G'day Reader,

Straight up, please forgive the clickbait subject line but it's kinda true.

When I first started in sales, it was to grow someone else's business. And since I wasn't the guy that had to deliver the solutions, just sell em, I didn't care if clients were dicks.

After all, if they were dicks, it was the team that had to deal with it, not me. I got paid either way.

Man I miss that job sometimes 😅

Things changed a bit when I started working for myself. If a client was a dick, I had to deal with it. I was the one that had to handle "urgent" requests, ridiculous orders, disrespect, flaky decisions, and all the other crap you get with shitty clients.

And I couldn't avoid it cause I needed to make money cause being alive is expensive af.

The last shit client

I still remember the guy. Jason, from some shitty engineering company.

The fast version: had sob stories about people ripping him off, commited to a larger budget project, then ghosted for almost a year. Comes back, yay more sob stories, renegotiates to a smaller (and lower budget) project. Oh look at that, no content and no images. Tells me to steal content from competitors or suppliers (I refused). Ghosted again for a few months, so I just set it aside.

And then, of course, absolutely lost his shit when I didn't have a finished site waiting for him when he deigned to look back into it.

Ufffff.

One of very rare situations where I've had to say "this isn't working, let's go our separate ways."

It was so painful. That process stressed me out many times, things got heated during conversations, and I actually thought I was going to need to get a lawyer to put him in his place (thankfully he realised I wasn't in the wrong).

But.... Jason was the last truly shit client I've had (although some have been a bit mediocre ngl).

And it's all because of one TV commercial (fr fr no cap).

The commercial

It was 2018, I was watching TV (normal, free to air TV), and this commercial comes on.

"What commercial Nick? What product was being advertised that had such an amazing impact on you?"

Fish. It was a fucking fish commercial.

This guy went to the dock in the morning, and the fish seller guy said all the fish were rejects. Cause John West had already said no to those ones.

I can't find a link to the actual one I saw, but there's a whole series of them. Here's one.

The ending line was something like "It's what John West rejects that makes John West the best."

I was in the middle of dealing with all this shit, and this commercial comes on, and that line just.... hit me.

I'd known that Jason (the client) was kinda shit. He had more red flags than.... uhhh.... something that has a lot of red flags. ​
​Sidenote: Google tells me a soviet rally would have a lot of red flags, so imagine I wrote that like a clever bastard.

I knew the red flags were there, I just ignored them because it's a client that will pay me money. Money good.

But... if I was willing to ignore the red flags, then wasn't I just like the people in the John West commercial that were selling the rejected fish?

I didn't wanna sell rejected fish.

To be the best, you need to act like the best

I did a LOT of thinking. I thought about who I was, who I wanted to be, who I wanted to work with, and WHY I wanted to work with them.

And I realised I wanted to be the expert. I wanted to be "the guy" that would solve shit for people. And I wanted to be appreciated as that expert.

I mean, I had the knowledge already. I just needed to make sure I wasn't dealing with the wrong kinds of people or the wrong kinds of projects, cause that shit was ruining my will to live.

So how did I actually change things up?

Well, I started by writing out my "red flags" for clients and projects.

Every single thing that would be done by the kind of client I didn't want to work with, but would NEVER be done by the kind of client I would want to work with.

And then I was ruthless on saying no to people that raised those red flags.

Now, to try save time, I even put a bunch of my red flags on my website (and I strongly recommend doing this).

Literally everyone will tell you that marketing is about attracting clients. But it's more than that. Yes we want to attract clients, but the right kinds. And importantly, we want to repel the wrong ones (that's the part everyone seems to forget).

It ain't easy though.

I say no a lot. Like, way more than I say yes. And it definitely costs me money, at least in the short term. And there's always this little voice that says "hmmm but you could totally work with them really, just do what they want and get paid."

But.... that's not how the best operate. The upside is that I enjoy the people I work with and the projects I do. I get to have an impact on projects I get involved in, and charge a lot, which is sweet. Plus I haven't been burned out in ages (felt like a perpetual state before).

I don't think I'm the best or anything, but I'm running my business like I want to be.

And since I work with people that let me be the expert, and on projects I know I have an impact on, it becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. Every project is proof that I'm good at what I do, moving me closer and closer to living as "the best."

My suggestion

1. Decide what model you want -> take orders, or solve problems (either are fine).
2. Write out the traits of your best clients and projects.
3. Flip it, and write out the traits of the WORST clients and projects (these are your red flags).
4. Say no to red flag clients/projects.
5. ????
6. Profit

🤘

Cowabunga,
Nick Gulic