The Causey Consulting Podcast

Beware of the Rabbit in the Pot! 🐰

February 04, 2021 Sara Causey Episode 63
The Causey Consulting Podcast
Beware of the Rabbit in the Pot! 🐰
Show Notes Transcript

January was a crazy month for me. My plans of just half-hibernating through the month went to the wayside and I had a couple of bizarre experiences. I am sharing them here (highly sanitized, of course) so that perhaps you can benefit from my missteps.

✔️ There is plenty of business out there. You do not have to engage with clients who behave like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. It will waste a lot of your time and energy and you may never be able to make them happy.
✔️ It's OK to be tired sometimes and it's OK to take a break. If you feel yourself wearing down, you don't have to push past the exhaustion.
✔️ Beware of clients who think they need to be the exception to all of your rules. If you set down the rules of engagement and they want to ignore them, you need to call them out on it.
✔️ If you are self-employed, a business owner, or solopreneur: you get to decide the ways and means you work in. Periodt.
✔️ Ensure you can hit the escape hatch. Be cautious about what you sign or what length of time you agree to work with someone. 

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Unknown:

Hello, hello and welcome to today's episode of the Causey Consulting Podcast. I'm your host, Sara Causey and I'm also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at Causey ConsultingLLC.com. So for me, nstead of wake me up when eptember ends, it's felt more ike wake me up when January nds. And now that it's ebruary, I can't really say hat I was sad to see January ome to a close, it was a trange month for me. A little rivia for you, the month of anuary is named after the Roman od, Janice, who had two faces nd could see into the past and nto the future. And that felt ike an apt metaphor for me, ecause January of this year, elt like one foot in the past, till dealing with the drama and he turmoil and the oddities of 020. But then also having one oot in the future, looking orward to new possibilities, resh ideas, cool tactics, you now, just being able to put 020 in the past and move on to ome new things. It was efinitely a busy month for me. nd First things first, I again, ant to take a quick second to ust express my gratitude to all f you, whether you're a regular istener, and subscriber or you ip in on occasion, if you've ver taken the time to share an pisode with someone that you elt could benefit from my onsulting work or my executive oaching, thank you, I really ppreciate it is paid off ecause as more people are aware f me and are aware of my usiness and my services, I've ad a lot of people sliding into y DMS and hitting me up via mail. And it's great. Now, as ou know, I'm always willing to attle on myself, I'm willing to ull the curtain back and share y mistakes and foibles with ou. So that if I can help you void making a mistake that I've ade cool, or if maybe you've een making the same mistake, nd you just need somebody to ay yeah, my hands in the air,'ve done that too guilty as harged. Sometimes it just helps o have that human experience to now that we're connected. hat's like having kind of a rappy month. We all have them ometimes you I really believe n this idea of The Spiritist onday, because there's been imes that I've said, Man, this as been a crazy month or so I ust felt really off or verything seemed to be a assle. Like I just I never ould get anything to run moothly. It's just been a eally weird time. Any time that've expressed a frustration or sentiment like that, I've lways had people that responded ack and said, yeah, it's been eird for me too. And I started o wonder what was going on? ike, what were the stars not ligned for me or what? So ometimes it feels really good o commiserate with other eople, you know, to sort of, we an't get together and cry in ur beer right now. But to have metaphorical cry in the beer nd just say, Man, that was kind f the pits and I'm glad it's ver with now. So post holidays, had a bit of that holiday angover, you know, and I had his vision in my mind that I as going to spin January in econd gear, like I am not going o take on any projects that equire me to haul ass, I'm not oing to move at a breakneck ace. I'm just gonna work in a ay that's efficient cost and ime efficient, so that I can lso knock off at a decent hour nd just chill like it's still inter. I don't care what orporate america says. It is till winter, it's still the allow season, it's still time o rest. It's not going to be pring until March and it like id to late March at that. So e've got some time left to just elax, not rush around. This is ot the time to break up the and and start sowing your eeds. This is still the time to et everything including ourself have a break. So I had his vision of like just hilling out working at a real ven chilled out pace, getting verything done on time and on udget, but not in that reakneck pace. And wow, for me anuary was definitely an xample of man plans. And God aughs because I got so many FIs and RFQs in my inbox, and'm like, well, as Karl says in Sling Blade. All right, de, I guess I need to address som of this. And I want to tell you about a couple of things hat happened because I I had two non ideal clients who slid into my DMs back to back for obvious reasons. I'm going to Be necessarily vague. But I want to mine this gold a little bit. Because if you can benefit from it, or if you have been through the same thing, and you need somebody else to tell you, hey, just because you become a successful business owner, it doesn't mean you're not going to ever make any mistakes. And it doesn't mean somebody isn't going to slide in under the radar and mess things up for you like, I will be that Voice in the Wilderness for you, I am definitely living that experience. As you know, I'm really big on distillation. Let's boil everything down to the barest element, get past the fluff or past