4 – Breaking Up with Web Design Clients—The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

What’s up y’all? Welcome to the Web Design Empire where we share stories and strategies to help you build your web design empire from a side gig. To multiple six fix I’m John, this is Kelly. We’re full time freelance web designers who’ve escaped the real world, broke up with our jobs, our bosses, our cubicles, and our commutes over 15 years ago.

And we haven’t looked back. We’re also course creators, web design store owners, Kelly owns Airbnb’s. I’m a touring professional musician, all that to say, we are constantly building our own empires. Today Kelly and I will be talking about recovering from client breakups. I actually have a lot of experience in recovering from breakups.

Fun fact about John I’ve been in not just client breakups. Yeah. I’ve been engaged three different times, three different times. [00:01:00] And he loves love. I love, I, I love, uh, there’s a, there’s an, A lyric from a Newsboys song.

It’s like, dumped on more than a birdhouse shingle. Yeah that’s me, dumped on more than a birdhouse shingle. That’s absolutely correct. Were you the dumper or the dumpy, Kelly in, in relationships overall? I mean, in my vast experience of relationships I suppose I was the dumper, but I’ve literally had like, One boyfriend and my now husband.

So yeah, I’ve just been engaged the one time That’s probably the best way my wife was the dumper she’s never been broken up with she’s never been dealt on, you know, I haven’t either but Anyway, anyway yeah, no, it’s a Yeah, it’s been an interesting week. My kids are sick.

We, here’s some, you ready for some first world problems? Here we go. Here’s John whining about [00:02:00] first world problems. My kids are sick. We let our nanny go. Well, by we I say my wife let our nanny go. And she hasn’t found the new one yet. But we need to and we still we share a car.

We’ve been sharing a car for almost 14 years. We have our 14th wedding anniversary here in a week in October. Second will be our 14th anniversary. We’ve shared, we’ve shared a car. Thank you. We’ve shared a car this whole time. I that’s crazy. I can afford a second car but it’s just the hassle of getting it and loading it on insurance and then I got it.

We have a three car garage, even though there’s only one car, but there’s like a workout equipment, there’s workout equipment. And so I’m just like, what am I going to do? Well, it’s not truly a three car garage. Like the, Oh, is it the tandem one? That’s what we have too. I don’t have a tandem, but it’s like, Oh, okay.

It’s like the steps going up to the house from the garage, like the three steps. If you move that, you could probably fit two cars there. Exactly. Anyway, yeah. [00:03:00] That’s my week of, I’m just agonizing over it. Gosh, do I get a second car or do I keep dealing with this for another year and then do it?

Anyway, that’s how my week is going. How is your week going? Well, to play off your First world problems. We just found out, I think I already told you this, that our oven has been off by 50 degrees for nine years, which is so embarrassing. Wow. And it kind of makes sense. I mean, we are at a high elevation here in Colorado or yeah so that does, that does, accommodate some of that difference, but, and I did figure out.

Just because I bake cookies and I’m like, I have really good cookies. And the first few times I made them here, I was like, well, this isn’t working. So I like up the temp by like 15 degrees. Cause I was like, it can’t be off more than that. So I have been adjusting a little bit, but anyway. Yeah. Just that’s, that was wild.

And we replaced our dishwasher. I feel [00:04:00] like the nine year mark. It’s actually the seven year mark is when houses just decide, you know what? We’re done holding together. We’re going to start falling apart.

 We also this last weekend I drove my youngest to Wyoming for a Her first ninja warrior competition. Are you familiar with ninja warrior? A little bit. I think I’ve seen it on TV. Okay, because when I say that, I think most people imagine like actual ninjas with like swords.

And it’s like, no, no, no. It’s like this obstacle course. So yeah. The stuff you’ve seen on TV. So anyway, she’s doing that now. She’s really excited about it. She wanted to join the team and she’s on the team. She made team. So Brynn had her first competition doing that and since it was her first competition, I tried to prepare her like, girl, you’re probably not going to do great. Like, I know you think you’re going to win, but it’s probably going to be difficult. Anyway, long story short she ended up getting third to last, which was out of 40 which was devastating to her., she was absolutely devastated, brokenhearted. [00:05:00] And I had to explain to her, , girl. And she’s my firecracker kid, like force of nature child. So having these types of conversations, but I tried to explain , this is how you learn you can’t get better and improve and learn unless you, run into these little failures and these mistakes and that’s how you get better.

Anyway, that made me think of this topic that we’re talking about today with breaking up with clients, because yeah, you have to treat it like a learning experience so that you’re able to, better move on and do better things in the future. So yeah. Wish Bryn good luck on her next comp.

Well, let’s hit these. We have several different categories of breakup. So Let’s hit this first one.

Go for it. What is it? Yeah. Okay. So the first category, well, there’s, I think there’s three that they generally fit into and it’s bad fit clients, meaning they’re good people. They’re just a bad fit for you. Or in your business. There’s just bad clients which suck for everybody. And then there’s good [00:06:00] clients who just have moved on for whatever reason.

