After years of heeding the call to abandon client work and making the transition into courses, memberships, and passive income products, many are now dropping these models and returning to client work.  What’s going on?  

Well, for one thing, the economy has changed and buyers are more skeptical of the outrageous claims that have become the norm.  Plus, client work is familiar and well-established, and in many cases, you can leverage your existing network, instead of spending hundreds of hours on social media and content marketing. And, it usually requires fewer clients to achieve your financial goals. 

But I get it, client work lost favor for some very solid reasons.  It can be challenging to figure out how to package, price, position, and promote your work and create healthy boundaries with clients.

Trust, respect, and communication are the essential building blocks for healthy relationships of all kinds, including client relationships. 

In this solo episode, I share strategies for setting boundaries, communicating value, and positioning yourself as the clear choice for your clients. 

If you find client work fulfilling, don't be discouraged by the obstacles, or dazzled by the passive income hype. Embrace the opportunity to make your client work satisfying, profitable, and sustainable. 

Key takeaways:

1️⃣ Client work can be a powerful and profitable business model. While other options like courses and memberships have gained popularity, client work offers the advantage of an established market value and a built-in network of referrals. Plus, you need fewer clients to reach your financial goals! 

2️⃣ Burnout is a real concern in client work. But with proper boundaries, communication, and pricing strategies, you can overcome the challenges and create a sustainable and fulfilling business. It's all about uncovering your stand-out difference and shifting your mindset. 

3️⃣ Trust, respect, and communication are the foundation for healthy client relationships. Recognize and address trust issues, unrealistic expectations, and lack of clarity upfront to avoid misunderstandings and frustrations. Building strong, respectful connections with your clients is key to success.

Mic Drop Moment: 

"I think your client agreement, in order to show respect toward both yourself and your client must have very clear cancellation policies, termination policies, and anything else that affects the relationship nature of your work together."

My signature program, The Boss Up Breakthrough can help you right-size your business so that you can avoid burnout, establish sustainable boundaries, and uncover the profit potential in your coaching or consulting business. 

We work together for 3 months to clarify what’s working, what isn’t, and where you can create more realistic systems, so you can start loving your business again. 

At this time,  I am only accepting 1:1 clients and the first step is to schedule a free 30-minute consultation right here: https://bit.ly/calendly-free-consultation

Not ready to work together but want to see more of my content? Subscribe to my weekly Linked In newsletter here: https://bit.ly/TDWE-Newsletter

TLDL for the time-pressured (or impatient) 

00:01:30 Client work is the simplest, most effective model.

00:13:08 Trust intuition, communicate openly and clarify expectations.

00:14:30 Include discovery call questions about expectations and experiences.

00:25:34 Avoiding burnout, ensuring your client work is profitable.

Well, hey there, and welcome back to the Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast. Today's solo episode is all about client work. Now I know that client work has kind of fallen out of favor in the last few years in favor of more popular options like memberships, courses, and large group programs. But if you've been in this game for a little while, you might have noticed that many people are now walking away from those options and going back to client work. Why? Well, client work has been around for a long time, it's familiar to both us and the people that hire us. It has an established market value, oftentimes client work is related to what we used to do in our former job or career. So, many times that means that people know us for what we do, they can refer people to us, and as we continue to do high quality client work, those people refer other people. Oftentimes we can take advantage of a network that we have already built over a few years or even many years. And one of the biggest benefits of doing client work is you need a whole lot fewer clients to reach your financial goals and profitability.

You might not need to dance on TikTok, you might not need to saying and do reels, you might not even need an email list or content marketing. Doing high quality client work with a good referral basis might be the simplest and most effective model for quite a few people. So if you like doing client work, that's another reason. Many people have found, while they have scaled their business and offered a variety of other options, they actually like the client work best because it feels the most intimate, rewarding and personally fulfilling to them. I think one of the reasons that is often the case it's because some of these other business models feel more transactional, and client work always feels relational. Now that has pluses and minuses, which we are about to get into because whether you love client work, hate client work, or you just accept it as a fact of life because you are in legal services, financial services, coaching, consulting, copywriting, graphic design. There are so many types of client work that instead of thinking, maybe I can get away from this and do another service model that maybe doesn't have so much emotional labor and heavy lifting.

