How to Identify “Bad” Clients

The ones who are not right for your business — and why.

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash

As we have discussed, you are absolutely definitely allowed to say “no” to working with clients who you don’t vibe with, don’t respect you and your work, or are just not good clients.

But how can you tell whether a client is going to be good or bad?

And what about at the beginning, when you’re just trying to build a business?

The thing with bad clients is that they tend to suck the fun out of what you are doing, make unreasonable demands outside the scope of the project, and often push back when it comes to actually paying you.

All of this means that instead of you having the time and energy to build your business, you are stuck catering to this one particular client for much more time than you originally estimated.

Once you learn the signs and can identify “bad” clients, you will do well to stay away from them and spend your time and effort on finding good ones — even when you feel this might be the wrong thing to do.

Here are a number of ways to detect and identify clients you may not want to work with. If you don’t see or ignore signs at the beginning, you may see other signs toward the end of the project, which may be a clear indicator that you…