I had a call today from a lady I've met two years ago at a conference in Vegas, she did mention that she too, had hit a point in her career when she decided not to deal with a certain type of clients. You know the kind that bitches and moans about everything, especially prices, are always late submitting their papers and/or only submit some 'cause they didn't think you needed the rest? Yeah, them people. As I'm sitting here, I'm also looking at my clients' list. On there I have some that I see weekly, some bi-weekly and some monthly. The one I would see sporadically, whenever crap was about to hit their fan, I did let go of. I've been toying with the idea of letting go of another one. He just annoys me. He never answers my emails, and when he does it's not about what I've questioned him about. I feel like a mother always repeating the same thing over and over. I didn't have children because I didn't want to play that game of repeating and hoping that something will stick.
Someone asked me why did I care if I charged by the hour. I don't and I care because my time is valuable, not as a priced item but as time I'm spending trying to figure things out for them (or pooper scooping) I don't have that time to do what I like. If I do a cost analysis, then the equation is simple: it's costing me more than I can bill or that is worth billing.
I know I have my answer; I should just drop those juice suckers and be free. I've got to break free. I want to break free yeah.
In other news, we've been to the cemetery on Friday. I had read that sometimes wild animals would dig up remains of buried pet if not buried deep enough. Since we kind of had to rush, because of some workers installing a tombstone near us, I wanted to make sure that Tobi's resting place was still undisturbed. Everything was as we left it, a month ago. Already.
3 comments:
Do your clients communicate with each other? If not just tell the obnoxious ones that your rates are going up and let them either leave on their own, or at least make themselves more worth the anguish. :-)
I have refused to work for certain clients before, and it is THE most liberating experience.
This is why you're the boss - so you can make the decisions that affect your life. Get rid of those that are draining you, because in the long run it's bad for your mental health to keep them, and it means you won't be able to give as good a quality service to your better clients
Back when I was self-employed, I had a client who would ask me to bid a job, then never follow up except to ask me to bid another (different) job, then never follow up, lather, rinse, repeat. I finally told him I was going to have to charge an hourly rate for bids. Never heard from him again. Yay!
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