Maybe this time will be different

This week I had the opportunity to be interviewed on The Melapress Show. It was a fun conversation where we talked about qualifying clients, the sales process, and paid discovery. But afterward, it was the questions about qualifying clients that really ended up sticking out to me.

I’ve never spent that much time thinking about how I qualify clients… It’s something I’ve just slowly learned to do over the past 9 years (mostly by getting it wrong 😅).

But when someone puts you on the spot and asks you to explain your process, it’s funny how many little signals, questions, and gut-checks you’ve collected over time.

I was surprised by how much I had to say, and afterward, by how much I forgot to mention.

I’ve had my fair share of nightmare clients and disaster projects. We all have. But I think we underestimate just how damaging those projects are.

The obvious cost is time. A project that should take 40 hours drags on to 60… then 80… then some amount of time you stop tracking because the number will only make you sick.

But it’s the hidden costs that I think are the most brutal.

It’s the hour you spend trying to figure out how to reply to an email. The afternoon you lose after getting a frustrating response. The good clients who have to wait because the a-hole is consuming all your energy. The marketing you don’t do, the processes you don’t improve, and the time you spend with your family totally checked-out replaying conversations in your head.

These bad projects leak into everything.

But when business gets slow, it’s incredibly tempting to ignore all the warning signs.

Maybe that comment was harmless… Maybe the deadline is negotiable… Maybe the last three web designers really were the problem.

But it’s never true, is it?

When money’s tight, its tempting, but it’s rare that the money for a bad project is ever worth it. You’d be better off just saying no. All that time you would have spent pulling your hair out could be put to better use looking for a great client instead.

That’s what makes the qualification process so important. Sure, you want to ensure a prospect has the right budget, timeline, and needs — but you also have to protect your time, attention, your other clients, and future-you.

So after the interview, I spent 30 minutes writing down every reason I could think of not to take on a project. All the red flags I’ve seen before, the behaviors that tend to predict trouble, the projects I didn’t enjoy, and the expectations I know I can’t meet.

Up until now, this has all just been loose memories and scar tissue in the back of my brain. But those don’t always prevent me from saying no when it’s the right call. So I wanted something in black and white. A new “company policy”.

It was an extremely helpful exercise, and I’d urge you to do the same. Write it down now while your head is clear and you don’t have a credit card waiving in front of your face.

That way, when you do, you’ll have something concrete to look at when you try and bargain with yourself that “maybe this time will be different”.