Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

When Firing a Client Is the Right Leadership Move | Vincent Malizia

15 Jan 2026 · 1 min

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A short excerpt from a YouTube interview (Cameron Herold) in which two speakers discuss leadership choices around client relationships. Speaker A describes walking away from multiple clients who verbally abused staff—sometimes leaving employees upset or crying—and terminating contracts rather than tolerating mistreatment. Speaker B reinforces the leadership principle of prioritizing employee well-being so they can better serve customers.

Chapters

We just always took approach to treat our employees, treat our clients the way we want to be treated. And believe it or not, we've actually walked away from a lot of clients because they don't treat our staff very nicely. And we would come back from being out in the field and we'd have staff members like upset and crying and we would find out that people were screaming at them. So we would actually terminate contracts and relationships with clients because we just, we didn't feel that anybody should have to put up with that regardless of how much business they're giving us. It just doesn't give you an excuse to treat people unfairly.
There's certainly businesses and I've worked in some of them where they'll just take on any client. It's more revenue and you see the team suffering. Most of the really well known leadership books that I read, you know, it says like when you take care of your employees first and make sure that they're priority, they will take care of your customers.