the excuses or past all the superficial junk, and get down to the heart of what's actually going on. And I practice what I preach, because I will sit and do the same thing with myself, whether I need to just sit at my desk quietly, or whether I need to go into my meditation nook, and really like, you know, inhabit a cone of silence until I get down to Okay, well, what's really going on here? What's the problem with this business deal? Or what? What's going on that I'm not attracting the right individuals? Why is my satellite sending out a signal for people that are not the types of folks that I want to really be working with, like, I do, practice what I preach on that. And it's been so helpful. So as I'm into this decade of my life, one of the things that I've really been focused on, is getting away from the blame game, like being able to look at mistakes or missteps in a more neutral manner. Like when I was, I would say, in my, in my teens, and especially my 20s, less so in my 30s. But for sure, in my 20s, I would beat myself up so bad, it was like, everything was my fault. How could you have been so stupid? Why didn't you see that coming, and it didn't matter. Like what it was, whether it was, you know, I didn't perform well on a test in college, or I didn't finish a task on time at work, or I dated some guy that turned out to be a butthole. Like, it was always my fault. I was I placed an expectation on myself to be superhuman. And I'm sure a lot of you listening to this broadcast right now can relate to that, like some of us do it to ourselves. And some of us, it's almost like a generational curse, that gets handed down by parents, grandparents and their parents and grandparents before them, and so on, and so on. Like, okay, it's alright, for everybody else to make mistakes, it's okay for them to not be psychic and be able to see every potential problem around every corner. But for you, you better be living to a higher standard. That is a ridiculous and impossible amount of pressure for anyone to put on themselves. I have really good gut instincts, but I'm not infallible. I have a successful business. But I'm still human, there's still going to be times when you know, maybe I misread some signals during an intake call. And I bring someone into my practice and think, Oh, you know, after we really get into the work that we're doing, it's like, Whoa, may maybe this wasn't such a great idea. After all. Obviously, you try to minimize those things. But there's no way that I know of either in your personal life in the dealings that you have with your family, or the business deals that you go through to just be completely perfect all the time to never have a miscommunication to never make a misstep. I mean, welcome to being human. Welcome to communication and miscommunication. You know, you strive to get everything right as much as you can. But it's impossible to be perfect. So in this decade of my life, instead of playing the blame game and trying to make it somebody's fault, and I'm sort of using fault and air quotes here, like it's my fault, or that guy lied to me, that lady didn't tell me the whole truth, and it's all her fault, like, take the fault out of it. And just say, Alright, we had a miscommunication. Maybe this person did lie to me, or maybe they sort of lied by omission and didn't tell me the real truth about what was going on. It's not about trying to fault find and assign blame. one guy's got to be wrong, so the other guy can be right. It's more about what can I learn from this experience? And then how do I embrace it, use it and move on from it. So one of the lessons that I have learned recently from having two back to back experiences was there's always room for more clarity. Like I'm sure you guys know whether you know me in real life, whether you've worked with me before whether you're just a frequent tuner inner of this podcast, I'm super direct. I don't use a lot of fluff. I don't beat around the bush, I don't pussyfoot around topics, I pretty much get right into whatever needs to be said. So I have the tendency to assume that because I am so candid and transparent and direct, that people understand what I'm saying to them, like, because it's so transparent and so direct, like, how could they possibly misunderstand what was said when it was laid out? So crystal clear? Well, guess what? That is part of being a human, that is part of potential miscommunication. It's like the old game telephone, where the guy at the beginning of the game says banana, and then by the time it gets back around, it's pickle. And you're like, how did you get the one out of the other? You know what, like, the bumper sticker says, shit happens. So no matter how clear that you think you might have been, there's always room for more clarity. And there's really something to be said, for being direct, and real about your methodology, your ideal clients, your methodologies, and what types of behavior you will and will not put up with. Now, I'm not saying that you have to telegraph all of this to your prospective clients within 10 seconds, you know, I'm not saying bombard them or get somebody on an intake call, and just machine gun all of this information at them. However you do, at some point, want to be really clear that if you're thinking they sound like a good prospect, and you're thinking that you can help them out with whatever work that they've proposed, you do need to set the rules of engagement, there's no way around that. Because if you don't tell them, here's the behavior, I will accept, here's the behavior I will not accept, if they start doing things that are weird, off, base off putting to you and you're starting to get rubbed the wrong way, you don't really have anybody to blame but yourself because you didn't lay out the rules of engagement. Now the second part of that, you have to demand compliance to those rules of engagement. And I think that's an area where a lot of business owners solopreneurs, and consultants allow the train to