One of the tougher clients I ever dealt with was one of these “enlightened” types who likes to run around singing koombaya and telling everyone how “centered” and “ego-less” they are.
Of course, they’re usually the most intolerant…
And judgmental people you’ll meet.
Anyway, her site had this weird setup where people could only access a certain lesson for 72 hours or something like that. And, she hired me to write the plugin that did all this checking and whatnot.
So, I did.
And, a few weeks later, she came back and said she was having problems with the timer getting “triggered” early, before she had made these time-limited posts even available on her site.
So, she thought something was wrong with the plugin.
I looked into it and immediately saw.
The posts were live on the site… always.
But, she’d just unlink them from her navigation.
Well, geez… there were all sorts of back doors into the posts. Category listings people could find, search, hell even just a direct link. I told her all of this and gave her several suggestions on what to do.
Nope.
It’s the plugin.
Sigh.
Anyway, we went back and forth like this for a few weeks. I even hired another developer I trusted, on my own dime, to look through everything and tell me what he thought. And, without giving him any indication of my opinion…
He came to the exact same conclusion.
Still… she wouldn’t accept it.
I was getting to the end of my rope with it.
Then, one day, she forwarded me an email thread between her and one of her staff members about some idea they had or whatever. But, she didn’t realize it contained the entire thread.
And, about three emails back…
Was her calling me every name in the book.
Some of the most vile stuff you’ll ever hear come outta someone’s mouth.
I wrote her back.
Copy and pasted that message she’d wrote.
And said, “I’m done. Effective immediately.”
She emailed me back almost immediately. Apologizing profusely. Begging me to stay on. But, nope. I was done. She even contacted me again almost six months later begging me to let her hire me, again.
Nope.
Point is…
Don’t put up with this kind of B.S.
The client is NOT always right.
Sometimes, they’re horribly, horribly wrong.
And, you shouldn’t pretend like they aren’t.
The money ain’t worth it.
And, you’ll drive yourself insane dealing with people like this.
Of course, I was able to fire her like that because, at the time, I was getting so many invites to other projects, I literally picked up a new client to replace her that next day. That’s the power knowing how to get clients… gives you.
You CAN tell a nasty client to piss off.
Because, you know you can easily replace them.
It’s not just peace of mind and “job security”.
It’s control.
Over who you work with and on what terms.
It’s liberating.
Anyway, that’s what I teach you in my Upwork 101 course. How to build your way toward this kind of control by having so many incoming client requests, you can literally pick and choose who you work with.
If you wanna give it a shot, link to get started for nothing is here: https://skl.sh/2hfGS0s
Later,
John
