Conquering Workflows & Systems For Bookkeepers & Accountants | with Alyssa Lang (Workflow Queen)

How and When to Fire Clients: Best Practices for Bookkeepers & Accountants

• Season 1 • Episode 87

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In this solo episode, Alyssa Lang covers the essential steps and strategies for gracefully firing clients while protecting your business integrity. Alyssa deep dives into implementing clear disengagement policies, managing client boundaries, and ensuring smooth transitions to foster a healthier, more aligned client base for your firm.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • How to determine if you are ready to fire a client
  • When to fire a client and the logistics that go with it
  • How to communicate to your client that you are firing them
  • How to be ready to make space for new, and more aligned clients

Resources mentioned in this episode:

💻 Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants

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Have you ever held onto those pain in the *** clients or the ones who are nonresponsive for a long period of time, or maybe the clients that ask you to do sketchy things or aren't willing to pay for the scope creep, or maybe you sent them a price increase and they're just not willing to accept it. Or the worst that can happen is that they're rude to you or your team. If you've been in the position or you're currently in the position. Where you have a couple of clients that you no longer align with, or that you really want to let go of, then this is the episode for you. In today's episode, I'm really going to be deep diving in to what it's like. To be letting go of several clients at a time, or even just like one client at a time. What the logistics look like? I'm going to be sharing my story of firing last month, three clients. And how that went about and what the process looked like. We're going to be talking about when you should let them go. What time of the year what's going to come up for you, how to reference your contract when you're disengaging, determining your action plan and the timeline for your off-boarding. We're also going to deep dive into how to communicate that you're firing to a client. So at the end of the episode, I'm going to deep dive into opportunities where you can jot down exactly what I'm saying to use it as an email, to send it off to your clients. It's going to be such a great episode. It is so fresh in my mind because I literally just let go of three clients last month. all for different reasons. And I'm just so excited to be deep diving into what that process was like so that you can make more space for truly aligned Oh boy, September for me just happened to be the month of firing. And last month I legit fired like three different clients. And I don't know what it was. I don't know if there's something in the air or what was going on, but I really just wasn't really in the mood. I just, I don't know if you guys have ever had that in your, from where like, it's like, don't fuck with me month, you know? And like, that was like my month in September and it was not even like, just out of nowhere, it genuinely was like a buildup. Of the certain clients that we were serving and that we were taking care of that just like we're no longer aligned with our firm and also just the direction that we were taking. And just so like, there was just a lot going on there. And so I really wanted to take the time to really record this episode, to talk through what that process looked like for me. And also just share the story of like how I let these people go. And also how I determined that they weren't the right fit when I let them go. How did I do that? Really just a lot of the logistics that go into it, because as most of us know, like. Half the battle is like allowing ourselves the opportunity to actually let go of the client. That is legitimately the one of the hardest parts and the reason why, I wanted to kind of lead with that is because. We're human. And we always want to like, do our best and we always want to best serve someone. And we also fear that if we let someone go or we fire them, as far as our clients. We fear that they're going to go and like, create this bad review about us. And then like, they're going to talk all this **** and that we have to worry about like the stance of our business after that, after letting this, you know, maybe it's a pain in the *** client, or maybe it's just a client that was amazing, but it's no longer in alignment with your new niche. Like whatever, the reason being it is fearful, it is fearful. So I just want to recognize anyone who is going through that, who is questioning, whether you have that really not so fun client that you've been wanting to let go for quite some time, or maybe you've just changed directions in your firm, but like you just no longer need to. Holding on to certain clients. I just want you to know your feelings are very validated, especially when it comes to the letting go in the fear that they are going to. come back and be pissed off or come back and request a refund or come back and, you know, put out some crazy review out there. A lot of the times, our mind does this very interesting thing, where at the end of the day, it tells us the worst case scenario. Rather, I find that a lot of the times, our worst case scenario in our head, the thing that we've built up is not what actually happens in the longterm. This happens to me all the time. Like I do this in so many different ways of my life. September was a really rough month for me. That's kind of why I disappeared. That's why the episodes were a little bit wonky and we weren't consistent with our episodes that we had because I was just kind of going through it. Not only was I firing three clients, but I also fired