In today's episode, we’re talking about parting ways with clients. No matter the reason, this can be a stressful experience. We dive into the before, the during, and the aftermath of firing clients, including spotting red flags, issues that can come up with money in the process, and how you can take care of yourself after it happens.
My guest is Julia DeWolfe, she is one of my coaches, a certified Cognitive Behavioral Therapy practitioner, and what she calls an 'everything coach' for entrepreneurs.
Julia is a regular guest on the podcast, and together, we explore the more emotional side of business ownership and dig into many of the things that I've personally struggled with or overcome in my own business.
For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode, visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode11
Topics discussed:
Connect with Jordan Schanda King:
Connect with this week’s guest Julia DeWolfe
Love what you heard. Reviews really help us out! As a thank you, you can get my 90-Day Planning Formula ($97 Value) by submitting a screenshot of your 5-star review at easyscaling.com/podcastreview
In today's episode, we’re talking about parting ways with clients. No matter the reason, this can be a stressful experience. We dive into the before, the during, and the aftermath of firing clients, including spotting red flags, issues that can come up with money in the process, and how you can take care of yourself after it happens.
My guest is Julia DeWolfe, she is one of my coaches, a certified Cognitive Behavioral Therapy practitioner, and what she calls an 'everything coach' for entrepreneurs.
Julia is a regular guest on the podcast, and together, we explore the more emotional side of business ownership and dig into many of the things that I've personally struggled with or overcome in my own business.
For the full show notes and access to resources mentioned in this episode, visit https://www.easyscaling.com/blog/episode11
Topics discussed:
Connect with Jordan Schanda King:
Connect with this week’s guest Julia DeWolfe
Love what you heard. Reviews really help us out! As a thank you, you can get my 90-Day Planning Formula ($97 Value) by submitting a screenshot of your 5-star review at easyscaling.com/podcastreview
Ep_11_How to fire a client with Julia DeWolfe
[00:00:00] Jordan: All righty. In today's episode, we're chatting with Julia de Wolff. Julia is one of my coaches. She is amazing. She's been on the podcast before she was interviewed in episode one, and she's going to be interviewed on many, many more episodes because it gives me a chance to explore some of the things that I've personally struggled with or have overcome, or that I've gotten support around in my own business.
So more on the emotional side of things today, we're having a pretty juicy chat about firing clients. And this was borderline difficult for me because this is a pretty vulnerable topic. Right. And I wanted to show up and be super. Honest and transparent about my experience with parting ways with clients.
And so we've tried to do that. I hope this is helpful because I feel like this is something that just doesn't get discussed in this space. And I find that to be very frustrating because it's something that we're all going to deal with at some point or another. And so having some practical tools for dealing with it and preventing it and then working through the aftermath, I think, is just so, so valuable.
And so I hope you enjoy this conversation.
Welcome. Welcome, everyone. And welcome Julia back to the podcast. I'm excited about this. Thanks for having me around. Yes. So this is going to be, as I think everyone knows, but to remind them, this is going to be a regular thing that we do, diving into more of the emotional stuff that comes with running a business and something that can go wrong.
I don't think our conversations need to be about bad things, but that's just kind of gonna be a natural thing. So last time we talked about creating and holding boundaries in your business, today, we're going to talk about firing clients, which will be pretty juicy and exciting.
[00:02:15] Julia: That's a big one. That's a big one. Yeah. That's, I think, every business owner's worst fear and something that maybe we don't think about. That we would have to even do as firing our clients. We are worried about getting fired, but then the idea that you would have to fire your clients is like one of those little doorways that you open and then realise, oh, this is something that I might have to do.
And it's terrifying. It can be terrifying.
[00:02:41] Jordan: Yeah. It's funny you say that too because I remember the first time I had to fire a client, and I was working with you then. And I talked to somebody else about it, and it, it, it, we were having this conversation, and it was like, why does no one tell you this?
Like, this is a thing that everybody has to do, but nobody talks about it. What is that about?
[00:03:06] Julia: I think that we take it on as this like personal responsibility of it's almost like this little shame-filled pocket of our business that somehow we would, we would have to. Saying no, a client's going to have to go because we have the ick around it.
We just have a lot of icky, murky feelings about it. But honestly, it's kind of an empowering thing to think about that. Part of the reason you have a business, not a job, is that you get to make these kinds of calls. And so to know that you're never truly stuck in a terrible dynamic with a client is quite a good thing, but it's because it wraps up all of those things like confrontation.
And then there's also that little window that you might get some feedback that you're not in the mood to hear from the client while you're firing them. That can be a stressful side of it. So there's just all this wrapped up, and nobody wants to present it to the world that they've cut ties with a client cuz a lot of people have bad feelings connected to that versus it being like a mutual parting of ways, kind of a
[00:04:17] Jordan: thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Mm. Okay. Let's just get into it. This is, it's going to get interesting because, we're going to talk about some of, some of my experiences that I've had. We’re not gonna, of course, we're not going to name any names and I, I would never put someone, someone on blast like that ever not appropriate. Don't do that to anybody.
But before we do that, give us a little bit of context; and I know you introduced yourself on the first episode, but let's go ahead and just introduce you again. So everyone knows who you are in case you’re newish.
[00:04:54] Julia: So I am a certified cognitive behavioural therapy practitioner, and I also am. A serial entrepreneur.
I have worked for myself in some way or another since I was like 15 years old. So I have loved having businesses. I love working with people who have their own businesses, and I especially love connecting with women running their businesses. And so I also really like to focus on how are we taking care of our emotional health.
And so that's what I do when I work with my clients. I care about your business, but I also care about you. And I kind of fit in that little pocket between, you know, you talk to your business coach about this stuff. You might speak to a life coach about this stuff, but who do you talk to about everything?
And that's where I sit. Yep. That's what I do. It
[00:05:44] Jordan: could be anything exactly what you do. Yep. That's what you do for me. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about it. Where do we start? Where do we begin with firing a client? Because of it. There are so many pieces of this that I think is really important that I want to touch on. There’s the, before there's the, how did you get this client in the first place?
And were they not a good fit for you at all? And you ignored some red flags or, you know, the space you were in when you brought on this client wasn't aligned with what you actually want to be doing. I mean, there's all kinds of things we can get into with the before then. There's, of course the, during, the, during of firing the client, how to do it, what things are going to come up, and then there's the aftermath, which is going to look different depending on how the during goes.
So, where do you think we should start?
[00:06:37] Julia: Well, where would you like to start? Let me flip that right back around.
[00:06:42] Jordan: come on, Julia, pull in the like coaching card on me on the podcast. Okay. Let's start at the beginning because that's just how my brain works. That's a perfect place to start. It’d be easier for everyone anyway.