leave the track. Because they'll say, you know, here's my methods, here's how I prefer to work, you know, and I'll use an example like have office hours, I have core office hours, from nine to five, I do not respond to text phone calls or emails outside of those hours. You know, I've had guests on the podcast before that talked about turning their phone off, or they have a dedicated work line. And they that phone gets completely turned off and put in another room, their personal cell phone number doesn't get shared with clients. It's only with friends and family, because at a certain time, they want to be able to turn it off, walk away and decompress. And I think with so many people working remotely working for themselves working from home these days, it's so important to have those boundaries. But they're meaningless. Quite frankly, if you don't demand compliance to those boundaries. If you allow people to just run right over the barbed wire fence you've set up, then it's pointless to have had the fence in the first place. So let's say that you have clearly told the client I keep core office hours from nine to five in whatever timezone outside of those core hours, I don't read my email, and I don't listen to voicemail so it won't get whatever you send me will not get interacted with until the next day. So they start bombarding you at night, and getting really upset and offended that you didn't immediately jump on to their communique. That's their fault, not yours. I mean, again, all right here, here I am going back to the to the fault finding component of it, maybe let's look at a way to frame it differently. It was their choice to contact you outside of core business hours, you told them what the rules of engagement were, they chose to contact you outside of that time. So if they also choose to get upset or angry about it, that is their choice. You don't have any responsibility for the choice that they've made. And if they decide to terminate the relationship working with you, because you're not going to compromise your time with your family and friends, that's also their choice. And it's not something that you need to take to heart and and like self flagellate about and get all upset like, no, it was their choice to do that. So I had a very similar experience to that. That was one of the back to back experiences I had was with this individual who wanted to pepper me with telephone calls and emails and I'm like, No, no, no, no. That I think I've told you before that my strategy is I lay out the rules of engagement at the very beginning and in If anything is tested, let's say, you know, I'm thinking about cows, because cows and bulls will always go up and test the fence, you have to regularly check your fences because they are. And if there's any spot where they can get through and wander off somewhere that they're not supposed to be, they will do it. So if you have somebody that tests your fence to see if you're going to really keep your boundaries and require adherence, you need to step up. So I let people have one reminder, hey, we talked about this, remember, and it's really important, you want to put it back on them, so that they know and understand some people nowadays they don't, they've lost the ability to actively listen, they're screwing around on their cell phone or checking emails, they're looking at crap on LinkedIn, when you're trying to tell them during an intake call, here's how it's gonna go down. You know, if you want to work with me, here are the rules of engagement to get access to my time, they may not have even heard what you said. So you want to make sure that you tell them Remember, we talked about this, if that feels scary to you, if you feel like that might be too confrontational or too direct practice, get to the point where you like work with work with a friend practice in the mirror or something, but get to a point where you can say that not in a way that feels painful or hostile, but firm. We talked about this. Remember, I keep core hours from nine to five. And anything that you send outside those times is not going to be engaged with until the next day. If they persist in trying to run over your boundaries or tear down the fence after that one morning. I let them go. Now I realize you may be listening to this thinking it's so flippin hard for me to get clients, my business is new. Every account I land feels like it's made out of solid gold. I'm scared to death of the idea of telling a client you're not treating me appropriately, so I'm going to terminate our relationship together. If it scares you, that's all the more reason why you need to set and demand adherence to good boundaries. My own coach who I work with from time to time, once told me if something scares you, if you hear a new idea or a new strategy, or someone's trying to give you advice, and it scares you, you feel intimidated by it. That's all the more reason that you need to put it on the to do list, you need to give it a try. You need to feel the fear and do it anyway. And I believe that she's right. I want to read a passage to you from Casey Zeman blog, full disclosure, I have not worked with Casey before. So this is not an endorsement or a non endorsement. I've never been part of his program. I do not know him. I found his blog article. And it really spoke to me. And I want to read a passage from this. And the title of this particular blog post is seven ways to stop attracting the wrong customer. The very first thing that he has put on his list is number one, raise your prices. I'm going to read what he has posted under this heading. Yes, I know, you might be saying, Casey, if I raise my prices, I won't get as many customers coming through. Yes, but is that necessarily a bad thing, it has been statistically proven that the more customer pays, the less hand holding and qualifying you have to be to that client. It doesn't mean you don't provide customer service when raising your prices, it means that they are a higher paying customer and they