How I Got Stiffed $4,000 by a Client, and What I Learned From That Horrible Experience

Hello hello everyone 👋

Here I am again with another article about one of the darkest moments of my freelance career, which happened just about a year ago.

A client stiffed me $4,000 for work I'd already delivered, not to mention backed out of a long-term $4,000 retainer.

It was horrible, but looking back, it led to some really important and positive changes for how I live my freelance life.

So I'm going to share this story with you, and tell you what I did after to try and get my money back.

(Spoiler alert: I never did.)

And then I'll show you how I made changes to my business to prevent this from every happening again. All in this article...

The most dangerous words on the planet: "I didn't think it would happen to me."

This was something I said a lot after I got stiffed, because for the 3-ish years I'd been freelancing, it never had happened to me.

I figured I was too good at reading people to ever work with someone who would steal from me.

I was horribly, horribly wrong.

The client in question is named Obodo. I'm naming and shaming them as part of my catharsis, and to prevent ANYONE from working with this terrible company in the future.

I connected with Obodo through a freelancer friend of mine, who had recently quit freelancing on his own to take a full-time job.

This friend (whom I still adore) wanted me to help them build their very first content strategy, since they'd just launched their website.

He also assured me he'd be my main and only point of contact, at least until it came time to present the strategy to the client.

So I start on the content strategy, and finish it, and just 1 day before I was about to send it over, my friend messages me to tell me he's quitting the company.

Why? The boss is toxic. But he says that they're still going to pay me, and that I'll just work with the boss.

Obviously I wasn't thrilled, but I have a long history of dealing with toxic bosses, so I figured it would be no biggie.

I'd present the strategy, and if he seemed ok, I would go ahead and continue working with them. If not, I'd take my money and cancel the ongoing agreement.

It takes weeks to get the boss on a call to go over the strategy. And when I do, he's really happy with it.

But he has some changes he'd like to see - that's fine by me. Then he starts talking about future work.

On this call, my read of this guy made me nervous. I could tell he was hot-headed and narcissistic, and my red flags were going off like crazy. 🚩 🚩 🚩

So I politely told him: "I am happy to make those changes so you have a strategy you can work with, but I won't be able to continue working on the account after that. I'll just need my invoice paid."

His response: "Oh, you shouldn't have said that. You shouldn't have said that."

I asked why. He just repeated that line. I asked, "Are you going to pay my invoice for the strategy?"

At that point, he hung up on me. Literally ended the Zoom call with not so much as a goodbye.

And that was the last time I talked to him.

Once I got over the shock and anger, I messaged him several times over email and tried to schedule more meetings.

I messaged everyone else in the company with increasingly urgent messages.

I never once received a response.

I was feeling all the feelings:

😡 Fury was the top emotion

😢 Anxiety kept me awake at night, wondering how I'd replace the income

🤦 I felt stupid and embarrassed for ever letting this happen in the first place

😈 I began to fantasize about how I could get my revenge...

The first thing I did was contact a small business lawyer, and after explaining my solution, he had this to say:

"Kiss that money goodbye."

Could I go to small claims court? Sure. But small claims court only judges that a client should pay. It does not do anything to actually collect the money. Even if I win the case, that would be on me.

The client could just ignore my letters demanding payment, or worse, they could turn the tables on me and use their lawyers to suck money out of me until I had to close up my business.

So I asked him this:

"What if I published a blog about them?"

There's no fury like an SEO Specialist scorned, and since this company had literally hired me to launch an SEO strategy, I knew a blog on my website about my experience would rank over anything they tried to publish on their own.

But the lawyer advised against this too. "Don't wake a sleeping bear," was their advice. Don't do anything that would encourage this narcissistic person to use his money against me.

In other words, his best advice was this: "Try to let it go, and learn from the experience."

That letting it go part was the hardest - I'm still angry even as I write this. But I refused to let this loss of money and confidence do anything else to hold me back from success.

So I got to work and made some big changes that still make my business healthier and stronger.

Here's what I did:

🙅 Revoked Access

The client wasn't going to pay for my services, and I knew they weren't smart enough to have made a copy of my excellent work. So I revoked their privileges to view the document on Drive, and thanked my lucky stars that I'd never sent a hard copy. They may never realize it, but that hurt them more than anything else I could have done. That strategy was mint, and judging by their website, they still haven't gotten one off the ground. They're losing money because of me. Mwhahaha

💳 Started a new payment policy

I now charge 50% up front for all work, no excuses. Doesn't matter if I have worked with you before or if we are friendly. You pay up front, or else the work doesn't start. (Not one person has protested this change in policy, even old clients.)

🔍 Searched for upsells

I was frantic about losing the money, and needed to replace it fast. I figured out that it would be much easier to upsell to existing clients, rather than find a new client from scratch. So I reached out to all my current clients with a few upsell ideas. As a result, I replaced the missing $4,000 (and more) within one month.

📢 Vented

I took to LinkedIn, and while I didn't mention the client by name, I did tell the whole story in a post that went semi-viral.

As a result, I got lots of sympathy (which helped), but even better**: I got two new clients out of the comments section.** Two people who read my post suggested me to their clients. I'm still working with one of those clients to this day, and they're paying more than $4,000 per month.

(Here's the post that did it: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/liamcarnahan_freelance-freelancers-freelancewriting-ac[…]p_B2?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web)

I also found a way to use the work I did for something else. Their content strategy is now part of my new SEO Bridge Builders offer, a small-group mentorship program I'm launching this month to teach people how to turn their knowledge of SEO into a sellable service.

More on that here if you're interested.

Am I happy that the client stiffed me? Absolutely not. I wish I had a time machine to go back and slap that man silly before he ever sent me an email.

But did it all work out? Is my business better for it?

Hell effin' yes. And that's the best I can hope for.

My final advice:

If you aren't already, start the 50% policy I mentioned above. Don't end up in the same situation I did!