What if instead you think about this, with the right pricing, packaging, and positioning of your client work that is geared towards profitability, and sustainability, your business model is a whole lot easier on your energetic capacity! You don't have to do so many different things to keep the wheels turning. So why do we shun client work? Well it's obvious, we're dealing with people, and when we're dealing with people, in a relationship type business model, let's face it, burnout is always a possibility. So the reason why is, if we don't have good boundaries, if we don't know how to communicate our value, and package our services in such a way, and price them in such a way, and position them as the clear winner compared to our competitors, then we are going to default to saying yes to too many people, charging too little, working too much, basically giving away the farm, and never having any time off. Those things are problems that can be fixed otherwise I agree with you, burnout would always be a possibility, and maybe even an inevitability, because client service work is more intimate. You really get to know your client, and they get to know you, which means it's more vulnerable.

You are more exposed, they are more exposed and that means it's a real relationship. So I think instead of just saying, I can't do client work. I don't wanna do client work. I wanna just do courses or memberships or whatever. You're still dealing with people over there, by the way if you actually want to do client work, and you actually enjoy doing client work, if it weren't for the problems that you have with clients then doesn't it just make sense to focus on the areas that perhaps you could develop more skill and maybe shift your mindset so that your client services work didn't feel so draining. You probably know that I used to be a psychotherapist, and I guess you might say, once a therapist, always a therapist, because I see relationship in everything I literally think everything's a relationship and if you are working with people, you are doing services for or with people, you're in a relationship with those people. And every relationship in order to be healthy requires 3 things. Are you ready? Trust, respect, and communication.

These 3 things are the foundation for healthy relationships, whether they are friendships, work relationships, romantic relationships, or client service work. They're an absolute necessity and if you think about it, think about the kinds of reasons why you have maybe thought, I don't want to do client service work, or I don't want to do client work anymore well let's talk about trust. A lot of people have trust issues, maybe your potential clients have trust issues, maybe you have trust issues, maybe you have been burned by clients, and clients have been burned by other service providers. I think we're at a time where just about everybody looking to hire a coach, a consultant, or someone to perform professional services has some level of trust issues because there's a lot of nonsense going on in the world right now, and a lot of people are saying one thing and doing another after they get the business. In addition, there are people who really have unrealistic expectations of what others can and should do for them.

They don't even realize they're unrealistic, probably because nobody's confronted them on that issue, and many people don't know what they want. I work with a lot of creative folks, and it is one of their biggest frustrations. Clients say I want this, they agree to this, you deliver this, and then they say, oh no, that's not what I had in mind right? Sound familiar? This is part of dealing with people, so these are just some of the issues when it comes to trust. Now let's talk about respect. I've had many clients I've worked with tell me they feel disrespected when a client asks for a money back guarantee. They feel disrespected by clients who don't follow through, who don't implement, who don't do any of the things that they're supposed to do so that they are able to create the deliverables that they are being tasked with creating, clients drop out and don't explain why.

They also ghost you when you try to reconnect with them. People fail to make payments or they stop payments already made. They will sign agreements and then not sign the invoice. They may string you along and then not come through. They show up late to scheduled calls and expect the full amount of time. I mean, I could go on, but the intent of this is not to make you disheartened and disillusioned, but just to say, I feel you. I feel you. I have experienced all of these things. And oftentimes, if you are a heart led, purpose filled service provider you take these things personally and that makes it twice as hard, that's like adding insult to injury, but it doesn't have to be this way. When it comes to communications, a lot of clients expect us to be mind readers and fairy godmothers all rolled into one. I think oftentimes they come with a don't ask don't tell philosophy even though they don't realize it.

So they don't give us the information we need to deliver the outcome they want, and then they don't tell us what we need to know when we directly ask for it. Some of us tend to assume that things are going well with clients until we find out otherwise. And I have learned the hard way along with other people that it makes a lot more sense, and it's simply a whole lot safer If we have processes in place to do what I call take their temperature as we go along. It's simply never a good idea in any relationship to assume the other person is satisfied, happy, and content without ever asking them. And when you hear me say that, it's like, well, obviously, I would never do that with my partner, but we probably do more often than we realize with clients, because let's be honest, the vast majority of us are conflict avoiders. We do not want to have uncomfortable conversations.