So we've gone through this too, where I have, and, and I hope everyone else can, who's listening, can resonate with this because I think that it's a pretty common situation that I see happening to my clients and happening with me is we know sometimes that we shouldn't take a client on there's a little teeny, tiny little something that's in the back of our mind being like, Hmm, that was weird.
Or, Hmm, I don't know about that, but we ignore it. Usually because of money. So let's start there, walk us through that and feel free to ask me questions if you want me to talk about my stuff. Sure.
[00:07:45] Julia: So you nailed it that we're taking clients on or ignoring the red flags most of the time. You know, when you're looking at something with rose-coloured glasses, all the flags, all the red flags are just flags, right?
And so when you, you can get a little blind to what some of your gut instincts are telling you about working with this person. It happens to everyone. So if you're currently in that situation, don't beat yourself up. It happens to everyone, and it happens to everyone probably multiple times because we, hit these different stages in our business where.
We feel like we need the client. We feel like we need growth. And so we start to push our needs or our cares and concerns to the sides. And we're just; we think we're going to make it work. So that's a thing once that happens, then, we're just kind of, we don't even realise that we're doing it, but we're kind of running this list in our head of things that are odd or off with this client, or the energy of our conversation is off.
We don't like how they make us feel, or we don't like how our heart starts to pound. When we see their name come through on a message or something like that. But we're not dealing with the things. We’re kind of just stuffing it down and like, well, it's the job. I’ve got to do the job.
And then it just ends up bawling up into. It's not going to feel good. It continues not to feel good. And these, the interactions continue to get tenser. Have you found that to be true?
I think so. I usually think when, so I've had one situation like that where I've had to fire a client, and it was deeper into the relationship.
Like we had been working together for several months before, it was like, wow, this is not gonna work out. Like, this is a bad thing for me, emotionally or mentally or stress-wise, but also bad financially. So I, I think that's something too. This doesn't always have to be a emotionally charged thing. It doesn't have to come from like, oh, well, this client is rude or they make me feel bad, or they're unprofessional. Like it doesn't always have to be something like that. I think it can be very objective too. Like there are situations like that, where I've seen a client being like, oh, well, we're losing money on this client.
[00:10:21] Jordan: These were early days before we knew how to structure things. So that was kind of my fault, but it was just a practical thing. It had to happen, but it was still very icky of exp of an experience. And. On the flip side. I think most of my clients that I've fired have been early, early days. It's been like, they've come on, and I've ignored the red flags.
And then we get started, and it's like, oh man, why did I do that? Why did I ignore the red flags? Because now everything that I'm seeing is evidence that you are right. You should have trusted your gut. This is not good. And so I, I, it, I don't resonate as much with it being, becoming like more and more and more stressful, like over time, because usually it's, it's a very quick thing at the beginning, but it, but it does ramp up fast.
I guess if, if that's what you're asking, the tension does build
[00:11:18] Julia: yeah. There the, you can feel the tension and then you also bring up a good point a lot of times. It's not even necessarily that we are consciously ignoring the red flag. Sometimes we just don't even know that those things are red flags for us.
Because a lot of times we are so grateful, especially at the beginning of our business. We're just so grateful that somebody wants to work with us, that somebody believed in whatever service or product or whatever it is that we're doing because we are still so fresh and new. So we still need a lot of that outside validation that somebody's willing to pay for what we've created.
And so. We'll do anything well, like
[00:12:01] Jordan: for sure, but I also think part of it is you don't even know what the red flags are like. Right. When I, I mean hindsight is 2020. And so I think this is part of that process now that I have fired several clients, and I don't like it, this sounds like such a negative way to talk about it, but I have parted ways with clients that were not a good fit for me.
And I was not a good fit for them and we're gonna call it firing clients because that's like, you know, click baby and juicy people are gonna wanna listen to this, but it's not always that negative. So I just wanna make that clarification. And so I have parted ways with, I don't know, in our time together, maybe like four clients, which isn't really that many, I feel like for, you know, a year or so.
since this business was brand new and it did kind of often come from a place of, I didn't exactly know. How to structure things or who ideal clients were. And so that's what I'm talking about now is the hindsight piece of looking back after you get into a bad situation and you fire a client being like, oh, that was a red flag.
[00:13:08] Jordan: That was a red flag. That was a red flag. And then the next time it happens, you still don't always recognize the red flags ahead of time. But then when you fire the next client, you're like, oh man, that was a red flag. And that was a red flag. And that was a red flag. And now I think we actually are to the point for, for me personally, where I see the red flags up front and I'm like, no, mm-hmm Nope, we're not, we're not going down this path because I know exactly what that is because I've seen it.
And I have the evidence for, if I ignore it, this is exactly what happens. And so it's partly that you maybe ignore them. It's partly, maybe that you don't even know their significance because you're not used to it. but whatever it is. The red flags are there. You just kind of have to get used to seeing them and then trusting them.
[00:13:59] Julia: Absolutely. And I think it's also helpful to recognize that there can be different kinds of alarms. So some of those may be a business interaction alarms. Like you may know, okay. Every time someone asks me this kind of question, or every time someone has behaved in X, Y, Z way, it has, it has gone on to be a problem in the future, or we just didn't jive or, you know, whatever it might be.
So those can be the business ones, but then there can also be the personal ones too, where we are just whatever our set of life experiences is that got us to where we were. There may be things that we don't appreciate, how someone might be handling something, or we may know certain things are quite important to us.
Like how people choose to communicate with us or what we want to hear from people, how we know we're doing a good job. We may recognize there's certain things that will just make us feel like we're not doing our best. Yeah. And we get to honor those as well because,
[00:15:07] Jordan: oh, go ahead. Sorry. No, you go for, for the gun.
I'm just getting excited. Cuz I wanna talk about some actual concrete examples. Mm-hmm because I also want people listening to think through, okay, well what are my red flags? And you can think about it in the context of, you know, if you have current clients that maybe feel less than perfectly aligned or potential clients or, or clients that you've had to fire in the past, like really.
I was just talking to a client about this, but like, you know, I recommend doing postmortems and we've talked about this retrospectives, whatever you wanna call 'em some people don't like postmortem language, but doing a postmortem on like launches and programs and things like that. I think you can actually do that with really anything in your business.
And so kind of applying that lens to past clients that didn't work out current clients that aren't working out and seeing, if you can pull out these specific red flags, whatever bucket that they're in for you specifically, so you can get used to seeing them in the future. So maybe we can talk through some of mine or other ones that you've seen just to give some concrete examples.