a team member, which is the first team member I had to fire and let go, which was. in its own, just a whole beast in a whole thing. So we ended up letting go of three different clients. So I'll just kind of give you a brief little backstory and then we'll dive into all the details and kind of how I approached everything and what we did. So one of the clients. was actually just no longer. She was amazing. Great person just really loved her great business idea. Just a great direction, but unfortunately we just changed direction. As of last year November, we decided that, we would have very specific requirements to working with our firm. One, you have to at least make 250 K annually and two, you have to be a woman owned business. And three also have to be either a course creator coach, or you have to be a creative. And so we were very strict about that. And so moving into this coming year, or this year was very much about realigning, a lot of our clients. So we let go of several of our clients. After we had made this decision last year in November, However, we kind of kept some of them what we were like. We love them. We think that there were going to get that they're going to get there, but one of the clients, unfortunately, just wasn't getting there. And so we just had to let her go. And she was amazing, but I introduced her actually to one of my students who actually took over her book. So she's well taken care of, but it just gave us space to be able to serve the people that we want to actually serve. The other two clients were actually a little bit more of the problem clients, the ones that we actually had, like legit fire, because we were just like no longer in alignment with them. So one of them was just. one big thing that really turned me off was when the business owner came to work with us. This is a woman owned business. She ended up introducing us to her husband. Who's not a business owner and the husband would just mansplained my team. He would talk down to us the way that he would like send emails was really freaking rude. And just, I don't take **** for my team at all. Like I literally will not let anybody talk to my team a certain way. If anybody, whether it's a student here, workflow queen or clients at, my, for magnetic profits. I legit will not tolerate it because I know that I can handle a lot of stuff. And I'm sure that my team is tough enough to handle that as well. It's just, they shouldn't carry that burden. They shouldn't carry the way that people talk to them. And I want that on my shoulders. Right. So I ended up being like, this is not in alignment. So I sent them an email was just like, this is clearly not working out for us. I think you guys would be better served by another firm that can actually handle whatever capacity that you guys have in place. and that also can handle these, different scope changes without increase in fee, because that was another problem that we had with them is they wouldn't tell us about things that they actually needed until we would be doing in the middle of the books and be like, oh, we need to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That like created a way different process for the way that we needed to do things, plus would cost more money for us to do it and they never wanted to pay for it. So at that point, I was like, no, like if you don't want to pay for it, you're not working with us. and so they would, they would do their increase in the fee. When we would make adjustments and changes. And at that point they just wanted some crazy things in their books that just were not making sense, to be honest. Like sometimes I know that everybody can relate to this. Sometimes clients, like, I love them to death and I know that they, they know best for their business as well. But at the same time, there's a reason why we are in the position to advise them and also to do the financials. And at the end of the day, when a client like things that they know best about the way that the actual like accounting should be done. Is where, like, I kind of draw the line because at the end of the day, it's like, we are here for a reason to support you. I'm happy to educate someone, but it's when someone is really pointing it at us and saying like, no, it has to be this way. This is how it should be done. It's like, well then why don't you just do it? Right. So anyways, that client was because honestly, if probably they didn't bring in their husband, We most likely probably would have kept her however, I feel like later on, she would have also become a problem as well, because he would have never let that go. And so we had to let them go, as soon as, and it's funny because a friend of mine was doing the taxes for them. And I was like, I am so sorry, because she was also experiencing some problems with them too. I was like, I am so sorry. I am never one to send like the wrong referrals to people, but I didn't even know the trades until like we were working with them. Anyways. She was like, don't fire them until after I'd filed the taxes. And I was like, I can't wait. Like I'm just going to fire them. So we're going to talk about here in a minute, like when to communicate the firing, the other client that I let go of, was another client. She was super sweet, super awesome. However, every single time that we'd send her, cause she was on a package that like would get a monthly financial loom video overview. Every single time that we would send her the monthly financial. loom overview video one whole year. We would give advice about a very specific vendor that she was wildly overpaying and wasn't even recouping the financials for like this person, the vendor she was paying was a marketing firm she wasn't even breaking even with like what the marketing firms should have been bringing in for anyone interested in working with