Most of us believe we are showing up and doing our business the best way we can on any given day, and we need to believe that we're doing it well enough until we hear otherwise. But I think that can create a tremendous amount of anxiety, especially for creative people and creative neurodivergent people in particular, because it's almost like we're just waiting for the client to drop the ball and tell us, actually, I'm not nearly as happy with you as you might think I am waa waa. So what do I have to say in these 3 areas about client work when it comes to trust, respect, and communication. Well, I thought you'd never asked, okay, I'm joking. Here are some suggestions to help prevent some of these problems, to help mitigate some of these problems and to, at the very least, give us more skill to address them if they do arise.

Are you ready? Okay, with trust, here's the mindset piece first and foremost, and I say this with all the compassion in the world, trust your intuition. When it feels like something's off, whether you just started working with the client or whether you've been working with them for years, If your intuition tells you something is off, off might be they seem distracted. They seem disinterested. They seem apathetic. They seem unhappy. They seem annoyed. You know it probably has nothing to do with you, but two things are gonna happen if you don't trust your instinct: Number one, I think you're gonna jump to the conclusion that it does have something to do with you, and then you're going to start to behave as though that were true. Chances are it has nothing to do with you, but if it does, trusting your intuition and following up with an inquiry, will at least put the situation on the table where you can communicate about it.

And trust me when I tell you that is going to increase the level of respect between the 2 of you. Because even though I've identified these 3 things separately trust, respect, and communication, you don't need me to tell you they really all do work together. When it comes to trust, I also recommend not just trusting your intuition but also this, to the best of your ability create a safe space with your clients to have uncomfortable conversations. I strongly suggest you bring it up at the very beginning of the relationship and you can do so in a variety of ways, just as I have in my business. You can clarify expectations before you start, during your discovery call, in your client agreement, and also at your onboarding call or first meeting. And I do not mean hammering these things down, because if you go overboard, people might think you're being a little bit paranoid.

I'm talking about including a question in the scheduling questions for booking a discovery call with you. Ask a couple of questions in your Acuity or your Calendly about expectations, so you kind of know a little bit about what their expectations are before that discovery call, and you also know how they respond to being asked about their expectations. A lot of people will give you the answer but they won't bring it up, and other people really don't know how to articulate their expectations. That's really important for you to know before they even become a client, wouldn't you say? I also recommend at some point either during the scheduling of the discovery call or during the discovery call, before you take them on as a client. Ask a question about what their experiences have been with other people like you. If you are a lawyer, if you are an accountant, if you are a graphic designer, if you are a consultant, could you tell me about some of your experiences, good and bad, with other attorneys you've worked with before me? Do not let them name names and stop them if they try, because it looks bad for you if you engage in gossip about colleagues even if you don't know these people.

But asking them to give you examples of, can you tell me about a good experience you had? And if they've never worked with someone in your specific category before, you can make it more general. Can you tell me about a good experience or a bad experience that you've had when working with other consultants. Doesn't even have to be in the same lane as you, because being invited to do so shows that you want to have a trusting relationship. This is also true if they decide not to answer the question or tell you, you know, I really don't have any experiences to report. The fact that you asked increases the trust factor they will have with you. Find out what their communication preferences are before you begin your engagement. This includes both what I call your communication cadence and your communication style. Some people prefer a phone call, so you need to work that in to the relationship you have. Some people only wanna communicate about, things that of the nature of your agreement on email.

Some are happy to use Voxer. Some want it to be text based. Some want it to be a Zoom meeting. And if you have a preferred style of communication, and a preferred communication cadence that refers more to how frequently you check-in as the work progresses, what reasons you have for checking in. Let's say you're a graphic designer and you do websites. You need to communicate to your potential clients ahead of time, I will be having communication with you at these intervals because I'm gonna be going over the things that you submit to me and implementing them in your website. You should both know what the communication is going to look like ahead of time, how often, by what means, for what reasons, and it gives you both an opportunity to say, I really don't ever want you to call me, always make it email duly noted. And if you have very strong preferences or are only able and willing to communicate with clients between meetings through one particular channel at a particular frequency they should know that and they should be able to consent with that, and if they're not, they're not for you.