[00:16:11] Julia: Sure. Why don't we start with, you, what would you say are some of those like buckets or categories early on we'll do early on and then how it morphed into now? How do yeah, how do you
[00:16:24] Jordan: feel? What are some of those, So here here's some that have come up for me that I can, that I can specifically put my finger on.
So one is communication and typically like time between communication or inability to make a decision. And of course, people, especially my clients are very busy, but every time I've had a client, who's kind of been on the fence back and forth. Like I wanna do it. No, I don't wanna do it. Or I wanna do it.
And then I don't hear from them for two weeks. That is always a red flag. For me. And that's, again, I know my clients are busy, but clients who work out that's, that's not how they act in the buying process once they decide, they know. and if they need time, I always give my clients time to decide to work with me.
But once they decide we get going, not, not a lot of wishy washiness , which I'm gonna use as a technical term in this situation. so that's one and, and the reason why is because I find that that actually bleeds into the entire relationship on decisions that, you know, we need for them to make in order for us to do what we do effectively and implement into their business.
It also can bleed into the relationship kind of in a bigger picture way of like them not being sure that they want to even have us on, or they're not fully committed to it generally. And so, or maybe they're not fully committed to their business. Those are all problems for what we do specifically. and that's usually how it shows up early days.
[00:18:12] Julia: And that's a really important thing to recognize, depending on what kind of business you have, you will have different kinds of red flags. You are, especially with your business, you're in the nitty gritty on your clients' businesses. Yeah. You need them to be clear and you also need them to be decisive or else you have an entire agency of people who are gonna be waiting for somebody to do something.
Yeah. So someone else may have a different kind of business that maybe if someone is having a little bit more time, you know, that might actually be a good thing. Maybe if somebody's too impulsive, that could be a bad thing in someone else's business. Right. And so it's important to recognize, as you get to know your business, what will make your business feel like a healthy and productive place?
And so that was a, that's a really good bucket
[00:19:10] Jordan: to have. Yeah. Yeah. So another one. That I see a lot. this is maybe gonna sound bad and I'm, I'm not, I'm not advocating for not reading contracts and asking for things that are important to you. But what I will tell you is historically, if someone comes to me to become a client and they're excited and we get going and send the contract an invoice, and they've got a massive list of things, they want me to change in my contract , every time I've justified making a bunch of changes to my contract, it ends up being a bad situation where we don't work together long term.
And because again, that is kind of how they show up in our relationship is that it's, it's almost like they're never satisfied with what we do and how we do things. So I think almost well, not almost always, always these red flags, like you said, translate to how they show up once you do start working together.
And so again, of course, read contracts, do your due diligence. If something makes you super uncomfortable, bring it up or don't move forward with it. That's great. But I also do the same thing, which means if I feel really confident about my contract and you want me to change a million things, it's probably not gonna be a good fit because this is the contract that we have.
And we have it for a very specific reason, and I've never had any issues with clients because of my contract. unless I've made a ton of changes and then usually, but not ends up not working out. So that's another one.
[00:20:50] Julia: A contract is a really solid. Tangible proof of a boundary mm-hmm . And so when we have, we have laid out, like, this is how our business relationship will operate.
You guys are literally both agreeing to this set of rules and terms. And then the last one, I talked about how our boundaries are basically our rules for ourselves. And so as soon as you get this dynamic, again, this is not, don't ask questions about contracts, or maybe there's like a small tweak or you guys had settled on different terms or something like that.
like, that's its own thing. But for when someone comes back to a standard contract and it's very standard requests and those kind of things that is you saying, I'm going to change my. Boundaries. And then that can set a precedent where you've got this kind of back and forth around things that you had no desire to have a back and forth around.
Yeah. And so that's a really important one to pay attention
[00:21:53] Jordan: to. Yeah, for sure. And I think, especially as it relates to contracts, when, and it's not always in the contract, sometimes it's more of just like a request or a discussion I've had clients come on and be like, well, actually I use this platform for communication.
So even though, you know, you use that, I would prefer if you use this with me, well, we can't do that. We have way too many clients to be able to accommodate requests like that. and there was another one, like someone didn't want any of their calls recorded and I was. I can't ACC, there there's certain things that I just cannot accommodate because there's reasons that we do those things.
We record calls because we have a big team and lots of people working on your projects, and we need to, we need to have a record of decisions that are made specific language, very specific things that are available to everyone on the team for the sake of transparency and efficiency. And I just can't accommodate that.
Like those types of things, those types of requests are also red flags. And again, they're not, it's not anything negative to say about the person. It's just that it won't work for
[00:23:00] Julia: us. Right. And that's what it is. This is a totally personalized process. And you're allowed to make those decisions and. That's the way it'll be.
And yeah, that's, I think one of the most important things about starting this process, again, depending on where you're at in this red flag journey and in your business, you have to get really in touch with what feels good with you. And you, it's also gonna touch into your self confidence on this too, and your, your belief in your decisions.
[00:23:37] Jordan: Okay. I have one more that I wanna share before. we move on to maybe something else and this is definitely a more personal one because those all seem very like practical.
like, my analytical eneagram one side is like, yeah, like that objectively makes sense that this type of client wouldn't work with for us. but on a more personal level, my love language is affirmation. Words of affirmation and. I Find that I have a difficult time working directly with clients who have certain communication styles that are more direct and lack any kind of words of affirmation.
It's like triggering to me, it makes me feel insecure. And if I think about all of the clients, I mean, all of our clients that we work with now, we love. But if I think about the clients in the past, who have made me feel that way and who I haven't wanted to really continue working with, they have been that style.
and they didn't really show appreciation and it almost felt like they didn't even respect me. if I can like really put my finger on it. And it's not that they were doing that on purpose. I think it was more just their way of communicating and my needs from them in this type of like, I'm working obviously very, very close with people.
[00:25:01] Jordan: And so. It's important for us to have a relationship where we both feel valued and appreciated, I think in order to be effective. and so that has now become like it's on the list now of potential red flags. If I feel like I'm kind of being triggered in that way, even on like a discovery call of like, uh, I don't like how I feel like I show up on this call, it makes I'm feeling more insecure or I'm feeling whatever, and it's maybe something to do with how they communicate.
[00:25:33] Julia: And that's where it gets really important for us to understand ourselves. I talk a lot when I talk with my clients about this idea that we don't need to be fixed, we need to be understood. And that understanding starts with ourselves. And this is a really great example of understanding ourselves and understanding our business because our business is an extension of ourselves.
So. It can feel really easy to be quite dismissive of these things to say, well, it's just business. I'll get over it. Especially with these more emotional need things. We love to think our business selves and our human selves are two very separate things, but it's all connected. It's all connected. So part of this journey is recognizing that your needs matter.