the marketing firm. It should take anywhere from three to sometimes four months. For you to recoup the fee that the marketing firm usually charges you. So if the marketing firms. Charge anywhere from 3000 to 4,000, usually it takes three to four months for you to finally make that back. But one year later is like not okay. Like that just means a marketing firm either does not work for you or just like, is not a good marketing firm. And so we gave her a lot of different advice about this and she just wasn't receptive. We would ask for like, Hey, do you have proof of KPIs of what they're doing for you? And she would just never give it to us. So it just got to a point where we were like, you know what. She's never going to be. Like it wasn't even just that it was a lot of different instances where she just wouldn't receive like the information. So it was just like a whole thing. So. We ended up sending her an email and just let her go as well. So. I wanted to share that story with you guys, just to kind of set the tone and now we're going to deep dive into all the logistics of what it's going to take to actually let go of someone. So the first thing I want to dive into is what a bad client can actually do to the team in the company. So a bad client can actually really rip your team apart. I have seen this firsthand. Not for myself, actually. I've never had experiences within my own team. However, I have seen it happen for a lot of my students in a couple of my different programs of how bad clients and not letting them go had actually lost really good team members because at the end of the day, the team could only tolerate so much before, like it's your responsibility as the business owner to really do your due diligence, to make sure that everyone is in full alignment. However, will you always be able to make your team happy? No, like sometimes there's just a personality clash. That's okay. If it's just a personality clash, a lot of times we just assign them a new person to take care of the account. However, if the bad client is legit, a bad client, but you're too scared to let them go. The, your team can recognize that, especially if your team is coming to you and saying, I do not like working with them, they are rude to us. And this is what's happening and you blatantly ignore that and you just continue moving forward. You're literally going to create a riff within your team. And so my recommendation is to also recognize that it's okay to ask your team how they feel about our clients. So when I was talking about how we reevaluated our client list last year in November, we did a re-evaluation. There's like this resource that we give inside of my breakthrough program, where essentially we give like a list of like, list out all of your clients and then rate them. And then also like rate or how much do you charge them? Like how much time does it take? What software do they use? Pretty much just reevaluating every single client from all perspectives. And we had our team also do that same evaluation. And we found that the common trend was people who were making over 250 K that were women in business. And those who are course creators coaches. And creatives. And because of that, that's what helped us to determine the exact niche that we wanted to serve. And so that's our new requirement. They have to make over 250 K. They have to be a woman and they have to serve that, be in those types of businesses. And so the reason I'm sharing this with you guys is because we had our team do this as well. And so you'll be able to find really quickly, like you might like, especially if like you're more removed in the business and you're not really doing a lot of the day-to-day, you don't get to see the ****. You know what I mean? Cause you're not in it every day. So really recommend that you involve. Your team. Like I said, sometimes there's a lot of reasons why we have to hold on to clients. Maybe it's for financial reasons, maybe it's because of the contract. And the all you have to do honestly, is to just communicate that with your team and say, Yes guys. I recognize that you guys do not like this client. And I don't either. And I really would like to let them go. However, I need to have a plan in place. Because their revenue is taking about 40% of our revenue. So I need to make sure to get that back. So can we just scoot by with this client for a couple more months while I try to get it together with the marketing? It's just all about communication. So my recommendation is to make sure with any of those Baghdad clients have communication, open communication with your team, but also have the opportunity to say. This is why we're gonna have to keep this client right now, because I recognize too that sometimes not everybody can just afford to get rid of all their bad clients. Like I totally get that as well. So just know that it can create a rift within your team and your company. So even if you don't have a team and it's just you, it can create turmoil, inside. So for me, I know that it really bothers me when we have bad clients, even though I'm not doing the bookkeeping every day. I just can feel their presence and it just it's too much for me. so just know that at the end of the day, if they're just consuming your life and consuming your thoughts and like just annoying you and you just hate every time, if you have any of those clients guys, to determine if you want to let someone go is like, every time you hear your email go off and before you even check it, you're like, I really hope it's not from X, Y, Z person, because I will literally like, just go crazy if that's how you feel the most likely, like you need to let them go. It's just like a bad relationship. A lot of the times you just hold onto things for like, who knows why. Oh, because we have this or we have this and we have