And those, like when I went through my, I literally went through like my deleted recurring invoices to see, to remember cause I’ve had a few this year. I think that’s something else to, that we should mention is this has been a rough year. 2024 has been tough for businesses. I had I think it was six lost clients within a couple of months, which is like by far a record for me.

And it was all for various reasons that I’ll go into. But yeah, it was a tough year. As web designers, as long as we’re doing well, as long as our clients are doing well. So if our clients start going out of business, obviously we start losing business too. So yeah, when the economy’s tough and it’s a tough year for business in general it can affect us.

But yeah, the very first, the first topic the bad fit clients. I know we’ve all had these, right? And I think in general, for me, this is almost like a, like you’re on a different wavelength or they’re coming from, they’re not familiar with like custom websites or [00:07:00] WordPress in general, or just the website world, period.

And they just don’t know how it works. And they can be extremely needy or just. just lost. And so that’s or it’s a client that you’re taking on against your will. I’ve had a couple in this category for example, right now I have a really bad fit client but it was a close family friend and I just, I felt like I had to take it on, even though I saw some red flags so situations like that.

Do you have any of these, do you have some examples for bad fit clients that you’ve gone through a breakup? Yes, I do. So if you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know that Kelly and I kind of have different, you know, different client preferences. Like I do best with, I do best with males who are, 30 to 65 ish.

This one’s the, this one is a female she was a life coach, life coach slash fitness Instructor and I met her through the Beachbody community and P90X all that stuff and [00:08:00] she wanted a web She was a Beachbody coach and she wanted a website for her Beachbody fitness coach life motivation thing So yeah, she’s trying to tackle several things with the website And I remember this was before I was hosting websites and so it was a 500 website ordeal.

Nice. 500 ordeal. And she just didn’t, man, she just didn’t know what she wanted. And she would, I felt like every three days she was sending me some other coach’s website or just like a scattering of, what about this? Yeah. Yep. Agreed. Like, Hey, we’ve already approved the wireframe here.

It’s building time. It’s the time for brainstorming is kind of over. And then somehow it turned into, I don’t know, me giving her like life advice at one point. You know, it’s a bad fit when you just, you skip the website and go straight to [00:09:00] life coach. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I remember like she was telling me she, she was a single mom and dad wasn’t in the picture.

She lives in, she lived, or maybe she still does. I don’t know. This is probably a decade ago or more. So it was in LA. And I remember she was telling me, I, she was like, I make 2, 200 a month, which is 400 too much to get like assistance from the state. And so, and my rent is 2, 100. For a two bedroom for her and her son.

And I remember going 2, 100? I’m like, for 2, 100, you could own a pretty nice house here in Nebraska. House, yeah, that’s true. I’m like, have you ever thought about moving? And she just goes, the best line, I’ll never forget it. She goes, move? But L. A. ‘s where it’s at.

And I was just like, I’m done, we’re done. That’s [00:10:00] anyway, that’s, that’s totally a different wavelength. You know, it’s just, it’s bad. It’s just a bad fit. Like you don’t understand one another. I’ve had a couple like that, but yeah the ones that I was going to point out for this were, I had, like, I just mentioned against my will project that I’m still going on.

And this guy has suggested. Rounded corners and suggested can you change the title fonts to this or we need, you know, like, just dip it into design or, no. And then the red I picked was too bright. He’s like, what about using Husker red? And I’m like alright. Genius . No one in Nebraska uses Husker Red.

There’s an idea. Mm-hmm. It was just he, turned into a designer. If anyone hasn’t seen the web design goes straight to hell poster by the oatmeal. Like, oh yes, find it. But it, that’s exactly what this project is. It’s just a bad fit. And again, I would have cut ties already, but it’s a family friend.

So I’m trying to be nice. And then another well, I would put that in a bad client category, but I, [00:11:00] as another family is an actual family member who to this day is like the worst loss I’ve taken on a project. Cause I paid developers out of pocket and he never paid that sucked.

That sucked. But then I think the weirdest, I have had a couple, I’ve had one lady who just decided to DIY and move platforms. I had that happen recently. She’s just doing it herself. And then I had another client who had all of her courses set up in Kajabi and then she just decided, you know what, my whole website is just going to be on Kajabi because they have like a website kind of out there as well.

It’s Jankity. I was like, that’s cool. I’m not dealing with that. So go for it. So those have been a few of my just kind of bad fit ones. My weirdest one ever was a client who I’d been with for years. And then they had like a leadership change, which happens. And my new client, Or my new contact was one of those people who just like talks in circles and goes nowhere.

Like we would have an hour long meeting and I [00:12:00] leave I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Like what just happened? And anyway he made this big deal about how they’re going to do a redesign. I was like, great. Can’t wait. I’m excited. And then he decided he, he, Contacts me. He’s like, you know, we decided to go with another company for the redesign.