And even if those needs are different than someone else's or you feel like they would be trivial, if you, I also work a lot with my clients and not dismissing their emotions. Right. We've done that a lot where it's like, I don't even why I don't know why I feel like that or whatever your feelings are valid.
So if those feelings are coming up, it's important that we look at them, that we understand them. And then we decide which ones are. Are we going to really take care of right now and for the future, because we like that part of us. And then which ones will we create different systems just to kind of, you know, function in a society.
And so it's important to know those emotional ones are just as important as those logical ones of, you know, this person doesn't seem like they're gonna pay on time because they took forever to pay on this thing. And then I'm more, that's a very practical one, but this person messages me urgently at 10 o'clock at night and makes me feel nervous.
And then I feel like I'm lacking because I don't let like that whole spiral can be one that happens for a lot of people. then that's just as important to pay attention to.
[00:27:39] Jordan: Yeah, for sure. And I think there's this other whole bucket that we haven't even delved into of not necessarily red flags, but we can call everything a red flag, I guess.
And so this other bucket of does the client really line up with the type of client who you want to work with as far as where they are in their, their journey. So for instance, uh, I have learned that we don't like to work with people who aren't totally all in on their business. So maybe they're new.
Maybe it's a business idea. , we don't do that because there's too much opportunity for them to not be ready to utilize us. And we don't like to be sitting around being like. Okay, well, are we gonna do it? And like we're waiting. And then we spend time and energy working on things. And then they kind of like backed, and that's not the type of client that we like to work with.
They're too early in their journey. And usually I will make some exceptions to that if I feel like they have everything else, plus they have business experience. Like maybe they have a, another business that, that they are actively running and they're successful in. And this is a new layer that they're adding on.
That's very different than I haven't really ever run a business, but I, I wanna start this new thing. Here's my idea. Okay. Well, I can't help you through all of the things that come with being a brand new business owner, if you've never done it before. The emotional side of things, I can help you with all the logistical side of things.
But if you are second guessing, whether you wanna do your business at all, I can't help you with that. It's too early. It's not my expertise. so that's one thing. And then the other thing that you mentioned around money. So that's another thing like we don't like to work with people who are too early financially, because then it puts way too much pressure on us to like be the magic bullet, to solve all of their business problems.
And that's again, Not what we do. like, I am not willing to take a hundred percent of the responsibility for your business to be a success. And I find that if people are too early financially, and it's too much of a stretch to work with us, it, it's not gonna be a good situation, cuz I'm gonna be stressed.
[00:30:13] Julia: Emotions are high when it's someone's life savings. and that's not really the time to start playing with metrics and those kind of things. That's yeah. Yeah. And that's a really important distinction to make because again, no matter what kind of business you have when you start versus where you'll be in a year or two years, or what far down the line.
It's going to take a while for you to figure out exactly what you're doing, who you work with and how you work with them. Just like your boundaries are kind of ever changing and flexible. A lot of the times, these red flags, these rules around your business, those are quite flexible as well until we get really comfortable with it.
Most likely you will outgrow some of your clients you'll realize as you grow and your business is starting to function, really get its legs under it. You're just going to realize that you made some commitments to clients that they didn't fit because you, you were just. Figuring it out, you're figuring it out.
And that can happen at any different point. I don't think that people are immune to it as their businesses grow either because we hit these different growth and checkpoints all throughout our business where you're about to make the leap to that next big milestone. And until we really start paying attention to the emotional side of the work, we can continue making these kind of iffy decisions, a around clients or fudging on our rules or whatever, because we're so excited about getting to that milestone that it's like, whatever, we'll just make it work and we wanna go for it.
But if we really do the work around this before, stuff of why is this important to me? What's what's going on with this. We wanna limit how many misaligned relationships we're creating in our business. And that goes for our clients too. So it's so important that we pay attention to. The feelings, the logic behind who are we working with?
Why are we working with them throughout our entire business? Never feel like, oh, I've got it figured out. I've totally got this figured out. Yeah. I'm, you know, it's, this is not gonna stop.
[00:32:18] Jordan: Yeah. Thanks for the reminder. I probably need you're welcome to hear that. so it's so kind of touching on like the money thing and the reason behind why we ignore red flags or why we don't act on them or recognize them or whatever the situation is, you know, for a fact that a lot of times I've made decisions and ignored red flags because I've been like, oh, but it's like a, it's like a $10,000, you know, decision that I'm making an early days.
That was a huge decision in my business. Nowadays it's less of a decision. Like, you know, one client is like, eh, like. Of course important, but it's not make or break the month. It's not make or break how much I'm paying myself or any of that. And so that's a very different experience. And what I think is interesting is that my business really took off and exploded more so after I figured this out and I stopped taking on the red flag clients and I fired all of the red flag clients.
And I had kind of a sketchy like month when I did all of that. And it was like, oh man, but this is such a huge piece of my revenue. What am I gonna do? And like, since we got really good at this, and we're like waiting through the trenches of no, it's important for me right now to get really clear on who my ideal client is and get rid of everybody else.
That has opened up so much opportunity. And I mean, my, we were just talking about this yesterday, cuz we had a call like I think I have what, four or five times as many clients as I did that month, when I, when I kind of fired all of the people who were like not a great fit and whittled it back down to like my core number of clients.
And then now we're at like four or five times as many. And it's only been what, three, three months, four months, very quick, something crazy.
[00:34:23] Julia: Very, very quick. Yeah. And I think that speaks to how much energy it takes up when we're, when we're working with people who are just not a good fit for us because we show up differently.
We think about things differently and things actually take us longer when we're not having a good time. and so if we have a client that it's just not driving. We're not going to feel excited. We're not going to feel creative. There's a lot of things that are, are, are caught up in this, but you're also not thrilled at the idea of finding more clients like them, you know, who wants to run out and go and find more clients who are just going to suck the life out of you.
Nobody's excited to do that. So then when you find those clients that just light you up, and those are the ones that you're like, oh, a breath of fresh air, this is who I wanna work with. It's really important. That just as important as recognizing those red flags, it's really important to look at the green flags too.
So if you have a client that you are not working with, well, look to the other end of the spectrum of a client who you love and think about what is it that you love with them, because that can also help you navigate. Maybe down the line, what could be some potential things that you don't think would work as well?
Maybe it's maybe it's somebody who doesn't even exist yet, a client who doesn't exist yet, but you're, you're just thinking about what wouldn't work with a client, because you may have a client, like you mentioned, those words of affirmation are really important. Maybe you've never had a client before who has been so kind and so affirming to you, but then when you have it, you're like, oh wow, that's incredible.
now, you know, you wanna find more clients like that. You want to foster those kind of relationships with your clients and you might then reflect on how did I do that with this client? How did I, what was the vibe that I brought to our interactions that made us feel so connected and how do I make that happen?