this house together, so we just have to stay together when it's like, you can let those things go. It's just a matter of the logistics and having an action plan in place. Right. So next, I want to talk about how to determine if you're ready to let go of a client. So here's a couple of the reasons why that might be the case for you guys. Maybe they're nonresponsive for a period of time. So we have a new requirement in my firm, and I think we rolled this out at the beginning of this year, beginning of 2024. Which was if a client does not respond to any of our questions for three months via content snare. Then we tell them on the third one, we're like, Hey, just by the way, the past two months you have not given us any responses. you need to give us responses by this month. If you do not give us a response site by this month, it's either option a or option B either option a, we are going to charge you a cleanup fee to go back for the past three months. Once we get your responses or option B. If we do not still hear from you and it's month four, we are going to need to off-board you and let you go. And I am super strict about this because at the end of the day, Like it just takes more time and our team just keeps falling up with someone and I can only care as much as our clients do. And so nonresponsive clients can also be a reason why you might not want to let them go. There's another one too, where they ask you to do sketchy things. We've all worked with a client who asks us to do sketchy things who tell us to put things on the books that shouldn't be on the books. And depending on if you want to be risky or not, whether this is like moral or not, that's not what we're talking about here. At the end of the day, it's like where you draw your line. So determine where your, line in the sand is and what you're willing to be okay with and what you're not. And say, I actually do not stand with what you're asking me. And unfortunately I have to let you go because it's not something that I aligned with. And so that can be another reason why he let someone go. Another reason might be willing to not willing to pay extra for scope creep. So we all know scope creep, which just means that someone is all of a sudden they're emailing you and being like, Hey, can you prepare these very special documents? For me to be able to go get a loan or, Hey, can you like, you know, just for the next couple of weeks, can you pay our bills? But they're not willing to pay for it. One, this there's usually two problems with this or two issues or two sides of the coin. One, you might not even be putting your foot down. so therefore the client thinks that you're just going to be okay with Al always saying yes. So that's, that's actually a you problem and not the client problem. So I would recommend getting better at creating that scope creep. issue. We do have a solution for scope creep inside of our breakthrough program. I do give this like bonus it's like the scope creep invoice trick. And it's actually really cool. It's essentially giving a client a, an invoice. That is showing them how much it would cost you to do that. So if you're willing to like do the thing for free, but you still want to show the value to the client of what it would have costed you. If you were to do it done it long-term for them. We usually send an invoice with a full price and then discount it 100%. If we decide to do it for free, if not, we legit just send them an invoice. I've I can't tell you how many times clients have reached out and been like, can you guys do this? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Like, this is our all a cart menu, all the Alla carte menu. It's going to cost this much for us to like now do this. And they can decide they're business owners, people it's not nickeling and diming people. It nickeling and diming them. It's at the end of the day, you're just running a business. so if you failed to put your foot down, then there's a reason why the client just keeps stepping all over. You. the other side of that coin is the client genuinely tries to make you feel bad about not just doing things for free or like, it doesn't take that much time. I freaking love when people say that, like what, like then why don't you just do it right. so at the end of the day, like that is up to you to make sure that you are, putting your foot down, but then also if you are putting your foot down, the client still expects it. You can also say, like, I understand your budget because you can be very gentle and kind, and your offboarding emails, you can let someone who maybe is just not willing to pay extra or just like budget conscious. Like, and I think everyone has the right to be budget conscious however, you get to decide that like, no, I just, I'm not budging on this. Right. You can be sensitive to them and you can just let them know, like, Hey, I really understand that like your budget is your number one priority. I see that from these sorts of examples here. I think that maybe you might be in a better alignment with someone who might be able to give you what you need from your budget. unfortunately I don't think that's going to be us because we just don't budget or negotiate on. Any of our fees. and I want to respect that for you. And I want to respect that for my team as well. It doesn't have to be crazy, guys. You don't have to be rude. You're just being gentle, right? Another reason too, is they won't accept a price increase. And so this happens pretty often. So we'll we tell people like to do increases for their clients. If the client doesn't accept the price increase fee. I don't negotiate. So we don't negotiate our terms. We don't negotiate our fees with our clients. So when we do the price increase, we let them know this is going to be the fee. And if they say that they don't agree with it, I'm