And he’s like, and it’s because I really wanted to keep you available for updates and doing edits. And I was like, uh, I mean, it was so weird. I was like, that’s not really, that is weird how it works. And then. Long story short, and I made it super clear, like, okay, well, as long as the site stays in Divi I’ll keep editing it.

That’s fine. Like they were a longtime client. I was like, I can make that work. And then he contacts me finally, like two months later. He’s like, yeah, when we were doing the redesign, we just decided to put it just straight into Gutenberg blocks. And so, and now so there’s no, we’re no longer using Divi.

And I was like, okay, I’m out. I made it clear. And he was so sad. Anyway, it was such a weird, again. You’re probably relieved. What do you do? I was absolutely relieved. I was like, this was a bad fit. Anyway, it was one of those. [00:13:00] I think there are, I think a lot of times when the client breakups happen, there’s at least a little bit of relief.

Like, Oh my God, that one was kind of a. I didn’t need that one in my life anymore, anyway. And then there’s just the bad clients. I talked about one of those. Do you have any of just the bad clients that I think that maybe we took on when we were younger and more naive and like at this point we would have the wherewithal to know it was just a giant red flag, we wouldn’t take it on anymore.

But I’ve been through a few of these bad clients that, that was really hard. Yeah, just bad clients. So our first category, bad fit clients, that’s more the needy to loss, change to DIY, they’re on the second category, just bad clients, meaning just bad clients are bad. You’re having payment issues.

You’re having communication issues and you’re having and then, and then generally it’s like, yeah. And or they’ll just ghost or you won’t hear from them for months and then they’ll like, Blame it on you somehow Hey, I [00:14:00] got back to you. Why isn’t this done tomorrow? Yeah. Yeah. Or it’s a combination of just all of that.

Yeah. So we have another episode where we talk about our biggest mistakes as web designers. And one of mine was having, letting someone do a 12 month payment plan, which is controversial, but it just, I tried it once. It didn’t go for me. So I have that one listed as a bad client payment issues because they never paid us for this.

They, for about six months of that year, they didn’t pay us. And then they went at it. business. And it was like, well, we’re never getting that money back. Another one where we had a payment issue was we built the site. It was for my business partners, a friend of his wife’s and it was a swimsuit line.

Have you seen this site before? And and anyway we built the site out. She paid the deposit, but then she never paid the second deposit. We launched the site. In good faith, uh, yeah, launch the site in good faith and then for a while the she’s paying the hosting, but still [00:15:00] not paying the second deposit, which is a couple of grand.

And then she stops paying the hosting. And then I find out that boyfriend’s card to pay for the website hosting. And it was like her and that boyfriend broke up. And then I kid you not, like six months later, the hosting started getting paid again every month. And I was like, she must’ve found a new boyfriend.

Well, did she ever pay the second deposit? What we ended up doing was we said, Hey, we’re going to split that out into 100 payments per month. And yes, eventually she paid the second half and she is paying monthly now, but I’m talking this went over like three years over a span of so is she still a client?

He’s still a client. I thought she was, well, I wouldn’t do a new site with her. Gotcha, you know, like I’m not gonna do it if she’s like I want a new website. It’s like no We’re not going through that again And then the last one I have here for just bad clients talking [00:16:00] about communication Yeah, this guy just wasn’t he was just very picky on the mock up very picky And this is before zoom so I hop on like I don’t know Adobe Connect or whatever that was called with him and I And and there’s this circle that I’m changing the color of, this circle, I remember the circle, he’s like, Just one circle.

No, right there, stop, right, don’t, don’t, go back, go back, wait, stop, right, Oh my god. And then, and then, and I remember at one point he was like, make that line a little thicker, now make it thinner, split the difference. And this is all like, and there’s a delay, because the technology wasn’t quite there yet.

Uh, and the girl I was seeing at the time, she gave me so much crap for that, on that, like, for a month, she was like, Make it a little thicker, John. Make it a little thicker. But the worst part was the circle that I was changing the color of. It was just a circle that I was just changing the color of.

It’s a circle. Oh, that’s really cool. You had part of the circle that color, but then the rest was this color. Well, because of the lag, [00:17:00] the, he was seeing the changes in like quadrants of the circle. And so, one, one quarter of the circle would change color before the rest. And that’s what he, it was miserable.

It was, Oh my gosh. I am never doing this. That’s another good example of the web design goes straight to hell when the clients turn into designers and they’re holding you as a pen and you’re like drooling. Yeah, it’s yeah, that’s no good. I guess there’s like a whole other category of like projects that never get off the ground, maybe.

What one of mine was like that were like we started and this was an auto shop guy, man. I have a, I, me and auto shop men don’t get along. Apparently I’ve had like three auto clients that I don’t know why I shouldn’t take them on. That’s my red flag. But anyway, this particular guy, he got so, like, this is the only time, and this, I still lived in Omaha, so, I mean, this was a hundred years ago because I remember being in my green office in the basement just sobbing, because this [00:18:00] guy sent me this email basically just telling me off, and it just, it made no he was so far off base that I couldn’t even wrap my head around what he was.

