This week, I get into the self-inflicted burden we carry as honest professionals.

It Doesn’t Feel Good

I was raised in a religious household where serving others and being ‘nice’ were expected. 

I felt guilty when I didn’t do what I thought others deemed ‘right or nice.’ 

While I understand the value of helping others, some rhetoric turned me into a people-pleaser. 

When I started my firm, my misguided ideas of fiduciary duty shifted my people-pleasing into high gear. 

I justified saying yes to everything. 

I thought it was my responsibility to own and fix situations for prospects in need due to their multiple bad decisions.  

At times, I justified scope creep as it afforded me the chance to learn new things and processes. The client was doing me a favor, so why would the client pay for that? 

I had $1000s of uncollected AR because I would rather be ‘nice’ than confrontational. 

I judged my actions based on how I thought the client or prospect would feel, devaluing me and impacting my family and team. 

Even after years of navigating this stuff, saying No can still feel bad. 

I had this email show up last month.

This person booked a time on my calendar in an unusual way. I sent a response and asked what they wanted to talk about.

After a civil exchange, I told them I didn’t think it was a good fit and would cancel our call. 

Was I crazy not to hear out a $125M tax attorney group?

Maybe.

Did their response and my self-diagnosed ‘un-nice-ness’ make me feel bad?

Yes.

The thing is, I’ve defined what I want to do.

And their description fell outside of that so I was out.

 

If you don’t remember anything else from this newsletter, remember this:

 

Just because it makes you feel bad doesn’t make it wrong. It makes you human. 

 

Putting yourself and your goals before others can be hard, but it is allowed and should be your default mode.    

Other Rationalizations 

Apart from saying yes too often, we routinely perform other mental gymnastics because of what others think we should do.  

One firm owner shared her pricing model with me in a paid consultation. 

She still billed by the hour but wanted to move to a fixed pricing model.

She was hung up on her son’s rationale for not making the switch.

Her son had said: “I don’t want good clients paying for the bad ones.”

I can see where he might be coming from.

Fixed pricing seems to favor bad clients. 

Bad and needy clients get more attention at the same price.

By billing the bad ones hourly, he’d ‘make them pay‘ for the extra work.

He’d probably get an additional 10-15% bump on the extra time spent. 

The added revenue is nice, and the good ones aren’t penalized, right?

But what about the opportunity cost and the impact on the team?

And here’s the thing:

Bad clients impact your team’s experience, which is reflected in every client’s experience.

Bad client engagement are profitless because of the mental bandwidth they take up.

They decrease our ability to pay attention to good clients regardless of our intentions and pricing model.

___________

I spoke to a different firm owner who was talking with another firm about a possible acquisition. 

The selling firm refused to set up a fixed-priced billing at the beginning of each month.

His justification?

He didn’t like that clients paid for something they hadn’t received yet. 

Call me a disconnected, clueless millennial, but this is absurd. 

I know that traditionally, we have been paid this way.

Wasting dozens of hours per year sending invoices, sending follow-ups and reconciling payments because of a perception.

I’d bet money that his clients would express little to no real concern about moving to upfront billing. 

Automated billing doesn’t disadvantage your client. 

Sure, it puts the cash in your pocket sooner than before.

But it removes administrative work from their plate and increases their cash flow predictability. 

Accountants have played bank for too long for their clients, and that needs to stop.

Handling It  

Saying no and putting myself first, still feels awkward. 

It’s probably something I’ll deal with for the rest of my professional life.

To keep my ‘niceness‘ in check and deal with the discomfort, I lean into a few ideas: 

• When you say Yes to one thing, you are saying No to many other things.   
• Define what you want. It is easier to say no, when you have a map of what Yes looks like. 98% of the opportunities that cross your path are not building your vision. They’re building someone else’s. 
• Wanting to take care of yourself and family, doesn’t make you greedy, dishonest, or selfish.  
• Not every client has to be your client. Let a qualifying process and required deposit upfront root out the mismatched clients.
• Set up firm policies to protect your sanity. Policies have more teeth than letting your feelings determine how you work with individual clients. 

Growth is fuelled by focus. Focus is cultivated with a healthy amount of Nos. 

Build the firm you want.

Mark