in a dead-end job like that, working on your self-confidence and self-respect would be the first step to recognize you deserve better.

And you most definitely do.