Two founders explain why they now refer clients to competitors instead of forcing bad fits. They distinguish between draining clients who demand custom work and refuse to use the product, versus demanding clients who push them to improve and open new markets. Knowing the difference saves time and keeps the right partners.
If we had someone that wasn't a good fit, we say, you know who's a good fit for you? Competitor A. And we would throw them over to competitor A and we say, I'll make the introduction for you. Here's what they have that is way better than us and will work wonders for you. And we were okay with that was a huge mentality shift for us.
You got rid of clients that were not good clients for you.
Yeah.
What does it mean to have a bad client?
This is actually a really interesting point because people will try to get rid of their biggest pain in the ass clients and you have to actually differentiate between the type of pain in the ass. One of them is someone that is driving you to be better and the other one is that is expecting you to do more than you have actually, you know, than you should be doing for them. One example was we were dealing with an Australian client. So I was their account manager. I would finish my day's work, you know, 6:30, come home, spend an hour and a half with the kids and then I would jump on at, you know, 8 o' clock at ready and at 9 o' clock I would be discussing with them for three hours to four hours. And I'm just doing this till 1:00am and every single time, no matter that, the advice I was giving them like they were unique. They were our entry into the Australian market. There was no one that was doing private lending in Australian market when it came to a SaaS product. And we were dealing with them and dealing with them and we realized that they actually didn't want, they weren't going to use our software correctly. They basically just wanted us to build custom software for them and it was not ideal. They weren't going to actually try to utilize a system and build a platform. And what we realized they weren't going to adopt, they weren't going to, they weren't going to try and change anything to be more efficient. They just wanted to do the same thing they were doing and basically beat us up for price. And they wouldn't learn, they wouldn't adapt and it was just, it was, it was wasting hours and hours and it was burning me out and it was burning our engineering team out. And this client just like was not ideal. So I ended up finding someone that would have been great for them. And I said, you should go to here, it'll solve everything you need and it's half the price of us. Good luck versus we have another client in the US and they would push us like crazy. But they were a, they were incredible in the servicing arm and that was an area we wanted to be great in. And they would just drive us and say, your numbers aren't working here. This report isn't working like this. This isn't like this. And they were demanding a ton out of us, but they were directing us and telling us how the industry works and giving us insight. First pain in the ass. But I love them to death because they helped us actually enter into a few new markets. They were like, you know, our big voice. They were anchor tenants in that place. They gave us all the insight we possibly needed and they, they gave us referrals on a regular basis. So we did a lot for them and it's a give and take relationship. Like you're going to give them a lot of custom development that is probably beyond what you should. We did a ton for them, but they helped us open a ton of doors. So that is two different versions of Pains in the ass, but one is actually on your team and the other one's just trying to suck everything out of you.
