Body
# Let me introduce you to Brian.
Brian ran a small chain in the southern United States. He had 13 locations, but Brian wanted to go in cheap on his marketing. I was dumb enough to think it was a good use of my time and effort.
You see, Brian had seven metric tons of sand spilling out of his ass. I was wearing rose-colored glasses, and I thought that sand was fairy dust. So I huffed it up and thought life was good.
I thought having difficult clients was part of paying my dues, so to speak. So I thought, "Well, this is clearly where I'm supposed to be."
I entered a bad client relationship, and that's on me. It was like an abusive partnership that I couldn't leave, because I created a world where Brian was 25% of my income.
So I let Brian punch me in the head (proverbially), kick me down the stairs (metaphorically), and roundhouse kick me in the tailbone (figuratively).
Brian called me in the middle of the night, raged when I didn't answer emails within 30 minutes of receiving them, and *loved* to over-analyze all the marketing content I sent him, order rewrites, then still took it upon himself to rewrite 30% of the content himself.
Then he complained that it didn't work. I know that I'm preaching to the choir for anyone else who works in marketing or advertising.
I worked with Brian for 27 months.
# During month 17, Brian became 40% of my income
Things were going backwards. I made a pricing switch in my freelancing career, and as a result, Brian was now *more* of my income than before.
By this point, I was sick of dealing with Brian. Problems persisted, communication didn't seem to work despite all my efforts, and I was burned out.
Then Brian had a big idea. A huge project. My prices had increased, and he wanted something new. Something I wasn't already providing for his business.
I received a horribly disgusting email, a small mountain of stress, and then something in me snapped. You know, not in a bad way, like I'm not gonna be on *The First 48* or anything.
I told him I couldn't do it for the price he wanted, and he was furious.
# It was time to kick Brian down to The 10% Club
I'd grown as a service provider. I lost some clients when I increased my prices, but then I found new ones. With that pay came more respect, more understanding from clients, and they actually leaned on me for advice and information.
My experience was being validated. My ideas were working. My case studies were getting more impressive.
But I still had Brian hanging behind me, flicking me in the ear, hitting my heels with a shopping cart. It was time to plan to eventually fire Brian, but first, I had to knock him down to The 10% Club.
This is a hyper-obvious internal term I use to describe clients who are at least 10% of my income. The goal became to not let anyone exceed that slice of revenue, as part of my new (much less stressful and more profitable) business model.
In month 23, Brian was in The 10% Club. This legacy client who didn't match my model anymore was no longer critical income.
Seemingly overnight, Brian became more timid. He was accepting copy with minimal revisions, the after hour calls stopped, and I was confused. What happened to the ball of fury that was Brian?
I barely heard from Brian. It was like he was a ghost, but the payments came through, his deliverables still hit his inbox. Did... did I wait Brian out?
# Nope, Brian was just tired, and when I fired him, I made a bunch of money
Brian called me in month 27, he shouted over the phone. Called me wretched names. I'm a calm man, and with the fear of lost revenue no longer looming overhead, it was time to tie concrete blocks to my fear's shoes and toss it in the Hudson.
I'm not a malicious person. I fought the petty urge to fire back at him. When he ran out of breath, I said, "Okay Brian, I hear you. I'll send you an email." Then I hung up.
I fired Brian. I outlined the reasons why, respectfully, and my phone rang five minutes later. Then again ten minutes later. But I was done. I fired Brian, and I didn't pick up.
The following Monday, I get an email from a guy (we'll call him Sebastian). Sebastian ran a financial institution, and received an email blast from Brian to about 40 other business professionals.
The email was an effort to discredit me. But Sebastian, who'd dealt with Brian many times, said it was obvious to him that it was just a message from someone who'd been done dealing with him, and he respected the fact that I fired him.
Sebastian's company has been a client of mine in The 10% Club for the past seven years. When we face an unruly client, internally, we say "They're being a Brian." We have a board with a column for clients who've entered "The Brian Zone" and are at-risk of being fired.
It took too long, and it was my fault for putting up with it for so long, but being in the position to fire a client was on my entrepreneurial bucket list.
**TL;DR:** Brian was a client. Brian was a shiesty boy. I fired Brian. He tried to discredit me to other entrepreneurs he knew. It backfired. I've worked with one of his contacts for seven years as a result.
Top comments (8)