Vol. 8. My first ever client refund

After 8 years in business, I finally had a client ask for a refund after I disengaged.

What a gut-punch. And quite possibly a rite of passage.

I thought I was doing the right thing by disengaging before things went any further. Apparently, that client was pretty upset that I didn't do so sooner, and that we even took on the engagement to begin with and felt like he overpaid for the services already rendered (even though he agreed to an hourly rate for all the cleanup). 

All this to say... even those of us 8 years in make mistakes, ignore red flags, and decide to help those outside of our niche, all because it was a referral--From someone I wasn't even familiar with... which is another lesson for me to actually reach out to referral sources before actually taking on the client.

In fact, this wasn't the only screw up I made in Q1. 

More screw ups loading...

1. I also ran payroll late for a client (after double paying their team and having to reverse a payroll prior to that).

2. My new account manager discovered missed interest expense on multiple clients from past years (even though I thought I had a solid review process, things were still missed). 

3. And to top all this off, I have one year end catch up who still hasn't paid their balance; after multiple follow ups sent and offers to break it up into smaller payments. Again, this is my bad for assuming someone that has paid their bill every year for a catchup for the past few years would again pay her bill, no issue. We did double our fee from prior year, but she also needed a quick turnaround. I did not create a contract for this one, just a quote. And now... I don't really have much to fall back on to enforce payment. 

Needless to say, Q1 came with some big learning lessons and challenges. And the reason I'm sharing them is because I promised to share the behind the scenes in this newsletter. 

I want you to know that all of these things are normal, and what matters is how they're handled.

When errors were discovered,

1. We as a team put a process in place to prevent the error or issue from happening again. 
2. Communicated that new process and took ownership of the errors or mistakes to the client 

Sometimes even when we know better, we get caught up in the stress of things, don't think there will be problems, and assume the best of people. 

Q1 gave me so many learnings. And I know that I always get ...

The results I wanted or the lesson I needed.

Sometimes we need a refresher.

Sometimes we hit new levels or we're *going to hit new levels and we need to experience something to become more discerning before we reach that point because we will be tested.

If you had some tough lessons learned in Q1 I'd love to hear.