not going to negotiate with it. And then I will gladly off-board them in a very gentle way. It's not rude. We're just doing normal price increase. It declined doesn't feel in alignment. They get to make their decision as the business owner to decide if they're in alignment with us as far as our price increase. So that could be another reason. The last reason kind of touched on a little bit, was being. Being rude to you or your team. so for me, I just don't tolerate it. I just am at this place in my business where. I've been doing this for quite some time. Like it's been since like 20, what is it? 2016, probably be 2015. I always forget what year I started out at this point. That I've been in business and now it's three different businesses and I've been through the ringer. I've seen it all at this point. And I just am at this point where. My sanity and my peace in life and for my team is way more important than the dollar that someone pays me. and so for me, if someone's rude to our team, sometimes, like they may come off a certain way and it maybe it just feels rude. And sometimes you can just notice that maybe it's just like they're having a bad day. That's okay. But just recognize when there's consistency, that that can be another option of why you need to let someone go. So let's talk about when you should let them go. So this came up the other day when I was in, um, our breakthrough group. so breakthrough is one of my group coaching programs and one of our students brought up. How they're feeling guilty that they really want to let go of this client that is just no longer in alignment with them. And they said, but I feel really bad because we're already in October. And I feel like I have an obligation to finish year end out. And I'm going to call BS on that for anyone listening. If you're going to say the excuse of why you have to keep someone on is because it's near the end of the year or it's, mid-year like, I don't care guys, if it's literally 10 days before the new year where you're like, I'm letting this person go, it is okay for you to decide when it's best to let go of your clients. However, Always make sure to reference your contacts. So whatever contract your clients signed. For example, if you have a contract that people have to stay with you for a year, that's going to be a little bit of a different story. then obviously you got to handle it differently because the legal ramifications, if you don't follow that, However for us, we have like a 30 day disengagement. Like we can tell someone 30 days in advance. We just have to give them 30 days notice in advance that we are going to be disengaging. So we can do that December 1st and disengage and have them on their own on January 1st. And I know that might sound really rude, and I know that this is coming probably for some of you. Like it might feel triggering to be like, how dare you leave someone at that time of the year? You guys, it's not your responsibility. It is not your responsibility. If the client. Had every single thing that they needed to, to be successful with working with you, but yet they were still rude to your team yet. They didn't want to do the price increase yet. They didn't want to pay for the scope increase. They wanted to do sketchy things. They were non-responsive. You have every single right to let them go. They had every opportunity to prove to you that they were going to be a great client for you to not have to like worry, to keep them on year round. Right. And so my recommendation to you is, do not allow that guys. To get in the way of letting go of clients that are no longer in alignment with you. I don't care. Like I said, if it's 10 days before the year end, let them go. If they do not feel right. So another thing too, when you're trying to determine when to let someone go, always reference your contract guys. I am not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice. I do recommend talking to a lawyer. if that's something that you want to do in order to get some more clarity around this, however, I do recommend if you don't have something like this in place in your contract, that you do consult a lawyer, so that way you have it drafted into your future contracts for future clients. However for each of our clients, like over the years, we've updated our contracts. We've changed them. So I always referenced the original contract. They signed. But essentially look at your contract and see if there was a disengagement policy. For us, like I said, in our disengagement it's 30 days. So either the client or us. He has to give 30 days notice. I know some of you guys listening. Do you have like an immediate disengagement option? It is truly up to you. On what you have on that contract, just to make sure to reference it. So for us, what we essentially do is we let the client know, Hey, we are going to be disengaging, which we're going to talk about here on like how to work, this kind of stuff. Hey, we're going to be disengaging, per our contract. It states that we have to give you at least a 30 day notice. So this is us letting you know of a 30 day notice same for the clients. The client comes to us and say, they're disengaging. let's just say that it's literally like 10 days before the new month, and they're like, I'm disengaging. So I don't want to move forward in October. I'm like, well, that's great. But like, you have to pay pro rate at least 20 days, because unfortunately it's in 10 days and you have to give us 30 days notice. So we will prorate October by 20 days. and so that's kind of like how we communicate that to our clients when they're disengaging from us. I also want you guys to Create an action plan if you can. So when you're letting someone go create yourself an action plan and a timeline for the offboarding, I like to communicate this with the client. So I