More? So the green flags that we have with our clients are just as important as those red flags with. That we may have with clients or that we're afraid of having with clients.
[00:36:40] Jordan: Mm-hmm, totally, that seems like a really positive place to end on that part of the conversation of like the before. So maybe now we talk about what happens when you're like, oh, I need to fire a client.
[00:36:58] Julia: Okay. So like you mentioned, some of those interactions could be totally fine. It might just be, you're wrapping up on a contract and your prices have changed or your services have tweaked. You're not, you're not offering those things that you had offered them at the beginning. So you might have the conversation clarifying that with them, letting them know, and then giving them the option.
They can either line up with these new services, but these are the prices that it's going and then they get to decide, or you might just let them know. , we won't be continuing our contract. We appreciated our time together. That's why these timed contracts can be a real gift. Right. because it gives you the option, but then you might have some that you're in the middle of your contract and things are just not going really well.
So tell me about what that process looks like for you. The realization process of, oh, this is this isn't going to make it to the end of our time period.
[00:38:07] Jordan: Mm mm-hmm mm-hmm so I've had a couple of those experiences and
oh man, just okay. Going back, going back and feeling all the things. so I think coming to that decision. Feels really fuzzy. Like if I think back I'm like, how did I like really decide? I don't know, for me, usually I feel like I kinda wrestle with it. And it's like, in the back of my mind, it's like, oh man, I don't wanna do this.
Oh man. You know, kind of back to that tension building thing, I'm a pretty like fast action taker. And so that usually is pretty compressed on a short time scale. so it may be, oh, I would say a week at max, but usually like a couple days of me being like, oh man, I don't think this is gonna work out.
What am I gonna do? Like I'm thinking about it a lot. I'm probably messaging you about it. and then yeah. Some kind of switch will flip I'll and I'll be like, Nope, we're done. We're done. And as soon as I decide, we're done, we are done and we are taking action and we are emailing the client now.
That isn't always gonna work for every situation. So I have a client right now who she knows she wants to fire one of her clients, but this client owes her money so, this is where, and, and this specific situation hasn't happened to me, but definitely the money stuff. Like I wanna talk about that because there's a lot of things that can go wonky related to money when you're firing a client.
but if you , if, if you're a quick action taker, sometimes it does serve you to wait and kind of deal with things in the order that they need to be dealt within. So in this situation for my client, she's wanting to fire this person, but they owe her money. The obvious decision here. Don't have the conversation about firing the client until they have paid you for the work that you've already done.
[00:40:19] Jordan: So that luckily hasn't been a situation for me to deal with because the clients that I've fired often have paid me in full and all of my clients pay me up front. So even if you don't pay me in full for three months, you for sure pay for one month in advance. and then you pay each time is in advance of the work that's done.
So I don't have that situation. I more have the situation that I have to deal with giving a refund and how much of a refund. And that gets really tricky as well. fortunately I am very protected again in my contract. when it comes to refunds and I actually don't offer refunds per my contract, but every time I've fired a client, I have offered a refund.
That's just like a, a for me like the ethical choice, that's gonna make me feel better. I don't offer full refunds if we've provided some services, but I offer a refund. That to me feels fair based on the work that we've done. So if you pay me three months in advance and after month one, we decide it's not a good fit, and we're gonna part ways, AKA, I'm going to fire you
I'm gonna refund you the, the other two months. Like that seems obvious, even though you probably took a client spot and you've now costed me more money, but I still wanna do. What's going to be truly fair. Interestingly enough. every time I do what I consider is fair. Like that objectively feels fair to me. I am like completely berated for, for doing that.
And people, people expect a full refund. It's so interesting. Well,
[00:42:02] Julia: money. Is stressful, right? as soon as, as soon as money enters, the picture people's expectations are involved or, you know, if they feel like while I'm not getting the full service, . It's not, it's not logical because you also have to factor in if you are the one who's deciding, okay, our relationship is coming to an end.
You have thought through all of this, but the client is just literally living their life, how they probably have always lived their life . And so then now somebody's coming to them and saying, this isn't gonna continue. If you put yourself in their shoes and you think about how you would feel, you'd probably be feeling a little surprised at this, especially if you've gone through a lot of your life.
And nobody's really told you, I don't appreciate that, or this isn't going to work. You're if you're not accustomed to not totally getting your way and that the full refund and. not then wanting to pay for the work that was done could be an extension of that. You know, just that level of like whatever.
Sometimes there's some people who are incredible at asking for things and it's things I would never think to ask for, but then they get them and so I think sometimes people are willing to just make the pitch and ask. I always think of, one time we were at a yard sale and. They were like, anything you see is for sale.
And my husband was like, even the cat. And they were like, yeah, even the cat. And we got like the best cat that we ever had and are like, no way. I never would've thought to ask that and he was just the best cat in the world. And, uh, that's always just this one example of like, I never would've thought to ask that, but we got the cat and sometimes people ask for things that you would never think to ask for, but they're probably getting more things than you would, you would think so sometimes it can be that.
And then sometimes it's an emotional dig. They're not happy. And so they're reacting in a way that feels, you know, a little uncalled for cuz it probably is. I think one of the benefits of being the one who's making this choice of we're going to end this early with the client is that you get to prepare for those things.
You get to kind of think through the hallway of consequences, what might happen here and how will I handle that? And that's one of the benefits, like you mentioned with your contract, where it says no refunds, but you know, you would like to probably, maybe not every time, if you listen to this podcast, , don't think on it.
I don't know. But you would probably like to give the refund because that would align with your integrity. So it's important to think of those, those things ahead of time, instead of in the moment where everybody's just kind of reacting, that's gonna be emotional. It's going to have some tension to it because money's involved and that's just the way it is.
[00:44:58] Jordan: Yeah. Yeah, totally. And it is true that I think people can really be blindsided about being fired as clients, because like you said, They don't have the same perspective on themselves. And it's not always something like that they would objectively see or hear from other people, because it is a lot of times about the dynamic between you two as individual people.
And what happens when you come together. And I think that specifically was kind of the root cause of one of the situations where I parted ways with a client. And it was like, well, you, you make me feel this way. And I, I can't like, I'm not gonna have an objective conversation with you about it, because to me that is the reality to you.
It may not feel that way, but I can't change how you make me feel like this. Isn't it's just not gonna work. Right. and then. On the other side of that, I think, like you said, it is in situations where it is more objective. Like, I feel like people are , like, it's not something that they're triggering me in me personally.