can appreciate one's time, because chances are they would want to be treated the same way they respect the gig. Fewer customers that pay more can often eliminate 40% of your wasted customer service on those customers who will bleed your time and not care at all about your value. It's all about setting expectations and true value proposition for your product that is well understood by your customer. Now I'm continuing to read here. Never underprice I had a business partner who told me one time to respect the gig, meaning don't take what you do your product or your customers for granted. I would also like to flip this around and share that it's your responsibility to convey to your community to respect the gig. Again, this sets an expectation that you value the work that you do and the products that you create. And they should too. I kind of like this Jerry Maguire style of business fewer clients more personal attention, fewer refunds. Funny enough, raising prices can cause fewer refunds because those who do buy don't usually need to refund so automatically. The higher the price, the less hand holding with your customers. Quote, I love that passage. And it goes back to what I was speaking to earlier, you need to be clear about your methods and your work style. And you need to price your services in a way that communicates to your prospects and your existing customers. I know what the hell I'm doing. I'm the expert, you are coming to me for a valid reason. If you are looking for a consultant, a SMI a whatever, that you feel like you need to babysit and handhold and micromanage, I am not for you. That segues into the second of my back to back experiences of January. I believe the first person was sincere, but was probably overly anxious, spastic and wanted me to be like the Messiah, I want you to be available to me at all hours of the day and night, I want you to be my hope, my Hail Mary pass, I want you to solve all of my problems. And if you don't, if you don't respond to me at all hours of the day and night, and you don't immediately come in and wave a magic wand and solve my problems, then I'm going to be upset and disappointed. A sincere person but not a good prospect for me. The second experience was with an individual who wanted a moving target. I want this No, I want that. No, I want this over here. No, I want that over there. And there was some misleading information given to me about the longevity of the company, the infrastructure, I had an idea in my mind of how the company was operating. And the reality was quite different. They were still in that scurry over here and scurry over there. And maybe this and maybe that and I don't work well, in those types of situations. I do not like a moving target. Tell me what you need. It's okay, if you don't know how to get from point A to point B. That's why theoretically, at least you're hiring consultant and expert, a subject matter expert, you need someone who can look at the situation and go Yep, I know how to get you from A to B. But here's my style, folks, and I don't obscure it. Leave me alone. Tell me what you need me to do. And then back off. don't hire me. If you want somebody to remember les mantooth that I played in the last episode, rub Vaseline on your hiney and tell you that it's special and different from everybody else's. If that's what you're looking for, do not hire me because I will not do it. I'm not the one for that. I promise you. Sometimes you will have clients who think they are the exception to the rule. I know you've heard me quote Animal Farm before. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. You may have clients who feel that way. Okay. Well, I know for everybody else, you don't get on zoom calls and phone calls. But like for me, you should be doing that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This person had been told explicitly, tell me what you want me to do. And then leave me alone. Generally speaking, you can email me anytime during core hours, and I will respond quickly. But phone calls, zoom calls Now again, that we every status update, or change in direction does not need to be a phone call. And I'm going to be I'm going to like not just double down but like triple or quadruple down. Outside of that first initial intake call where you're feeling each other out. You're setting the rules of engagement, you're talking about the scope of work and how everything's going to play out. I have never been in a business meeting, or on a conference call or a zoom call. I like to call them cowpoke round ups because that's how it feels to me. I have never been on one of those damn things that couldn't have been an email. Never Not a single flipping time. You have people sometimes who are highly extroverted, and they might mean well, but it's like because they're super social, and they want all of that human interaction. They think everybody else does to kids, let me tell you, I put some coin down a while back to have a time and motion study done. And somebody that's like at the top of his game that knows what he's doing. And it was money and time well spent. Pun intended, pun not intended, because I learned so much about time drains. You know, some people get super distracted by email or by text messages or social media. So in order to stay on point and focused, they have to mute all of those things. Then there's other people like me, who the telephone is a distraction zoom meetings or I am or slack Like channels, or any of that crap can be a huge time drain, right? Because it takes anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to get your focus back. So that Oh hey, can we just hop on a quick phone call for like five minutes. First of all, the phone calls not going to be five minutes probably going to be more like 10 to 15 minutes. If you're lucky, then it's going to take you another 10 to 20 minutes after that to rebound to get your focus back. So you imagine all of those things over the course of a day a week or a month stacking up