like to go in not just like firing a client and just having nothing in place. I don't just go send an email and say, we're letting you go, we'll be in touch. Like that's to me have an action plan, guys, write this down. We have templated emails that we use when we're letting go of our clients. That just pretty much tell them like, Hey, here's what you can expect over the next couple of weeks as. As we off-board you, and over the next 30 days, you can expect X, Y, Z. By this time you can expect X, Y you know, this, this, this, by this timeline. Whatever that looks like. So have an action plan. do not sway, do not let someone talk you out of the reason why you shouldn't fire them. If you feel that you need to fire someone, you gotta do what you gotta do. People at the end of the day, you got to do what's best, right. So let's talk about two more points, which is how to communicate. You're firing them. This is the hardest part that I think a lot of people get really overwhelmed with. So if you have a notebook, I hope you've been taking notes because there's a lot of information here. So how to communicate that you're ready to fire someone. for us, it depends if you're in person, guys, the whole different scenario, but we're going to go virtual just because I'm a virtual firm. We usually just send an email to our clients. So typically we'll send them an email with all the details. Like I said, I don't just say we're firing you. And by it's like, Hey guys, depending on why you're firing someone sometimes I will say guys, If you are firing and letting go of a client that is a pain in the *** client who is not receptive, most likely you trying to tell them that they're not receptive. Most likely won't do anything for you. So I have learned this, like just through life in general. Some people think that they're always right, which is okay. Cause we all think that ourselves are always right, right. And that's okay. However, at the end of the day, sometimes the people who are rude or do things that are wrong or sketchy or whatever, don't even have awareness around that. So usually what I do is I always just say in the email, something along the lines of. Hey, it's been such a pleasure working with you. You can always X that part out. I did X that part out on one of our clients that we send our off-boarding email to. I didn't want to tell them it was a pleasure to work with them. I was like, cause it wasn't right. But so just determine of what you want to say, but you just, just listen to how I'm going to say. Or you can totally like re type this out. thank you so much for the, you know, the years or the months of service of working with you guys. We've actually appreciated it. this is really hard for me to send this email to you, but I just want it to be really clear and honest with you guys that we are going to have to let you guys know in disengage we have per our contract. We have a 30 day requirement to give you guys a notice of disengagement. And then this is where your chance, if you want to include the reasons why you're disengaging them. for someone who is non-responsive, I will literally tell them that, like, for that, I'll say, unfortunately, one of the big reasons why we're letting you guys go or letting you go is because you've been nonresponsive for over two to three months. And we really need to work with clients who are going to get us the information that we need in order to better serve you. So, unfortunately you might be better served by someone who's willing to wait a certain number of months to support you. Maybe if it's someone who's doing sketchy things, I will straight up tell them, like, unfortunately, some of the things that you ask our team to do, just do not align with what we are willing to do within our firm to support our clients. And so, because of that, we unfortunately have to disengage. If someone is like really rude to my clients, I will tell them that. But sometimes if the client. Like, for example, one of the clients I let go of who just wasn't receptive to. our advice, I didn't tell her that. because at the end of the day, she's going to be like, well, what do I have to listen to you guys? Right. And that's fine. So for us, we just let her know that the reason why we were letting her go is that we are changing our niche and we're changing our direction of the firm and who we're working with. And that at the end of the day, she's no longer in alignment with where we were going. So just determine how you're going to say this at the very end is what we put our timeline. So we say something like. and just to give you an idea of what to expect next, this is a 30 day disengagement. So what's going to happen is we are going to categorize your transactions up to X date. We are going to do X. We're going to do Y by this date. so that way you can be on your own and do this right. And one thing that I will say that we started adding into our offboarding in our offboarding email is if we liked the client and we think they might be better suited for someone else, we do offer referrals. So this has happened like, so. Let's just say that you just change your niche and you genuinely love the client, but you're just, they're no longer in alignment with the firm. Then it's okay to send them referrals. However, if it's someone who's super rude, I don't even want to give them referrals because I don't want to send them to people, especially because a lot of the referrals I send people to are my friends or people have good relationships with last thing I need is to put that on their plate. So just determine if like you don't owe them anything. You don't owe them anything to give them referrals. However, it depends on how they treated our team and the experience. If I want to give someone a referral or not. One of the other things too. And this comes up a lot