It just is something about the OB this situation objectively. That's not gonna work. even then there's still an emotional reaction. It's just an emotional process for everyone involved. Even if the reason isn't emotional, like the, the, the root cause of why you're parting ways doesn't have to be emotional for the whole process to be emotional.
At least that's what I found, but maybe I'm just an emotional person. I don't know.
[00:46:27] Julia: but , I think it's important. I think a lot of people who run their own business, they feel like, like I mentioned before, like they're just supposed to check emotion at the door, but if we recognize that it's here, it's here, , it's going to be here.
And of course, because no matter how you slice it, we're passionate about this stuff. If it's our business, well, I mean, we created it. We're excited about that anyway. Nevermind. The fact that our livelihood is wrapped up into it. So of course this is emotional, right? Especially if you're providing a service, that's deeply connected to how someone's business functions, some of their surprise could just be around the fact that if you're managing practical things in their business, they might be thinking about, well, now what am I supposed to do?
like, what am I gonna, what will I do now? And that's not to say that that's your responsibility to factor in because that's part of the risk that we have as business owners is that things change. We, we need to figure out our services and those things, but it can help us to keep their response in their perspective and pocket that it belongs in of like, okay.
Yep. I get it. That you're reacting to that. Does that change the way that I'm moving forward? No, but we can, we can have that space for them reacting as a human in response to. What we just handed them.
[00:47:50] Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about some of these, like exact examples, exact examples in the air quotes of maybe some practical tips on how to do it when you're really firing someone, things that can happen, things that can go wrong.
How to, so one thing in particular that I know can happen, cuz it's happened to me is what's called a chargeback. And if no one's ever experienced chargeback, Ugh, you are so lucky. this is one of in my opinions, the most stressful things that can happen in this type of situation. So like I mentioned, most of my clients pay me either like totally in full for several months or at least one month in advance.
And so this specific situation that I was in the client. One month in advance very early on. Like there had been lots of red flags before we started. And then within like the first week, it was very obvious, like, okay, there are some very inappropriate things happening that I'm not comfortable with. This is not gonna work.
And I don't wanna get any deeper into this situation than we're already in and then have to fire her down the line. Like, let's just nip this, let's be done with it. Like we're finished. Let her know she was very unhappy. and I won't even get into the details of, of accusations and, and crazy crazyness, but we'll, we'll talk about how to deal with some emotional responses that people will probably send you in a minute.
But what happened was I gave a refund, almost a full refund, only subtracting the hours that we had put in like direct costs, uh, of our team on time. And. That was not acceptable. She wanted a full, full refund, and I did not agree to that gave her the partial refund. That was fair based on the hours that we had worked and then got a notification that she had done a chargeback, which means the remainder of the amount that I was withholding to cover.
Our costs was pulled immediately from my bank account by the bank. because she had like reported us for, you know, an unauthorized charge or however she had gone about doing it. So that then starts this whole process where you can dispute it. it's technically called like a fraudulent charge is what I had been categorized as, and I had to go through all this whole process of submitting.
I had to submit the contract. I had to submit email communications to prove that we were justified and withholding that amount. And so again, this is where a contract comes in handy. This is where I think it's very important to always do communication regarding, contracts regarding firing regarding refunds.
All of that has to be done in writing. I mean, I think that sounds obvious, but just as a reminder, that all has to, to be done in writing so that you can attach that if someone does a chargeback on your account and three months later, I got that money back, but it was three whole months. And so imagine if someone had done a chargeback for $10,000, I mean, this was like less than a thousand dollars, right?
It wasn't that that much money in the grand scheme of our costs. but a very stressful, very stressful experience. And one that has impacted how I look at doing business with people moving forward, because now that I've seen that that can happen. What scares me is that someone could potentially do that on a $10,000 charge or, you know, something along those lines, which is very scary.
And even though I know I'm a hundred percent covered, it's still just no fun. And so I actually have language in my contract now about chargeback specifically because it was such a negative experience, but that's just one example of things that can happen and how you might have to, to deal with it and what you can do to prepare.
[00:51:42] Julia: Yeah. That's a really valuable one because, That's that's kind of a dirty move, you know? And so to, to learn that we have to plan for those things can be a hard, a hard realization in our business and it is stressful. we would classify that as that's, that goes in the business trauma side of things, right?
Because it's something that you, you are carrying with you now, , you're nervous about that happening. And what if it could happen on a larger scale? And we start to play out all of these different things. It, it ruins your trust a little bit with people, but it's only, I always love that sale that saying of like, it's only a failure.
If you don't learn something from it. And so things can still go wrong, but if we can at least look at it and say, Okay, what am I doing next time to have this protected? And so then we might work differently with our accounting, where we always have a certain amount of bubble in our, in our cash flow. So that way, this, these kind of things won't sink us or language in the contract or learning how to protect ourselves.
And so that's a really helpful tidbit of information that somebody could do, something like that. And so how would you be prepared if it happens? What are some other things that you would,
so I think another thing to think about and talk about is once you're in the process of firing the client and likely I hope this isn't the case, but likely what's gonna be the case is that they're not gonna be happy.
[00:53:16] Jordan: About you firing them and you may get some very emotionally charged communications back at you. You may get lots of questions. You may get accusations, you may get them just generally wanting to change your mind. them wanting you to keep them on for one reason or another. and I will say probably that's not a good idea, just FYI spoiler alert.
Uh, but even though they're gonna want to dig and talk and change your mind and accuse and whatever, I think for, for me, what we've learned is that I don't engage in a conversation once the decision has been made, everything becomes very contract language based, everything like, and I, I hate, I hate to, like, I don't want that to sound bad.
Like it, like, it becomes no longer. A a relationship, but it does have to become more professional. The, the language does matter in the communication back and forth and your decisions on what you say and what you respond to will often determine if they keep coming back at you with more questions and more this and more requests and more whatever.
And because that, because I find that extremely stressful, Like I said, what we found is really important for things to become very matter of fact, very much. Here's the decision. We're not gonna get into the, the why of it. Because if you get into the why of explaining and talking about specifics, they're gonna want more information from you.
And so you're inviting them to have a conversation. so we don't do that. we don't do that anymore. It's here's the decision. Here's the contract language. Here's the next steps. That's it? Not, not anything else that's conversational.
[00:55:15] Julia: And that's really important to know what is the goal in your conversation.
So if you have a client that things are a little iffy, you need to come to that decision beforehand, would you be willing to get some clarification around whatever the issue is at hand? In order to move forward in a better way, or have you decided this is done because if your goal is we're done, then the decision's been made.