and you have lost so much productivity, that's time that you could have spent increasing your billing, you might have been able to take on extra clients and make more money, you might have been able to have more time with your spouse and your kids, or your animals or or giving time to your church or your charity. Like, hello, we have lives outside of the workplace. guard your time jealously. Now, if you're an extrovert, you like to talk and that's your thing. I know you've heard me say before, work is not the appropriate outlet for your social muscle, hang out with your friends with your family members, call your grandma, whatever. But don't force the people that you work with, or your clients or your consultants to try to be your friends. It's super gross. So this individual knew the rules of engagement, and just chose to run roughshod over the top of them. And at one point, the person actually said to me, Well, I know that you like email, but I like the phone. I'm not good at writing email. So because it's more convenient for me, I want to trap you on phone calls. And I thought, yeah, this, this isn't gonna work. I don't know how I have managed to attract to people that were needy that I felt like wanted to take the marrow out of my bones, but I clearly need to recalibrate because this ain't gonna work. Obviously, the best time to say no, is during the initial intake process, if something comes up, that's a red flag for you, it's okay to say, you know, I don't think I'm the right provider for you, I don't think I would be able to help you in the way that you need to be helped. I mean, honestly, going even beyond that the best, the best thing is to just simply repel those people that aren't a good fit for your sales funnel. Again, it's not always possible to do that. Sometimes we have those blips on the radar. But if you see a red flag, you hear something said during the intake process, speak up, don't ignore it and get happy years and assume it's not going to be a problem, you need to really hone in on it. But if somebody does slide in, that maybe you thought the situation was this, but it's really that maybe you thought you were clear, you thought they understood and would abide by the rules. And now they're showing you that they don't give a damn about your time, they don't see your value. Don't be afraid to pull the plug. I'm always very conscientious about not signing anything for a long period of time. Don't get yourself in a position where if you begin working for a client, and it turns into a bleeding nightmare, you want to be able to hit the escape hatch. So always be very cautious about what you sign with people. You want to be in a situation where you know if you if you try to make things work, and you're clear about what's going on, and it's just it's not gonna gel, it's it was a mistake to have gotten involved with that person, you want to be able to amicably part ways and not feel trapped. Does it feel kind of awkward and weird to have to get on the phone and say, I don't think this is going to work out and we need to part ways. I'll send you a final invoice. And that'll be that. Yeah, I think if anybody tells you, oh, I can fire a client, I can part ways with somebody and it never feels gross to me. They're either lying or there's some kind of narcissist. Most people with a sense of empathy. And most people who give a damn about performing well in their business and doing a good job for their clients, they will feel kind of rude about having to do that. Nevertheless, you need to, you know, I'm thinking of like cowboy or cowgirl up and do it. If it needs to be done. If that awkward conversation needs to be had, then you need to do it. You don't need to delay the inevitable and try to jump through hoops pleasing somebody that you just can't please, I want to read a passage from you. For you from the spell brand blog. Again, I have not worked with spell brand before. So this is not an endorsement or a non endorsement of any kind. I'm just reading from this article. And one of the things that they talk about is loss of time when you attract the wrong customers and try to do business with them. One of the big side effects of that is the loss of your time. They quote the statistic that in most businesses 80% of customer service issues are due to 20% of the customers. I think that's probably true, right because we are have all had those times where some beeyotch or butthole some jerk somebody, some nightmare customer from hell made our lives miserable like everybody else thinks that this is amazing and they're super happy and grateful and just awesome but that one person is like, you know, sticking out like a sore thumb. So I think that's probably accurate. I want to read this example story that they tell about one of their clients, one of our clients and told me the story of a customer who engaged her copywriting services. Right off the bat, the customer had haggled on the price and extracted a discount from and while claiming that he did not need anything elaborate, and that he would be happy with some simple copy to use in a brochure. I'm going to stop reading for just a second here and make another Interjection. That was one of the other issues that I had with my second person in my back to back January experiences. He clamped me down on hours to the point where it was like I could barely accomplish anything in the amount of time I was allotted. And the excuse given was, well, we're on a budget, we have to be conscientious on how much we spend, you're not exactly the cheapest person around, I believe you can solve our problem, but like, you know, we have to really adhere to this budget. And I almost felt like he was trying to punish me for not being the cheapest option. It's kind of like somebody going into a restaurant saying, I want the Philemon Yon. But I only want to pay you as though it were ground hamburger meat. Like it doesn't work that way, pal. This is Sorry, sorry to burst your bubble. Alright, so I'm going to