for you guys is when you're disengaging from a client, the client will like badger you about like how you need to give them the process that they own it. They don't own the process unless it's in your contract, unless your contract states that they own that process. It's a different dynamic. However, I remember when Brooke Swan was letting go of one of her clients and we were having a conversation and she was letting me know, and I know she was totally okay with me sharing this because she's shared it in our breakthrough group many times. The client really wanted her processes. And I told her, you are absolutely not going to give it to them unless they're going to pay a hefty fee for that. And so at the end of the day, what she did was we ended up coming together and talking about how she can price it. and it was a pretty hefty fee guys. Like we're talking like over a couple thousand dollars to give away her processes. Because guys, it is your years of experience. If you want to give it to your clients, you can also say no. However, if you feel in alignment with it, you can also charge them for the process. So if they ask you like, well, if you're gonna let us go, we want the process or those spreadsheets or blah, blah, blah, or whatever it is. You can say. Absolutely. I don't mind if you guys have them for XYZ fee. So just remember that you don't owe anybody, anything, unless it's in your contract. That is the only thing. So the logistics of letting someone go in the dates, this is where things can get a little bit more grade area, but like not really. So per our contract, we have to give our clients 30 days notice, however, A lot of you guys are going to be thinking well, that means that if I charge them on the first of the month and I need to wait until the first of the month. To tell them of the notice that way they're not with us the next month. Like I said, guys, I don't care if it's the fifth day of the month, the 20th day of the month, if you want to fire someone, fire them. Let them go get it over with, just get it done. What we do in our firm is if we have to give them 30 days notice because we charge all of our clients on the first of the month. If it's, let's just say the 20th of the month, and we decide to send off the disengagement letter. We will literally do one of two options and we give these options to our clients. This is really up to you. We tell the client in that offboarding email. So per our contract, we have to give you a 30 day notice because it's the 20th day of the month. We could do one of two things. One we can prorate October for 20 days to cover the 10 days in September and the 20 days in October, which is 30 days. So we can prorate it, which would be for X fee, or we can always just finish out this month for the last 10 days. And not charge you at all for next month, but we'll, would immediately stop by the end of this month. However per our contract, we need you to let us know which option works best for you. The reason why we do this in email people is because it gives them the option to like say, you know what? If you're going to fire me, just let me go. Like, I don't want to have to go into the next month for 20 days and prorate it. That usually actually ends up being the outcome. So sometimes when I really don't like a client, I tend to let them go more towards the end of the month so I can give them that option so we can be done sooner with them. It's like such a great little workaround. However, I cannot force that on a client because it's part of our contract states that we have to finish out the 30 days. So I give them the option and because they respond back via email, it is a written approval. That they are okay with us, not prorating and just cutting it off at the end of the month and not charging them moving forward. And so just know, like I said, I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Everything goes based off your contract. By the end of the day, it is written that my client has agreed that they're okay with the other option, but I never force it on them. If that makes sense. So at the end of the day, guys, when you're letting go of your clients, this is really just going to free up the space to help you find more aligned clients. No matter what I know this is stressful. I know it's hard to do. I know that there's a lot of factors that go into play in making these decisions. Not letting people go. But genuinely. The more space I've given. Like we just literally brought on two new clients that are freaking incredible. Like such amazing align clients. And it's so funny that we had to let go of three clients in order to gain two new, amazing clients. And so I know that it feels stressful and I know that's like, oh, how am I going to replace the revenue? You can, and you will, you are resilient. You've done this., you know what you're doing? It's just a matter of giving yourself the mental space that you need. To recognize what you want in the business. So I hope this episode helped you guys, if you're going through a scenario where you're letting go of a team member, I'm sorry, I have a client that's a whole nother episode, which that just happened to me last month. So whole nother episode for a whole nother day. but at the end of the day, if you were letting go of a client and you just are overwhelmed, or you want to talk through the mindset side of it, Or just some of the logistics feel free to bring it into Instagram at workflow queen, to me, a DM I've always loved chatting with you guys or shoot me an email support@workflowqueen.com. If you're one of my students inside a breakthrough, bring it to a coaching call, guys. We talk about this a lot on our coaching calls, bring it into the Facebook community, whatever you need. We are here to support you as you are letting go of those pain in the *** clients.