Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing, and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

Audio Recording

In Episode #9, I explain how to break up with a bad copywriting client.

 

 

Transcript: How To Break Up With A Client

Hey guys. Welcome to Write Bites, an audio series where we discuss writing, marketing and freelancing during one of my daily walks around the neighborhood.

The question that I want to answer today is, “How do I break up with a client?” What we’re really meaning here is, “How do I break up with a bad client?” or just a suboptimal client.

The first thing I would say here is:

You need to know exactly why you’re breaking up with the client.

Never let any decision be made based on a vague feeling about something. You need to really isolate the specific reason you’re wanting to take an action.

When we talk about “How do I break up with client?” let’s first ask, “Why do I want to break up with this client?” The two biggest answers are usually going to be either:

They aren’t paying enough, i.e. the pay is too low.

You are unhappy with something related to how the client/freelancer interaction is going. Maybe they’re not paying on time, maybe they’re vague, maybe they require way too many revisions—stuff like that.

If the issue is the pay, before you break up with the client, or maybe as part of breaking up with the client, what you should be doing is asking them for more money. Once you decide, “Hey, this project isn’t worth it,” if we’re talking about a recurring client—because really, if we’re talking about breaking up with the client, it’s always going to be a recurring issue, usually it’s just someone you’re working with repeatedly—so, if you decide, “Hey, this is too little pay,” the first thing you should do is you should try to just raise your rates with them.

Just let them know, “Hey, my rates have gone up since the time we began working together. Starting at X date in the future (maybe at the end of the month) I’m no longer going to be able to continue working at the previous rate. I’d love to keep working with you, but if you’d like to continue, it’ll need to be at this new rate”

That gives you a chance to retain the client and also suggest to them that your demand is going up—that a lot of other people are liking what you do. And if the client really likes your work and understands how much of a pain in the ass it’s going to be for them to have to go replace you with someone else, then there’s a very good chance they’ll raise your rate. It happens a lot more frequently than a lot of freelancers would expect.

Now, let’s say it’s not a pay thing. Let’s say it’s related to the relationship. We had someone in Write Minds mentioning today that their client is always way overdue on payments. Someone else on one of our office-hours calls mentioned that the client will frequently give unnecessarily harsh and mean-spirited critique on their work, and it’s just very discouraging and causes doubts, and causes them to question their writing ability, and it’s just ongoing and it’s unnecessary; it’s not just normal critique. Stuff like that.

It could be any number of things. Maybe it’s just something as simple as they have really strict editing processes and you’re kind of just getting to the point where you’re sort of over it. I’ve had that happen at times in the past as well. So, if it’s anything like that, then what you want to do is ask yourself, “Does it make sense to address the specific scenario?”

For example, “Does it make sense to communicate, ‘Hey, I’m not going to continue work until you pay my invoices on time.