What he was upset about and it was timeline. It was payment. It was everything. And then I proceeded to take like the next two days straight, like 40 hours straight, like working on an email back to him. And I went through every single interaction we ever had and was like just to show him like you are incorrect, you know, And cause I cared so much and obviously that project didn’t go anywhere.

That was a terrible experience. I’ve had a couple of people not pay. And again, launch in good faith and Oh, payments in the mail. I’m like, all right. Never showed up. But if, as long as you’re hosting, it’s easy enough to just, turn those off, but it’s still just like, man, why do people suck?

Why are you making me do this? Why are you making me do this? Why are you making me be the bad guy here? You know, it’d be fun. Yes. Some, some episode when we talk about this again [00:19:00] in the future, we should dig up I should, I bet Jake has one. We should dig up like the worst client email we’ve ever gotten and just read it.

Oh, I have them. And just have them like calling our team. Whatever and that’s one thing I won’t put up with if a client says something calls one of our team members stupid we had one client call like, her name’s not Mary But like Mary’s stupid and she’s terrible to work with and it’s like no, I know I know Mary and She’s not that and you’re not gonna talk to our team that way like no, we’re not totally yeah That would definitely go in the bad client category.

Yeah, wouldn’t they just cross every boundary or Disrespect to a point like that happens so rarely, but I mean it does have it does happen yeah maybe like out of 300 clients one might end up being like, yeah, and we’re super forgiving. We’re from the Midwest like we’re we’re so nice We’re very accommodating Pulp [00:20:00] leasers.

Dang it. Why? Okay. Yeah, those, that’s the bad fit and just bad clients. But then, inevitably, you will have good clients who just move on for whatever reason, whether there’s like, internal changes, or there’s new leadership, or the company was bought, or they sold it, or just the economy took them out.

I’ve even had, I’ve even had clients die. And you can’t prevent that. And that was awful. That was awful. I don’t like going through that. No one does. And GoDaddy requires death certificates to move domains. And it’s a really Oh, man. Not to make light, but seriously, like if bad, if a situation isn’t bad enough, it’s like here, web designer, you need to produce a death certificate.

Like how weird is that? So yeah, what I know what I can go through a few here, like really quick I had a client that had like significant health issues. She could literally no longer keep up with her business that was online and we had to shut it down for a while. I [00:21:00] had a client recently.

That was this year. I think these are all, well, most of these are this year. I had a client get absorbed by a parent company. And so their whole website became like a section on the new website. I had a financial advisor go straight out of business. I had another client that I had for years, just decided to retire.

She was a wedding gown designer and I always enjoyed, Updating that site ’cause her gowns were so cool. And yeah, had to delete it. It was so sad. I’ve had a couple coaching, like new life coaches. There’s lots of new life coaches. A couple of them gave up. And then I had another client, a fabulous client.

I know you’ve told us similar story where. Where you had a client that was just kind of like, thanks for all your help. You guys have been great. We’re moving to this situation. I had another one who very similar, but she they picked like a they’re a what are they?

Flooring company. And they are now with a very specific flooring website, like database. So I couldn’t compete with that. Like they have all access [00:22:00] to all of the data and they could just pull all these different samples right on the site. So that was another, like, it was so sad. Like I loved working with her.

She liked working with me. It was just. They had to move on. And then my, the other one that really hurt was my very first client, actually my second client my very first client as K Design, but my second client overall, cause I was, as an intern, I had another client that I still have.

But my second client ever, the first one I got paid in cash for, it was so cool. And they I was with them for like 17 years, like a long time. And I had gone through, I was so proud that I went through like five different marketing coordinators and they stuck with me. And then they hired a new one who was like, Sorry, we’re going to use, my, my vendor that I’ve used with my last company and they just moved on.

So that sucked, but again, like that kind of stuff’s just inevitable and you can let it bum you out or you can let it move, help you move on. All right, tell me some of your stories for good clients. [00:23:00] That just moved on. Yeah. I got a few scenarios. One was a social media influencer and she had a lot of YouTube followers.

Also in the fitness space and she had a team. She had I think four people working for her. And she wanted, they wanted a website. Their current website was in Wix and they had all the members in Wix somehow it was a Wix membership thing. And the challenge was originally they were down with.

Hey, we’re going to build a new website and we’re going to let everyone know about it. And they’re going to swing over and they’re going to, they’re going to sign up at the new website, the new membership thing in WordPress. We’re outgrowing Wix. This is great. And it was like, okay, cool. That will work. But then over the course of discovery of the next few weeks, it was like, Hey, they realized as I would realize Hey, we can’t ask people to re sign up.

We need them to port over and at the time we looked and there was just no easy way to [00:24:00] port over these members, these paying members. paying member? Okay. From Wix. Yeah, that’s a big deal. To WordPress and then they started wanting some TikTok API integration stuff happening too. And it was just like, Hey, we’re going to give you the deposit back.

