The Text Message That Almost Ended My Business
I remember about 3 years ago I was sat in my house and got a random iMessage from my biggest retainer client at the time.
They text to tell me:
“This isn’t going to work.”
I was so confused as to why.
So I called her (she’s in the US, different time zone).
I said, “Hey, what’s going on?”
She told me that she spoke to another big agency and they did an audit of the account and told them they should be making more than what we were doing for them.
I told her that this agency had exaggerated numbers and that their account is really healthy (we were generating almost 40% of their total revenue).
She didn’t want to hear it.
So she gave in her 30 day notice, said thank you for the work, but told me they’d like to cancel now and kicked me out of their account.
They disputed the final payment and Stripe being Stripe, they won 25% back of the final payment.
I remember that same day, calling her in the evening.
Pleading with her. Begging her not to leave.
She got too scared by my begging and threatened to report me, so I stopped.
But it stung so bad.
I went up to my room.
Sat there in silence. Lights off. Just pitch black.
I didn’t know what to do.
At the time, they were almost 60% of my business’s revenue.
So I felt like I had lost everything.
That was my first biggest loss in business.
The agency they went on to sign with didn’t last 3 months with them anyway loool.
But it’s crazy how I almost lost all hope.
I have now since replaced them x5 and life is good.
It seemed like life was over then.
But truly, life is only over when you quit.
Shit can go left. Shit can fall apart.
But if you don’t quit, you’re never out of the game.
Shoutout to that client for a hell of a lesson.
I guess we both learned something important.