And so, like you said, this isn't a conversation that is going to happen. And again, we, we have room for human nature. People get defensive, especially depending on the nature of your, this isn't going to work out. kind of a thing how you present that can also greatly impact how they're going to take it because.
people, our natural response where we feel like justice is on the table is if somebody says something about us, we want to defend ourselves. If someone says, oh, you're actually awful to work with. , yeah, I'm gonna, I have something to say about that. Like what, what are you talking about? So that's going to be their response.
So how you, how you word that decision is important. Sometimes it's worth it for us to bottle up deciding like what's, what's my motivation and what I'm about to tell them, am I, am I looking for a little bit of justice here where I want them to know just how much of a pain they were and I don't care what the outcome is.
Like, what, what are we looking for in that interaction? Because it might be that we know, we know this is the reason why, but what we present to them is going to be a little more concise, matter of fact, wrap it up because once you open that door and. You've got this, this V back and forth emotions are high.
Nothing good is going to happen. You are not going to feel good about that interaction. And then the next time you need to have an interaction like that, or something seems to be going that way. You're gonna be right back in that spot. Yeah, you'll be right back because you're not going to get resolution around this.
It's just, it's not going to feel good. And then the other thing I wanted to say about that too, is when someone starts coming back, especially if there's like accusations or complaints and those kind of things, this is where it becomes very important that you feel solid in your boundaries, solid in the service you provide and solid in your decision.
Because when we feel a lot of shame around things and shame can be tricky. A lot of times people don't realize they feel shame. They think it's this like. , you know, I just feel indecisive or maybe I didn't make the right choice. Maybe I'm overreacting, like all those things, but it, it ends up bottling up into a feeling of shame.
Shame is a very porous emotion. We start to believe whatever someone says to us when we're feeling unsure in this like embarrassed space. So if they come back and they say, well, you didn't do this and this didn't happen. And da, da, da, da, da. If you're not solid in that, if you don't feel safe and secure in your choice, your reaction is that you're either going to believe what they said.
And you're going to feel like you need to start making excuses for your choice, or you are going to get defensive and be like, well, that's not true because this, and so then it can just kind of escalate. So it's really important that you do the work beforehand. What's my goal here. How, how could I get the best possible outcome?
Even if it means putting your ego to the side a little bit on this, that you don't get to really nail that great line that you thought you were gonna say to let them know how much of a pain they are, and then what are your rules gonna be? What are your boundaries that you, like you said, you won't engage after a certain point.
Remember, your boundaries are far how you will behave, not how other people will treat
[00:59:17] Jordan: you. Yeah. And this has been , it's taken a while for us to learn this for me, for sure. and I will say that I don't know the, I don't know the reason why behind this and maybe this is something we can, you know, dive in together in private about is, why originally I did feel the need to explain, and I, I think.
That's different for everyone. But I do think that that is a really common thing in this space, in the female business owner space. we feel the need to explain and justify our decisions to the people and that that's fine and great. I think in some situations, I, for the most part, don't think it's ever necessary.
And there's a lot of like, you know, you see stuff on social media or wherever of like, overexplaining like, even if you're just late responding to an email or like, you don't have to tell people your life story of why you did or didn't do something. Okay. Like, I think we all know that, like we see people talking about that all the time.
But we still wanna do it. Right? Like we still, especially in these types of situations where we are making a big decision, that's affecting someone else. Like we're firing a client, we feel this urge. Like we have to explain, like, it's not justified. If we don't explain it, it's kind of how it feels like, oh, well I can't do this unless I have a really good reason that I can communicate to no, it, none of that matters.
None of that matters. Like you can just make the decision and then you can just communicate the decision and you don't have to justify it with a bunch of stuff. And again, what I've found for me personally is that it's critical. Not to give the explanation, because again, that is the invitation for them to disagree with you.
And I can guarantee you 100%, they're gonna disagree with you, on why you're firing them. And they're gonna want, they're gonna want more information or they're gonna wanna prove you wrong or any of the things. And, and so everyone's decision around what your boundaries are, what your protocol's gonna be for for firing a client may be different, but that has been the realization for me is that I do not, I do not overly explain.
It's just a very matter of fact, like communication.
[01:01:34] Julia: Yeah. The more you give, the more you get, but not in a good way in that anyways, like the more information you give, the more questions you're going to get, the more response you're going to, and if you've made the decision, you can communicate it. We start to take on all of this ownership for people's response to things, and that's really none of our business.
It. Is difficult because it affects us, but we start to bottle up, you know, we want them to understand, we want them to, you know, validate the choice in some way, but we don't need to. That's, that's really that shift towards this is my business. And so I get to decide how the I'm driving the boat and this is the
[01:02:15] Jordan: direction we're going in.
And it's a practice. I mean, , this is not how I have fired clients in the past. And honestly, I wish I could go back cuz I think I could have done it better now that we know, but I can't. And I've had to learn how to do things and what's maybe gonna be a less emotionally charged way to do things and all of that.
and you kind of have to, you, you have to learn it. I think in practice, even if you're listening to this and you're gonna go fire a client and you're like, okay, this is the exact thing I'm gonna do. And , this is what Jordan said, and this is what's gonna make it not emotionally charged. Uh, it may still be, and you may be very, a matter of fact, in your initial email, and then you may cave when they come back to you and demand reasons, you know, like you're just gonna have to move through the experience in real time and then look back and be like, oh man, I wish I would've done that differently.
And that it's just great data and great information to have moving forward. so don't, I feel like this is something Julie would say, don't make yourself wrong for the way that you did it, because now you have the information and you didn't necessarily have it in, in the moment. and hopefully you can do something with it moving forward.
I forgot where I was gonna go with that. I actually have that really important point. I liked that yeah, that is totally something you would say. And so that's partly what is important. I think in having support from someone who you can talk this stuff through, because Julia, that's a lot of the stuff that you and I have done together is in real time, I need a gut check on this response or here's what they said.
[01:03:51] Jordan: And maybe initially I would've gone right back and said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And instead I send my response to you and we talk it out of like, okay, well, do we really need to say this? And I send it to my husband and I'm like, does this make me sound crazy? Like help me with this. You know? So you have to have those outlets no matter who it is, business coach, your mastermind.
If you're in my mastermind, I would love to look at your responses before you fire clients. you know, so like you have to have. that type of support because otherwise you're just way too deep into it in situations like this, where it's hard to get out and be objective and not just go straight into the mode that you would kind of like normally be in, in emotionally charged situations.
[01:04:32] Julia: Mm-hmm and that's where it can also be helpful to think of it. I think the most helpful thing to really reflect on is. what's your true north? Like, what is your integrity telling you in any interaction? The most important thing that you can think about is how do I want this to go in a way that reflects who I am as a person, because that's who, that's what you're going to process through and live with as you go forward.