When it comes to respect, I believe that it serves us well to assume ignorance rather than malice, another way of saying that is expect that people are basically good, and that they want to have a good relationship and a good outcome with you, just as much as you do. I do not think it serves us well to assume that people are out to take advantage of us, they're out to waste our time, they're out to rip us off, they're out to make demands that we can't fulfill. I do not assume that. Now maybe I'm idealistic, and I have certainly had some very negative experiences including the need to fire a client and give back all of her money, I chose to do that. But I still choose to assume that if there's a problem in the area of respect, it is simply an oversight or ignorance, I do not believe it's malicious. Now if it's a pattern of behavior that seems intentional, I go back to my earlier advice about trusting my intuition, and I respond to it accordingly. But I think your biggest asset here when it comes to respect is the language in your client agreement. I also think because many client agreements tend to be lengthy, and let's be honest, most people do not read the things they sign.

So my client agreement has the different areas broken down into paragraphs where the client initials each paragraph, which is a different topic, in addition to signing and dating at the end. Now may not make any difference if it comes to a legal matter, a breach of contract, or what have you, but I'm giving them the opportunity to recognize how much I respect their consent, and I want them to read each paragraph at least skim it. I think I'm more likely to get that when I give them the opportunity to initial in each space. And I do not consider the contract valid if they overlook the initials so I go back and say, I'm really looking forward to moving forward with you, would you please return to the client agreement document and be sure you initial in each place that is indicated. I think your client agreement, in order to show respect toward yourself as well as your client because it really has to work both ways for it to work is to have very clear cancellation policies, termination policies, and anything else that affects the nature of the work together.

You can talk about things all you want in the discovery call, but once you start working together, most people simply won't remember. So having it in writing where they can refer to it, and when or if there's a problem, you can signal them to refer back to it that can help you both feel respected. And finally, when it comes to communication, I think that it's kind of like finding the right balance between being clear and direct and being a little lighthearted. Communicating what could seem like confrontational language to some people, but to do so with a dash of humor or at least a light touch. I think when we come on really strong about our expectations, it can seem aggressive. It can seem confrontational. It can seem like, why would I wanna work with this person, she sounds like she's gonna be really difficult. But I like to think that when we show respect for ourselves, we invite our clients to respect us as well, and to expect that we will respect them.

It's a dance, you don't want to step on people's toes. You don't wanna hit them in the head when you swing them around, and you want to communicate clearly to them that you expect to be treated with respect as well. Sometimes it's in what you say, but more often it's in the way you say it, and most of the clients that I work with rely on my copywriting skills to shape that language so that it can hit that sweet spot between direct and a light touch of humor. When it comes to things like canceling the contract, missing a session, dropping out and what happens to the rest of the sessions? I think we've all experienced this, where a client who's booked for working with you for 3 months, 6 months, a year may proceed along just great, and then all of a sudden, they literally disappear. They don't respond to your emails. They have prepaid unused time with you. What do you do in a case like that? Well, coming back to trust, respect, and communication.

I think oftentimes, we can prevent these things from happening by checking in with our clients as we go along. Asking questions before the discovery call, when they're scheduling it, asking questions during the discovery call. I go one more step I think I may probably do more of this than most people I know, but I ask questions when they sign up for a discovery call, which I call a free consultation. I ask questions once we are together during that consultation, and even after they have signed a contract and paid to work with me. The very first thing they do is a getting started questionnaire. I want an extremely high level of informed consent. I want them to feel a sense of safety and trust, a sense of mutual respect, and a high level of communication. I invite them to tell me what they want, and then I invite them again and again. And they're different questions at different levels of depth. I'm not bombarding people with the same question over and over that would be harassment.

But I think you see what I'm getting at with all this right? If you like client work, but you've maybe tried to avoid doing it or tried to get away from doing it or you've done the course thing, the membership thing, the big group program. And now you find yourself going back to client work, knowing that you can set it up in a way that you're not gonna burn out, that you're much less likely to be ghosted. You're much less likely to have clients who are gonna start but not finish, and that you can feel confident both identifying red flags and addressing problems that come up with the people that you invite to work with you. Doesn't that take a little bit of the fear factor out of client work? It really has for me, and the other side of the equation is knowing how to price, position, and package your client work with a focus on profit and avoiding burnout. That's what I do with my clients in my 1 on 1 coaching when I take them through the Boss Up Breakthrough program. A lot of it has to do with repackaging the work they're already doing so they can stand out, be sought after, and be far more profitable doing client work. So that wraps it up for today, I hope you got some good takeaways. I will have some links to additional episodes and resources to help in this area, in the show notes, and I will be back next week with another amazing guest interview.