You Need To Tell Some Clients To...

13 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:12

In this candid YouTube monologue, Robin Waite advises freelancers and agency owners—particularly web designers—on the importance of rigorously qualifying prospects, staying focused on a core product, and being willing to bluntly turn away clients who aren’t a good fit. He illustrates the point with a scenario where a web designer is asked to add SEO services, which later becomes a source of conflict. Waite stresses that unhappy clients can damage a business’s reputation through word‑of‑mouth and negative online reviews. He advocates mastering one specific service for a defined client type, applying a repeatable process, and delivering consistent results, even if it means telling a client to “fuck off” when necessary.

Chapters

Sometimes you just got to tell clients to fuck off. How often have you got into a bit of dire straits with a client where that relationship is starting to break down and you find yourself again? Oh, well, the client's not doing this and the client's not doing that. When you were potentially looking to enroll that client, did you ask all of the pokey, pointy questions that you needed to ask to ascertain whether they were best fit or not? Let's use the example of the web designer. They came in and they actually they wanted SEO. They didn't want your website package, which is your your core product, like your hero product. They said, "Oh, could you do a bit of SEO?" SEO for us. And you went, yeah, yeah, we can do that for you. And next thing you know, it's the SEO which is causing the problem with the client. Um, it's really important you've got to qualify your prospects like right from the word go and be prepared to turn them away if they're not best fit. Ultimately, your reputation hangs off this because if you've got an unhappy client for whatever reason, what do you think they're going to go and tell their friends about you? They're going to go and tell their friends not very nice things about you. There's a potential they might leave a negative Google review. Which is going to damage your brand reputation. So it's really important you learn to do one thing really well for one specific type of client. You follow a process, boring business, you do the same thing over and over for them, and you get great results for people each and every time.