So, you know, it's our business, but it's also us. It's a reflection of us. And so if you can really get in touch with what's my integrity telling me on this, not to say, oh, I'm just gonna let whatever go, because I want everybody to be happy. That's not an integrity move. right. It's, it's the, what's your actual true self telling you that your needs are, but also how you want them to walk away, you know, They can't say anything about it or whatever it is, you, you can still ride that line while knowing what your integrity was.
And that may shift over time, because as you go through these processes or as your business grows at the beginning, you may have thought I'm the kind of person who makes everybody feel like they're so taken care of and all of their emotional needs are met. And they're just gonna be happy no matter what I tell them.
And that's not gonna be possible. That's not our responsibility. It, it won't happen all the time. So even if someone's upset with you, it doesn't mean that you acted poorly in your business. And those are the important things that you can remind yourself before you head into is maybe difficult interactions is okay, but this is who I am as a person.
And I feel at peace with what I'm about to say.
[01:06:17] Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. And, and like you said, I. If things go south and you end up having a really negative experience when firing a client know that that likely has nothing to do with how you handled the situation, you could handle the situation. Absolutely. Perfect.
And still, it is like just totally stressful and like totally knocks you off your game. And has you like worried about everything for a little bit? Like there is kind of this emotional, kind of like aftermath to taking action on, on things like this, but then you do get to the point where you are gonna see the benefits.
Like you are gonna have more time and like you're gonna get over it. And it, if you're gonna be less stressed about bringing on new clients, because you know that you're gonna be more particular and like there's all of these good things that come with it. you don't have to the, the experience of firing the client doesn't have to be a good one or a bad one, or like there's no particular way that that has to happen in order for it to, to be a good thing still long term.
So is there anything else? I hope this has been really practical and I just wanna hammer home one more time, having to fire a client and having a negative experience, firing a client and people being mad at you is in no way, a reflection of your like worth or success or anything as a business owner.
and hopefully I'm not like painting, painting a terrible picture of myself over here. Like I fire all these clients, like in the grand scheme of things. Again, like I haven't fired that many clients, but I'm actually extremely thankful for that because I, I do think that that's a big reason why I have all dream clients now, like all dream clients and have been able to grow.
[01:08:09] Jordan: And so I would look at it as a positive thing. And that's kind of how I feel about all negative, terrible things that happen in business is that once you're through it, you're actually like inviting all of this new growth and you have to experience those negative things in, in order to be ready for.
The amazing things that are on the other side of it. And I know you've seen that in real time in my business. So, you know, just be, be grateful for the fact that you get to hire a client.
[01:08:40] Julia: it also is a Testament to growth because as we go, we learn things about ourselves. We learn things about interacting with people and we just get a clearer picture of how we want things to go.
And that's okay. That's totally okay. And it gives you a completely new set of skills and I don't think it creates a terrible picture. I think it creates a realistic picture. When you work with a lot of people, you're going to have a wide range of experiences, especially as you kind of flex that muscle of.
Listening to your gut once you get clear on oh, yep. I knew, I felt weird with that. I knew I didn't like the way that went, but you have to have the understanding. I totally went for it because I thought that they were gonna be like my next big client or I was trying to hit this goal or whatever. You have to look at the how and the why on those situations.
And then once you understand that, then you can start to say like, yeah, you know what I understand. Why I did that. Here's how I'm going to get ahead of that next time, because then you might have two different things. One is in the way that you interact with your clients, but then one is also how you're taking care of yourself.
If you notice yourself getting into this space of lack, where it's like, I just need to find somebody, I just need to find somebody that is not going to be a great energy to go and start having client calls. Because the first person who's like, I think I'd like to work with you. You're gonna snatch 'em up.
Even if they've been, you know, totally elusive and weird or whatever on the whole discovery call or client call or whatever you have, you'll take the first. Yes. Because you feel like you need to. And so it's important to get some things in place to recognize what are some of your triggers in your business, or what are some of the triggers in your life that make you start to spiral out on stuff and then make choices in your business that.
Is not taking you in the direction that you wanna go in. So even though it can be negative, it's still going to teach you something about yourself, something about your business, and then you can process it and move forward and plan for it
[01:10:56] Jordan: a thousand percent. And it's, it's gonna take some time to figure that a whole out it's a process.
It's a journey. You're not gonna get it after the first time, but keep on keeping on. So anything else we need to leave people with?
[01:11:13] Julia: Well, after you've done this, it's important to have some kind of a plan in place to take care of your emotions, take care of your nervous system and recalibrate how you feel about your business, because it will be scary and.
It will be stressful if it goes badly, if it goes good, then we really don't have to have this conversation. congratulations. But if it went stressful for you, they said something or whatever that was particularly triggering to you, it's really important that you give that the weight that it is, don't just try and blast through it and be like, well, business is business.
And off I go to find someone else you have to get outta that head space and you also have to take care of yourself a little bit. So, think about the emotions that you're actually feeling, identify those, and then kind of treat yourself like you're a little kid. where it's like, okay, I get that. We're feeling this way.
This is what I'm going to do to take care of it. Of course, I I'm really big on the, of course I feel that way because. Because it really just opens up this internal conversation with ourselves where we, our brain feels like, okay, we're in the mood to take care of ourselves. If we're immediately dismissing the feeling, our brain's not gonna be very helpful in processing it.
So if we start to think through the, of course I feel this way because they were kind of mean to me, or this was scary. Like think of it, how you would explain it to a little kid. And then, then you can start to come up with a solution, go for a walk. I just actually did a post on like six things you can do for your nervous system on my Instagram, but it's like go for a walk, do legs up the wall, do some deep breathing exercises.
Try EFT. I, a huge believer in tapping to process your emotions, like lots of different things to physically care for yourself, because that will change how you respond to situations in the future. If your brain has flagged these interactions as not safe, something bad's going to happen, you'll have a physiological response.
Your heart's gonna start pounding. You're gonna feel shaky. You're just gonna feel off. So if you can really care for your mind and body in that moment, take that time. Some nurturing care. It will make everything feel better right now, but then also better for the future.
[01:13:32] Jordan: I love it. That's perfect. Well, I think we could almost do an entire episode about about that.
and we'll, we'll put the link to that, Instagram post that you just mentioned in the show notes, cuz I think that would be helpful or sure. Any other resources we can think of that might be helpful, for dealing with this, , in particular, but I, I really hope this was helpful for everyone listening, getting into some specific examples to help you identify some red flags, to know how to deal with situations, once you're in them with firing clients, some things that you can do to prevent maybe , some issues when going through this experience.
So I think we covered kind of the big, the big things, and ended on a positive note with how you can take care of yourself. So I love it. This was super fun. Thanks Julia. It was thanks.