When a client disrespects you or misses a payment, your instinct is to assume they're trying to exploit you. Usually they're not. Three stories of clients who defaulted because of divorce, death, or crisis show the difference between someone being incompetent and someone being malicious. Most people are just preoccupied with their own lives.
What I found is that when you get defensive because maybe a lead disrespected you, somebody churned, or a bad thing is happening in your business, the fix to that is to not try to not think about it. It's to think about your best clients instead. And it's tempting to assume malice. It's tempting for you to go with, this guy just wants to fuck me over. He just wants my processes. This guy is evil. He is my enemy. But what I found is that it's not that they mean malice. It's just that we're just not that important to them. They got stuff going on in their lives. 3 stories on this. So 3 clients defaulted on payments, and where did my head go before? Fuck this guy. This guy's trying to get everything from me for free. Like, who does he think he is? But I realized, dude, I'm the lowest level on their priority list. Like, one of them was going through a divorce. The other one had somebody die in their family. That doesn't mean don't assume incompetence, because some people are incompetent and maybe you should kick them out. But don't assume malice. People are not evil. They just don't think about you.