This is just too, it’s here. We recommend these couple of people that could probably help you figure this out. And so that was a bummer because they had a cool brand and That was gonna be exciting to work with. But the couple people on our team though, they were younger and they just, I could just tell that they were expecting the world here.

Uh, the social teams are, they think they know everything for sure. Yeah. We had a partner we’ve had this happen twice. We’ve had two partners in a business, and then they have a split. A split. Um, and they, and then you’ve got both partners telling you to like. Give me the, send me the, you know, whatever.

And it’s like, crap, what do we do here? What do we do? We’re just going to wait. One of them, we just waited till like they were going to court [00:25:00] and it was like, we’re just going to wait until whatever happens in court here. Jake ended up handling that one, but we’ve had that happen. Happened twice or a partner will say, Hey, my partner’s trying to steal the business.

If he asked you to do anything, don’t let him like, stuff like that. We’ve had that happen twice. That’s crazy. You’ve had that happen. So I’ve never had that happen. That’s wild. Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. We had one time a father son have a similar thing. Oh, they were like, they broke up. Oh dear.

Like they were having major issues and it was the same kind of thing. Hey, don’t let my dad change anything. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. And then in general, like we just had a client that had been with us for 10 years. We check sites every day on our, every business day for, on our Updating system.

And most of the time we find out that someone has moved on is that their website will not load in our updating thing. And that’s how we find out. And I don’t mind it anymore. That used to bug me. Like, come on. You can’t. I don’t want to try to [00:26:00] win you. I don’t want you to send me an email saying like, Hey, we’re thinking about going here.

Convince us otherwise. I’m like, no, you know, but a heads up would be nice, but now a little heads up. I don’t care anymore. They probably did whoever was like your contact might not have even been there and they didn’t like that’s happened before or they’re like Oh, we didn’t even know who to reach out to Thanks for stopping charging us So then I’ll just send an email then, which you could, or I, I used to Clara does it now, but I just send an email that says, hey, it looks like you’ve gone a different direction.

I’ve canceled your monthly recurring billing. Wish you all the best. Cheers. Yeah, I know. Okay. We’re gonna talk more about that here in a minute. But yeah, actually yeah, let’s get into it now like I think the best way I again like I said, that first client that tried to tell me off, I spent so many hours just agonizing over it and like coming up with this email that was proving myself right and improving him, which did no [00:27:00] good, obviously.

But yeah, I mean, a little bit at the time. But yeah, And any more, and granted like losing clients when you don’t have a lot is a big deal. But any more, obviously when we have, I have over almost 200, you have, I don’t know, what, 400? Yep. You know, losing one just isn’t that big of a deal.

And the best way whether you do have a lot or a few, the best way to deal with it is exactly what John just said. Gratitude. Thanks for being a client. We wish you nothing but the best. That’s how it should be handled. Gosh, think of all the headache that would have saved me all those years ago.

Instead of taking, taking two days to write an email, kill them with kindness. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Some other tips with how to deal with losing clients. Cause it can be painful. It can sting. But I think one of the first things to keep in mind is to not let any one client [00:28:00] make up a large percentage of your business because that will make it sting even more.

I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with anything like that, John? Probably not. But I have heard that from some of our students and other web designers where it’s like, oh, I lost my one client that was half my business and I’m in big trouble. I’ve definitely been in the position early on where it’s like, well, I have to do this website because I have to pay rent.

Oh, and it’s a sucky spot to be in even though, you know, they’re a bad fit, you know You’re like what choice do I have? Yeah, that sucks. That’s not a great spot to be in Fortunately, we’re not in that spot anymore But i’ve definitely been like especially if it’s like a early on if it’s like a five thousand dollar project I’m like i’m making this work Exactly.

That’s true. That’s a good point. That’s a good point. I think once you do have, a growing business, obviously you have the luxury of being picky and choosy. But yeah, I think we’ve all been there at the, I got to take this on or I really want [00:29:00] to or need to, even if you don’t but yeah, definitely been there.

But yeah, I think dealing with the whole rejection thing and even sometimes, this applies to like projects you don’t necessarily win. I used to let that really bother me, but it’s like, well, again, anymore, not a big deal. Again, it’s that gratitude. It’s that move on.

Yeah. But yeah, that can be try not to take it personal. Like, nine times out of ten, it has nothing to do with personal it’s just a business decision and, they’re treating their business like a business, just like you should and they’re not making it personal, so what are some red flags to watch before taking on projects? Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s the most important thing And again, that, that’s what comes with the experience of having hundreds of clients is being able to see these red flags so that you don’t take on the bad clients or even the bad fit clients, watch for the red flags and holy moly.

I wrote down a lot, John. I’m not sure how many. Awesome. Let’s go through them. All right. Uh, good, good balance here. [00:30:00] Yeah. Okay. There’s the people who expect. Speck work or promise exposure, right? Oh Exposure or future work like oh if you do this project for me, we’ll get you we’ll get you lots more work I have a nice friends like no no no no no so many people.

