6. Three Signs That It's Time to FIRE A CLIENT

Foreignerds welcome to the Connected Accountant, where we believe that bookkeepers, accountants, and fractional CFOs that own their own businesses should be making more money as CEOs than when you work for somebody else. We believe that you should be serving the kinds of clients that you love, and we believe that your personal life should direct your business, not the other way around. My name is Michael King and I'm the founder here at the Connected Accountant. And I'm so grateful that you're here today. I want to talk about a little bit of a touchy subject. I want to talk about something that's kind of icky, and that is this question of how do you know when it's time to fire a client? I will tell you, after six years in business, I've had to fire many clients. There was even a point years ago that I fired all of my clients. And so people often ask me, hey, I feel like maybe I should, but I don't know how to tell for sure when it's time. And so today, what I want to share with you is three, three big indicators for me that tell me when it's time to consider firing clients. So let's go ahead and dive in. The first time that, I mean, it's just the writing's on the wall. For me, it's time to fire the client is when I identify that there is a values misalignment. Now, if you've been following me for very long at all, you know that I preach the importance of identifying your values. And one of the benefits of doing that is you should be applying that same list of values to the clients that you're working with. And so if you have a client that starts to violate, especially those, what I call permission to play, permission to play or pay to play, values, then it's time to move on. So here's an example. There are so many business owners out there, unfortunately, that are willing to knowingly do unethical and sometimes illegal things for tax savings. And so maybe if you have a client that's insistent on claiming certain things on their taxes that you've told them no uncertain terms, that that is not okay, and they're still insistent on it, maybe it's time to go. Here's a true story. Years ago, I had a client that was putting some, we'll call them, nefarious charges on his business that came to find out were due to some extracurricular activities that he was doing in his personal life. And when I confronted him about it, he confirmed that that's what those things were. And so that was an easy time for me to say, all right, we're not going to be client any, but you've got to know what your values are. And especially those values that are key, like those, you know, if you violate these boundaries then, or these values, then we gone know what those are. And when a client violates them, be ready to walk away. Freudian slip there. The second indicator is when boundaries are violated. Now I will tell you this. You have a responsibility as a vendor, as a business owner, as a leader to set boundaries and to communicate those boundaries. And I think that that whole process of setting boundaries starts on the sales call. I think that boundaries should be established in your scope of work, and I think that you should regularly communicate those boundaries. And if a client kind of violates them, it's up to you to kind of wrangle them back in. Okay. And so, for example, some of those boundaries might be when it's okay to call you. You know, we work 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, except federal holidays. And if you have a client that keeps calling you at 7 o' clock at night, or in the morning for that matter, I've had both. Or maybe you have a client that insists on texting you over the weekend, tell them, hey, I'm happy to field your calls or your texts or whatever, Monday to Friday from 9 to 5 Central Time. And I would ask that you please honor that and don't reach out to me outside of those hours because I have a family and I want to make sure that I'm present for them. And I also want to make sure that I'm fully rested and recharged so that when I come to work, I'm ready to serve you. And so if you have a client that just won't honor that, after you've set those expectations, after you've tried to bring them back in, it might be time to let that client go. And I don't want to minimize the importance of this because there are clients that even. I mean, you think about the work we do, bookkeeping, accounting, fractional cfo, it's like, why would they find it necessary to call me at 9 o' clock at night? Why do they find it necessary to text me on the weekends? It'll happen and it will start to impact your personal life. And so I really want to encourage you to be thoughtful and diligent about maintaining those boundaries. And if clients won't respect them, let them know that if they don't stop, you're going to have to tell them to hit the door, Jack. All right, this last one, you're going to notice if you're watching this on the YouTube channel, I have asterisks all over it, right? It might be time to let them go if they just don't get it. Okay? And what I mean by that and the reason I have the asterisks on it is week in, week out, month in, month out, quarter in, quarter out, you've been telling your clients, look, you've got to start making more responsible spending decisions or you're going to go out of business, or you've got to start paying your vendors on time, or you've got to stop commingling your personal expenses with your business expenses, right? When you're just telling them time and time again and they're unwilling or unable to kind of take your guidance in your direction, it might be time to fire them as a client. Now, the reason that I have four asterisks or astra sees astracyz around this is because I think that especially for the work that we do, it's so important that we show up with the heart of a teacher. And part of having the heart of a teacher means that we're patient. And so I know for me, and maybe you as a is a numbers kind of person, we're really direct. We like to just kind of be like, you know, abcd, this is what you have to do. This is the checklist. Just go do that. But the truth is, not everyone else responds to things that way. Sometimes we've got to explain things five different ways and four different times. And kind of like teaching our kids how, you know, what is it we teach kids to ride a bike, right? You got to have a lot of patience and just keep showing up for them. And so the reason I asked risk it is you have to do that with your clients. And so I don't want the message to be that just because they're not doing what you tell them to fire them. But, I mean, when there's this repeated pattern, this repeated behavior where you've explained things multiple ways and multiple times you've shown them why they need to do it, and they just don't, right? It might be time to let them go. And normally, what I found is it's not that they don't understand at that point what you're telling them. It's just that they don't care or it's not a priority or it's not something that they value. And like I always say, when you've got those misalignments on those things, both people are probably unhappy and so that's normally a big indicator to me that it's time to go and that can happen on the bookkeeping level, the tax prep level. It can happen with fractional CFO clients as well. So just be mindful that when you start seeing that it seems like they just don't get it. Show up with the heart of a teacher but it might just be time to go ahead and let them go. If you'd like me to cover in a future episode best practices on how to fire a client and how to do it with dignity and respect so that you don't look or feel like an a hole, let me know in the comments below and I will record an episode that gives you my best practices on how to let clients go and how to do it the right way. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you next week my friends. See you then.