read from this post again. After the project began and sent the first draft of the marketing copy her troubles began. She got back an email with one sentence, not happy with the copy, please rewrite more professionally. I'm going to interject again because that was also very similar, you know, so clamped down on hours and not really making any money to speak of, you know, because here's the thing, when you're self employed, you're going to have to take the taxes out. Not as the quote says the only sure things are death and taxes, and that is right on the money. No pun intended. So I'm looking at this going alright, well, this individual seems like a headache. I'm not making a lot of money. Why the hell did I even do this? I'm gonna read again, and was livid reading this, she had spent over eight man hours researching brainstorming and then writing and rewriting the copy and has over 12 years of experience in writing market copy, and has a few awards under her belt. So she emailed back the client asking for clarification. She wanted to know exactly what he did not like and what part he wanted changed his reply. If I knew what parts to change, why would I hire you and pay that much money? Wow. And was amazed at that response. But you know what I am not. I've seen my fair share of such nonsense in our agency a few years back. Anyway, this went on for days, finally and gave up and went back to the drawing board. She rewrote the copy and even added an additional section which was outside the scope of the project. You can guess what happened next? More short. I'm I'm not trying to laugh. I just really relate more such a short and nonsense replies. Then came the phone calls. But let me interject for a second. What is it with these just demanding people and their phone calls? Oh, time was draining like water through a cloth sieve and spent countless hours on this project. After three weeks, all of a sudden she gets an email from the client that he was still not happy with the copy and wanted a refund. I will not go into what actually happened after that. But an should have fired this client right after the first email. Better yet. She should have said no to this customer start with Yes, I know how could an have known this customer was bad. You cannot turn down projects just because you get a bad vibe or because the customer handles the price. Yes, you can. And you must round of applause for that story. And my heart goes out to Ann wherever she is because I relate. I think a lot of people you know whether you're creative, whether you do coaching, whatever kind of work it is that you do, you if you've been in business long enough, you've had a client, like an had or like the one that I just recently had a migraine experience with. You don't have to discount your price. You don't have to allow people to haggle with you. In hindsight, when my headache person told me that their budget was really clamped down Thai and they were going to have to limit my hours and in order in order to be able to afford me right then and there. I should have said, I'm not the person for you. In order for me to really work effectively and have enough time. I have to have enough billable hours to actually get the work done, you know, trying to do things at a breakneck pace, which I didn't want to do. Remember the big Getting the episode I told you, I didn't want to spend my winter that way. Instead of trying to do everything at a breakneck pace and get everything done and cram jam my work together and hope it was good, I should have walked away from it. One very important takeaway is don't work with people who don't see your value. As I was going into my medic, meditation cave and distilling all of this down, you know, sort of the self talk in my head was like, okay, so I had two back to back experiences where I felt like Michael Douglas and fatal attraction, I thought I was clear, I thought I set everything out, I thought that the rules of engagement were laid out in a way that anyone could understand. But then I had individuals that were needy, and clingy, that didn't want to allow me to work independently and autonomously. Everything was a moving target, I felt like I couldn't keep up with what they really wanted, was clamped down due to time or money or budget considerations like what what was going on here. And as I kept distilling it down further and further and further, the heart of it was, they did not see me, and respect to me as the expert and the authority figure. So many problems in your business, if you're a solopreneur, or a small business owner, if you are really that outward face of your company, so many things, no matter how removed from that general idea, they may seem to be on the surface, so many problems that you will have will always come back to that root cause the customer, the client does not see you and respect you as the expert and the authority figure. There is a night and day difference between engaging with clients who view you that way. Versus clients who don't, clients who do understand that you're the expert, and the authority figure will respect your methodology. They'll respect your time, they'll respect your process. And if you tell them, I'm not going to camp out on a Slack channel, I'm not going to just be available for phone calls any old time, contact me via email, they'll do it, they will comply, they will comport and here's something else, they will be happy to do it. They're happy with what you're doing for them. They respect you. They're overjoyed with what's going on. So whatever rules of engagement you set forth about how they can have access to you, they'll do it. It's the other people that don't view you as the expert and the authority figure who will turn into a giant nightmare. Do not be afraid to say no. Do not be afraid to walk away. As I've said before, not all money is good money. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it. If you haven't already, take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now.