Yeah, see this. Yes That’s a giant red flag Some variation of tiny budget or ridiculous timeline. Usually those go hand in hand. That’s a huge red flag as well. And generally though, and John says this all the time, those are generally the worst clients anyway, like they’re the pickiest, the neediest.

Which is a hard truth. And so that’s just a red flag. If all they care about is how much it’s gonna cost and how fast you can get it done, it is not worth it. Giant red flag. Let’s see what else. Oh, when they use language, like, Oh, it’s just, it’s just a simple, all I need is just [00:31:00] a little website, just simple.

I mean, I do it myself, but I don’t have the time, right? Yes. Yes. Yep. Yep. I started on it, but I just don’t want to do it anymore. Yeah, that’s the simple stuff. If they use the word simple, like to me, that’s just the flag just goes right up. I’m like, yeah, it is. Yeah, it’s simple. Sure. It’s simple.

Oh, this is another one. We kind of talked about this when they cannot articulate their vision or their goals or they say, Oh, no, when I say, See it like when they just can’t, they can’t articulate or communicate with you, in clear terms of what exactly their needs are. That’s super frustrating and a big red flag because that’s not going to change.

They’re going to stay in that same zone, the entire project and not know, that’ll take forever. That’ll be one of those six year drag out projects. I had one of those six years, six.

That project ends up being a [00:32:00] first grader. Exactly. Wow. Oh just ghosting and then blaming. The timeline on you. That happens where, you’re staying on top of your timeline that you provided and then you don’t hear from them. They take, what, a month for feedback or even a couple weeks for feedback.

And I like now my I tell all my clients at the start of a project I will take your website project as seriously and urgently as you do, which I think hits home for them. So and I even explain if you take two weeks for feedback, I’m going to take two weeks for feedback. For the revisions. That’s, you don’t expect me to do it overnight if you’re not working overnight, but if they, but then, but that doesn’t work.

Yeah. It’s like a mom thing for sure. Yeah. And the clients all, the ones, and I’m true to that. The clients that get back to me really quick, I will stay on top of the project. Oh yeah. That goes both ways. And then, oh, we talked about this as well. When they don’t respect your expertise, when, they try to be the [00:33:00] designer or they don’t respect your boundaries or they’re calling you stupid, there’s just a lack of respect.

Calling you at night. I’m like, no. Hopefully that goes without saying and yeah, that’s another one that’s why I said boundaries like I’ve had clients, call at 10 o’clock on a Friday night. I’m like, what planet is this? Okay. And unless your site went down and you are literally losing business right now.

This is unacceptable. Oh, I, this, I don’t do contracts typically, but like a refusal to sign a contract. I had a we, one of our mastermind students right now went through this recently where they just refused to sign the contract and they like sent it to the lawyers and she realized like, Oh man, this client one big headache.

And John and I recommended that she, yeah, move on. I think she did anyway, but yeah, that was, that’s, that’s a red flag. And the red flag was, we’ll have to, we’ll have to do an episode sometime on contracts cause we, we use them on artillery, but before when I was a solo [00:34:00] freelancer.

I think I was a lot like you or like here’s an email with the price and yeah Hey, let’s go and then replying back like yeah, let’s do it that was kind of like paper trail done

But this client who that she had who was you know Reportedly worth millions and millions. Oh, yeah, and then his the guys, you know She wasn’t communicating with the millionaire guy and the multi millionaire guy. She was to she was just Communicating with his quote unquote manager and the manager was saying, Hey it was like a 13, 000 project, something like that.

And the manager was saying, Hey we do million dollar deals with no contract all the time. It’s like, no, you don’t. In fact, you know what that sounds like, Kelly? That sounds like a scam. The more I think about it, remember the classic Hey, can you build my restaurant website? I have 20 grand, but you got to work with my marketing guy who overpaid someone else.

And so you got to pay extra, remember that whole scam? Yeah. I wonder if that was that. But anyway, well, um, she ended [00:35:00] up digging into him and I believe he was in prison at some point, but anyway, we digress. Um, that’s a red flag. That’s a bright red one. Yeah. Google, Google your clients. See who you’re working with.

That is a red flag. Wow. And then the other ones I have are like. Complain about previous designers, which I guess that goes both ways because there are so many, Crappy web designers out there that just ghost people or leave them hanging like it happens More often than not I would say so so I get that perspective, but if they complain about Not a good look.

I don’t know. Yeah, it’s just not a good look. And you know that they’re going to be complaining about you, too. Disregard for scope, constant drag out just not getting you the content you need. Sometimes those projects are better to let go before you even start. So those were the red flags I had.

Do you think I missed any? That was a lot. I have two, one that you said, and one that, that I’m not sure if you said it or not, but we did, we had this [00:36:00] one project and I think the budget was around 20 grand and the marketing director, they were a they were a farm. They’re like a dairy farm and all the sites that he sent in for inspiration were like, super high tech, super high tech websites.

One of them was the, one of them was like proprietary. Yeah. Oh, one of them was like a Disney here’s all the, here’s all these Disney movies. And when you hovered over each one, it would open up and play a trailer. It had nothing to do with their industry. Nothing to do. How would, how would that translate to a dairy farm videos of your cows?

It’d be like, Hey, I need a tractor. And but I really like. A lamborghini or a tesla you’re like, you’re in the same. That’s a classic You’re not even in the same and so right off the bat right off the bat you’re showing me websites that are like, six figures here right off the bat I gotta be the bearer of bad news and [00:37:00] be like, okay cool Uh, yeah, these are dope but they’re not your audience is gonna hate this, because your audience exactly These old farmers and they’re looking for one thing.

Yeah Or all the animations or your, some circles following your mouse when you go, you know, all that stuff. Or horizontal sliding websites. Gosh, I hate those. Or like if it overtakes your, overtakes your scrolling for you. Like you’re not helping me here. I hate that.

And there’s a lot of like web designer websites that are like agencies will do that. And I’m like, what are you guys doing? To me, it’s such bad user interface, but whatever. Whatever. So anyway, the point of that, it looks cool. Upper minute. Yeah. The point of that one is man they don’t know what they want.

They, because they haven’t, yeah. There’s no strategy behind this. They’re just like, no, this is cool. This is cool. So that was one. And then when you said spec work, that, oh man. That prompted me, that bring up another one. On the one time that a client asked respect for this client, it was a potential client [00:38:00] and we were trying to win them, right?

We’re trying to win their business. And then they send Jake this email that was like, Hey, we’re talking to this company out of Omaha, which is an hour away from us. They already sent us a homepage design. They haven’t paid it. They haven’t paid a deposit or anything. Can you guys send us what your guys homepage would be?

And I wrote back an email with a video attached to it. But I remember telling the client like, Hey shouldn’t there be strategy in your homepage design?

Shouldn’t they ask you. What your goals are and what you’re trying to do in your business before they give you this homepage design shouldn’t that be part of the thing? It’s like, no, we’re not going to give you a and I was like, they probably had some template, they just swapped colors and names for you.

We’re not going to do that. That’s not what we do here. We do custom solutions to fit the strategy and specific needs of your business. So how’d that end up? So we didn’t get it. Did you ever, did you ever hear from him again? [00:39:00] And thank goodness you didn’t because the silver lining. Before we get to silver linings, we got to talk about our sponsor.

Oh, my bad. Our sponsor, John, surprisingly is shocking. Break into web. com. Start or scale a self employed web designed business and Lifestyle you love. We’re all about freedom as a self employed web designer. The time has never been better.

Don’t wait until next year, next month, or even Monday, stop waiting and start taking action with break into it. Preach. And then full disclosure, Kelly and I are the instructors at BreakIntoWeb. Yeah. Yeah. In case that wasn’t obvious. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let’s dive into the silver lining. The clients that we do lose whether they’re bad clients, whether they’re good clients.

I think it’s important to just try to put on a solid, good mindset [00:40:00] and look for the lesson, always look for the lesson. And there should always be a lesson, even if the lesson is don’t ever work with that person again. But there’s always a lesson to learn and if anything, it’s going to help you better hone in your target audience.

It’ll help you dial in your processes. And that’s kind of the silver lining. Do you have additional thoughts on that? Well I put on here, lost clients. Did we lose them? Or did they lose us? Ooh, ooh, ooh, that’s what we should, that should be the title.

Any more? And it’s probably because it probably comes from a place of privilege, I’m sure, of having too many clients to, to be able to serve them, service them all. But I’m usually I’m generally relieved or don’t care if a client leaves now. And the times that I’m relieved, it’s because, for example, They were a bad fit, probably.

That ten year old site that we talked about. Great. [00:41:00] The marketing director over there, great guy. But the site, it was 10 years old and it was like, Hey, we, I don’t want to work on the site anymore. It’s old and it’s also involved a lot of custom code.

And so our. Our support person doesn’t know PHP. And so it just required a heavier lift to get in there and do it. And you get to this point in your web design business where some folks might say, well, John you’re getting paid your hourly rate to do maintenance.

Like more money. Right. And it’s like, no it’s not that doesn’t bring the ultimate happiness. It’s, it is I don’t want, it doesn’t matter that they’re paying my hourly for maintenance. I don’t enjoy the work of maintenance. That’s, that’s, you kind of get to that spot.

So I put on here so before that client left, it’d be lots of maintenance that doesn’t best fit our process and not using our current framework that we use, I use an old framework which causes more support invoices, right. Which causes me to be.

Me, I send the invoices to be the bearer of more bad news. Hey, we thought this was going to [00:42:00] take an hour, but because this code was deprecated, we had to bring in the developer and he had two hours. And we have to charge that. Plus the other hour that we added now it’s a four hour thing. Sorry. I don’t like being that no person and bearer of bad news.

I hate that. So that’s kind of, well, and I think that’s I think that naturally happens as part of your business evolving process. Like the clients that are a bad fit like that that don’t fit into your typical standard processes they’re going to eventually fall off.

And again it’s one of those things that’s actually, a blessing it ends up being better for everyone. But yeah, you have to have the right mindset or it can really get under your skin and make you cry for two days. So I’ve never cried over a client. I’ve been mad. I’ve definitely been mad.

And I’ve been like I’ve definitely asked my business partner, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this website? Is this going, this is going against what we set out. And you’re right. You’re right. You [00:43:00] have here refined processes set rules. We have set rules now, the client’s not going to host with us.

We’re not doing their website. Exactly. And that’s yeah, I’m guessing that came from That was a product of one of these bad fit clients. You’re like, okay, no more. We’re doing this is a rule Multiple multiple bad fits. But yeah, this is so it does Has you refine your process and then you have a standard that If you’re by yourself, it’s up to you to keep that standard But if you have a partner like I do It’s a good thing to keep.

It’s a good thing to keep both of you in check. Like, uh, we don’t do that. And there’s a reason why we don’t do that. Let’s remember, I think it’s also important to use it to reflect on the experience. Like if there was a client that was upset if the breakup happened because a client was upset to reflect on that and be like, did I do something wrong?

Was it either, did I. Did I not set clear expectations? Did I [00:44:00] miscommunicate? Do I need to look at my processes? Do I need to look at, you know, like actually use it as an opportunity to reflect as well based on their feedback instead of just saying, ah, well screw them. If it was a bad experience, because that’s inevitable as well.

I just thought of this, but so our goal as a company is to do basically roughly about 70 websites per year. We have a point system that we give a project and whether they’re depending on which hosting plan they get on, it depends on whether it’s 1. 2 points or four points.

And so we’re shooting for 80 points, which normally would be about 70 websites. This year is probably going to be less because we have more people signing up for that middle plan. Two points. Anyway, but our goal is roughly 80 points and we might change that to a hundred since we’re getting more of that middle signup.

But an idea that I had for Jake about proactively firing clients was, okay, let’s say our goal is 80 points. Let’s say we get to 83 or [00:45:00] 85. Okay. We have to fire that many points. That’s really funny you bring that up because I remember once upon a time 60 websites ago, 70 websites ago, and I was like, John, I don’t think I can manage more than a hundred websites And you’re like, you’re like, why not?

That’s how you make you more reoccurring revenue. Okay, I’ll do it I’ll do it. But no I am totally on board for that because There you do you reach a level granted you have a team so obviously you can handle more support but I really do think that there is, I don’t know what it is yet.

Like I’m managing just fine. Cause I do have contracted helpers when I need them. But yeah, I do believe that there is a point where that would make a lot of sense. And I know my brother, who’s a business owner as well, when they do evolutions of their business, it requires them to fire clients.

And again, that’s, it’s just part of, it’s just part of evolving and it should be considered but yeah, would you, do you already, I’m just curious. Do you already have a list of here’s my [00:46:00] top 10 clients? I know, I know who they would be. Absolutely. I know the first five websites we would let go.

Yeah. And I guess my last point on this is to remember that, these bad clients these bad fit, just bad clients, they’re the minority. They’re going to be the minority. Absolutely. Definitely minority. And I know folks talk about 80 rule where, Hey, 20 percent of your clients are causing 80 percent of your headaches.

I think in our case, it’s probably more like 10 percent of clients are causing 90 percent of my headaches. And so I just told Jake, I’m like, what if we got rid of that 10% What if we I think it would do you well. You should do it. Make it an experiment. Let us know what happens. Well, that’s what needs to happen.

Yes, that needs to be an I need to get Jake on board to say, Hey, fine. What let’s do a hundred points next year, 2025, and let’s stick to however many points we go above that. We have to let we have to let those folks go. He’s gonna say, well, we gotta let him have we gotta let them know an alternative or something like that.

Yeah, maybe we do. I don’t know. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But, [00:47:00] remember, it’s gonna be the minority. Of folks. So yeah, any final thoughts, Kelly? I think I put it all out there. It’s just a, it’s a necessary evil. It’s an inevitable thing. It’s just part of running a business.

It’s nothing to get worked up about like old me in my sad green office. So yeah, just learn from it and move on. That’s how you handle those. What shade of green are we talking about here? Like forest green? Um, it was lime green. Oh man. This was before I was any good at interior design. I’d say I’m pretty good now.

But this was in my experimental phase. It was a lime green office. Lime. Lime. With like bright orange accents. It was not good. But hey, I had to learn somehow. I had to learn by making mistakes. That, that, that combo had its time. Did it though? It probably wasn’t the early two thousands when I was doing it.

All right, y’all with [00:48:00] that, thanks for tuning in to joining us today on the web design empire. Be, uh, be sure to check out again, our sponsor today, breakintoweb. com. Learn how you can break away from your daily grind, become a freelance web designer and create the empire you’ve been dreaming of. Also, if you like this podcast, be sure to like it, follow us, rate us, leave us a review if you’d like.

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